The Child's Elephant (25 page)

Bat’s heart missed a beat. He knew this dark frown. He had seen it before; and with a sudden jolt of horror he remembered from where. This was the man who all those years ago had been out on the savannah, the man who had slaughtered Meya’s mother and hacked off her tusks. He could see him even now, bending over the broken chainsaw, cursing the faltering engine and his frightened companions. For a few panic-stricken moments, Bat feared that he might be recognized back. A mirrored stare swept the ranks. The boy shrank. The fright was spilling from his face. But the man just drew on a cigarette and, with a nod to the commander, turned away.

The harsh smell of tobacco wafted across the lines of waiting children. Nobody moved. The man exchanged a few muttered words with Lobo but, when he then beckoned, it wasn’t to Bat.

It was a girl who walked out. She must have been about the same age as Muka and, like her, she was tall, slim and supple. But the resemblance ended there. Where Muka’s eyes were still lit by a fierce inner life, this girl looked defeated. A smile was pulled, as if by some mechanical contraption, from her lips. It seemed to work quite separately from the rest of her face. The man with the scars took a necklace from his pocket and,
leaning forward, fastened it around her neck. The two spoke, but none of the children could hear what they were saying. Bat thought of his grandmother: ‘The neck wears jewellery while the heart wears troubles,’ she would say. The man crossed the compound, the girl following behind him, and they disappeared one after the other into a far hut.

It was much later in the afternoon that Bat was called. Lobo came to fetch him.

‘The Leopard wants to see you. You’re to come with me. There’s nothing to be frightened of,’ he encouraged. There was a mixture of excitement and pride on his face, as if the boy whom he now led across the compound was in some way his possession. He laid a hand on Bat’s shoulder like a mark of ownership.

The man they called the Leopard was sitting sprawled in a chair under a rickety bamboo-and-palm-leaf construction, his legs resting on the heels of a pair of heavy black leather boots. Their criss-cross of laces reached almost to the knees. His skin glistened like the barrel of a well-oiled rifle. Bat could smell its sharp tang. He looked into the man’s eyes. Now that he had taken off his glasses, he could see they were dark as stagnant pools. Bat lowered his lashes. Even the girl who was now crouching at his feet smoking dagga seemed not to want to look. Her eyes were remote. She was drifting away on the wisps of her smoke. The commander was lounging nearby, a half-finished bottle of palm wine beside him. The baby antelope was roasting, a charred silhouette on a spit. Its four legs stuck out, stark as a cry for help.

‘This is the boy, sir,’ declared Lobo. ‘This is the elephant boy I told you about.’

‘Ahh. So you’re the one they call Bat.’ Slowly he looked him up and down. Bat fought to keep his face blank. He remembered that voice, harsh as the saw of a serrated blade against bone.

‘And you can speak to the elephants?’

‘Yes, sir! He can, sir!’

‘Let the boy talk for himself!’ the man snapped.

‘Yes, sir.’

Normally Lobo would have been slouching in one of the two chairs. Now he stood nervously aside, casting his eyes about as if worried, but all the time smiling as if he felt at ease. The other visiting stranger, the one who had carried the antelope, also loitered watchfully.

‘So, Bat.’ The Leopard drew the boy towards him. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’

Bat felt an undefined fear rising up within him. His mouth was starting to feel all fuzzy round the edges. He clamped his lips tight so that they would not shake.

The Leopard picked up the bottle and took a long draught. ‘So you like your new life as a soldier?’ The voice was perfectly level and yet it flashed menace, sharp as the blade of a hidden knife.

Bat nodded. He knew what was expected.

‘Good. Well, my commander says you’ve done well. He tells me you are ready to work.’

The commander beside him gave a grunt of agreement.

Bat just looked ahead. He was fighting to keep his gaze steady; to stop it from skidding all over the place.

‘Our war isn’t a cheap one,’ the Leopard continued. ‘We need weapons and ammunition to keep you all safe.’ The word safe, on his lips, sounded almost like a threat. ‘We have to feed you,’ he said. ‘And buy fuel. A jeep drinks more than a thirsty cow. And mine needs repairing . . . get that boy Gulu to take a look at it,’ he added as an afterthought to the commander. ‘There’s a clank in its engine. Get him to put it right.

