I could tell that Jon was trying not to react to my uncharacteristic appearance. “I don’t know how you feel about Peking duck.” His eyes sparkled as he announced his entrée. “Bloody vegetable with feathers if you ask me, but seemed more fitting to the occasion than pork.”
Holding the door open, Jon held his free hand out to let me in. “The chef assured me that he makes the best bloody Peking duck in all of Hong Kong. Of course, I withheld judgment, but I didn’t have many options.” He emitted a slight giggle, as was his way when he got excited talking about food and recipes. “To be quite honest, it looks pretty bloody good.”
As I came through the door, Jon looked me up and down admiringly. “You could extract a tear from a glass eye with that number.” He smiled. “Craig’s tailor must have had a run-in with Vera Wang.”
I laughed and held out my arms to show the dress off. “Not too outrageous?”
Jon beamed as he let the door go. As it shut behind us, we embraced. I immediately felt all the air expel from my lungs as we held each other for a long, long time. I finally felt that familiar sense of being at home again.
Tears streamed down my face. “I am so sorry, Jon. I didn’t mean to leave you in the dark for so long.”
“Rough as a pangolin’s bottom, this place. But I managed.”
“That’s a positive spin.”
“Took a lot of time to come to it, trust me.” He smiled and held my cheek in his hand. “In fact, I hadn’t felt optimistic until this very moment.” He kissed me on the lips and led me to the table. “Come, you must be famished.” He poured me a glass of champagne and poured himself a sparkling apple juice. He held up his glass for a toast.
“To starting over,” I offered.
“To taking stock and moving on,” Jon added.
“Well said.” I took a sip of the crisp, bubbly drink and followed the warm sensation as it flowed through my body. I hadn’t felt this relaxed since Jon and I were floating down the Zambezi River together.
I took another sip as Jon removed the silver domes that had covered both of our prepared plates. I watched his slight limp as he moved around the table. “You were using a cane at the White Swan. How is your leg doing?”
“Jes’us, it was a bloody struggle, I tell you. And modern medicine in Africa hasn’t gotten much beyond the dark ages, but it’s fine.”
“Did the physical therapy help?”
“Moderately. The cane helps.”
“That’s great to hear.”
“Come, let’s eat.”
“It smells divine.”
“Not as good as what I would make, but when in Rome…”
“Of course.” I held up my glass and took another sip. “When in Rome…”
We ate the thin slices of rich duck meat with crisp skin, prepared in Peking style. I wrapped a slice in a delicate, thin pancake, adding the sweet brown duck sauce and accenting it with a sprig of fresh spring onion. We exchanged stories of the past couple of weeks and then I explained the details of Lu Lu’s past and what had happened to Nigel. The past few days with so little sleep had caught up with me, and after two glasses of champagne and a few duck pancakes, I had to lie down.
Jon lay down next to me and stroked my hair as I tried to stay awake. I felt so conflicted. Although all I had been thinking about was reconnecting with Jon, I was already seeing myself on the plane to Uganda—imagining sitting next to a gorilla in the Impenetrable Forest. I wasn’t ready to tell Jon of my plan yet, and I certainly hoped he didn’t have a wedding proposal in mind. Our relationship wasn’t ready for that kind of development, given what I needed to do next. We’d say our goodbyes in the morning, and I’d tell him when the time was right.
Jon took a deep breath and sighed. “Africa is the only place where a man can feel human. I think it’s time you return.”
“I like the sound of that,” I said sleepily. “But it’s not just Africa—we need elephants in this world in order to feel human.”
“Yes, you’re right. Africa without elephants would be a dark, dark place.”
As I drifted off, I wondered how elephants would survive—not only the politics of war, shrinking habitats, and the abject poverty of the people who they shared land with, but also the conflicting perspectives and competing interests of conservation organizations.
—
Early the next morning I was in and out of a waking dream, in between a tangle of legs sprawled out on Jon’s bed, as I watched the sunrise over the Okavango River. Rays of sunlight penetrated the riverine forest and hit the gathering mist on the water in shafts. Elephants roared in the forest behind the white bank. Fish eagles cried in the background as the copper-tailed coucals murmured back and forth to each other deep in the reed beds on either side of the river.
Hornbills flew clumsily across what looked like a frozen glassy lake reflecting the mist on the water, except that the glass kept slipping south in its journey to the great delta in Botswana. Looking down at the glassy, fast-flowing river was disorienting, with clouds, blue sky, mist, and hornbills overhead and underneath, all in the same view.
I felt a ripple on the water. Or was that Jon’s leg slipping off the bed?
