Riding the Elephant Read online

“Bawk,” he confirmed.

  “Bawk good?” I asked.

  “Hello,” he replied.

  I said “bawk” again and pointed to myself and mimed eating. He smiled and pointed at Helen.

  “Bawk?” he asked.

  She shook her head and I gave her a stern look.

  “I’m not that hungry. I’ll just have some of yours,” she said, throwing me under the bus.

  We drank some more beers and got chatting to the domino players and were invited to sit for a game. Dominoes being a splendid pastime which requires no one to speak the same language, things were going swimmingly. I had almost forgotten about my food order until it was placed in front of me. A blue willow-pattern plate bearing a dark brown stew on a bed of white rice. I’ll never forget it.

  That was at a time when I ate chicken. I am, to this day, familiar with the smell and consistency of chicken even when it is diced and smuggled into my presence under a thick blanket of aromatic curry sauce. I know chicken and this, my dear, was not one. Never had been.

  “Bawk!” said Mr. Hello, proudly.

  I looked at the plate with suspicion. I glanced at Helen, who looked concerned. I looked at the other players, who were smiling at me in the most charming and friendly “go ahead and eat your lovely plate of chicken” way.

  “Bawk?” I asked again.

  Everybody assured me it was indeed bawk and they all, including Helen at this point, looked excited at the thought of me eating it. I bowed to pressure and took a forkful.

  You know when you eat dog. Even if you have never eaten dog before, you know. It somehow tastes like you would think it would, which you probably haven’t thought about until now. It tastes a little like how dogshit smells but with curry. There was a lot of spice but it was in there. A four-legged friend.

  I looked at the waiter.

  “Woof?” I asked.

  The domino players and the waiter were horrified. Lots of exclamations and shaking of heads and assurances of bawk. I was skeptical, and when I refused to eat more, an unpleasant tension came into the air. Helen told me I should knock it off and eat more so as not to be rude. I said that it was fucking dog and that if she wanted to be polite she could eat it. She told me she wasn’t hungry and anyway she would never knowingly eat a dog. I told her I would never knowingly eat a dog either, and she said she couldn’t because she was a former Miss East Cheshire Pony Club, as if that had anything to do with it. In the interest of world peace I took a few more disgusting mouthfuls of man’s best friend and then made the tummy-rub sign for being full up. Mr. Hello and the Domino Gang seemed to be happy to let it go at that. We paid up and left pretty soon afterward and as we walked away from the café we both pretended not to hear the barking noises and laughing coming from within.

  * * *

  —

  The next day we were driven in a Morris Minor to the coastal resort that we were booked into for a week. Sri Lankan driving may have improved since December 1989, and I hope for the Sri Lankans’ sake it has. I also hope they don’t have teenage soldiers at checkpoints every ten miles or so either. That was a bit buttock-clenchy too, although clenched buttocks was exactly what I required given the night I had spent on a Lassie-fueled gastrointestinal thrill ride.

  I still felt queasy as we pulled up to the gates of the swanky resort. I don’t know if the discomfort was left over from my run-in with Scooby Stew or the sickness I have always felt in the presence of third world economics, a feeling I increasingly experience when I’m in Los Angeles. Extreme wealth flaunting itself up against extreme poverty, or you could express it the other way round, I suppose, if you were a heartless asshole.

  We drove past a man at the gate who was wearing a threadbare version of what I assumed to be traditional Sri Lankan costume. He was smoking, but took the cigarette from his mouth and waved at us as we drove past. Next to him stood a sad-looking gray Indian elephant. It was large, of course—bigger than the man, bigger than the Morris Minor, bigger than the security gates—but pretty small for an elephant. She (as I later found out) had a decorative headdress on, the type traditionally used on her species by now-defunct cruel circuses. She looked like an old person in a cancer ward who’s been dressed up by the nurses for a visitor. It was crushingly sad, or maybe I had a terrible hangover, or maybe both. The man and I locked eyes for a moment and he smiled at me, really smiled. He didn’t look sad at all.

  “What’s that about?” I asked the driver.

