The Eye of the Elephant Page 21

  Two days of hard scarp driving makes my shoulder muscles burn. But I pull into camp late in the afternoon of the second day. Mark welcomes me with a bear hug.

  "Where's my surprise?" I smile.

  Mark can barely contain himself. He pulls me along to the porch of our bedroom cottage, tells me to sit down, and hands me a glass of cool wine. "Okay, we wait here. The surprise is coming." As we chat quietly, Mark keeps glancing at his watch and then toward the tall grass bordering camp.

  Minutes later, he touches my arm and motions for me to stop talking. He points behind me to the edge of camp. "There, there is your surprise."

  I turn and see an elephant—Survivor—only forty yards away. He lifts his trunk and holds it high, taking in the amalgamation of camp scents. I squeeze Mark's hand, but otherwise we are still. "Just wait," Mark whispers, "just wait."

  Survivor takes one step forward, then stops and lifts his trunk again. He raises his right front foot as if to step, then pauses and swings it back and forth. For long minutes he dangles his foot and lifts his trunk, then quite suddenly walks toward us with no further hesitation. He marches right into camp and begins feeding on the marula fruits behind the office cottage. Twenty-five yards from us, he feels along the ground with his dexterous trunk, finds a fruit, pops it into his mouth, and chews with loud slurping noises. Now and then he gently swings his entire head in our direction, but otherwise he does us the honor of ignoring us completely. He feeds for thirty minutes; just before dark, he walks away quietly along the same path he had followed into camp.

  Mark tells me excitedly that Survivor has been coming into camp every evening since I have been gone. That this kind of acceptance can happen so soon, in the midst of such a slaughter of his kind by our kind, is all the proof we need that our project may work. It is stimulus enough to keep us going.

  Survivor continues to come to camp every day, not just in the evening but anytime. Mornings he ambles up to the kitchen boma and feeds ten yards from the campfire. He forages between the office and bedroom cottages, and once he walks within four yards of us, as we stand quietly on the porch of the bedroom cottage—so close he could touch us with his trunk. No longer do we have to freeze in his presence. There is an unwritten truce—as long as we move quietly and slowly around camp, he pays us no mind. Simbeye, Mwamba, and Kasokola are as taken with Survivor as we are, and often I see them standing quietly at the workshop, watching him feed.

  The truce is broken only once. One morning Mark hurries down the path toward the office cottage, his head down. As he steps around the cottage, he looks up to see Survivor's knee only six yards from him. The elephant, caught by surprise, draws up his trunk and flaps his ears, making loud blowing noises as he steps backward. Pivoting around, he runs twenty yards before swinging to face Mark again. Mark resists the urge to flee in the opposite direction and stands quietly. After a few minutes of ear flapping, Survivor calms down and feeds again.

  The annual inspection of the airplane is due, so Mark has to fly to Johannesburg to have it serviced. Unfortunately, he will be away for more than three weeks. I stay behind to continue our work and to watch Survivor. Occasionally the guys and I see him and his four companions roaming the hills between the airstrip and camp. All of them have become accustomed to us and do not run away— but only Survivor comes into camp.

  Elephants can move through the bush as quietly as kittens, but when they feed, they make a noisy racket as they strip leaves from a branch or topple small trees. Whether I'm working at the solar-powered computer, building the fire, or reading, I know where Survivor is by his loud slurps. At night he drifts through the sleeping camp like a large moon shadow. Lying in bed, I am lulled to sleep by the stirring wind, his soft footfalls, and the rustling leaves— the song of Survivor.

  One night as he forages in front of the cottage, I cannot sleep, or perhaps do not want to. I get up and ease the door open. The half-moon winks through the marula leaves as Survivor feeds beneath the tree ten yards from where I stand. Inching forward, watching his every move, I step onto the stone veranda and slowly sit on the doorstep. Gracefully he turns to face me, lifting his trunk to take in my scent. He immediately relaxes, lowering his trunk and sniffing loudly for another fruit.

