Rose & Thorn Journal - Spring 2010
______________________
Phil van Wulven lived in several African countries
during what now seems another life. He now lives in Canada and enjoys
the different cycle of the seasons. He likes children, most animals, and
some adults. Oh yes, and beer. He tries to avoid watching televised
warfare. He can be found at: swazz7
Phil van Wulven
We set out south at first light and had left the outskirts of Lusaka before the sky in the east lightened past bright oranges and pinks, while the streets were still almost empty of vehicles. The car was packed with Henry and we three teenagers, and all our stuff.
Since I was quickest off the mark, I was in the front seat with lots of elbow room. I expected some objection from the younger two, but no one said anything for quite a while. Rich and Isabel were still dozing in the backseat, and while my stepfather, Henry, and me weren’t chatty people at the best of times, this morning we were definitely in a somber mood.
Last night Henry had opened up a bit after my brother and sister had gone to bed, well, probably just to their rooms to read or goof around. “All right then, Pete,” he’d said. “You want to know why I don’t talk about the War the way some others do?” He filled up his glass with a good dollop of gin and a splash from the sweating-cold bottle of water, took a slow sip, and frowned at me.
“Well, yes. I mean, I’d like to hear about how it was. In the Western Desert, fighting the Germans and everything.”
“I never really spoke to your mother much about that stuff either, before she died. Never really seemed to be the right time.” He lifted his glass, but then paused and looked at me, “Well, anyway, the thing is, those who yap on about the bloody war weren’t really in it. Spent two years in barracks in Cairo, or driving a bloody lorry at the docks, or something.”
“But you were right in it, weren’t you? I mean, you shot at people and everything, right?”
“You mean I killed people. Of course, I did. See, even you don’t find it easy to just come out and say it. I did what I had to. Doesn’t mean I have to like it or look back on that as the greatest time of my life, like some of those ponces.” He drank deeply and put the glass down with a clunk. “But now I think you should get some sleep. Early start in the morning. Tomorrow at the lake we can talk some more. I can tell you about dry heat and filthy water, dead friends rotting and bloating in the sun, and being shelled by our own people.” He stopped abruptly and shook his head. “I have to sort some stuff out in my head first, but you’re right, I should tell you how it really was in the war. Though not the others, yet. Too young. God, even eighteen like you is too damn young for that shit.”
We were headed for Siavonga, on the north shore of Lake Kariba, quite close to the dam, where Henry had booked a cottage for the weekend. December in the Zambezi valley meant temperatures up over 100 and stifling humidity, but we would be able to swim in the lake, and it would be a change from the city.
The early start meant that even Issy was too sleepy to start yakking until after we’d left the smooth tarmac of the Great North Road, and then of course, we couldn’t be bothered to raise our voices over the noise of the loose stones and bumps of the dirt road. There was no other traffic, so we didn’t have to put up with dust coming in the windows, at least. Our own plume hung behind us in a reddish brown cloud that stretched for maybe a mile.
When we stopped for a break after several hours, the bush was quiet and still under the sun, and only cicadas and doves sang in the dusty thorn scrub along the road. Shade was rare and sparse this close to noon. Henry pulled up under a tree just off the road that was covered with pods like three-foot grey sausages. The thick dark foliage gave an impression of shelter from the sun, if not the heat.
We sat and ate a sandwich each, drank Fanta out of plastic cups, and Rich got out with his camera. He took shots of everyone else sitting in the car with the doors open, and of the sausage tree and its fruit. He fiddled with his camera settings and wrote the figures down, so he could look at them when the films were developed.
Henry had a Rhodesian newspaper and read bits of it aloud. “‘Security Forces confident they have adequate supplies of munitions to match any current Terrorist threat.’” He shook his head and said, “I just bet they can match ’em, probably got the same stuff but more of it; after all, they pay better, hey. Plus, of course, the Russians know you have to stir things up if you want the shit to rise to the top.” He read on a bit, “‘Peace talks break down again. Proponents of reconciliation sidelined as confrontation escalates.’ So war is inevitable then.”
