The Child's Elephant (14 page)

The months of the long rains was everyone’s favourite time of year. Fresh green grass sprouted, all the blossoms burst open, the breeze filled with butterflies and sweet flowery scents. Mothers sang songs to their babies on the way to the shambas. The children scampered through pastures, intoxicated as bees. The goats jumped about amid the rocky boulders, and the cattle, growing frisky and sleek on so much rich grazing, would headbutt each other and kick up their heels with loud snorts.

Meya was light-hearted the first day Bat left his cows in the care of Muka and set off to search for the wild elephants. She barged through the bushes and clambered onto anthills and made little mock rushes at an indignant sand grouse. They were going to the river; but not to the places where the villagers went to bathe and draw water. They were heading further downstream.

Keeping pace with the islands of water hyacinths which floated, buoyed up by their tangles of rubbery roots, they followed the course of the swollen brown flow until they reached a place where it gradually widened, sweeping swift and shallow over a sandy bed. Bat paused under a tamarind. The elephants came to this spot. He could tell by the footprints in the soft earth. He picked out the sharper, more clearly defined patterns of those left by the younger animals before singling out one that he thought must have belonged to the matriarch.
Its ridges were smoother, its heel more worn . . . and it was so big. He gasped inwardly as he bent to measure it as Bitek had taught him. The size of an elephant can be estimated by its footprint, the fisherman had told him. Twice the circumference of the pad is the height of the animal at its shoulder. The creature that had made this must have been truly enormous.

Untying a knotted rag, Bat shook out a sprinkle of ash. The wind was perfect. This was where he would wait. He leaned back to rest. The sound of the insects was like a wind in his ears. Where did they all come from? he wondered dreamily as he watched them, darting and hovering and swooping and crawling, millions of tiny creatures with sheeny bright shells and gauze wings that glittered like splinters of pure light. They just appeared out of nowhere at the end of the dry season. It was as if they had fallen with the rains, he thought.

Suddenly, Meya paused in her grazing. She had heard something. Bat couldn’t tell what. He waited, pulse fluttering. A short while later he thought he heard something too: a slow, steady, sluffing of softly padded feet. His eyes darted around him. His breath caught in his throat. A long file of elephants was arriving, the cows in an orderly column, their calves keeping close in obedient formation, scurrying a little faster every now and then to keep up. They were making their way towards the riverbank.

Only when they had almost reached the water did the little ones break rank, squealing and splashing as they plunged into the river, tumbling and squirting as they scrambled about, disturbing the storks and sending the
ducks scattering, while the calmer matrons, wading into the shallows, dipped their long trunks and sucked slowly and drank. Meya was spellbound. She stood still as a rock.

Then the wind ruffled through the grasses and changed course, carrying the scent of the watchers in the wild elephants’ direction. The effect was immediate. The whole herd moved off at once, the matrons surging like great ships through the flow of the river, the waters rushing and foaming about their baggy knees, while the little ones dashed after them, backs arched and chins high. They glanced over their shoulders and showed the whites of their eyes.

As soon as they were safely on the far bank they wheeled round in unison as if at some silent order. Ears flared and a row of trunks lifted. They waved above the line of massive heads, sampling the unfamiliar smell that was drifting towards them; letting the air out again with a soft low whoosh. Then one beast emerged. She must be the matriarch, Bat thought; and his heart swelled with pride that perhaps one day Meya would look like that. She was magnificent: tall, with great hollow cheekbones and long deeply curved tusks. They were pointing straight at him as she advanced in his direction, step by slow step. Shaking her head from side to side, she clapped her huge ears like thunder and kicked at the water in a movement which he recognized all too well as a threat. A loud shrilling trumpet reverberated through the air. Bat tensed, his blood pumping, every nerve-end singing, every tendon strung taut as he froze, suspended in the stillness of that split-second moment that lies between
utter fixity and the first thrust of flight. If she charged now, his chances of escape were slender; but if he stayed she could crush him as easily as a crouching sand grouse. Just as the balance finally tipped in his brain; just as, pushing up with his knuckles, he steeled himself for the sprint, she flipped her trunk forward and wheeled slowly round, the currents eddying about her, and, wading out of the river, the water streaming from her flanks, barged her way back into the watching herd.

