The Child's Elephant (13 page)

The final straw came on the day Bat left the elephant quietly browsing while he followed Muka and his grandmother to the shamba to work. The wet season was approaching, and they had not yet heaped up the little mounds in which they would do their planting. These humped rows were important. When the rains came sluicing in thick sheets from the sky, the water would run off their surfaces instead of carrying the soil away in thick red rivulets. All morning, the three workers bent over their hoes, and the sun had already risen high in the sky when, glancing upwards, they noticed that Meya had drifted off.

Just at that moment they heard the sound of uproar in the village. There was a clattering of pots and a succession of loud screams. Muka and Bat shot a single glance at each other and dashed off, leaping bushes and jumping thorn hedges as they raced to get back. But by the time they arrived it was already too late: Meya was hastening across the compound, back arched and ears flapping, and a trail of destruction lay in her wake.

The little elephant had been hungry and, creeping into the cook-hut where Bat’s grandmother kept food in a battered old tin trunk, she had decided to help herself. Upending the box and stamping until the clasp had flown open, she had waited for all the good things that she could smell inside to come tumbling out. The noise had disturbed a neighbour who, flying over to see what was the cause of the clatter, had startled the guilty animal which, swivelling in panic, had bashed over the cooking pots and broken a stool. Then Meya had made a sudden dash for the door.

She was almost five years old now. Her back was high as Bat’s shoulder. She was too tall to fit easily through an entrance way and her sides were too wide. Creeping in carefully she could just about manage, but at full pace she caused havoc. Barging the lintel post, she had broken it. The wall had crumbled, the rafters been dislodged; the thatch had come tumbling down in a heap. The cook-hut lay in ruins, and Meya was standing in the far corner of the compound, eyeing them anxiously, the piece of brightly coloured plastic that had once carefully wrapped some tasty market purchase dangling like a piece of torn ribbon from her mouth.

‘An elephant isn’t a pet,’ the headman told the children the next day as they sat with Bat’s grandmother around a makeshift cooking-fire. ‘She can’t have a home in the village for ever. You do understand that eventually she will have to go.’

Bat’s grandmother nodded. ‘It’s time to wean her completely. Meya must learn how to live on her own. If she was wild her mother would have a new calf by now.
She would no longer be nursing. She would have to be able to take care of herself.’

‘Elephants have vast ranges,’ Bitek the fisherman told Bat the next day as they sat amid scattered debris, plaiting thatch grass to make a new roof. ‘They travel right up over the escarpment,’ he said, nodding in the direction of the great wall of rock that formed their northern horizon. ‘They know secret paths that run over it. Sometimes a family will be away for years. By the time a wild elephant has reached Meya’s age, it will have travelled miles and miles, visiting every corner of its tribal lands. It will have learned where the grasses are richest and in which season; it will know all the trees and when they bear fruit; it will have wandered the length of the river to find the lush sedges and been up to the forest to discover the figs. It will be able to look at a line of blue hills and know from their shape precisely where it is now and where it needs to go next. Meya must be able to do all this if you want her to survive as a wild animal. She needs to move outwards if you want her to live a true elephant life.’

Bat sat on the earth. It still felt warm, even though the shadows were lengthening across the yard. He pushed his palms down. When he raised them again he could see the red patterns that the ground had pressed into them. It was because he was young, strong and healthy, he thought. He had plenty of blood. But his grandmother didn’t. Her palms were silvery pale. They felt dry and scaly. Her fingers were gnarly as a twist of dug root and the pain in her hip was growing worse with each passing moon. She had taken to using a thorn stick as
she walked. She wouldn’t be able to go on working for ever and, when she couldn’t any longer, then Bat would have to be there to help her. He wouldn’t have time to waste with his little elephant.

‘But what can we do about Meya?’ he whispered worriedly to Muka a little later. ‘We can’t just send her away.’ He jumped to his feet and began pacing anxiously like he did when his mind was beginning to race. ‘I am not going to leave her. I don’t care what the chief says. I know she still needs us. We can’t just push her out.’

