She holds the smoke in her lungs as long as she can
before blowing it out. She wants the hash to wash out her
fears and anxieties. She wants to paint.
The hash is strong. She feels its effects within a few
seconds, a soothing combination of numbness, purpose,
and timelessness. She loses herself in the canvas.
She emerges from her drugged creative trance. Hours
later? Minutes? It is darker: only a handful of candles still
burn.
She goes to the sink and splashes her face with water.
She forms a cup with her hands and drinks from it.
She lights a few fresh candles and returns to the canvas.
She finds that she has painted a scene from her dream,
one of the most violent moments. She had never before let
herself depict such brutality. The giant elephant, who, in
her dreams, is somehow her daughter Njàbò, is trampling
humans beneath her enormous feet. She is throwing
a mangled man in the air with her trunk. Cleo notices
that she has painted words in the background, including
“NJÀBÒ” — but also other strange words that she has never
heard of before, such as “MÒKÌLÀ” and “MOKIDWA.”
“Why are you afraid of the dream?” Cleo is startled by
this intrusion.
Njàbò?
Cleo turns, but her daughter doesn’t wait to hear the
answer. Cleo hears her rush up the stairs and shut the
door. Does she know that Cleo has no answer? Cleo isn’t
surprised that Njàbò knows about her recurring dream.
She’s scared, and what scares her most, somehow, is that
lack of surprise.
It was Patrice who had known what “Njàbò” meant, but
Cleo who named the baby. How had it come to her?
After the midwife had left, the whole family had slipped
into bed with Cleo and the new baby. Cleo had immediately
fallen asleep, exhausted from the long labour. She had
slept deeply, had not remembered any dreams, but had
woken knowing the baby’s name. “I think I want to call her
Njàbò” — it was an odd-sounding word that meant nothing
to her — “but I don’t know why.”
Patrice, who had been devastated by the elephant tragedy
and had read many books to assuage his grief, recognized
it. The last elephant, a female African forest elephant on a
reserve in the Congo, had died nearly a year before Njàbò’s
birth. Poaching, loss of habitat due to increasing human
encroachment, spiteful slaughters in backlash against
conservationists, and disease had finally taken their toll.
All efforts at cloning had failed and were still failing.
“I know!” Patrice had said. “Njàbò . . . Njàbò is a mythical
creature from Africa: the mother of all elephants. A giant
with enormous tusks who appears whenever the elephants
need a strong leader. All elephants gather around her when
she calls. It’s a beautiful name. A strong name for our strong
girl. I like it.” Everyone had agreed. Cleo had pushed aside
the question of how the name had come to her. It was one
of those unsolvable riddles best left alone.
Now, looking at the name on the canvas, she is more
convinced than ever that she had never heard or seen the
name before it mysteriously came to her eight years ago.
The dream now plagues Cleo nightly. She is always tired,
never getting enough sleep, never fully rested.
She avoids Njàbò. She has begged off mothering.
Tamara, Patrice, West, and Assaad now share the task.
Cleo, after all, has taken on the bulk of that work for the
past eight years, devoted her time and life to raising Njàbò
and Sonya, to taking care of the house while the four of
them pursued their careers. There had been that book with
Tamara, five years ago, when the girls were three years old.
The paintings, the shows, the tours. Of course, they say to
Cleo, she should explore that aspect of her life again, let
someone else take care of the house, the girls.
Tonight, the house is quiet. The whole family has gone
for a walk in the park. It rained all day, and finally the cloud
cover broke to give way to a warm evening. Cleo had agreed
to go, but decided against it at the last minute. Assaad,
especially, insisted that she come along, to spend time with
the family. But in the end she’d stayed alone in the house.
Well, not quite alone.
Waters follows her as she walks into the living room. She
takes down a big art book from a shelf built into the wall.
Cleo sits on the floor; Waters sits in front of her, purring
and rubbing his head on her knee. She opens the book at
random and remembers.
The book,
The Absence of Elephants
, was a worldwide success.
Trying to exorcize her dream, which she never talked
about, Cleo had created a series of elephant paintings.
Some were scenes from her dreams, but not all. She had
used no photographic references. The results ranged from
photorealism to evocative abstractions. She painted in the
evenings when the girls were in bed, asleep. The whole
family was extremely excited about her paintings. Patrice
and Njàbò, especially, spent hours looking at them, but it
was Tamara who had been inspired by them.
