An Inconvenient Elephant Read online

  A few minutes later, I was presented with a large platter.

  “Cauliflower al dente and mashed pumpkin,” he announced with a flourish, “with a complimentary side of fried worms in peanut sauce.”

  Diamond’s steak dinner arrived shortly after mine: a large platter of cauliflower and mashed pumpkin, with a complimentary side of fried worms in peanut sauce.

  “Perfect,” Diamond said as she dug into the worms with the tip of her knife, then chewed them noisily. “Forgive my manners. I’m usually in the bush when I eat.”

  I waved my hand. “No problem,” I said, rapidly tucking into my mashed pumpkin. “I’ve been eating with elephants for the past year. You’re positively dainty compared to them.” I watched her dinner disappear at warp speed, then reflected, “Of course, they ate with their noses.”

  I was still hungry after the mashed pumpkin and turned my attention to the cauliflower, which was al dente if you had dentes like a crocodile.

  I looked around. The restaurant was crowded, and it felt odd to be sitting at a real table after a year squatting next to baby elephants. People were chatting softly, daintily blotting their lips, and using all their utensils. No one got smacked in the head for stealing from another’s plate. No one threw their food on their back and shoulders. I was going to have to get used to good manners again.

  Diamond and I finished our dinners and still had a long time before our plane left for Victoria Falls. It was scheduled to leave around ten or noon or never. We drank an impressive amount of coffee in order to stay awake and ordered doubles on the Malva pudding, which only engendered another profuse apology from our waiter. Malva pudding was not available for dessert. Nor was anything else.

  “Tell me again how this is going to get us to New York?” I asked Diamond-Rose as I downed my fifth cup of coffee.

  “It won’t exactly get us to New York,” she admitted. “Americans sometimes have a problem getting out of Zimbabwe, but my friends reassure me there is no problem at all getting out of Zambia. Eventually we can take a plane from Zimbabwe to Zambia. Or Botswana. They like Americans in Botswana.”

  “It’s the word ‘eventually’ that bothers me,” I said. I had visions of spending the rest of my life taking planes from one African country to the next, with my new friend promising how each one would be easier to leave from than the last, while the prospect of getting to New York became more and more remote.

  “So, who are these friends of yours?” I asked as we ordered still another cup of coffee. “It was really very nice of them to make all these arrangements.”

  “Charlotte and Billy Pope,” she said. “They run ThulaThula Safaris in Chizarira, but they had no vacancies, so they booked us for Charara. Once we get settled, they said they would gladly take us on safari. It’s a lot more wild than anything you’ve probably seen.”

  I supposed that was nice, if I wanted to see more of Zimbabwe. The thing was, I didn’t. I had come here almost a year and a half before to help rescue Margo, a badly wounded elephant, and her calf, and the country had broken my heart. I had never seen such hunger, such deprivation, such desperation, such shortages of everything, and all due to a depraved and indifferent government. Families were living in the streets, huddled under tarps for warmth, digging through garbage for scraps of nonexistent food. Dogs and cats and goats and cows dropped in the streets from starvation.

  We had managed to save Margo and her baby by capturing them in the Zimbabwe bush and flying them back to a wildlife sanctuary in New York, but I had vowed I would never go back.

  “So why don’t you stay on in Zimbabwe instead of going to New York?” I asked Diamond. “Or do you have family waiting for you?”

  “No family left,” she replied, her face suddenly becoming serious. She scraped her flaming hair back, twisting it into a loose knot, and stared off through the restaurant windows at the black African night. “I was raised in Manhattan by my aunt, but she died,” she added. “So I guess I’m returning to my native habitat—getting my bearings, you know—before I push off again. Most animals do that.”

  “No ex-husband? Ex-boyfriend?”

  Diamond’s face clouded and she looked down at her fingers. My eyes followed her eyes, and I noticed a pale band of skin where a ring had been. She caught me looking and folded her hands in her lap.

  “That’s okay,” I said quickly. “I have one of each, and it only means you still have no one to come home to.” I thought of Tom. We had broken up a year earlier.