“Catherine?” I heard a voice calling above the mist and opened my eyes.
Jon searched my lost expression. “Sorry to wake you, but I’ve got to head to the airport soon.”
I sat up slowly. “That’s okay. I was just waking up.”
“Can I make you some coffee?”
I stretched my arms out and nodded.
“Where were you anyway?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just now, when you woke up.”
I yawned. “We were floating down to the delta on Vera. The fish eagles were just calling in the background.”
He smiled. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
“And elephants were roaring in a tree island beyond the mist.”
“Nature at its bloody finest.”
He reached out to embrace me, and his kiss felt as if it could melt any barrier between us. But my mind was in a different place than my heart.
He whispered to me just like he had in so many of my dreams, “Catherine, stay with me.”
And in that moment, it was as if I had been cured of some subconscious torment—torn between a love interest and a calling. I realized that I was meant to continue this quest on my own—at least for now. It was less complicated that way. And I was already on the airplane to Uganda by myself, imagining my finger reaching out to an inquisitive gorilla in the Impenetrable Forest, both of us looking for some kind of connection—and for me, a new kind of redemption.
This book is dedicated to all those who risk their lives on a daily basis to fight wildlife crime as well as those who work to inspire this and the next generation to want to save wild animals and wild places from going extinct.
Acknowledgments
In the spring of 2000, I was hired by TRAFFIC International, a branch of the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature), to monitor the ivory trade in China a year after a onetime legal sell of government stocks of ivory took place between Southern African countries and Japan. At the time, I was struck by how much illegal ivory was being flown into China from Africa and going unreported by major agencies, as well as how little communication there was between agencies involved in monitoring the illegal wildlife trade. But the thing that had the most impact on me was the richness of the Chinese culture and the beauty of southern Yunnan and just how vulnerable the remaining elephants and wild places were. I was also inspired by the passion of the people I met and how dedicated they were to saving the few remaining wild places left in China. I am indebted to my 24-7 interpreter, Wenhua Lu, without whom I would have been completely lost in more ways than one, as well as my boss, Marcus Phipps, and colleagues Rob Parry-Jones and Sam Lee. I also thank Kristin Nowell of Cat Action Treasury for recommending me for the job.
There is currently so much blame placed on the Chinese for perpetr
ating wildlife crimes and, in fact, a lot of global wildlife crime is linked to China. But I wanted to highlight the fact that there are many Chinese nationals who are trying their best to stop wildlife crime and many others who are attempting to educate the public and build awareness about the problem. I wanted to help instill the next generation of Chinese conservationists with hope and pride in their work. The idea for the National Nightingale Society was born out of a friendship I made with a Chinese ornithologist with whom I traveled on mainland China in 1989, who told me stories about how he and his scientist colleagues had to take some of their conservation efforts underground during the Cultural Revolution.
I have to thank my husband and storytelling partner for his story sense and advice on different plot elements and for helping me distill this story into its present form. I also thank my parents and my sister, Siobhan, for advice on earlier drafts of the manuscript and Thelma Alane for her great comments on the most recent draft. I’d also like to thank copy editors Tricia Wygal and Elizabeth Sullivan and the Alibi marketing and publicity teams. I am especially grateful to my editor, Anne Speyer, for all of her editorial advice and encouragement throughout the development of this story.
BY CAITLIN O’CONNELL
The Catherine Sohon Elephant Mysteries
White Gold
Ivory Ghosts
The Elephant’s Secret Sense
An Elephant’s Life
A Baby Elephant in the Wild
Bridge to the Wild
The Elephant Don
The Elephant Scientist (with Donna Jackson and Timothy Rodwell)
PHOTO: © TIMOTHY RODWELL
A world-renowned expert on elephants, CAITLIN O’CONNELL holds a PhD in ecology and is an adjunct professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, as well as director of life sciences for HNU Photonics. She is the author of five nonfiction books about elephants, including the internationally acclaimed The Elephant’s Secret Sense, An Elephant’s Life, A Baby Elephant in the Wild, and Elephant Don, and coauthor of the award-winning The Elephant Scientist. She is the cofounder and CEO of Utopia Scientific, a nonprofit organization dedicated to research and science education, and the cofounder of Triple Helix Productions, a global media forum with a mandate to develop more accurate and entertaining science content for the media and at the same time empower girls to go into the sciences. When not in the field with elephants, O’Connell divides her time between San Diego and Maui, Hawaii, with her husband, Tim Rodwell, and their dog, Frodo.
caitlineoconnell.com
@ElephantSkinny
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