While we sat, a vulture circled slowly, a black speck against the vibrant blue sky, and then grew larger as it wheeled slowly down toward a possible meal.
We were about to set off again when something moved, over beside a great bare baobab tree a couple of hundred yards away. There stood an elephant, watching. He curled his trunk up to be sure of the scent, uneasy but not scared. He waved his great ragged ears backwards and forwards, and his trunk wove around as it followed the fitful breeze while he shifted his feet in a dusty shuffle. He was orangey-ochre from the dust all over his back and the top of his head, ash grey and wrinkled elsewhere, except for two dark wet streaks that ran down from his eyes. His tusks were uneven, one longer and straighter than the other, and both blunt-ended and worn with use with bits of root and soil on the tips. He had a sort of utilitarian air about him, like an old pickup truck, and a sense of purpose despite his present stasis.
“He wants to get at this tree, I expect,” said Henry. “Those pods look like they’d make a fair sized meal. Come on, get in, let's go. Let him get at them.”
“Just a sec, I want some shots of this old boy. Believe it or not, I've only ever seen live elephants from the plane, or far off and trying to get away,” said Rich. “All the elephants in the reserve are very shy, so I've never had the chance to get any good pictures, except of backs and back ends.”
His subject began to get visibly impatient as Rich fiddled with his lens. He stamped up clouds of dust and turned to look directly at this possible threat. Henry started the engine, and we others waited in the thick heat as elephant and photographer played out their game of chicken. One party determined to get just one more shot as the other came closer and larger by the second.
“Come on. Get in the car! Now!” ordered Henry.
“Let's go,” urged Isabel. “He’s coming right for us. Come on!” She was trying to shrink right down into invisibility, and at the same time, seemed to be resisting an urge to get out of the car and just run to get away. She gripped the door handle tightly but gave me a weak smile and let go of it when I turned and looked at her and shook my head. At last, still hoping for the perfect shot, Rich got into the backseat beside her.
Fortunately, we didn't have to reverse or turn, just go forward with spinning rear wheels and a few lurches over the dry dirt, ’til we hit the corrugated earth of the road and picked up speed. The elephant stopped right where we had been parked and flapped his ears, then turned to the tree and began to tear down a laden branch.
“He must be the only elephant for miles around,” said Rich. “There’s no water near here. He must be getting moisture from those pods, as much as food.”
“Sounds like you’ve been learning something about elephants, at least, up in the game reserve. You sound just like old what’s his name. Dr Adams, is it?” I said.
Henry cut in, “Well, that is the point of holiday jobs, you know. To learn something you can’t get in school. I know the money matters to you, too, but believe me, the experience you get is far more valuable.”
After a pause, Rich went on. “Mind you, there can’t have been many around here for a long time. You can tell by looking at the bush, lots of big trees with all their branches. Elephants do a lot of wrecking when they feed. Same job as a good clearing fire, in a way, making room for young growth. Just like a war zone when they pass through anywhere.”
Isabel asked, “Dad, is that why people say they've 'seen the elephant' when they’re war vets? I mean, because elephants wreck everything, just like in a war?”
Henry coughed, then said, “Not quite, actually. There is an old story, you know, about three blind men who described an elephant each had encountered. One said it was a big structure, well established, with strong supports, and he could hear all kinds of mysterious things going on over his head. Another said it was more like a big snake, and picked his pockets. While the third said he had just got to grips with it when it dumped a big pile of hot shit all over him.”
“Oh yuck, Dad!” Issy wrinkled her nose in exaggerated disgust.
