Mountains?
“Damavend, Sabalan, Elbrus, Ararat, Bam-i-dunya, and the Muztag.”
The teacher didn’t ask about the peoples in their midst, the tribes beyond their walls. Geography is never flesh but stone, water, and clay, names and lines and vacant scratches of the plume. And the students, skeptics to the end, wondered: How could clouds of dust rise from a world engraved in flat relief? Outside the school, soldiers rustled toward the city walls, where they relieved their comrades and took over the chore of playing dice on the parapets. The game lacked conviction. Few soldiers had the stomach for reckless wagers or the hunger for their fellows’ rings. Embarrassed, a man returned a belt he had won off another. This was no time for gain. Dust hung high on the horizon, and beneath it, invisible to the eye, a river of flesh rolled on to flood the city.
Even as the khan’s army neared, the city continued to drift. In the baths, slaves untangled their mistresses’ hair with ivory combs. A baker left his cakes to cool in the shade. Wardens patrolled the market for pickpockets, though few stalls remained open and fewer shoppers roamed the quiet lanes, mistrusting the onions. Only the booksellers were out in force, possessed of that blind faith in text. There will always be books to sell. There will always be people to read.
In the gutted teahouse, the tea drinkers gathered at dusk, looking at each other wordlessly, their faces open books. Smoke still lifted off the wreckage, drifting over the streets, a thin echo of the horizon of dust closing on the city. They could not bring themselves to speak. Neighborhoods of rust had overtaken the voice of the kettle, the sugar had grown hard in the heat, the milk gone sour, the jowls cobwebbed and creased. Above the smoldering ruins, the city hummed its commentary. And the tea drinkers knew: The past is read in the sands, not heard. In later years, archaeologists would find no trace of the teahouse or its strata of myth. But the drinkers remained there, silent and unmoving, until the untold ends of their stories.
ELEPHANT AT SEA
In the late summer of 1979, the Second Secretary of the Indian embassy to Morocco received a cable that uprooted his considerable years of training and left him floundering. The message read simply: “Elephant en route.” Was it some sort of code? Further investigation only deepened his confusion. The cable had come from the customs office in Cochin, a port in the south of India. No, the customs officials reported back to him, it wasn’t code. It was an elephant, an elephant that along with its mahout—its driver—was now very much headed by ship to Casablanca. The Second Secretary probed: Why send an elephant? Here at the customs office, the reply came, we handle only the movement of goods. For the movement of reasons, please refer your inquiry to the ministry of external affairs.
The Second Secretary telegrammed his colleagues in the ministry in Delhi. With telegrams to the ministry, it was important, first, to be terse so that you were considered economical and, second, to be sharp so that in the midst of reams of communication from outposts around the world, your message would be noticed. WHY SHIP ELEPHANT STOP EMBASSY ALREADY HAS CARS STOP. No one in the ministry seemed to know anything about the elephant. A flummoxed telegram returned to the embassy. WHAT ELEPHANT STOP IS THIS CODE STOP. Embarrassed, the Second Secretary finally consulted the ambassador, who knew through long experience that it was pointless to question the whims of the capital. Marvelous, the ambassador said, smoothing his mustache, an elephant, just what we need, and they couldn’t even send it to us … no, they’re sending it to Casablanca. You’ll have to arrange for the thing to be met and picked up. He sprayed himself with cologne and mused: If an elephant can even be picked up.
That night the Second Secretary swam awake in his bed, resenting the sheets, resenting the pillow, resenting the indifference of his work, resenting Morocco, resenting Arabic for its impossible, secret throatiness, and resenting, with what little bitterness was left to him, the unknown buffoon who would make diplomacy out of elephants.
