by Martin Suter
He didn’t mind living alone at Brudermatte Farm. Three times a week Frau Huber came to tidy and clean – which was permanently necessary – and to replenish his supplies. He either ate in the pubs of nearby villages or he put frozen pizzas, tartes flambées and cheesecakes in the oven, or cooked tomato spaghetti, his signature dish.
Reber spent the evenings watching the television news and reading specialist literature on the internet. Recently he’d been looking at dwarfism in humans and animals, and he was especially fascinated by microcephalic osteodysplastic primordial dwarfism type 11, where the foetus barely grows in the womb, but otherwise develops normally. Like Asha’s foetus.
Judging by Roux’s surprise at the fact that his embryo had stopped growing, dwarfism couldn’t have been the goal of his experiment. But Reber doubted his aim was to breed herpes-resistant elephants. He’d done some background research on Roux and learned that he used to work for Gebstein, who experimented with glowing animals. He wouldn’t be surprised if Roux was involved in a similar commercial project.
At any rate it was significant how suddenly his interest was aroused once he spotted the possibility that the foetus might survive to become a mini elephant.
Kaung was right when he said Roux wasn’t a good man. Which was why Reber didn’t feel any guilt. Although hiding from Roux the fact that the embryo was still alive wasn’t strictly ethical, Reber was certain that Roux’s intentions weren’t either.
Any qualms that Reber may have felt were short-lived, for surely it would only be a few more days before Kaung rang to tell him that Asha had lost the baby. They were agreed that the most important thing to do when it happened was to get rid of the dead foetus and afterbirth as quickly as possible so that Roux didn’t get his hands on a single cell.
Reber wasn’t a particularly outspoken opponent of genetic engineering. He just didn’t like it. He found he had nothing in common with the people who were interested in it. At university these had generally been the technocratic researchers and scientists.
Although it was principally the student number quotas rather than a pure love of animals that drove him into veterinary medicine, he did like animals. And people who liked animals.
But since he’d given up his work in the large animal clinic and been working as a country vet, his relationship to the job had changed. He had – how should he put it? – become more idealistic. The farmers he dealt with, most of them at any rate, had a natural affinity with their animals. Not sentimental, but it wasn’t value-free either. The animals might be livestock, but they weren’t mere commodities. And certainly not organisms or clusters of cells to be experimented on willy-nilly.
The more he read about the subject of genetic engineering the more dubious it seemed. But it was only when he learned of the discovery of a system that allowed simple, cheap and efficient interventions into the genome, that he became a convinced opponent.
The system was called CRISPR/Cas and it allowed targeted genes to be destroyed, repaired or modified. You could use it to modify specific gametes. And changes in the genome of a living being affected all its descendants too.
Reber had enough professional experience to know how quickly mistakes could occur and he was concerned by the idea that each of these would be passed down to future generations.
He gradually became anxious that the tiny embryo might be one such mistake.
The due date came ever closer and the mini foetus was still alive. Reber and Kaung had to brace themselves for the prospect that the elephant might be born alive. Kaung was sure of it, and Reber himself slowly started to accept this possibility.
If it did happen, he’d agreed with Kaung that they’d try to keep the birth secret and Reber would hide the creature on his farm. For the duration of what was likely to be a short life.
6
12 August 2015
Just for once Reber was sitting on his after-work bench outside the house. Throughout the entire rainy summer he’d been able to blame the weather for not doing it. But that evening the atmosphere before the next looming storm was so wonderful that he simply had to sit out there, enjoying a bottle of wine and the paper.
The grass was tall and dark green; no farmer had dared make hay. Like a wound, a red-rimmed gash on the horizon gaped in the ash-grey blanket of cloud.
The bottle was already half empty when he noticed that the light had changed into an unreal yellow. Shortly afterwards stormy gusts started tugging at his paper. He made for the shelter of the house.
Before he’d got to the front door his mobile rang. On the display it said ‘Kaung’.
‘Must come,’ Kaung said. ‘Taxi not find house. GPS not find house either.’
That was true. His house didn’t have a GPS locatable address. ‘Where are you?’
‘Graufeld. Must come. Quick.’
‘Has Asha lost her baby?’
‘Not lost. Alive. Quick!’
As Reber was reversing his SUV out of the shed the first lightning flashed in the sky. Halfway to the village the deluge almost defeated the windscreen wipers. Streams flowed from farm tracks onto the narrow road.
Alive? If that was the case then the baby had arrived before the earliest date. And without any signs from the mother.
It stopped raining abruptly. The road led through a little wood. Reber accelerated.
A few seconds later the car hit another wall of rain. Reber braked, the SUV skidded, but he regained control. The wine, Reber thought. He hadn’t expected he’d have to drive.
Shimmering through the downpour by the side of the road were the lights of Waldhof, the last farm before the edge of the village. Soon afterwards Reber saw the Graufeld sign and the speed limit.
They hadn’t arranged where to meet, but it was a small village. Even from a distance Reber could see the taxi sign shining and reflecting on the wet roof of the vehicle.
He flashed his lights and saw a door open and Kaung get out. He turned around, picked up a bag and waited for Reber in the pouring rain.
