An Elephantasy

  Contents

  Title Page

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  Translator’s Note

  About the Publisher

  Copyright

  1

  On Thursday, I went out nice and early to take my geranium for a little walk, like I did every Thursday. But no sooner had I opened the door, than… Ker-BLAM! What did I see? The front step was filled by a huge grey mountain blocking my way.

  So what did I do? I pushed it! Yes, I pushed the mountain and managed to get it down onto the sidewalk. And there I saw—I was sure I had to be dreaming—that the mountain was nothing less than an elephant. Would you believe it? An elephant!

  Well, I was about to scream for help when I noticed that the huge animal had a very large letter hanging from one of its ears. Someone had written my name in really big writing on the envelope. So I opened it, and this was what it said. Listen up:

  Dear Miss,

  My name is Dailan Kifki, and I beg you not to be alarmed at the fact that I’m an elephant. My owner abandoned me because he is no longer able to feed me. He is sure that you, miss, with your good heart, would want to take care of me and cook me my yummy, lovely oats soup. I’m very hardworking and affectionate, and as for TV, I’m absolutely crazy about cartoons.

  Just imagine!

  (Have you imagined?)

  Well, you can guess what a problem this caused!

  You might find a cat abandoned at your front door. You might find a dog, a cockroach, a stray ant… Even a baby in a nappy with a safety pin. Anything but an elephant!

  It wouldn’t have felt right just leaving him there like that, all abandoned and hungry. But on the other hand, even though we do have a big house, I really didn’t know where to put him, and I had no idea what my family or our neighbours would say.

  All the same, I decided to take him in just for a few days until we could find him someplace better.

  You’d have done the same, right?

  So I went back to pushing him, this time with his trunk facing indoors, his back end to the pavement, and without his offering the least resistance. He got himself inside very quickly, no doubt lured by the smell of rice pudding coming from the kitchen.

  I took Dailan Kifki into the garden as stealthily as I could, trying not to wake anyone. But his footsteps boomed around the house like thunder, and soon my whole family appeared in their nightgowns at the window that looks out over the garden.

  My mum fainted, my dad’s pipe fell out of his mouth, and my brother Roberto said:

  “We’re toast.”

  Dailan Kifki just stood there in the garden, nice and calm, looking around casually and sniffing the flowers.

  I went back inside to deal with my family, and on my way ordered four hundred thousand kilos of oats from the market, and fifty-four thousand, six-hundred-and-seventy-two dozen bananas, an army of bottles of milk and three croissants, all for my new houseguest.

  When I got back to the garden, there was another surprise awaiting me.

  What do you think Dailan Kifki was doing?

  He was working!

  Yes, you heard me right: working!

  He was turning on the tap with his trunk, filling the watering can and then watering the plants, ever so delicately. As he walked, his big feet squashed flat all the ants he met along the way.

  I could see then that what the letter had said was true: Dailan Kifki really was an extremely hardworking elephant.

  There could surely be no other elephant like him in the world!

  I was standing there watching him, full of admiration, when my Auntie Clodomira decided to show up at the house for a visit, with her umbrella and her hat that was covered in daisies.

  When Auntie Clodomira saw Dailan Kifki in the garden, she fainted.

  I was just about to call the fire brigade because my aunt is really fat and I couldn’t get her out of the large plant pot she’d fallen into, when…

  What do you think the elephant did?

  He picked her up gently with his trunk, raised her through the bedroom window and set her down on the bed.

  Then—still through the window—he fanned her with his ears, and stroked her softly.

  As you can imagine, when my aunt woke up and saw she had an elephant as her nurse, she gave a terrible shriek and fainted again. But this didn’t alarm Dailan Kifki.

  Do you know what he did then?

  He walked over to the kitchen, opened the fridge, took out a jug of cold water, pushed the door closed with his little foot, and then tipped the jug delicately over Auntie Clodomira’s hat.

  My family, meanwhile, were furious, and spurred on by my aunt’s terrible cries, they all begged me tearfully to get that monster out of the house.

  They screamed so much, I learnt later, that the uproar made all the stamps come unstuck from the post.

  I had no choice but to say to Dailan Kifki:

  “Come on, then, sweetheart, you’d better come with me. Nobody here understands you. Let’s go. I’ll take you to the zoo.”

  And what do you think Dailan Kifki answered?

  Nothing. He started to cry, first two teeny little teardrops, then two great big teardrops, after that two absolutely huge teardrops and finally two hosepipe streams of tears.

  He cried so loud that he made the whole block tremble and, naturally, the few stamps that were still stuck on the post came unstuck and flew out the windows.

  My family were touched by this sorry sight, and had no choice but to stop their own crying. Everyone began trying to console him. Because the truth is, an elephant’s sadness is much greater than a person’s.

  My father gave him a cookie, my Auntie Clodomira lent him her hat just for a little while, my mother stroked his ears and my brother Roberto said:

  “We’re toast.”