The buffoon was not, as he imagined, some self-satisfied civil servant in South Bloc, but the princess of Morocco. Explanation arrived via telex from a friend in the ministry who owed him a few favors and so mustered the initiative to ask around. The story of the elephant began six years earlier in the same Indian embassy in Rabat. At one of those habitual functions whose purpose seems so obvious in the preparation but disappears in the operation, the little Moroccan princess had come to the embassy and frozen before a picture of an elephant. It was among the many stock images—all approved by the ministry of tourism—that lined the lobby of the embassy: dawn over the Himalayan ranges; houseboats on the backwaters; the Taj Mahal rosy in its cushion of smog; a bright tractor devastating a field of wheat. The princess only had eyes for the elephant. Her wordless arm extended toward the picture, pointing. C’est un éléphant, said the embassy official tasked with escorting the princess. She remained transfixed. Vous aimez les éléphants? the unlucky man suggested. It seemed the princess did love elephants, because she wouldn’t move. The official, who had in previous posts offered counsel on trade policy with Indonesia and arms deals with the Soviet Union, looked around for help before lowering himself to her level. Mademoiselle, vous voulez un éléphant? he asked with the desperation stoked in him by all children—never mind the princess of Morocco. She turned, smiled, and gave him the smallest gift of a nod. It was enough. The official eventually spoke to the then ambassador, who put in the request to Delhi recommending the delivery of an elephant to satisfy the princess and to strengthen a bilateral friendship. The request passed through the appropriate channels at the usual speeds. Six years later, the creature was irrevocably on its way.
The Second Secretary received updates about the elephant’s progress from various consular staff. In Aden, it posed for photographs in front of the oldest coffeehouse. It bumped a football back and forth with boys on the beach in Alexandria. In Algiers, veterans of the war against the French held a reception in its honor; the Indian elephant was, in their words, a symbol of the ancient wisdom of a civilization that had inspired the global struggle against Western imperialism. After it passed through Gibraltar, the Second Secretary got an excited telegram from the British naval high command. BRILLIANT STOP TOP PACHYDERM STOP.
The Moroccans were less enthused. What are we to do with it? they said. Casablanca’s zoo has enough African elephants, and there’s no space for an Indian one. The Second Secretary protested. It’s for the princess, he reminded them, she asked for it. Well, she may have, the Moroccans said, but she’s away studying sociology in Paris now and has no interest in elephants. So you might have to take the thing back.
Only the Indian ambassador’s persistence at a cocktail party won their grudging cooperation. It was agreed that the elephant would be specially housed in a portion of the royal gardens in Rabat. How it would get there was another matter. The Moroccans insisted they had no trucks big enough to carry the creature between the two cities. This was a time of war and their heaviest military vehicles were all rumbling around the south. Worse, thanks to the mischief of Polisario terrorists, the single rail line between Casablanca and the capital was broken. But these inconveniences, the Moroccans claimed, shouldn’t be a problem. After all, the elephant is its own means of transportation.
The Second Secretary was sent to Casablanca to escort the elephant back to Rabat. It took some time to find an appropriate launch in which to ferry the creature to port. When it finally disembarked, the small police band awaiting its arrival had grown sour in the heat. They rushed the welcoming ditty and swiftly packed away their trombones. The reporters also sped through their work. They found the mahout altogether too clothed. As he perched on the elephant’s back, they had him remove his shirt and roll up his trousers to look more convincing for the cameras, all knobby knees and gleaming skin. Instead of asking the mahout questions about the elephant, they surrounded the Second Secretary—he was wearing a suit. We are proud to share the joy of elephants with the people of Morocco, he said. The haathi belongs not to one nation, but to all.
What little the Second Secretary knew about elephants came from an urban childhood of zoos and encyclopedias. As a measure of their robust memories, elephants hold grudges and harbor very finely developed notions of revenge. Elephants have sensitive feet capable of feeling through the earth, from long distances away, the approach of other elephants, or of rainstorms, or of bulldozers. Studies have shown that they can recognize their own reflections, suggesting that, however rudimentary, there may exist among elephants an amorphous theory of mind.
In sum, these scraps formed an altogether surreal idea of the elephant, one incommensurate with the full being in front of him, dappled with cooling splashes of mud, blinking restlessly and curling its trunk around the legs of its driver. The mahout supplied more practical information. In its present, ship-weary condition, the elephant could walk at most forty kilometers in a single stretch, probably no more than twenty-five. How far is it to the capital? he asked. He spoke no Hindi, and the Second Secretary spoke no Malayalam, so they talked in a manner of English. A little more than ninety kilometers to Rabat, the Second Secretary said. Hoisting himself onto the elephant, the mahout surveyed the road leading out from the docks through the flat outskirts of Casablanca. For all the immensity of this unknown continent, the world always seemed more manageable from the back of an elephant. He smiled at the Second Secretary. Ninety of their Moroccan kilometers or ninety of ours? What are you talking about, the Second Secretary said, there’s no difference. The mahout shook his head. You and I may not be able to tell the difference, but the elephant can.
