The baby
elephant had lost its mother.
He felt
this keenly, and truly whole mothers are not lost every day. He did
not think how it happened, he only remembered that she used to be there—that
her flank was soft and smelled like her, that her milk was warm and
comforting, that her voice was earthy and reassuring—that all of
her had been nice, because it had been her—and that all of her
was gone now. The world seemed strange, and not the same world he had
grown up in at all: it was bare, and covered over with noises and shapes
that would not conform to his mind. He was confused: the only shape
he would have been certain about was the shape that was not there: the
only sound he could be sure of was missing. His tummy was empty, but
there was an emptier place that hurt more, and that was why he bellowed.
At the
same time, he was stuck in a muddy incline. He might have gone out into
the falling darkness, into the dark shade of the trees and the scratchy
closeness of the long grasses and felt some relief in the covering of
night: but this way it just isolated him more from the covering he might
have had.
He lifted
up his trunk and wept.
Among
the strange noises he began to be aware of something that had a distinct
familiarity. He listened more closely and then, a split second before
he knew what it was, something in his throat leaped up and he bellowed
louder. A band of elephants! It was not joy, but a panicky resemblance
that leapt into his throat, and gave strength to his bellows. The elephants
could not help but hear those bellows, and without hesitation, but without
hurry, they tended their thudding steps toward the incline.
And there
they were suddenly, mid-bellow. He blinked. They leaned over and extended
their trunks, and with a gulping sob he lifted his little trunk up to
them. The trunks did not quite meet. A few minutes passed while the
elephants carefully maneuvered their front legs down and down, until
they wrapped their trunks around the baby. His skin heaved a little
at their touch, and his cry started, but it was directed at these strong
shapes he knew, and the cry itself was a comfort because of that.
The strong
shapes heaved and hauled at the baby as its cry pulled and tugged at
their ears. They were very aware of that tug, and they were even more
responsive to it because of the growing constraint of the night. The
urgency to get the baby out was made more urgent by the urgency to move
on before nightfall: but as the minutes passed, the darkness that clamored
at their eyes grew more insistent than the clamor in their ears, and
the urgency of the darkness suddenly sprang out and overshadowed all
other urgencies. With a single will, the elephants turned away from
the baby. They did not look back, but thudded slowly off. Without hesitation
and without hurry, they thudded away. They were reconciled to harsh
circumstance and necessary action; and as their great forms receded
they embodied this greatness of their wisdom: that not to be reconciled
was to add to the waste.
But the
embodiment was lost on the baby elephant.
Hope springs
eternal in more than the human breast, and hope deferred makes more
than the human heart sick. The bellowings were now out of this sickness—almost
a madness of despair, of hurting hope that would not die, that had been
crushed and beaten and lay gasping, taunted, stabbed, but that would
not die and become insensible. It would keep gasping, and go on being
pierced through with sorrows.
And then
out of the night noises rose a sound that in its very strangeness was
recognizable. It was the cry that should be shuddered at: and the baby
elephant shuddered at it. He did not know what caused it, but he knew
what it meant: Fear!
And he
was afraid.
The shapes
of the darkness now seemed to circle about him with unnatural hunches
and hideously disproportioned heads. He moved his feet frantically in
the muddy sludge, and fear sucked at him as the sludge sucked at his
feet. He was stuck in a steep terror: he could do nothing, but even
less could he accept that. Fear and despair trumpeted in his mind, blasted
away all consciousness but their own blasts: and when he blasted them
out through his trunk, his cry was the embodiment of anguish.
This embodiment
was not lost on the hyenas.
They circled
closer: and their laughter lurked in the air. It was as unnatural as
their physique—frigid where it should have been fluid: limp where
it should have been firm: hunched over itself, lurching its way through
the other harmonies of the night. It did not proceed from joy, or even
a desire for joy, but from a cavity. It was the laughter of nothing,
and it jarred against all that was.
Behind
the snickers, there was another rustling, and though the baby elephant
could no longer distinguish sounds, the air must have been stirred with
it: and the hope that lay stabbed and gasping must have felt the air
stir. With a sudden renewal of energy, the baby wrestled its legs through
the mud and trumpeted up into the sky, without reason and without doubt.
The sound did not jar against the night: the night wind took it up and
carried it along, for it is the most natural cry in the world: the cry
of the baby, lusty and confident—a cry of faith.
And it
was not lost on the band of elephants.
The thuds
that broke the hideous shadows apart were not now slow and ponderous:
they rumbled forth like thunder: the shadows they attended advanced
like billows of the sea. It was the sound of might, coming to the aid
of the baby elephant. The alien laughter fled away.
The baby
elephant had managed to loosen himself enough in his frenzy of fear
that the elephants were able to dislodge him, and pull him up, up into
their warm midst. He nestled into their sturdy legs and gasped out broken
sobs of relief. They lay their trunks over him gently, consoling him,
and somehow in the middle of being consoled and sobbing brokenly the
softness of a flank was against him, and the nourishment of milk was
in his mouth, and the world assumed its rightful place in the background,
and he was comforted for the loss of his mother, and his night of weeping.
The
sorrows of death compassed me, and the floods of ungodly men _made me
afraid. The sorrows _of hell compassed me about: the snares of death
prevented me. In my distress I called upon the LORD, and cried unto
my God: he heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before
him, even into his ears. _ Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations
also of the hills moved and were shaken, because he was wroth. _There
went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured:
coals were kindled by it._ He bowed the heavens also, and came down:
and darkness was under his feet. And he rode upon a cherub, and did
fly: yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind. _He made darkness his
secret place; his pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick
clouds of the skies. _At the brightness that was before him his thick
clouds passed, hail stones and coals of fire. _The LORD also thundered
in the heavens, and the Highest gave his voice; hail stones and coals
of fire. _ Yea, he sent out his arrows, and scattered them; and he shot
out lightnings, and discomfited them. Then the channels of waters were
seen, and the foundations of the world were discovered at thy rebuke,
O LORD, at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils. He sent from above,
he took me, he drew me out of many _waters. He delivered me from my
strong enemy, and from them which hated me: for they were too strong
for me. They prevented me in the day of my calamity: but the LORD was
my stay. _ He brought me forth also into a large place; he delivered
me, because he delighted in me.
Psalm
18:3-19
···
Heidi
Zartman - "This story is based on my own experience of the Almighty
and on a true occurence in nature filmed by Dereck and Beverly Joubert
in "Reflections on Elephants", a National Geographic Society
Special (1994). My husband and I live in South Carolina, where he attends
seminary: we hope to one day be missionaries."
