Part 10 (2/2)

Every new nugget of information about the impending arrival made my eyes go wider and wider.

'She can tightrope-walk? She's ten foot tall and she can tightrope-walk?'

Miss Strange knocked back her drink and gave half a smile. I was sitting on the good side of her face and it looked almost nice, but I was wrong. It was one of those grown-up, fed-up-but-trying-to-be-patient smiles. 'Yes, our Artemesia is the Parading Pachyderm. If we're very lucky she will arrive with her own tutu.'

'Maybe we should put a tightrope up so she feels at home when she comes. Do you think she might show us? I mean, I've never seen...' I never finished my hesitant suggestion.

Miss Strange banged her hands together abruptly. 'Is it just me or does anyone else realize that we have a great deal to do? For G.o.d's sake. I am breaking my back to give this G.o.dforsaken creature a home and all we talk about is tightropes and boredom? Who cares? What else are you going to give it? A TV?'

'Can they watch TV?' I was probably not being helpful. 'Do animals get bored?'

Miss Strange snapped out her answer. She was getting irritable. 'Bored? You'll be asking if they fall in love next. They are not stupid like us. Animals do everything for a reason. They mate to reproduce. To increase the genetic stock. They don't get bored and they don't get sentimental. Isn't that right, Helen?'

Miss Strange sounded like Harry. I didn't like it. Pinned for an answer, Helen mumbled, 'I don't think we should anthropomorphize animals.'

Cosmos smiled at Helen. 'We'd be lucky if we could do it with you.'

'You didn't used to feel like that,' said Sweetheart, looking straight at Miss Strange. Miss Strange looked at me and picked up her shovel. She started digging with renewed energy.

'What's anthropo...?' I was having trouble following.

'Don't make animals more important than people,' Miss Strange replied as she attacked the earth. 'A brown bear may be nice to look at but it's never going to do anything useful. It is not going to compose Beethoven's Ninth.'

Sweetheart stared at Miss Strange. 'Neither are you.'

Everyone was getting a little warm. 'Oh come on, Sweetheart, you'll be having the animals go to church on Sunday next. What do you say, Sweetheart? Will there be bugs in heaven?'

Cosmos interrupted. 'Even the humblest can aspire to enlightenment.'

Miss Strange shot back at her, 'Yeah, and any a.s.shole with money can become President.'

'Buddha believed anyone can make the quest for enlightenment. Anyone can find nirvana - absolute truth.'

'And what is that?' demanded Miss Strange.

'Buddha doesn't say.'

'How mean of him.'

'Because it escapes definition.'

'That's a neat trick.'

Sweetheart was quietly adamant. 'You only need Jesus.' 'I think believing in Jesus is like being invited to a fancy-dress party,' said Helen. Everyone looked at her. 'Well, it's nothing but worry. You know, what if you go dressed as Marie Antoinette and no one else bothered? They just turned up in shorts. Before the party no one knows, and with Jesus lots of people have gone off to the party but no one has ever come back and told you what you should wear. If you see what I mean.'

It was the longest speech I had ever heard her say with so many people present. Sweetheart nodded her head.

'I don't know about all that. I just know that Jesus holds me up.'

I looked at the old woman. I knew it was one of Harry's corsets which held her up, but in that moment I wanted to believe. I wanted Jesus to be my friend mainly because I couldn't bear for Sweetheart to be disappointed.

'And don't start with me about me being related to Sappho and all that.' The orang looked at Sweetheart and pa.s.sed her a cookie. Certainly they didn't have a family resemblance.

'You believe what you like. I don't believe in any of it.' Miss Strange sweated but never stopped working. She seemed angry now, the way grown-ups can suddenly turn when you don't expect it.

'Judaism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam - ridiculous. All that divine inspiration transmitted from a male power to males for their benefit. Five patriarchal systems providing clarity, certainty, a synthesized worldview. They're just soap powders. Different ways of was.h.i.+ng yourself whiter than white with different advertising slogans. Islam - There is no G.o.d but G.o.d.'

Sweetheart shook her head. 'Don't be so bitter.' But Miss Strange was on a roll.

'And Jehovah said to Jesus, ”I am the Lord your G.o.d and thou shalt have none other G.o.ds before me.” Why did he say that if he is the only G.o.d? Was there compet.i.tion?

Why did he need to say it? Do you think other G.o.ds were setting up shop? I tell you, if I die I ain't going to heaven. It'll be some a.s.shole place run by a bunch of Apostles. G.o.dd.a.m.n men in beards who abandoned their families, sitting arguing and talking about fis.h.i.+ng.'

