Elephant Song

by Wilbur Smith

  Then recently, in the last few weeks, there's been a change. They have begun using a reagent. You see, the platinum molecules are coated with sulphides. The sulphides reduce the efficiency of the recovery process by forty percent. They are using a reagent to dissolve the sulphide coating and to free the platinum. What does the reagent consist of? Daniel demanded. Arsenic. She spat the word like an angry cat. They are using a two percent solution of white arsenic to break down the sulphide coating. He stared at her in disbelief. But that's crazy. You said it, Kelly agreed. These aren't sane or responsible people. They are poisoning the forest in a murderous orgy of greed.

  He climbed up out of the dead river and stood beside her.

  Slowly he felt her outrage seep into his own conscience. The bastards, he whispered. It was as though she realised the moment of his total commitment to her cause, for she reached out and took his hand. It was not a gentle or an affectionate gesture. Her grip was fierce and compelling. You haven't seen it all yet. This is just the beginning. The real horror lies ahead at Wengu. She shook his arm demandingly. Come!

  she ordered. Come and look at it. I challenge you to remain on the sidelines after you have seen it. The little column moved on, but after another five hoursmarch the Bambuti porters abruptly halted and dropped their packs and whispered together. Now what is the trouble?

  Victor wanted to know, and Kelly explained. We have reached the boundary of the clan hunting area. She pointed ahead. From here onwards we will be entering the sacred heartland of the Bambuti. They are deeply troubled and perplexed. So far only Sepoo has seen what is happening at Wengu.

  The others are reluctant to go on. They are afraid of the wrath of the forest god, the Mother and Father of the forest. They understand that a terrible sacrilege has been committed and they are terrified.

  What can we do to persuade them? Daniel asked, but Kelly shook her head. We must keep out of it. It is clan business. We must leave it to Pamba to convince them. The old lady was at her best now. She spoke to them, sometimes haranguing them shrilly, at others dropping her voice to a dovelike cooing and taking one of their faces in her cupped hands to whisper into an ear. She sang a little hymn to the forest and smeared ointment on each of their bare chests to absolve them. Then she performed a solitary dance, shuffling and leaping as she circled. Her withered breasts bounced against her belly and her skirt of bark cloth flipped up at the back to expose her surprisingly neat and glossy little buttocks as she cavorted.

  After an hour one of the porters suddenly picked up his load and started along the path. The others, grinning sheepishly, followed his example and the safari went forward into the sacred heartland.

  They heard the machines at dawn the next morning and as they went on the sound became louder. The rivers they crossed were waist-deep and thick as honey with the fearful red poisoned mud.

  Apart from the distant growl and roar of the machines, the forest was silent. They saw no birds or monkeys or antelope, and the Bambuti were silent also. They kept close together and they were afraid, darting anxious glances into the forest around them as they scurried forward.

  At noon Sepoo halted the column and conferred with Kelly in a whisper. He pointed towards the east and Kelly nodded and beckoned Daniel and Victor to her. Sepoo says we are very close now. Sounds in the forest are very deceptive. The machines are working not more than a few miles ahead. We dare not approach closer for there are company guards at the forest edge.

  What are you going to do? Victor asked.

  Sepoo says there's a line of hills to the east. From there we'll be able to overlook the mining and logging area. Pamba will stay here with the porters. just the four of us, Sepoo and i, you, Daniel, and Victor, will go up on to the hills.

  Daniel unpacked the VTR and he and Victor checked it. Come on, Kelly ordered, before the light goes or it begins to rain again.

  They climbed the hills in Indian file with Sepoo leading.

  However, even when they came out on the top they were still hemmed in by the forest. The great trees soared high overhead and the undergrowth pressed in closely about them, limiting visibility to twenty or thirty feet. They could hear the bellow of diesels below them, closer and clearer than before. What now? Daniel wanted to know. Can't see a damned thing from here. Sepoo will give us a grandstand view, Kelly promised, and almost as she said it, they reached the base of a tree that was a giant amongst a forest of great trees. Twenty pygmies holding hands can't encircle this tree, Kelly murmured. We've tried it.