  “That man will give elephant ride, sir. Not as good as a car. Very slow,” he told me, helpfully.

  The resort wasn’t particularly expensive, but it was in a part of the world where just a few pounds, dollars, or deutsche marks went a long way. I hated it. I felt guilty being there. The view was beautiful, of course. Open lobby facing out onto an impossible azure ocean and a white-sand beach, but the vista was marred by overweight cartoon Westerners sunning themselves and napping like some tropical species of albino walrus. Uniformed security guards kept local beggars from trespassing onto the precious resort sand or approaching the guests.

  There was an all-you-can-eat buffet every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Native staff scurried deferentially, the men in white Nehru jackets and the women in traditional dress. I felt as if I were in some super-luxurious open prison for the criminally greedy, which I suppose I was.

  You know, I have run all my life. From fights and bars and women and any number of tricky situations. I run to think and I run to not think. I ran even when I was drinking. Often, I would leave bars and run into the night, just keep going until sheer exhaustion or sheer drunkenness stopped me. I don’t run in groups or on teams, I don’t run in events or with friends. I don’t run for charity. I don’t run for fitness—I ran even when I was fat or when I smoked. I run for the same thing I have always run for. The solitude and the independence of spirit. The feeling of freedom. When I was in my early teens I read Alan Sillitoe’s short story “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner” and had my psyche explained to me.

  I took to running down the Sri Lankan beach to escape the horrible Sunday-afternoon feeling of the hotel. I ran barefoot, past the security guards who mumbled dire warnings about my safety. I ran to the edge of the headland and back. It took about an hour and occasionally some local kids would run next to me laughing, until they got bored. One day a young man, maybe in his early twenties, ran with me, keeping in step and saying nothing. At first the atmosphere felt malevolent and I thought I might be in a spot of bother, but we soon fell into a companionable pace and occasionally he or I would speed up to test the other or clear a rock or beached jellyfish in our path. When I reached the halfway point I stopped, as had become my habit, to catch my breath and have a cigarette. I offered him one, which he accepted graciously. We smoked in silence for a few minutes and then he asked me in perfect English:

  “What’s it like to be rich?”

  I sputtered and coughed a little and told him I wasn’t rich, which he didn’t believe.

  “Of course you are rich. You have a nice fat tummy and you wear rich man’s clothes.”

  He had a point about the tummy, but I was wearing a ratty old T-shirt I had been given from the Hackney Empire in London when I’d played a gig there. He wasn’t wearing a T-shirt at all. I thought that had been a choice but perhaps not.

  “This is a rich man’s T-shirt?” I asked.

  “Oh yes,” he said. “Hackney Empire. Very famous.”

  “You want this T-shirt?” I asked.

  He said that he could never accept such a generous gift, but I could tell he did want it. I took it off and gave it to him.

  “You’ll have to wash it. It’s a bit sweaty.”

  He laughed like it was a slightly stupid joke and put on the shirt then and there. I have to admit it looked better on him than it did on me. We finished our cigarettes and began the run back down the beach. We
ran in step all the way to the resort security guards and then, before they could confront him, he said, “Good-bye, thank you for the cigarette and the shirt.”

  He ran off in the opposite direction, back the way we had come. I never saw him again. I hope life worked out okay for him. The security guards gave me the stink-eye like I’d broken the rules by fraternizing with the locals.

  * * *

  —

  Because I was miserable and uncomfortable in the hotel, Helen and I quarreled a lot. When I look back, I think we quarreled a lot wherever we were, which I suspect was entirely my fault. She was actually quite a happy and upbeat person; it was I who was miserable. It was never her that I was angry with, not really. It was myself, of course.

  Toward the end of the holiday, after one of our regular rows, the subject of which I have long since forgotten, I stormed out of the hotel and stood fuming by the ornate fountain outside reception. One of the security guards watched me suspiciously, as if I were getting ready to make a run for the fence or was dropping the soil from my secret tunnel out the hem of my trousers. I decided to piss him off by strolling outside the front gates and having a cigarette with the elephant man who I’d seen on the first day.