  Ten yards from an elephant. Sitting down and looking up at an elephant. He covers the world. Even in this soft light I can see the deep wrinkles and folds in his skin. They look like the craters and valleys of the moon.

  Slowly rocking back and forth, he picks up the fruits, sometimes extending his trunk in my direction. Gradually he makes his way around the corner of the cottage, until I am sitting in the moonlight watching his huge backside and his tail. Even that is enough. When at last he disappears into the shadows, I return to bed and sleep.

  It is, of course, the marula fruits that keep him coming. In early May thousands of them carpet camp, releasing a sweet scent into the soft air. But by late June most of them have been eaten by Survivor and the Lillian lovebirds. Once the fruits are finished, he will migrate to the scarp mountains. I wonder, in spite of his name, if he will survive another season. Every morning I poke around under the bushes, under the solar panels, in all the hard-to-reach places, pulling the fruits out into the open where he can find them.

  Survivor is already coming into camp less often, maybe every other day instead of daily. Only rarely do I see him and the four others feeding on the tall grass and short bushes of the hillsides.

  Now the marula fruits in camp are nearly gone. At night I sit at the window watching the moon cast eerie shapes across the grass. But the large moon shadow and the soft song for which I wait come no more.

  16. One Tusk

  MARK

  I am the wind.

  I am legend.

  I am history.

  I come and go. My tracks

  are washed away in certain places.

  I am the one who wanders, the one

  who speaks, the one who watches...

  the one who teaches, the one who goes...

  the one who weeps, the one who knows ...

  who knows the wilderness.

  — PAULA GUNN ALLEN

  WHERE THE LUBONGA meets the scarp, One Tusk carefully picks her way down a steep ravine, stepping gingerly over sharp gravel on the path, her massive body swaying rhythmically, almost as though she is on tiptoe. Her single tusk, more than three feet long, seems to touch the side of the stream cut as she looks back at her family. They include Misty, her eighteen-year-old daughter, and Mandy and Manila, two younger adult females. One infant and a three-year-old calf follow closely, watching their footing as they maneuver down the slope.

  The matriarch has passed this way many times before, as her ancestors did. Each time she pauses, as she did earlier today, to smell and fondle with her trunk the bones of the recent dead. But now instead of thousands of elephants, only small, isolated groups move silently, nervously, through the dying forests toward the Lubonga River.

  The winter sun, dull and bloated from the smoke of dry-season wildfires, sags into the distant hills. One Tusk will take her small family to drink at the river only after dark, when the poachers have camped for the night.

  Staccato bursts of gunfire thunder through the canyon. Several bullets slap One Tusk in quick succession. She staggers back, raising her trunk and screaming a warning, eyes white with fear, blood streaming from small holes in her neck and shoulder. She screams again, a pink froth foaming from her mouth. Three more blasts shatter her skull. Sinking to her knees, as though in prayer, she slides in that position all the way to the bottom of the bank. The calves run to their fallen matriarch, wailing in confusion. Their mothers turn to face the gunmen.

  One of the shooters steps boldly to the top of the bank in full view of the terrified elephants. Shrieking, ears back, trunks raised, Misty, Mandy, and Marula charge up the slope toward him. More shots ring out. Two puffs of dust explode from Mandy's chest. She screams, sits on her haunches, then rolls back down the hill in a tangle of
legs, trunk, and tail. Misty and Marula break off their charge and stampede out of the ravine, the calves huddled close to their flanks. They run for more than a mile, to a meadow below the scarp where there are dense thickets, and a stream from which to drink. Without One Tusk's leadership, they mill about in utter confusion.

  The beleaguered elephants press together, turning circles, their trunks raised, sniffing the air. Over and over they entwine their trunks and reach out to touch faces, apparently reassuring themselves that the others are still there, and are all right. The mothers reach down with their trunks, pressing the calf and infant close to their sides, caressing their faces, necks, and shoulders.

  After they have calmed themselves, Misty, Marula, and their young walk farther east, away from the point of attack. Then they turn back and spend the night huddled together just a few hundred yards from where One Tusk and Mandy were shot.