  It's the sacred honey tree of the tribe.

  She pointed at the primitive ladder that scaled the massive trunk.

  The pygmies had driven wooden pegs into the smooth bark to reach the lowest branches and from there they had strung liana ropes and lashed wooden steps that ascended until they passed out of sight into the forest galleries a hundred feet above where they stood. This is a Bambuti temple, Kelly explained. Up there in the high branches they pray and leave offerings to the forest god. Sepoo went first for he was the lightest and some of the pegs and steps were rotten. He cut new ones and hammered them into place with the blade of his machete, and then signaled the others to follow him. Kelly went next and reached down to give Victor a hand when he faltered. Daniel came last, carrying the VTR slung over his shoulder and reaching up to place Victor's feet on the ladder rungs when he could not find them for himself.

  It was slow progress, but they helped the old man up and reached the upper gallery of the forest safely.

  This was like the land at the top of Jack's beanstalk, an aerial platform formed by interlinked branches and fallen debris. New plants had taken root in the suspended leaf mould and trash and formed a marvelous hanging garden where strange and beautiful flowers bloomed and a whole new spectrum of life flourished closer to the sun. Daniel saw butterflies with wings spread as wide as his hands, and flying insects that sparkled like emeralds and princely rubies. There were even lilies and wild gardenias growing in this fairyland. Daniel caught the flash of a bird so jewelled and splendid that he doubted his own eyes as it vanished like a puff of brilliant smoke amongst the foliage.

  Sepoo barely allowed them to rest before he began to climb again.

  The trunk of the tree was half as thick at this level, but still as huge as its neighbours had been at their bases. As they went higher so the light changed. It was like coming up from the depths of the ocean.

  The green submarine glow brightened until abruptly they burst out into the sunlight and exclaimed with wonder.

  They were on the top branches of the sacred honey tree.

  They looked down upon the carpet of the forest roof. It spread away, undulating like the billows of the ocean, green and unbroken on every side, except in the north. All their eyes turned in that direction and their cries of wonder faded and they stared in horror and disbelief.

  In the north the forest was gone. From the base of the green hill below them, as far as they could see to the north, to the very foothills of the nowclad mountains the forest had been erased. A red plain(of desolation lay where once the tall trees had stood.

  None of them could speak or move. They clung to their lofty perch and stared speechlessly, turning their heads slowly from side to side to encompass the enormity of the bare devastated expanse.

  The earth seemed to have been raked by the claws of some rapacious beast, for it had been scoured by the torrential rain waters. The topsoils had been torn away, leaving stark canyons of erosion; the fine red mud had been washed down to clog and choke the rivers through the forest. It was a desolate lunar landscape. Merciful God! Victor Omeru was the first to speak. It is an abomination. How much land has he defiled? What is the full extent of this destruction? It's impossible to calculate, Kelly whispered. Even though she had seen it before, she was still stunned by the horror of it.

  Half a million, a million acres, I don't know. But remember, they've been at work here for less than a year. Think of the destruction in another year from now. If those monster
s she pointed at the line of MOMU vehicles that were strung along the edge of the forest at the foot of the hill, if those monsters are allowed to continue. It was an effort for Daniel to drag his eyes from the wide vista of destruction and to concentrate on the line of yellow machines.

  From their high vantage point they seemed as tiny and innocuous as a small boy's toys left in the sandbox. The MOMU were in a staggered formation, like a line of combine-harvesters reaping one of those endless wheat fields on the Canadian prairie. They were moving so slowly that they appeared to be standing still. How many? Daniel asked, and counted them aloud. Eight, nine, ten" he exclaimed.

  Running side by side that gives them a cudine almost four hundred yards wide. It doesn't seem possible that just ten machines have been able to inflict such terrible damage. Victor's voice shook uncertainly.

