Eyes Like Sky And Coal And Moonlight

by Cat Rambo

  A narrow ledge spiraled down along the side, too narrow for him to climb. He trumpeted his anger, his fear as a face peered down at him from one side before saying something to another face. He had been here two days now, and starvation weakened him. When the man came down the ledge, he could not rise, despite the grain smell. The man came nearer and he tried again to stand, but could not. The hands ran over him, an unthinkable touch that gradually became no more bothersome than a tick-bird picking parasites from his skin. Reluctantly at first, he let the man feed him handfuls of mash from the bucket, tasting of dust and metal, becoming more eager as the strength returned.

  For a while the man lived with him, slept by his side, and he became used to him. Even acquired a fondness for him. But no matter how much food the man brought him, it was never enough, and the hunger ate at him during the nights, making him fretful and weak.

  Later Matthew had found him in the Paris Zoo, huddled with Alice. Puniest elephant I’ve ever seen, Matthew said, tipping his head back to consider him, think he can make it to London? The Frenchman shook his head. Mais non.

  P.T. Barnum liked things big. Say that, he told the reporters in his mind, rehearsing the spiel mentally, “P.T. Barnum likes things big. Why, right now, he’s chasing after the world’s largest elephant, Jumbo, seven tons and eleven and a half feet tall!”

  Right now he stood in the offices of the London Zoological Society. He’d been in these sorts of places, smelling of formaldehyde and dusty feathers. He’d bought the Fiji mermaid from such a place, knowing when he saw the nappy black hair, the scaly lower half, that here he had a moneymaker.

  “You want to buy him as a sideshow,” Abraham Bartlett said politely. He was a wispy, fine-haired man with a heavily waxed mustache and tendrils of hair protruding from his ears, which Barnum stared at in fascination.

  “A sideshow? No—for the circus, my circus!” Barnum said. “I’m willing to pay you $10,000 for him!”

  The silence in the room changed to a new and waiting quality as the two Englishmen exchanged glances.

  “No, I’m afraid not,” Bartlett said with genuine regret in his tone. “Jumbo is one of the greatest attractions here. Hundreds of thousands of children have ridden on him over the last fifteen years.”

  On the way out of the Zoo, Barnum ducked through the East Tunnel and made his way to the Elephant and Rhino Pavilion. Inside, he stopped and stared at Jumbo. “There’s got to be a way,” he thought.

  Clusters of children were lined up to ride the elephant, who stood beside his keeper. Three little girls were arranged in graduated height with their nanny, each dressed in blue with red bows riding their hips and matching bows perched like butterflies on their hats. One held up her hands to Jumbo and the elephant’s trunk explored them for the peanuts she held. Her face shone with joy.

  “I will have you,” Barnum mused. “P.T. Barnum doesn’t take no for an answer.” He imagined his friend Charles, the world’s smallest man, in the place of the child the keeper was lifting up. The biggest and the smallest together in one ring and himself in the background proclaiming, “General Tom Thumb and Jumbo!”

  “Mr. Barnum,” a voice said beside him. It spoke in English, but the accent was indefinable, a rumble beneath the words like a distant echo of thunder.

  “You have the advantage of me, madam,” he said, turning.

  “You seem entranced by the elephant.” She was a small woman, dressed all in gray, the lustrous, colorless cloth giving her a pigeon’s drab appearance. “Surely you have seen one before?”

  He laughed. “Hundreds!” he said. “I used one to plow my farm in Bridgeport.”

  “As advertisement, I know,” she said.

  “Every agricultural society in the States wrote to me, asking if the elephant was a profitable agricultural animal.”

  “And was it?”

  He chuckled. “No. One eats up the value of his head, trunk, and body each year, not to mention that he can’t work at all in cold weather. Tell me, why are you so interested in elephants?”

  She looked at Jumbo. “In Africa, the elephant hunters leave piles of corpses, only the tusks removed,” she said. “It is a savage, barbaric sight. Have you ever witnessed elephants mourning? They speak their sorrow in sounds too low for the human ear to comprehend, but you can feel it vibrating in the ground beneath your feet. They gather around the corpses, walking in circles and mourning. They throw handfuls of straw and grass upon the corpse as though trying to shield themselves from the sight.”

