The Glass Palace. Amitav Ghosh

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СКАЧАТЬ pierced by the glowing tips of cheroots, where the oo-sis sit beside their huts, savouring their last smoke of the day and chewing a final quid of betel. But now I saw, to my astonishment, that there was no one about; I could hear nothing but frogs and owls and the feathery flapping of great jungle moths. Absent also was that most familiar and reassuring of a camp’s sounds, the tinkling of elephants’ bells. Evidently, no sooner had the soil been tamped down on the dead man’s grave than the other oo-sis had begun to flee the camp, taking their elephants with them.

      ‘The only elephant that was still in the camp’s vicinity was Shwe Doke, the dead man’s mount. The hsin-ouq had taken charge of his nephew’s riderless elephant after the accident. She was restless, he said, and nervous, frequently flapping her ears and clawing the air with the tip of her trunk. This was neither uncommon nor unexpected, for the elephant is, above all, a creature of habit and routine. So pronounced an upheaval as the absence of a long-familiar handler can put even the gentlest of elephants out of temper, often dangerously so.

      ‘This being the case, the hsin-ouq had decided not to allow Shwe Doke to forage through the night, as was the rule. Instead he had led her to a clearing, some half-mile’s distance from the camp and supplied her with a great pile of succulent treetop branches. Then he had tethered her securely between two immense and immovable trees. To be doubly sure of keeping her bound he had used, not the usual lightweight fetters with which elephants are shackled at night, but the heavy iron towing chains that are employed in the harnessing of logs. This, he said, was a precaution.

      ‘“A precaution against what?” I asked. By this time his eyes were dulled by opium. He gave me a sidelong glance and said, in a soft, slippery voice: “Just a precaution.”

      ‘There now remained in the camp only the hsin-ouq and me and of course, McKay-thakin in his tai. The tai was brightly lit, with lamps shining in all its windows, and it seemed very high, perched on its tall, teakwood stilts. The hsin-ouq’s hut was small in comparison and much closer to the ground, so that standing on its platform I had to tilt my head back to look up at McKay-thakin’s glowing windows. As I sat staring, a low, reedy wail came wafting out of the lamplit windows. It was the sound of a clarinet, an instrument the thakin sometimes played of an evening to while away the time. How strange it was to hear that plaintive, melancholy music issuing forth from those shining windows, the notes hanging in the air until they became indistinguishable from the jungle’s nightly noise. Just so, I thought, must a great liner look to the oarsmen of a palm-trunk canoe as it bears down on them out of the night, with the sounds of its ballroom trailing in its wake.

      ‘It had not rained much through the day, but with the approach of evening clouds had begun to mass in the sky, and by the time I blew my lamp out and rolled out my mat there was not a star to be seen. Soon the storm broke. Rain came pouring down and thunder went pealing back and forth across the valleys, echoing between the slopes. I had been asleep perhaps an hour or two when I was woken by a trickle of water, leaking through the bamboo roof. Rising to move my mat to a dry corner of the hut, I happened to glance across the camp. Suddenly the tai sprang out of the darkness, illuminated by a flash of lightning: its lamps had gone out.

      ‘I was almost asleep again when, through the chatter of the rain I heard a tiny, fragile sound, a distant tinkling. It was far away but approaching steadily, and as it drew nearer I recognised the unmistakable ringing of an elephant’s bell. Soon, in the subtle tensing of the hut’s bamboo beams, I could feel the animal’s heavy, hurrying tread.

      ‘“Do you hear that?” I whispered to the hsin-ouq. “What is it?”

      ‘“It is the cow, Shwe Doke.”

      ‘An oo-si knows an elephant by its bell: it is by following that sound that he locates his mount every morning after its night-long foraging in the forest. To do his job well a hsin-ouq must know the sound of every animal in his herd; he must, if the need arises, be able to determine the position of all his elephants simply by concentrating on the ringing of their bells. My host was a hsin-ouq of great ability and experience. There was not, I knew, the slightest likelihood of his being mistaken in his identification of the approaching bell.

      ‘“Perhaps,” I ventured, “Shwe Doke was panicked by the storm; perhaps she managed to break loose of her fetters.”

      ‘“If she had broken loose,” the hsin-ouq said, “the chains would still be dragging on her feet.” He paused to listen. “But I hear no chains. No. She has been freed by a human hand.”

      ‘“But whose could that hand be?” I asked.

      ‘He silenced me abruptly, with a raised hand. The bell was very close now and the hut was shivering to the elephant’s tread.

      ‘I started to move towards the ladder but the hsin-ouq pulled me back. “No,” he said. “Stay here.”

      ‘The next moment the sky was split by lightning. In the momentary glare of that flat sheet of light, I saw Shwe Doke, directly ahead, moving towards the tai, with her head lowered and her trunk curled under her lip.

      ‘I jumped to my feet and began to shout in warning: “Thakin; McKay-thakin …”

      ‘McKay-thakin had already heard the bells, felt the tremor of the elephant’s approaching weight. A flame flickered in one of the tai’s windows and the young man appeared on the veranda, naked, with a lantern in one hand and his hunting rifle in the other.

      ‘Ten feet from the tai Shwe Doke came to a standstill. She lowered her head as though she were examining the structure. She was an old elephant, trained in the ways of the aunging herd. Such animals are skilled in the arts of demolition. It takes them no more than a glance to size up a dam of snagged wood and pick a point of attack.

      ‘McKay-thakin fired just as Shwe Doke began her charge. She was so close now that he could not miss: he hit her exactly where he had aimed, in her most vulnerable spot, between ear and eye.

      ‘But the momentum of Shwe Doke’s charge carried her forward even as she was dying on her feet. She too hit the tai exactly where she had aimed, at the junction of the two cross-beams that held it together. The structure appeared to explode, with logs and beams and thatch flying into the air. McKay-thakin was catapulted to the ground, over Shwe Doke’s head.

      ‘Such is the footwork of the skilled aunging elephant that it can balance its weight on the lip of a waterfall, perch like a crane upon a small mid-stream boulder, turn in a space that would trip a mule. It was with those small, practised steps that Shwe Doke turned now, until she was facing the Assistant’s prone body. Then, very slowly, she allowed her dying weight to go crashing down on him, head first, her weight rolling over in a circular motion, in a technically perfect execution of the butting manoeuvre of the aunging elephant – an application of thrust so precise as to be able to cause a ten-thousand-ton tangle of teak to spring undone like a sailor’s knot. McKay-thakin’s lantern, which had been sputtering beside him, went out and we could see nothing more.

      ‘I threw myself down the hut’s ladder with the hsin-ouq close behind me. Running towards the tai I stumbled in the darkness and fell, face first on the mud. The hsin-ouq was helping me up when a bolt of lightning split the sky. Suddenly he let go of my hand and unloosed a hoarse, stammering shout.

      ‘“What is it?” I cried. “What did you see?”

      ‘“Look! Look down at the ground.”

      ‘Lightning flashed again and I saw, directly ahead of me, the huge scalloped mark of Shwe Doke’s feet. But beside it was a smaller impression, curiously shapeless, almost oblong.

      ‘“What is it?” СКАЧАТЬ