Whistling for the Elephants (30 page)

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, grass, 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 hell…’ started Miss Strange. Artemesia put down the hose and looked
at Miss Strange. Very slowly and gently she lifted up one massive 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 damn hot for corsets. Too damn 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 Sassaspaneck. 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 passing 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 shore. The noble 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.