Whistling For The Elephants Part 15

'I think having two females is great,' I said, feeling very defensive.

'Sure. It's great,' agreed Cosmos. 'We're not like, in Siam.'

I lay down next to her and stared at the ceiling. A G.o.d on a snake stared down at me.

'That's Vishnu,' explained Cosmos. 'Reclining on the Ananta-Sesha serpent as he floats on the cosmic ocean. He is dreaming his cosmic dream. Every now and then the world is destroyed and Vishnu must recreate it in a dream. See, from his navel on a long-stemmed lotus is the G.o.d Brahma, the creator. It is his job to create what Vishnu dreams - everything in the universe.'

'Vishnu has the great vision then he gets the builders over,' chuckled Miss Strange.

Cosmos was not distracted. 'It is said that from the many petals and stamens of this miraculous lotus the G.o.ds Vishnu, Siva, Brahma and Agni eventually created the various castes or families of elephants, the celestial ancestors of Artemesia and Betsy.'

Miss Strange shook her head. 'Betsy! What kind of a name is that?'

On the walls a mosaic of mountains and trees spread up to the G.o.ds. 'Look there,' commanded Cosmos. 'There, sheltered in the Himalayan Mountains, is the mythical Himaphan forest, where many real and fabulous creatures including the elephants live.'

It was a dream world. We lay in a dream of elephants and mythical forests. This was where I wanted to stay always.

'Here, Sugar,' said Cosmos, 'I made you this.' She handed me the most perfect wood carving of Betsy playing. 'It's a s.h.i.+nto-baku - a tiny elephant kept by believers near their bed to ward off nightmares.'

'Harry will close us down, Cosmos,' said Miss Strange, quietly changing the subject. I clutched my new power against evil.

'No,' Cosmos replied. 'We have something he does not. We have the power of concentrated calmness over unreason and brute force.'

'What does that mean?' I asked.

Cosmos looked at me and smiled. 'Buddha had enemies. They sent wild Nalagiri elephants to trample him to death, but Buddha subdued their ferocity by the power of his inner strength. The elephants came toward him and he simply raised his hand to calm them. We shall do the same.'

And I believed her.

Sweetheart sat smiling at the elephants. 'Just think what John Junior would have made of this. What a show he would be planning.'

Miss Strange laughed. 'He could make a show out of a dead elephant. Culpeper-Meriweather's Great Combined Circus.

Sweetheart nodded. 'Boston. Fourth of July fair.'

'What happened?' I asked. Miss Strange smiled at me.

'Our Great Asiatic Caravan, Museum and Menagerie was due into Boston for the fair when an old elephant we had - this was before Toto and Ellen - died. So Culpeper heard about this and started advertising his event with the slogan Come See the Only Living Elephant at the Fair. John never worried for a second. He put up posters saying Come and See the Only Dead Elephant at the Fair. And they came. The public ate it up.'

Sweetheart shook her head. 'Not as much as the pigtailed macaque monkey which inhaled when it smoked.' It was another world.

The next day was all hands on deck. None of the women sat and watched. Aunt Bonnie and Judith came out from the big house with Sweetheart and Perry. Judith looked real pale but she had stopped crying. Her hair hung straight now and she had no make-up on at all. I thought it was much better. She looked younger. Troilus followed in her footsteps. Everyone gathered on the lawn. Women from all over the town. Even more than the night before. Women I had never seen before. No one had said anything. All Miss Strange did was bring Artemesia and Betsy out on the lawn. There was a long pause and a lot of murmuring and then everyone just kind of got on. Half the workforce immediately set to completing the enclosure. Everyone else was on food detail.

Helen gave out the shopping list. 'Okay, now, mainly vegetarian, please, ladies. We are looking for one hundred pounds of hay and twenty-five pounds of fresh fruit and vegetables per elephant per day. Bark, gra.s.s, hay, apples, cabbages, carrots, bananas, oranges, bread, and, before you rush out and think you're on to a winner - they don't like peanuts. Delicacies and treats include grapefruits and sweet-potato tops.' She grinned at the women. Helen had taken on a new life. I went with Sweetheart to the A&P. I just knew Alfonso would help us out. Then there was Frank's Franks - he always had lots of bread left over.

