Elephant Winter (21 page)
I don’t know how long I’ll stay. When I get crumpled letters with bright yellow stamps from Zimbabwe I can smell the caves and feel the heat on my skin. But today, willing and fain, I ask the elephants to take me captive in their captivity, enthrall me and lead me hand in hand as we wander slowly through the hours watching a small baby grow, learning more and more of each other’s language. There are nights when I chafe at my duties and fall battered into bed after working all day. There are days when I’m exhausted and I wish I had no one to take care of. But my ferocious love for this child and my deep bond with these elephants
draw me into life, where old furies are gentled. The Safari will open again and the elephants have to be ready to walk among tourists, to make the trek down to the pond so that on summer afternoons people can marvel at the weightless joy they take in rolling and splashing in the water. I have to clean up the howdahs for the children’s rides and get Saba’s pictures framed. I have to take care of Omega. I want her to know where she will fall asleep and where she’ll wake. Even in this small safari there is much to do. I find things to keep my heart occupied. Omega said her first word today. It was the greeting Saba makes to her, an audible
brah
with a light caress from her trunk. Omega waved her arms when Saba came up to us and made the sound back. Then they made the sound together and I listened and laughed to hear it. We are all each other’s Word.
Stevie Smith,
The Collected Poems of Stevie Smith,
Penguin 20th Century Classics, ed. James MacGibbon.
Emily Dickinson,
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson,
Little Brown and Co., ed.Thomas H.Johnson.
Every effort has been made to contact or trace all copyright holders. The publishers will be glad to make good any errors or omissions brought to our attention in future editions.
When
Elephant Winter
was first published I was surprised at how many people asked whether the elephant lore in the novel is true. It is the job of fiction to give meaning to facts, and the job of language to shape the world. This being said, all of the elephant lore in the novel is drawn from extensive research into the history and mythology of elephants, accounts of their ability to communicate with each other and with humans, scientific studies on their physiology and behaviour, particularly their intense desire to learn and to nurture and teach their young.
I would like to thank Katherine Payne for her extensive work on elephant communication and a generous afternoon she spent with me at Cornell University where she described her research and played me her audio and video tapes. Katherine Payne was the first person to document elephant infrasound which she discovered by noticing a strange pressure change on her ear drums. She has continued her research on elephant communication in Africa as well as studies on their ability to teach each other migration routes. Her fine scientific work, and her admiration and knowledge of these great animals is an inspiration
to me. It is important to stress however that while we understand elephants to have a small repetoire of infrasonic utterances with which they communicate, the Elephant–English Dictionary in this novel is a complete invention.
The work of many elephant researchers was important to me: Joyce H. Poole, Cynthia Moss, Iain and Oria Douglas-Hamilton, Heathcote Williams, Douglas Chadwick, H.H. Scullard, Ramesh Bedi. The autopsy notes are based on a 1936 report by Francis G. Benedict in
Physiology of the Elephant
. The ability of elephants to draw is described in David Gucwa and James Ehmann’s
To Whom It May Concern: An Investigation of the Art of Elephants
. For the chance to see elephants in the wild I am grateful to the guides at Fothergill Island, Lake Kariba, in Zimbabwe. For access to elephants in captivity, I am grateful to Michael Hackenburger at the Bowmanville Zoo. For information on the training of elephants, and their habits in captivity, I consulted with several elephant keepers I met through the Elephant Managers Association. I have also turned to written accounts such as Franklin Edgerton’s
The Elephant Lore of the Hindus
. One of my favourite descriptions of the qualities of an elephant driver comes from his book:
The supervisor of elephants should be intelligent, kinglike, righteous, devoted to his lord, pure, true to his undertaking, free from vice, controlling his senses, well behaved, vigorous, tried by practice, delighting in
kind words, his science learned from a good teacher, clever, firm, . . . fearless, all knowing.
Many ancient writers were interested in the physical and metaphysical significance of the elephant. I have read their observations avidly. Cassiodorus in
Variae
wrote, “Its breath is said to be a cure for headaches in man.” Aelian in
De Natura Animalium
noted “An elephant will not pass by a dead elephant without casting a branch or some dust on the body.” Livy, Oppian, Cassiodorus, Elder Pliny, Plutarch, Cicero all wrote about elephants. But my favourite of the ancients’ observations belongs to Aristotle in
De Rerum Natura:
“The beast that passeth all others in wit and mind . . . and by its intelligence, it makes as near an approach to man as matter can approach spirit.”
