An Elephant in the Garden

by Michael Morpurgo

  Most of the other refugees we met were from Dresden, like us, though a few had come from farther east. For them in particular, fear of the Russians still far outweighed any anger against the Americans and the British. There were many stories of dreadful atrocities committed by the Red Army on civilians as they advanced deeper and deeper into Germany. I did not know then, and I do not know now, what was true and what was not, but I do know that many of our fellow refugees were terrified of the Russians. I only know that there is always atrocity in war. We heard too that the Red Army was closer now than we had thought, only a few miles on the other side of Dresden. So despite all the Allied bombing, everyone thought it was better to be at the mercy of the Americans and the British, rather than to wait for the Russians to arrive.

  Whenever we found ourselves hiding away in the company of other refugees, Peter would make himself scarce, to avoid suspicious looks and searching questions, he told me. Sometimes he said he was off to look for food, but often he would excuse himself by saying that he had to see to Marlene. And whenever I could, I would go with him, not of course to help with Marlene at all, but just because I wanted to be with him. We wanted to be together now all we could, and alone too. The two of us would spend long hours sitting there beside Marlene, out in some barn or shed, as she munched her hay or straw—whatever we had found for her. Or we would be watching her from a riverbank, drinking and sluicing herself down.

  It was during these times together that Peter began to tell me about his home in Canada, in Toronto, of the parts he had played in the theater, mostly walk-on parts: a spear carrier, a servant, a policeman, a butler. He would tell me about the cabin deep in the forest—he called it his “cottage”—where he and his mother and father used to go for weekends all through his childhood, about the cycling and the canoeing they did, and the salmon fishing, and the moose and the black bears they saw. And I told him about Papi, about Uncle Manfred and Aunt Lotti, and all the good times we had had down on the farm, and about the argument that had split the family.

  But we tried all we could not to talk about the war. Both of us knew it was the grim shadow that hung over us, that threatened to separate us, and we both wanted to live for a while away from all of that, in the warm sunlight of shared memories and hopes. We found we had so much in common—bicycling, boating and fishing. He was an only child, he told me, and had never been part of a large family, until now, that is. He knew he was only playing the part of the elder brother, but the longer he was with us the more he felt easy in the part, just one of the family, and he loved that, he said.

  How we talked, but even in our silences I felt a togetherness with him that I had never felt with anyone else.

  Then came the time—well, I suppose it had to happen, didn’t it?—that Karli came upon us one day and surprised us. I remember we were sitting there on the riverbank, with Marlene wafting her trunk over our heads.

  “You two, you are canoodling, aren’t you?” he said, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “I know you are. You are always going off together. I have been watching you.”

  “None of your business,” I snapped. I was furious with him and embarrassed too. But Peter handled it much better. He sat him down between us and put his arm around him.

  “We were just talking, Karli, getting to know one another. I am her brother, remember? Your brother too. You and me, we talk, don’t we? The thing is, that if I want to play a part right, I have to get right into it. That is why you told me all about your asthma attacks, remember? I need to know all there is to know about the new me, and my new family. I have to know the backstories of everyone in the play. See what I’m saying? It is what actors do. You understand that, don’t you, Karli? I mean, people might ask me questions, about Papi, for instance, about where we lived in Dresden, about the zoo, about the farm, about Uncle Manfred and Aunt Lotti. I’ve got to know these things, right? Elizabeth, she is just telling me all she can, to help me.”

  Karli seemed happy enough with that, but there were many times after that when I could feel he was keeping an eye on us, and that worried me. I certainly did not want Mutti to have any idea how I really felt about Peter. Not because of what she might think about it, but because it was private, very personal, and I wanted to keep it that way.

  The food we had brought with us from the farm lasted as long as we could make it, but in the end of course there was none left. After that, finding something to eat became our greatest problem. Not for Marlene. She would only have to brush the snow aside with her trunk or her foot, to be able to find something edible underneath. And once the snow had gone, Marlene simply grazed as she went. She was on a constant scrounge, her trunk searching ahead of her. For much of our journey we kept to the valleys, so there was always plenty of water for us to drink, from the rivers and streams. And there were many days when Peter found us a hay barn to hide in where Marlene could gorge herself all day long.

  But food for us was much harder to find. Again, it was Peter who saved our bacon, so to speak. In the air force he had done some training in living off the land—it was something they all had to do, in case they got shot down. And anyway, luckily for us, back home in Canada he was used to finding food in the wild, scavenging for it, fishing for it, hunting for it. He had done this all his life, but, as he said, until now scavenging had not included stealing.

  Early every morning we would settle into our new shelter for the day, make ourselves and Marlene as comfortable as we could, and then sooner or later Peter would disappear. He would be back an hour or so later with something: eggs from a hen house maybe, or a sausage, “liberated” he called it, from someone’s larder. There were carrots sometimes, even apples once or twice. It turned out that there were many homes and farms lying empty and deserted in the countryside. So many people, like Uncle Manfred and Aunt Lotti, had abandoned their houses and fled.