When, a short while later, she returned once more to the river, he again got ready to run, but this time he was not panicking. Calmly, he watched her. There was something in her manner that made him think that she meant no harm. Perhaps it was the way she was moving, he thought: like an old village woman who feels she has not been accorded befitting dignity; like his grandmother when he helped himself from the calabash before her, or old Kaaka the time that a guava fruit had dropped on her head. There was a haughty self-consciousness to her gait. She headed stiffly towards him, the waters churning about her, and the whole herd of elephants followed splashing in her wake. They walked right past his tamarind without even pausing, ambling away, their great sagging bottoms swaying, their outlines gradually blurring and fading and eventually disappearing as they melted back into the hot dusty shimmer from which they had first come. Their slow padding steps made barely a sound. And neither did Meya: the young elephant just stood there and stared, transfixed.

After that, Bat would return to the same spot every morning. Normally, at this time of year, he would have
been hard at work with the threshing. The millet was cut. The yard had been spread with cow dung. It had baked smooth and hard. And usually it would have been Bat who was driving a pair of horned cattle, flicking his switch to keep them moving in circles, trampling out the grains for his grandmother to collect. But now, leaving the village as the first smoke from the cook-fires streaked the damp morning, he headed straight out instead into the flaring pinkness of dawn.

Often he arrived at the swamps before the wild elephants. Then he just sat dreaming while Meya grazed, as peaceable a part of the African landscape as the high-stepping ibis that waded through shallows or the spoonbills that sliced the deep pools with slow sweeps. Only the fish eagle remained annoyed by his alien presence. It would take off from the branches with a fluting call of alarm. The wild elephants soon learned not to pay it any heed.

Little by little, as the days passed, they seemed to grow used to Meya. The first time they reached out to her, the boy squeezed his eyes tight, too frightened to look. His hands, clutched hard round his kneecaps, were trembling. But soon they began to greet her as naturally as he would have greeted a visitor to his village. They wandered towards her with deep belly rumbles, sniffing her all over and putting their trunks in her mouth. They let her feed by their sides, plucking and twirling and munching and swallowing, while the ox-peckers perched on their backs and hissed.

Bat learned to recognize each member of the herd individually. It was a bit like learning the alphabet
with his grandmother, he thought. Just like he had worked out the shapes of the letters, he came to tell the elephants apart by the shapes of their ears: some big and some small; some stiff and some floppy; some ragged round the edges, full of holes, tears and notches; others smooth and clean-edged. Their tusks were different too: they could curve outwards or inwards, be asymmetrical or crossed. One of the cows had broken hers: only a gnarled stub remained; and the old matriarch’s right tusk was much blunter than her left. She probably used that side, explained Bitek when Bat described it, for digging up roots and over the long years it had got worn away. Slowly, just as individual letters come together to make words, Bat came to recognize each elephant as clearly as he knew his own cattle; he could tell them, even from afar, by their postures and attitudes, by the way they moved or the company they kept. And then, as words in their turn come together to create meanings, he learned to read their separate characters, to realize that each member of that elephant herd was as distinct in its own way as the people who lived in his village.

It wasn’t long before Meya began to play with the youngsters. As they charged in mock fury, their tusks clonked together. They wheeled, skipped and scrambled about the riverbanks or engaged in long wrestling matches, pushing and shoving like the village boys did. And then, when from time to time the elephants vanished, sometimes not returning for several days, Meya would be sad and restless. She would trumpet down the river and gaze anxiously about. It made the boy anxious
too. What if this time the elephants don’t come back? he would fret.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Bitek when he met him on one of his searches. The fisherman was untangling the nets he had spread on a fallen trunk. ‘The elephants will only have found a ripe fig tree or a marsh of lush grass a little further upriver. Look at the colour of their skins and you’ll find out where they’ve been. White means a forest wallow; ochre a mud pool among the acacias; and dirty grey is probably from the river a bit further south.’

