José Saramago - The Elephant's Journey

APART FROM A MINOR SCUFFLE among some soldiers, three from either side, the journey to valladolid passed off pretty much without incident. In a gesture of goodwill, worthy of mention, the portuguese captain left the organization of the convoy, that is, the decision as to who should go in front and who behind, to the austrian captain, who was very clear about his choice, We'll go in front, the others can sort themselves out as they think best or, if they're happy with how things were when they left lisbon, they can stick to that. There were two excellent and obvious reasons why the austrians chose to go in front, the first was the fact that they were, to all intents and purposes, on home territory, and the second, albeit uncon-fessed, was that, as long as the sky was clear, as it was now, and until the sun reached its zenith, that is, during the mornings, they would have the sun-king straight ahead of them, with obvious benefits for their glittering breastplates. As for recreating the column of men as it was before, we know that this will not be possible, given that the porters are already on their way to lisbon, passing through the place that will, in a still distant future, be the unconquered and ever loyal city of oporto. Anyway, there was no need to give the matter much thought. If they keep to the rule that the slowest in the convoy should be the one to set the pace and therefore the speed of their advance, then it is obvious that the oxen should go behind the cuirassiers, who will, naturally, be free to gallop ahead whenever they wish, so that anyone who comes to the road to watch the procession will not risk confusing, as the castilian proverb has it, chums and merinas, churns being the unwashed fleeces and merinas the clean ones, and we use this saying because we are currently in castile and know how effective a little touch of local color can be. Or, put slightly differently, horses are one thing, especially when ridden by cuirassiers clothed in sunlight, and quite another are two pairs of scrawny oxen drawing a cart laden with a water trough and a few bundles of forage for the elephant that follows immediately behind with a man astride its shoulders. After the elephant comes the detachment of portuguese cavalry, still trembling with pride at their valiant stance on the previous day, when they blocked with their own bodies the entrance to the castle. None of the soldiers will forget, however long they may live, the moment when, having visited the elephant, the austrian captain gave orders to his sergeant to set up camp outside, in the parade ground, It's only for one night, he said to justify this decision, in the shelter of a few oak trees which, given their age, must have seen many things, but never soldiers sleeping in the damp night air beside a castle that could easily have accommodated three whole infantry divisions and their respective military bands. This absolute triumph over the arrogant pretensions of the austrians was also, unusually in the circumstances, a triumph for common sense, because, however much blood might have been spilled in castelo rodrigo, any war between portugal and austria would be, not only absurd, but impracticable, unless the two countries were to rent an area of land in france, for example, more or less halfway between the two contenders, so that they could marshal their respective armies and organize a battle. Anyway, all's well that ends well.

Subhro is not entirely sure that he can take much solace from that soothing dictum. Seeing him, perched three meters up and dressed in his brightly colored new suit of clothes, smart enough to wear to visit his godmother, if he had one, and which he's wearing now, not out of any personal vanity, but to honor the country from which he has come, the gawpers who watch him pass imagine a being endowed with extraordinary powers, when the fact is that the poor indian is shaking at the thought of what his immediate future may hold. He thinks that until they reach valladolid, his job is guaranteed and someone will pay him for his time and his work, because although it may seem easy traveling on the back of an elephant, this could only be the view of someone who has never tried, for example, to make solomon turn right when he wants to turn left. Beyond valladolid, though, the waters grow murky. He thought he had good reason to believe that, from the very first day, his mission was to accompany solomon to vienna, this assumption, however, exists in the realm of the implicit, that if an elephant has his own personal mahout, it's only natural that where one goes, the other goes too. But no one has ever actually looked him in the eye and told him so. That he'll travel as far as valladolid, yes, but nothing more. It is, therefore, inevitable that subhro's imagination should lead him to expect the worst of all possible situations, arriving in valladolid and finding another mahout waiting to take up the baton and continue the journey to vienna, where, thereafter, that new mahout will live high on the hog in the court of archduke maximilian. However, contrary to what one might think, accustomed as we are to