‘She would be so lonely,’ agreed Muka. ‘She needs us for company. Even if we tried to get rid of her she would only come back home. So let’s just tell them that, shall we? Let’s just tell them that she wouldn’t leave us, even if we wanted her to. That’s the answer. Isn’t it, Bat? Don’t you agree that that’s what we should say?’ She glanced up at the boy, expecting to find him in complete agreement, but Bat had dropped back down onto his haunches, his head clutched in his fists.

In the end it was Bitek who was sent to persuade them. ‘Of course you can’t just push her out; and no one would even want that,’ he said gently. ‘The whole village loves your little animal. But look how big she has grown.’ He nodded across at a nearby acacia. A ladder of notches climbed up its trunk. Every few moons, Bat had cut in a new one to record the height of his growing elephant but, as they climbed up the tree-trunk, one on top of the other, they seemed to be scaling the tree faster than a pair of monkey paws. Bitek turned back and nodded at the debris around him as if to emphasize his point, and then he smiled. ‘And you, Bat, you
may be growing faster than a yam tendril in the rainy season, but already you have to stand on tiptoe if you want to scratch her along the ridge of her spine. How much longer do you think you can look after her like she needs to be cared for? She must have the company of her own kind now. She’s no longer a baby. She needs to find a family into which she can fit.’

Bat stared at him obstinately. ‘But we’re her family! If she needs a family why can’t she just stay with us?’ He turned to Muka. But the girl didn’t answer. Her underlip was quivering. She folded her face in her hands. She understood what it meant to live among the wrong people. As a little child, sent away by her mother, she had sometimes felt so lonely that her whole body had ached. And then Bat’s grandmother had come along and she had found a home. The whole world had been different once she had found the right place. Would Meya feel the same? she wondered. Did she long for other elephants? Would she yearn all her life to find her real home?

‘The time has come to introduce Meya to the wild elephants,’ Bitek said softly. ‘And that’s what I have come to tell you about. It will be dangerous. But if you are careful and can get them to trust you, you will have a chance and, more importantly’ – he cast a hard look at the children – ‘you will be giving a chance to Meya too.’

Bat refused to meet his eyes. He felt a slow sinking in the pit of his stomach. He loved the little creature. He could not bear to lose her. His whole world would feel empty without her great shambling bulk. He could
hardly remember the days when she had not been alongside him. She had formed the backdrop to almost half his life. How could he part with her? He stretched out his hands as if trying to catch the last of the sunlight, but the shadows were already stretching across the compound.

‘What are elephant families like?’ he heard Muka whisper.

‘Elephants move in families of females,’ explained Bitek. ‘Each has a powerful matriarch to protect it, a leader who can be trusted to know what is right, to know where to feed, when to rest, how to find the best wallow. The bulls only come along when it’s time for breeding. The rest of the time they hang about on the fringes, daydreaming and feeding and getting into fights – a bit like the village boys when they haven’t got enough work to do,’ he added with a smile at Bat. ‘You will understand how it works when you have watched them for a bit.’

Muka smiled weakly but the boy refused to look.

‘And I promise you, Bat,’ continued Bitek, ignoring the fact that the boy refused stubbornly to so much as glance up, ‘when you have seen how the elephants live you won’t regret your decision. If elephants ruled this land instead of men, our world would be happier; it would be kinder and gentler. There would be less quarrelling and lying, less fighting and cheating. We would live in a land of love and respect. And besides,’ he muttered darkly, ‘how do we know right now what might happen? There are rumours. What if we had to flee? What if we suddenly found that we had to leave Jambula. Then what would happen to Meya?’

For the first time Bat jerked his head up. Muka had told him the stories from the market. A wave of uncertainty swept over him. It fluttered like a shadow as the night wind brushes by. He swallowed.

‘Will the wild elephants accept her?’ His voice was faint and small.

