Whistling for the Elephants (20 page)

‘Isn’t
that incredible?’ whispered Phoebe.

‘Yeah,’
said Grace. ‘Most of us can’t even stand on our feet.’ At which point Uncle
Robert fell off Rotumah, rather underscoring the point.

It
didn’t all go brilliantly. Edith Clifford, whose act included gulping
razorblades, a huge pair of scissors and a saw blade, did not appear. She had
been rehearsing a new finale where she placed the tip of a bayonet blade in her
mouth and lowered the hilt into the barrel of a small hand-held cannon. The
blast had unfortunately jammed the blade down her throat.

After
supper Toto, the elephant, was brought to the front door. A thick strip of leather
studded with silver beads went across his forehead, almost over his eyes, with
a loop over the crown of his head, one below the chin and one behind his ears,
all fastened with vast brass rings. He was accompanied by a steam calliope
—
an organ fixed into a red wooden wagon frame trimmed in cream
and gold. Two evil-looking jesters in pointed shoes and hats held the oval open
frame surrounding the steam pipes. It played as Toto led the way.

John
had presents for the women in his life. First there was Phoebe, then Billie,
and finally Grace. Grace carried the emaciated Phoebe round to the terrace
overlooking the river.

‘These
columns? All antique,’ John called to his guests. ‘Ninety—one of them. Mostly
eleventh—century. They’re all mounted on brick pedestals of varying heights and
then covered with cast stone to make them the same height.’

The
courtyard, with its rhythmic repetition of arches and columns, was a natural theatre.
Its inlaid-mosaic doorframes, antique columns, wall fountains, statues,
friezes, medallions, cartouches, bronze doors and loggia walls acted as
splendid sounding boards. Everyone sat down and waited as Sweetheart brought
out Phoebe’s gift. A small, slim woman appeared on the terrace. Phoebe gasped
and Grace looked at her anxiously.

‘It’s
Doris Humphrey’

Sweetheart
made the introduction. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we are privileged to have with us
Miss Doris Humphrey, pioneer of the American modern dance and an innovator in
technique, choreography and theory of dance movement. Tonight she will present
one of her famous music visualizations.
Water
Study
incorporates her theory of fall and recovery as the key to human
movement and uses only non-musical rhythms
—
waves, natural human breath
and pulse rhythms.’ Sweetheart sat down and Doris danced. Phoebe was nearly
beside herself She clutched Grace’s hand as the elegant Doris swayed low to the
ground and then recovered.

‘It’s
the arc between two deaths,’ whispered Phoebe, who longed to dance.

It
was a curious, silent performance. Doris constantly held the moment between
motionless balance and a falling imbalance where she seemed incapable of
recovery. She understood that every movement a dancer makes away from the centre
of gravity has to be followed by a compensating readjustment to restore balance
and prevent uncontrolled falling; the more extreme and exciting the controlled
fall attempted by the dancer, the more vigorous must be the recovery. The arc
between two deaths.

As
her wedding present from John, Billie got a theatre. Not just any theatre, but
the eighteenth-century interior of a theatre from the castle at A solo near
Venice, which John had had shipped and reassembled.

‘It’s
the only original… what was it, Milton?’

‘Baroque.’

‘….
baroque
theatre in the United States.’ It was gorgeous. The audience consisted of three
rows of galleries in an oval shape with three hundred velvet seats. The ornate
décor included portrait medallions of Dante and Petrarch.

‘Who
are they?’ asked Billie.

‘I
haven’t the faintest idea,’ said John. ‘Dead, I guess. Sure haven’t heard from
them.’

Professor
Heckler’s World Famous Trained Flea Circus was the first act and the last.
There had been a problem in rehearsal and the fleas had not been troopers. The
show had not gone on and the fleas had abandoned the stage for the auditorium.
The seats were infested.

Grace
carried Phoebe out laughing and excited. ‘Theatre. It’s an old Greek word
meaning “to see”.’