Bat looked and learned. He found out, just as Bitek had told him, where the herd had been. He read the signs that they left in the mud or dust; understood how to tell which way they were heading, what they were doing, how many had passed and how long ago. He discovered which springs they favoured. Some were so tiny that only one animal could drink at once, but these had minerals, explained Bitek, and so the elephants were prepared to line up and wait.

Soon Bat discovered that he could sense where the herd was. It was not just the vibrating rumbles that alerted him, or the sound of thorns brushing against rough hides. He would know they were coming even before their arrival. If they were absent, the landscape had a peculiar emptiness; if they were there, it was pervaded by a strange trembling life. He would feel it like a singing in the marrow of his bones.

‘Don’t be deceived,’ Bitek warned him. ‘Elephants are dangerous. They might look perfectly peaceful, but deep down they are wild. You must beware; especially of the bulls when they are in musth. When you see dark
liquids leaking from the corners of their eyes, they are ready to mate and then nothing will stop them. They will kill you without a thought if you cross their path.’

Bat nodded. He had seen the huge footprints of these creatures in the dust. He knew for himself how vast they could grow. He had heard their great rumbles. They set the air quivering. They rattled his body right down to the bones. He would lie still and stay hidden at the sound of their approach. But often he would feel sad as he crouched in his nest of grasses or ducked his head down behind some stony outcrop. Why couldn’t he walk among the elephants like Meya? Surely they could understand that he meant no harm. Surely they would sense how much he loved them. And then he would wonder again if Meya would always remember him, and all the qualms he felt whenever he contemplated losing her would return. Why did Meya have to go anyway? He knew how to look after her. Why shouldn’t she stay with him? Couldn’t he care for her just as well as any herd of elephants?

But then came the day when Meya found herself in trouble. Everything had seemed so perfectly ordinary that afternoon. The hoopoes were calling from their woody hollows; the weaver birds twittered as they built their dangling nests, and in the far distance he could see a herd of zebra grazing. They looked as brightly polished as little wooden toys.

Just at that moment, he heard Meya calling. When he had last looked, she had been browsing in the swamps by the river but now, turning, he saw that she’d sunk through a crust of mud. As he ran towards her, she tried
to heave herself out, but the more she struggled, the deeper into the mire she was dragged. She panicked and bellowed, but there was nothing she could do. She floundered and rolled, but she remained firmly embedded. The air was alive with her terrified squeals.

Bat was desperate. She was stuck. He tried pulling her trunk but it only made her squeal louder. He tried pushing her from behind but he was nearly trapped himself. And how could he hope to shift so heavy a bulk anyway? He was frantic. His heart was thudding so hard that his eyeballs almost shook. Who would help him? Should he run back to the village and find someone with a rope? Or should he stay behind and try to calm her? But what about the crocodiles? What if they came to get her? Or if a lion was lurking? Frenzied images chased through his brain. He started to run. But he was a long way from home. His breath broke from his throat in shallow burning gasps. His fear tasted bitter at the back of his tongue. And Meya cried out ever more desperately as she saw him disappearing. She thought he was leaving her. His heart pounded louder and louder as the sound of her terror faded slowly away. He imagined her lying there in forsaken silence. ‘I’ll be back, I’ll be back!’ he promised as he took each panting step.

Approaching the village, he found Muka out with the cattle. His heart leaped with frantic hope. She would have a rope; not a very long one, it was only for the cattle, but it would have to do . . . it was all they had. Within moments the two children were racing back, side by side, their lungs bursting as they leaped through the long grasses, round trees, over rocks, not speaking,
not daring to think what would happen if their plan didn’t work. But as they came to the spot where Meya had been left struggling, the pair of them pulled up to a sudden astonished halt.

The elephants had heard Meya’s terrified calls. They too had come running to help and, as the two children watched, they were gathering anxiously around her. The matriarch stepped forward. Edging her tusks beneath the trapped animal, she started to lever like a man with a pivot trying to move a great boulder. Rocking slowly back and forth, she gradually worked Meya loose until, all at once, with a resounding smack, she was out. Two other females reached out with their trunks, tugging her towards them until, step by laboured step, she was floundering free of the mud. The herd gathered around her, rumbling as she stood there amid them, frightened and grateful and covered from trunk to tail in sludge.