  His name was Mr. De Silva. It seemed to me that every Sri Lankan I met had the surname De Silva. I don’t know what the story is behind that, but I suspect it is not a good one. Something colonial, probably. Another legacy of the Victorians, those greedy, self-righteous blundering asshats who plundered the world and sowed the seeds of chaos for generations to come.

  I offered Mr. De Silva a filter-tipped Benson & Hedges from the silly golden box they were sold in, but he demurred, preferring to roll his own. He asked me if I’d like an elephant ride and I said maybe later, which I could tell disappointed him. I saw that disappointed look on people’s faces all the time back then, and I hated it. So I said fuck it, paid the necessary rupees, and climbed up the little stepladder he provided onto the back of the patiently waiting pachyderm. In the interest of clarity and friendliness we should name her. Let’s call her Patricia.

  We lumbered away from the gates, me riding on Patricia while Mr. De Silva led her down a dirt track into the jungle. The track was wide and clean and was obviously used for vehicles although none were about. Mr. De Silva pointed out some different plants and flowers in a very professional tour-guidey way. Pretty soon we came to a collection of concrete houses and beat-up trailers, which he told me was his village. It was not picturesque guidebook stuff—it looked more like a tropical version of where I grew up—but he clearly possessed a healthy share of civic pride, so in order to be polite I made the requisite noises of awe and wonder as he showed me his friend’s pickup truck and his brother-in-law’s fish tank, which was outdoors and held no fish or, indeed, water.

  A few people came out from their houses and waved shyly to us. They were all dressed quite elegantly, and I remarked on that to Mr. De Silva. He told me this was because it was a special day in the village, and I was very lucky to be there at that time.

  There had been a death.

  Given his accent and my confusion and the heat and the fact I was sitting on a fucking elephant in the Sri Lankan jungle, I didn’t really grasp what he had told me until we stopped in front of one of the concrete houses. He pulled out the little ladder and indicated that I should dismount Patricia.

  I stepped down and was led by smiling villagers into a small concrete house where I was introduced to the corpse. He was an ancient, tan-leather-looking gentleman who seemed to be asleep. This was the first time I’d seen death on a human. I’d seen bugs and roadkill rabbits and a couple of tortoises and hamsters that were unfortunate enough to have been pets of a Scottish schoolboy who had a woeful record of animal husbandry, but I’d never seen a dead one of us. I was shocked by how ordinary it looked and felt. The deceased was lying on white sheets and wearing white robes, and the bed was draped in white muslin. There were some candles lit and the room smelled of jasmine or some kind of perfume more exotic than anything I had encountered. I was a little afraid, more from the feeling of ceremony than mortality. Also, I was embarrassed. I felt like I was intruding on something deeply private, although Mr. De Silva was beaming a big smile at me and nodding to the corpse like I should say something. So I said:

  “Very nice.”

  “Thank you, yes. This is my grandfather. We are very happy. He was sick for some time and now things are much better for him.”

  The metaphysics of this were a little beyond me then, but I’m older now and have been broken down by life a little more. I think I understand what he meant, even though I’m not Hindu and reincarnation seems an unlikely explanation of what happens next—although I’ve learned enough to not rule anything out.

  After a few bows and nods with the cheerful family and elderly upbeat widow, I climbed back on Patricia and was taken back to the big Western hotel behind the iron gates. I tipped Mr. De Silva and, not knowing what else to do, offered him my T-shirt, which he accepted with as much appreciation as if I’d given him a car.

  Back at the hotel I felt stoned or shocked or like I’d been on an acid trip or a deep-sea dive—neither of which you return from unchanged. I had seen a dead human for the first time and could not process the experience. I did what I do when I’m scared and confused. I ran away.

  I ran barefoot down the beach. There was no one around, no naughty local children, no judgmental security guards, no cool buddy to run with. Just me and the beach. I ran up to the headland as another incandescent tropical sunset was commencing over the Indian Ocean, the dark blues and deep greens of the sea and the sky and the jungle intensifying in breathtaking clarity before succumbing to a clear black night unpolluted by modernity and electrics. A primal, timeless shore.