Cosmos came into the discussion from left field. 'The Sumerians wors.h.i.+pped the Great G.o.ddess, Inanna. She had a lap of honey, a v.u.l.v.a like a boat of heaven and bounty poured forth from her womb so generously that every lettuce in the land was to be honoured as the Lady's pubic hair.'

Sweetheart put down her sandwich. The mention of lettuce had been too much. I didn't understand a lot of the conversation but I was so glad to be there. I felt grown-up, valued, important. We were talking about important things. Cosmos went back to digging while Helen sat down with yet another book. She had raided the library in the big house. When we weren't working in the field Helen and I spent a lot of time in the library. There was every kind of animal book you could imagine. We had found a whole stack about elephants. I think by then I was building a strange image of the arriving creature. I knew that she would be big, so big that fence posts couldn't hold her back, that she could tightrope-walk and that she would never forget anything. Helen wasn't really helping. She read out quietly from an ancient tome: ”'1844 ... Charles Knight ... The surgeon Sir Everard Home, who carried out an exhaustive anatomical examination of the elephant's ear, maintained that its structure precluded the animal from having any appreciation of music.

I nodded, not sure what to make of it. 'I guess that's TV out.'

'”Elephant herds consist of up to four generations of females and young, immature males. The herd has a dominance hierarchy based on age, with knowledge pa.s.sing from mother to child to grandchild.”'

'She'll probably remember.' Cosmos called out to Miss Strange. 'You know, Artemesia. Being here, I mean. She might even remember you. It's true about their memories. Doesn't it say in that book, Helen?'

'They never forget. A calf was once knocked over by a train in a.s.sam. The mother elephant waited until the train came the next day and then she put her weight against it and derailed it.'

'Can't you find something useful in there?' snapped Miss Strange. 'We're not having a herd, I'm not going to play her music and she ain't playing on the train tracks.'

Helen sucked hard on her lip and turned the page. 'The average bull consumes one hundred twenty-five pounds of hay per day.'

'Great. Something else we hadn't thought of.' Miss Strange heaved another post from the ground. For her age she was remarkably strong. From the left side she looked incredibly powerful and perfect.

Perry was running around tracing circles in the dust with a twig. He tripped over nothing at all and crashed to the ground, grazing his knee. Sweetheart scooped him up and held him close. She rocked her great-grandson while Cosmos and Miss Strange dug, Helen read and I tried to be helpful. We were a strange group. It was very hot and we all looked terrible. I was fairly sure that Mother would feel we were not making the most of ourselves. Not that we had time. There were problems to deal with.

A dog began attacking some of the smaller creatures at night. There were two geese who lived at Manitou Manor. A gander called Troilus and his mate Cressida. Two nights after we started work on the elephant run, Cressida got savaged by the unknown dog. In the morning we found Troilus standing silently beside her partly eaten body. Troilus was inconsolable. He hunched his body and hung his head. His eyes looked sunken and he seemed to cry pain and distress. It made Cosmos cry but Miss Strange shrugged.

'Zoo's so d.a.m.n good, animals are trying to get in,' she said. She said she would call Joey to get the dog but I don't think it made the goose feel better. It just hung around looking terrible, which didn't exactly help. When you are busy what you don't need is a depressed bird getting in the way all the time. Once the fencing was clear the next difficulty loomed at us. Something had to take the place of the old wood and we were running out of time. Building a fence strong enough for an elephant was no mean feat. This was a creature who could use her trunk like a forklift truck. A mammal with the strength of fifty men. One evening I rode home on my bike past the big house. I loved to watch the sun turn it golden in the evening light. Down by the river, the railway track trudged its useless miles along the bank and across the water. Miles and miles of metal lying silent. I was thinking about tightrope-walking so I got off my trusty steed and had a go on the track. Rusty with disuse, it still did not flinch when I bounced up and down on it doing my circus-elephant impression. The old track was strong and usable. I just wasn't sure how.

On my way back I stopped at the A&P. Mother had asked me to get her more pecans. She never asked me why I took all day doing it. It was a good excuse to stop at the store. We were going to need a heck of a lot of fruit at the zoo when Artemesia came and I figured Alfonso would help. When I came round the apple display I saw that Harry was talking to him. Harry was holding a roll of the Close the Zoo posters and he was almost jabbing them at Alfonso.

'I need your support here, Alfonso.'

Alfonso picked up an apple to s.h.i.+ne as if his life depended on it. 'Look, Harry, I know you want the stadium and I've always voted for you before. You're a good man and I know you've had troubles...'

'Alfonso?' I interrupted. I couldn't bear it if he took a poster. I had to talk to him first. He looked relieved. A man at home with avocados and oranges did not want to dabble in politics.

'h.e.l.lo, Dorothy, come for your pecans? Beautiful thing, the pecan. Member of the walnut family and native to these United States. The ones we have in today are from Indiana and...'

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