Whistling for the Elephants Read online

  Every time I went to the Burroughs House I remember being amazed. It was a fairy-tale place where extraordinary people in an unreal time had played out their lives. Our little band of women, the abandoned boy and an orangutan crunched up the circular drive to the front marble steps. In the still moonlight we climbed the five steps to three high arches supported by Greek goddesses which heralded the front door. A front door carved from twelve-foot-high pieces of maple into Roman panels.

  The library seemed to be the only room in regular use now. It didn’t have dust sheets on the furniture and there were signs that people still lived there. Cosmos lit a fire in a fireplace you could live in while Sweetheart and Miss Strange settled Perry on a sofa. Cosmos went to get some more wood.

  ‘Helen,’ said Miss Strange. ‘Some cocoa.’ They went out, Helen silently fluttering behind the height and strength of Miss Strange. Sweetheart and I were left alone by the fire with Perry sleeping. He slept without a trouble in the world. I guess-he didn’t know who did or didn’t want him. Sweetheart sat down in a chair and I sat on the floor beside her. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself in case I was made to go. After a time Sweetheart got up and began wandering around the room. She picked up small objects from the library shelves and looked at them. After a while she stopped in front of a sepia photograph in a silver frame. When she spoke I don’t think she was really talking to me. She just stood looking at the picture. Billie and John Junior smiled back at her from inside the shining frame.

  ‘This was the room where I was interviewed. I never thought anyone would give me a job again. John needed a secretary. He was doing so many shows then, and there was the business. He left Billie to choose. She was quite fussy.’ Sweetheart laughed to herself ‘She didn’t want anyone too good-looking and she didn’t want a man because any man who was willing to be a secretary had to be a … Well, anyway, I was last on the list. Come all the way from South Carolina. I was twenty-eight. I had great secretarial skills but no references. Billie was just getting to this when Grace slipped in the back of the room. She stood there by the door.

  ‘“You say you have ten years of experience?” said Billie.

  ‘“Yes,” I replied.

  “‘Yet you don’t have one recent employer who will vouch for you?”

  ‘“No.” And I looked her straight in the eye. “You see, I am not married and I have a son. He’s eight. I used to keep it quiet and then when anyone found out I usually got fired. I got tired of living a lie. I can’t do it and I don’t think it’s good for my son. I don’t want him to grow up that way. So I came to New York. I hear you have a more liberal attitude.” For all her gusto I don’t think she knew what to say or do. She was a Catholic at heart, you know. She kind of stumbled.

  ‘“Yes, well, uh … Miss … uh …’

  ‘“Schlick.”

  ‘“We’ll have to..

  ‘And Grace spoke up from the door. I can still hear her. “Hire you. We’ll have to hire you. You’re hired. Welcome to Burroughs House, Miss Schlick.” She saved me and Harry and now Harry won’t…’

  ‘Harry lived here?’

  ‘Oh yes. John fussed so over him. He bought Harry a little tuxedo for parties. There was a miniature railway cart which ran from the cellars right into the house and behind John’s chair at the dining table. Harry used to work the car and serve the champagne. John loved that. He left me to arrange everything. Used to call me his sweetheart. And the house was always full of people. Rich people, friends of rich people, and crazy people from the shows. Emile Pallenberg was always trouble if he came. He had a troupe of bears who had been trained to roller-skate and bicycle and insisted on doing it across the terrace. Then there was Patrick Culpeper from the New United Monster Shows who arrived with an entire tribe of Zulus just as we were sitting down to lunch, and Colonel Edgar Daniel Boone and Miss Carlotta came with their lions one Christmas Eve. Nothing was strange then. Everyone just got on with being who they needed to be. There was John’s Uncle Robert, who refused to sit down at dinners but rode round the table on his giant tortoise Rotumah, wearing a top hat and waving a lettuce leaf on a stick in front of its mouth. John had bought Rotumah from Lord Rothschild, the Honourable Walter, for one hundred fifty dollars. It was Uncle Robert’s second tortoise. He said the first one died from sexual over— excitation, but as he was a lone male everyone thought it was either unlikely or peculiar. Uncle Robert would go round and round the table telling stories about Africa.’

