An Inconvenient Elephant Read online

  “What was your friend’s title again?” I whispered to her. “Minister of Cold Showers and Stale Cupcakes?”

  “Never mind,” she whispered back. “He’s the only one left who can help us.”

  A few minutes later, we were being served tea and cornmeal cakes sprinkled with sugar by the soldier, who put aside his Uzi in order to perform the social graces required of a secretary.

  I took a sip of tea. “ELLI,” I suddenly announced with a flourish.

  Diamond shot me a puzzled look. “Ellie? Yes?”

  “ELLI,” I repeated. “Elephant Liberation League Internationale.” I spelled it out. “E-L-L-I. We’ll call ourselves ELLI. We tell your friend that we’re from ELLI.” I stood up and raised my cup and announced in portentous tones, “We will save Tusker in the name of ELLI!”

  “Shhh, sit down!” Diamond cautioned, then whispered, “ELLI—I like it.”

  The minister was a very heavy man in his early sixties, with ebony skin, thick white hair, and steel-rimmed glasses that gave him the air of a college professor.

  He clapped his hands. “Sorida,” he greeted Diamond, “it has been a long time since you have traveled this way.”

  She cupped her hands to greet him back. “Sorida, Excellency,” she said.

  Mukomana eased himself behind his huge polished mahogany desk and signaled the soldier to leave us alone, then turned his attention back to Diamond.

  “I am sorry about Jakob.” He frowned for a moment in remembrance. “He was my shamwari.”

  “Thank you,” Diamond said.

  “How long has it been, now?” he asked. “It seems yesterday.”

  “Two months,” Diamond replied. “It seems yesterday to me, as well.”

  “I have never forgotten how you put your life at risk for me, shamwari,” Mukomana said, bowing his head to her.

  “We could do no less for such a friend,” Diamond replied, bowing her head in reply.

  “So, you have fallen in love with one of our elephants?” Mukomana asked teasingly.

  “I have,” she said, shaking her bright hair from her shoulders and giving him a dazzling smile. He watched her appreciatively.

  “I am afraid he is a bad one,” the minister said, his mood suddenly turning grave. “You have not chosen well.”

  “We can take him off your hands,” Diamond replied. “We have a place for him.”

  “I see,” he said. “You bring him back to Kenya with you, so you can show your customers what a bad Zimbabwe elephant looks like?” He wiggled his eyebrows at her and giggled at his joke.

  “We have enough bad elephants in Kenya,” Diamond said, laughing with him. “But I am leaving for America tonight. I want to show bad elephants to the Americans.”

  “And you?” he turned to me. “Miss Diamond tells me you are Miss Sterling. A capital name!”

  “Thank you,” I replied. “I am president of”—I took a deep breath—“ELLI. It’s an organization that saves elephants.” I hoped I hadn’t sounded pretentious.

  “So why don’t you save a good one?” Joshua Mukomana said, his face serious at first, before he laughed at my perplexed look. He leaned back in his wide leather chair. “I know of this elephant,” he said. “I am told when he comes into the campgrounds to steal food, he frightens the campers. We cannot take the risk.” He gave a sad sigh. “His disposal is already scheduled.”

  Diamond leaned forward and pressed her hands against his desk. “Joshua, shamwari, that is the ministry speaking. What can you do to help us?” He rocked in the leather chair and pondered. He sipped his tea and ate a sugary cornmeal cake and pondered for a long time. I felt impatient, but I remembered Diamond’s words and just calmly sipped my tea.

  “I can sell him to you,” he finally said. “We sell many elephants.” He paused. “To hunters. Do Americans like to hunt?” He gestured to me. “Ah! You are too pretty to hunt.”

  I felt my face flush at his words.

  “We don’t want to use him for hunting,” Diamond said casually. “We just want him. He is of no use to you.”

  “True.” Joshua Mukomana drained his tea, holding the cup daintily, with one pinky extended. He pressed a small buzzer on the front of his desk. The armed soldier returned.

