by Anita Desai
Elephants—now those are creatures which make me uneasy still. Of course I rarely encounter one. Even when my children were young, I avoided zoos, circuses, any place an elephant might be sighted. I feared to have that sad, shrewd eye turned on me, taking my measure and finding it wanting.
Once I had a nightmare—it was while I was still in the district and it was never repeated and never forgotten—in which such a beast devoured, blade by blade, leaf by leaf, an entire forest till it was laid waste, and then it raised its trunk and stepped forward to the tree where I was hiding, to expose—what? I don't know because such nightmares do not have endings. One flees them by waking.
And in wakefulness I would think of the immense creature as innocent and defenceless, who dwindles from neglect and finally lies down not to rise again. A death so huge as to be incomprehensible. This disturbs me and I turn away to distract myself from it. I know behind it is the question: Could I have done more? But it is not for us to do everything for everyone. In the end my reputation in the service was good, solid. What else could I have done?
In fact, by now I am not even sure the museum existed, or the man who created it or his mother who received it or the keeper who kept it. Or if it was a mirage I saw or a book I once read and only vaguely remembered, with none of the solidity, the actuality of objects and men and beasts.
Occasionally a scene from it will rise out of my subconscious just as I am drifting into sleep. Then it slips away.
