David had stood still and listened to the elephant feeding. He could smell him as strongly as he had the night in the moonlight when he had worked up close to him and had seen his wonderful tusks. Then as he stood there it was silent and he could not smell the elephant. Then there had been a high squealing and smash ing and a shot by the .303 then the heavy rocking double report of his father's .4 50, then the smashing and crashing had gone on going steadily away and he had gone into the heavy growth and found Juma standing shaken and bleeding from his forehead all down over his face and his father white and angry.
"He went for Juma and knocked him over," his father had said. "Juma hit him in the head."
"Where did you hit him?"
"Where I fucking well could," his father had said. "Get on the fucking blood spoor."
There was plenty of blood. One stream as high as David's head that had squirted bright on trunks and leaves and vines and another much lower that was dark and foul with stomach content.
"Lung and gut shot," his father said. "We'll find him down or anchored—I hope the hell," he added.
They found him anchored, in such suffering and despair that he could no longer move. He had crashed through the heavy cover where he had been feeding and crossed a path of open forest and David and his father had run along the heavily splashed blood trail. Then the elephant had gone on into thick forest and David had seen him ahead standing gray and huge against the trunk of a tree. David could only see his stern and then his father moved ahead of him and he followed and they came alongside the elephant as though he was a ship and David saw the blood coming from his Ranks and running down his sides and then his father raised his rifle and fired and the elephant turned his head with the great tusks moving heavy and slow and looked at them and when his father fired the second barrel the elephant seemed to sway like a felled tree and came smashing down toward them. But he was not dead. He had been anchored and now he was down with his shoulder broken. He did not move but his eye was alive and looked at David. He had very long eyelashes and his eye was the most alive thing David had ever seen.
"Shoot him in the ear hole with the three oh three," his father said. "Go on."
"You shoot him," David had said.
Juma had come up limping and bloody, the skin of his fore head hanging down over his left eye, the bone of his nose showing and one ear torn and had taken the rifle from David without speaking and pushed the muzzle almost into the ear hole and fired twice jerking the bolt and driving it forward angrily. The eye of the elephant had opened wide on the first shot and then started to glaze and blood came out of the ear and ran in two bright streams down the wrinkled gray hide. It was a different colored blood and David had thought I must remember that and he had but it had never been of any use to him. Now all the
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dignity and majesty and all the beauty was gone from the elephant and he was a huge wrinkled pile.
"Well we got him, Davey, thanks to you," his father had said. "Now we'd better get a fire going so I can put Juma back together again. Come here you bloody Humpty Dumpty. Those tusks will keep."
Juma had come to him grinning bringing the tail of the elephant that had no hairs on it at all. They had made a dirty joke and then his father had begun to speak rapidly in Swahili:
How far to water? How far will you have to go to get people to get those tusks out of here? How are you, you worthless old pig fucker? What have you broken?
Then with the answers known his father had said, "You and I will go back to get the packs where we dropped them when we went in after him. Juma can get wood and have the fire ready. The medical kit is in my pack. We have to get the packs before it's dark. He won't infect. It's not like claw wounds. Let's go."
His father had known how he had felt about the elephant and that night and in the next few days he had tried if not to convert him to bring him back to the boy he had been before he had come to the knowledge that he hated elephant hunting. David had put no statement of his father's intention, which had never been stated, in the story but had only used the happenings, the disgusts, the events and feelings of the butchering, and the work of chopping out the tusks and of the rough surgery on Juma disguised by mockery and railery to keep the pain in contempt and reduce its stature since there were no drugs. The added responsibility David was given and the trust that was offered him and not accepted he had put in the story without pointing their significance. He had tried to make the elephant alive beneath the tree anchored in his final anguish and drowning in the blood that had flowed so many times before but always staunched and now was rising in him so he could not breathe, the great heart pumping it to drown him as he watched the man who came
to finish him. David had been so proud the elephant had scented Juma and charged him instantly. He would have killed Juma if his father had not fired into him so that he had thrown Juma into the trees with his trunk and charged on with the death in him, feeling it as only another wound until the blood welled up and he could not breathe against it. That evening as David had sat by the fire he had looked at Juma with his stitched up face and his broken ribs that he tried to breathe without and wondered if the elephant had recognized him when he had tried to kill him. He hoped he had. The elephant was his hero now as his father had been for a long time and he had thought, I did not believe he could do it when he was so old and tired. He would have killed Juma too. But he didn't look at me as though he wanted to kill me. He only looked sad the same way I felt. He visited his old friend on the day he died.
It was a very young boy's story, he knew, when he had finished it. He read it over and saw the gaps he must fill in to make it so that whoever read it would feel it was truly happening as it was read and he marked the gaps in the margin.
He remembered how the elephant lost all dignity as soon as his eye had ceased to be alive and how when his father and he had returned with the packs the elephant had already started to swell even in the cool evening. There was no more true elephant, only the gray wrinkled swelling dead body and the huge great mottled brown and yellow tusks that they had killed him for. The tusks were stained with the dried blood and he scraped some of it off with his thumbnail like a dried piece of sealing wax and put it in the pocket of his shirt. That was all he took from the elephant except the beginning of the knowledge of loneliness.
After the butchery his father tried to talk to him that night by the fire.
"He was a murderer you know, Davey," he had said. "Juma says nobody knows how many people he has killed."
"They were all trying to kill him weren't they?"
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"Naturally," his father had said, "with that pair of tusks."
"How could he be a murderer then?"
"Just as you like," his father had said. "I'm sorry you got so mixed up about him."