  ‘So Joseph Tompson’s making his way across the highlands, totally uncharted, and a group of these warriors, the Masai, get after him.’ Uncle Robert paused in his story to shake a lettuce leaf at Rotumah and get him moving. The tortoise lumbered forward. ‘Well, Tompson hightails off on his horse and they catch him. He stands there facing them in their tribal paint, terrifying, and Tompson is shaking so much his false teeth fall out in his hand. Bingo. The natives think he is magic and start worshipping this man who can take all his teeth out.’

  John Junior laughed and nodded. ‘Magic, that’s what holds them. I once got given a very nice woman because I convinced the chief that my hurricane lamp was really a piece of star fallen to earth.’

  John and I are thinking of going to Africa. Aren’t we, John?’ called Billie.

  Absolutely.’

  ‘You’ll love it, my dear,’ replied the tortoise—supported Robert. All you have to remember is to keep the spirits up, the bowels open, and wear flannel next to the skin.’

  It was a heady time. There were the parties, where for three days cars swept continuously up the circular drive, to be met by John and Billie on the front marble steps and then passed on into Sweetheart’s care. Everyone came. Not the old money, but the new stuff with all sorts of people from every walk. Prominent industrialists, politicians, celebrities —Alfred Smith and James J. Walker; the Governor and Mayor of New York; Florenz Zieglield and his wife, also called Billie; Bernard McFadden, the body builder; Lord Cranworth, the African explorer; and people from the bootlegging business which by now kept the Burroughs enterprise afloat. Billie and John had their portrait taken to mark their engagement. She looked almost coy as she posed, all in fur despite the summer heat. A sepia picture showing a white leopard coat with beaver collar, leopard hat and single red rose exposed at her bosom. Her hands hidden in a matching fur muff John standing beside her— tall and bursting from his waistcoat with pride and affluence. At the engagement party everyone got presents. Sweetheart was told to slip a $100 bill under everyone’s plate and Harry was allowed to sit at the table.

  ‘This wine comes direct from France,’ beamed John, serving endless banned claret. ‘Well, it swings by a relay station. The French island of Miquelon, off the Canadian coast? I have Bill McCoy’s word that it’s genuine,’ he boasted, smiling at Billie. ‘Did you know there’s some Prohibition crazy trying to rewrite the Bible? Ain’t that right, Phoebe?’

  Phoebe smiled. ‘Dr Charles … Something. He wants to remove all references to wine. So Jesus will turn water into a cake of raisins.’

  Sweetheart did not sit.

  ‘More eland, anyone?’ she would ask while Grace, as usual, devoted herself entirely to Phoebe. She would allow no one else to help her and more often than not carried her rather than put her in the wheelchair.

  ‘What do you reckon to Harding, John? Gonna be President?’ called a guest.

  ‘No way. Poor old Warren hasn’t a Chinaman’s chance.’ Everyone nodded. John was the oracle. The wine flowed.

  During dessert, Unus, the Upside-Down, Gravity-Defying, Equilibristic Wonder of the World, stood on the table to entertain. His real name was Franz Furtner of Vienna. Like the guests, he wore tails, but also had a top hat and white gloves. Sweetheart arranged a lighted globe on the centre of the table and turned out the lights. Unus waited till he had everyone’s full attention. Then he put the forefinger of his right hand on the globe, near the Antarctic, and went up into a handstand. Well, a fingerstand.
r />   ‘Isn’t that incredible?’ whispered Phoebe.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Grace. ‘Most of us can’t even stand on our feet.’ At which point Uncle Robert fell off Rotumah, rather underscoring the point.

  It didn’t all go brilliantly. Edith Clifford, whose act included gulping razorblades, a huge pair of scissors and a saw blade, did not appear. She had been rehearsing a new finale where she placed the tip of a bayonet blade in her mouth and lowered the hilt into the barrel of a small hand-held cannon. The blast had unfortunately jammed the blade down her throat.

  After supper Toto, the elephant, was brought to the front door. A thick strip of leather studded with silver beads went across his forehead, almost over his eyes, with a loop over the crown of his head, one below the chin and one behind his ears, all fastened with vast brass rings. He was accompanied by a steam calliope — an organ fixed into a red wooden wagon frame trimmed in cream and gold. Two evil-looking jesters in pointed shoes and hats held the oval open frame surrounding the steam pipes. It played as Toto led the way.