It was hot, unbearably hot in the enclosure. Gabriel arrived early. He never said a word to Helen and she didn't speak to him. It was as if nothing had happened the night before between them and yet everything had. Helen was a new person. She had her brown cords back on but she had tied a bright pink scarf from the cabin trunk round her neck and it stood out against her usual clothes. Gabriel got on with the job and on with sweating. About halfway through the morning the chain broke on his tow-truck. He tried to fix it but it was no use.

'No can do,' he said with his gift for language.

There were still a dozen or more pieces of track to come over from in back of the house. Helen didn't stop for a minute.

'Isn't the old harness still in the house?' she asked Miss Strange, and the two of them went off. When we got back Artemesia was wearing a large leather harness and doing the work of the truck. It seemed like nothing to her. She used her tusks like a forklift to get the track in place. Then Gabriel would fasten it to the harness so she could pull the load round to the enclosure. She and Gabriel seemed to have got into a rhythm so that Artemesia could even hold the pieces in place while Gabriel welded. Seemed kind of a strange trick, getting her to build her own stockade. She worked with great precision, apparently understanding the concept of balance and symmetry in loading and stacking the metal pieces.

Judith had moved herself sufficiently to take over providing the drinks, and Aunt Bonnie was working in the field. She didn't need to play with Perry any more. He had a new friend. Perry and Betsy played together every hour there was. Neither one seemed to know they were boy and elephant babe and maybe not ideal playmates. Certainly Betsy hadn't got the idea at all. Despite having the wizened look of a little old gnome she saw the whole world as a thrilling adventure. She would get so excited that her ears flapped, and then she would bounce up and down with her two forefeet together. Quite often it was while bouncing like an India-rubber ball that she would try sucking her trunk. She usually stood on it instead and fell over. Her feet and legs lacked coordination. They seemed too big and long for her tiny body.

When Perry took time off to play on the swing outside the barn, she stood and watched. Then she moved toward him and waved him away with her trunk. Perry got off and Betsy backed up to the swing and tried to sit down. The swing swung out of the way of her substantial bottom and she fell backward as Perry laughed. At least half an hour went by with Betsy trying to use her tail to hold the swing steady.

She tried using her trunk but to no avail. That brilliant elephant arm was no use to her yet. A piece of flesh sensitive enough to read Braille but at the moment incomprehensible to the young calf. One hundred fifty thousand muscles and Betsy didn't know how a single one of them worked. Eventually it would be flexible sideways, upward and downward, slightly telescopic, but not yet. One day it would be able to pick up a needle in a haystack. She twirled it like a long bobble cap placed on her head by Artemesia to keep her warm. It made everyone giggle, even Judith. Artemesia, however, knew exactly what she was doing. Her trunk was a six-foot-long, one-foot-thick third eye.

The women detailed to shopping had filled a huge shed near the field with different foodstuffs and bolted the door. Helen was busy organizing it all. She had fixed a pulley system to a tree and was busy hanging vegetables off it to make feeding as interesting as possible. 'Imagine you were in jail and all your meals just came on a tray.'

Sappho handed me an Oreo cookie. I wasn't sure it would be so bad. I don't know if the women were either. A lot of them had spent twenty years cooking family dinners. The thought of anything arriving on a tray was probably pretty attractive. Helen carried on organizing. She hung brackets for 'multi-level feeding' and a big trough for vegetables.

'Don't cut it up,' she ordered her brigade of women. 'The elephants need to pick and sort the food themselves. Just like in Africa.' There were other notions too about making the elephants at home. It was the coconut matting which finally got Judith involved. Until then she hadn't done anything. She hadn't left either, but she hadn't really helped. Cosmos had a thing about 'abrasion.

'I'm right, aren't I, Helen?' she called out. 'You see, elephants need abrasion. Their skin is used to it in the wild so we need to make some. Help keep them in good trim.' Cosmos held up some coconut matting from a Welcome doormat. 'Maybe I could...' She tried fixing it to a log. For the first time Judith took an interest. She stood up. This was fabric. This was her area. She took the mat and she and Troilus went to get string and a strong needle. Soon she was sewing in abrasion all over the place. I'm not sure that Artemesia appreciated all the effort.