  The next morning, rumbling loudly and holding their trunks high, their temporal glands streaming, they walk to where One Tusk and Mandy lie sprawled in a great reddish-brown stain made by their body fluids. The faces, feet, tails, and trunks have been hacked off the slain elephants, and they are buried beneath a seething pile of hissing vultures, which have fouled the gray and bloating bodies with white streaks of excrement. Swarms of maggot flies have already begun laying their eggs in the rotting flesh.

  Leading the others, hesitating after each step, her trunk raised, flapping her ears, Misty cautiously approaches the mutilated corpse that just hours ago was One Tusk. She and the others assemble around it, their trunks extended, smelling every inch. Then Misty nudges it with her front foot and tusks. The others join in, as if willing their slain matriarch to get up and live again. After a long while Misty walks to the severed trunk, picks it up with her own, holds it for a moment, and then puts it down, her cheeks wet from her weeping temporal glands.

  After smelling and fondling their dead for nearly two hours, Misty and Manila begin ripping up tufts of grass, breaking twigs from trees, and scuffing up piles of gravel with their feet. The younger elephants join in as they cover the corpses with this debris. The burial takes the rest of the morning, and when they are finished, the elephants stand quietly, their trunks hanging down for several minutes. Then Marula leads them away. Misty returns to her slain mother, puts her trunk on her back, and stands for nearly two minutes. Finally she turns to follow the others.

  She catches up to the little group and assumes the lead. Walking at a determined pace, they all head northwest toward the tall peak of Molombwe Hill, which is set behind the chain of hills that forms the leading edge of the scarp. Below it is Elephant's Playground, where they last saw Long Ear and her family unit. Rumbling constantly, temporal glands streaming, they follow the paths used by their relatives as they cross the hills and vales along the foot of the Muchinga. Often they stop to listen, and to smell, circling with their trunks raised high, testing the breeze. The elephants have hardly fed for two days, and the two youngsters are especially hungry and tired.

  On the morning of the third day Misty, Marula, and the others are nearing Elephant's Playground when they hear a rumble ahead. Running along the slope at the edge of the swale, they see Long Ear's group watching them, trunks raised. Misty runs faster, as Long Ear and her two young daughters rush to meet them. The trumpeting, rumbling, and clacking together of their tusks echo to the hills as the two groups entwine in greeting. Pushing together, milling in a tight compaction of gray bodies, over and over they touch one another's faces with their trunks. Long Ear keeps looking east, as though expecting One Tusk and Mandy to appear. Misty walks into Long Ear's side and stands there, her face buried in the loose and wrinkled skin.

  Eventually the elephants calm down, but they continue rumbling softly and touching one another. Both groups have lost their matriarch—and with her, access to the immense wisdom acquired from her ancestors and from her decades of roaming the valley. Young, inexperienced, relentlessly pursued, these orphans of the poaching war will stay together, raising their young as best they can. They move off now, deeper into the hills, touching often.

  Harassing the poachers with the plane is no longer working. I had flown over One Tusk and her family just an hour before she and Mandy were killed. The poachers certainly saw the plane, but it didn't frighten them anymore. They have figured out that I can't land except on an airstrip or a sandbar. The next morning, drawn by smoke from a fire the killers set on their way out of the park, I fly again and find the dead One Tusk and Mandy, their family milling around them.

  Flying a patrol along the Mwaleshi four days later, I see two elephants grazing near the river. On my way back to camp an hour and a half later, I discover their tuskless carcasses. Landing along the river, I hike to the spot, where I record their age and sex and look for any evidence—a shirt, a boot track, rifle cartridges, a piece of camping gear—that might lead us to the poachers. Then, afraid they may still be in the area and attack the plane, I run back and take off for camp.

  I am two hours overdue by the time I get back to Marula-Puku. Delia meets me at the workshop, her face pale with worry. "Mark, where have you been? I was just about to call out a search."

