by Martin Suter
‘The foetus isn’t frozen,’ Pellegrini confessed in a soft voice.
‘What then?’
‘It’s not here any more.’
‘Where the hell is it then?’ Roux was shouting again.
‘Kaung took it to the animal corpse disposal centre.’
‘But you knew that—’
‘Yes, I did. But Kaung didn’t.’
‘I hope you booted him out.’
‘I’d have to boot out the elephants too.’
‘I’m going to sue you,’ Roux screamed. He darted out of the convoy of lorries and put his foot down.
Just before the Feldkirch/Frastanz exit he was stopped by the motorway police. He’d been driving at 178 kph. Roux’s BMW was confiscated.
29
Zürich
14 June 2016
Sixty per cent of her time was spent working in the animal hospital and the rest was taken up by free consultations in the back room of a second-hand clothes shop. Having set up the street clinic, she now ran it and was its sole employee.
Valerie was in her early forties and an attractive woman, but not immediately. She had short black hair and occasionally disguised her shyness by being excessively tomboyish.
The last patient had left and she opened the window of her surgery to let out the pong of the dog and its master.
Then someone else arrived.
She’d seen him before but she didn’t know he had a dog. Or was it a cat he had in the holdall? He placed it on the examination table.
‘I’m closed, actually,’ she pointed out.
‘It’s an emergency.’
Now she recalled where she’d seen him: with the dog lovers at the station. She’d occasionally pass by to check whether there were any new dogs that hadn’t been seen by her and were lacking a chip or their inoculations, and whether there were owners who hadn’t completed the obligatory dog courses. In fact all this was rather rare. The homeless adored their dogs and wouldn’t risk them being taken away. She knew owners who’d come running to her with their four-legged friends at the first sign of any pain, whereas they’d never go to the doctor themselves, however urgent the need.
Valerie kept an eye on the dog scene all the same. She felt responsible for the pets of those without a home. She wouldn’t have had to start up the street clinic otherwise.
The man now in her surgery after closing time sometimes hung around with the dog lovers. He was one of the silent ones. And she’d noticed something else: his teeth. Most of the alcoholics and junkies on the streets had terrible teeth, whereas he seemed to care for his. Valerie had seen him laugh once and it looked as if they were still all there and white. Perhaps he visited the outpatient clinic of the institute of dental medicine, which offered free treatment to the homeless and marginalised.
‘What have you brought me?’ Valerie asked. She didn’t know his name.
He hesitated. ‘This comes under doctor–patient confidentiality.’
She smiled. ‘Vet–patient confidentiality. Even stricter.’
He opened the zip. ‘You won’t have seen anything like this before.’
‘I’d be very surprised.’
The man put his hands into the bag, carefully took out a pink toy elephant and laid it on the examination table.
Valerie grinned. Either the guy was pulling her leg or he wasn’t quite right in the head. It was quite common among addicts.
But then the toy moved. The trunk coiled, the small body convulsed and something flowed out of its mouth. The creature threw up.
Valerie put a hand over her mouth as if suppressing a scream. The man was right: she never had seen anything like it before. It was a tiny elephant, forty centimetres long at most and thirty tall. It had the proportions of a young animal and the skin of a … a marzipan pig! Just a bit wrinkly, and with pink hair on its back.
‘Where did you get that from?’ she blurted out.
‘I’ll tell you later. Do something – it’s dying.’
The tiny elephant doubled up again. Now something flowed out from behind. Watery, mixed with undigested green matter.
Valerie went to a cupboard and tied a rubber apron around herself. She put on some surgical gloves and came back to the little patient. ‘What did it eat?’
‘Grass, leaves, that sort of thing.’
‘Can you be more specific?’
‘Well, the stuff that grows where I sleep.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘By the river.’
‘What did the grass look like?’
‘Like … like grass. Long, thin, green. With flowers.’
Valerie’s ears pricked up. ‘Yellow ones?’