"I wish he'd killed Juma," David had said.
"I think that's carrying it a little far," his father said. "Juma's your friend you know."
"Not anymore.
"No need to tell him so."
"He knows it," David had said.
"I think you misjudge him," his father said and they had left it there.
Then when they were finally back safely with the tusks after all the things that had happened and the tusks were propped against the wall of the stick and mud house leaning there with their points touching, the tusks so tall and thick that no one could believe them even when they touched them and no one, not even his father, could reach to the top of the bend where they curved in for the points to meet, there when Juma and his father and he were heroes and Kibo was a hero's dog, and the men who had carried the tusks were heroes, already slightly drunk heroes and to be drunker, his father had said, "Do you want to make peace Davey?"
"All right," he said because he knew this was the start of the never telling that he had decided on.
"I'm so glad," his father said. "It's so much simpler and better." Then they sat on old men's stools under the shade of the great fig tree with the tusks against the wall of the hut and drank native beer from gourd cups that were brought by a young girl and her younger brother, no longer a detested nuisance but the servant of heroes, sitting in the dust by the heroic dog of a hero who held an old cockerel newly promoted to the standing of the heroes' favorite rooster. They sat there and drank beer while the big drum started and the Ngoma began to build.
He came out of the working room and he was happy and empty and proud and Marita was waiting for him on the terrace sitting in the sun of the bright early fall morning that he had not known existed. It was a perfect morning, still and cool. The sea below was a flat calm and across the bay was the white curve of Cannes with the dark mountains behind it.
"I love you very much," he said to the dark girl as she stood up. He put his arms around her and kissed her and she said, "You finished it."
"Sure," he said. "Why not?"
"I love you and I'm so proud," she said. They walked out and looked at the sea with their arms around each other.
"How are you girl?"
"I'm very well and very happy," Marita said. "Did you mean it about loving me or was it just the morning?"
"It was the morning," David said and kissed her again.
"Can I read the story?"
"It's too lovely a day."
"Can't I read it so I can feel like you do and not just happy because you're happy like I was your dog?"
He gave her the key and when she brought the notebooks and read the story at the bar David read it sitting beside her. He knew it was ill mannered and stupid. He had never done this before with anyone and it was against everything he believed about writing but he did not think of that except at the moment when he put his arm around the girl and looked at the writing on the lined paper. He could not help wanting to read it with her and he could not help sharing what he had never shared and what he had believed could not and should not be shared.
When she finished reading Marita put her arms around David and kissed him so hard that she drew blood from his lip. He looked at her and tasted his blood absentmindedly and smiled.
"I'm sorry David," she said. "Please forgive me. I'm so very happy and prouder than you are.
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"Is it all right?" he said. "Can you smell the shamba smell and the clean smell of hut inside and feel the smoothness of the old men chairs? It's really clean in the hut and the earth floor is swept."
"Of course it is. You had it in the other story. I can see the angle of the head of Kibo the heroic dog too. You were such a lovely hero. Did the blood make a stain in your pocket?"
"Yes. It softened when I sweated."
"Let's go to town and celebrate the day," Marita said. "There's a lot of things that we can do today."
David stopped at the bar and poured Haig Pinch and then cold Perrier into a glass and brought it with him to the room where he drank half of it and took a cold shower. Then he pulled on slacks and a shirt and put on alpargatas to go into town. He felt the story was good and felt even better about Marita. Neither had been diminished by the sharpening of perception he had now, and clarity had come with no sadness.
Catherine was doing whatever she was doing and would do whatever she would do. He looked out and felt the old happy carelessness. It was a day for flying actually. He wished there was a field where he could rent a plane and take Marita up and show her what you could do with a day like this. She might like it. But there isn't any field here. So forget that. It would be fun though. So would skiing. That's only two months away if you want it. Christ, it was good to finish today and have her there. Marita there with no damned jealousy of the work and have her know what you were reaching for and how far you went. She really knows and it's not faked. I do love her and you make a note of it, whiskey, and you witness it for me, Perrier old boy old Perrier, I have been faithful to you, Perrier, in my fucking fashion. It feels very good when you feel so good. It's a stupid feeling but it fits on this day so put it on.
"Come on girl," he said to Marita at the door of her room. "What's holding you up besides your beautiful legs?"
"I'm ready, David," she said. She had on a tight sweater and slacks and her face was shining. She brushed her dark hair and looked at him.
"It's wonderful when you're so gay.
"It's such a good day," he said. "And we're so lucky."
"Do you think so?" she said as they walked to the car. "Do you think we're really lucky?"
"Yes," he said. "I think it changed this morning or maybe in the night."
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Chapter Twenty-five
CATHERINE's CAR was in the driveway of the hotel when they drove up. It was parked on the right side of the gravelled approach. David stopped the Isotta behind it and he and Marita got out and walked down the drive past the small, low empty blue car and onto the flagstones of the walk without speaking.
They passed David's room with the locked door and the open windows and Marita stopped outside of her door and said, "Good bye."
"What are you doing this afternoon?" he asked.
"I don't know," she said. "I'll be here."
He walked on down to the patio of the hotel and went in the main door. Catherine was sitting at the bar reading the Paris Herald with a glass and half a bottle of wine beside her on the bar. She looked up at him.
"What brought you back?" she asked.
"VVe had lunch in town and came on up," David said.
"How is your whore?"
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"I haven't one yet."
"I mean the one you write the stories for."
"Oh. The stories.
"Yes. The stories. The dreary dismal little stories about your adolescence with your bogus drunken father."
