The Elephant Vanishes Page 23

  Making elephant heads is tremendously rewarding work. It requires enormous attention to detail, and at the end of the day you’re so tired you don’t want to talk to anybody. I’ve lost as much as six pounds working there for a month, but it does give me a great sense of accomplishment. By comparison, making ears is a breeze. You just make these big, flat, thin things, put a few wrinkles in them, and you’re done. We call working in the ear section “taking an ear break.” After a monthlong ear break, I go to the trunk section, where the work is again very demanding. A trunk has to be flexible, and its nostrils must be unobstructed for its entire length. Otherwise, the finished elephant will go on a rampage. Which is why making the trunk is nerve-racking work from beginning to end.

  We don’t make elephants from nothing, of course. Properly speaking, we reconstitute them. First we saw a single elephant into six distinct parts: ears, trunk, head, abdomen, legs, and tail. These we then recombine to make five elephants, which means that each new elephant is in fact only one-fifth genuine and four-fifths imitation. This is not obvious to the naked eye, nor is the elephant itself aware of it. We’re that good.

  Why must we artificially manufacture—or, should I say, reconstitute—elephants? It is because we are far less patient than they are. Left to their own devices, elephants would give birth to no more than one baby in four or five years. And because we love elephants, of course, it makes us terribly impatient to see this custom—or habitual behavior—of theirs. This is what led us to begin reconstituting them ourselves.

  To protect the newly reconstituted elephants against improper use, they are initially purchased by the Elephant Supply Corporation, a publicly owned monopoly, which keeps them for two weeks and subjects them to a battery of highly exacting tests, after which the sole of one foot is stamped with the corporation’s logo before the elephant is released into the jungle. We make fifteen elephants in a normal week. Though in the pre-Christmas season we can increase that to as many as twenty-five by running the machinery at full speed, I think that fifteen is just about right.

  As I mentioned earlier, the ear section is the easiest single phase in the elephant-manufacturing process. It demands little physical exertion on the part of workers, it requires no close concentration, and it employs no complex machinery. The number of actual operations involved is limited, as well. Workers can either work at a relaxed pace all day or exert themselves to meet their quota in the morning so as to have the afternoon free.

  My partner and I in the ear shop liked the second approach. We’d finish up in the morning and spend the afternoon talking or reading or amusing ourselves separately. The afternoon following my dream of the dancing dwarf, all we had to do was hang ten freshly wrinkled ears on the wall, after which we sat on the floor enjoying the sunshine.

  I told my partner about the dwarf. I remembered the dream in vivid detail and described everything about it to him, no matter how trivial. Where description was difficult, I demonstrated by shaking my head or swinging my arms or stamping my feet. He listened with frequent grunts of interest, sipping his tea. He was five years my senior, a strongly built fellow with a dark beard and a penchant for silence. He had this habit of thinking with his arms folded. Judging by the expression on his face, you would guess that he was a serious thinker, looking at things from all angles, but usually he’d just come up straight after a while and say, “That’s a tough one.” Nothing more.

  He sat there thinking for a long time after I told him about my dream—so long that I started polishing the control panel of the electric bellows to kill time. Finally, he came up straight, as always, and said, “That’s a tough one. Hmmm. A dancing dwarf. That’s a tough one.”

  This came as no great disappointment to me. I hadn’t been expecting him to say any more than he usually did. I had just wanted to tell someone about it. I put the electric bellows back and drank my now-lukewarm tea.

  He went on thinking, though, for a much longer time than he normally devoted to such matters.

  “What gives?” I asked.

  “I’m pretty sure I once heard about that dwarf.”

  This caught me off guard.

  “I just can’t remember who told me.”

  “Please try,” I urged him.

  “Sure,” he said, and gave it another go.

  He finally managed to recall what he knew about the dwarf three hours later, as the sun was going down near quitting time.