During a short break Sweetheart and Aunt Bonnie handed out drinks to everyone. It must have been a hundred degrees out and everyone was feeling it. Artemesia and Betsy stood side by side with Artemesia sheltering her calf from the sun. Cosmos sat on the ground looking at them.

'It's so weird,' she said. 'These huge creatures. I mean, like, they have all these feelings but they can't tell us about them.'

Aunt Bonnie giggled. 'Bit like men then.'

'Exactly like men,' chortled Sweetheart. Everyone laughed.

'Show us some of Artemesia's tricks,' called one of the women.

'What did she do?' called another.

Miss Strange patted Arterifesia and looked her in the eye. 'Tightrope-walking,' she sighed.

'Did you see it?' I asked, trying to imagine such a thing. I mean, an elephant on a tightrope. It was incredible.

'Once,' replied Miss Strange. 'She had a special rope. Maybe twenty foot long, six inches in diameter and four foot off the ground. It was ridiculous. She would walk along the rope, get off, play the organ, blow a whistle and fire a cannon.

'Anything else?' asked Doreen.

'I don't know. Isn't it enough? What do you want her to do? Write her name with a piece of chalk? Drive a car?' Miss Strange wiped the sweat from her forehead. It ran in strange patterns down the right-hand side of her face. A kind of glacial facial movement.

'I can drive,' I volunteered, but it was a grown-up conversation.

'They shouldn't be doing it at all,' said Cosmos. 'It's humiliating. I hate it. Animals shouldn't like be trained to behave like people. They're not amusing slaves. They are dignified creatures deserving our respect. They're too smart for it. You know there were like, some young elephants in Burma who kept raiding the banana groves near their owners' house at night. The owners put bells round their necks so they could hear when they were coming. The elephants stuffed mud in the bells and came anyway. Now that's smart.'

Artemesia wasn't listening. She had stood and watched for a while and then moved off. Using her trunk, she opened the latch to the food store, lifted the bolt and flipped it across with a quick movement of the tip of her trunk before pulling the door open. She helped herself to some oranges. After her snack she moved to the water tap. She turned on the tap using her front right foot and trunk. There was a hosepipe attached but all she did was raise it to her mouth and pour the water straight down her throat.

'Artemesia, what the h.e.l.l...' started Miss Strange. Artemesia put down the hose and looked at Miss Strange. Very slowly and gently she lifted up one ma.s.sive foreleg to rest on a crossbar and be petted. It was impressive. Miss Strange fed her one of Frank's hot-dog buns. Mrs Torchinsky looked on in wonder.

'Imagine never having to diet,' she said.

'Never having to wear a corset,' said another.

Sweetheart nodded. 'It's too d.a.m.n hot for corsets. Too d.a.m.n hot.' As she spoke she wriggled in her dress and slowly and deliberately removed her girdle. The women giggled in the hot sun. Then Doreen did the same, and then Ingrid. Each removal caused a great cheer of triumph. It was weird. Women I had got to know quite well suddenly changed shape in front of me. Up till then they had all looked pretty much the same. Now they bulged in all kinds of places. Helen began gathering up all the discarded garments and throwing them on the still-glowing bonfire. Women's lib had come to Sa.s.saspaneck. Betsy managed to pick up an eighteen-hour version with her trunk and throw it up on her head. She was so proud of her new headdress that she began running pell-mell with it round the enclosure. This caused much shouting as Perry ran after her trying to grab it. Eventually Betsy lay down with the corset over one eye. She had a ridiculous, satisfied expression on her face which no doubt Harry had never managed to achieve with a customer before.

Then it started to rain. Gentle, cooling summer rain. Artemesia gave a trumpeting bellow and flapped her ears. Cosmos copied her and soon all the women were running wild round the enclosure. Spreading out their arms in the falling water. It was kind of crazy. It's not often you see a human being as ecstatic as a dog about to go for a walk but it was like that. Artemesia and Betsy ran through the middle of it all, twirling, flapping their ears and trunks and trumpeting with gusto.

