The Elephant's Tale

by Lauren St. John

  Martine kept expecting to be outed as an imposter and evicted, but nobody took any notice of her. She sat nibbling the pineapple, which tasted and smelled like nectar. When she’d finished it, she thanked the waiter and set off along a corridor marked “Spa” and “Gift Shop.”

  With every step, her hopes of finding a clue that might save Sawubona evaporated. Everything about the lodge appeared eco-friendly and aboveboard. The staff had warm smiles and were going about their work contentedly. The guests were in a state of bliss. There could hardly have been a place in Namibia that looked less like a den of corruption.

  She rounded a corner and there was Reuben James. He was strolling toward her, but he was focused on his companion, who was speaking.

  Martine wanted to move, but her limbs felt heavy and useless, and her brain functioned at half speed, as if its batteries were almost flat. At the last conceivable moment, she bounded sideways into the gift shop.

  From a small office at the back of the store, a disembodied voice called: “I’ll be with you as soon as I can, honey. I’m just finishing up an order. If you want to try anything on, the changing room is free. I’m Theresa. Give me a yell if you need help.”

  “Thanks, Theresa, I will,” said Martine.

  She snatched a couple of T-shirts off a shelf and shot into the changing room just as Reuben James came into view. Soon afterward, she heard his voice raised in cheerful greeting outside in the parking lot. She stood on the cubicle stool and peered through the slits in the air vent. Reuben had his hand on Gift’s shoulder and was congratulating him on his exhibition of photographs. Gift was smiling.

  When Gift moved away, Reuben’s companion, who was in shadow and could only partially be seen from Martine’s angle, said, “You genuinely care for that boy, don’t you? How can you look him in the eye?”

  “Easily,” Reuben James responded shortly. “First, because what he doesn’t know isn’t going to hurt him. Second, because very soon I’m going to put everything right. And lastly, because I’m thinking about the bigger picture. What I’m doing is for the good of everyone in Namibia.”

  “Oh, sure,” drawled his companion. “You’re all heart.”

  “Look around you,” Reuben James said heatedly. “Can you not see that global warming is a devastating threat to the already impossibly hard lives of the desert tribes and animals here?”

  Martine was startled to hear global warming mentioned twice in one morning. She strained her ears, trying not to miss a word.

  Reuben James went on: “Can’t you see that the Ark Project is going to transform the lives of thousands, including that of the boy?”

  “I can see how it’s going to transform your bank balance.”

  “And yours.”

  “To be sure,” said the stranger. He moved slightly, revealing the back of his head and his broad shoulders. His hair had the shiny blue-blackness of a crow’s wing. “But then I’m not pretending I’m going to save the planet.”

  He cocked his glossy black head and studied the other man. “What I want to know is, are you prepared for the catastrophic effect that this is going to have? Are you prepared for war?”

  Reuben James rounded on him angrily. “What are you talking about, Callum? There’s not going to be a war.”

  “Are you sure about that? Can you say that for certain? And anyway, I thought you told me you were prepared to do whatever it took. I wouldn’t like to think that you were going soft on me at the eleventh hour. I might have to take drastic measures. I might have to, say, call in that loan.”

  Reuben James looked at him with contempt. “I meant what I said. I will do whatever it takes. But when this is over, I don’t ever want to lay eyes on you again.” And with that he climbed into a sleek silver car and sped away in a plume of dust.

  The stranger watched him go. “Don’t worry,” he said so softly that Martine barely caught the words. “You won’t.”

  As if some instinct told him he was being observed, he whipped around and stared straight at the vent.

  Martine leaped clumsily off the stool, knocking it over in her haste.

  “Is everything okay in there?” called Theresa.

  To buy herself time, Martine called, “These T-shirts are lovely, but I need a smaller size.”

  A cocoa-brown hand with red-painted nails slipped around the curtain and took them from her. “I should say so, honey. These are men’s extra-large. They’d look like dresses on you. I’ll nip out to the storeroom and see if we’ve got them in kids’ sizes.”

