Read the book: «Elefant»

Part One
1
Zürich
12 June 2016

It couldn’t be withdrawal syndrome as he’d had plenty to drink.

Schoch tried to focus on the object. A child’s toy, a tiny elephant as pink as a marzipan piglet, but more intense in colour. And glowing like a pink firefly, right at the back of the hollow, where the ceiling of the cave met the sandy ground.

People sometimes stumbled across Schoch’s cave, a hollow eroded from beneath the riverside path, and he might find the occasional junkie’s gear, condoms or fast-food packaging. But he’d never seen evidence of a child’s visit before.

He closed his eyes and tried to get something like sleep.

But then he had a ‘merry-go-round’, which was what he called those states of inebriation when everything started spinning the moment he crawled into his sleeping bag. In all these years he’d never managed to put his finger on what caused drunkenness to become a merry-go-round. Sometimes he was certain it was the volume consumed, while on other occasions he suspected it was down to the mixture of drinks. And then there were days like today when – so far as he could recall – he hadn’t drunk more than yesterday, or anything different, and yet everything was still spinning.

Maybe it was something to do with the weather. On the way home the Föhn wind had chased the thick clouds over the river, intermittently tearing them apart to reveal a full moon. Full moon and the Föhn: maybe that was the reason for his merry-go-rounds, at least a few of them.

He’d never found out whether it was better to keep his eyes open or closed either.

Schoch opened them. The toy elephant was still there, but it appeared to be a little further to the right.

He closed his eyes again. For a moment the little elephant spun beneath his eyelids, leaving a streak of pink.

He immediately wrenched his eyes open.

There it was, flapping its ears and lifting its trunk into an S-shape.

Schoch turned over onto the other side and tried to stop the spinning.

He fell asleep.

2
13 June 2016

Schoch had been drinking for too long for this to be a hangover worth mentioning. But also too long to recollect every detail from the previous evening. He woke later than usual, with a dry mouth, gluey eyes and his pulse racing, but no headache.

The heavy raindrops were making the twigs of the bushes at the entrance to his cave bounce up and down. Beyond these, in the dawn light, Schoch could make out the grey curtain of rain and hear its even drone. The Föhn had abated and it felt unusually cold for June.

Schoch wriggled out of his sleeping bag, stood up 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 left him eight years before – how time flew! – thought he looked more like a sheep shearer.

The divorce threw him off the rails. He’d been living with his wife, Terry, and the twins, Katie and Jerome, in a large bungalow in Fendalton, the smartest suburb of Christchurch, running a veterinary clinic with his partner and earning good money.

Sure, he’d had the odd affair, but just when he was improving on this front he caught Terry with his friend and partner. A terrible shock. He was prepared to forgive the two of them and attempt a fresh start, but although Terry wanted a fresh start too, she didn’t want a fresh start with him. After their divorce she married his partner.

Harris got himself hired as a vet on various game reserves in Asia. He’d only been back to New Zealand three times since, to see his children. They’d grown into teenagers and on their last meeting had made it plain that they didn’t think much of his rare visits. Contact with them was now restricted to modest bank transfers on their birthdays or at Christmas and the occasional awkward Skype call. Harris didn’t need to pay any maintenance and his own infidelities hadn’t been disclosed during the divorce.

A few tables further on two female tourists were feeding the ravens. He’d already noticed them on his first visit to the buffet. About thirty years of age, German-speaking, no beauties, but determined to experience more than just foreign culture and nature on their trip – this was something Harris had an eye for.

They were having great fun watching the birds land on the table and nibble their food. Harris could have impressed the women by pointing out that this was a good way of contracting cryptococcosis and psittacosis – not completely false, nor completely true either. He was just about to go up to the dessert buffet and make a remark to this effect when his mobile rang.

The display said ‘Roux’.

Harris answered, listened, said, ‘Hold on,’ took a pen from his jacket and jotted down some numbers on the back of the list of daily specials. ‘I thought it would never happen,’ he said, before finishing the conversation and dialling another number.

‘Kasun?’ he said into his phone so loudly that a number of guests turned and stared. ‘Get yourself to Ratmalana. Now!’ He made the international gesture for ‘The bill, please’ to the waiter, and when it wasn’t brought immediately Harris went up and signed the slip. On the way to his room he called his contact at the heliport.