  "I've been out counting dead elephants, where else!" Slamming the door of the truck, I stomp off to the kitchen for a cup of black coffee. For some time I have been living out of my coffee cup, drinking a brew so strong it is like a thin syrup. The caffeine gives me the kick and the courage to do what I have to do, but increasingly it is running my brain and my mouth. My fuse is very short.

  Poachers have invaded large areas of the park, including the sanctuary around our camp, which until now I have been able to defend with the airplane. The region has become a war zone. From the air one morning I discover six dead elephants, faces chopped off, tusks removed, on the Lubonga near its confluence with Mwaleshi. Two days later a freshly set bush fire leads me to another two carcasses on the Lufwashi near Chinchendu Hill. The next day three more are slaughtered along the Mwaleshi River at the north side of Chinchendu. And then three more north of Marula-Puku—killed by Patrick Mubuka, the officer in charge of the Nsansamina game scout camp.

  I am flying night and day, spotting poachers, diving on them with the plane, and airlifting scouts when they will come. But the killing is totally out of control and escalating. Delia and I cannot go on like this for much longer, and neither can the elephants. But we have at least solved a mystery: we have found the fabled elephant graveyard. It is Zambia.

  On long night flights, droning along in the darkness while searching out poachers' fires, I find myself staring into the plane's black windscreen, the faint red glow from the instruments reflecting back at me, trying to figure out why the poaching has so suddenly escalated. Even though it is not as bad as it was before the ivory ban was enacted, it has exploded recently and I don't understand why.

  One morning a few weeks after the killing of One Tusk and Mandy, I am standing next to our Mog at the Mpika marketplace. Local people are coming and going to the cubicles and stands that sell potatoes, mealie-meal, cabbages, dried fish, and black-market cooking oil, sugar, and tobacco. Kasokola is inside doing the buying while I guard the truck. I feel a little uneasy, as though every poacher in the district is watching me. After about twenty minutes a Zambian man dressed in light gray slacks, an argyle knit shirt, leather shoes, and sunglasses slopes toward me across the dry and dusty ground.

  "Mapalanye," I greet him in Chibemba.

  "Good morning. How are you?" He is slightly unsteady and smells strongly of beer.

  He studies the Frankfurt Zoological Society logo and the North Luangwa Conservation Project lettering on the side of the Mog. Aloud he misreads, "'North Luangwa Construction Project.' So you work in construction. Where?"

  "Down in the valley." I wave east, toward Luangwa. "I'm in road construction."

  "I see." Pause. "You want to buy something, maybe?"

  "Depends what you're selling."

  "Aaaanything! Anything you want
." He holds out his arms. "You want ivories, I have ivories; you want lion skins, I got lion skins; elephant foots and tails; zebras, leopards, anything." He leans close to me, lowering his voice as some women come by selling a basketful of dried fish. "I even got rhino horns. You interested?"

  "Well, I don't know. I'd have to see the goods first. Where are you getting all this stuff?"

  "I know people with a safari company. My merchandise mostly comes from Fulaza Village, near North Luangwa. They organize the hunters that side, some from Mpika, some from Fulaza, then transport the ivory and skins to Mpika."

  We step aside as Kasokola and another man lug a bag of beans by its ears to the back of the truck and throw it in. "How much do you have to pay a hunter to shoot an elephant?"

  "For now, not so much. Only about a thousand kwachas." That's a little over ten dollars—for an elephant.

  He tells me that a good hunter can earn as much as fifty thousand kwachas in three weeks in the bush, and up to half a million in a year. The illegal ivory is transported to Lusaka in army trucks or in civilian vehicles, hidden in spare tires, bags of mealie-meal, drums, or buried at the bottom of heavy loads. In Lusaka the ivory takes various routes out of the country. Some of the tusks are cut up in dozens of illegal "chop shops" and smuggled in small pieces to Swaziland aboard Swazi Airlines. Or a government contact is paid to launder it with official documentation, and it is shipped with legal ivory through Botswana and Zimbabwe to South Africa. From there some of it is carved and sold as crafts; the rest is marketed to dealers in China, North Korea, and other non-African countries that refuse to observe the ban on trading ivory.