The Elephant Vanishes (7 page)

I stretched out in the bottom of the boat and closed my eyes, waiting for the rising tide to carry me where I belonged.

—translated by Jay Rubin

S
AY HEY
, how’s tricks?

This morning, I paid a call on the kangaroos at the local zoo. Not your biggest zoo, but it’s got the standard animals. Everything from gorillas to elephants. Although if your taste runs to llamas and anteaters, don’t go out of your way. There, you’ll find neither llama nor anteater. No impala or hyena, either. Not even a leopard.

Instead, there are four kangaroos.

One, an infant, born just two months ago. And a male and two females. I can’t for the life of me figure out how they get along as a family.

Every time I set eyes on a kangaroo, it all seems so improbable to me: I mean, what on earth would it feel like to be a kangaroo? For what possible reason do they go hopping around in such an ungodly place as Australia? Just to get killed by some clunky stick of a boomerang?

I can’t figure it out.

Though, really, that’s neither here nor there. No major issue.

Anyway, looking at these kangaroos, I got the urge to send you a letter.

Maybe that strikes you as odd. You ask yourself, Why should looking at kangaroos make me want to send you a letter? And just what is the connection between these kangaroos and me? Well, you can stop thinking those thoughts right now. Makes no nevermind. Kangaroos are kangaroos, you are you.

In other words, it’s like this:

Thirty-six intricate procedural steps, followed one by one in just the right order, led me from the kangaroos to you—that’s it. To attempt to explain each and every one of these steps would surely try your powers of comprehension, but more than that, I doubt I can even remember them all.

There were thirty-six of them, after all!

If but one of these stages had gotten screwed up, I guess I wouldn’t be sending you this letter. Who knows? I might have ended up somewhere in the Antarctic Ocean careening about on the back of a sperm whale. Or maybe I’d have torched the local cigarette stand.

Yet somehow, guided by this seemingly random convergence of thirty-six coincidences, I find myself communicating with you.

Strange, isn’t it?

O
KAY, THEN
, allow me to introduce myself.

I
AM TWENTY-SIX
years old and work in the product-control section of a department store. The job—as I’m sure you can easily imagine—is terribly boring. First of all, I check the merchandise that the purchasing section has decided to stock and make sure that there aren’t any problems with the products. This is supposed to prevent collusion between the purchasing
section and the suppliers, but actually, it’s a pretty loose operation. A few tugs at shoe buckles while chatting, a nibble or two at sample sweets—that’s about it. So much for product control.

Then we come to another ask, the real heart of our work, which is responding to customer complaints. Say, for instance, two pairs of stockings just purchased developed runs one after the other, or the wind-up bear fell off the table and stopped working, or a bathrobe shrank by one fourth the first time through the machine—those kind of complaints.

Well, let me tell you, the number of complaints—the sheer number—is enough to dampen anyone’s spirits. Enough to keep four staffers racing around like crazy, day in and day out. These complaints include both clear-cut cases and totally unreasonable requests. Then there are those we have to puzzle over. For convenience sake, we’ve classified these into three categories: A, B, and C. And in the middle of the office we’ve got three boxes, marked A, B, and C, respectively, where we toss the letters. An operation we call “Trilevel Rationality Evaluation.” In-house joke. Forget I mentioned it.

Anyway, to explain these three categories, we have:

1. Reasonable complaints. Cases where we are obliged to assume responsibility. We visit the customers’ homes bearing oxes of sweets and exchange the merchandise in question.
   

2. Borderline cases. When in doubt, we play safe. Even where here is no moral obligation or business precedent or legal iability, we offer some appropriate gesture so as not to compromise the image of the department store and to avoid unnecessary trouble.
   

3. Customer negligence. When clearly the customer’s fault, we ffer an explanation of the situation and leave it at that.
   

Now, as to your complaint of a few days back, we gave the matter serious consideration and ultimately arrived at the conclusion that your complaint was of a nature that could only be classified as belonging to category C. The reasons for this
were—ready? listen carefully!—we cannot exchange (1) a record once purchased (2) one whole week later (3) without a receipt.
Nowhere in the world can you do this
.

Do you get what I’m saying?

End of explanation of the situation. Your complaint has been duly processed.

N
ONETHELESS
, professional viewpoint aside—and actually, I leave it aside a lot—my personal reaction to your plight—having mistakenly bought Mahler, not Brahms—is one of heartfelt sympathy. I kid you not. So it is I send you not your run-of-the-mill form letter but this in some sense more intimate message.

A
CTUALLY
, I started to write you a letter any number of times last week. “We regret to inform you that our policy prohibits the exchange of records, although your letter did in some small way move me to personally … blah, blah, blah.” A letter like that. Nothing I wrote, however, came out right. And it’s not as though I’m no good at writing letters. It’s just that each time I set my mind on writing you, I drew a blank, and the words that did come were consistently off base. Strangest thing.

So I decided not to respond at all. I mean, why send out a botched attempt at a letter? Better to send nothing at all, right? At least, that’s what I think: A message imperfectly communicated does about as much good as a screwed-up timetable.

As fate would have it, though, this morning, standing before the kangaroo cage, I hit upon the exact permutation of those thirty-six coincidences and came up with this inspiration. To wit, the principle we shall call the Nobility of Imperfection. Now, what is this Nobility of Imperfection?, you may ask—who wouldn’t ask? Well, simply put, the Nobility of Imperfection might mean nothing so much as the proposition that someone
in effect
forgives someone else. I forgive the kangaroos, the kangaroos forgive you, you forgive me—to cite but one example.

Uh-huh.