  The gift shop fell silent. Martine’s head was spinning. Are you prepared for war? That was the sentence that kept going through her mind over and over. She had to talk to Ben. If she was quick, she could get out to the parking lot before Theresa returned. She pulled back the curtain.

  Standing at the shop counter, half turned away from her but looking every bit as surly as he had when she last saw him at Sawubona, was Lurk.

  20

  The brass rings screeched as Martine wrenched shut the curtain. Had he seen her or hadn’t he? She thought he might have, but she couldn’t be sure.

  The seconds stretched into minutes. The gift shop stayed silent. Martine stood pressed up against the back wall of the cubicle, praying for Theresa’s return. She seemed to have been gone forever. Then she heard footsteps—not the saleswoman’s clicking heels, but the heavy, deliberate tread of a man’s shoe. They came around the counter and stopped outside the changing room.

  Martine’s heart almost stopped with them. She could hear Lurk breathing. He slid back the curtain.

  Martine screamed.

  A henna-haired Damara woman she took to be Theresa came rushing in, followed by Gift. Martine caught a glimpse of Ben close on their heels, but he spotted the chauffeur in the nick of time and took rapid evasive action.

  “Lurk, have you lost your mind? What do you mean by terrorizing my customers?” the saleswoman demanded.

  “Yes, Lurk, have you lost your mind?” parroted Gift, unable to resist the opportunity to make fun of the man he loathed.

  The chauffeur glowered at him. “I know this girl,” he told Theresa, pointing rudely at Martine. “She from South Africa. Very bad witch. She make buffalo rise from the dead and the elephant to chase me.”

  Theresa went red with annoyance. “What rubbish are you talking, Lurk? As if a young girl could resurrect buffaloes and order elephants to charge you. Have you been drinking?”

  “I know her,” Lurk insisted. “She ride white giraffe.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Lurk,” said Gift. “This is Anna, the sister of a friend of mine from Windhoek. She’s staying at the lodge with her family.”

  Lurk’s bulging eyes seemed to bulge even more. His chin rose defiantly. “Not Anna. She Maxine. No, no, Martine. She from South Africa; from Mr. James’s new safari park.”

  “Lurk, you’ve just heard Gift say that this girl is a friend of his from Windhoek,” snapped Theresa, beginning to lose her temper. “She is also a guest of Mr. James at this hotel and the notion that she’s some kind of animal magician, riding giraffes and ordering lions and elephants about, is absolutely preposterous. Now, if you want to remain in Mr. James’s employment another day, my strong suggestion is that you apologize to this young lady, pull yourself together, and get back to work.”

  “Sorry for mistake,” growled Lurk, not looking in the least bit contrite. As he slouched from the gift shop, Martine heard him mumble: “Very bad witch, I no forget this.”

  “Please accept my sincerest apologies, Anna,” Theresa said, embarrassed. “I can’t think what’s got into him. He can be a bit odd at times, but today he seems quite deranged.”

  “No problem at all,” Martine assured her, anxious to get away in case Reuben James came to investigate the disturbance. “It’s an easy mistake to make. He obviously has a grudge against this girl Maxine.”

  “Martine,” Gift corrected helpfully.

  “Let me make it up to you, honey,” Theresa of
fered. “Is there anything you’d like? Can I give you a Hoodia Haven T-shirt?”

  “Really, it’s not necessary,” said Martine, feeling like a fraud. The last thing she wanted was a T-shirt advertising her archenemy’s hotel.

  But Theresa was adamant she take something, so Martine reluctantly accepted a piece of rose quartz the saleswoman was using as a paperweight. It wasn’t for sale, she told Martine. It was just some rock she’d picked up by the roadside.

  Martine suspected that it was worth far more than Theresa made out, but she couldn’t refuse without seeming ungrateful. It could be a present for her grandmother if she ever saw her again. When, Martine told herself firmly. When she saw her grandmother again.

