The Child's Elephant (26 page)

All day he avoided her. He chopped wood for the cook-fire with little La. He made a good companion, Bat thought: he didn’t ask any questions. He didn’t speak.

In the evening Gulu wandered over. He had been out all day working on the Leopard’s jeep. His shirt, face and hands were covered with grease.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked softly.

Bat turned away. ‘Nothing,’ he answered. He meant it. Without hope there is nothing, he thought. Gulu knew that; the army had taught him . . . and now Bat belonged to the army as surely as Gulu did. Gulu was a part of it because he was a mechanic; Bat they wanted because he could lead them to elephants.

Again that night he couldn’t sleep. As soon as he closed his eyes he would see the huge creatures: a long quiet line swaying softly through the trees, the light falling in dapples of shining on their skin. He was standing by the path. As each of them passed him, it fixed him with a look of sad reproach. He couldn’t bear it. He forced his eyes open and stared emptily out into the black.

The next day, despite his tiredness, he threw himself into his drill. He ran, jumped and crawled with a furious energy. If anyone had tried to stop him, he would have attacked. He wanted to drive every thought of the elephants from his head. He could live only in the moment. What else was there left? And yet, still, at the fringes of his mind, the memories were lurking. Wherever he was hiding, they came creeping to find him; whenever he was resting, they came slinking up beside him and he would have to get up again. All day he fled.

In the evening, when he saw Gulu again crossing the compound towards him, he rose quickly to his feet and, for the first time since he had been brought to the camp, he dashed over to join in a football game. At least that way the boy couldn’t nag him with questions, he thought, as he shoved through the throng. Gulu never played ball. It hurt his broken foot. Scuffling and tussling, zigzagging and darting, Bat ran so hard that for a
while he managed even to dodge his own thoughts.

‘Here, over here!’ he shouted out to Lobo as the boy looked about for someone to take his pass. Bat scored a goal from the shot.

Lobo grinned. He put an arm round Bat’s shoulder as they came off the pitch. ‘Come with me,’ he said. And Bat did as he said. Why not? he thought. Why not just accept things . . . obey orders . . . there was no alternative.

‘You’re good.’ Lobo was flattering. ‘Why didn’t we know it before? You can be on my team. We’re on the same side now. After all’ – he smiled – ‘we both come from the same village.’ He drew Bat closer towards him and together they went inside Lobo’s hut.

Pulling out a bottle, Lobo took a long gulp himself and then passed it over. Bat tipped it to his lips. It burned the back of his throat. He spluttered and coughed. Tears sprang to his eyes, but he took another sip, and then another, and then he sat down on a mat. The alcohol soaked through his mind like palm oil poured onto a piping hot yam.

He began to feel giddy. The walls were swirling about. He could hear his own voice talking, but it sounded a long way off. Raising a hand, he held it up in front of him. It looked like some peculiar creature. He wriggled the fingers about. They felt no more a part of him than some half-squashed creature still writhing. The whole world had receded to the end of a long tunnel. What did he care for those shadows that flickered against the far distant light? He kept on reaching for the bottle. He understood now why the soldiers drank. Lobo smiled and nodded. ‘It puts fire in your belly,’ he said, laughing.

Bat was violently sick on his way back to bed. Doubling over at the edge of the compound, he retched into the leaves. A guard watched him indifferently; the muzzle of his gun raised. Bat looked up at the trees. They were reeling and swaying; but beyond them he could see the face of a new moon. It was so very bright. It stared into his dizzy head. He shuddered. The gods were looking down. They had seen him. They knew what he had done. But then what did they care, he thought angrily, as he struggled back to his feet. What did they care about the lives of the children in that compound, all fighting and suffering and dying and giving up?

He stood swaying a moment as he planned his next move. Like a chameleon, he thought, weaving from side to side as if about to make some tremendous leap but in the end managing only a small forwards waddle. He pitched over. Suddenly, everything seemed tremendously funny. He convulsed in mad giggles. The noise fell about him like a clattering pot.