Tamara had sold her publisher on the idea: an art book
combining Cleo’s paintings with photos of forests and plains
where elephants used to thrive, of human constructions that
now stood in areas that were once habitats for elephants.
There would be no words: the pictures, especially in the
wake of the global desolation over the extinction of the
elephants, would speak in all languages, allowing the book
to be marketed worldwide without the cost of translation.
Tamara would go to Africa, India, and anywhere else where
any elephants — even woolly mammoths — had once lived,
hunting with her camera the ghosts of the dead creatures.
The Absence of Elephants
led to gallery bookings. Cleo’s
paintings, along with Tamara’s photographs, were hung in
cities all over the world, from Buenos Aires and Montreal
to Glasgow and Sydney . . . but not in India, where the
book was too hot politically. The two women had gone on
tour with their work — wine, food, and five-star hotels all
expensed. It had been a glamorous, exciting experience for
Cleo — and it had forged a complicit bond between the two
women. Before then, Cleo had often been intimidated by
the beautiful Tamara’s fashionable elegance.
The book, the sales of paintings and signed, numbered
prints of Tamara’s photos, the DVD-ROM, the web rights,
and the CGI Imax film had made the family not quite
wealthy, but certainly at ease.
West took a sabbatical from the university and looked
after the house and the children. After nearly a year of book
tours, art galleries, and media appearances, Cleo missed
Njàbò and Sonya, yearned to return to domestic life. She
came back home, to the girls. For the next few years, she
rarely painted. But the dream continued to haunt her.
Cleo now spends entire days in her studio, has even taken
to locking herself in. Sometimes she stands silently behind
the door, listening to the others talk about her. They assume
that she has been overtaken by a new creative storm, is
painting a new series, and needs time alone to focus her
creative energies.
In truth, Cleo’s days disappear in a cloud of hash. She
hides from her fears: of Njàbò, of what she would paint if
she were to take up the brush, of being in public, vulnerable
to the appearance of the wrinkled old man.
The first thing Cleo thinks is:
Patrice and Assaad look so
uncomfortable sleeping on that small ugly couch.
Patrice is lying
on top of Assaad, resting his head on Assaad’s shoulder.
Assaad’s arms are wrapped around Patrice, one hand on the
small of his back, the other on his shoulder blade. “Patty?
Assaad?” The two men snap awake. And then Cleo peers
around the room, touching the mattress beneath her. She
thinks:
Is this a hospital bed?
Cleo notices that Patrice looks worried, but she can’t
read Assaad, whose face is even more inscrutable than
usual. Getting up, the men stand on either side of Cleo,
each wrapping one of her hands in their own. Cleo takes
her hands back before they can say anything. “Enough.
This is too much. Go sit down. What am I doing here?”
They go back to the couch. Assaad squeezes Patrice’s
hand, nodding at him to speak. “No, love, you tell her.”
Patrice says. “You found her.”
Assaad looks straight into Cleo’s eyes, willing her to
keep her eyes locked on his. His voice is dry ice, fuming
with wisps of cold mist. “None of us had seen you for more
than a day. For weeks, you’ve been distant, aloof, oblivious
to the girls, oblivious to all of us.”
Cleo’s muscles tighten up, in a reflexive effort to protect
herself. She’s never heard Assaad speak in such a cold, hard
voice before.
“We thought you were working on a new series. You let
us believe that.”
Assaad pauses, his eyes still locked on Cleo’s. Is he
waiting for an explanation? Or a reaction? Cleo wants to
look away, but can’t.
“As I said, we hadn’t seen you for more than a day. You
hadn’t come to bed the night before. You’d locked yourself
in your studio. The girls and I were ready to have lunch. I
knocked on your door, calling you, inviting you to eat with
us. You didn’t answer. I knocked harder. Yelled out your
name. Still, you didn’t answer. I had to take the door out.
I found you unconscious. The air was foul. You’d pissed
yourself. Vomited.”
Again, a pause. Cleo feels the cold mist of Assaad’s anger
go down her throat, into her stomach. Of all of them, he
is the most patient, the most understanding, the one who
resolves conflicts, soothes hurts and pains. How could she
have let it come to this?
