Philosophy Made Simple (25 page)

“Elephants have always been important in my whole life, since I was a little girl, and my grandfather have elephants.”

“But you married and moved to the city?”

“That’s true. Yes. For three years. I am twenty-nine and TJ is only three when my husband is killed.”

“What was it like after living out in the country?”

“Oh, it is very nice in Guwahati. There are so many things to see. And my husband was a lovely man. From Punjab. There are no elephants in Punjab.” She laughed. “My grandfather give us a lovely house near the Fancy Bazaar, and we are very happy in Guwahati. We have a baby and want to have another baby. Then my husband is killed in an accident at refinery, and I take my son
and go back to my home. By this time my father have his own generator for electricity and we have running water. My grandfather is still alive and my mother is needing help to take care of him, and my father is needing help with tea garden. I understand the elephants. I know all the mahouts, Punchi and Mohammed and Ali. There’s a special tribe where the men become mahouts.

“My father is wanting to expand, to anticipate independence. He is wanting to buy more land, two thousand hectares of new land that has never been planted, but he knows it has good tea soil. The British people are leaving. We clear two thousand hectares with just elephants. My grandfather is supervising all the clearing.”

“And now you have just the one?”

“Just the one, yes—Champaa, and she is very old. My grandfather, long ago, is having four at one time. They work very hard,
but they enjoy life too. He is operating a kind of postal office for the British tea planters. Only elephants can go through when the rains come. He is like a king.”

“What do you do with Champaa?”

“We still do some logging, and I rent her out to nearby towns and villages for weddings and festivals, like a temple elephant,
and for clearing land sometimes.” She looked up and shaded her eyes. “My brother is watching us,” she said.

“Then we’d better be careful,” Rudy said.

“Oh, I do not think my brother is caring,” she said, laughing. She waved at her brother and then pushed off against the steep bank. Rudy followed her.

Norma Jean was reluctant to leave the river, but Nandini spoke to her firmly and she climbed up the bank and everyone else followed. Rudy went with Nandini, who had wrapped her wet sari
around her, to get Norma Jean settled in her stall. Siva went up to the house with Molly and TJ. Nandini was starting to shiver. Rudy poured some of the Russians vodka into a paper cup and handed it to her before pouring a cup for himself.

“You should put on some dry clothes,” Rudy said.

“I will in a moment, please.”

Norma Jean kept shifting around, reaching out to touch Nandini’s hair with her trunk. She was starting to get hungry, and Rudy was becoming increasingly anxious about the Russian.

“Elephants are very fond of alcohol, you know,” Nandini said.

“I didn’t know that.”

“They raid the villages,” she said, “if they are brewing beer. And when my grandfathers favorite elephant is dying, Khush,
we give him bottles of Old Monk rum, and we mix his oats and
gur
with rum too.”

“What’s
gur?”
Rudy asked.

“I don’t know the English word. Maybe molasses.”

They walked up to the house, sipping from their paper cups.

Molly and Siva and TJ were sitting at a card table on the veranda, working on a jigsaw puzzle Molly had brought from India.

Siva rose to greet them, holding a glass of red wine. He raised his glass in a mock toast. Rudy and Nandini raised their cups.
Siva said something in Hindi that made Nandini blush, but she didn’t explain what her brother had said.

Rudy served leftovers for supper. The Russian had not returned yet, and Rudy was worried.

“Where does his sister live?” Siva asked.

“Somewhere in Mexico.”

“You don’t know where?”

“No. It can’t be too far, because he’s never been gone more than one night before.”

“That narrows it down some.”

“But not a lot.”

“I think I’ll drive over to his place,” Rudy said, hoping that Siva would offer to join him, which he did.

The weather was hot but not unbearable. They drove with the windows down in the pickup. There was no sign of the Russian’s truck, and the little house he rented from Medardo was dark. Rudy caught a glimpse, in the headlights, of something white taped to the door, and he knew what it was without getting any closer. It was a letter addressed to him, and he didn’t have to open it to know what it said. They sat in the pickup and Rudy turned on the cab light. Siva read the letter aloud: “Dear Rudy, I am very sorry to leave you without saying good-bye, but I have too many years to be making repairs on my old barn.
I leave my oldest and best friend in your care because I know she love you, and I know you take good care of her. I leave many paintings in the barn for you to buy food for Norma Jean.”

It was signed, “Your friend, Vasily Vsevolodovich Czutzimir.”

Rudy was stunned. His chest constricted. He had trouble breathing. He took a nitroglycerin tablet out of the little bottle in his shirt pocket and swallowed it without water. The taste was bitter.

“Do you want to look in the barn?” Siva asked.

Rudy couldn’t talk. He could only shake his head. He handed Siva the keys to the pickup and they traded places so Siva could drive. Rudy tried to breathe deeply on the way home. Siva parked the truck in the drive.

“I need to be alone for a while,” Rudy said. “You go on up to the house.” Siva nodded.

Rudy sat in the barn with Norma Jean for a few minutes and
then opened the door of her stall and started shoveling her big turds into the wheelbarrow. About fifteen minutes later Nandini joined him. “My brother is telling me you are upset because this Russian is going away.”

It was dark in the barn, but he could see her standing in the doorway. She was still wearing TJ’s University of Michigan baseball cap. He could make out the gold letters. She walked to the door of the stall and put her hand on Norma Jeans trunk.

