Only the Animals

The elephant and her twin sister, like all the elephants in their herd, grow up hearing stories of their ancestors. Their ancestors’ souls “glow” at them from constellations, and some evenings, the elders point out trunks or ears in the stars. The elephant and her sister like to reenact their ancestors’ stories and imagine what it’s like to turn into an eternally sparkling soul. They learn early on that ancestors only make it to the stars if they die a noteworthy death. Both elephants thus long to die dramatically so that their legend will live on. The best death, they decide, will be “mass historical death,” like large groups of their ancestors who were slaughtered and sacrificed.

Once the elephant and her sister are a bit older—but still young enough to get away with things—the elephant asks her aunt why the only stories they hear are about ancestors who lived far away from Mozambique, where the herd lives. This aunt habitually enjoys intoxicating marula bark, so the elephant waits to ask until her aunt is swaying. Her aunt explains they believe that all elephants share a common ancestor, no matter where they live. The elephant notes that the ancestors in the skies are overwhelmingly Indian elephants or North African forest elephants, not African savanna elephants like them. She asks where the stories about them are. Her aunt insists that there are lots of stories about them—most of the souls in the sky lived in these lands.

The aunt catches herself and asks how old the elephant and her sister are. The elephant lies that they’re 12, even though they’re 11. Her aunt hiccups and says that there are fewer stories about savanna elephants like them because the other species of elephants lived closer to Europe and therefore had more interesting lives. Disappointed, the elephant asks why the elephants in the stories lived so long ago. Visibly uncomfortable, the aunt says that it takes time for souls to appear in the sky. The elephant wants to know how long, so she asks which elephants in the stars died most recently. That would be Castor and Pollux, the sibling zoo elephants who died during the Siege of Paris in 1870 or 1880. Her aunt says it takes about 100 years then and wanders away to find more marula bark.

After sunset, a baby cousin asks the elders for the story of Suleiman. The elephant usually enjoys this story, but tonight she doesn’t want to hear about a faraway elephant. An elder recounts that Suleiman was born in 1540, in the King of Ceylon’s royal stables. The king sent him to Lisbon and he eventually ended up in Maximilian II’s new menagerie in Vienna. Maximilian ordered that Suleiman should get the best exotic fruits, and in the winter, he got a gallon of wine every day. On a stone block by Suleiman’s enclosure, Maximilian had words from Pliny the Elder inscribed: that elephants are the largest land animals and are closest to humans in intelligence. They understand language, remember things, and likes affection. Elephants also have virtues that are rare in men, like honesty, justice, wisdom, and respect for the stars.

Maximilian gradually expanded his menagerie, but he couldn’t find another elephant. Some said it was because Maximilian didn’t want Suleiman to bond with another elephant. One day, when Maximilian brought priests to visit Suleiman, they found that Suleiman had written, “I, the elephant, wrote this” in the sand. The priests decided Suleiman was demonic and wanted him killed. Maximilian refused—but the priests poisoned Suleiman anyway over the course f four months. Maximilian was inconsolable. He divided up Suleiman’s body and gave pieces to important people in the Holy Roman Empire so he’d never be forgotten. The elephant’s elder points out the various parts of Suleiman’s body in the sky.

When the elder notes that a museum in Europe held Suleiman’s skin until it disappears during World War II, the elephant asks if there are no stories about elephants from Mozambique because they don’t have a museum. A slightly older cousin quips that there’s a museum in Maputo, but the elders shush him.

Not long after, the elephant’s oldest female cousin decides to tell the elephant and her sister the secret history of their herd. She says that a few years after the twins were born, there was a human war between the Portuguese and the local people. The elephant’s sister asks if there were any “historically worthy deaths.” Their cousin says that many elephants in their clan were de-tusked and left to die. She refuses to answer more questions until the twins are “old enough.”

When the cousin hears that the sisters are already almost 13, her eyes soften. It’s almost time for them to be initiated. When the elephant complains that nobody will tell them anything, the cousin says with frustration that the elephant and her sister have always gotten special treatment because they’re twins. Their mother didn’t have enough milk, so an auntie shared her milk. The herd has protected them—and when they’re strong enough, they’ll learn what they want to know.

Not long after the elephant and her sister turn 13, they spend their first full night awake. Rather than sleeping lying down with the young elephants, they stand with the adults. Just before sunrise, they doze on their feet. After this, their mother says it’s time to be initiated—staying awake means they’re almost ready to be mothers and leaders. Once the next full moon rises, the two-week long initiation begins.