  “A pity,” Barnum said.

  “More than that. An atrocity. If more people knew elephants as something other than distant monsters, perhaps the public outcry would make the trade cease.”

  “So you are their advocate.”

  “After a fashion.”

  He sighed, following her gaze. “Jumbo here is no ordinary elephant. The largest of his kind. What a draw he would be!”

  “And yet you speak as though you cannot have him, Mr. Barnum.”

  “I will have my way. It’s only a matter of time.”

  “The curators will be reluctant to part with him. So vast a creature and yet so gentle.”

  Her voice gave the last word a lingering caress.

  “Gentle, yes,” Barnum said. An idea flickered in his mind.

  After Lord Corcoran’s death, Matthew Scott had come to the London Zoological Society along with the animal collection the Lord had left to that Institution, elands to cheetahs, Amazonian parrots, and a lone pink-headed duck.

  “I’m just a jumped-up ostler,” he’d say when drinking. “My fellas just look a lil’ more unusual than most.” At first he’d balked—the animals he cared for ate better than any member of his family, which seemed obscene. But with time, he’d become proud of the variety of animals he’d nursed through illnesses or helped birth their scaled or spotted offspring. When the directors sent him to Paris to scour the zoos there for possible additions, he’d been pleased.

  He wouldn’t have found the elephant without the woman, though. He’d been in the Champs Elysees when she approached him. At first he’d reckoned her for a whore, but her dress was muted, unlike that of the tarts who seemed to vie with each to see who could more closely resemble the brightly-plumaged macaw that he’d found in one zoo. Surely no decent woman would accost a man in order to speak to him.

  “You might be interested in the Jardin des Plantes,” she said. Her English was perfect.

  “Eh, Miss?” he said.

  “The Jardin des Plantes,” she repeated. Her eyes were brown and fluid as a gazelle’s, but he could not determine her age. She turned away but he caught at her shoulder.

  “Miss, how did you know?” he began.

  “I saw you at the Parc Floral and overheard your conversation with the curator about their peacocks,” she said.

  “What will I find at the Jardin des Plantes?” he said.

  “Two elephants,” she said. “Young ones. They’re very ill.”

  He frowned. “Ill from what?”

  “The climate. Lack of care. Improper diet.”

  “What makes you think I can save them?”

  “You know elephants,” she said.

  The two young elephants, Jumbo and Alice, were indeed ill. Matthew looked into the long-lashed eye as big as his clenched fist and saw despair there. He laid his palm flat across the warm gray hide.

  “Hang on,” he said. “I’ll get you out.” The zoo tried to bargain with him, but he pointed out that the two might not even survive the journey and that in that light his offer of a full-grown Indian rhinoceros in trade was quite generous. He suspected the curators had miscalculated how much an elephant could consume. Going to the market, he paid for a cart of hay and brought it back to the Jardin to feed the pair. He bought a bushel of peaches as well and fed them to Alice and Jumbo in alternating handfuls, smelling the sweet pulp as the elephants plucked the fruit from his fingers.

  Jumbo wouldn’t have done it, but when the man offered him
the handful of peanuts, he didn’t realize the trick until he felt the terrible burning in his trunk. He cried out and the children ran, screaming as shrill as gulls, as he reared back on his legs, trying to find the source of the red pepper. Matthew was there between him and the tormentor and he could not find him with all the burning, as though the world of smells had gone away and he was forced to rely on his own weak eyes. He turned to the water tun, drinking with frantic need, but the burning barely ceased, and he trumpeted angrily again.

  It was hard for Barnum to keep from grinning when he signed the papers in the Zoo’s office. Sunlight slanted across the page as he finished the bold loops of his signature and blotted it. He’d celebrate at the Madagascar Hotel tonight, drink champagne with the Swedish Nightingale, Jenny Lind, who’d come to see him. As he’d suspected, the directors were worried at Jumbo’s temper tantrums, which Barnum had paid two sub-zookeepers to provoke by every method they knew. The pepper had been the most effective.