Even Judith looked up from her sewing and grinned. For a second she caught Miss Strange's eye and they looked at each other. Miss Strange gave that half-smile she had, but then the moment was gone. Still, I think the rain was important. I think there was no going back after that.

That night was the last before the enclosure would be ready. We put Artemesia and Betsy back in the pool. Everyone was tired. The women drifted home in their new shapes. Those of us that were left - Helen, Miss Strange, Judith, Aunt Bonnie, Sweetheart, Sappho, Troilus and me - sat on the edge of the deep end and watched our new friends. Judith was busy making some tapestry with elephants on it.

'We should go home,' said Aunt Bonnie, but she was too tired to move. We were all exhausted.

'Artemesia did a brilliant job today.' Sweetheart smiled at the huge creature. Down in the empty pool Artemesia stepped delicately on an apple. She split it open and rubbed the pieces into her hay before pa.s.sing it to Betsy. It looked for all the world as if she was flavouring it. She was smart all right. Miss Strange nodded.

'Great creatures. They hauled planes in India in the war, they helped build the River Kwai Bridge. Hannibal took forty thousand men and thirty-eight elephants over the French Alps. When he crossed the Rhine some of the elephant rafts overturned. The attendants drowned but the elephants, weighed down by heavy foot chains, swam to the sh.o.r.e. The n.o.ble elephant. Symbol of the Republican Party.'

Helen sat with us now 'Can you imagine the elephants marching with Julius Caesar? Arriving in Britain? The first elephants to set foot in Britain in ten thousand years. No wonder he conquered.'

Cosmos was struggling with a black and white TV. She banged the side of it and I Love Lucy spluttered into view. Artemesia looked up. She paused for a moment then pushed her trunk out and shook her head with a loud slap of her ears against her neck. Cosmos looked at Artemesia and changed channels to Bewitched. Artemesia paused for a moment and then rapped the end of her trunk smartly on the ground. It made a hollow, metallic sound like some old theatre effect. She did it again, causing a current of air to emit a sharp sound like a sheet of tin being rapidly doubled.

'What's that about?' asked Aunt Bonnie.

'Patently she doesn't like Bewitched,' said Miss Strange as Cosmos retuned the TV again.

'Really?' I asked.

'We'll never know, Sugar.'

Artemesia and Cosmos finally settled down to The Johnny Carson Show and there was quiet. Whether it was because they were exhausted or corsetless, the women sat more relaxed than I had ever seen them. Artemesia too seemed entirely content. She stood with her trunk curled and resting on her tusks. Her body stood easy but the folded tip of her trunk seemed to form two eyes, endlessly watching, perhaps smelling what went on. She seemed very old to me. Vast and grey like old Father Time. Betsy slept below her. She lay flat out, in the exhausted sleep of the puppy or the baby. She had covered her eyes with one ear folded over her head. From her trunk came small bubbly, snoring noises. I wondered what she dreamed of. Whether she dreamed at all. Could an elephant dream of possible happiness in the future? She was a baby but seemed to me to have been born old. She looked as if she had already been let in on some great secret. Perry lay near by, snuggled down in some hay.

Aunt Bonnie pulled on her cigarette. 'Aren't those tusks incredible?' She had never been much for animals, but sitting this close no one could help but admire.

Miss Strange looked at the lengths of ivory on which Artemesia rested her trunk. I knew it was smooth and cool to the touch. It was a funny word, 'ivory'. Made it sound like it was nothing to do with the elephant.

'Pistol grips, baubles, bracelets, baroque beer mugs, hairbrushes, opulent fans, chess-pieces, dice boxes, knife handles, figurines, furniture, combs, perfume flasks, joints in bagpipes, well-balanced billiard b.a.l.l.s, piano keys, mah-jong sets, carvings and trinkets, holy crosses, umbrella stands, rosary beads, bookends, p.o.r.no scenes on ivory plaques ... that's what people see when they see ivory. More blood, human and elephant, has been spilled in the quest for this "white gold" than any other raw material.'