  “I was married for seven years,” Diamond said softly, “but the jungle took him.” She gulped the last of her coffee.

  “Took him?”

  Diamond gave me a sad smile. “The jungle takes everything,” she said. “Eventually.”

  I wondered at her words, then thought she was right, in a sense. The jungle had taken my heart. And all the plans I had made for a conventional life.

  By mid-morning, we were finally on the charter to Victoria Falls. I peered sleepily from the window of our small plane at the green-and-gold savannahs and blue gorges below. The sky was filled with sponged white clouds, and I could see the shadow of our plane following us across the thick green treetops below like a faithful puppy.

  An hour later, we landed in a town churning with tourists and filled with tiny roadside stands selling illegally captured, bedraggled-looking wild parrots and cheap African mementos made in China.

  “Now what?” I asked Diamond.

  “We could visit the falls,” she said. “They’re only about eighteen miles away, and we have three hours to kill before the transfer van.”

  She led me to a waiting taxi bus. “Come on,” she said. “We’ll keep ourselves busy.”

  “We don’t need to keep ourselves busy,” I retorted, following her. “We are busy. Busy trying to get home.”

  Mosioa-Tunya, the falls are named.

  “The smoke that thunders.”

  Which perfectly describes the white streaming pillars of water that plunge three hundred feet into an abyss that becomes the Zambezi River, sending up an enormous veil of vaporized, billowing spray. It was a wall of white. A world of white. White sound, white foam, white air from white clouds of water, crashing and hissing on their way to join the river, reverberating with such force that I imagined the sound could reach the floor of heaven. The water was alive, possessed with its own life force, with an energy and animation that was mesmerizing.

  I stood enthralled, too overwhelmed to move, the roar thrumming deep into my chest, transforming my pulse into a great matching rush of blood.

  We stood on thick, wet gray rocks and let the spray wash over us. Speech was nearly impossible.

  “We’re getting soaked through,” Diamond chortled into my ear, pushing me out from the cove of trees that we had taken refuge under and into the spray.

  “I don’t care,” I yelled back, pulling her with me. The water drenched us both, but we only laughed harder.

  I stood there in the splash-up of cold water and raised my arms. It was as though the falls were rearranging my molecules, laying me open, pores, heart, and soul, preparing me so that I could absorb the essence of Africa.

  I felt something here summoning me. The wild, uncontained fury beat against a door to my heart and forced it ajar. It was overwhelming, and I stood rooted in the steaming spray, trying to understand what was happening.

  I was unraveling, being torn into pieces that didn’t fit together anymore. Changing. Everything was joining together here and pulling me into it, the sky and the air and the pure white summoning of holy water. How could I leave?

  “Don’t change,” my mother had said to me before I left for Kenya.

  “You’re changing,” Tom had said to me when we spoke a week after I had left.

  Tom.

  I loved him so much, I used to dream of him all the time. I used to hear his deep, rich voice in my ear cautioning me, you’re changing, you’re changing, and I wasn’t sure what he meant. After a while, I couldn’t talk to h
im.

  Then I realized I had changed. d I couldn’t help it. Or maybe I had always been like this, maybe I was just becoming more defined. I had felt something in Kenya, when I sat up nights with infant elephants and caressed their trunks and fed them formula, fighting so hard for their recovery. I remember thinking how I could never go back to an ordinary life again. I had loved Tom, and that was an important part of me, but my life in Kenya had become bigger. The falls were reminding me again how I had changed.

  Diamond pulled at my arm and pointed. Arcing across the chasm was a rainbow, the bright colors forming a dazzling, jeweled bridge.

  “It’s a good sign for our visit,” she yelled into my ear. “Eyes that see a rainbow will see good fortune.”

  I couldn’t answer her. There were no words left to me. I had been unfastened somehow, undone, changed all the way through, and I knew there would be no turning away from it.

  Chapter 3

  “WHEN IS THE BUS LEAVING FOR CHARARA?” I ASKED a large woman in traditional dress and head scarf, who was sitting on the curb, eating pieces of grapefruit. Diamond and I had just returned from Victoria Falls to its namesake town, and were hoping to leave fairly soon for Charara.

