He crept completely into the cave and made a grasp for the elephant. But before he could touch it, it moved. It lowered its head and thrust its trunk into the air with a swing of its head.
Turning around, the creature moved right to the very back and narrowest part of the hollow. Where Schoch’s hand couldn’t reach it.
‘I’m going mad!’ he exclaimed.
And again: ‘I’m going mad!’
Then, more softly: ‘Or I am already.’
In the middle of the cave lay some leaves and stripped branches from the bushes by the entrance. Schoch picked some up and crawled as far back as he possibly could. He held out some leaves to the tiny creature, but it wouldn’t be enticed. It just stood there, occasionally fanning its ears or raising its trunk menacingly.
Schoch clicked his tongue and spoke softly, ‘Come on … come on … come on … tchick-tchick-tchick.’
The little animal put its ears back and started feeling the sandy ground with its trunk. Sometimes it curled the end of its trunk and sometimes it gracefully lifted a leg and let the foot hang there loosely. But it wouldn’t come a single step closer.
15
Zürich
14 June 2016
At some point Schoch woke up, freezing. It took him quite a while to remember why he was lying like this. The elephant was nowhere to be seen and he was just about to put the whole thing down to a hallucination when he discovered the dung. The same crumbly mounds he remembered from the zoo visits of his past life, only much, much smaller, lay in the part of the cave where the ceiling was at its lowest.
He crawled backwards until he could just about sit up, and looked around. Apart from a few leftover leaves and twigs he didn’t see anything unusual.
He took the sleeping mat from his bag, rolled it out, laid the sleeping bag on top, removed his shoes and got in. Now he heard a rustling by the entrance to the cave, saw movement in the bushes and finally the pink glow of his hallucination.
Schoch kept still and waited. And fell asleep.
He dreamed of a tiny pink elephant glowing in the dark. Someone he didn’t know said, ‘This is no dream, this is real.’ When he looked again the elephant had turned into a little dog. Schoch wanted to stroke it, but the dog ran away. He wanted to follow it, but he couldn’t run.
Suddenly he was beside the whirlpool of death, where Giorgio and Bolle were fishing with long poles. ‘Has someone drowned?’ he called out.
‘You!’ they replied.
Something warm, damp and soft enveloped his thumb.
He felt the dream departing, distancing itself rapidly and inexorably, and leaving him alone.
But the thing enveloping his thumb was still there. It moved, sucking and slurping.
Schoch opened his eyes. The dawn gave his cave a touch of light. The little elephant was beside his hand. It was standing on its hind legs, kneeling on its front ones and suckling his thumb.
Carefully Schoch lifted his other hand and brought it down gently. The pink skin felt warm and as soft as pigskin.
The creature flinched and scurried back to its hiding place. But not as far back as before. Stopping where Schoch could still have reached it, the elephant wiggled its trunk and looked at him expectantly.
Schoch crept out of his sleeping bag, squatted then knelt, and tried to breathe deeply and in a controlled manner to calm the pounding of his heart. What he could see wasn’t a hallucination. You couldn’t touch hallucinations.
But what was it?
A miracle? A sign? Something mystical?
Schoch had never been a religious man, but before his downfall he’d certainly believed in the existence of something that transcended his powers of perception and imagination. A higher reality, and maybe a higher power too.
But like everything else, this belief had crumbled with his downfall. And hadn’t made its presence felt in all the years since.
Until today. For the fact that this fabulous creature from another world, maybe even another dimension, had chosen to reveal itself to him – him! – must have a significance.
Schoch now did something he hadn’t done since childhood: he crossed himself. But this form of homage seemed inappropriate given the significance of the revelation and the fact that it might be an Asian elephant before him, so he put the palms of his hands together in front of his beard and gave a deep Thai-style bow.
The animal felt around on the ground with its trunk.
‘Hungry?’ Schoch asked. He picked up a few leaves and held them out to the elephant.
Hesitantly, and with its trunk outstretched, the creature inched closer. It grabbed hold of the leaves, lowered its wedge-shaped jaw and stuffed them in its mouth. Schoch’s hand brushed the tip of the trunk, which felt soft and silky.
The elephant raised its trunk, indicating that it wanted more.
Schoch put on his shoes. ‘Stay here,’ he ordered. ‘I’ll fetch you some more.’ He pushed past the bushes and got to his feet.
The clouds hung low and the river was still brown and flowing rapidly. But at least it wasn’t raining. Schoch went over to the old willow growing a little way downstream and broke off a few branches. Then he pulled up some clumps of grass and a bunch of buttercups that were growing just above the high water level.
With this harvest he struggled back up the embankment and crept into his cave.
His visitor, still standing in the same place, shot out its trunk when it saw the food.
Schoch fed the little animal with fascination and patience. It was so hungry that he had to go out twice for more. With his penknife he also cut off the lower third of a plastic bottle, filled it with water from the river and watched the elephant sink its trunk in, suck up the water and empty it into its mouth.
Thus the morning passed without Schoch having eaten or drunk anything.
His cheap plastic watch showed 2 p.m. when his little guest went for a lie-down. Schoch thought this was a good idea and lay down beside it.
When he awoke the mini elephant was on its side in a different spot. Its stomach was rising and falling rapidly and its trunk was being thrust out and curled up at irregular intervals. On the ground everywhere were puddles of runny excrement.
Schoch gently laid a hand on the little body as if it were the forehead of a feverish child. It didn’t react. He carefully took hold of the elephant and placed it upright. It stood there, legs splayed, ears and trunk drooping, and beneath its tail the contents of its bowels gushed out, as thin as water. The little creature lay back down even before it had finished. In fact it was more like falling down than lying down.
Drink lots of fluids when you’ve got diarrhoea, Schoch thought. He took an empty bottle and went back down the embankment. It was much easier now; after twenty hours without any alcohol he was quite steady on his feet again.
But he was still panting heavily when he entered his cave with the full bottle. The tiny, pink, magical creature now lay there peacefully, its chest no longer rising and falling and the trunk not twisting any more, but resting limply beside its front legs.
Schoch panicked. ‘You’re not going to die on me,’ he muttered. ‘You’re not going to die on me.’
He shook out the contents of his holdall, wrapped the droopy animal in the towel with the Nivea logo and placed it inside the holdall. Then he hung this over his shoulder and left.
16