In consultation with the two Moroccan gendarmes assigned to them, they agreed to break journey several times en route to Rabat. The convoy set out from Casablanca in the middle of the afternoon. The gendarmes led in their battered white car, its red lettering chipped and peeling. The Second Secretary brought up the rear in the embassy’s sedan. In the middle, the mahout set a gentle tempo. The elephant wore an anklet that, wrapped around a man, would have had all the thickness of chains. Its every step tinkled with the jewelry of another land.
Perhaps because it was on its way to await the uncertain pleasure of a princess, or perhaps because it had already traveled so far, the elephant chose not to exert itself. But it quickened its pace whenever the coastal road veered west toward the Atlantic. The change would have been imperceptible to observers—and there were many on the busy highway—but the mahout felt it in his thighs. Each time the cobalt ocean wheeled into view, the creature’s muscles seemed to quiver with new desire. It was an urge all the more palpable in its restraint; elephants are polite creatures of typically conservative temperament. Yet it was enough of a rumble and churn for the mahout to sense that his mount was already missing the sea.
* * *
At dusk, the elephant drank from a pond in the golf course of Mohammedia, a pleasant-enough beach town that brushed up against Morocco’s only oil refinery. The last of the day’s players lofted their balls in long arcs overhead before descending on the fairway and finding the creature asleep in a bunker. It lay on its side flanked by the apologetic guards, its heavy breathing raising little tempests of sand. Nobody protested. Golf can only be improved by the intrusion of an elephant, even a snoring one.
The Second Secretary was given accommodation in the clubhouse, in a room glowing with trophies and the lidless glare of the nearby refinery. He smoked and dipped at a plate of zaalouk. The mahout came in but declined the invitation to share in the dish. He had already eaten with the policemen. The Second Secretary gestured to a couch for the mahout to sleep on. The man looked restless. No, I’ll stay with the elephant, he said, this is our first night back on land after weeks … It will rest poorly without me, and I without it. The Second Secretary shrugged and returned to his puréed eggplant, only to be surprised by the touch of the mahout’s hand on his shoulder. In the parallel universe of their own country, such contact would be almost unimaginable, a movement far too intimate to cross the wide gulf of rank. Indians turn into more equal beings when not at home.
Tell me truthfully, the mahout leaned forward. There are no other elephants in Rabat? The Second Secretary sighed. I’ve told you already, it will have to be kept by itself. The royal gardeners can only manage one elephant. It will have all its creature comforts, don’t worry. The mahout listened, seesawing his head from side to side. This was the strongest and happiest elephant he had ever known, but he feared that it would struggle with its solitude. Like humans, elephants yearn for other elephants. It will be lonely, he said, it will need distractions. Annoyed, the Second Secretary promised they would make sure that it was the most distracted elephant in Africa. He unlaced his shoes and stretched out to sleep.
A few hours later, with the red and orange light of the refinery’s towers angling upon his face, he awoke to find the mahout sitting cross-legged in front of him. I’m sorry to disturb you, the mahout said, but promise me something: you won’t let them use it in the circus. In the circus? the Second Secretary said. The mahout climbed to his feet and paced about the room. In the circus, yes … I have heard about the way the firangs treat elephants—like dolls, like puppets, like cartoons. He grew more animated still. They make them dance, they make them ride cycles, they make them stand on their heads … sometimes, they think it is amusing to have the animals sit down to tea as if they were old women … this can’t be its fate. The Second Secretary sat up. We won’t let that happen, he said, besides, you have nothing to worry about; these people aren’t really firangs, they’re Moroccans, they’re so much like us … Just go to sleep.