Finally, I would like to thank the following for their generous encouragement and exchange of ideas: Rex Murphy, Leslie and Alan Nickell, Ann and Adam Winterton, Cynthia Holz, Julie Showalter, Carol Shields and my loyal and unfailingly encouraging writing group. Special thanks to Madeleine Echlin, Ross and Olivia Upshur and my publisher, Cynthia Good.
Elephant Winter
Thirty-year-old Sophie Walker is enjoying expatriate life in her adopted home of Zimbabwe, where she teaches art and studies ancient cave drawings, when she is called home to southern Ontario, Canada, to care for her dying mother. Sophie finds herself confined to her mother’s home, which borders a touristy safari-zoo called Ontario Safari on the stark landscape of the old escarpment. Torn between duty and love, Sophie adopts the role of caregiver, sparking an emotional and spiritual journey. Her mother, a wildlife painter, is strong and outspoken and loving; she tells tales of her younger days living in Paris with her lover, Sophie’s father. Once a vibrant and social woman, attending glamorous art openings and keeping a busy house, she has isolated herself from her friends and acquaintances during her illness, keeping company instead with her budgies and a pair of African Grays and listening to the sombre music of Arvo Pärt. In the intense daily domestic life of tending to the dying, Sophie lives moments of despair and joy and deep understanding through the daunting task of “waiting.”
Sophie watches the safari’s rugged elephant-keeper, Jo Mann, walk his elephant herd each day through the frozen fields behind her mother’s house. Seeing her in the window, Jo beckons her to join him. Sophie is instantly attracted to him. Slipping out of the house, she discovers unexpected life in Jo’s love and in getting to know his elephants. When she becomes pregnant she observes how the elephants form themselves in a matriarchal group whose purpose is to survive, to care for their young, and to keep from boredom in their enforced captivity.
When she’s not caring for her mother, Sophie works in the barn, and, observing the elephants’ behaviour, she records and analyzes their language. Woven through the book is Echlin’s Elephant–English Dictionary; divided into five sections, it loosely translates everything from simple greetings to layered expressions of love and community. The dictionary gives voice to the complicated relationships of these powerful mammals. Sophie’s connection with the elephants, particularly a pregnant female named Kezia, develops further as her own baby grows.
Disrupting the calm daily routine of caring for the elephants is scientist Alecto Rikes, who arrives at the safari uninvited. Jo is concerned about Alecto’s presence in the barn, and with due cause. Sophie soon learns of his past: killing wild elephants and performing autopsies to study their anatomy. Nevertheless, she is drawn to his intellect and his wide knowledge of the species, but as she gets closer to him she discovers that he possesses an even darker side. At once charming and disquieting, Alecto also fascinates Sophie’s mother, who accepts his company just as she has accepted eccentrics throughout her life. When the only male elephant at the safari dies, Alecto’s purpose for visiting the safari and his innate evil emerge in myriad ways.
Winner of a Torgi Award and nominated for a Books in Canada Award, Echlin’s mesmerizing first novel eloquently explores mysteries of life and death, good and evil, community and communication, all within the poignant, personal tale of one woman’s life-altering winter. As described by
The Evening Telegram, Elephant Winter
is “achingly beautiful, at once sad and uplifting . . . a story for the heart, the mind and the soul.”
Q:
The mother–daughter relationship is so pivotal to this story. Did you draw upon your own relationships with your mother and your children? Did you draw upon a personal experience of losing someone close to you when writing the story between Sophie and her mother?
These are questions that readers often ask. One of the surprising things that happened to me after I published this book was that people who have tended to the dying told me they appreciate how I describe this experience. I always felt grateful when they mentioned this. Of course, a writer draws from observation and from personal experience, but more important is how a writer transforms what he or she sees and feels in life through the imaginative work of storytelling.
Our relationships with our parents and children, with caring for others, especially the marginalized and dying, demand great creativity. I have witnessed great tenderness toward the dying and from the dying. I have also witnessed people who prefer solitude as they die. All of these are personal experiences, but as a writer I want to be able to write in a way that makes the writer disappear. Our greatest writers create stories and language that go beyond their personal lives and linger in the reader’s mind long after the moment of reading.
Q:
Why did you choose elephants for this story?
I used to dream frequently about elephants; they were an image that resonated with me. As I researched them I learned why they are such a powerful archetype. Not only do they embody enormous physical strength, but they have capacities of memory and sensitivity and communication that are still a source of wonder in the scientific and lay communities. They are religious symbols in some cultures; they live long lives in the wild, teach each other migration routes and language. I was especially interested in their matriarchal social structure. I wondered what it would be like to imagine a human community that was structured, after survival, on nurturing one another and the young.