  “That’s it!” he exclaimed. “The old guy in Stage Six! You know, the one who plants hairs. C’mon, you know: long white hair down to his shoulders, hardly any teeth. Been working here since before the revolution.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Him.” I had seen him in the tavern any number of times.

  “Yeah. He told me about the dwarf way back when. Said it was a good dancer. I didn’t pay much attention to him, figured he was senile. But now I don’t know. Maybe he wasn’t crazy after all.”

  “So, what did he tell you?”

  “Gee, I’m not so sure. It was a long time ago.” He folded his arms and fell to thinking again. But it was hopeless. After a while, he straightened up and said, “Can’t remember. Go ask him yourself.”

  AS SOON AS the bell rang at quitting time, I went to the Stage 6 area, but there was no sign of the old man. I found only two young girls sweeping the floor. The thin girl told me he had probably gone to the tavern, “the older one.” Which is exactly where I found him, sitting very erect at the bar, drinking, with his lunch box beside him.

  The tavern was an old, old place. It had been there since long before I was born, before the revolution. For generations now, the elephant craftsmen had been coming here to drink, play cards, and sing. The walls were lined with photographs of the old days at the elephant factory. There was a picture of the first president of the company inspecting a tusk, a photo of an old-time movie queen visiting the factory, shots taken at summer dances, that kind of thing. The revolutionary guards had burned all pictures of the king and the royal family and anything else that was deemed to be royalist. There were pictures of the revolution, of course: the revolutionary guards occupying the factory and the revolutionary guards stringing up the plant superintendent.

  I found the old fellow drinking Mecatol beneath an old, discolored photo labeled THREE FACTORY BOYS POLISHING TUSKS. When I took the stool next to him, the old man pointed to the photo and said, “This one is me.”

  I squinted hard at the photo. The young boy on the right, maybe twelve or thirteen years old, did appear to be this old man in his youth. You would never notice the resemblance on your own, but once it had been pointed out to you, you could see that both had the same sharp nose and flat lips. Apparently, the old guy always sat here, and whenever he noticed an unfamiliar customer come in he’d say, “This one is me.”

  “Looks like a real old picture,” I said, hoping to draw him out.

  “’Fore the revolution,” he said matter-of-factly. “Even an old guy like me was still a kid back then. We all get old, though. You’ll look like me before too long. Just you wait, sonny boy!”

  He let out a great cackle, spraying spit from a wide-open mouth missing half its teeth.

  Then he launched into stories about the revolution. Obviously, he hated both the king and the revolutionary guards. I let him talk all he wanted, bought him another glass of Mecatol, and when the time was right asked him if, by any chance, he happened to know about a dancing dwarf.

  “Dancing dwarf?” he said. “You wanna hear about the dancing dwarf?”

  “I’d like to.”

  His eyes glared into mine. “What the hell for?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I lied. “Somebody told me about him. Sounded interesting.”

  He continued to look hard at me until his eyes reverted to the special mushy look that drunks have. “Awright,” he said. “Why not? Ya bought me a drink. But just one thing,” he said, holding a finger in my face, “don’t tell anybody. The revolution was a hell of a long time ago, but you�
��re still not supposed to talk about the dancing dwarf. So, whatever I tell you, keep it to yourself. And don’t mention my name. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Now, order me another drink and let’s go to a booth.”

  I ordered two Mecatols and brought them to the booth, away from the bartender. The table had a green lamp in the shape of an elephant.

  “It was before the revolution,” said the old man. “The dwarf came from the north country. What a great dancer he was! Nah, he wasn’t just great at dancing. He was dancing. Nob’dy could touch ‘im. Wind and light and fragrance and shadow: It was all there bursting inside him. That dwarf could do that, y’know. It was somethin’ to see.”

  He clicked his glass against his few remaining teeth.

  “Did you actually see him dance?” I asked.

  “Did I see him?” The old fellow stared at me, spreading the fingers of both hands out atop the table. “Of course I saw him. Every day. Right here.”

