The Lair (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (55 page)

“Yes, I know about that. And the elephants?”

“Monsieur Gerard introduced Beatrice to two exiled Cambodian painters, poor and talented. She was very impressed, she agreed to back the project, ‘Painting Elephants.’ An art school for elephants that are becoming less useful. Looking after them costs money, as well as their medical care. I read that each one receives, at birth, a young male caretaker who will look after them until
death. Asian elephants. The African ones are a different story. Ga
par bought the drawing at a Christie’s auction. Beatrice steered him there. I don’t think that your friend will come back for a consultation. He got fed up with my telling him that he’s immense, like an elephant. Maybe he got as far as Thailand.”

“Did he suggest something to that effect?”

“No, but he didn’t ask after Lu. He entered the office like a meteor, dropped off the tube and was gone.
Forever.”

Gora was silent. Koch, too. The show was over.

“You were wonderful, Izy, you were fantastic. I forgot all about the angioplasty, the stents, the panic.”

Izy was looking at him and smiling.

“I’m glad. There’s something else, while we’re here … Ga
par left a letter, too. He wanted to inform me that he’s not supporting the Republican Party, and that the prophet Mohammed was born in the Year of the Elephant. He told me not to forget this! Forty years before the birth of Islam. And when the Abyssinian king, the tyrant Abraha, attacked Mecca, he didn’t use just one huge new weapon but many elephants. Ga
par wanted very badly to improve my education before leaving.”

Now Gora smiled, as well, looking at his friend.

“And there’s still another strange allusion. He said to ask you if you have a code name. He’s referring to the secret police, isn’t he?”

“I assume so. He’s asking if I was an informant. There were many. Stalkers and stalked, that was the game. Sometimes the role was cumulative.”

“I knew what I was doing when I ran. I’d be interested to talk about this. You and I can talk about anything, right? Nothing will ever change between us?”

“Of course.”

Izy was convinced that a long conversation would follow. Gusti didn’t seem inclined.

“Yes, it’s interesting. We’ll talk some other time. I’m tired, and it’s
late. You were wonderful, Izy, fantastic. I forgot about the angio–plasty, the stents, the panic.”

The two old classmates embraced fraternally, as they used to many years ago.

Izy remained pensive in the doorway. Surprised not by Gora’s refusal but by the way in which he interrupted the questions. He’d thanked him with the same words, repeated mechanically, identically, twice. Once home, Gora fell asleep instantly. The following morning he seemed perfectly recovered.

Recovered, he rushed to the small screen.

The Thai National Institute for Elephants was giving away extraordinary gifts for lovers of animals and art. Original paintings, executed by elephants with or without the guiding hands and minds of people. There were no forgeries in this extraordinary collection of abstract creativity—that was the name of the collection, Abstract Creativity.

The paper was handmade, especially for the collection, out of 100 percent recycled materials and free of bacteria, according to the needs of the medium, the acrylics were of the highest quality, imported from England and France.

The elephants had succeeded in forgetting their immense bodies, the patient concluded, encouraged. Each one had, from birth till death, his or her own caretaker and instructor, who knew his or her pedigree and history perfectly. The instructors were trained for the Great Project through special courses: how to prepare the brushes and paints, when to give the signal to start, and particularly, to finish. The opportune stopping of the creative exercise was essential. Elephants don’t know when to stop, they would keep going forever.

The celebrated Lampang Conservation Center fought against the disappearance of Asian elephants, reduced by half from the hundred thousand that lived in Thailand only ten years before.
The funds obtained by the Lampang Center served for maintenance and for raising public awareness about the dramatic fate of these creatures.

It wasn’t a matter only of Thailand or South Africa, but also of Colorado Springs, where the drawings of the celebrated artist Lucky were being sold in a solo exhibition, held at the municipal airport. Born in 1980, Lucky had arrived at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in 1981, after she’d been orphaned in Kruger National Park in South Africa. She lives here with her friend Kimba, also from South Africa. In spite of her spectacular dimensions and weight, Lucky adapted to the courses in just a few weeks. Attentive to details, she works only with the brushes that she likes. “Elephants have over a hundred thousand muscles,” the computer was telling Professor Gora, who was following the forty–eighth birthday celebration of the African elephant Hydari, in the Philadelphia Zoo. Hydari, nicknamed Dari, was the oldest of his kind. Then Gora found himself in the Toledo Zoo, where little Louie received birthday presents, a festive cake and gifts to his tastes, for his fifth birthday. In the Oakland Zoo, the public observed the diet and caretaking of the elephants, in Los Angeles they were celebrating the one–year anniversary of the enchanting Ruby’s retreat, at seven years old, from an acting career in the Performing Welfare Society.

“The image trumps the word! The planetary transmission has no competition in the library!”

Was it Ga
par’s voice? The question had burst victoriously through the fog of his thoughts.

“Is there another more insane and formidable country than this one? Idealistic, pragmatic, cynical, and religious. For–mi–dab–le! And that’s final! The online commercial agency Novica represents fifteen academies of elephant art. Elephantine art, is that right? That’s right and it’s formidable. For–mi–dab–le, that’s all.”

You hear that? Online! Elephant painting! Fifteen art academies!

Where do you find this stuff? In books? No, on the stupid little screen!

It had been hard for him to get used to the invention, harder than it was for Lucky with the brushes, but it became a necessity, just like all useless things that replace other useless things. In one second you find anything you look for, but one little mistake and you don’t know how to get out of the labyrinth. Lost, humiliated, you don’t remember the rectifying action to take. Only the Army of Technical and Infantile Aid can help you; three– and eight– and eighteen–year–old children with tiny laptops in their ears and nostrils. All of them conceived and born of the magic instrument, not in the maternal placenta.

In one second, the can of information opens again, just like in fairy tales. No need for a library, school or books, professors, the child presses a button and there it is: Information. Another era, other needs, another speed, other tastes, the charm of Lucky the elephant surpasses the barriers of time, space, and generations.

Lucky, the star of Cheyenne Mountain, prefers painting in tempera, in pink and red. She signed every artwork. While her trunk gracefully handled the brush, the giant quadruped vocalized her ecstasy: a little grumble of satisfaction, as might be heard only in the studios of the great artists. The voices of the plebe annoyed her. She would stop, disgusted at the buzzing of admirers, many minutes would pass before inspiration came back to her. When the instructor gave the final signal, Lucky would sign the piece with an arrogant gesture of her trunk, and her friend Kimba would apply the stamp over the artist’s signature, a proper hoof mark.

But what about Aet, the eleven–year–old male artist, the author of the masterpiece RA0298? Gora searches all over for him, among the celebrities, waiting for some telepathic sign from Ga
par.

All of a sudden, dubious signals in his chest. He doesn’t have the courage to measure his blood pressure, he rejects the alarm.

New headlines had appeared on the screen, thank God: on the coast of the Black Sea, near the same Tomis where Ovid was exiled long ago, a certain Victor–nicknamed–The–Elephant walked the streets alongside an elephant dressed in a giant national costume,
for his electoral campaign. So, then, Elephantus wasn’t active only in Uncle Sam’s electoral campaign, but also on the
Pontus Euxinus,
where the persecuted Ovid bemoaned his estrangement.

Gora was increasingly convinced that Peter Ga
par was in Thailand, at a school for elephant instructors. At some point he’d published a book about the Baroque, the art of elephants would surely justify a new edition for mass distribution.