“There was but one new painting. Later, Njàbò told us
you’d painted that one weeks ago, the day West brought
them to his class. I called the ambulance. I couldn’t rouse
you.”
Another pause. Patrice fills the tense silence. “The
doctor told us you were suffering from dehydration and
malnutrition. Why haven’t you been eating? What have you
been doing? Are you angry with us? Speak to us, Clee, we all
love you. Maybe we should have been more attentive. You
were looking weak, tired. We should have paid attention.
We were all too preoccupied, with work and with the girls.
Why are you hiding from us? What are you hiding from us?”
Patrice’s voice gets louder and increasingly reproachful.
“Why did you let this happen?”
Assaad looks away from Cleo, puts his hand on Patrice’s
shoulder, calms him, and, in the process, calms himself.
Patrice frowns, “I’m sorry, Clee, I — I’m just worried about
you.”
“Patty, I . . .” She avoids their faces. She feels ashamed.
Why has she kept the dream a secret all these years? The
dream is a chasm into which intimacy is falling ever further
from her grasp. Can it reemerge from those depths after so
many years of secrecy? “How . . . How are the girls?”
“They’re fine, Clee. Assaad quit his job at The Smoke
Shop. He’s a great mother.” Patrice’s grin fills his whole face.
He ruffles Assaad’s hair, kissing him on the cheek. Assaad
fights a losing battle against the grin spreading on his face.
“We didn’t really need the money. It’s a stimulating change
to be at home with the girls. It’s a challenge to teach them,
and to learn from them.”
“Who’s taking ca — ”
Assaad answers, “They’re with West today. He took them
to see the new
Katgirl & Canary
movie that they’ve both been
so excited about.”
“How long have I been here?”
Patrice glances at Assaad, then gets up and sits next to
her on the bed, stroking her face. “You’ve been out for four
days. It’s Sunday.”
Cleo closes her eyes. She wishes she knew why she’s
been so apprehensive, why she’s been hiding a part of
herself from her lovers. She remembers falling in love with
Patrice when she was still waiting tables at The Small Easy.
She remembers him introducing her to his family — Assaad,
Tamara, West; her family, now. She takes a blind leap. “I’ve
been having this dream . . .”
The Baka — the few hundred who remain — live in the forest,
in a territory that covers part of Cameroon and the Congo.
They believe — or believed, Cleo isn’t sure — that the Mòkìlà
were a tribe of shapeshifters, both elephant and human. The
Mòkìlà would raid Baka villages and initiate the captives
into their secret society. Their sorcerers, the mokidwa,
would transform their captives into shapeshifters. The
captives became Mòkìlà and were never again seen by their
families.
The mokidwa could take on the form of any animal.
They also knew the secret of invisibility.
Njàbò is the ancestor of all elephants, sometimes male,
sometimes female. Stories abound of avatars of Njàbò,
giant cows or bulls, leading herds of elephants against
Baka warriors or villages. Njàbò’s tusks are so enormous,
they contain ten other tusks within them. Njàbò is often
flanked by a retinue of guards.
Cleo has been trying to demystify her experiences. She
searched the web for those strange words on her painting
and found them. She asked West to get books from the
university library. She’s been reading about the Baka and
the myth of Njàbò. She’s never cared before about her
ancestry and now finds herself wondering if perhaps there
are Baka or Mòkìlà among her ancestors. The Mòkìlà are a
myth, she reminds herself.
She’s been painting again. The new canvasses are
violent, raw. When she painted her first series years ago,
she hadn’t felt this uninhibited. Now, every session leaves
her exhausted, yet exhilarated. Having shared her dream
with her family, she has nothing to hide. She feels free.
She still dreams every night, but the dream is changing.
Now the whole family walks with Njàbò. And the dream
is getting longer. There is more violence, more bloodshed.
Njàbò leads the tribe around the world. They crush all
human constructions. They kill all the humans. Theirs is
an unstoppable stampede. Cleo has painted much of this.
Now, the dream continues beyond the violence. The tribe
walks the Earth in peace. The tribe grows and Njàbò reigns.
Today, for the first time, Cleo’s painting is inspired by that
part of the dream.