‘Yes. Buttercups.’
She went back to the cupboard, took out a rubber pump and filled it with water. She pushed the hose end into the creature’s mouth. It struggled a bit, but Valerie was able to carefully push the hose deeper into the gullet until it felt slight resistance.
‘What are you doing?’ the man asked.
‘Flushing out the stomach. The poor thing’s poisoned.’
‘By what?’
‘Buttercups.’
‘Buttercups are poisonous?’
‘Yes. Some slightly, others seriously.’
‘But they’ve got such a wholesome name,’ he said, surprised.
She pressed gently on the water-filled rubber pipe. Soon water mixed with plant residue was flowing out of the trunk.
Valerie repeated the procedure until the water running out was almost clean. Then she gave the elephant an enema until the water that end was no longer cloudy.
She went to the medicine cabinet and mixed a black liquid, which she drew up into a transparent tube, the end of which she inserted into the patient’s gullet again. Then she pumped the contents of the tube into its stomach. ‘Physiological saline solution to combat the loss of liquid. And charcoal powder, which binds the toxins,’ she explained.
During the treatment, which took almost an hour, the owner of the strange creature stood there anxiously and helplessly. She kept listening to the elephant with her stethoscope and taking its temperature, and each time he asked, ‘Is everything all right?’
Each time she replied, ‘I don’t know,’ which was the truth. She had no idea what the pulse of a thirty-centimetre-high pink elephant should be; she doubted that anybody on earth did.
She fetched some towels, gently patted the patient dry, laid it down on a second towel and covered it with a third.
After a while the elephant stopped curling and stretching its trunk, and it closed its eyes.
‘It’s dying,’ the alcoholic said.
She took her stethoscope and listened. The pulse was considerably lower than before.
‘I don’t think so. I think it’s better. I think it’s asleep.’
It sounded as if the man wanted to say something in reply, but couldn’t because his voice was refusing to play along. Valerie looked at him and saw that his eyes were moist. He turned away and coughed.
She went to the sink, filled two glasses of water and passed one to him.
He thanked her and gulped it down.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Schoch.’
‘First name?’
‘Everyone calls me Schoch.’
‘Okay, Schoch, where did you get this?’
‘It was suddenly there in my sleeping place.’
‘Where do you sleep?’
‘I don’t like to say.’
‘Vet–patient confidentiality.’
‘In a cave by the Limmat.’
‘Hmm.’
‘It glows in the dark.’
Valerie looked at him in amusement. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me.’
They both gazed down at the tiny creature, which now was breathing deeply and calmly.
‘Let’s sit down,’ she said, pushing over one of the bar stools that the patients’ owners sat on, and taking one for herself.
‘Who knows about this?’
‘
I haven’t told anyone.’
‘Good. Keep it like that, Schoch, do you understand? Tell no one. Whoever it belongs to will want it back at any price.’
He nodded.
‘What you’ve got here is an impossibility. It’s a global sensation. Do you understand me, Schoch?’
‘Yes, for Christ’s sake.’
It went quiet until Schoch said, ‘If it’s an impossibility, then how is it possible? How come it exists?’
‘Genetic manipulation.’
‘Oh, you mean …’
‘What else? It’s the great industry of the future. The Chinese are the ones doing it most brazenly. For example they’ve bred and patented tiny pigs. They did it for research purposes to begin with, because pigs make the ideal laboratory animals. And mini pigs are much simpler and more economical to deal with. But now you can buy them as pets and toys. I bet you can make mini elephants with the same technology too.’
‘Crazy,’ Schoch murmured.
‘Have you ever heard of glowing animals?’
Schoch shook his head.
‘Come, I’ll show you.’ She went over to her computer and turned the screen in his direction. Then she typed the words into the search engine. Monkeys glowing green, hares glowing blue and sheep glowing red appeared on the screen.