Harris ordered a taxi and quickly put on his work clothes – khaki trousers and faded short-sleeve denim shirt. From the wardrobe he took his instrument case, which he’d already packed and checked over and over again for this long-awaited opportunity.

Barely five minutes after the phone call he was in a taxi on his way to Ratmalana Airport, fifteen kilometres to the south of Colombo.

A quarter of an hour later he was there. Kasun, the young man assigned to him by the Department of Wildlife Conservation, was waiting for him beside a Robinson R44, a light, four-seater helicopter. Its rotors had started spinning as soon as Harris’s taxi came into sight.

When Harris got to the chopper, Kasun was already strapped into the back seat, his headphones on.

The pilot increased the rotor speed, the small aircraft rose slowly and hovered over the runway for a moment. Then the pilot lowered its nose and they set off towards the south-east.

4
The same day

They’d flown the last few kilometres at low altitude above the railway line and could see the stationary train from far away. A few metres behind the engine a group of people were gathered around the injured elephant.

The pilot flew higher to give them an overview of the situation. Not far from the site of the accident was a clearing, at the edge of which stood a few huts. Enough room to land.

Apart from a handful of old women and small children the village was deserted. Those not working in the fields had gone to the scene of the accident.

Laden with instrument case, a hard-shell cool box and various containers, the stocky Harris and his tall, loose-limbed assistant hurried along the narrow path that led from the clearing to the railway line in the forest.

As usual in Sri Lanka, it was over 30 degrees with more than 90 per cent humidity. When they reached the railway embankment Harris’s shirt was sticking to his large torso. They laboured their way up the gravel and began heading northwards along the tracks. The site of the accident had to be just beyond the bend.

Not a scrap of shade fell onto the railway line; they were at the mercy of the roasting sun. It stank of the hot creosote that the wooden sleepers were impregnated with. And of the passenger lavatories.

Now they could see the train as well as the people grouped beside the embankment.

Just before they reached them, Harris instructed his Sri Lankan helper to go first to clear the way. Kasun barked some instructions in Sinhalese, and all Harris understood were the English words ‘National Wildlife Department’. The curious villagers and passengers from the train immediately moved aside.

Before them lay the little elephant and beside it knelt a young woman, stroking its head.

‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ she said, choking back the tears.

The animal’s eyes were wide open, it was biting its trunk and its hind legs stuck out at an unnatural angle. Harris put down his case and opened it.

‘Are you a vet?’ the tourist asked him in her American accent.

Harris nodded. He took out a syringe and filled it from an ampoule.

‘Will she be okay?’ the American woman asked, worried.

Harris nodded. He lifted the injured animal’s right ear. The network of veins on the back stood out prominently. Harris chose a swollen one as thick as a finger, positioned the needle, and injected the contents of the syringe.

‘Painkiller?’ she asked.

Harris nodded once more. ‘Painkiller,’ he muttered, checking his watch.

The elephant seemed to relax. The tongue slid from her mouth and lay on the trampled grass like a weary snake. The American tourist kept stroking the baby elephant’s head, which was dotted sparsely with long hairs. ‘Shhh, shhh,’ she said, as if to a child going to sleep.

Harris checked his watch again and made a sign to Kasun. He understood and touched the woman’s shoulder, who flinched and looked up at him.

Now Harris could see how young the tear-stained face was.

‘Let’s go, miss,’ Kasun said.

The American looked at Harris for help.

He nodded. ‘Everybody leaves now. We have to do some surgery.’

Slowly she got to her feet, looked back down at the baby elephant, wiped the tears away with the heels of her hands and looked at Harris. ‘You put her to sleep, didn’t you?’

He didn’t reply.

She turned around and was led away by the train guard to the group of passengers waiting a few carriages further on in the shade of the trees at the edge of the forest.

Harris took off his sweat-drenched shirt and replaced it with a green surgeon’s gown. Kasun clapped him on the back and handed him the disinfectant. Its glycerine content made it easier to put on the surgical gloves.

The vet listened to the little elephant through his stethoscope. After three minutes he nodded to Kasun, who was also now wearing sterile, disposable gloves. Kasun took the large scalpel from the instrument case and passed it to Harris.

Harris set the blade beside the eighteenth rib below the spinal column and opened up the lumbar region of the dead elephant.