‘We have to buy things.’ The Leopard came back to his point. ‘And our country has riches. They’re there for the taking.’ He paused and gave a dry laugh. ‘They’re there for the taking, if you know how to get them.’

Putting a cigarette to his lips, he flicked at the wheel of a lighter with his thumb. The flame leaped and flickered and then steadied. A wristwatch flashed in the light. The black eyes prowled Bat’s face. ‘Do you know what I’m talking about, boy?’ asked the Leopard as he slowly breathed in. Then he gave a nod. ‘I think you know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about ivory. I’m talking about the ivory of the elephants.’

Exhaling a long stream of smoke, he glanced at the girl as she squatted on the ground beside him. She wasn’t even listening. Her eyes were unfocused. But the necklace he had given her, fastening it like a collar around her slender neck, gleamed in the sunlight. It was pale as bleached bone against the blackness of her skin.

The sun was beating down on the compound. Bat felt the top of his head turning soft as the heat worked into his brain, unloosening its coils. His thoughts were starting to swim. A vision shimmered through his mind. He remembered the last time he had seen the elephants:
the herd ambling off through the silvery moonlight, swaying across the great open spaces of the world, swinging their trunks as if moving to some unheard rhythm, bearing their great tusks before them like precious gifts for the gods. For a moment he was there with them, wandering along behind them.

‘You will take us to the elephants.’ The command struck him hard as a stone.

‘Take you to them?’ Bat stuttered. Now everything inside him was dissolving. His knees were giving way under him. He was trembling violently. His throat was so tight he couldn’t breathe. ‘I don’t think I can . . . sir.’

He watched the eyes harden. Two hands reached out. They clamped Bat round the wrists. He was standing between the man’s knees now. His palms were pressed down upon muscular thighs. Bat could feel the hard sinews beneath the cloth.

‘They’re there in the forest. We know it. Their tracks have been seen. But we need you to find them for us.’ A pair of thin lips was pulled back from a row of yellowing teeth. ‘Do you understand me? That is your job. Why else do you think we would have gone to so much trouble to get you?’ The man gave a laugh like a bark. ‘And there’s no need to worry about trouble from the rangers,’ he added, glancing at the man who had accompanied him to the camp. ‘George here, he’s a ranger. He’ll make sure his friends don’t come visiting.’ The man shifted his weight and grinned nervously, but the Leopard had already turned away.

Bat tried to steady his mind. So now, at last, he knew why it was that he had been captured. Lobo had told
them about the elephants. He shot a bewildered glance at the boy, but Lobo had already slid his eyes well out of reach. Hands deep in his pockets, he was staring down at his boots.

Bat wanted to run. He wanted to run and to run regardless of what they would do to him. He didn’t care if that meant a bullet in the back. How could he do what they asked him? How could he betray Meya and the elephants? But then, what about Muka? He couldn’t betray her either. He needed a firm answer but his mind was a swamp: thoughts emerged and then sank, sucked down into its depths. He shut his eyes for a moment. The inside of their lids burned hot red. He listened to the
sit sit sit
of the Leopard’s wristwatch. If he could just have more time he might come up with something. But time was now moving in seconds, and it was quickly running out.

When he opened his eyes again, the black stare was waiting, its pupils like pebbles that are flung into polluted depths. Bat braced every muscle in his body. Then he nodded his assent.

The ranger gave a low grunt of satisfaction. Lobo shifted uneasily, a look of relief on his face. But Bat didn’t notice. He was thinking only of Meya. Where was she now? he wondered. Was she no longer safe? A sense of her presence passed over his mind like a shadow. Normally at this time of year the herd would be grazing by the river, but the short rains had failed. The savannah would be parched and the long rains were now late. The elephants would have retreated deep into the forests. They would have followed ancient paths to their secret
drinking pools. He imagined the cows standing in the dappled sunlight, their calves tumbling and playing, squirting bright rainbows of water. Was it possible that it had been them he had passed in the forest; that it had been his herd? He shook his head quickly to dislodge the gnawing fear.