  “Tea.” Joshua Mukomana held up his cup. “More tea and more cakes.” The soldier saluted and left the room. We waited. Joshua Mukomana studied us. “You came especially to see me because of this elephant?”

  “We did,” said Diamond.

  The soldier returned with a red clay pot filled with more steaming black tea and another tray of little cakes, then poured us each another cup. Joshua Mukomana pressed his thick, cigar fingers together and rocked some more in his chair. “Since we are good friends and I have a debt to you I feel obligated to repay, I will authorize his sale to you. You can have the elephant.”

  “Thank you, shamwari,” Diamond said. Her voice was filled with relief.

  “Seven hundred and fifty zillion Zim dollars,” he said. “A bargain, because we are old friends.”

  It sounded like a defense budget, and then I felt like giggling. A trillion zillion. A squillion. A bozo-illion, an elephantillion. No one in the whole world spouts numbers like that. I glanced over at Diamond, who just kept sipping her tea. No one except people in Zimbabwe.

  “Ten trillion Zim dollars,” she said evenly.

  “He’s a fine, big elephant,” Joshua Mukomana argued. He stared at Diamond. She took another sip of tea. “Fifty-five trillion.”

  “Fifteen,” Diamond countered. She looked at her watch. “What time is our flight?” she asked me. “It’s nearly five o’clock.”

  “Six thirty,” I choked. How could Diamond be so calm? We didn’t have any money at all to buy Tusker, let alone a few bazillion joke-atillion lying around.

  Joshua Mukomana rubbed the expanse of stomach that protruded from under his light gray suit. “I am like a cat hungry for dinner. I can think of nothing else. Let’s finish this. Forty trillion.”

  “Thirty-five,” Diamond said.

  He frowned at her. She ran her hand through her hair and shook it loose.

  “Thirty-five trillion five hundred million,” he said. “My final offer.” He slapped a heavy hand on his mahogany desk, and it sounded like a shot.

  Diamond only smiled. “How much is that in United States dollars?” she asked.

  Joshua Mukomana pulled out a large, ostentatious gold pen and pressed numbers into the calculator on its side.

  “That is about thirty-five thousand American dollars,” he replied. “Cheap!” He grunted and stood up. “But you’d better hurry. Or his price will go up again.” This made him suddenly giggle.

  Diamond stood up, too, and offered her hand. “It’s a deal.”

  They shook hands. “You have one week to pay for him and remove him from the park,” Mukomana said.

  “Six months,” said Diamond.

  “Two weeks,” he countered.

  “Three and a half months, and that is my final offer,” Diamond said.

  He offered his hand and they shook again, and we turned to leave.

  “By the way, he has a friend with him,” Diamond added. “A young bull. He might cause trouble if we take just the older animal.”

  Joshua Mukomana waved her away. “Take them both. Tusker and his shamwari, but listen, make sure you pay me only. You must send me the check. My name alone must be on it, you understand? You send it by special private messenger. A bank check. An American bank check.”

  Diamond shook her head. She understood very well.

  “Pay me and you take them both.” He looked at her with a grave expression. “No check and we shoot him, shamwari.” He made a gun with his fingers and fired. Then he gave a loud, hearty laugh.

  Chapter 11

  WE WERE FINALLY GOING HOME. I DIDN’T REALLY believe it until the plane raced down the runway and lifted its nose into the clear blue African sky. Until we were weaving in between brilliant white clouds and almost
touching the yellow crystal sun. Until we could take off our belts and leave our seats to walk the skies.

  I wanted to feel happy and expectant, but I felt an ache for the land I was leaving and horribly defeated over the price we had negotiated for Tusker. And Shamwari, the young bull, inadvertently named by Joshua Mukomana.

  I chattered nervously to Diamond about the horse and dog I had left behind in New York, and Alley, my cat, and the house I had bought for myself more than a year earlier. I tried to imagine it, but all I could picture was a hut with a thatched roof.

  I babble when I get nervous. I think it’s because it saves me from having to listen, which I never did well, anyway. It took me a whole year filled with orphaned baby ellies to learn to listen. I listened for signs of pneumonia, little lungs filling with fluid, little trunks struggling for air. I learned to focus on elephant sounds and noises and eventually, even human conversation.

