Elefant. Jamie Bulloch

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СКАЧАТЬ as far as his low-ceilinged billet would allow and rolled up his bed tightly. He tucked his shirt into his trousers and reached for his shoes.

      He always took them off by the opening to the cave – far enough inside so they wouldn’t get drenched by a sudden downpour – but now he could only find one. After a while he located the other shoe outside the cave, lying in a puddle beside one of the dripping bushes. Schoch couldn’t recall this ever happening before, no matter how hammered he’d been. Perhaps he ought to slow down a bit.

      Cursing, he fished out the blue and white striped trainer, took the tatty Nivea towel from his holdall and tried to pat the shoe dry.

      It was hopeless. Schoch slipped his foot into the cold, damp trainer.

      A vague thought flitted through his brain, something from last night. Something strange. But what? An object? An experience? Like a forgotten word or name that’s on the tip of your tongue.

      He couldn’t hold on to it, and meanwhile he was starting to freeze as the cold from the shoe crept up his leg. He needed to move and get some warm coffee in his belly.

      Schoch put on a yellow raincoat that he’d pinched one day from a construction site. It had once borne the logo of the construction firm, but now it was flecked with tar and only the word ‘Building’ was still visible. He stuffed his sleeping bag into the stained holdall that contained a few more of his belongings. Pants, socks, T-shirt, shirt, wash bag and a wallet with his papers. The rest of his things were stored in the Salvation Army hostel; Schoch was on good terms with the man who ran it.

      He pulled a baseball cap over his matted hair and stepped outside. He left nothing behind in the cave.

      The rain was so heavy that he could only just make out the far bank of the river. Schoch struggled up the slippery embankment, losing his footing twice. By the time he’d reached the riverside path his trouser legs were smeared with mud up to the knees.

      Schoch had inherited his sleeping place from Sumi, the man who’d introduced him to life on the streets back at a time when there were still rules among the homeless. Such as the one that said you respected other people’s sleeping places. Now it wasn’t like that any more. These days you could come home to find someone else already camped there. In most cases it was a labour migrant, someone who’d come to the country in search of work.

      Sumi had discovered the billet shortly after the flood of 2005, when the river level had risen so high that in several places it had hollowed out the ground beneath the path and washed away a large proportion of the vegetation.

      By chance, Sumi had noticed the gaping hole from the other bank. The only downside was that the cave was easily visible. But luckily, one of his jobs before ending up on the streets had been as an assistant gardener. From further downstream, where the river basin was broader and the water hadn’t reached the embankment, he’d dug out some shrubs and replanted them in front of the cave.

      He baptised his sleeping place River Bed and spent almost eight years dossing there. Schoch was the only other person who knew of it. ‘When I croak,’ Sumi used to say, ‘you can have my River Bed.’

      ‘You’ll drink us all under the ground,’ Schoch would reply.

      But then Sumi died suddenly. Drying out. Delirium tremens.

      This had strengthened Schoch’s resolve never to stop drinking.

      Not a soul was about on the riverside path. The early joggers he usually met at this time of the morning had been kept at home by the rain. It wasn’t long before Schoch’s dry shoe was just as soaked as the wet one. The rain ran down his beard and into the neck of his coat. Jutting out his chin, Schoch wiped his beard with the back of his hand. He urgently needed his second coffee now; he’d slept through the first one.

      Further along the path he passed a weir, where there was a small platform. Two concrete posts were sunk into the embankment, to which a rescue pole was attached. It was a notorious spot because a whirlpool formed on the downstream side of the weir, especially when the water level was high. Schoch could hear shouting coming from the platform.

      He walked on until the vegetation on the bank no longer blocked his view. Two men, one tall, one shorter, were standing on the concrete platform, prodding the brown water with the rescue pole below the eddy.

      ‘Need any help?’ Schoch tried to shout, but his voice was so hoarse that he failed to utter anything audible.

      He cleared his throat. ‘Hey! Hello!’

      The tall man looked up. He was Japanese or Chinese.

      ‘Has someone fallen in?’

      Now the man with the rescue pole looked up too. A redhead with shaven hair.

      ‘My dog!’ he cried.

      Schoch raised his shoulders and shook his head. ‘Whirlpool of death,’ he shouted. ‘Nothing gets out of there alive. It’s swallowed plenty already. Forget the dog and concentrate on not falling in yourselves!’

      The man with the rescue pole kept prodding the water. The other man waved to Schoch, said ‘Thanks!’ in English, and turned back.

      Schoch continued on his way. ‘I warned them,’ he muttered. ‘I warned them.’

      3

      Galle, Sri Lanka

      25 April 2013

      The ravens were skulking on the railings of the restaurant terrace, watching for the slightest inattention from the waiter guarding the warm buffet. From the terrace you could hear the waves of the Indian Ocean.

      Jack Harris was sitting at the second table from the back. This gave him the best view of the assortment of backpackers, businesspeople and the last expats sticking to their jour fixe at the Galle Face Hotel.

      He’d been waiting around here for three weeks now, glugging too much Lion lager. Occasionally he’d get into conversation with a tourist, and once an American woman travelling on her own was so impressed by his career that she followed him up to his room. Harris was a vet, specialising in elephants.

      Mostly, however, he spent the nights alone in his room. It was nicely situated; it might not directly face the sea, but it did look out on the large grassed area where the colonial masters once played golf and where countless souvenir stands and food stalls now plied their wares. Sometimes during these lonely nights he’d open one of the two windows, light a cigarette and gaze down at the lights of the lively Galle Face Green and the fluorescent surf of the ocean.

      Voices and laughter mingled with scraps of music, and clouds of smoke rose from the food stalls into the light of the outside bulbs, while now and then the wind blew over the aroma of charcoal and hot coconut oil.

      Harris got up and helped himself from the buffet. For the second time. He shovelled a not particularly gastronomic hodgepodge of curry, stew and gratin onto his plate and returned to his table, where the staff, unprompted, had placed a ‘Reserved’ sign in his brief absence.

      He was eating too much.

      Jack Harris was forty years old, from New Zealand, and looked like Crocodile Dundee gone large. Or so he thought. His wife, who’d СКАЧАТЬ