placing base material interests above genuine spiritual values, it wasn't the food and the drink and the freshly made bed each day that made subhro sigh, but the sudden revelation that he loved the elephant and did not want to be parted from him, this was not, strictly speaking, either sudden or a revelation, more a latent state of mind, but such states of mind are not to be discounted. If another mahout really was waiting in valladolid to take charge, subhro's reasons of the heart would weigh very little in the archduke's impartial scales. It was then that subhro, swaying to the rhythm of the elephant's steps, said out loud, up there where no one could hear him, I need to have a serious talk with you, solomon. Fortunately, there was no one else present, because they would have thought the mahout was mad and that, as a consequence, the safety of the convoy was at serious risk. From that moment on, subhro's dreams took a different direction. As if he and solomon were a pair of star-crossed lovers, to whose love everyone, for some reason, was violently opposed, subhro, in his dreams, fled with the elephant across plains, climbed hills and scaled mountains, skirted lakes, waded rivers and crossed forests, always keeping one step ahead of their pursuers, the cuirassiers, whose swift-galloping horses proved of little advantage, because an elephant, when he wants to, can move at a fair old pace. That night, subhro, who never slept far from solomon, went over to him, taking care not to wake him, and began to whisper in his ear. He poured his words into that ear in an unintelligible murmur, that could have been hindi or bengali or some other tongue known only to them, a language born and raised during their years of solitude, which was still solitude even when interrupted by the shrieks of the petty noblemen from the court at lisbon, or the mocking cries of the populace of the city and environs, or, before that, the sailors' jibes on the long voyage that brought him and solomon to portugal. Since we have no idea what language he was speaking, we cannot reveal what subhro was saying, but knowing, as we do, the uneasy thoughts preoccupying him, it is not impossible to imagine the conversation. Subhro was simply asking for solomon's help, making certain practical suggestions to him as to how he might behave, for example, showing, by all the expressive, even radical, means open to an elephant, how unhappy he was at his enforced separation from his mahout, should that prove to be the case. A skeptic will object that you can't expect much from a conversation like that, given that the elephant not only did not respond to the mahout's plea, but continued to sleep serenely. That person clearly knows nothing about elephants. If you whisper in their ear in hindi or in bengali, especially when they're asleep, they're just like the genie in the lamp, which, as soon as it's out of the bottle, asks, What is your wish, sir. Whatever the facts, we happen to know that nothing untoward will happen in valladolid. Indeed, the following night, subhro, feeling repentant, asked solomon to ignore what he had said, he had been acting out of rank egotism, which was no way to solve matters, If things turn out as I fear they will, I'm the one who will have to take responsibility and try to convince the archduke to allow us to stay together, but whatever happens, don't do anything, all right, nothing. The same skeptic, were he here, would have no option but to set aside his skepticism for a moment and say, A very nice gesture, this mahout is a very decent fellow, and it's quite true that the best lessons always come from simple folk. With his spirit at peace, subhro went back to his straw mattress and, within a matter of moments, was asleep. When he woke the following morning and remembered his decision of the previous night, he could not help but ask himself, What would the archduke want with another mahout when he already has one. And he continued to unravel his own reasoning, I have the captain of the cuirassiers as my witness and guarantor, he saw us in the castle and couldn't have failed to think how rare it was to see such a perfect conjunction of man and beast, true, he doesn't know much about elephants, but he knows a lot about horses, and that's something. Everyone recognizes that solomon has a good heart, but I wonder if, with another mahout, he would have bade farewell to the porters in the way he did. Not that I taught him to do that, I want to make that quite clear, it just sprang spontaneously from his soul, I myself assumed he would go over to them and would, at most, give a little wave with his trunk or trumpet loudly, do a couple of dance steps and then, so long, goodbye, but, knowing him as I do, I began to get an inkling that he was concocting something in that great head of his, something that would astonish us all. I expect a lot has been written about elephants as a species and much more will be written in the future, but I doubt that any of those au thors will have been witness to or even heard of an elephantine prodigy that could compare with what I witnessed in castelo rodrigo, barely believing what my own eyes were seeing.