Chained (13 page)

I stare at the metal shackles that encircle Nandita’s legs.

Timir steps closer, and Nandita turns to face him.

He stares at me as he speaks. “I see flight in her eyes. We have to do what we can to keep her here. We’ll also be locking the entrance near the arena when we leave every night. It would be a shame if she got out and ran off. Imagine how she would be punished when we found her. Or we’d have to catch another elephant to bring back. Perhaps the elephant has a sister”—he brushes my cheek with the back of his hand—“who would work out just as well. Maybe better.”

My face feels like it’s crawling with spiders. I back away from Timir’s touch and stand closer to Nandita.

Timir narrows the distance between us and raises his cane. Before he can move any closer, Nandita calls out a trumpet blast. Branches overhead shake as the birds that rested in them fly away. Ears flared out straight, Nandita steps toward Timir and throws her trunk across my body.

We all stand frozen in place. Timir and Sharad do not take their eyes off Nandita. Sharad’s hand grips the handle of the hook at his side. Nandita stares at Timir with a look I hope she never gives me. Our breathing is the only sound I hear. The silence in the trees adds to the stillness.

Leaves rustle as Timir takes one step back and waits. When Nandita doesn’t move, he takes another, and another, holding his cane out in front of him.

“Let’s go,” he says when he steps just past Sharad. Sharad does not move. “Come on, we’re done here for now.” He taps Sharad’s leg with the tip of his cane.

Sharad shakes his head as if someone snapped him out of a daydream. He joins Timir and backs away from Nandita. She stands in place until they are out of sight. I let out a deep breath I’ve been holding and slump against Nandita. My shaking hands and pounding heart need some time to calm down.

Nandita has shown before that she cares about me—she crosses the arena when I walk by, even when I don’t have a bottle of milk. She likes to sleep next to me, and looks as if she’s smiling when she sprays water on me or taps me on the shoulder. But I didn’t know she would put herself in danger to protect me. I hope I can do the same for her one day.

I hug her and pet her forehead, then we walk together to the spring.

*   *   *

To make the elephant show more entertaining, Sharad trains Nandita to do harder and harder tricks, like balancing on a row of milk bottles. Even when the show is over, her work is not. After each performance, people from the audience now line up for elephant rides. Nandita kneels onto her front legs for each person to climb on her back, then walks them three times around the arena.

On show days, I let Nandita enjoy a longer evening bath. I scrub her with the coconut husk until my hands are too sore to move, then I sit on the bank of the spring while the cool water flows over her body, which I know must ache.

I imagine myself years from now, as an old man, still sitting here at this spring while Nandita takes her bath. How big will she be then?

Nandita’s chains rattle against her shackles when she rolls to her other side in the water. At this moment, she does not look like the sad, overworked show elephant, but more like the playful wild elephant she was when I first saw her. When she looks up at me, her face reminds me of our Ganesh figure back home. Sometimes I used to sit in front of it and listen to the stories my father told. One of my favorites was about how Ganesh got his head.

“He did not always have the head of an elephant, you know,” Baba would say.

“He didn’t? What happened?” I asked each time, even though I had heard the story a hundred times before.

“Ganesh used to have the head of a regular boy, like you, until the day his father returned…”

“Skip to the ending, Baba,” I said, “where Ganesh’s parents meet the elephant…”

“What good is a story if you hear only the end? You have to know how you got there!”

So I would listen while my father told the whole story.

The goddess Parvati was lonely, since her husband, Lord Shiv, had been away from home for so long. So she gathered some earth in her hands and created for herself a son. She named him Ganesh.

One day Parvati told Ganesh, “I am going to take a bath. Guard the door for me, and do not allow anyone to enter. I do not wish to be disturbed.”

“Yes, Mother,” said Ganesh.

On this same day, Lord Shiv returned home from war. When he tried to enter his home, he was blocked by the boy guarding the doorway!

“Move aside,” Shiv ordered him.

“My mother is taking her bath,” said Ganesh. “No one may enter our home right now. Come back another time.”

