Taller Than Trees

Chapter One

It was many years now since he had killed a man. Now he was an old elephant of maybe sixty; he was using his sixth and last pair of molars and when they wore out he would die of starvation; he was too old and wise to let man get near him, and he wanted peace more than he felt hate in his heart now. He was thirteen and one half feet tall at the shoulder, which is more than twice the height of two very tall men. He weighed over twelve tons and his tusks were over eleven feet long and he had to hold his head up a little so they did not plough the earth in front of him, and his heart was almost as big as a man’s chest. Now he roamed alone across a territory twenty times the size of all England, and from Lake Victoria in the North to the Limpopo in the South, from the Congo in the West to the Indian Ocean in the East he was known as Dhlulamiti, Taller Than Trees. He was the largest mammal ever to have trod the earth.

There were five old bullets embedded in his skull and two iron bolts and one potleg, and over the rest of his body there were embedded twenty-nine bullets and pieces of iron. The left side of his face, from the centre of his forehead down to the base of his jaw, was not wrinkled grey hide but black scar tissue, and he had no tail, and that happened like this: the high velocity bullet fired into his head had felled him, and the American big game hunter, who had never shot an elephant before in his life, immediately set his African porters onto skinning the head preparatory to chopping out the tusks, and he cut off the tail as another trophy. The African porters, excited at so much meat and the photography the American was doing, cut and tore away the hide on the exposed side of the elephant’s face. Now, an elephant’s skull is a massive thing, made up of a honeycomb of hollows, and the brain is not much bigger than a human brain; the American’s bullet had not pierced the brain, and this elephant was not dead, he was only stunned and badly wounded. As the porters tore the last section of hide off the left side of his face, while the American took photographs, the elephant came round.

Came round in a convulsed scream of fury and great thrashing legs and trunk and flying blood and dust and the natives scattered, screaming under the hot African sky. The elephant scrambled up throwing his bloody head high and wide in agonised rage so his ears flapped like sails and his trunk flailed the air and his curved tusks flashed white and terrible as the blood flew high and wide over the treetops. The great elephant reeled, bellowing, and shook his head to clear it of the shock and pain and the blood in his eyes, and through his agony he saw the fleeing American, and he bellowed his outrage, and he charged. Charged so the earth shook, his bloody ears out and his bloody trunk curled under between his tusks, charged bellowing thundering terrible to kill the American. The American ran stumbling terrified as fast as his fat legs would carry him through the unfamiliar African bush with the African elephant thundering after him. He ran as fast as his legs would carry him, screaming his terror to the African sky, but it was not nearly fast enough, for an elephant can run much faster than any man; the bloody elephant thundered after him, and hit him. Hit with a great scream and dust and flying blood so the American sprawled and the elephant thundered after him and hit him again with his trunk, and proceeded to kill him.

It crashed its knees down on top of him as he lay there screaming and writhing, and knelt on him smashing his pelvis and his thighs and his stomach and his ribs in, and all the time the massive bellowing of rage and the dust and sun flashing scarlet on his massive face and the great tusks. He crashed with his tusks at the broken screaming man to gore him, sharp white curved eleven foot tusks crashing down through the dust to stab him and smash him. But the tusks were too wide apart and he picked the bloody man up with his trunk and flung him. High, cartwheeling, spewing blood, and then crashed his knees down on him again and wrenched him up on high and shook him and crunched him so his arms, legs, head shook in every direction and his eyeballs bulged in his terrified face. The elephant tried to wrench him onto the points of his tusks, wrenching and shaking his bloody head in rage, but the tusks were too long so he wrenched the man high in the air and then crashed him down to the ground like a club, screaming his hate and rage and agony. The man was not screaming any more, for his head was smashed open. His brains were splashing out all the time the elephant was bellowing his outrage up to the sky, and the earth shook and the dust and blood flew. The elephant pounded the bloody earth until long after the man was dead, then he tore the body apart.

The elephant stamped his forefoot on the smashed body and curled his great trunk round the broken neck and wrenched the head off by its roots, and flung it high over the trees. Then he wrenched one leg off with a crack of bone and sinews and flung it cartwheeling away, and then the other leg, and then the arms. Then he pulverised the bloody torso. He stamped on it and gored it with his tusks until there was only flattened flesh and crushed bones and bloody mud. Then he turned and looked for something else to kill.

He was crazed with agony in his head and searing torture in his torn-off face, and he lumbered about, shaking his head to shake off the agony, and then his good eye saw the rifle lying there and at this moment he knew instinctively what every animal gets to know: that man is the creature which can kill from a distance and he knew that the thing lying on the ground was the agency and he lumber-thundered at it in a great scream of hate and snatched it up with his trunk and crashed it down like a club, so the carved stock shattered off and the gleaming barrel buckled. He smashed the big rifle into twisted steel so the earth flew in clods, then he stamped it into the ground; then he saw the native axes lying there bloody with his blood and he bellowed and picked them up and smashed and flung them high and wide over the treetops; then the camera, and the water-bottles and the American’s folding chair: he smashed them up too, splintering them with his trunk, and all the time bellowing his rage, then he started to decimate the trees.