Reber stopped, Kaung opened the back door, put the bag on the seat, pushed it to the middle and said, ‘Must pay please. Kaung not enough money.’
The taxi driver made no move to get out, but just put the window down, said, ‘One hundred and fifteen thirty,’ and held out his hand.
Reber gave him 120 and hurried back to his own car.
The taxi drove off, but Reber didn’t start his engine. Kneeling on the seat he peered behind at the bag.
The zip was open. Kaung was holding the two sides apart.
At that moment the courtesy light inside the car automatically went off.
Inside the bag he saw something that was pink and glowing.
7
Circus Pellegrini
The same day
Kaung had been certain that it was imminent; he could read the little signs. Asha had started making the same steps forward and backward for hours on end. Although it was common for elephants living in captivity to display such mechanical behaviour, for Asha this was new. Nor was it like her to throw food and objects around. She also had diarrhoea, another indication that she was nervous.
Then Kaung saw that she’d lost some mucus. By now at the latest he ought to have informed Dr Reber. But a visit outside his scheduled calls would have raised eyebrows in the circus. Kaung could still ring him if it were absolutely necessary and he could be here pretty quickly because their current venue in the Oberland was only about half an hour away from Dr Reber’s village.
But Kaung didn’t think it was necessary. He was almost sure that it would be an easy birth. Yes, the doctor was afraid that such a tiny baby might get stuck and suffocate in the long birthing canal, but he had never believed it would survive anyway. The doctor was a good man, but he didn’t believe in miracles.
Kaung was now sleeping beside Asha, which didn’t arouse any suspicion as it wasn’t unusual for him to spend the night with a poorly animal, talking to it and feeding it little treats. And Asha was poorly. She
had a gastrointestinal infection, or at least that’s the excuse Kaung had given Pellegrini for her not being able to take part in the performance.
Kaung sat in Asha’s stall in the lotus position, meditating. The rain made a dull thud as it drummed onto the roof of the animal tent. The smell of the elephant dung mingled with that of the wet grass that drifted in through the half-open entrance.
A noise from far beyond his consciousness alerted Kaung. Opening his eyes he saw that Asha was thrusting her trunk high in the air and hunching her back.
The noise was coming from Trisha, who had stood up and was blurting out the sounds. Kaung immediately knew what they meant: Asha’s contractions had begun.
He stood up, went to the entrance to the tent and closed the tarpaulins. Then he hurried back to Asha, laid his hand on the root of her trunk and spoke some words of comfort.
As a young boy he’d learned how to read the eyes of elephants. He could spot their fears, their anger, their happiness and their pain.
Asha wasn’t in pain. Although her body tightened once more she didn’t seem to feel any resistance.
She pushed again. Kaung leaped behind her – just in time to catch a little bundle in a jet of amniotic fluid.
Asha turned around.
Normally she’d now free the baby from the sac, but Kaung didn’t dare put this tiny creature at the feet of the mighty animal. He hurriedly ripped open the slippery membrane with his bare hands. And got a fright.
It was as if he were peeling an exotic fruit from its plain exterior.
The skin that appeared was a deep, schid, shining pink.
Kaung took the animal completely out of the sac and nudged it to get it moving.
Yes, it was breathing!
Asha gave the small creature a fleeting examination with her trunk and turned away. Kaung fancied he’d seen something in her eyes that told him it was advisable to leave.
He carried the newborn out of the stall. No sooner had he secured the heavy bolt than Asha gave the partition wall a thundering kick and trumpeted briefly but angrily.
Kaung went past the stalls with the sleeping horses to the tack room, where he dried the baby with a towel and bedded it down on a blanket.
In front of him lay a perfectly formed elephant. Not twenty centimetres tall.
It was pink.
And it radiated a holy aura.
Kaung knelt and prayed.
The creature moved its trunk and tried to lift its head.
Kaung covered the body with the loose end of the blanket and left the tack room.
A few planks formed a slippery path across the soaked meadow to the caravans. Only in one of them was there a light still on, while a television flickered in another.
He opened the door to his small caravan and went in. Without turning on the light he pulled out a bag from under the bed and returned to the tack room in the pouring rain.
The small elephant appeared to have moved; the blanket had slightly slid to the side. Kaung covered it up again, took a Thermos flask from the bag and went to the elephant stalls.
All the elephants were on their feet. Asha still looked as if she ought to be given a wide berth. He went into the others’ shared pen and approached Rupashi, who gave him a brief hug with her trunk.
Kaung patted Rupashi, led her calf to the udder and waited until it started drinking. An elephant cow can only be milked when a calf is suckling on the other teat.
He stroked Rupashi’s udder and she let him milk her.
Kaung filled the Thermos with a litre of her milk.
When he returned to the saddle room the small elephant was standing on wobbly legs. Kaung filled a baby bottle with some milk and offered it to the elephant.
It hesitated, examined the teat with its trunk then eventually lifted it, opened its mouth, put its head slightly to one side and started to suck.
Kaung watched the tiny fairytale creature, which wasn’t even twice as big as the baby bottle, as it drank almost 100 millilitres of Rupashi’s milk.