Lord Shiv shoved the boy aside and tried to step into the house, but young Ganesh leaped in front of the doorway and would not let his father pass. Shiv was so enraged, he grabbed his sword. He cut off the head of Ganesh and threw it far into the woods.

Parvati heard the commotion outside and ran to the door. When she saw what had happened she cried out, “That was our son!”

The horrified parents ran to the woods to search for Ganesh’s head, but could not find it. Knowing their child could not live without a head, they decided to take the head of the nearest creature they found.

The first animal they saw was an elephant. When Shiv and Parvati told him what had happened, the elephant bowed his head and said, “Lord of the World, cut off my head quickly. I will gladly sacrifice it and move on to my next life, so that your son may live.”

Lord Shiv told the elephant, “You will not need to live again in this world. I bless you and set your spirit free, so that you may join the gods.”

Ganesh’s mother and father raced back home with the elephant’s head. Shiv placed it on his child’s body. Parvati placed her hands upon Ganesh, and their son awoke.

As I remember the end of the story, I think of the animal that was so generous he gave his own life to save another. I look into Nandita’s eyes and know that she would do the same if asked. And I would do it for her.

That evening after I finish my chores, I’m looking around for a piece of wood to carve while Nandita eats hay in the stable. I notice Ne Min sitting on the ground outside the arena. A large roll of brown twine sits on the ground next to him.

“What are you making?” I ask as I approach.

“That elephant, she does not give you room to sleep.” The roll of twine unravels in a blur as he works. Row after row of knots appear, each a perfect copy of the one before it. I sit down across from him.

He is right. Nandita has grown so much during our time together. Many mornings I can feel the pattern of bark imprinted on my face, from sleeping while pressed against the stable wall.

“Hang this hammock in the stable and sleep above her. Then she can have the whole floor to herself.”

The knots of the hammock seem complicated, but Ne Min ties them in neat rows with no more effort than it takes him to stir a pot of rice.

“You must have made many of these,” I say.

“A few. I prefer sleeping mats woven from palm leaves, but you have no room for that. Someone who has his own hut, with an elephant that sleeps outside among the trees, can sleep on a mat and blankets on the ground. But for you, for now, a hammock.”

“Some people let their elephants sleep outside? Not locked in a stable?”

“They like to wander around, yes, but if they are treated well, they come back when they are called.” Ne Min smiles and pauses in his knot tying. “The mischievous ones try to hide so you have to look for them, but still they come back.” He looks at me, then down at the hammock, and continues working. The roll of twine uncoils even faster than before. “Nandita would return to you, even if she were allowed to wander.”

“Maybe. But I’ll never know, since Timir would never allow that.”

“Timir is one who does everything out of fear.”

I laugh. I have never thought of Timir being frightened of anything. He seems so strong, and so scary himself, what could he be afraid of?

“One who is brave inside does not have to use fear to control others,” he says. “You are braver than Timir will ever be.”

“Brave? Me? I’m afraid all the time!”

“It is not weakness to feel fear. To do the right thing even when you are afraid—that is bravery. It saddens me that I have not always done so.”

I try to find the words to ask Ne Min what he means, what it is that bothers him so much.

“Can you tell me—” I start to say.

The swaying of trees in the distance catches my eye. Ne Min turns to follow my gaze. The tops of the trees shake, even though there is no wind. Neither of us moves.

Then I see it emerge from the woods. It is the largest animal I have ever seen.

20

Elephants grow six sets of teeth during their seventy-year life span.

—From
Care of Jungle Elephants
by Tin San Bo

If one man stood on the shoulders of another, he still would not meet the eyes of the elephant that stands before us now.

As he walks closer to us, he pulls up clumps of grass with his trunk. He beats them on the ground, then places the grass in his mouth when enough dirt has been pounded away.

“If Nandita ever grows that big,” I say, “there won’t even be room in the stable to hang that hammock. I’ll have to sleep outside.”