  “You will be taking him back to America as soon as possible?” Bartlett asked.

  “Oh, I reckon not,” Barnum said. “Figured I’d leave him here long enough to say goodbye to you Brits.” He smiled and tipped his hat to Bartlett.

  Within the week the journalists he’d paid off had done their work. “England to Lose National Treasure!” one said. Another demanded, “Are We Shipping Our Largest Asset to America?” More newspapermen, who’d missed the original story, were waiting for him as he exited the Regent’s Park Hotel, and he stopped despite the rain’s fine drizzle to address them, standing back on his heels with his thumbs in his suspenders, surveying the crowd craning to hear him against the hubbub of passing carriages and foot traffic. The English didn’t have a chance against good old American scheming.

  “Is it true the Prince of Wales himself asked you to reconsider taking Jumbo?” a tall man in a porkpie hat asked, pen poised over his notebook.

  “Well,” he drawled. “His Majesty and I are old friends from my other tours. He did bring it up, but I said no sir, a deal’s a deal.”

  “Visitors to the London Zoo have tripled,” another said. “All saying goodbye to Jumbo. Do you have any message for the children pleading with you to leave Jumbo here in England?”

  “They’re welcome to come to the U.S. of A. and see their pal there. He’s not a born British citizen, so maybe the fellow will like a little travel,” Barnum said.

  “When are you returning to America?”

  “I’m setting sail tomorrow, actually.”

  “With Jumbo?”

  “No,” Barnum said. He refrained from adding “with all this publicity he’s generating I’d be crazy to” but the thought had crossed his mind.

  He would have stayed to talk to them longer, but he wanted to pick up presents for his wife Nancy at Harrod’s. He strolled the aisles, finding Jumbo dolls, mugs, tin banks, booklets, everything he could have thought up himself and more, and it brought a constant smile to his lips, even when the salesclerk recognized him as the man taking Jumbo away and charged him twice what he should have for a stuffed elephant waving the Union Jack in its trunk.

  Jumbo knew what the crate was as they rolled it into his yard. It smelled of oak and iron and the canvas padding that lined it. Big enough to hold him, the largest elephant in the world. He’d smelled that smell before on his trip to Paris, and then later to England. He remembered the water’s feel underneath him, and the nausea that came as unwelcome accompaniment to the hunger, as though they were alternating, angry monkeys on either side refusing to let him rest.

  He flapped his ears, warning them, but they continued to urge him towards the crate. He lay down, flopping onto his side with a grunt. Let them try to get him up. He wouldn’t go.

  Telegram from George Couro, agent for Phineas T. Barnum, March 1st, 1882:

  JUMBO IS LYING IN THE GARDEN STOP WIL NOT GET IN CRATE STOP PLEASE ADVISE STOP

  Telegram from Phineas T. Barnum to George Couro, March 1st:

  LET HIM LIE THERE A WEEK IF HE WANTS STOP BEST ADVERTISEMENT IN THE WORLD STOP

  Couro crumpled the telegram in his hand and threw it to the ground. All very well for Barnum to say such things, but he didn’t have Parliament and the Queen ragging on him, nor had he been threatened with imprisonment if any force was used to remove Jumbo. He went to the window to look out across Regent’s Park towards the Zoo’s distant blur. Overhead, clouds like mottled lead filled the gray sky.

  Telegram from Phillip Harbottle, editor of the London Daily Telegraph, March 3rd, 1882:

  BRITISH PUBLIC DEMANDS JUMBO STOP WE ARE AUTHORIZED TO REQUEST YOU NAME YOUR PRICE STOP

  Telegram from Phineas T. Barnum to Phillip Harbottle, March 4th, 1882:

  HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS WOULD BE NO INDUCEMENT TO CANCEL PURCHASE STOP SINCERELY PHINEAS TAYLOR BARNUM.