Henry ignored the interruption. “If you actually see an elephant, you can understand how they were all right, just that each came at it from a different perspective. You can describe war in those same terms, and each person has a different experience, but the whole really is understood best by those who have a firsthand close up view. Those who 'have seen the elephant'. The actual experience of having someone try to kill you, to shoot at you, and of shooting back, is indescribable. The impact of knowing in your deepest heart that you can die, right then and there, is totally different to just knowing that in your mind. In the same way, to a lesser extent, of course, the actual experience of seeing a live elephant is so much more than hearing any number of descriptions or even seeing a photograph. Do you see, Isabel?”
Isabel said, “Oh yes, thanks, Dad.” She didn't look up from the magazine she had opened as he started his speech, though.
Like every day for a while now, a few wisps of cloud began to thicken overhead. On other days the critical point had not been reached. Grumbles and muttering thunder over the horizon was the most we'd seen. Today there seemed to be extra tension in the air. A small change somewhere had sent things rolling towards a climax, a breaking point.
We reached Siavonga, down in the valley by the lake, sometime in mid-afternoon, dusty and sticky just before the rain came. By the time we had located the bungalow and started to carry stuff inside, the rain began.
Great warm drops drummed on the metal roof of the bungalow and drove the dust in the air down to its proper place as mud, then collected in puddles and rivulets within a minute or so. Thunder boomed and rolled out over the lake in long noisy volleys, sometimes loud enough to rattle the cutlery into sympathetic jingling, and then died off again into distant mutters before it crashed back suddenly and made everyone jump, as lightning crackled nearby, blinding blue-white. With camera in hand, Rich tried to anticipate one of these nearby strikes, but at the same time, hoped to save his dwindling supply of film, while me and Issy stood outside in the mud and just enjoyed getting soaked, for a while anyway, until we were cold and went back inside.
The waves on the lake were no more than ripples since there had been almost no wind, but the rain drove so hard that lake water jumped up to meet it so that the surface was almost theoretical. Lake and rain mixed with air in a liquid mist that would have made breathing quite hard for any swimmers out there.
Within twenty minutes it was all over, the air clean and marvelously cool, as everything steamed gently and birds began to appear, prospecting for insects caught in the deluge. A bee-eater, bright as roses on bare earth in shades of lilac and red, paused for a few seconds on the roof of the car, visible through the open back door with a large dragonfly in its beak. It flew off as soon as the camera turned its way.
We made sure all the windows were open to let in the cool air and that the screens were tight to catch and keep out the coming hordes of mosquitoes. Then Rich headed for the lake with me close behind, and we ran right in, waist deep, before diving under and emerging some twenty or thirty feet away, gasping. Both of us dog-paddled in place, the feel of water so smooth and warm it was almost intangible, except for the way it resisted movement.
Isabel followed in a few minutes, armoured in bathing cap and matching blue floral one-piece, and got to knee depth before she stopped and complained, “Eww, it’s all squishy and muddy, and there’s something nibbling my leg.”
“Oh yeah, well if you come farther in, it’s just clean sand out here. Every time it rains, mud gets washed in where you are. Keep your eyes open for crocs though,” I told her, before I set off with a crawl stroke even farther out, past standing depth to where you couldn’t see the bottom anymore. There I turned belly up and floated, gazing idly at a fish eagle that flew to its evening perch on a dead grey tree, which still stood in shallow water.
Now, with war close, Henry’s grim reaction and outlook on the situation suddenly began to mean something. Now that I thought about it, when Henry told his war stories late at night after a good amount of gin, there wasn't much positive in anything he said, except when he spoke about men he had known, and they were all dead now. He seemed to have left a good part of himself buried with them.
I turned over and swam for the shore with a quiet, reflective breaststroke.
After one of those blazing sunsets that show you all the colours in its palette and then just fades away into dusk, we ate rice and tinned peas with cold beef left over from the day before, then washed it down with orange squash.
Henry found the gin bottle and a comfortable deck chair and sat and looked out over the muddy beach and the water toward the border. He was seeing images from his youth, I knew. From years ago and far away, from the Western Desert. Panzers and artillery barrages, thirst and flies, friendly fire and dead comrades.