  Thanking Theresa profusely, she and Gift left the shop. As soon as they were in the corridor, Gift said in a low voice, “That was a close call. I think we’d better go before you get yourself into any more trouble. You round up Ben. I need to check with reception to see if the camera lens I’ve ordered has arrived.”

  He strode away across the courtyard. Ben stepped out from behind a potted palm tree.

  “Ben, did you see what happened?” cried Martine. “Lurk recognized me. He came after me like a psycho.”

  “Never mind about that now,” said Ben. “I’ve got something to show you and I don’t want Gift to know about it just yet.”

  Ordinarily Martine would have been hurt by his lack of concern, but she could see at once he was onto something. His face was alight with it.

  Keeping an eye out for Lurk, who was sure to be as cross as a snake after the gift shop humiliation, he led Martine to the guest lounge, where Gift’s elephant exhibition had been hung. Three women were sitting in the corner tucking into tea and sponge cake, but they were deep in conversation and barely glanced up.

  The photos were of a herd of elephants. They were taken over the course of a single day, starting with the first ray of dawn and ending with the ascent of the evening star. Gift had arranged them in a panorama around the room. The rich and varied life of the herd, and the spirit of individual elephants, shone from them.

  “Ben, they’re wonderful, but are you sure we have time for this?”

  Ben gestured toward three photographs taken shortly before sunset and said, “This won’t take long. What do you notice about these pictures?”

  Martine found it difficult to concentrate after the scene in the gift shop. “Umm, I don’t know. I guess they’re well composed.”

  “Do you see anything unusual about the elephants?”

  “They look like a normal herd of elephants to me. Ben, we should go.”

  Ben said patiently, “Look closely. There are sixteen elephants in the first and second picture and fifteen in the third.”

  “So what?” Martine checked the door, half expecting Lurk to burst through it. “The pictures were taken five or ten minutes apart. Maybe one of the elephants sloped off to devour a tree.”

  “Could be. Only the missing elephant is a young bull. He’s walking slightly apart from the others in the first and second picture. He’s in the background. That’s why you don’t notice him if you only glance at the photos. In the third picture, he’s not there anymore and the other elephants seem to be milling around as if they’re fretting or distressed.”

  He paused. “Now look again at the second picture and see what’s in his path.”

  Martine squinted at the photo. “A fairy circle!”

  “I think,” said Ben, “we’ve just found our Bermuda Triangle.”

  21

  “The Ark Project?” repeated Gift. “Those were Reuben James’s words?”

  “I think so,” said Martine. After questioning Gift and learning that the elephant photographs had been taken on the plain near the Stone Age rock engravings in Twyfelfontein, she’d asked if they could visit them.

  “I was listening through a vent,” she went on, “but I’m fairly sure that’s what he called it. He talked about global warming and how what he was doing was for the good of everyone in Namibia.”

  “What did I tell you?” said Gift. “You’re both so ready to believe he’s a fraudster because you’re upset he’s bought your game reserve, but what you overheard proves that he’s a generous, decent man. The Ark Project sounds like some sort of conservation scheme, or maybe it’s a code name for the new hotel he’s building.”

  “Sounds like a Doomsday project to me,” murmured Ben.

  Martine was getting heartily sick of Gift defending his mentor. “They don’t prove anything. For starters, he hasn’t bought Sawubona, he’s tricked my grandfather into signing it away . . .”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “. . . and besides, the man who was with him, the one with blue-black hair like crow’s feathers—”

  “I’ve never seen him before.”

  “Well, he accused your Mr. James of pretending to save the planet only because he wanted to make himself richer.”

  Gift slowed the vehicle and turned down a gravel track leading to a ring of rocky mountains. “That doesn’t prove anything either. Reuben’s a businessman. Of course he has to work out if a project makes financial sense.”

  Martine could have easily burst his bubble by telling him how Reuben James had told Callum that what Gift didn’t know “can’t hurt him,” and that he planned to “put things right.” She could have told him that the men were planning to start a “war.” But she couldn’t bring herself to do that—not yet anyway. Not until they had investigated further. She liked the San boy enormously. He’d almost certainly saved their lives. She didn’t want to cause him pain when she might have misheard or misunderstood what Reuben James was saying.