Gulu was waiting for him as he stumbled to his mat. He could see the boy’s eyes glittering in the bright moonlight; but Bat didn’t speak. He lowered himself unsteadily and stretched out. Everything was swirling around him. He scratched at his neck where a mosquito had bitten him. Another was wailing by his ear. He slapped at the air, hoping that he had killed it, then fell straight from the brink of consciousness into a deep, plumbless slumber. There were no dreams; only black. He woke just as abruptly in the thinning darkness before dawn. The dew was cold on his skin. He was shivering on the outside, but inside he burned hot. A headache
pounded his skull. He rose unsteadily to his feet. The light sliced like spear grass. He was swaying as he stood in line at morning drill. He saw the commander watching him as he stumbled, noticing his slowness where the day before he had been swift.

Lobo was watching him too, and also Muka. Why was everyone staring at him? Bat felt suddenly irritable. He shrank back and tried to pretend that everything was normal but he could feel his stomach churning. The bile rose in his throat. He dropped his head in shame. And then, falling to his knees, he was vomiting again.

‘The only cure is another drink,’ persuaded Lobo when the day’s work was done. He seemed almost gentle. ‘It’s awful the first time,’ he cajoled. ‘But it gets better after that.’

Bat followed him into his hut.

‘You see, life in the army is not so bad,’ Lobo told him. ‘At least it’s better than the village . . . and less boring,’ he said. ‘Who wants to spend all day digging holes for cassava? Why hack with a hoe when you can get what you need with a knife?’ He laughed and clapped Bat so hard on the shoulder that the boy bit his tongue. ‘Only joking,’ he cried. ‘But you’ve got to admit it. Life in the army does have something to offer. I mean, look at me – in the village people treated me like I didn’t matter, but here I’m a sergeant already . . . I have respect, and soon I’ll be promoted. The Diviner told me that. I’ve met him, you know.’ Lobo puffed out his chest. ‘The Diviner’s not like you think. People in the villages blame everything bad on him . . . but he’s not a bad person.’ Lobo searched Bat’s face for a sign of assent. ‘He has
powers, you know.’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I saw him conjure up a rainbow in the middle of his camp. Some of the soldiers were frightened. They started to run . . . but not me. I’m not scared of the spirits.’

The boy took another long pull at the bottle and then, sliding his arm around Bat’s shoulder, leaned close. ‘You can meet the Diviner too. I can fix it,’ he hissed. ‘I can fix it, if you want, as soon as things get better . . . as soon as these troubles have passed. Right now everything is a bit difficult – it’s the government soldiers.’ Lobo spilled his confidences into Bat’s ear. ‘The government is—’

A shadow fell suddenly upon them. The Leopard was standing in the doorway. His head was so high that it brushed the palm-frond roof. Neither boy could read his face. The sun was behind him. But Lobo shrank from the scowl of fury in his voice. ‘The child’s drunk,’ he growled. ‘What the hell are you up to? I don’t want a dithering fool. I need an alert tracker.’

Snatching his arm from Bat’s shoulder, Lobo lumbered to his feet. ‘He asked me to give it to him, sir. He said that he wanted—’

‘Go!’ the Leopard barked. ‘This boy’s got a job to do. I want him sharp as a dog, not lolling about like some savannah baboon.’ He kicked out at Lobo with a booted foot and the boy, flat to the wall like a spider, slipped quickly past him and scuttled off.

The Leopard glowered at Bat. Then, picking up the bottle, he turned on his heel and strode off.

Bat didn’t move. He didn’t feel scared or worried or guilty or nervous. He didn’t feel anything . . . and yet, to feel nothing, he mused blearily, was one of the strongest
feelings that there is. He stared at the ground. Was this, he wondered, what it was like to be dead?

Across the compound, he could see the child soldiers gathering around the cook-fire; the older ones barging and jostling their way through to the front. They were craning to peer into the pot of simmering millet porridge which, now that every scrap of yesterday’s antelope had been finished, the bones cracked for their marrow, the hide scraped for its fat, was all the children had to eat. But Bat didn’t get up. He was beyond hunger now. He dropped his head to his knees and gazed dully at the ground between his feet. An ant was hauling a speck of food across its dusty expanses. He put out a finger and blocked its course. The ant changed direction and looped its way around him. Bat blocked it a second time. Once more the little creature turned. Again and again Bat set down his obstacle; again and again the ant resumed its course. It was such a tiny thing, the boy thought, and yet it had so much resolution. In a battle of wills it would always win. Somewhere behind him he could hear the noise of a radio. It fizzled as busily as the blankness that fizzled inside in his head.