“Bloody elephant,” Henry said.
Have You Seen the Elephant?
We set out south at first light and had left the outskirts of Lusaka before the sky in the east lightened past bright oranges and pinks, while the streets were still almost empty of vehicles. The car was packed with Henry and we three teenagers, and all our stuff.
Since I was quickest off the mark, I was in the front seat with lots of elbow room. I expected some objection from the younger two, but no one said anything for quite a while. Rich and Isabel were still dozing in the backseat, and while my stepfather, Henry, and me weren’t chatty people at the best of times, this morning we were definitely in a somber mood.
Last night Henry had opened up a bit after my brother and sister had gone to bed, well, probably just to their rooms to read or goof around. “All right then, Pete,” he’d said. “You want to know why I don’t talk about the War the way some others do?” He filled up his glass with a good dollop of gin and a splash from the sweating-cold bottle of water, took a slow sip, and frowned at me.
“Well, yes. I mean, I’d like to hear about how it was. In the Western Desert, fighting the Germans and everything.”
“I never really spoke to your mother much about that stuff either, before she died. Never really seemed to be the right time.” He lifted his glass, but then paused and looked at me, “Well, anyway, the thing is, those who yap on about the bloody war weren’t really in it. Spent two years in barracks in Cairo, or driving a bloody lorry at the docks, or something.”
“But you were right in it, weren’t you? I mean, you shot at people and everything, right?”
“You mean I killed people. Of course, I did. See, even you don’t find it easy to just come out and say it. I did what I had to. Doesn’t mean I have to like it or look back on that as the greatest time of my life, like some of those ponces.” He drank deeply and put the glass down with a clunk. “But now I think you should get some sleep. Early start in the morning. Tomorrow at the lake we can talk some more. I can tell you about dry heat and filthy water, dead friends rotting and bloating in the sun, and being shelled by our own people.” He stopped abruptly and shook his head. “I have to sort some stuff out in my head first, but you’re right, I should tell you how it really was in the war. Though not the others, yet. Too young. God, even eighteen like you is too damn young for that shit.”
We were headed for Siavonga, on the north shore of Lake Kariba, quite close to the dam, where Henry had booked a cottage for the weekend. December in the Zambezi valley meant temperatures up over 100 and stifling humidity, but we would be able to swim in the lake, and it would be a change from the city.
The early start meant that even Issy was too sleepy to start yakking until after we’d left the smooth tarmac of the Great North Road, and then of course, we couldn’t be bothered to raise our voices over the noise of the loose stones and bumps of the dirt road. There was no other traffic, so we didn’t have to put up with dust coming in the windows, at least. Our own plume hung behind us in a reddish brown cloud that stretched for maybe a mile.
When we stopped for a break after several hours, the bush was quiet and still under the sun, and only cicadas and doves sang in the dusty thorn scrub along the road. Shade was rare and sparse this close to noon. Henry pulled up under a tree just off the road that was covered with pods like three-foot grey sausages. The thick dark foliage gave an impression of shelter from the sun, if not the heat.
We sat and ate a sandwich each, drank Fanta out of plastic cups, and Rich got out with his camera. He took shots of everyone else sitting in the car with the doors open, and of the sausage tree and its fruit. He fiddled with his camera settings and wrote the figures down, so he could look at them when the films were developed.
Henry had a Rhodesian newspaper and read bits of it aloud. “‘Security Forces confident they have adequate supplies of munitions to match any current Terrorist threat.’” He shook his head and said, “I just bet they can match ’em, probably got the same stuff but more of it; after all, they pay better, hey. Plus, of course, the Russians know you have to stir things up if you want the shit to rise to the top.” He read on a bit, “‘Peace talks break down again. Proponents of reconciliation sidelined as confrontation escalates.’ So war is inevitable then.”