The rain kept thundering on the tent roof.
‘Barisha,’ Kaung muttered, the Hindi word for rain.
And from that moment on, this would be the little elephant’s name.
8
Graufeld
Autumn 2015 to spring 2016
Barisha’s entry into the life of Hansjörg Reber challenged almost everything that he’d hitherto thought incontrovertible, and cast a shadow of doubt over what he’d always imagined to be cast-iron certainties.
His scientific understanding was shattered, he doubted his powers of medical judgement and he was doing things for which he needed reserves of dishonesty he never knew he possessed.
He kept telling himself, of course, that his motives were nothing but ethical. In this case someone had intervened in nature not for the sake of scientific progress that would cure illnesses or save lives. He’d done it to produce a sensation and possibly earn a fortune too. Was his intention to produce a living toy? Was that what Roux was trying to do?
Reber didn’t spend long pondering the question of how unethical one could be to prevent something unethical.
That he’d appropriated something that didn’t belong to him wasn’t in doubt. Something that was the result of years of expensive research activity. However contemptible Roux might be, Reber was guilty of cheating him out of the fruits of his labour and of withholding a scientific sensation.
But he didn’t feel the slightest pangs of conscience. The only worry plaguing him was the fear of being caught.
Although Reber had taken precautions to ensure that this didn’t happen, he’d been obliged to widen the circle of those (partially) in the know. Frau Huber knew that for research purposes he was keeping an animal in quarantine in the stables, which were now permanently locked.
And every day Hans, her unemployed son, drove in his tuned and lowered Opel Astra to wherever Circus Pellegrini happened to be performing. He brought with him an empty Thermos sterilised by his mother and came back with a full flask that Kaung would hand over in a place specified by text message.
Hans wasn’t interested in the content of the Thermos flasks, only in the money per kilometre that Reber paid him, which was higher than usual: one franc. For greater distances, Hans also received an expenses allowance, which given his huge bulk was not inconsiderable.
In the end Reber knew exactly why none of these ethical questions bothered him: he was completely in love with Barisha.
Not as a vet, not as an elephant specialist, not as a scientist. Ever since his first encounter with the tiny creature he’d been entranced by its – charm.
Yes. He was overwhelmed by a feeling that he’d only experienced once before, and very briefly at that, in the first few weeks after meeting his ex. When he was in love with her freshness, her naïvety, her chubbiness.
Now he felt a similar affection for Barisha, a comparable urge to protect.
No doubt anyone else would have felt the same. Barisha was captivating. She – Reber had identified her sex – possessed the charm, curiosity, awkwardness and attachment common to all baby elephants. Only she was much, much smaller. And pink. And she glowed in the dark like an alien.
His feelings towards Barisha were different from Kaung’s. Reber felt affection, whereas Kaung felt reverence. Kaung prayed to her and venerated her like a deity. On the visits he made on his days off he placed small flower garlands around her neck.
Barisha was doing well with Rupashi’s milk. She’d weighed 2.45 kilograms at birth and now was putting on about twenty-five grams per day. And she was thriving in Reber’s care. After her birth he’d disinfected her navel, as he would with any normal baby elephant. Later he’d immunised and vaccinated her with a fraction of the usual doses.
Barisha was an adventurous baby and Reber noticed that she was getting bored in the pen of the old cowshed – she kept running against its confines.
When the air was pure and the weather decent, Reber took Barisha outside. She
loved vanishing into the unmown grass between the trellis and the vegetable garden, only to appear again by the edge of the gravel path that led to the house. Sometimes she’d roll around, leaving marks in the grass that must have looked like little corn circles to Frau Huber.
Reber’s veterinary work suffered as a result of his new housemate. He couldn’t leave Barisha for longer than three hours, because that was how often she needed her milk. On several occasions he’d had to call on an astonished colleague and competitor when he’d been summoned to attend a calving cow at an awkward time of day.
But Reber didn’t care; he had more important priorities than his reputation as a vet. He wanted to spend as much time with Barisha as possible, because he didn’t think she’d live long. From what he’d found out, brain haemorrhages and vasoconstriction were common in humans with microcephalic osteodysplastic primordial dwarfism. Why should it be any different with elephants?
Barisha was kept in the stables only on those days when Frau Huber was in the house or when Reber was in his practice or out on a call. Otherwise she kept him company in the kitchen or sitting room. She also spent the nights on a blanket beside his bed. He’d rolled up the rugs, put them in the hayloft and was always armed with a roll of absorbent paper and dog waste bags. This was more out of consideration for Frau Huber than any need for cleanliness. He liked the smell of elephant stalls.
His evenings were spent reading in the sitting room beneath the standard lamp on the threadbare sofa, both items his predecessor had left behind. Or he’d watch Barisha, who slept either on the sofa or at his feet. And glowed silently.
He couldn’t remember ever having felt so happy.
9
Circus Pellegrini
Autumn 2015 to spring 2016
Kaung’s daily routine was less tranquil. He still spent every day training the elephants on his own, for Pellegrini claimed he was far too busy with the preparations for next season. And there was plenty of time to integrate him into the act in a way that made him look like the trainer.