  They are like giant locusts, remorseless, insensate, terrible. The caterpillar tractors were working ahead of the line of MOMUs, scything the forest to make way for the monstrous earth-eating machines to follow.

  Even as they watched, one of the tall trees quivered and swayed.

  Then it began to move, swinging ponderously as the steel blades ate through the base of its trunk. Even at this distance they heard the scream of living timber rending. It sounded like the death throes of a wounded animal.

  The falling tree gathered momentum, its death cry rose higher and shriller, until the trunk thudded into the red earth and the mass of foliage shivered, then lay still.

  Daniel had to look away. Sepoo was perched beside him on a high branch, and he was weeping. The tears ran very slowly down his wrinkled old cheeks and dripped unheeded on to his naked chest. It was a terrible intimate grief, too painful for Daniel to watch.

  He looked back just in time to see another tree fall and die, and then another. He unslung the VTR from his shoulder and lifted it to his eyes, focused the telephoto lens, and began to film.

  He filmed the devastated bare red plain on which not a living thing remained, not an animal, or bird, or a green leaf.

  He filmed the line of yellow machines grinding inexorably forward, keeping their formation rigidly, attended by an endless horde of container trucks, like worker ants behind the queen ant, carrying away the succession of eggs she laid.

  He filmed the red poison spewing from the dump chutes at the rear of the MOMU, falling carelessly upon the savaged earth where the next rainstorm would carry it away and spread it into every stream and creek for a hundred miles down the contour.

  He filmed the fall of the trees ahead of the line of yellow machines and the giant mechanical saws mounted on specially modified caterpillar tractors. Fountains of wet white sawdust flew high into the air as the spinning silver blades bit in and the tree-trunks fell into separate logs.

  He filmed the mobile cranes lifting the logs on to the trailer beds of the logging vehicles.

  He filmed the hordes of naked Uhali slaves working in the red mud to keep the roads open for the massive trucks and trailers to pass over, as they bore away the looted treasures of the forest.

  He had hoped that the act of manipulating the camera and viewing the scene through the intervening lens might somehow isolate him from reality, might allow him to remain aloof and objective. It was a vain hope. The longer he watched the destruction, the more angry he became until his rage matched that of the woman who sat on the branch beside him.

  Kelly did not have to give voice to her outrage. He could feel it like static electricity in the air around her. It did not surprise him that he was so in tune with her feelings. It seemed only right and natural.

  They were very close now. A new bond had been forged between them, to reinforce the attraction and sympathy that they had already conceived for each other.

  They stayed in the treetop until nightfall, and then they remained another hour, sitting in darkness as though they could not tear themselves away from the terrible fascination of it. They listened to the growl of engines in the night and watched the floodlights and the swinging headlights turn the forest and the devastated red plain to daylight. It never stopped, but went on and on, cutting, digging, roaring, spilling out poison and death.

  When at last it began to rain again and the lightning and the thunder crashed overhead, they crept down from the treetop and made their way slowly and sadly back to where Pamba waited in the forest with the porters.

  In the morning they started back through the steaming silent forest towards Gondola, stopping only for Daniel to film the polluted, bleeding rivers. Victor Omeru went down into the muck and stood knee-deep in it and spoke into the camera, giving articulate voice to all their sorrow and rage.

  His voice was deep and compelling and filled with concern and compassion for his land and its people. His silver hair and dark noble features would hold the attention of any audience, and his credentials were impeccable. His international reputation was such that nobody could seriously doubt that what he described to them was the truth. If Daniel could show this to the outside world, he knew that he would be able to communicate his own sense of outrage.

  They moved on slowly. The Bambuti porters were still subdued and dismayed. Although they had not witnessed the mining, Sepoo had described it to them and they had seen the bleeding rivers. Yet even before they reached the boundary between the heartland and their traditional hunting grounds they were given even greater cause for sorrow.

