An Elephantasy Read online

  “Hang on,” I answered. “Have a bit of patience. You don’t just make furniture overnight, you know. Wait a little…”

  And I went off to the garden to plant my bean, while they all sat there in the air in a filthy mood.

  Dailan Kifki helped me plant it, treading down the earth with his big steamroller feet.

  Once the bean was nicely sown, we sat down on the grass to wait for it to grow.

  I pretended not to be paying attention and didn’t look at it much, because I knew that if you looked at it, it would take longer to grow, in the same way a pot of milk takes longer to boil.

  But a good long while went by… and nothing.

  Then two whiles went by… and still nothing.

  Then a really, really big while went by… and still nothing.

  The bean didn’t even give out the tiniest, rubbishest shoot.

  Without wasting another moment, and certain that the carpenter must have swindled me, I went round to his place and dragged him back with me by his delightful, celestial, wood-shaving beard.

  The carpenter dug up the bean and said:

  “Hm… Well, quite!”

  “Quite what? Didn’t we plant it right?”

  “You planted it the wrong way round! Can’t you see it’s growing downward?”

  And we saw that the bean was, indeed, the wrong way round. It had sprouted a long green beard, but pointing downward.

  The carpenter planted it the right way up, Dailan Kifki once again trod down the earth with one of his big feet, and I instructed him to keep an eye on it for a little while.

  Then I went to explain to my mum that, as it turned out, getting hold of wood to make furniture wasn’t as simple as it first appeared.

  My mum was still sitting in the air.

  Poor Mum.

  4

  That afternoon, when I got back from work, I found a big crowd of people outside my house.

  Whatever could have happened? I thought in alarm.

  I could hear policemen’s whistles, ambulance sirens, the tinkling triangles of the wafer sellers, people screaming and sighing and shouting and having tantrums.

  I shoved my way through as best I could.

  Everybody was yelling and arguing, looking up towards the sky. The police officers were trying to keep order.

  There were photographers and reporters, a TV news team, a dog with two tails, firemen eating meringues and children who were just there taking advantage of the commotion to skip some school.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, still alarmed.

  Nobody answered. Some of them because they didn’t feel like it. Others because they were too busy eating ice creams. Others because they didn’t know what was going on either.

  Since everybody was looking up, over the back of my house, I looked up too. And what do you think I saw? Only Dailan Kifki asleep on the tall, super-tall trunk of a tall, super-tall tree! So tall it seemed to be feather-dusting the clouds with its leaves.

  “It can’t be,” I said to myself. “I must be dreaming… How did Dailan Kifki manage to climb up there?”

  “Isn’t it an outrage?” remarked one of our neighbours. “When have you ever seen an elephant on top of a tree, eh? And what if it falls? What if it squashes someone flat? The government should not be allowing elephants to climb trees!”

  “Yes, you’re quite right, ma’am,” I answered, choosing not to point out that the elephant was my elephant and that his name was Dailan Kifki.

  I kept on pushing my way through and saying lots of excuse-mes until I managed to get into my house, which was also full of people, security guards, firemen, cameramen, dogs, cats, ice-cream sellers, balloon sellers and even a nun who was saying prayers to calm everyone down.

  My mother threw her arms around me, crying, and said:

  “You see what a disaster it is? I told you it would have been best to take that elephant to the zoo!”

  “But Mum, where did Dailan Kifki find such a tall tree?”

  “That tree is your famous bean!” said Mum between sobs.

  “My bean? It’s grown that much?” I asked.

  And my mother told me the whole story.

  After planting the bean, I left Dailan Kifki in charge of looking after it.

  It seems the poor thing had fallen asleep… right on top of where the bean was planted.

  And of course, the bean began to grow at full speed… Just think of the effort that poor little bean must have made lifting an elephant! Can you imagine? Well, the fact is that the little plant grew, and it grew, and it grew… It started sprouting little twigs, then branches, then tree-trunks… And of course, on the way it picked up poor Dailan Kifki, who really is a very deep sleeper.

  The fact was, the bean had been transformed into a lovely tree, at whose summit a sleeping elephant was rocking gently.

  I made the crowds quiet down because I was afraid they would wake him up and he’d fall. And I started thinking very anxiously about what we could do to get him safely back to earth.

  My mother was still complaining:

  “But doesn’t this elephant understand we need the tree to make the wood to make the furniture?”

  I asked her to have a little patience, as there was absolutely no way we could chop the tree down and give poor innocent Dailan Kifki such a terrible bump.

  I came up with various ideas for getting him down safely.

  The first was to ask a helicopter to approach him slowly. But I immediately thought the roaring noise would startle him.

  I also thought about asking the firemen for their ladder. But how was the poor thing, with his great big feet, supposed to come down such flimsy steps?

  Impossible.

  At that point my brother Roberto arrived, looked up and said:

  “We’re toast.”

  Then it occurred to him that the best plan would be to soap the tree-trunk so that Dailan Kifki would just slide down. But I didn’t think that was such a good idea.