If I hadn't known it before, I knew then that I would fight for Artemesia and Betsy. That no one would make billiard b.a.l.l.s out of them. I think that is when I thought of the telegram. I know I didn't tell anybody, but I think that's when it was.

Helen had found an extraordinary book in the library. It was the All Purpose Swahili Phrase Book from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. She was giggling as she read. 'I don't think this is going to help, Cosmos.'

Cosmos dragged herself from the TV. 'No, really,' she said. 'It might be comforting. Artemesia came from Africa. Swahili was probably like, the first language she heard.'

Helen read out a phrase.

'What does that mean?' I asked.

'The idle slaves are scratching themselves.'

Miss Strange nodded. 'Now that is useful.'

'How about this? "Six drunken Europeans have killed the cook. Do not pour treacle into the engine."' We all grinned although I wasn't quite sure why it was funny.

I was reading one of the huge leather-bound books about elephants. I wanted to know everything about them. Wanted to speak to them. I read out loud.

'Did you know that the area a bull elephant sniffs to ensure a female is ready for mounting is called Jacobson's organ?'

The women fell about.

'We'll have to tell Gabriel!' roared Miss Strange, weeping with laughter.

I didn't get it. There was such helpless jollity when Joey came in that I'm sure he thought it was about him. He shuffled in the door in his uniform looking hot and tired. He paused at the sight of Artemesia watching TV with Cosmos, but he didn't say anything about it.

'I caught the dog,' he declared. 'The one that killed the goose.' Judith stroked Troilus at the news. Joey smiled at her and she smiled back. It was the first normal thing she had done since she arrived.

'Uh ... Miss Strange ... I have kind of a strange announcement I have to make.' Joey cleared his throat, unaccustomed to quite so much attention. 'I want you to know that I don't think it's right. I have tried to phone the state office for advice but no one seemed to know and...'

Little Joey was sweating as he s.h.i.+fted from foot to foot. It was Judith who finally smiled at him and asked, 'What is it, Jocy?'

Joey pulled his pants up and brushed back his hair for an official announcement. 'As dog catcher it is my duty to inform you that the Mayor of Sa.s.saspaneck has today issued an order in relation to all domestic pets and their licenses. From today all animals in the town will be cla.s.sified as domestic pets and will require a license.'

Miss Strange looked at him. 'What do you mean, all animals?'

'All,' muttered Joey.

'I see. And who provides these... licenses?'

'That would be the Mayor.'

Miss Strange carried on. 'So an elephant would now be a domestic pet?' Joey nodded. 'And if I don't have a license for, say... an elephant?'

Joey carried on nodding as if he was trying to get the idea into his own head. 'I would be required to bring the animal in ... and have it destroyed.' Joey looked desperate. 'I'm sorry, Judith. I don't know what else to...'

It was brilliant. Not only could Harry close down the zoo by refusing all the licenses, he could humiliate Joey at the same time with the task of enforcing a ridiculous local law. It was a beautiful piece of work. But so was my telegram.

Chapter Thirteen.

Maybe it was the heat toward the end of that summer, but everyone in the town seemed to go kind of deranged. Judith still refused to go home. She sat sewing and sewing. She and Troilus were quite a couple now. I didn't think it was one of Joey's rainbow bridges, but it was pretty close. It had been a couple of weeks since the enclosure was finished. Aunt Bonnie had been back to defrost stuff for Uncle Eddie and see he was okay. I went along to check on Father and Perry came for the ride. Straight across the harbour from the Dapolitos' house was Harbour Island. A small island on the harbour which had not been named by a literary genius. The island sported the only piece of almost-beach in the area and it was here that kids when not at camp were sent for swimming lessons. A series of floating docks, like Uncle Eddie's, had been anch.o.r.ed in place to box in the beach and make a safe area for the lessons.

Father and I had tried to have a conversation. He had grown very thin over the summer and for the first time I thought he looked old. I guess I should have paid him more attention. Been a better daughter.

'I've been thinking about school,' he said. 'You need a proper school.' I wanted to talk about my place in the cosmos and not being an Et cetera, but it didn't seem like the moment.

'When's Mother coming back?'