  And from that day on, Dailan Kifki lived in our garden.

  2

  I became very fond of Dailan Kifki. Which was why one night, when I heard him crying very softly, the sound just broke my heart.

  Why would poor Dailan Kifki be crying, at midnight, in the garden?

  Since his crying was becoming weepier and weepier, I was afraid that my family and our neighbours would wake up, or that the crying would be heard in the post office a second time and all the stamps would unstick themselves again. And so I got up, and just as I was, in my nightie, I put on my tulle hat with little flags and went out into the garden.

  Dailan Kifki was crying like four elephants who had spent four whole years peeling onions.

  “What’s the matter, sweetheart?” I asked, gently.

  “Oooohooooo!” he answered.

  “What’s up? Do you miss your mummy? Have you been bitten by a mosquito? Did you have a bad dream that a mouse was running after you?”

  “No,” he told me with a shake of his head, left-right, left-right.
/>
  And he took my hand with his trunk and placed it on his tummy.

  I understood everything: the poor thing must have a tummy ache. It had to be indigestion from the forty-five buckets of rice pudding with cinnamon he’d eaten that day.

  What a catastrophe!

  If somebody like you, with your tiny tummy, knows how much your tummy hurts when it hurts, just imagine how much more an elephant’s big belly would hurt, being so very huge.

  I massaged it a bit, but this didn’t seem to make it any better, so I decided to call the vet at once.

  Still half asleep, I found the number in the phonebook and called, but the vet must have been asleep, and it was one of his patients who answered, because when I asked “Is that the vet speaking?” a grumpy voice replied “Woof!”

  I phoned again, and another voice, just as grumpy, answered: “Meow!” So I didn’t insist. In desperation, all I could think of was to call the fire brigade.

  No sooner had I hung up the phone than a delightful Fireman appeared, all dressed in red, with a golden helmet with a plume, a hose with polka-dots and an axe that shone as bright as the moon.

  “Where’s the fire, where’s the flame, that hides each time I call its name?” asked the Fireman.

  “Look, Mr Fireman,” I answered, “to tell you the truth, I can’t actually offer you a fire just now, but…”

  “But if there’s no fire in forest or glade, no rescues to be most heroically made, then why did you call out the fire brigade?” he said.

  “Let me explain, Mr Fireman. What happened is, Dailan Kifki has a tummy ache…”

  “A fireman can’t tell you how to fix an achy tummy. For such things, miss, I rather think you’d better ask your mummy.”

  “Firemen know about everything… And also, the vet was asleep. I got horrible answers like woof and meow when I called him, so please understand, Mr Fireman…”

  “Very well, miss. For your sake, I will attend to this tummy ache,” the Fireman answered, resigned.

  I took him out to the garden without switching on the garden light so he wouldn’t see, just like that, all of a sudden, that his patient was an elephant.

  It was very dark in the garden, so when the Fireman heard a strange booming voice saying “Oooohooooo!” he was so startled that he grabbed me by the neck and jumped into my arms, and I had to pick him up like a little boy while he trembled and screamed “Mummy!”

  What a spectacle.

  “You should be ashamed,” I said. “Fancy a fireman being scared!”

  Then he recovered his cool, hopped back down to the ground, straightened his jacket, polished up his buttons with his sleeve and, grabbing hold of his axe and hose, headed towards Dailan Kifki.

  “But what’s this?” he cried. “It’s an unearthly beast! It’s a fiend from the east! A fearsome damsel-slayer, or a giant Himalaya?”

  Then I turned on the light.

  When he saw that his patient was an elephant, the Fireman sat down with a bump on his polka-dot hose.

  With some effort I got him back up onto his feet. Impatiently now, I scolded him:

  “Yessir, an elephant, that’s right—so why did you get such a fright?”

  “Very well, now, don’t get irate. Don’t get in a state. Don’t yell at me, chide me, or grumble or prate,” said the Fireman.

  And he began to examine Dailan Kifki, who was crying more than ever now.

  After examining him, the Fireman said:

  “For elephant tummies, the best thing, it’s true, is a soothing lettuce and sawdust brew.”

  So we went to the kitchen and got several heads of lettuce. But the sawdust was harder to find.

  I thought about going round to wake up the Carpenter who lives on the corner, but the Fireman said:

  “No, waking up a carpenter’s a risky operation. His nightmares might pursue us and they lead to devastation.”

  So we made our way back into the house—quietly, so as not to wake my family—and we carried all the furniture out to the garden.

  We grabbed hold of a saw and the two of us sawed chairs, tables, sideboards and shelves, until we had enough sawdust for a good dose of elephant medicine.

  When we had managed to fill several buckets, the Fireman prepared the poultice of lettuce and sawdust, spread it out on a sheet and put it on Dailan Kifki’s little tummy.

  And we sat and waited for it to get better, while I brewed up some mate tea for the poor Fireman, who was exhausted and terribly sleepy.