  Then my dad, who’s a practical man, suggested that someone ought to climb the tree and tie a cable from the top of the tree to the top of a nearby skyscraper, that we should give Dailan Kifki a little parasol and that he would then walk across like a tightrope-walker till he’d arrived safe and sound on top of the skyscraper.

  “Yes, Dad, it’s an excellent plan,” I said. “But you haven’t thought about the next problem we’d have. When Dailan Kifki arrives on top of the skyscraper, how do we get him down then? He won’t fit in a lift, and he doesn’t know how to go down stairs.”

  Dad had no answer for this, and only managed to scratch a little behind his ear. Then my Auntie Clodomira showed up twirling her umbrella and said:

  “See? I told you that elephant was going to cause you a headache. Such an impudent creature. Isn’t the big beast ashamed to be perched up there like he’s some kind of bird?”

  “Please, Auntie,” I replied, “now isn’t the moment for a telling-off. The most urgent thing is for us to get him down from the tree without him hurting himself.”

  “Oh, but that’s the easiest thing in the world!” said my aunt.

  “You think so, Auntie? What should we do?”

  “You have to bend the trunk of the tree down, nice and slowly, bit by bit…”

  “And what if it breaks?” I asked.

  “Well, I hadn’t thought of that,” replied my Auntie Clodomira. And she immediately forgot all about the problem and started dictating a recipe to my mother for cork sponge with candied spinach.

  Then my brother Roberto, who by now was quite furious at so much commotion, could only say:

  “I’ll get that elephant down with my slingshot!”

  I nearly hit him then, but I stopped myself because I was worried the noise of the thwack would wake Dailan Kifki.

  Meanwhile, I looked up again and saw that Dailan Kifki was stretching. He woke up gently, like an angel. Everybody watched him, mouths agape, while the photographers took his picture and the cameramen filmed
him.

  When he had woken up he seemed quite astonished, because he stared down with a look of utter wonderment.

  Luckily he didn’t fall as he’s a clever elephant and he’d realised that, strange as it seemed, he had fallen asleep on top of a tree.

  Seeing him wide awake, I took the opportunity to give him a good scolding.

  “Oh, that’s just lovely, Dailan Kifki,” I shouted, “just lovely! So, what, you think you’re a little birdie, then?”

  And do you know what the cheeky fellow replied?

  Mocking me, with his big booming voice, he replied:

  “CHEEP CHEEP CHIRRUP CHEEP!”

  I wasn’t expecting that.

  5

  Well then, as I was saying, there we were with cricks in our necks from all the hours we’d spent looking up at Dailan Kifki, and still nobody had thought of a truly effective method for getting him down from the tree. To tell you the truth, since he liked it and he felt like a little birdie—which was completely unforgivable, according to my aunt—we could really have left him there and just sent food up to him somehow, except that we urgently needed to chop down the tree to get wood to make the furniture for my house. So there wasn’t a minute to lose.

  I made a decision: I’d go fetch the Fireman. Who else would be better at thinking up clever ideas for getting Dailan Kifki down from the tree? No one, that’s who.

  So I telephoned the Fireman, and before I’d even finished hanging up, there he was, in his lovely red jacket, his golden helmet with a plume, his polka-dot hose and his axe that shone as bright as the moon.

  “What should we do, Mister Fireman?” I asked him, most distressed. And the Fireman replied, very serious:

  “For hunting down an elephant who thinks he is a bird, there’s only one solution—just you wait—I’ll say the word…”

  “Very well, Mister Fireman. Tell me your method.”

  And the Fireman whispered, very secretly, in my ear.

  When he had explained it properly, I almost fainted in wonder at such a clever fireman.

  I put on my tulle hat with little flags and ran out to the street, which was still full of people nibbling on caramels and unwrapping lollipops.

  I went straight over to the supermarket. I bought seven hundred and eighty dozen balls of thick twine, upholstery needles, tissue paper, paste, six hundred and seventy-eight kilometres of tulle in all kinds of colours, hat feathers, wooden rods, cellophane, silk ribbons and a kilo and a half of some thing or other I don’t remember now.

  I took it all home, and in the garden the Fireman and I set to work, while everyone watched us in amazement and my brother Roberto just kept on repeating again and again like a parrot:

  “We’re toast, we’re toast, we’re toast.”

  Oh, how the Fireman and I worked!

  For hours we sewed, glued, unglued, trimmed, darned and knotted, we did and undid, because the Fireman never felt the job was quite perfect.

  Fortunately Mum felt sorry for us and brewed us some mate tea.

  Every once in a while I would look up just to check how Dailan Kifki was doing.

  “How are you doing, sweetheart?” I shouted.

  “CHIRRUP CHEEP,” he replied.

  When our work was finally ready, it was nearly dark.

  And it was time to tell everybody what it was the Fireman and I had been making. A pair of wings!

  A lovely pair of wings so that Dailan Kifki could fly down and land in the garden safe and sound.

  See how clever the Fireman was?

  And to think it hadn’t occurred to anyone else!

  Those wings were very beautiful. Just picture them: tulle in all kinds of colours, with little feathers, cellophane trimmings, finished with silver paper, silk ribbons, and even a rosette the Fireman added at the last minute.