  And Peter scavenged for more than food. Once he came back with a fishing rod, and after that we quite often had grilled fish for our breakfast. But there were times when he came back with very little: a few nuts and some half-rotten root vegetables. Several times he returned empty-handed altogether. Then we just went hungry, and those were the days, with no food inside us, when it was hardest to keep ourselves warm, even if we could manage to make a fire.

  Those were the worst times during our whole long trek, the days of hunger. The endless walking I got used to. I even got used to my blisters, to my freezing hands and ears, and my numb feet. The snow went away, but the cold never did. Sometimes, when I felt I could not take another step, I would feel Mutti’s arm around me, and she would say always the same thing, “Just put one foot in front of the other, Elizabeth, and we’ll get there.” It was her constant mantra. When I was at my lowest ebb, I would keep saying that to myself, trying my very hardest to believe it. There were so many times when I came close to giving up altogether.

  Thinking back, though, it was Marlene as much as Mutti’s mantra that kept me going. Through wind and rain, mud and frost, Marlene just plodded on. She was our pacemaker, and we kept with her. When I was walking anywhere near her I could hear the hollow rumblings of contentment from inside her. And that for some reason always made me smile, and so lifted my spirits. We all envied her ability to find food on the move, snuffling up dead leaves, tugging at what little grass there was. We took great comfort and courage from her endless patience and perseverance. And she treated us all now, Peter included, with great affection, as if we were her family. We certainly felt she was part of ours. She was forever touching us with the soft tip of her trunk, reassuring us, and reassuring herself maybe. If Peter was our guide and provider, and Mutti was our strength, then Marlene was our inspiration.

  Sometimes, after the long hours of walking through the darkness of the countryside, when we were all hungry and cold and tired, and the night seemed never-ending, Mutti would get us singing. We would sing her beloved Marlene Dietrich songs, or Christmas carols, or the nursery rhymes and folk songs Karli and I had gr
own up with. Peter knew some of these from his Swiss mother, so he would join in then too. Of course Karli would sing out louder than any of us, conducting everyone from high up on Marlene. These were the moments, as we were singing our way through the night, that I felt all my fears fly away. I felt suddenly light-headed, and full of hope, hope that all would be well. I cannot imagine why just singing together should be able to do this, but it did. It did not only pass the time. Somehow it lifted my heart, gave me new strength, and fresh determination just to keep going. It was the same for all of us, I think.

  I suppose we must have been three weeks or so into our journey across Germany, and we were making much slower progress than Peter had expected. It was the streams and rivers that were holding us up. Streams we could have forded easily enough—Marlene seemed quite happy to go back and forth carrying two of us at a time. But to cross the rivers we had to find a bridge, and a bridge that was not guarded, as many of them were. So whenever we came to a bridge, Peter had to scout ahead to find out if there were sentries. And if there were, it meant a long diversion along the river until we found an unguarded bridge. This made our journey a lot longer, and so we lost a lot of time that way.

  We knew that anyone and everyone who saw us or met up with us was a danger to us, but we could not avoid them altogether, however hard we tried. Even at night we did meet a few people, some walking home to their village after dark, or sometimes shepherds out in their fields checking their sheep; and once a farmer, I remember, who we came upon suddenly behind a hedge. He was trying to help one of his cows give birth, and he needed a hand, he said. So Peter got down on his knees at once, and pulled alongside the farmer. It took a while, but the calf came out alive and kicking. The farmer was delighted, and shook all our hands energetically. It was only after it was all over that he seemed to pay any attention to Marlene. Mutti told him our story, and he seemed quite happy with that. We had a night in his barn and his wife brought us some hot soup. They asked no questions, but kept bringing more and more of their family in to see Marlene. Far from attracting unwelcome attention to us, as Peter had thought, Marlene was turning out to be a kind of talisman. She seemed to divert attention away from us, and away from Peter in particular, which was of course just what we wanted.

  Hidden away during the daytime, huddled together inside some shed or barn, we had heard and sometimes seen fighter planes flying low overhead, but we were safe from them, always well out of sight. Day and night we had heard too the drone of bombers overhead, but like the fighters, they passed us by, and left us in peace. Had it not been for the ever more distant thunder of Russian guns we might almost have been able to forget that there was a war going on at all. The deeper we went into the countryside, the quieter it became and the safer we felt. There were some days and nights so still and silent now, that it really seemed to me sometimes as if the war might have ended already, and we just had not heard about it.

  I remember Karli became ill quite quickly.

  Weakened by his asthma, he had never been a strong child. It began one evening with a little cough that would not leave him. Mutti swathed him in blankets, and for the best part of that night he rode up on Marlene as usual, but it was becoming obvious after a while that he just did not have the strength to stay up there, that he could fall off at any time. Much against his will Mutti persuaded him down, and carried him the rest of the way in her arms.