  John had presents for the women in his life. First there was Phoebe, then Billie, and finally Grace. Grace carried the emaciated Phoebe round to the terrace overlooking the river.

  ‘These columns? All antique,’ John called to his guests. ‘Ninety—one of them. Mostly eleventh—century. They’re all mounted on brick pedestals of varying heights and then covered with cast stone to make them the same height.’

  The courtyard, with its rhythmic repetition of arches and columns, was a natural theatre. Its inlaid-mosaic doorframes, antique columns, wall fountains, statues, friezes, medallions, cartouches, bronze doors and loggia walls acted as splendid sounding boards. Everyone sat down and waited as Sweetheart brought out Phoebe’s gift. A small, slim woman appeared on the terrace. Phoebe gasped and Grace looked at her anxiously.

  ‘It’s Doris Humphrey’

  Sweetheart made the introduction. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we are privileged to have with us Miss Doris Humphrey, pioneer of the American modern dance and an innovator in technique, choreography and theory of dance movement. Tonight she will present one of her famous music visualizations. Water Study incorporates her theory of fall and recovery as the key to human movement and uses only non-musical rhythms — waves, natural human breath and pulse rhythms.’ Sweetheart sat down and Doris danced. Phoebe was nearly beside herself She clutched Grace’s hand as the elegant Doris swayed low to the ground and then recovered.

  ‘It’s the arc between two deaths,’ whispered Phoebe, who longed to dance.

  It was a curious, silent performance. Doris constantly held the moment between motionless balance and a falling imbalance where she seemed incapable of recovery. She understood that every movement a dancer makes away from the centre of gravity has to be followed by a compensating readjustment to restore balance and prevent uncontrolled falling; the more extreme and exciting the controlled fall attempted by the dancer, the more vigorous must be the recovery. The arc between two deaths.

  As her wedding present from John, Billie got a theatre. Not just any theatre, but the eighteenth-century interior of a theatre from the castle at A solo near Venice, which John had had shipped and reassembled.

  ‘It’s the only original… what was it, Milton?’

  ‘Baroque.’

  ‘…. baroque theatre in the United States.’ It was gorgeous. The audience consisted of three rows of galleries in an oval shape with three hundred velvet seats. The ornate décor included portrait medallions of Dante and Petrarch.

  ‘Who are they?’ asked Billie.

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ said John. ‘Dead, I guess. Sure haven’t heard from them.’

  Professor Heckler’s World Famous Trained Flea Circus was the first act and the last. There had been a problem in rehearsal and the fleas had not been troopers. The show had not gone on and the fleas had abandoned the stage for the auditorium. The seats were infested.

  Grace carried Phoebe out laughing and excited. ‘Theatre. It’s an old Greek word meaning “to see”.’

  ‘I didn’t know we were going to feel it as well,’ chortled Billie, scratching all over. ‘Come on now, John, what does Grace get?’

  John stood, his feet spread wide. A colossus in his empire.

  ‘Grace? Why, Grace gets romance. Here.’

  Around the corner of the main house walked Sweetheart’s young son, Harry. He was leading the most beautiful female elephant. The boy looked fit to bust with pride as he gently held her by a giant ear. The great pachyderm was soft with the boy. She walked with the gentlest tread on huge cushioned fret. The noblest of creatures, she had a slight smile about her which suggested she had seen a mirror and knew she looked ridiculous. Her grey skin was almost entirely obscured by her costume. A vast blanket with a hundred thousand hand-sewn sequins had been draped over her. Above her head the blanket had been moulded up into the head and body of a swan. It was Lillian Gish in an ill-advised musical. It was over the top. It was terrible but Grace was in love.

  ‘For Toto. A mate for Toto.’

  John shrugged as if it was nothing. ‘Oh well, you keep going on about animals being lonely and whatnot. So there you go. She’s called Ellen.’

  The day after the engagement party Billie started packing her trunks for her honeymoon to Africa. Huge patterned boxes with inner drawers and hanging space were filled with her finest clothes. Across the bed lay a flowing silk gown shaded in purples and blues.

  ‘That’s beautiful,’ said Grace, stroking the rich silk while Sweetheart helped fold endless garments in tissue paper.

  Billie held the gown against herself and danced across the room.