‘I
didn’t know we were going to feel it as well,’ chortled Billie, scratching all
over. ‘Come on now, John, what does Grace get?’

John
stood, his feet spread wide. A colossus in his empire.

‘Grace?
Why, Grace gets romance. Here.’

Around
the corner of the main house walked Sweetheart’s young son, Harry. He was
leading the most beautiful female elephant. The boy looked fit to bust with
pride as he gently held her by a giant ear. The great pachyderm was soft with
the boy. She walked with the gentlest tread on huge cushioned fret. The noblest
of creatures, she had a slight smile about her which suggested she had seen a
mirror and knew she looked ridiculous. Her grey skin was almost entirely
obscured by her costume. A vast blanket with a hundred thousand hand-sewn
sequins had been draped over her. Above her head the blanket had been moulded
up into the head and body of a swan. It was Lillian Gish in an ill-advised
musical. It was over the top. It was terrible but Grace was in love.

‘For
Toto. A mate for Toto.’

John
shrugged as if it was nothing. ‘Oh well, you keep going on about animals being
lonely and whatnot. So there you go. She’s called Ellen.’

The
day after the engagement party Billie started packing her trunks for her
honeymoon to Africa. Huge patterned boxes with inner drawers and hanging space
were filled with her finest clothes. Across the bed lay a flowing silk gown
shaded in purples and blues.

‘That’s
beautiful,’ said Grace, stroking the rich silk while Sweetheart helped fold
endless garments in tissue paper.

Billie
held the gown against herself and danced across the room.

‘I
shall wear this for cocktails at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro. Elephants will
wander by in single file as a lion roars under the stars. Come with us, Grace.
Doesn’t it sound romantic?’

I was drifting off to
sleep when Miss Strange and Helen came in with the cocoa and Cosmos returned to
build up the fire. Sweetheart put a coat over me. She stroked my cheek and I
wanted to cry.

‘I don’t
know why, but she reminds me of Phoebe.’

‘Poor
kid, she seems kind of lost.’

I went
to sleep dreaming that Miss Strange carried me in her arms. I lay sure and
still as she gathered me up. We laughed and wondered together at the animals as
her strong arms held me up to see. I was home. I was safe.

When I
awoke the women were all talking about the elephant.

‘I don’t
see why it’s like, a problem,’ said Cosmos, emphasizing each word with a cut of
her knife on a new flute.

Miss
Strange was firm. ‘Cosmos, we cannot deal with Artemesia. We don’t have the
facilities.’

I was
having trouble following. ‘Who’s Artemesia?’ I asked sleepily.

Miss
Strange looked at me, sorry that I had no education. ‘First known woman sea
captain. Fifth century.’

‘No,’ I
said. ‘I meant, what kind of animal?’

‘An
elephant. The most beautiful elephant,’ replied Sweetheart with a smile I had
not seen before. ‘Ellen and Toto’s baby.’

‘But it’s
the most blessed thing that could ever happen to the zoo,’ persisted Cosmos. ‘Touch
an elephant and you receive enlightenment. Buddha himself was born into the
body of an elephant in an elephant trainer’s family. On the night of his birth,
an elephant entered the dreams of Buddha’s mother, Queen Mahamaya, and Gautama
Buddha was thus born patient, strong, meek and unforgetful.’

‘Did
emperors have elephants?’ I asked, already agog at the thought of this romantic
creature.

‘Have
them?’ said Cosmos. ‘They adored them.’

Miss
Strange was unmoved by emperors’ feelings or otherwise. ‘That is all very well
but this is upstate New York, not India. We can’t do it. The elephant would
need a huge reinforced outdoor paddock. We don’t have anything like that.’

‘So we’ll
make one,’ insisted Cosmos.

Miss
Strange shook her head. ‘We couldn’t do it. We couldn’t afford the labour.

‘We can
make it ourselves.’

‘You
don’t know what you’re talking about. This is not some pets corner we need.’

‘Where
did we used to keep her?’ inquired Sweetheart, frowning.