  We’d only had about seven hundred and forty-two mate teas each, and dawn had just begun to break, when at last Dailan Kifki stopped whimpering. He sighed, smiled and said, “Aaaah…”, very relieved.

  “Are you better now, kid?” we asked him.

  Dailan Kifki told us yes, moving his big head up and down, up-down and down-up.

  We covered the elephant well, sang him a lullaby duet, and finally Dailan Kifki fell very happily asleep.

  I thanked the Fireman and gave him a little kiss. He trotted off in his red jacket, his golden helmet slightly askew, with his polka-dot hose and his axe that shone as bright as the moon.

  And I went off to sleep, happy at having cured the terrible illness of my poor little elly with a sore little belly.

  3

  My father, my mother and my brother Roberto woke up, and straight away they all started crying and stamping their feet.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, absolutely exhausted after a bad night because of my sick elephant.

  “What do you mean, what’s going on?” asked my mum. “Can’t you see I’m sitting in the air?”

  I opened my eyes wide and went over to look.

  It was true: Mum was sitting in the air because there wasn’t a chair for her to sit on.

  “And what about me?” shouted Dad. “Making me sleep standing in a corner! You think that’s a nice way to behave?”

  Just so: Dad was sleeping standing up because there was no longer a bed.

  And my brother Roberto said:

  “We’re toast.”

  Which was quite right, since he, too, was sitting in the air opposite a cup of café au lait that was hanging from the light fitting because the poor thing had been left without a table.

  And when they leant out the window to the garden, still in their nightgowns, they saw the remains of the furniture that the Fireman and I had sawn up so valiantly in the night, and they all screamed even louder than before.

  They complained, they scolded me, my father promised to give me a good smacking on my backside and my brother Roberto said:

  “We’re toast—so very, very much toast,” pointing at Dailan Kifki with an accusing finger.

  What was worse, they sent me off to the carpenter’s to order some new furniture.

  “I can’t spend the rest of my life sitting in the air, you know,” complained my mother, quite correctly.

  I ran off to the carpenter’s on my own. Even though he was dying to tag along, I didn’t want to take my elephant with me, as it would have overexcited the neighbours.

  I knocked really loudly and the carpenter appeared, with his delightful wood-shaving beard that reached all the way down to his bellybutton.

  “Good morning, Mister Carpenter,” I said. “I’ve come to see whether you might have time this afternoon to make several pieces of furniture for my family.”

  “Are you totally mad?” he answered.

  “No, I’m not, Mister Carpenter. I’ll pay you double if necessary.”

  “Hm,” said the carpenter, “and what about the wood, eh?”

  “Well,” I answered, “I would have thought that, being a good carpenter, you’d have wood, and nails, and a saw, and everything else you need, right?”

  “Hm,” he said again. “There’s no wood.”

  “You’re kidding. There’s no wood?”

  “None.”

  The carpenter moved towards me with a mysterious expression on his face, till he was so close his beard prickled at my ear,
and he said:

  “You know where you get wood from?”

  “Of course,” I answered. “From trees.”

  “Hm, and where are the trees?”

  “Everywhere. In the forests, on the streets, in—”

  “Hm… But if you cut trees down without permission, an officer will show up and… smack.”

  That did alarm me, because I’d had more than enough threats of getting a smack at my own house.

  “So what do we do now, Mister Carpenter?” I asked him desperately. “Where are we going to get the wood from?”

  He didn’t answer, but with an enigmatic gesture led me to his workshop, walking along a carpet of shavings, sawdust and sweetly scented woodblocks. He lit a lamp, lifted up a floorboard, and pulled out a chest.

  Inside the chest there was a box.

  Inside the box there was another box.

  Inside that box there was another box.

  Inside that box there was a briefcase.

  Inside the briefcase there was a small bag.

  Inside the small bag there was a velvet case.

  Inside the velvet case there was a purse.

  Inside the purse there was a little packet wrapped up in tissue paper.

  Inside the little packet wrapped up in tissue paper there was a bean.

  The carpenter gave it a quick polish with his sleeve and held it out to me.

  “And what am I supposed to do with this bean, Mister Carpenter?” I asked, sure he’d gone quite mad.

  “What are you supposed to do? You plant it, of course!”

  “Plant it? What for, if I might know?”

  “What for? From the bean will come a shoot and from the shoot a twig, from a branch will come a trunk and from the trunk a whole tree and way up there, way up on top, the birdies will be singing.”

  “But Mister Carpenter,” I said, distressed, “when the tree has grown and there are birdies singing on top, we’ll be very sorry to have to cut it down to make wood. And besides, Mum will be fed up of sitting in the air by then.”

  “Well, what can you do?” said the carpenter. “If you want wood, plant the bean.”

  And he shut the door in my face! I walked away, so very sad, with the bean in my hand, seeing that I had no choice but to plant it and wait for it to grow.

  When I got home, my family bombarded me with questions.