The Leopard slackened his grip. The boy was no longer the focus of his attention. He was talking to the ranger. ‘It’ll be simple,’ the man was saying. ‘We’ll work as a gang. The boy scouts them out . . . he gets their trust . . . that’s the most difficult bit. I make sure that my colleagues are nowhere about. Then we circle the animals . . .’

Bat’s mind was a blur. He watched a girl on the far side of the camp cleaning her rifle. She was singing a song to herself as she rubbed it with an oily rag.
It’s funny
, he thought,
how life just goes on regardless
. He looked back at the ranger. He was still talking. He studied the movements of his tongue, teeth and lips. They worked with a curious precision . . . like some insect, he thought. But his thoughts were swirling too fast to take in what he was saying.

A plate of charred antelope meat was brought. The Leopard ate fast and swiftly. The juices ran down his chin as he chewed. They left bloody streaks. He didn’t wipe them away. He just went on eating until at last, with a belch, he gave a satisfied nod.

‘And you’re confident?’ he asked, turning suddenly to Lobo.

‘Yes, sir.’ The boy gave a sharp salute.

‘Good.’ The commander smiled thinly and, stretching
for a bottle under his chair, took a long draught before passing it to Lobo. The boy’s face spread in a smile as he tipped it to his lips. ‘Oh yes, I’m confident,’ he said as he swallowed. ‘And I know about the elephants too.’ He gave a low laugh. ‘I’ve even ridden one . . . once . . . it was . . .’

The commander frowned sceptically as Lobo fell silent and straightened his face quickly. He took another pull at the bottle as if to wash his boast away. ‘I’m confident all right,’ he muttered.

‘You’d better be,’ the Leopard snarled. ‘Now I’m tired. I’m turning in.’ He rose with a slow feline ease. ‘Well done, boy,’ he growled at Bat. ‘You’ve shaped up well.’ He laid a hand on the boy’s head, gave his hair a brief rub. ‘You will be all right . . . as long as you do as you’re told. If you don’t . . . well, that girl Muka, the one I’ve been telling Lobo here he can’t touch . . . well, let’s just say her life won’t much be worth living,’ he said, and he smiled. It was a terrible smile. The muscles moved over its void like bright water over a crocodile’s back.

Bat couldn’t sleep that night. His head was churning with questions. In the morning, he stared about hopelessly at the encircling trees. They rose up like the stockade that a nomad weaves for his cattle: a spiny barrier of branches and creepers and great brindled trunks. The camp was a prison and, as if to prove it, a sentry slipped at that moment out of the shadows and began to pace back and forth. He had orders to shoot anyone who tried to come in – or get out. He would pull on the trigger without so much as a second thought; and besides, even if he did manage to escape, Bat thought, what then? The jungle was vast. He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t even know what country he was in.

Defeated, he stared up into a scrap of sky. For so long he had managed to hold everything together. He had struggled on like a market woman labouring
under her load: chin lifted, eyes fixed only on the path ahead. But now the load had slipped. He felt as if he had been turned upside down, and everything that he had thought to be fixed firmly inside him had come tumbling out. He stared at the ground as if the pieces of his life lay strewn all about him. He didn’t think he knew how to fit them back together again.

He was tired and hungry and utterly empty. He slumped down against the banana palm and stared bleakly across the compound. An ant crawled up his shin but he didn’t bother to slap it. A lizard slid out from behind a stone. If it didn’t slide back again quickly it would get put in a stew, he thought. He watched it seize a fly and toss back its head. Translucent wings glinted on either side of its grin before disappearing into the crunching jaws.

From the far side of the clearing Muka was watching him. Her brow was knitted in confusion. Normally he would have flashed back a reassuring glance but now he just dropped his head. What was she looking for? he thought miserably. What did she expect? He could not help her. He could only bring her harm. So why was she looking at him as if he had an answer. Why didn’t she just give up on him? He had given up on himself.