While we sat, a vulture circled slowly, a black speck against the vibrant blue sky, and then grew larger as it wheeled slowly down toward a possible meal.
We were about to set off again when something moved, over beside a great bare baobab tree a couple of hundred yards away. There stood an elephant, watching. He curled his trunk up to be sure of the scent, uneasy but not scared. He waved his great ragged ears backwards and forwards, and his trunk wove around as it followed the fitful breeze while he shifted his feet in a dusty shuffle. He was orangey-ochre from the dust all over his back and the top of his head, ash grey and wrinkled elsewhere, except for two dark wet streaks that ran down from his eyes. His tusks were uneven, one longer and straighter than the other, and both blunt-ended and worn with use with bits of root and soil on the tips. He had a sort of utilitarian air about him, like an old pickup truck, and a sense of purpose despite his present stasis.
“He wants to get at this tree, I expect,” said Henry. “Those pods look like they’d make a fair sized meal. Come on, get in, let's go. Let him get at them.”
“Just a sec, I want some shots of this old boy. Believe it or not, I've only ever seen live elephants from the plane, or far off and trying to get away,” said Rich. “All the elephants in the reserve are very shy, so I've never had the chance to get any good pictures, except of backs and back ends.”
His subject began to get visibly impatient as Rich fiddled with his lens. He stamped up clouds of dust and turned to look directly at this possible threat. Henry started the engine, and we others waited in the thick heat as elephant and photographer played out their game of chicken. One party determined to get just one more shot as the other came closer and larger by the second.
“Come on. Get in the car! Now!” ordered Henry.
“Let's go,” urged Isabel. “He’s coming right for us. Come on!” She was trying to shrink right down into invisibility, and at the same time, seemed to be resisting an urge to get out of the car and just run to get away. She gripped the door handle tightly but gave me a weak smile and let go of it when I turned and looked at her and shook my head. At last, still hoping for the perfect shot, Rich got into the backseat beside her.
Fortunately, we didn't have to reverse or turn, just go forward with spinning rear wheels and a few lurches over the dry dirt, ’til we hit the corrugated earth of the road and picked up speed. The elephant stopped right where we had been parked and flapped his ears, then turned to the tree and began to tear down a laden branch.
“He must be the only elephant for miles around,” said Rich. “There’s no water near here. He must be getting moisture from those pods, as much as food.”
“Sounds like you’ve been learning something about elephants, at least, up in the game reserve. You sound just like old what’s his name. Dr Adams, is it?” I said.
Henry cut in, “Well, that is the point of holiday jobs, you know. To learn something you can’t get in school. I know the money matters to you, too, but believe me, the experience you get is far more valuable.”
After a pause, Rich went on. “Mind you, there can’t have been many around here for a long time. You can tell by looking at the bush, lots of big trees with all their branches. Elephants do a lot of wrecking when they feed. Same job as a good clearing fire, in a way, making room for young growth. Just like a war zone when they pass through anywhere.”
Isabel asked, “Dad, is that why people say they've 'seen the elephant' when they’re war vets? I mean, because elephants wreck everything, just like in a war?”
Henry coughed, then said, “Not quite, actually. There is an old story, you know, about three blind men who described an elephant each had encountered. One said it was a big structure, well established, with strong supports, and he could hear all kinds of mysterious things going on over his head. Another said it was more like a big snake, and picked his pockets. While the third said he had just got to grips with it when it dumped a big pile of hot shit all over him.”
“Oh yuck, Dad!” Issy wrinkled her nose in exaggerated disgust.
Henry ignored the interruption. “If you actually see an elephant, you can understand how they were all right, just that each came at it from a different perspective. You can describe war in those same terms, and each person has a different experience, but the whole really is understood best by those who have a firsthand close up view. Those who 'have seen the elephant'. The actual experience of having someone try to kill you, to shoot at you, and of shooting back, is indescribable. The impact of knowing in your deepest heart that you can die, right then and there, is totally different to just knowing that in your mind. In the same way, to a lesser extent, of course, the actual experience of seeing a live elephant is so much more than hearing any number of descriptions or even seeing a photograph. Do you see, Isabel?”