  Matthew didn’t trust this Barnum fellow. Slick American, and by all accounts a flim-flam man. There was a story circulating about an earlier visit to Europe when Barnum had gone to see the antiquities at Warwick Castle. He’d had the gall to ask the curator how much he’d sell the antiquities for. When the man declined, Barnum said, “I’ll have them duplicated for My Museum, so that Americans can see them without coming here, and bust up your show that way.” Was this the right person for Matthew Scott, a man of good character even if he was just a jumped-up ostler, to associate with?

  He went out into the Pavilion. The transportation crate loomed in the middle and off to one side was Jumbo’s bulk. The elephant stirred as he approached, and the trunk caressed his face when he stooped.

  “Look, old man, this won’t do,” he said. He sat down beside the vast head, the straw crinkling below him. Overhead through the skylight, the night stars were bright as diamonds. He leaned back against the knobbed plane of the top of Jumbo’s head, and the elephant gave a low soft rumble of pleasure at the contact.

  “You can’t lie here forever,” he said. The elephant rumbled again. Matthew sighed.

  “Barnum’s offering me five times my wages here to travel with you,” he said. “America. It’s a frightening thought, but an alluring one. I’d have to leave the other elephants here. Alice, for one.”

  He could hear the elephant’s breathing in the darkness, a great rush of straw-scented air, regular and rhythmic.

  “You’re my success story, you know,” he went on. “The largest elephant in the world. Who would have imagined a sickly little thing like you turning into that?”

  He laid his arm along the elephant’s side, exploring the deeply grooved skin. To the south, a hyena’s whiny warble sounded from their enclosure.

  “I’ll do it,” he said. And sighed.

  He didn’t want to, but with Matthew urging him on Jumbo entered the crate, trumpeting once to show his indignation before he went in. Sixteen matched Percheons pulled the cage through the streets towards the docks. Word of Jumbo’s departure had spread, and thousands lined the streets, following the team. Matthew stared forward, ignoring the crying children.

  The thirteen ton crate was swung aboard their freighter, the Assyrian Monarch. Crowds filled the docks. From his vantage point, Matthew could see a blond five year old whose father had lifted her onto his shoulders to see. Tears glinted on hr face but she waved a small flag in her hand, imprinted with the elephant’s outline. Gulls circled overhead, watching for stray food, and two artists stood where they could see it all, trying to catch the scene on sketchpads.

  Barnum, standing beside Matthew as they watched the crate’s progress onto the ship, rubbed his hands together.

  “Worth every penny,” he said. “You know they charged me for the freight they can’t ship because of Jumbo? And steerage passage for 200 emigrants. I’m in the wrong business. But it’s all advertising. There’s a banquet on board tonight and I expect you there.”

  “I want to settle him down,” Matthew said.

  “Sure, sure, see him settled. I sent up fruit for him. And a bushel of candies. I hear he has quite the sweet too
th. But come to the banquet. All sorts of lords and ladies there, all to say goodbye to him. I sent a tux along to your quarters.”

  “I won’t know how to act,” Matthew said in a sullen tone.

  Barnum clapped him on the shoulder. “You’ll do fine.”

  Despite his fears, Matthew was able to take to the sidelines during the banquet. At the head table with the Captain and the scowling Prince of Wales, Barnum led toast after toast, drunk in the best French champagne. “To Jumbo,” he cried, ignoring the English nobility’s dark looks.

  Beside him, a woman said, “Is he well? Are his quarters sufficient?”

  He turned and recognized her, again in her gray dress. A pearl necklace rested around her throat, surprisingly opulent against her olive skin.

  “You again,” he said. He was a little tipsy from the unaccustomed drinking. “Are you traveling with us?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Come tomorrow and I’ll show him to you.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Tell me your name this time.”

  “Miss Laxmi.”

  There was plenty of food, and a boy who shoveled his droppings as fast as they fell. Despite the swaying deck beneath Jumbo’s feet, he did not feel queasy this time. He ate the sugary candies delicately, one by one, so small he almost could not taste them.

  When he smelled Matthew, he rumbled his greeting.

  “Got a friend,” Matthew said, producing a handful of peanuts. Jumbo began to alternate between them and candies.

  The woman touched his side near his foreleg. “So big,” she said. “A magnificent ambassador for his race.” She smelled comforting, like grass and hay in the sun.