  They cut the tracks of an elephant. They all recognized the spoor of the beast, and Sepoo, called him by name. The Old Man with One Ear, he said, and they all agreed. It was the bull with half his left ear missing.

  They laughed for the first time in days as though they had met an old friend in the forest, but the laughter was short-lived as they studied the spoor.

  Then they cried out and wrung their hands and whimpered with fear and horror.

  Kelly called urgently to Sepoo. What is it, old friend? Blood, Sepoo answered her. Blood and urine from the elephant. He is wounded; he is dying. How has this happened? Kelly cried. She also knew the elephant like an old friend. She had come across him often in the forest when he had frequented the area round Gondola. A man has struck and wounded him.

  Somebody is hunting the bull in the sacred heartland. It is against all law and custom. Look! Here ara the tracks of the man's feet lying over the spoor of the bull. He pointed out the clear imprints of small bare feet in the mud. The hunter is a Bambuti. He must be a man of our clan. It is a terrible sacrilege. It is an offence against the god of the forest. The little group of pygmies were shaken and horrified. They clustered together like lost children, holding each other's hands for comfort in these dreadful days when all they believed in was being turned upside down, first the machines in the forest and the bleeding rivers, and now this sacrilege committed by one of their own people. I know this man, Pamba shrieked. I recognize the mark of his feet. This man is Pirri. They wailed then and covered their faces, for Pirri had made his kill in the sacred places and the shame and the retribution of the forest god must come down upon all of them.

  Pirri the hunter moved like a shadow. He laid his tiny feet down gently upon the great pad marks of the elephant, where the bull's weight had compacted the earth and no twig would snap and no dead leaf would rustle to betray him.

  Pirri had been following the elephant for three days. During all that time Pirri's entire being had been concentrated upon the elephant, so that in some mystic way he had become part of the beast he was hunting.

  Where the bull had stopped to feast on the little red berries of the Selepe tree, Pirri read the sip and could taste the tart acidic juice in his own throat. Where the elephant had drunk at one of the streams, Pirri stood upon the bank as he had done and felt in his imagination the sweet clear water squirt and gurgle into his own belly. Where the elephant had dropped a pile of yellow fibrous dung on the forest floor, Pirri felt his own bowels contract and his sphincter relax in sympathy.

  Pirri had become the elephant, and the elephant had become Pirri
.

  When he came up with him at last, the bull was asleep on his feet in a matted thicket. The branches were interwoven and covered with thorns that were hooked and tipped with red; they could flay a man's skin from his limbs. As softly and slowly as Pirri moved, yet the elephant sensed his presence and came awake. He spread his ears, one wide and full as a mainsail, the other torn and deformed, and he listened.

  However, he heard nothing, for Pirri was a master hunter.

  The elephant stretched out his trunk, sucked up the air and blew it softly into his mouth. The olfactory glands in his top lip opened like pink rosebuds and he tasted the air, but he tasted nothing, for Pirri had come in below the tiny forest breeze and he had smeared himself from the top of his curly head to the pink soles of his feet with the elephant's own dung. There was no man-smell upon him.

  Then the elephant made a sound, a gentle rumbling sound in his belly and a fluttering sound in his throat. It was the elephant song. The bull sang in the forest to learn if it was another elephant or a deadly enemy whose presence he sensed.

  Pirri crouched at the edge of the thicket and listened to the elephant sing. Then he cupped his hand over his mouth and his nose and he gulped air into his throat and his belly and he let it out with a soft rumbling and fluttering sound.

  Pirri sang the song of the elephant.

  The bull sighed in his throat and changed his song, testing the unseen presence. Faithfully Pirri replied to him, following the cadence and the timbre of the song, and the elephant bull believed him.

  The elephant flapped his ears, a gesture of contentment and trust.

  He accepted that another elephant had found him and come to join him.

  He moved carelessly and the thicket crackled before his bulk. He came ambling forward to meet Pirri, pushing the thorny branches aside.