“She will not grow to that size, even if she does live to be as old as this one,” says Ne Min. “The females do not grow as large as the bulls.”

“He is old?” The bull looks so strong, like he could crush a truck if he stepped on it. “How can you tell?”

Ne Min points. “See the pink face? And the ears—look how tattered they are, and how they fold.”

The elephant is still far away, so I don’t know how Ne Min noticed it so easily, but I see it now. The edge of the animal’s ear is raggedy and flops inward. Splotches of pink cover his face and trunk.

“That means he’s old?” I ask.

“That, and those tusks. You see—that one he has broken, perhaps in a fight, but it takes many years to grow tusks that size.”

Each tusk looks thicker than both of my legs put together. “I wouldn’t want to meet the elephant that dared to fight him.”

We both stand and watch the bull as he pulls grass and ambles toward us. He’s not close enough to touch, but I don’t want him to get any closer.

The air around us is quiet. Timir and Sharad have gone home for the evening, so we hear no shouting from Timir, no yelling demands of Sharad’s training. The only sounds are of the bull pounding grass on the ground and the chewing as he eats. At times he looks at us, then wraps his trunk around another clump of tall grass he yanks from the ground.

In a quiet voice I ask, “Is he as old as you are?”

“Not that old, no,” Ne Min answers. “If their teeth could last longer, they could live to be as old as I am. This one may not have many years left. He might have wandered all day looking for grasses that are easy to eat.”

“Their teeth wear out?”

“You have seen how much Nandita eats every day. Imagine how all the chewing of hay and grass wears down their teeth, year after year. Like your wood carving, only much slower. When you whittle away at the wood, bit by bit, there comes a time when there is nothing left to work with.”

“So it’s like their food whittles away at their teeth.”

“It takes a long time, but yes. By the time they grow as old as he is, most of their teeth have worn away. They die when they can no longer eat.”

“And then what?”

“And then they are dead, Hastin.”

“Yes, but—” I have never mentioned to anyone that I wonder sometimes about Baba. He must have been reborn by now into someone else, somewhere else, but I wish I knew who, and where. I would find him and visit him, even if his new self would not know me.

“What do you think happens to them after they die?” I ask.

“Or after we die?”

“Or that. Do you think they, or we, are born into another animal or person?”

“Perhaps.” The way Ne Min says “perhaps” sounds like “perhaps not.”

“What do you think happens then, if not that?”

Ne Min sits down again and continues working on the hammock. “You know where I keep the candles, in the cook shed?”

“Yes.”

“Bring me two.”

I do not know what Ne Min is thinking or why he needs candles. The lantern burns brightly enough for this time of evening. But I run to the cook shed and bring back two candles for him. He sets one on the ground and tilts another into the lantern flame. After it ignites he hands it to me then returns to tying knots of the hammock.

“Now what?” I ask.

“Now we wait.”

I hold the candle while I wait for whatever it is Ne Min wants me to wait for. The bull elephant still wanders nearby. I remember when I first watched Nandita and her family at the river. During all those trips to the forest, I never did see an elephant alone.

“I wonder where his herd is.” A pool of wax collects just beneath the candlewick, then overflows and drips onto my finger.

“When they are a few years old, the bulls leave the herd and live on their own. It is the mothers and aunts who stay together as a family with the young ones.”

In all the conversations I have had with Ne Min, I’ve never found out how he knows so much about elephants. He must have lived around them and worked with them for some time. What kind of circus is this, where the cook knows more about elephants than the trainer and cares more about them than the owner? And me—I’m supposed to be the elephant’s caretaker, but I would be lost without Ne Min here to answer my questions.

“So before you came here,” I ask, “like when you lived in Burma, were you a cook there, too? Or did you have some other job?” The wax has cooled on my fingertip. When I lift it off with my thumbnail I see the whirled lines that mark my fingers.

“Your candle will die out soon.”

I didn’t see him glance away from his knot tying, but sure enough, I check my candle and see it has burned almost down to my fingers. Ne Min picks up the candle from the ground next to him. He holds it out between the two of us.