  But none of it mattered. Diamond-Rose dozed through most of my soliloquy except to comment that she didn’t care about such mundane things as shelter. I had the feeling she would just as gladly have made camp along some highway and wrung the necks of a few passing sparrows to live on.

  “Do you have a place to stay when we arrive?” I worried.

  She just shrugged. “Something will show up. It always does. As they say on safari, home is where you gather firewood.”

  “Well, you can’t just land in New York and set up a tent on the tarmac,” I said, shocked. “You know, my house has a spare bedroom. Actually, it’s my office, and it has a daybed. The room’s small, but you’re welcome to it.”

  “Thank you. I don’t plan on staying in one spot,” Diamond said, giving me a grateful smile. “And everything I own is in my rucksack—a few changes of clothes, my tooth-brush, and my lariat.” She put her head back against the seat and let out a sad sigh. “’Course, I’ll have to pick up a new safari knife. They confiscated mine just before we boarded. Had a good gut-hook blade, too.”

  “You won’t have much use for one,” I reassured her. “Unless, of course, you’re going to start dating.”

  We cleared customs, rented a car, and stopped for our first American meal.

  “How’s this place for dinner?” I asked, pulling into an inexpensive-looking diner along the interstate. I glanced down at my now dusty jeans and soiled tee, and then at Diamond’s outfit. “We’re not exactly dressed to kill.”

  “I think we look fine,” she said. “I just want a little snack, anyway.”

  We lingered over coffee while Diamond scrupulously studied the dessert menu. She signaled the waitress and ordered a double slab of chocolate pie, which inspired me to order a piece of chocolate cake.

  “So,” Diamond asked, “how much will you charge for me to stay with you?”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “Don’t worry about paying me for the room. It’s my—”

  She held up a finger to interrupt me so she could signal the waitress. “Throw two scoops of ice cream on my pie,” she called over, then turned back to me. “That just might do me, though I might want some cherry pie, too. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen American desserts.”

  The waitress brought the check, and Diamond-Rose snatched it from her hands. “My treat.” She dug through her rucksack and pulled out a woven red straw purse. “I may have spent my life in the bush and have to be housebroken again, but as they say in Kenya, only someone else can scratch the middle of your back. So, I sleep at your house and the food is on me.”

  My house was waiting for me, like a faithful friend.

  It was a proper house. Windows, with their eyes shut, about to be awakened at the touch of a light switch. My green-painted rocking chair was still in the corner of the porch, its yellow floral pillow perched invitingly against the wicker. The porch light, left on for me by my brother after I let him know I was on my way home, made a welcoming yellow splotch in the night. My front door stood ready to let us inside, as though we were any family coming home after an evening out. I had been living in a wooden hut for the past year, and I had almost forgotten what it felt like to have a house. Diamond took in everything with a certain hunger in her eyes before she even got out of the car.

  “This is it,” I turned around to announce from the top of the porch steps.

  Diamond grabbed her rucksack. Her boots made hollow thumps as she climbed up behind me. “I really appreciate the invitation,” she said. “You know, I had originally booked my flight without even planning what I was going to do afterward.”

  I lifted the doormat and picked up the key my brother left, along with a little white card. “From my brother Reese,” I explained. “He’s kind of a goofball.” I opened the card and made a face at its content. “It says welcome home, and then there’s the usual elephant joke. He’s been obsessed with jokes ever since I got involved with elephants.” I scanned the handwritten note and then read it aloud. “‘Where does an elephant with a rash go?’”

  Diamond gave me a puzzled look. I turned the card over and upside down to read the answer: “‘To a pachyderma-tologist.’” I sighed and stuffed the card into my pocket and opened the front door. “He hasn’t changed one bit.”

  Diamond followed me in and stood there awkwardly as I put my suitcase down and flicked on a table lamp. Its light looked pallid and sullen, and I crossed the room to turn on another lamp. It did help, the room brightened, but nothing like the open, clear light I had gotten used to in Kenya.