  She took a gulp of clean desert air and resolved not to be cross anymore. “You’re right,” she said, “it doesn’t prove anything.”

  Gift’s cell phone beeped. He checked the message. “Typical. The camera lens has just been delivered to the hotel. I’ll need to go back for it. I’ll drop you at the Welcome Center café and you can have lunch and tour the Stone Age engravings while I’m gone.”

  He pulled up outside a low, stone building set against a rocky mountain. It was mid-afternoon and the oven blast of desert heat that engulfed Martine as she stepped out of the vehicle threatened to roast her alive.

  “Wait,” called Martine as Gift prepared to drive away. “Did you have a chance to speak to your guide friend? Did he know anything about Angel’s past?”

  “Unfortunately not. He’s never heard of any zoo in Damaraland, much less one that went out of business. But he did say something that might interest you. Not long after he started in the job three or four years ago, he disturbed Reuben in the midst of a blazing row with Lurk about his mistreatment of an animal, although which animal they were referring to he had no idea. The reason it stuck in his mind is that Lurk cornered him later and told him that it would be ‘big mistake’ for him to ever repeat what he’d overheard; that his job could be in jeopardy.”

  Gift glanced at his watch. “I really do have to go. We’ll talk later.”

  “When?” Martine shouted as he reversed. “When will you be back?”

  But Gift didn’t seem to hear her. “See you soon,” he mouthed, and then he was gone and the blanketing heat was closing in on them once again.

  Ben sprinkled salt and pepper on his toasted cheese and tomato sandwich, prepared by a smiling cook in the Welcome Center café and purchased with money donated by Gift, took a bite, and started a list on the back of a Damaraland postcard. “We have a million questions, but these are the most important,” he said. “Number one: Is Reuben James the rightful inheritor of Sawubona or is he a con artist?”

  “A con artist,” Martine answered at once.

  “We have to be objective, like real detectives,” Ben reminded her. “He’s not my favorite person either, but Gift thinks highly of him and we should take that into account.”

  Martine stirred her “Peace” drink, a refreshing blend of rooibos tea, orange and lemon ju
ice, and cinnamon, so vigorously that the tourist couple at the next table looked over. As far as she was concerned, if Reuben James was involved in something so explosive it could lead to a war, he was as wicked as she’d thought he was all along. After Gift had gone, she’d filled Ben in on the details of the scene she’d witnessed at Hoodia Haven.

  “It sounds as if this man Callum is blackmailing Reuben James,” Ben had said. “It’s as though he wants to start a fight against Reuben’s wishes. But surely they weren’t talking about a real war? Maybe it’s just an expression and they were using strong language because they were angry.”

  Martine wasn’t convinced. “Hopefully. I’d hate my grandmother to turn on the news in England to find that war has broken out in Namibia and we’ve both been blown to smithereens.”

  Then she said, “Maybe the second question on your list should be: If Reuben James and Callum do start a war, who are they going to be attacking?”

  Ben scribbled it down. “We also need to find out what the Ark Project is and what it has to do with global warming.”

  “Question number four: Who broke into the house at Sawubona and what were they looking for?” put in Martine. “Oh, and we still have to find out the truth about the elephant’s tale, although I’d be willing to bet that the conversation Gift’s friend overheard was about Angel.”

  “Last one,” said Ben. “Are the fairy circles causing the elephants to vanish through: A) Radiation sickness B) Starvation (global warming) C) Aliens! D) The ground is swallowing them (e.g., Bermuda Triangle)?”

  He pushed the postcard over to Martine. “All we ever get is more questions. After a week of trying we don’t have a single answer.”

  Martine read the list while sipping at her Peace drink. “It’s as if someone’s thrown a million jigsaw pieces in the air and we’re expected to put them together without knowing what the picture looks like.”