We are launching a new offensive
. The announcement from the radio snagged his attention.

The rebel army is a parasite
, a deep voice was booming. Then the radio crackled and spat. Bat strained his ears now to hear the government broadcast, but only a few tattered fragments drifted across . . .
a troublesome jigger lodged under our skin
. . .
we will impale it
. . .
pull it out of our land. Our soldiers are—

The transistor was abruptly switched off. A few
moments later the Leopard stormed out of his hut. There was a thunderous frown on his face. He called the commander over. Bat watched them as they conferred. The Leopard paced back and forth, back and forth, restless as a caged animal, his hands clasped behind him. The commander just stood, his jaw muscles gripped.

Suddenly the commander whipped round. ‘What are you hanging around for?’ he screamed at the children. ‘We don’t feed you here so that you can just laze about. This army is alert. It’s strong. It’s all-powerful! It will defeat those government hirelings. It will grind them into dust.’

His cries rang around the heads of the soldiers as they scrambled to attention. Then, swallowed up by the forest, they slowly faded and died, leaving nothing but a huddle of thin children standing bewildered in a clearing and a mood of anxiety hanging in the air.

‘Elephants! Elephants!’

It was the Goat who was shouting the next morning, arms waving in excitement as he arrived in the camp. He must have walked all through the night to get back at this hour. But the hungry children who, on seeing his arrival, had looked up from the breakfast fire and momentarily brightened, soon let their heads again fall. They were disappointed. For days they had been waiting for the return of his raiding squad. They had been dreaming of maize cobs and chickens and yam roots. But now here he was back from the forests empty-handed; carrying nothing with him but a piece of news.

Bat’s heart gave a great jolt. It shook him out of his torpor. All the confusions created by drinking were suddenly cleared. His mind felt very sharp, very alert,
very still. He rose quickly to his feet. Every nerve-end was trilling. Every muscle was steeled.

The Leopard, roused from his shelter on the far side of the clearing, was also now emerging. The commander, still barefoot, hurried along behind. Ears straining, Bat crept up as close as he dared.

‘When we got near the village,’ the Goat was saying, ‘we found the government army. Soldiers were hanging off a jeep, thick as bats on fruit trees. They had automatic rifles and belts full of bullets . . . there were too many for us, so we ran. But we didn’t take the normal path. We were worried they would follow . . . we didn’t want to risk leading them back to the camp.’

The commander grunted his approval. But the Leopard remained silent, his thin lips clamped firmly shut.

‘We followed the course of the dry river that runs down the ravine,’ the boy was continuing, ‘and it was then that we saw them . . . a whole herd . . . with vast tusks,’ he said, stretching out his arms as far as they could reach. ‘I could have shot one,’ he boasted, brandishing his old bolt-action rifle, ‘but I was worried that the government soldiers might hear it. I turned to check about me; and when I looked back, all the elephants had disappeared.’

‘How far away?’

‘Less than half a day’s walk.’

The Leopard pivoted on the heel of his boot, only to find that Bat was already there. ‘Get ready,’ he barked, and strode back to his hut, turning only to snap a brisk order at Lobo. ‘Give him some food!’

Bat hunched over a calabash of cold rice but he
couldn’t eat. There was a knot in his stomach that took up all the room. The moment had come; the moment that he most dreaded. Only a few days earlier he had thought he had given up all hope, but all the while, he now realized, it had still been smouldering inside him, like an ember still glowing beneath the ashes of the fire. Why did people always tell you that hope was a good thing? he wondered. It wasn’t. Gulu, all along, had been right. Hope was cruel: it was cruel as a fish hook. Just when you imagined you had finally got free of it, there it was, lodged inside you, yanking you back again.