Isabel said, “Oh yes, thanks, Dad.” She didn't look up from the magazine she had opened as he started his speech, though.
Like every day for a while now, a few wisps of cloud began to thicken overhead. On other days the critical point had not been reached. Grumbles and muttering thunder over the horizon was the most we'd seen. Today there seemed to be extra tension in the air. A small change somewhere had sent things rolling towards a climax, a breaking point.
We reached Siavonga, down in the valley by the lake, sometime in mid-afternoon, dusty and sticky just before the rain came. By the time we had located the bungalow and started to carry stuff inside, the rain began.
Great warm drops drummed on the metal roof of the bungalow and drove the dust in the air down to its proper place as mud, then collected in puddles and rivulets within a minute or so. Thunder boomed and rolled out over the lake in long noisy volleys, sometimes loud enough to rattle the cutlery into sympathetic jingling, and then died off again into distant mutters before it crashed back suddenly and made everyone jump, as lightning crackled nearby, blinding blue-white. With camera in hand, Rich tried to anticipate one of these nearby strikes, but at the same time, hoped to save his dwindling supply of film, while me and Issy stood outside in the mud and just enjoyed getting soaked, for a while anyway, until we were cold and went back inside.
The waves on the lake were no more than ripples since there had been almost no wind, but the rain drove so hard that lake water jumped up to meet it so that the surface was almost theoretical. Lake and rain mixed with air in a liquid mist that would have made breathing quite hard for any swimmers out there.
Within twenty minutes it was all over, the air clean and marvelously cool, as everything steamed gently and birds began to appear, prospecting for insects caught in the deluge. A bee-eater, bright as roses on bare earth in shades of lilac and red, paused for a few seconds on the roof of the car, visible through the open back door with a large dragonfly in its beak. It flew off as soon as the camera turned its way.
We made sure all the windows were open to let in the cool air and that the screens were tight to catch and keep out the coming hordes of mosquitoes. Then Rich headed for the lake with me close behind, and we ran right in, waist deep, before diving under and emerging some twenty or thirty feet away, gasping. Both of us dog-paddled in place, the feel of water so smooth and warm it was almost intangible, except for the way it resisted movement.
Isabel followed in a few minutes, armoured in bathing cap and matching blue floral one-piece, and got to knee depth before she stopped and complained, “Eww, it’s all squishy and muddy, and there’s something nibbling my leg.”
“Oh yeah, well if you come farther in, it’s just clean sand out here. Every time it rains, mud gets washed in where you are. Keep your eyes open for crocs though,” I told her, before I set off with a crawl stroke even farther out, past standing depth to where you couldn’t see the bottom anymore. There I turned belly up and floated, gazing idly at a fish eagle that flew to its evening perch on a dead grey tree, which still stood in shallow water.
Now, with war close, Henry’s grim reaction and outlook on the situation suddenly began to mean something. Now that I thought about it, when Henry told his war stories late at night after a good amount of gin, there wasn't much positive in anything he said, except when he spoke about men he had known, and they were all dead now. He seemed to have left a good part of himself buried with them.
I turned over and swam for the shore with a quiet, reflective breaststroke.
After one of those blazing sunsets that show you all the colours in its palette and then just fades away into dusk, we ate rice and tinned peas with cold beef left over from the day before, then washed it down with orange squash.
Henry found the gin bottle and a comfortable deck chair and sat and looked out over the muddy beach and the water toward the border. He was seeing images from his youth, I knew. From years ago and far away, from the Western Desert. Panzers and artillery barrages, thirst and flies, friendly fire and dead comrades.
“Bloody elephant,” Henry said.