On the third day, the matriarch tells a story. She says that many years ago, the Portuguese wanted to grow crops on a particular piece of land. They ordered a hunt supervisor to kill 2,000 elephants—but this man loved science. He decided to cut out every unborn elephant baby from the dead adults. He kept cutting until he had the only complete collection of elephant fetuses: 22, one for each month of gestation. He preserved them and donated them to the local museum, which still displays the jars. She points to a group of stars. The elephant and her sister count them. There are 22.

The matriarch says that the twins’ immediate ancestors are in the stars too, but their stories are harder to tell children. So children first learn the stories of elephants that lived long ago. Noticing how excited the elephant and her sister look at the prospect of learning new stories, the matriarch warns the twins not to romanticize death now that they’re adults. Only the young want things to go badly, and the souls in the sky will live on only if they remember the stories. If they forget the stories, there’s nothing.

The elephant is shocked when she enters her first heat cycle. Adolescent bulls (male elephants) from all over come to gaze at her, and the attention is intoxicating. The elders counsel the elephant to wait for an older bull and she follows their advice. As a bull courts her, she forgets her family and sister for the only time in her life. The elephant knows she’s pregnant immediately, so she calls her family to celebrate. Not long after, her sister becomes pregnant too. They’re pregnant through two of the driest and longest summers in living memory.

The elephant labors for two days and finally delivers her daughter. Once her daughter stands to nurse, the elephant rumbles happily, sharing the news with the wider elephant group. Days later, she helps her sister give birth to her son. Together, they laugh as they watch their babies figure out what to do with their trunks, and they stand awake over their infants at night. Becoming mothers brings about the end of their longing to die gloriously. The elephant and her sister wish only for beauty and goodness, and they try not to think of death. They barely listen to the elders telling stories, and when the elephant’s daughter finds Castor and Pollux in the stars, the elephant is only happy to be touching her daughter.

When her daughter and nephew are two, the elephant finds them painting mud from Lake Urema in diamonds on each other’s foreheads. They’re pretending to be Castor and Pollux, giving Parisian children rides around the zoo. They don’t understand why the elephant is angry (she’s afraid), so they run away and hide. The elephant’s sister reminds her that scolding the children will only encourage them.

The elephant’s sister takes a different approach. She tells the children about the Prussian siege of Paris. The Parisians ate through thousands of horses, then rats, then cats and dogs. They never considered rationing—the rich must eat meat, and officials told the poor to eat mustard and wine. When the elephant shoots her sister a look, her sister announces that it’s naptime. The next morning, the elephant’s daughter and nephew get a baby zebra to pretend to be a horse and a bush rat to be a city rat. The baby elephants chase the other creatures, pretending to be hungry humans. Dominance games like this are normal for baby elephants, but the elephant asks her sister to stop telling violent stories for a while.

At about this time, foreign humans move into the National Park tourist camps, which have been abandoned since the Portuguese left. Usually the only people the elephants ever have to deal with are local villagers who sometimes cross through Gorongosa. Some of the herd recognize the men’s scent from their time in South Africa, before there were electric fences. As they watch men set up a shooting range and teach others to shoot, the elephants decide to move toward the eastern edge of the park, traveling only at night. The elephant remembers being a child and loving the eastern boundary of the park. On the other side of the fence, villagers grow oranges, and she desperately wanted to eat one. But as the elephants walk, they can’t smell citrus. They only smell smoke.

The next night, the elephants come to the Muaredzi River. It’s barely flowing after several dry monsoon seasons. Lake Urema had just enough water. Now, they have to decide whether to return to the lake and risk being close to the strange humans or stay here and hope the river will swell. The matriarch decides to wait. Weeks later, another herd in the greater bond group arrives. They’re on their way to check the river further on. The new group stays for a few nights to exchange stories. They say that the foreign humans have many new recruits and have burned homes. Some of the recruits are practically still children.

The second group promises to return quickly as they head for the next river. When they get back, they share that the river is dry—and a new group of men is camping in an abandoned building on the floodplain, where a pride of lions used to live. The lions are gone, and the elephants worry for them. Since the other group has fewer babies, the two matriarchs decide that the other group will move on, while the elephant’s group will stay with the water in the Muaredzi. They have a formal farewell ceremony.