This cycle, however, is not perpetual. At some point, the kangaroos might take it into their heads not to forgive you. Please don’t get angry at the kangaroos just because of that, though. It’s not the kangaroos’ fault and it’s not your fault. Nor, for that matter, is it my fault. The kangaroos have their own pressing circumstances. And I ask you, what kind of person is it who can blame a kangaroo?

So we seize the moment. That’s all we can do. Capture the moment in a snapshot. Front and center, in a row left to right: you, the kangaroos, me.

Enough of trying to write this all down. It’s going nowhere. Say I write the word “coincidence.” What you read in the word “coincidence” could be utterly different—even opposite—from what the very same word means to me. This is unfair, if I may say so. Here I am, stripped to my underpants, while you’ve only undone three buttons of your blouse. An unfair turn of events if there ever was one.

Hence I bought myself a cassette tape, having decided to directly record my letter to you.

[Whistling—eight bars of the “Colonel Bogey” march]

T
ESTING
, can you hear me?

I
DON’T REALLY KNOW
how you will take to receiving this letter—that is, this tape—I really can’t imagine. I suppose you might even get quite upset by it all. Why? … Because it’s highly unusual for a product-control clerk of a department store to reply to a customer complaint by cassette tape—with a personalized message, too, mind you! You could even, if you were so inclined, say the whole thing was downright bizarre. And say, were you to get so upset that you sent this tape back to my boss, my standing within the organization would be placed in a terribly delicate balance indeed.

But if that is what you want to do, please do so.

If it comes to that, I will not get mad or hold a grudge against you.

Clear enough? We are on 100% equal terms: I have the right to send you a letter and you have the right to threaten my livelihood.

Isn’t that right?

We’re even Stephen. Just remember that.

C
OME TO THINK OF IT
, I forgot to mention that I’m calling this letter
The Kangaroo Communiqué
.

I mean, everything needs a name, right?

Suppose, for instance, you keep a diary. Instead of writing this long-drawn-out entry, “Department-store product-control clerk’s reply re complaint arrives,” you could simply write
“Kangaroo Communiqué
arrives” and be done with it. And such a catchy name, too, don’t you think?
The Kangaroo Communiqué:
Makes you think of kangaroos bounding off across the vast plains, pouches stuffed full of mail, doesn’t it?

[Thump, thump, thump
(rapping on tabletop)]

Now for some knocking.

[Knock, knock, knock]

Stop me if you’ve heard this.

Don’t open the door if you don’t feel like it. Either way is perfectly fine. If you don’t want to listen anymore, please stop the tape and throw it away. I just wanted to sit down awhile by your front door talking to myself, that’s all. I have no idea whatsoever if you’re listening or not, but since I don’t know, it’s really all the same whether you do or you don’t, isn’t it? Ha, ha, ha.

O
KAY, WHAT THE HELL
, let’s give it a go.

•   •   •

S
TILL AND ALL
, this imperfection business is pretty tough going. Who’d have thought talking into a microphone without any script or plan would be so hard? It’s like standing in the middle of the desert sprinkling water around with a cup. No visible sign of anything, not one thing to cling to.

That’s why all this time I’ve been talking to the VU meters. You know, the VU meters? Those gizmos with the needles that twitch to the volume? I don’t know what the
V
or the
U
stand for, but whatever, they’re the only things showing any reaction to my ranting.

Hey, hey.

All the same, their criteria are really quite simple.

V
and
U
, well, they’re like a vaudeville duo. There’s no
V
without
U
and no
U
without
V
—a nice little setup. As far as they’re concerned, it really doesn’t matter what I babble on about. The only thing they’re interested in is how much my voice makes the air vibrate. To them, the air vibrates, therefore I am.

Pretty swift, don’t you think?

Watching them, I get to thinking it doesn’t matter what I say so long as I keep talking.

Whoa!

Come to think of it, not too long ago I saw a movie. It was about a comedian who just couldn’t make anyone laugh no matter what jokes he told. Got the picture? Not one soul would laugh.

Well, talking into this microphone, I’m reminded of that movie over and over again.

It’s all very odd.

The very same lines when spoken by one person will have you dying with laughter but when spoken by another won’t seem funny in the least. Curious, don’t you think? And the more I think about it, that difference just seems to be one of these things you’re born with. See, it’s like the curvature of the semicircular canals of your ears having the edge over somebody else’s, or … you know.

Sometimes I find myself thinking, If only I had such gifts, how happy I’d be. I’m always doubling over laughing to myself when something strikes me as funny, but try to tell someone else and it falls flat, a dud. It makes me feel like the Egyptian Sandman. Even more, it’s …

You know about the Egyptian Sandman?

Hmm, well, you see, the Egyptian Sandman was Prince of Egypt by birth. A long time ago, back in the days of pyramids and sphinxes and all that. But because he was so ugly—I mean, truly ugly—the king had him sent off into the deepest jungle to get rid of him. Well, it so happens that the kid ends up getting raised by wolves, or monkeys, maybe. One of those stories, you know. And somehow or other, he becomes a Sandman. Now, this Sandman, everything he touches turns to sand. Breezes turn into sandstorms, babbling brooks turn into dunes, grassy plains turn into deserts. So goes the tale of the Sandman. Ever hear it before? Probably not, eh? That’s because I just made it up. Ha, ha, ha.

Anyway, talking to you like this, I get the feeling I’ve become the Egyptian Sandman myself. And whatever I touch, it’s sand sand sand.

O
NCE AGAIN
, I see I’m talking about myself too much. But all things considered, it’s unavoidable. I mean, I don’t even know one solitary thing about you. I’ve got your address and your name, and that’s it. Your age, income bracket, the shape of your nose, whether you’re slender or overweight, married or not—what do I know? Not that any of that really matters. It’s almost better this way. If at all possible, I prefer to keep things simple, very simple—on the metaphysical level, if you will.