  “Here?”

  “You heard me. Right here. He used to dance here every day. Before the revolution.”

  THE OLD MAN WENT ON to tell me how the dwarf had arrived from the north country without a penny in his pocket. He holed up in this tavern, where the elephant-factory workers gathered, doing odd jobs until the manager realized what a good dancer he was and hired him to dance full-time. At first, the workers grumbled because they wanted to have a dancing girl, but that didn’t last long. With their drinks in their hands, they were practically hypnotized watching him dance. And he danced like nobody else. He could draw feelings out of his audience, feelings they hardly ever used or didn’t even know they had. He’d bare these feelings to the light of day the way you’d pull out a fish’s guts.

  The dwarf danced at this tavern for close to half a year. The place overflowed with customers who wanted to see him dance. And as they watched him, they would steep themselves in boundless happiness or be overcome with boundless grief. Soon, the dwarf had the power to manipulate people’s emotions with a mere choice of dance step.

  Talk of the dancing dwarf eventually reached the ears of the chief of the council of nobles, a man who had deep ties with the elephant factory and whose fief lay nearby. From this nobleman—who, as it turned out, would be captured by the revolutionary guard and flung, still living, into a boiling pot of glue—word of the dwarf reached the young king. A lover of music, the king was determined to see the dwarf dance. He dispatched the vertical-induction ship with the royal crest to the tavern, and the royal guards carried the dwarf to the palace with the utmost respect. The owner of the tavern was compensated for his loss, almost too generously. The customers grumbled over their loss, but they knew better than to grumble to the king. Resigned, they drank their beer and Mecatol and went back to watching the dances of young girls.

  Meanwhile, the dwarf was given a room in the palace, where the ladies-in-waiting washed him and dressed him in silk and taught him the proper etiquette for appearing before the king. The next night, he was taken to the great hall, where the king’s orchestra, upon cue, performed a polka that the king had composed. The dwarf danced to the polka, sedately at first, as if allowing his body to absorb the music, then gradually increasing the speed of his dance until he was whirling with the force of a tornado. People watched him, breathless. No one could speak. Several of the noble ladies fainted to the floor, and from the king’s own hand fell a crystal goblet containing gold-dust wine, but not a single person noticed the sound of it shattering.

  AT THIS POINT in his story, the old man set his glass on the table and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then reached out for the elephant-shaped lamp and began to fiddle with it. I waited for him to continue, but he remained silent for several minutes. I called to the bartender and ordered more beer and Mecatol. The tavern was slowly filling up, and onstage a young woman singer was tuning her guitar.

  “Then what happened?” I asked.

  “Then?” he said. “Then the revolution started. The king was killed, and the dwarf ran away.”

  I set my elbows on the table and, cradling my mug, took a long swallow of beer. I looked at the old man and asked, “You mean the revolution occurred just after the dwarf entered the palace?”

  “Not long after. ‘Bout a year, I’d say.” The old man let out a huge burp.

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “Before, you said that you weren’t supposed to talk about the dwarf. Why is that? Is there some connection between the dwarf and the revolution?”

  “Ya got me there. One thing’s sure, though. The revolutionary guard wanted to bring that dwarf in somethin’ terrible. Still do. The revolution’s an old story already, but they’re still lookin’ for the dancing dwarf. Even so, I don’t know what the connection is between the dwarf and the revolution. All you hear is rumors.”

  “What kind of rumors?”

  I could see that he was having trouble deciding whether to tell me any more. “Rumors are just rumors,” he said finally. “You never know what’s true. But some folks say the dwarf used a kind of evil power on the palace, and that’s what caused the revolution. Anyhow, that’s all I know about the dwarf. Nothin’ else.”

  The old man let out one long hiss of a sigh, and then he drained his glass in a single gulp. The pink liquid oozed out at the corners of his mouth, dripping down into the sagging collar of his undershirt.