  The most difficult job was still to come: climbing up the tree and putting the wings on Dailan Kifki. But the Fireman said bravely:

  “Adorning Mister Elephant with such a pair of wings? It’s nothing too alarming, quite the easiest of things.”

  As the Fireman was getting ready to climb the tree, my whole family came out to the garden to see him off, as though he were going to China or to Mars on a rocket.

  My mother hugged him, sobbing, and gave him a noisy kiss.

  My father clapped him on the back and said:

  “Be brave, my friend.”

  My Auntie Clodomira, at the very last moment, sewed a button onto his jacket, and my brother Roberto simply said:

  “We’re toast.”

  While we all waved our handkerchiefs at him and shouted encouragement, the Fireman started to climb the tree. It was difficult since he was loaded up with those wings, which were huge.

  Fortunately, at that moment the Boy Scouts’ band showed up and set about playing a march that really helped to raise the Fireman’s spirits.

  In the final stretch, when it was beginning to look like he was going to fall, defeated by the weight of the wings, and all twitchy because a butterfly had just settled on his nose, Dailan Kifki gave him a little help, picking him up with his trunk and setting him down beside him on top of the tree.

  The Fireman got to his feet, struck his breast valiantly, let out a great yell like Tarzan and grandly flourished his golden helmet with a plume.

  The hard part was over.

  6

  When she saw him at the top of the tree, my mum said:

  “What a brave fireman. You ought to marry that one, my girl.”

  Which embarrassed me terribly, as you can imagine.

  I ran to fetch my spyglass to get a better view of what the Fireman was doing all the way up there.

  I could see that he had climbed onto Dailan Kifki’s head and was putting on the elephant’s wings.

  Dailan Kifki seemed to be finding it ticklish, because he was giggling and shaking all over. He was bucking about so much I was scared he’d make the Fireman fall.

  So my family, just as a precaution, brought all the mattresses, pillows and cushions out into the garden and arranged them around the tree, so as to soften any dangerous bump that might occur.

  “I ought to have lent him my umbrella,” said Auntie Clodomira.

  “What for, Auntie? It’s not raining,” I said, beginning to get rather annoyed with her.

  “To use as a parachute in case of emergency,” replied my aunt.

  I must say, those wings did look lovely on Dailan Kifki.

  By the light of the sun’s last rays, you can’t imagine how those cellophane trims, the ribbons and the rosette all shone!

  Fortunately the wind picked up a little, which apart from being helpful for flying also made the tulle of his wings flutter.

  When the Fireman was sure the wings were firmly affixed, he waved us goodbye with his arm raised high in the air, flourished his helmet with a plume, settled himself comfortably on the elephant’s head, and spurred him on with his heels. Then Dailan Kifki unfurled his wings and… Zzzzzzooooom! away he flew.

  We all clapped frantically, while the Fireman waved and Dailan Kifki, just fooling around, did two or three pirouettes in the air.

  We were so excited at the success of our undertaking that at first we didn’t notice that this new spaceship, rather than coming straight down into the garden, was off through the air, flying faster and faster and higher…

  “But where are they going?” I asked, slightly alarmed.

  “Did you advise the Fireman to land right away?” asked my dad.

  “No,” I answered. “A fireman doesn’t need anyone giving him instructions. He always knows exactly what to do.”

  “But what if he doesn’t come back? How are you going to marry him then?” asked my mum with a pout, her bottom lip starting to quiver.

  “We need to bring them down with a slingshot,” said my brother Roberto softly, as he looked—green with envy—at the astronautical Fireman.

  We stood there dumbstruck, watching as Dailan Kifki fluttered high above our
house.

  He seemed to have no intention whatsoever of coming down to land.

  I have to admit, I was jealous, too, just like my brother Roberto.

  Can you imagine how beautiful it would be to glide through the air on a flying elephant?

  “Why didn’t you go up with him?” asked my mother.

  “It didn’t occur to me,” I replied, “which is a shame. Look at the journey I’ve missed! They’ll probably get up to the moon and everything…”

  Then my mum started waving at the Fireman with a hankie, gesturing for him to come down. But the Fireman didn’t understand her. He thought she was waving a hello and just waved back, with exaggerated flourishes of his golden helmet.

  He did so many waves and bows he almost fell off the elephant. Dailan Kifki had to straighten him up again with a rather energetic whack of his trunk.

  They climbed higher and higher. By the time we’d realised it, they were out of sight. And night had fallen.

  My brother Roberto said:

  “We’re toast.”

  This time I had to agree.

  7

  That night we had a family meeting, all of us sitting on the floor like Native Americans because, as you’ll remember, we’d been left without any furniture.

  My mum said:

  “We have to report Dailan Kifki’s escape to the police.”

  My dad said:

  “No, this is a matter for the local council.”

  According to my Auntie Clodomira:

  “No, we need to inform the UFO investigation centre.”

  And my brother Roberto said:

  “We’re toast.”

  “Meanwhile,” I said, my own bottom lip starting to quiver now, “poor Dailan Kifki is flying around the sky with nobody to make him his lovely oats soup.”

  Then suddenly we heard three loud knocks on the front door.

  Knock,

  and Knock

  and Knock.