Schoch stood up and came to the screen. ‘Are those for real?’
‘As real as that over there,’ she said, pointing to the mysterious animal. ‘Someone even won a Nobel Prize for it.’
Shaking his head, Schoch moved over to the examination table and looked at the creature like a father gazing at his sleeping baby.
Valerie stood beside him.
‘Is it going to survive?’
She shrugged. ‘Poisoning can cause permanent damage. Kidneys, liver, circulation, etc. I don’t know, we’ll have to nurse the poor thing back to health and keep it under observation.’
Schoch sighed. ‘Great. My cave’s going to be ideal for that.’
30
The same day
It was dark when Valerie Sommer’s clapped-out Peugeot estate stopped outside a villa high up on the Zürichberg. A hedge that hadn’t been clipped in ages blocked the view of the building.
Valerie rummaged in her bag and finally found the remote control. She turned around to Schoch, who was sitting in the back beside the bag with the pink dwarf elephant, and said, ‘This comes under vet–patient confidentiality too.’ She pressed the remote control and a metal gate rattled and creaked to the side, revealing a double garage behind. She drove the car forward and waited till the gate behind them had closed.
Now one of the two garage doors opened and she drove in.
A green vintage Mercedes was jacked up in the other half of the garage. The number plates had been removed and the cream-coloured roof carried a thick layer of dust.
Once the garage door had closed again Valerie motioned to Schoch to get out and she went ahead. She took him through several utility rooms into a kitchen and then into a large, dark room.
‘Look!’ Schoch said. Valerie came closer. He’d opened the zip of the holdall completely and let her look in.
The elephant was lying on its side; the eye facing them was open. And the tiny pink body was glowing.
They stared at it in silence for a while, then looked at each other. Valerie smiled and shook her head in disbelief.
‘I told you,’ Schoch whispered.
She pressed a switch and a few of the candle-shaped bulbs on a brass candelabra lit up, bathing the entrance hall in gentle light. The room was panelled up to the ceiling and a drab oriental carpet covered the parquet floor. In the middle stood a round table bearing a brass sculpture. A stag being brought down by half a dozen hounds.
The decoration on the heavy front door was repeated on the five other doors that led off the hallway into other rooms. Above each of them was a light patch in the wood panelling in the shape of a shield, like the ones for mounting hunting trophies. It smelled of dust and stale air.
‘Who lives here?’ Schoch asked.
‘Nobody.’
She went and opened one of the doors. Behind it was a lift, also entirely clad in wood. A mirror with black spots was set into the central panel.
They went up to the first floor, where the air was even mustier. The light from the lift fell into a landing from which three corridors led. This was laid with a thick carpet and it had a round table precisely in the middle, bearing the bronze of a naked female archer.
Valerie led the way down one of the corridors. At the end she opened a door into a spacious room with a double bed, sitting area and a door that led to a bathroom.
It smelled of drains. Valerie turned on the sink and bath taps and flushed the loo. ‘The traps dry out if they go too long without any water flowing through them. That’s why it stinks in here.’
In a cupboard she found a towel that she handed to Schoch. ‘Wait an hour if you don’t want a cold shower. I’ll go and switch the boiler on now.’
When Schoch hesitated, she added, ‘It wouldn’t do any harm.’
They went back into the sitting room. ‘Take a seat, I’ll be right back.’
She left the room and returned with a small dog bed, woven from wicker and painted light blue. The rim was lower in the middle to make it easier for a small dog to climb in. In many other places it had been gnawed away. Inside was a small mattress with holes revealing the yellow foam inside.
They lifted the small elephant from the bag and laid it in the basket.
‘I don’t know much about elephants, but if I’m not mistaken they’re nursed for the first two or three years of their lives.’
‘What with?’
‘Elephant milk.’
‘How do you get hold of that?’
‘I don’t know if they can cope with cow’s milk, it might be too fatty. I’ll find out tomorrow.’ She took a mobile phone from her pocket. ‘Do you know how to use one of these?’