He charged the nearest tree with his forehead so it splintered and his blood splatted and the pain of it exploded in his head, but he only half felt it in his rage. He charged the next tree and crashed it over also and now the blow made him scream and he charged the next tree and flung his trunk around it and heaved with his great furious legs and shoulders and tore it out of the ground with great wrenching, and flung it, roots spewing earth over the clouds of dust above the treetops. And the next and the next, the crack and wrench of trees and the blood and the dust flying and the massive animal heaving and staggering, the branches tearing at his raw head. He crashed and smashed through forty trees, then the pain in his head overwhelmed his rage and he got slower and slower in killing the trees of this hateful place. Now his bellows were screams of pain, and then he turned from the ground that was trampled red with his blood, and he ran. He ran blundering through the grey bush, massive grey beast, the greatest to have trod the earth, his face torn off, flapping scarlet flesh, shaking his head and bellowing in pain. He did not know where he was running to, he only knew he was trying to run from the agony.

Later the rest of the herd came back to the place where their leader had fallen, and they smelt the blood of elephant and man and they saw the place where he had stamped the American into the ground and they bellowed, enraged. They flung up the bloody mess with their feet and tusks and pulverised it and fought amongst themselves to tear it apart further, and they found the smashed head and the limbs and tore them to shreds, and then they set about the trees. They tore down the trees and laid the area waste, then they milled about furiously, waiting for their leader to come back.

But he never came back. He kept running – headshaking, blood flying, crazed out of his mind – stumbling a long way. Then he slowed down, exhausted. The flies buzzed about his head and sat on the mass of raw flesh and he beat it with his trunk and moaned and shook his wild head and started running again.

That night the infection set in, the swollen throbbing heat on top of the agony. He came to a river and went splashing deep into it and he sucked up a trunkful of water and squirted it hard over the hot agony on his head and he bellowed at the new agony of this and he shook his head and he did not know what he was doing, he only knew he had to cover up the great pain in his face. He scooped up some sandy mud with his trunktip and slapped it on the raw flesh, and he bellowed and shook his great head at the new pain but he scooped up more mud and slapped it on, and more and more, until his whole face was plastered.

It took many days for the agony to subside and become just solid pain. For many days he could not sleep. In the daytime he stayed near the water, walking round and round to keep the flies moving, never dozing in the middle of the heat of the day as an elephant should, and he plastered his face with fresh mud and grass to keep the sun and flies off it. He stood on the river bank, sucking the sand up his trunk and spraying it over his head and back. For many days. The flies got to the cracks in the dry mud and ate the suppurating flesh underneath and laid their eggs and the maggots hatched, but the maggots ate the rotten flesh and they were pulled off when the mud cracked and fell off, and new mud was slapped on. It took many weeks for the pain to subside and the big mass of scar tissue to form.

After that he always moved alone.

Alone, great grey beast with the massive white tusks that almost ploughed the earth, and mass of scar tissue on the left side of his head, and no tail, steamrollering through the great African bush as silent as a ghost, hate in his great heart. He did not tolerate the company of other elephants. When he saw them in the distance he just kept moving and they parted for him. If another elephant came near him and raised its trunk in greeting and salaamed to show its respect for his great size and tusks and acceptance of his authority (for might is right in the kingdom of elephants and he would have been king of any herd he chose), when this happened he did not make a greeting back, and the other elephants could tell the hate in his heart and they moved away quickly. If they did not he raised his trunk and shook his head and trumpeted once, and they fled. At the end of the rains, when that sweet natural call comes that only elephants can hear, that it is time for the congregations on the savannah grasslands for the mixing of herds and the making of new breeding clans, he stood alone, and no bull dared choose his cows until he had shown his choice. For several days he just held them there with his lonely authority, moving slowly through the hundreds and thousands, then he chose a clan and he started moving off into the high forest lands for the long hot dry season, with them following him, and only then did the thousands mix and choose amongst themselves. But he only stayed with his cows a little while, until they had all gone on heat once and he had sired them once, and he did not woo and make love and fall in love with them like other bulls, giving them titbits and putting his trunktip in their mouth and fondling their teats intertwining his trunk with theirs, and kissing; he just mounted them, his great forefeet astride their submissive backs. And when he had finished with the cows, he left them, alone, and never saw them again. He did not know it but he sired and left many sons. And he killed a lot of men. But he knew about that, very well.

A lot of men tried to kill him. He knew very well about that also.

They hunted him for his massive ivory; hunted him over mountains and escarpments and across valleys and rivers, across the vast hot dry bushveld and the savannahs and through forests, following the great wrinkled spoor which was seventy inches in circumference and twenty-six inches in diameter, the largest footprints a mammal ever left on this earth, carrying the richest ivory man has ever seen. Very few hunters saw him or his ivory, they only heard about him and saw and followed his great spoor, and very few of those who did see him lived to tell about him. For he knew when he was being hunted, as only an animal can know, and he moved great distances as silent as a ghost and twice as fast as the best man can run; then he laid his ambush. He turned about and came back alongside his own tracks, in good cover, and then he waited.

When the hunter came tracking past this cover he screamed and charged him, crashing him over and picking him up, he beat the earth with him and smashed his brains out, then he tore his body apart and threw the parts over the treetops. Then he laid the trees waste again. But all the same he carried thirty-four bullets and pieces of iron embedded in his head and body, from high velocity rifles and muzzle-loaders. He had killed all those men, certainly. He killed any man he saw. And sometimes, in those days, when he was passing in the grey green bush and he smelt an African village he did not raid the crops and the grainbins stealthily, soundlessly, by night, like other elephants; he would suddenly take it into his great aching head to kill them. Then he