  “Now we’re home,” I said to Diamond. “For what it’s worth.”

  I didn’t know what to expect, but the house felt almost unbearably stuffy. How ironic that my little hut in Kenya gave me the feeling that I had all of the outdoors to live in, while this house, so much bigger, felt so much more confining.

  The air was oppressive with furniture and drapes and carpeting and locked windows, and I fought off the feeling that I was going to asphyxiate any minute. Diamond apparently felt the same way. She dropped her rucksack and took a few gulps of air.

  A desiccated plant stood in a pot in the corner of the living room, but there wasn’t a spot of dust anywhere. My mother, I thought. She had probably tidied everything before I got home. The plant had been her housewarming gift when I moved in. I supposed she left it here as a quiet remonstration for my leaving for Kenya. I’d throw it out in the morning.

  There was a loud click, then a gentle whir. The sound of it startled Diamond.

  “Oil burner,” I said.

  But it did sound like a thousand bird wings flapping furiously to escape a predator. Warm, dusty air rose from the vents, and I, too, stood in the center of the room, flustered. I had forgotten all these domestic things.

  Suddenly the ceiling felt crushingly low. A band of panic closed around my chest, and claustrophobia took over. Could I bear to stay here? Where was the sweeping African sky encrusted with all the stars of the universe? Even the carpeting was wrong. I was so used to the familiar red dust that penetrated everything before it got trod into thick mud by baby elephant feet.

  The house didn’t feel like mine at all. These walls weren’t mine, this wasn’t my air. It was all wrong. There were nights in Kenya that I had dreamed of home. I needed to know it was still there for me, that it was still mine. But now I wanted to return to the little hut with the woven mats on the floors and my ellie babies. God, how I was missing them already.

  Diamond picked up her rucksack from the floor and slung it across her back. “Civilized,” she remarked.

  I gave her a sympathetic nod. “I hope you’ll be comfortable here,” I said doubtfully. She had nineteen years of jungle on me. “I mean, I hope you’ll be able to adjust.” I stopped before adding ruefully, “I hope I’ll be able to adjust, too.”

  I checked out the rest of the house and returned to find that Diamond had summoned the courage to wander around the living room, touching the television, picking up the phone to listen to the dial tone, running her fingers over the back of the floral printed furniture, he
r rucksack still slung across her shoulder.

  “Odd,” she said. “Flowered furniture and tables and lamps. It’s the kind of home I had always wished I grew up in.”

  I wasn’t sure what she meant, but it was my home and it was a proper home. The thing was, I thought I’d feel more at ease once I actually walked around a bit.

  I hung away my jacket and grabbed my suitcase, gesturing for Diamond to follow me upstairs. “I’ll show you your room, but the mattress on the daybed in there might be a little lumpy.”

  Diamond shrugged. “You know I’m used to sleeping on the ground,” she replied. “And I’m used to showering with cold water and peeing behind baobab trees, so nothing fazes me.”

  I laughed. “You’ll scandalize my neighbors if you squat behind the hydrangeas, so please enjoy the indoor plumbing. Except I have to warn you, I seem to remember that the shower was a bit like a water ride. It sprays sideways up your nostrils.”

  “Don’t worry about the loo,” Diamond reassured me. “I rarely shower. I mean, what’s the point?”

  At the top of the steps was a little hallway that turned to the right and brought us to my office. It was a small room lined with bookcases, a daybed, and my desk. “All yours,” I said, opening the door and making a sweeping gesture with my hand.

  Diamond walked over to the window and pressed her nose against it to look out at the darkness.

  “How very strange,” she murmured. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had glass between me and the world.” She threw the rucksack into a corner and sat down on the daybed, testing its springs, then jumped to her feet to pace, finishing at the window again, where she stopped and touched her fingertips against the panes.

  “Will you be okay?” I asked. I felt bad for her. Diamond reminded me of the animals I had seen in zoos, pacing the perimeters of their cages, staring out at the world with bewilderment in their eyes.

  Diamond turned around and forced a half smile. “Just throw me a blanket and I’ll be fine.”