Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

For Sarah, Mark, Isabelle,

Sienna, and Henry

in gratitude for endless hours

of happiness in the Karoo

a cognizant original v5 release october 04 2010

The Kenya—Tanganyika border,

September 1961

The Land Rover juddered to a halt. Natalie Nelson jolted her head on the side window and was shaken awake. “What’s the matter, Mutevu? Why are you stopping? Watch out for that termite mound! Have we got a flat tire? What’s wrong?”

Natalie was weary—no, she was drained, exhausted, spent , and this delay was too much. She’d been traveling without sleep now for more than twenty-three hours, since she had left Cambridge sometime yesterday, and she was anxious, longing, desperate, to reach Kihara camp. However primitive the beds might be, however much a relic of empire, however scratchy the horsehair mattresses, she’d be asleep in no time—just try stopping her. A two-hour train ride from Cambridge to London, two hours across London to Heathrow, two hours at Heathrow, waiting, thirteen hours in the air, including a two-hour stopover in Cairo, two hours at Nairobi International and more waiting, and then two hours in the smallest, noisiest, most bone-shaking single-engined contraption she had ever seen, which had dropped her out of the sky at the red-clay Kihara airstrip not forty-five minutes ago. Twice already, she had nodded off in the Land Rover, and that took some doing when you were driving over the corrugated volcanic ash that the Serengeti boasted in places.

“Elephants,” muttered Mutevu Ndekei.

Natalie frowned. For as far as the eye could see, all around them, smooth bone-colored rocks caught the African sun, making the landscape resemble a vast graveyard where ungainly dinosaurs had met their end. Here and there clumps of flat-topped acacia trees threw patches of shade across the shimmering gold-green of the savannah grass that swayed in the breeze. Gazelles grazed in the distance, now and then raising their heads to look for trouble.

But right in front of them, near a massive fig tree, was a small herd of elephants.

She frowned again. “Yes, I can see that but… they’re not dangerous, are they, elephants? Why don’t we just drive round them?”

This was Natalie’s first dig as a fully fledged member of an archaeological team—she had just turned twenty-eight and her Ph.D. was barely six months old. But she had worked in South Africa as a student and so was not a complete novice in the bush.

“One of them is flat on the ground—he or she may be dead.”

They both watched as the other elephants moved in closer to the animal that had fallen.

“I don’t understand, Mutevu. What does it matter if—?”

“Shhh . Elephants can be difficult sometimes if an animal dies,” he whispered, pointing to a large she-elephant looping her trunk around a tree and pulling at the branches.

Mutevu, who had been the only person at the strip to meet Natalie—the rest of the team were in Kihara Gorge, excavating—was as soft-spoken as he was huge, a six-foot-three Maasai, black as night, with tribal cut marks gouged out of his cheeks. He had told her his main job was as camp cook, but he also helped out with the driving.

His enormous fingers found the diminutive ignition key and killed the engine.

“Elephants seem to understand death—not as much as humans do … they don’t bury their dead in graves, nothing so elaborate, but they’re not like other animals, either, who show no signs of loss.”

Mutevu pointed at an old male elephant standing by the fallen animal.

“They appear to have a form of grief—and will remain by a dead body for days on end, almost as if they are offering comfort, or holding ready to help if the fallen animal should move or show signs of life.”

They both watched in silence as most of the herd stood still, stopped eating, and just looked on while the large female this time broke off an entire tree branch, thick with leaves, and carried it in her trunk toward the fallen beast. Then she dropped the branch on the elephant, so that the creature was partially covered.

“That’s amazing,” said Natalie under her breath.

“Are they burying the animal—or covering it, to keep it warm? No one knows,” said Mutevu softly. “But it’s clearly an emotional time, and to drive through or near a herd when they are in this mood can be dangerous. We’ll just wait.”

Natalie reached for her camera.

For the best part of an hour they watched as the elephants completed what Natalie had to concede looked very like a ritual. Four or five other animals followed the lead of the she-elephant and tore off branches of trees and covered the dead animal. Then, one by one, they moved off, leaving just the solitary male still standing by the corpse.

The only sound was the wind, gently rocking the Land Rover.

When the main herd had all but disappeared across the plain, and the old male was left by himself, Mutevu’s fingers found the ignition key, he switched on the engine, and the Land Rover rolled forward.

Natalie’s mind was in a whirl. If elephants experienced grief, did they have any conception of an afterlife? Did that mean they had the rudiments of religion?

She rubbed her eyes with her fingers. She was too tired to face that kind of question just now. But it was the kind of question she liked, the kind of question she had come to Africa for. As an expert on extinct forms of life, she was hoping to make her fair share of discoveries in the coming months. The excavation she was about to join was the most prestigious in her chosen field, and the invitation to become part of the team was a big feather in her cap. So long as she didn’t make a fool of herself, and published one or two good papers, a fellowship of her college was now a distinct possibility.

Mutevu slowed the Land Rover to negotiate some dried ruts where a herd of something had churned up the ground. He stretched out his arm and pointed: “Bat-eared foxes.”

Natalie yawned, smothered it with her hand, and grinned sheepishly. She looked to where Mutevu was indicating, but she couldn’t see anything. Her “bush eyes” were still underdeveloped. The foxes’ camouflage was just too good for her.

Mutevu accelerated as they cleared the ruts. The sun was high now and hardly any shadows could be seen across the plain.

Natalie marveled at the landscape. The shimmering grass, the lush greens of the fig and acacia trees, the rust-red rocks, the wide sky—this was one of the reasons she had chosen Africa; it was so far—and so different in every way—from Cambridge.

Cambridge. She’d had to get away and the invitation to Kihara couldn’t have come at a better time. Until recently she’d never have imagined she would ever want to escape Cambridge, but then she had never imagined Dominic would do what he had done, and in the way that he had done it.

She was beyond tears now, but the skin on her throat still broke out in a sweat when she thought of … It had been this way since … since that day four—no, five—months ago, when he had told her he was going on a long tour and that—well, he didn’t want to see her again. Just like that, a guillotine , as her mother would have said, drawing a finger across her throat, a bolt from the blue.

Natalie hadn’t suspected that anything so dramatic, so final, so terminal , was in the wind when Dominic had suggested coming up to Cambridge from London for the day. It had happened scores of times before. But, she supposed, she had been naive. In her experience some people were born naive, just as some people were born knowing and others were born wise. It wasn’t true in her case, however, that she was born naive. She knew now that she had had a very naive upbringing.