  I DIDN’T DREAM about the dwarf again. I went to the elephant factory every day as usual and continued making ears, first softening an ear with steam, then flattening it with a press hammer, cutting out five ear shapes, adding the ingredients to make five full-size ears, drying them, and finally, adding wrinkles. At noon, my partner and I would break to eat our pack lunches and talk about the new girl in Stage 8.

  There were lots of girls working at the elephant factory, most of them assigned to splicing nervous systems or machine stitching or cleanup. We’d talk about them whenever we had free time. And whenever they had free time, they’d talk about us.

  “Great-looking girl,” my partner said. “All the guys’ve got their eye on her. But nobody’s nailed her yet.”

  “Can she really be that good-looking?” I asked. I had my doubts. Any number of times I had made a point of going to see the latest “knockout,” who turned out to be nothing much. This was one kind of rumor you could never trust.

  “No lie,” he said. “Check her out yourself. If you don’t think she’s a beauty, go to Stage Six and get a new pair of eyes. Wish I didn’t have a wife. I’d get her. Or die tryin’.”

  Lunch break was almost over, but as usual my section had almost no work left for the afternoon so I cooked up an excuse to go to Stage 8. To get there, you had to go through a long underground tunnel. There was a guard at the tunnel entrance, but he knew me from way back, so I had no trouble getting in.

  The far end of the tunnel opened on a riverbank, and the Stage 8 building was a little ways downstream. Both the roof and the smokestack were pink. Stage 8 made elephant legs. Having worked there just four months earlier, I knew the layout well. The young guard at the entrance was a newcomer I had never seen before, though.

  “What’s your business?” he demanded. In his crisp uniform, he looked like a typical new-broom type, determined to enforce the rules.

  “We ran out of nerve cable,” I said, clearing my throat. “I’m here to borrow some.”

  “That’s weird,” he said, glaring at my uniform. “You’re in the ear section. Cable from the ear and leg sections shouldn’t be interchangeable.”

  “Well, let me try to make a long story short. I was originally planning to borrow cable from the trunk section, but they didn’t have any extra. And they were out of leg cable, so they said if I could get them a reel of that, they’d let me have a reel of the fine stuff. When I called here, they said they have extra leg cable, so that’s why I’m here.”

  The guard flipped through the pages of his clipboard. “I haven’t heard anything about this,” he said. “These things
are supposed to be arranged beforehand.”

  “That’s strange. It has been. Somebody goofed. I’ll tell the guys inside to straighten it out.”

  The guard just stood there whining. I warned him that he was slowing down production and that I would hold him responsible if somebody from upstairs got on my back. Finally, still grumbling, he let me in.

  Stage 8—the leg shop—was housed in a low-set, spacious building, a long, narrow place with a partially sunken sandy floor. Inside, your eyes were at ground level, and narrow glass windows were the only source of illumination. Suspended from the ceiling were movable rails from which hung dozens of elephant legs. If you squinted up at them, it looked as if a huge herd of elephants was winging down from the sky.

  The whole shop had no more than thirty workers altogether, both men and women. Everybody had on hats and masks and goggles, so in the gloom it was impossible to tell which one was the new girl. I recognized one guy I used to work with and asked him where I could find her.

  “She’s the girl at Bench Fifteen attaching toenails,” he said. “But if you’re planning to put the make on her, forget it. She’s hard as nails. You haven’t got a chance.”

  “Thanks for the advice,” I said.

  The girl at Bench 15 was a slim little thing. She looked like a boy in a medieval painting.

  “Excuse me,” I said. She looked at me, at my uniform, at my shoes, and then up again. Then she took her hat off, and her goggles. She was incredibly beautiful. Her hair was long and curly; her eyes were as deep as the ocean.

  “Yes?”

  “I was wondering if you’d like to go out dancing with me tomorrow night. Saturday. If you’re free.”

  “Well, I am free tomorrow night, and I am going to go dancing, but not with you.”