‘It will be difficult,’ Bitek answered. ‘It will take all your skill. But there are tricks. I can teach you.

‘Look,’ he said, pulling a small square of cloth from his pocket and, stepping lightly across a fallen rafter to the ruined cook-fire, he scooped up a palm-full of ashes. ‘You creep up on a herd by tying a handful of these up like this.’ He knotted the corners of the material. ‘When you think you are close, scatter a few of them onto the breeze. That will tell you which way it’s blowing. You must always be sure to remain upwind. Otherwise they will smell you. They might even attack. And not many people can stand up to the onslaught of an elephant. This hut certainly didn’t.’ He laughed, looking at the wreckage that was strewn around the compound.

Neither of the children laughed back. Nothing seemed funny to them right now.

Bitek pulled his face straight. ‘Little by little you will have to introduce her. You will have to take it step by tiny step. Nobody is expecting you to banish Meya from the village. It will take a long time, and only when the moment is right will she finally choose to go.’

Bat’s grandmother came looking for them. She had not got her stick; but stepping over the fallen rafter of the building that for so long had sheltered her, she looked suddenly frail. She walked stiffly, placing one
slim foot in front of the other and, as she approached, Bat noticed, as if for the first time, how grey the hair had become on her close-cropped head, how bony her shoulders, how knotted the hands that now hitched at the waistband of her wrap.
Water does not flow back to the source
, he thought. That was what she always said. She would only get older. She would never be young again.

‘We have talked,’ she said to the children. ‘We have made a plan. Muka, you from now on will look after the cattle. You will care for them in the same way that Bat now does. And Bat, you will go out with the elephant. You will lead her back to the herds to which she belongs. You will lead her back gently until she finds her right place. You say that you love her. Then the time has come to show it. The time has come to show that you can love her enough to leave her, to let her find her own life.’

Bat looked up. He felt as if he was trapped in an airlock. He didn’t know what to say. Thoughts scurried wildly back and forth across his head. Every now and then he made a frantic dive to grasp one; but it was like diving at a brood of newly hatched quail. They darted from him and scattered, and when finally he managed to clutch one, he found that he had killed it. It lay limp and still in his mind as if it was dead.

Meya ambled over. He gazed at her lovingly. She blinked her eyes slowly. She was penitent after all the damage she had caused but she also knew that there was an orange in his pocket. She could smell it and she was wondering if he was going to let her have it. She reached out hopefully with her trunk. Bat smiled wanly and retrieved the hidden fruit. He watched her as she
stood there chewing it contemplatively. Meya watched him back. She seemed to be aware that something serious was up.

‘Will she forget me?’ Bat whispered.

The elephant stared at him with a strange fixity. It was as if their thoughts were colliding, he thought, mingling like the light and dark of the gathering dusk.

‘She will never forget you,’ said Bitek.

Bat gazed into the depths of her russet-brown eyes. He could hear his heart pounding; the blood singing in his ears. He could see his tiny reflection, stilled like a speck in her long slow gaze. It was like a fly trapped in amber.

‘She will always hold you in her heart and her head.’

During the dry season the wild elephants spent most of their time in the cool of the forests and, though you might sometimes glimpse them browsing at the fringes, upon your approach they would melt away. But when the rains came and, as if by magic, the river over-spilled into swamps, they were easier to find. They came down to the marshes to feed in the morning, churning the mud into deep, sloppy wallows and leaving huge footprints on the sandbanks.

Sometimes, when the wind was blowing up from the river, the elephants would pass right by you if you stood quite still, shambling along one by one, the cows slowly flapping their huge tattered ears as they ambled; their young trotting eagerly along behind. Occasionally there would be a great bull elephant among them, a vast mountain of muscle with a huge bony head and an
immense sweep of tusks. His breath would blow thick as a thundercloud. Then it was best to step away as quickly as possible. Even the ill-tempered buffalo would shuffle out of his path.