“One thing is clear for Norma Jean,” Nandini said. “She is excellently disposed, all good things an elephant can be: kind,
friendly big-hearted, barrel-shaped, very fragrant, like sandalwood. And I can see that this Russian he is taking good care of her. And she is very smart too. You see how she lays down all her
leed
in one corner to make it easy to clean up after her.’

“Very smart,” Rudy said, dumping another shovelful of turds into a wheelbarrow. “The Russian sells these to a local citrus grower for fertilizer,” he said. “I’m thinking they might be good for avocados too. I’ve started a pile in the northeast corner of the lower grove.”

Nandini laughed. “You see how she listens to us now?” Norma Jean, her head cocked to one side, flapped an ear and began to massage Rudy’s shoulder with her trunk while Nandini poked around in her mouth. Nandini talked to her all the while, telling her to please hold her trunk still.

Rudy turned on the lights.

“She has good strong teeth,” Nandini said, “and you see how pink her tongue is, no black spots, and good strong toenails,
just the right length on all eighteen toes.” Rudy looked at her feet. He hadn’t counted her toes before. She had five on her front feet, four on her back. “And she is very fond of you,” Nandini went on. “I am thinking more than just fond of you. She loves you. Is very unusual. I think it is because she is saving your life.”

“I haven’t forgotten that,” Rudy said. “But I can’t take care of an elephant. If the Russian doesn’t change his mind and come back by tomorrow, I’m going to call the zoo in Brownsville.”

“I don’t think Norma Jean is going to be happy in a zoo, Mr. Rudy.” She shook her head. “And I am thinking that you might consider about this in a different way. I am thinking it is a stroke of maximum good fortune for you if this Russian does not come back.”

“Looking after hers a full-time job,” Rudy said. “It was one thing to have her around for a few weeks, but now the harvest is coming up.”

“She can help you pick your avocados. This is clearly a
shubhkaal
for you, an auspicious time.”

“Of course,” Rudy said, “and I suppose she can pull the wagon when this old tractor gives out.”

“All the tea gardens,” Nandini said, “used to have elephants instead of tractors.”

The tractor, an old Case 500 diesel that needed a new clutch, was parked in the back corner of the barn, next to the door that opened onto the paddock. Rudy needed this tractor to get him through his first season, because he couldn’t afford a new one. But replacing it with an elephant?

“You remember how I am explaining to you about Lord Ganesh,” Nandini went on, “our elephant-headed god. There is also Rina Vimochaka Ganapathi, who aids people who are in debt. And Durga Ganapathi, who helps us through in our difficulties. This form has eight hands with
ankusha,
tusk,
ak-shamaala,
arrow, bow,
kalpalatha, jambhuphala,
and
paasha
respectively in each hand. This form of Ganapathi is adorned in red cloth. I think Durga Ganapathi will come to your aid in this time.”

“He’s got his work cut out for him.”

He heard a car in the driveway and thought for a moment that the Russian had come back after all. But when he went to the door he saw it was Father Russell’s Pontiac. Rudy watched without saying anything as the priest got out of the car and walked up to the house.

“Now I am showing you something you must learn very soon,” Nandini said. “There are four ways to mount an elephant, but this is the way you must learn, so you will be more expert even than your expert daughter. This is such a way that is most comfortable for the elephant.”

“My expert daughter didn’t do so well the last time we went for a ride,” Rudy said. “And I made a fool of myself.”

“It requires you to have more experiences, but you have to start at some time. You don’t just drive a car once and then they give you your driving permission. Now please remove your shoes and stockings.”

Rudy took off his shoes and socks.

Nandini looped the tow rope around Norma Jean’s neck and said something to her, and she lowered her trunk. Nandini placed her bare foot on the center of the trunk and took hold of Norma Jean’s ears, and Norma Jean hoisted her up and over her head and Nandini swung one leg over the elephants back.

“You see how I am doing this, Mr. Rudy?”

“It happened too fast.”

“Maybe we try something simpler the first time.”

“That’s a good idea.”

“Utha, utha,”
she said, and Norma Jean raised her front leg. “Take hold of her ear and step up on her leg. It is like an elevator for you.”

Rudy grasped Norma Jean’s left ear and stepped up on her raised knee, and Norma Jean lifted him up so he could scramble over her head and onto her back.

“Shouldn’t you be in front?” he said to Nandini.

“I sit in back seat,” she said, “for your first driving lesson.”

Rudy touched his bottle of nitroglycerin pills, but he’d already taken one pill that evening.

“Keep your back straight,” Nandini said.

It seemed to Rudy that Norma Jean was vibrating with excitement, but it might have been his own nervousness.

“Flick your toes under her ears,” Nandini said.

Rudy flicked his toes, but Norma Jean didn’t move.

“Harder.”

Rudy flicked harder, and this time the elephant started to move forward, out of her stall, like a great ship moving away from the pier. They both had to duck as they left the barn.

“Keep flicking your toes.”

“It hurts.”

“You’ll have to become accustomed to it.”

“Her ears are rough.”

It was dark, but there was enough moonlight to find their way around Father Russell’s Pontiac. Rudy could hear voices laughing on the veranda. Nandini was hanging on to him, holding on to his upper arms with her hands.

“Push with your left foot,” she said. “Put your heel right on her head where you feel it is soft. Push hard.”

Rudy pushed, and Norma Jean veered slowly to the left, up the tractor path and into the upper grove.