‘Up by
the restaurant,’ sighed Miss Strange. ‘But I don’t think those fences would
keep her now. It’s hopeless.’

Sweetheart
nodded. ‘She was lovely.’

Until
then I had kept quiet, but the second I heard about Artemesia I knew I wanted the
elephant to come. I wanted to receive enlightenment.

‘Why
doesn’t Cosmos whistle for help?’ I suggested. I looked at Cosmos. ‘You said
your whistles brought help.’ The women looked at me. I think everyone thought I
was overtired. It’s what grown-ups decide about kids who have said too much.
Everyone, that is, except Cosmos. She leaped to her feet and held her small
flute aloft.

‘Yes!
Yes!’ she cried. ‘Sugar’s right. If you’re in trouble and you whistle then the
elephants will come to save you. The elephant will come to save us. The
elephant will come.’ She put the flute to her lips. It wasn’t even a finished
one but the sound carried clearly in the night air. Cosmos began marching round
and round the library, whistling her strange tune from the Sudan.

‘Come
on, Helen,’ she called between pipings. ‘Come on, Sugar, Miss Strange.’

‘Cosmos,
for goodness’ sake! This is ridiculous,’ called Miss Strange.

But
Cosmos was not listening. She threw open the french windows to the garden and
marched out. Slowly we followed, Miss Strange with Mr Paton on her shoulder and
carrying Perry, Sweetheart followed by Sappho, the orangutan, and me. At last
even Helen uncurled herself and very slowly came to see what was happening. A
curious collection of womanhood. In the moonlight Cosmos was our Pied Piper. We
followed her as she led us across to the zoo and up into the corner field.
There she began pacing out the paddock, calling out encouragement to us to join
in and dance. Sweetheart started to laugh and began marching behind her. Mr Paton
began his own tune and the orang clapped along. Then Miss Strange and I tagged
on behind and we marched, laughing, under the moon. Putting her arms around a
sagging post, Helen clung on tight, and watched as Cosmos spread her arms into
the light.

‘We
shall make a
gajapatti
— an abode of elephants,’ she cried. ‘And we know
that it is written: “The form under which Buddha will descend to the earth for
the last time will be that of a beautiful young white elephant, open jawed,
with a head the colour of cochineal, with tusks shining like silver sparkling
with gems, covered with a splendid netting of gold, perfect in its organs and
limbs, and majestic in appearance.”‘

‘Cunt,’
said Mr Paton.

Chapter
Nine

I guess it was a good
summer for an elephant to come because it was so damn hot. Like Africa. It was
as hot in Sassaspaneck as I thought Africa ought to be. After the night Perry
came to the zoo no one ever discussed again whether Artemesia ought to come. At
least I don’t think so. We just kind of got on with it. Not that it didn’t mean
problems. The old elephant enclosure now belonged to Hrotsvitna, the buffalo.
It was up in the far corner by the river. The first thing to do was to move
her. There was general agreement that whatever Artemesia would stand for after
a life in the circus, it wasn’t living with a buffalo. So Europe’s first
dramatist got moved in with Tubman, the liberating donkey. It wasn’t ideal but
everyone was having to make sacrifices.

In the
morning light we stood and looked at the field. The old fencing was not long
for this world. Most of the posts had rotted over the years. Hrotsvitna had
apparently stayed put through inertia rather than restraint. Not for her the
stampeding dashes of her forefathers. An elephant would be a different matter.
Perry, who had a three-year-old’s notion of calm, took a running leap at a
fence support and it clattered to the ground.

‘She
can’t just wander around,’ said Miss Strange. ‘Artemesia. She can’t just wander
around.’

‘How
big is she?’ I asked. I wanted to be helpful but I didn’t like to admit that my
knowledge only ran to the fact that ‘E is for Elephant’. Helen sucked on her
lip for a moment before speaking.

‘Full-grown.
I guess she must be maybe four tons, about ten foot tall.’

I
couldn’t imagine such a creature. All I could think was that she would make a
good basketball player. It was totally outside my previous city-dwelling
experience.