But mahouts sleep as fitfully as elephants, and when the Second Secretary rose at dawn to perform his ablutions, he found the man at the door of the clubhouse, standing in a pose of total stillness at war with the anxious writhing of his eyebrows. The mahout burst at the sight of the secretary. These royal gardens, are they near the water? The water? the Second Secretary said, blinking. Yes, the water—the ocean. I have no idea, the Second Secretary replied. The mahout held the Second Secretary’s hand in both of his. The elephant … for it to be happy, it must be near the sea.
As he shaved, the Second Secretary muttered to himself about the mahout. All the man has to do is deliver the elephant to Rabat, and then the government will give him a tidy check and send him home by plane. How many mahouts ever see the inside of a plane? He’ll never again get to be in a plane. He can tell his parents, his wife, his children if he has any, his grandchildren in the future, that he was in a plane. And they’ll tell all their friends and enemies and the mahout will be forever famous throughout his village. Yet this madman keeps me awake all night with his ridiculous demands for an elephant nobody actually wants. If he fusses any more, we’ll return him by boat. And what glory is there in a boat?
* * *
What the Second Secretary did not know—and what the mahout found impossible to explain—was that, for the elephant at least, travel by boat was utterly glorious. Before they left India, the mahout had worried about the creature’s well-being. How would it cope in steerage for all those weeks? Would it endure the din of the ship’s innards, the engines and pipes pumping at all times, soot-faced engineers swinging like monkeys from the levers? Surely, the clamor of a mechanical universe would depress a creature that loved nothing more at the end of the day than lowering itself into mud. The only consolation the mahout could find was that he too was terrified of the ship. There was solidarity to be had between two beings who had never traveled further than Kozhikode, two beings for whom the rusting expanse of an oceangoing ship was only ever something to behold, not enter. In its salty dark, the mahout imagined, they would comfort each other, leaning close, pressing head to trunk.
It was not to be. While the mahout lurched from deck to deck vomiting, the elephant thrilled to life at sea. It trumpeted every time the captain sounded the great foghorn. The ship’s sailors fawned over the creature, playing it music, showering it with nuts and chocolate. There were pleasures to be had even in its hold in the cargo bay
, which rattled with the vigor of the ship’s machinery. One morning, the mahout discovered the elephant rumbling. With its usual smile, it produced a low and eerie noise that seemed to come from its most interior parts. The mahout rushed to its side and held it as best as he could, trying to calm the animal. A moment’s listening dispelled his fears; in perfect pitch, the elephant was mimicking the sound of the engines, as if through imitation it could bridge the divide between thought and matter and speak with the gray monstrosity of the ship.
On deck, the elephant stormed from side to side, relishing the heave of the ship, the rise and prostration of the bow as it carved its mass through the blue. The mahout studied the joy of the elephant with awe. He thought the elephant would grow bored of the sea, but the wonder never wore off. As the wind sprayed it with foam, the creature seemed to admire the uninterrupted ocean in a kind of rapture, a dervish-like ecstasy. It once occurred to the mahout that this was the closest he had ever got to witnessing contact with the divine: the elephant forgetting its elephantness in the vista of the sea, the veils of moksha parted, the creature poking its trunk into the beyond and feeling its way toward cosmic oneness. Then the motion of the vessel shook the mahout’s insides loose. He staggered to the rim of the stern and emptied himself into the deep.
The sailors also felt the magic of the elephant’s presence. Once during the voyage, in the Indian Ocean, a solitary whale bobbed into view. This was hardly an unusual sight for the tanker’s crew, but they watched anyway as the whale crested the surface and snorted through its blowhole. They hoped at that moment for a response from the elephant: a trumpet, a bellow, a spout of water from its trunk, some little signal of recognition. After all, what was a whale but an elephant of the sea? These two creatures were kin in bulk and grace, breathing the most air through the largest lungs in a world rightfully made for them. There could be no better omen than that shared understanding. For men who commit their bodies to the seas, who abandon childhoods on rice paddies and factory floors for the education of currents and gales on the shipways, the communion of these beasts would be vindication. But the sailors were disappointed. Standing on the opposite, starboard side, the elephant had not seen the whale at all. Or if it had, it chose to ignore it, keeping its eyes fixed instead in contemplation of the water.
Swimmer Among the Stars Page 4