  Next to the woman was a sign nailed to a tree that read, “Renkini.”

  “‘Bus stop,’” Diamond translated for me. “That means this is the stop for the long-distance bus—the one we want.”

  I put down my suitcase and sat on the curb next to the woman and sighed. She gave me a shy smile and cupped her hands together, a Zimbabwe greeting. “When the bus is full, it will leave,” she replied softly.

  I looked up at Diamond, exasperated. “I hate that there’s never a schedule.”

  “That is the African way,” she agreed with a shrug. “Things start when they start.”

  The bus in question was sitting vacant in a sunny spot not far from us, the driver leisurely sipping coffee and eating a hard-boiled egg. It was not really a bus in the conventional sense—it was a dalla-dalla, a chicken bus, with some regular seats up front and thick metal bars enclosing the rear.

  I watched the woman eat her grapefruit, ripping it apart with her thumbs and slowly sucking on each piece before finally chewing and swallowing it. What was I so impatient for, anyway? There really wasn’t anyone waiting for me. Oh, there was my family, of course, and my best friend, Alana, who was a therapist, though she had moved out of New York. “There’s a lot more mental agita in Florida,” she had explained. I knew she’d want to hear from me. And I still had my little house. But they all had been waiting a whole year; another few days wouldn’t matter. Even another few weeks.

  “I suppose I’m not in any rush to go home,” I admitted. Diamond sat down next to me and stretched her legs over her rucksack.

  “Wherever you’re going, it will be there when you arrive,” she replied.

  The bus filled within the hour. With what seemed like a hundred people, along with baskets of fruits and vegetables, a few woven chairs, a goat, a dozen crying babies, and too many makeshift containers filled with live chickens. I found a narrow metal bench against a wall and sat next to an unfriendly rooster, who managed to slip his beak through the slats of his crate and nip me whenever my arm came within an inch of him. Diamond wisely found a spot on the other side of the bus. Another twenty or so people pushed on, and we were finally on our way.

  We hurtled along at 120 kilometers an hour, swaying and dipping across the rough dirt roads with such force, I feared the bus would break apart and scatter us all across the countryside like litter. There were a few particularly jarring bounces that seemed to launch us completely off our wheels.

  Though the horn blasted incessantly at apathetic pedestrians and indifferent cows that shared the road with us, I leaned my head back against a metal bar and tried to doze. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the falls. I could still hear them, even a hundred miles away. If I had any misgivings about taking time to return home, they were washed away in the great roar of white steaming mist.

  It was unbearably hot. Vendors poked corn through the open windows anytime we stopped, radios played African pop music, and almost all the chickens managed to get loose. We bought a few hard-boiled eggs from a vendor, and I hungrily peeled one, only to reveal a reeking dark green interior. I tried not to gag and fed it to the rooster, who snatched it up without so much as a second’s worth of ethical consideration and then ungratefully nipped me again.

  We stopped three more times, once for a herd of gazelle that decided to spring across the road in airy leaps, seemingly impervious to the heat and traffic, and once for a herd of buffalo that wandered aimlessly in front of us, not caring in the least that the bus was physically nudging some of them along.

  Our last stop was at a checkpoint set up by the Department of Veterinary Services, so that we—bus, passengers, and chickens—could be sprayed with insecticide to repel tsetse flies. A man walked around carrying a black hose and a huge vacuum cleaner canister slung over his shoulder, sending an acrid yellow mist everywhere.

  “This is horrible,” I complained as the fumes poured through the flapping windows, stinging my eyes and throat.

  Diamond coughed. “Sleeping sickness is worse,” she rasped. “If you want to go to Charara, you have to get sprayed.”

  I opened my mouth to remind her that I hadn’t wanted to go to Charara at all, but another burning whiff had me gagging uncontrollably. We were finally released to continue our journey and arrived late in the afternoon, smelling like a lab experiment.