  ‘I shall wear this for cocktails at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro. Elephants will wander by in single file as a lion roars under the stars. Come with us, Grace. Doesn’t it sound romantic?’

  I was drifting off to sleep when Miss Strange and Helen came in with the cocoa and Cosmos returned to build up the fire. Sweetheart put a coat over me. She stroked my cheek and I wanted to cry.

  ‘I don’t know why, but she reminds me of Phoebe.’

  ‘Poor kid, she seems kind of lost.’

  I went to sleep dreaming that Miss Strange carried me in her arms. I lay sure and still as she gathered me up. We laughed and wondered together at the animals as her strong arms held me up to see. I was home. I was safe.

  When I awoke the women were all talking about the elephant.

  ‘I don’t see why it’s like, a problem,’ said Cosmos, emphasizing each word with a cut of her knife on a new flute.

  Miss Strange was firm. ‘Cosmos, we cannot deal with Artemesia. We don’t have the facilities.’

  I was having trouble following. ‘Who’s Artemesia?’ I asked sleepily.

  Miss Strange looked at me, sorry that I had no education. ‘First known woman sea captain. Fifth century.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I meant, what kind of animal?’

  ‘An elephant. The most beautiful elephant,’ replied Sweetheart with a smile I had not seen before. ‘Ellen and Toto’s baby.’

  ‘But it’s the most blessed thing that could ever happen to the zoo,’ persisted Cosmos. ‘Touch an elephant and you receive enlightenment. Buddha himself was born into the body of an elephant in an elephant trainer’s family. On the night of his birth, an elephant entered the dreams of Buddha’s mother, Queen Mahamaya, and Gautama Buddha was thus born patient, strong, meek and unforgetful.’

  ‘Did emperors have elephants?’ I asked, already agog at the thought of this romantic creature.

  ‘Have them?’ said Cosmos. ‘They adored them.’

  Miss Strange was unmoved by emperors’ feelings or otherwise. ‘That is all very well but this is upstate New York, not India. We can’t do it. The elephant would need a huge reinforced outdoor paddock. We don’t have anything like that.’

  ‘So we’ll make one,’ insisted Cosmos.

  Miss Strange shook her head. ‘We couldn’t do it. We couldn’t afford the labour
.

  ‘We can make it ourselves.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. This is not some pets corner we need.’

  ‘Where did we used to keep her?’ inquired Sweetheart, frowning.

  ‘Up by the restaurant,’ sighed Miss Strange. ‘But I don’t think those fences would keep her now. It’s hopeless.’

  Sweetheart nodded. ‘She was lovely.’

  Until then I had kept quiet, but the second I heard about Artemesia I knew I wanted the elephant to come. I wanted to receive enlightenment.

  ‘Why doesn’t Cosmos whistle for help?’ I suggested. I looked at Cosmos. ‘You said your whistles brought help.’ The women looked at me. I think everyone thought I was overtired. It’s what grown-ups decide about kids who have said too much. Everyone, that is, except Cosmos. She leaped to her feet and held her small flute aloft.

  ‘Yes! Yes!’ she cried. ‘Sugar’s right. If you’re in trouble and you whistle then the elephants will come to save you. The elephant will come to save us. The elephant will come.’ She put the flute to her lips. It wasn’t even a finished one but the sound carried clearly in the night air. Cosmos began marching round and round the library, whistling her strange tune from the Sudan.

  ‘Come on, Helen,’ she called between pipings. ‘Come on, Sugar, Miss Strange.’

  ‘Cosmos, for goodness’ sake! This is ridiculous,’ called Miss Strange.

  But Cosmos was not listening. She threw open the french windows to the garden and marched out. Slowly we followed, Miss Strange with Mr Paton on her shoulder and carrying Perry, Sweetheart followed by Sappho, the orangutan, and me. At last even Helen uncurled herself and very slowly came to see what was happening. A curious collection of womanhood. In the moonlight Cosmos was our Pied Piper. We followed her as she led us across to the zoo and up into the corner field. There she began pacing out the paddock, calling out encouragement to us to join in and dance. Sweetheart started to laugh and began marching behind her. Mr Paton began his own tune and the orang clapped along. Then Miss Strange and I tagged on behind and we marched, laughing, under the moon. Putting her arms around a sagging post, Helen clung on tight, and watched as Cosmos spread her arms into the light.