‘I’m told they’re getting simpler. If that’s true, then yes. I used to be able to.’
‘I’ll dial my number, see?’ She showed him. ‘All you’ve got to do is press the green ‘Dial’ button and it will call my phone. Do it the moment you think that something’s not right with the elephant and I’ll come straight away.’
‘You’re not sleeping here?’
She shook her head. ‘I can’t.’
‘Whose house is this?’
‘My parents’.’
‘Where are they?’
‘Dead.’
‘I see.’
‘Stay inside, don’t show yourself, don’t open the door to anyone and keep quiet. Tomorrow I’ll bring you both something to eat.’ She pointed to a huge antique cupboard. ‘The bedclothes are in there.’
‘I don’t use bedclothes.’
‘Will you manage without food till tomorrow morning?’
He nodded. ‘I’m not much of an eater.’
‘And without drink? Will you cope without that, Schoch?’ She stared at him sceptically.
‘I’m not much of a drinker, either.’
31
The same day
The Persian carpet was softer than Schoch’s cave. He’d taken the flowery throw from the bed as a blanket and as a pillow he used a seat cushion from one of the armchairs. This allowed him to look into the light-blue dog basket where the miniature elephant lay.
It hadn’t vomited for three hours, nor had any diarrhoea. Once it tried to scrabble to its feet, but failed.
But the elephant wasn’t asleep; its round eyes were wide open, it kept moving its head restlessly and most of the time its trunk was flailing around.
Schoch had tried several times to lay his hand on the warm, soft body, but on each occasion the fantastical creature became more unsettled, as if wanting to shake him off.
Now he was just lying beside the elephant, watching it.
In the distance a bell chimed three times and he could hear the wind rustling the old trees.
The shutters and curtains were closed, but Schoch had opened a window to let in some fresh air.
Who has a house like this, but doesn’t live in it? he wondered. Can’t sleep in it, but holds on to it?
The elephant drew in its front legs, pushing them beneath its body, and tried to get up.
‘Shhh,’ Schoch said. ‘Shhh, shhh.’
It seemed to respond to him. At any rate it turned its head slightly in his direction and laid it back down on the tatty mattress.
‘Shhh, shhh, shhh,’ Schoch said again, placing his hand gently on the small, faintly quivering body.
‘Shhh, shhh, shhh.’
This time it let him keep his hand there. It even seemed to relax.
‘Shhh, shhh, shhh.’
The round eyes closed. Opened again. Closed. Opened. Stayed open.
Schoch didn’t dare withdraw his hand. He tried to make it as light as possible and gazed at the slumbering creature as it lay peacefully in its own pink glow. A creature from another planet.
Schoch’s gaze fell on his hand: coarse, dirty and shaky. He got up gently, went into the bathroom and found a nailbrush. There was also a new bar of soap in one of the many drawers. When he unwrapped it from the crinkly lime-green paper, something flaked away from the now crumbly outer layer.
He held the soap under the running water and rubbed it between his hands until it lathered. Then he washed his hands thoroughly, brushed away the black beneath his long, brittle nails and trimmed them with some nail scissors that he found in an incomplete manicure set.
Schoch tiptoed back into the bedroom.
The tiny creature was lying a metre from the basket, trying to stand. Schoch hurried over, squatted down, picked it up, stood it gently on its feet and let go carefully.
Now the elephant, legs apart and its trunk hanging down, stood there shakily, as if it might topple over again at any moment.
Schoch lifted it up and laid it back down in the basket. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to leave you, erm …’ What were elephants called?
He only knew one elephant name: Sabu, the beast who a few years ago had escaped from the circus in Zürich, taken a long bath in the lake and then gone for a stroll along Bahnhofstrasse. He’d remembered the name because the elephant’s story had struck a chord. Like Schoch, he’d bailed out of a comfortable life.