  Peter and I were scouting ahead, looking urgently now for a place to shelter—anywhere would do, just so long as we could get Karli out of the cold. There were no lights in the houses, of course, because of the blackout. But it was a moonlit night, which was why I caught sight of the dark looming shape of a huge building in the distance, and then the ribbon of a tree-lined drive curving through the fields towards it. From the sound of his cough and his wheezing, we could tell that Karli was getting worse all the time. He needed more than just a shelter for the night, he needed a doctor. We had no choice. We knew it was a risk, but we walked straight up the gravel drive and knocked loudly on the huge front door. It was a while before anyone came, and Peter was beginning to think that the house had been abandoned like so many others. But then the door opened. We saw the light of a lantern. Holding it was an old man in pajamas and nightcap.

  He did not look at all friendly.

  Two

  “It is the middle of the night,” growled the old man. “What is it that you want?”

  “Please. We need a doctor,” Mutti told him. “My son, he is very sick. Please.”

  Then from farther inside the house came another voice, a woman’s voice. “Who is it, Hans? Is it more of them? Let them in.”

  The door opened wider, and we saw then a lady in a dressing gown, coming down a huge wide staircase, and then hurrying towards us across the hallway.

  “She says they need a doctor, Countess,” the old man said. They were both peering at us now, from behind the lamplight.

  “We are from Dresden,” Mutti told them.

  “Am I seeing things?” the lady asked. “Or is that an elephant?”

  “I can explain about that later,” Mutti replied. “But my son is ill, seriously ill, and I have to find a doctor. Please. It is urgent.”

  The lady did not hesitate. She took Mutti by the arm and led her into the hallway. “Come in, come in,” she said. “I shall send for the doctor from the village right away. And Hans, you will find a place for that animal in the stables.”

  I had no idea that night who these people were, and neither did I care. We would soon have a doctor for Karli, and we had found shelter for him too. That was all that mattered. And it would be warm too. I could even smell food. But I did not get to go in right away. Mutti asked me to take care of Marlene, and to make sure that she had something to eat and drink. So, led by Hans, the old man in the nightcap, who muttered angrily to himself the whole time, I took her ’round the side of the house, through a great archway and into a stable yard. I saw to it that she had all she needed, hay and water both, and left her to it. She seemed quite happy, happier certainly than the horses across the yard from her, who were becoming increasingly unsettled at the appearance of this strange intruder.

  As we walked back towards the house—the place seemed immense to me, more like a castle than a house—Hans was still grumbling on, but less to himself and rather more to me, about how he could never get a good night’s sleep anymore, how it was bad enough that the countess had opened her doors to all and sundry, but now she was turning the stable yard into a zoo. It was all too much, he said, too much.

  It was not until he was leading me back into the house and up the grand staircase that I began to see for myself what he was complaining about. Everywhere I looked, every centimeter of floor space, was occupied. People were lying fast asleep, in the corridors, on the landings, and, I presumed, in every room. And those that were not asleep were sitting there on straw-filled sacks looking up at me blankly as I passed by. There was bewilderment on every face I saw. Hans took me up to the top of the house, to the attic, where I saw Karli lying stretched out on a mattress by a fire with Mutti kneeling over him, bathing his forehead. Peter was busy piling more wood on the fire.

  “He has a fever, Elizabeth,” Mutti said, looking up at me, her eyes full of tears. “He’s burning up. Where is that doctor? Where is he?”

  For the rest of that night Karli lay there tossing and turning, sometimes delirious, and all three of us took turns to try to cool him. None of us slept, we just sat there watching him, hoping the fever would leave him, longing for the doctor to come. When he did come at long last, the lady came with him, dressed now rather grandly, and all in black. The doctor examined him, and said that Karli should be kept warm at all costs, and that the more water we could get him to drink the better. The doctor gave us some medicine for Karli and told us that on no account was he to go out in the cold, or travel, until he was completely well again.

  It was only now, once he had gone, that the lady in black introduced herself. �
��Everyone just calls me Countess,” she said, shaking each of us rather formally by the hand. “We do not bother much with names here—it is safer that way. I think we have about seventy refugees now in the house—all sorts, mostly families from the east resting up for a few days. Everyone is passing through. It seems as if the whole world is in flight. We have soldiers on their way home on leave, or returning to their regiments at the front, some deserters no doubt, and we have a few vagrants too. I ask no questions. We have a hot meal only once a day, at midday, and then soup and bread in the evening. It is not much, but it is the best we can manage, I’m afraid. As you know, food is becoming very scarce everywhere now. You may stay as long as you like, certainly until the young boy is better, but I would not advise you to stay on much longer after that. The Russians are not so far away now, maybe a few weeks away, no more. The Americans are closer, by all accounts, but who knows who will get here first?”

  Mutti thanked her from the bottom of her heart for all her kindness towards us.

  “Having said I ask no questions,” the countess went on, with a smile, “I have to say that I am rather curious about the elephant.”