  “No alcohol in camp,” the driver warned us as he drove over the pitted, dusty road that led into the park. “No guns. And no citrus. No citrus. The elephants, they smell the citrus and come to your hut. Make much trouble.” The sign on the park gates pretty much repeated the driver’s warnings, in addition to mentioning no loud music after nine o’clock and no fireworks.

  We promised him we hadn’t brought citrus. In fact, we hadn’t brought anything edible. The last thing we had tried to eat were the eggs. The bus rolled to a stop at the warden’s building, and we gladly climbed out.

  “You have a message,” the park warden told us once we checked our reservation. He handed Diamond a note, and she made a face as she read it.

  “Bollocks!” she exclaimed. “Charlotte can’t get petrol to drive to us. She hopes she can buy some on the black market tomorrow. Apparently, there’s a van coming up with supplies from South Africa.” She stuffed the note into her pocket.

  “Why didn’t she just call you?” I asked.

  “Typical African phone service,” Diamond replied. “She says my phone was out for most of the day.”

  I nodded. I’d had similar problems in Kenya. The service was erratic to nonexistent.

  We were assigned a guide, who drove us to our quarters, a brilliant turquoise hut with a thatched roof and a bright candy-pink wooden door. A small wooden table and two chairs sat in front. He swung open the door and gestured for us to go in ahead of him.

  “Very comfortable for you,” he commented. “You like elephants? They come here all the time.”

  “I love elephants,” I murmured as we entered the hut, exhausted from our almost two full days of travel.

  It was surprisingly cool inside, and it was clean and comfortable. The walls were pale green, a colorful spread was tucked over the neatly made bed, a brightly woven rug covered the floor, and another small wooden table was flanked by two woven chairs. A green tole lamp sat in the center of the table and gave everything a welcoming feel. A bright pink curtain led to a tiny stall behind the hut that housed a real toilet, and though there was no sink, there was a shower that drained right into the floor.

  The guide stood at the pink curtain to chat. “I think, maybe elephant even come tonight, very bad elephant. Steal dinner.” This greatly amused him. “Steal your dinner!” he added in a delighted voice.

  He turned on the lamp and left us. Diamond dropped onto the rug in weariness, pushed her rucksack under her head, and
stretched out. “I need a nap. Why don’t you take one, too? Dinner’s not for at least another hour.”

  “Why don’t you use the bed?” I said, dropping my suitcase on the floor and opening it to pull out some fresh clothes. A nice hot shower would be wonderful, I thought.

  She yawned. “I’m perfectly fine, I’m used to sleeping on the ground.” I laughed but she did look comfortable.

  “Do you mind if I take the first shower?” I asked.

  “I don’t mind,” she said, with a wave. “You can take all of them.”

  I gathered up my clothes and one of the clean but very thin towels that had been left on the bed for us.

  The water was ice cold, and there was some kind of white cream that I assumed was soap or shampoo or toothpaste or bug repellant or all four. It barely lathered, but I was glad just to wash. I quickly toweled off and put on fresh jeans and a tee, and returned to the hut to tuck my things away. Diamond was still stretched out on the floor, her flame hair surrounding her face like a sunset.

  “Hi,” she said as soon as I walked in.

  “I thought you might be asleep.”

  She opened her eyes. “You’ll know when I’m asleep—I snore like a rhinoceros.”

  “I was planning to take a walk.”

  “Fine,” she said, closing her eyes again. I stepped over her motionless body to head for the door.

  “I’ll be back soon,” I said.

  There was no reply.

  “Diamond?”

  “Fine,” she mumbled. “Just don’t get eaten.”

  The pale blue sky was fading into soft rose, meeting its reflection in glimmering Lake Kariba as I followed the shoreline away from camp. The lake, a reservoir actually, had been made by the government many years before by damming off part of the Zambezi River. It was serene and beautiful. Large houseboats floated by, and a flock of pink-and-white flamingos looped overhead before landing in the lake on spindly legs to fish.

  Beyond the lake, far in the distance, a thin, rolling mountain range of darkening purple was fading from view. The soft, dusky breezes blew fringes of rose lavender swamp grass around my legs, rippling the feathery tops, rippling the water beyond them, making everything flow together, undulating in the shimmering light.