Over the summer, the Muaredzi dies slowly. The adults drink little, leaving as much water for the babies as they can. There’s not much to eat either; they dig for roots that might have moisture stored in them. At night, the adults carefully guard the babies, as the hyenas are hungry, thirsty, and getting bolder. One afternoon, the elephant’s sister distracts the children by telling them more about Castor and Pollux.

The elephant’s sister says that during wartime, a zoo is a dangerous place for an animal. This is because, for humans, a zoo can be the difference between life and death. The elephant’s daughter and nephew listen closely as the elephant’s sister says that first, the rich Parisians ate the zebras, camels, and the kangaroo. They ate the lions and tigers next. The hippo was saved only because the zookeeper charged 80,000 francs for it. The Parisians ate the wolves and the pigeons. After the story, the children argue about who gets to play Castor, and who gets to be Pollux. The elephant is glad they have energy to pretend.

The next day, the elephant takes over telling the story. She says that the Parisians paused when they considered whether or not to eat the monkeys. Some people thought it was better to starve than eat a creature that reminded them of themselves, though they couldn’t figure out why. They didn’t, however, think of elephants as being akin to humans, so they turned to Castor and Pollux. The zookeeper sold the elephants for 20,000 francs. The children are older now, so the elephant’s daughter is curious what elephants taste like. The elephant says that diners complained about the elephants’ texture and taste. A month after the elephants died, the French surrendered, and the English sent boatloads of food to Paris.

That night, the elephant’s daughter wakes and very seriously tells her mother she doesn’t want her to die. The elephant strokes her daughter for a while and then asks if her daughter knows who Castor and Pollux were named for. She tells her daughter the human myth of Castor and Pollux, twins born to a mortal woman but with two different fathers: one father was mortal, and the other was the god Zeus. Because of this, Castor was mortal and Pollux was immortal. When Castor died in battle, Pollox begged Zeus to make Castor immortal. Zeus agreed and turned the twins into the constellation Gemini. Humans see the human twins in the stars; Elephants see the elephant brothers, foreheads pressed together.

The elephant’s daughter thinks for a bit and stares at the sky. Clouds scrub out the stars, but they never drop rain. Finally, her daughter asks if the elephant or the elephant’s sister is the mortal twin. The elephant smiles, evades the question, and says that when she and her sister die, their souls will appear together in the sky to watch over her and her cousin. That night, the elephants hear humans fighting to the south.

When the Muaredzi is almost dry, the matriarch decides it’s time to move to a waterhole in a secret location. The elephants travel at night, though they move during the day if they sense humans nearby. The humans aren’t interested in the elephants, but the elephants know that some men will still kill them for their tusks. When the herd passes a bachelor herd, the bachelors are supposed to cede the edible grasses and roots to the herd. They don’t, even when the matriarch leads a charge—until the elephant’s nephew pushes to the front and nibbles on grass in front of a bull. The bull turns away and leaves the herd in peace.

When the herd reaches the secret waterhole, it only takes days to drain it. The matriarch decides they must return to Lake Urema. Elders struggle to make the journey in the heat, and the herd passes a number of animals that humans killed and ate. The dead aren’t unusual at first—but then the herd comes across a pack of wild dog carcasses. The dogs live in bonded packs like the elephants, so the elephants stop to mourn and cover the bodies. The elephants have to take a circuitous route to avoid the roads, and on one path they find the matriarch from the group who let the herd stay at the Muaredzi. Her herd must have been in danger, since they left her body uncovered.

The elephant’s daughter and nephew are terrified of the body. She and her sister coax their children into joining in the grieving rituals of touching the body and covering it with branches and sand. The elephant’s nephew asks if they’ll see her soul in the stars tonight. The elephant and her sister share a look, and her sister says that they’ll be able to see her soul soon. The matriarch died for her family, which is the most heroic death of all.

When the elephants are a day away from Lake Urema, a group of villagers surrounds the elephants. They’re not poachers, they’re just hungry. The matriarch charges, leaving the elephant’s sister exposed. The villagers shoot her sister. Though the elephant feels the herd trying to keep her close, she hears her twin calling and goes to her. When her sister can’t get up, the elephant lies down beside her. She doesn’t remember feeling pain as she’s shot. Both the elephant and her sister mentally will the herd to keep their babies safe.

As they die, the sisters press their foreheads together. A human steps up and puts an orange between the elephants’ trunks. It seems like an act of kindness, though the elephant is too far gone to eat it. But the smell makes her happy and for an instant, she and her sister are children again, playing by the fence with oranges on the other side. They long to die gloriously and to have elephants point out their souls in the stars to the young.