  Out of breath, I sat on the sand and lit a cigarette. I inhaled deeply and stared at its burning tip, which seemed to get brighter as night fell. I thought about cancer and wondered if that was what the old man had died of.

  I wondered what I would die of. I was twenty-seven then. I’m fifty-seven now.

  I smoked and enjoyed the solitude for a while, then stood up and threw the rest of my coffin nail in the ocean and began running back down the beach. As I approached the hotel I could smell cooking. Greedy Brits and Germans in Hawaiian shirts would be gathering in the hotel lobby in anticipation of the next all-you-can-eat buffet. I was hungry and the aroma of roast pork added an edge to my appetite. It was only when I got a little closer and saw the smoke rising from the jungle that I realized that I had not smelled cooking pig but rather the cremation fire of Mr. De Silva’s grandfather. The smoke must have been pulled out to sea by the cooling air. I stopped and felt sick for a moment, revolted by my unintentional cannibalistic tendencies.

  It was almost completely dark by then, but the flames were throwing a warm glow toward the sky. This can’t be true but now, when I remember the smoke rising from the jungle, I see your face in the dark plumes, your face and the faces of our children. As the sun disappears below the horizon on that strange day, I put my head down and run as fast as I can toward you.

  2

  Mad Nomad

  I was raised artificially in a laboratory. The town of Cumbernauld is a suburb of Glasgow that was designed in the 1950s as a social experiment. The bombing of the city by the Luftwaffe during World War II had not helped the prewar housing shortage, so city planners and politicians came up with an idea to house the overspill population who couldn’t cram into the crumbling tenements that remained. They would build a modern wonderland, a cut-price concrete utopia on the farmland about fifteen miles northeast of the city. That way the proles could still get to work at the factories and offices in their unreliable, shitty British cars that were becoming increasingly cheap and available. It wasn’t a terrible idea, and I think at its core it was humane, forward thinking. But like the communist impulse from which it was born, it was a spectacular failure in pr
actice.

  That’s not to say it couldn’t have worked under different circumstances, but circumstances were not different, so it didn’t.

  I’ve never found the notion that “things would have worked if circumstances had been different” to be particularly helpful. Circumstances are what they are. For example, when British Nazi Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, sixth baronet of Ancoats and admirer of a certain A. Hitler of Austria, died in the 1970s, the British press (even the left-wing Guardian newspaper) concluded in his sympathetic obituaries—sometimes in as many words—that he was a great politician marred by his political leanings. This seems totally absurd to me. What the hell is a politician but his political leanings? What they meant was that although he was a world-class dick, he was also a baronet so he should retain a measure of respect. It’s horseshit, of course, but a nice illustration of circumstances.

  Had he not been born into an aristocratic family, he’d have been hanged.

  The desire to provide working people with affordable housing is undoubtedly a decent one, but unfortunately Cumbernauld was designed by people who would never live there. Middle- and upper-class architects who lived in Edinburgh or London in ornate Victorian structures had the time of their lives drawing up an homage to midcentury optimism that probably looked great on blueprints where it never rains and there’s no dogshit or glue sniffers. They put flat roofs on the houses. Flat roofs! Having a flat roof in Scotland is like living in a rabbit burrow beneath an aboveground swimming pool. It’s very, very damp in Cumbernauld. It’s still the only place where I’ve seen indoor slugs. It rains nearly all the time. Flat roofs are for adobe structures in New Mexico, not a blustery swamp that has weather so inclement that even the Roman Empire gave up and went home.

  This is true.

  Cumbernauld is built almost on top of the farthest northern frontier of the Roman Empire in its entire history. The emperor Antoninus built a wall and posted a garrison there, but they only lasted twenty years before deciding the hassle was just not worth it. The people were crazy and ungovernable and the weather was terrible. It has changed very little since then. There is also a rumor that Pontius Pilate was born in Cumbernauld, when his father was stationed in the fort on the Antonine Wall, but I suspect that’s a fabrication put out there by people like me (maybe just me) to make the town seem more glamorous than it is.