Elefant

Harris answered, listened, said, ‘Hold on,’ took a pen from his jacket and jotted down some numbers on the back of the list of daily specials. ‘I thought it would never happen,’ he said, before finishing the conversation and dialling another number.

‘Kasun?’ he said into his phone so loudly that a number of guests turned and stared. ‘Get yourself to Ratmalana. Now!’ He made the international gesture for ‘The bill, please’ to the waiter, and when it wasn’t brought immediately Harris went up and signed the slip. On the way to his room he called his contact at the heliport.

Harris ordered a taxi and quickly put on his work clothes – khaki trousers and faded short-sleeve denim shirt. From the wardrobe he took his instrument case, which he’d already packed and checked over and over again for this long-awaited opportunity.

Barely five minutes after the phone call he was in a taxi on his way to Ratmalana Airport, fifteen kilometres to the south of Colombo.

A quarter of an hour later he was there. Kasun, the young man assigned to him by the Department of Wildlife Conservation, was waiting for him beside a Robinson R44, a light, four-seater helicopter. Its rotors had started spinning as soon as Harris’s taxi came into sight.

When Harris got to the chopper, Kasun was already strapped into the back seat, his headphones on.

The pilot increased the rotor speed, the small aircraft rose slowly and hovered over the runway for a moment. Then the pilot lowered its nose and they set off towards the south-east.

4

The same day

They’d flown the last few kilometres at low altitude above the railway line and could see the stationary train from far away. A few metres behind the engine a group of people were gathered around the injured elephant.

The pilot flew higher to give them an overview of the situation. Not far from the site of the accident was a clearing, at the edge of which stood a few huts. Enough room to land.

Apart from a handful of old women and small children the village was deserted. Those not working in the fields had gone to the scene of the accident.

Laden with instrument case, a hard-shell cool box and various containers, the stocky Harris and his tall, loose-limbed assistant hurried along the narrow path that led from the clearing to the railway line in the forest.

As usual in Sri Lanka, it was over 30 degrees with more than 90 per cent humidity. When they reached the railway embankment Harris’s shirt was sticking to his large torso. They laboured their way up the gravel and began heading northwards along the tracks. The site of the accident had to be just beyond the bend.

Not a scrap of shade fell onto the railway line; they were at the mercy of the roasting sun. It stank of the hot creosote that the wooden sleepers were impregnated with. And of the passenger lavatories.

Now they could see the train as well as the people grouped beside the embankment.

Just before they reached them, Harris instructed his Sri Lankan helper to go first to clear the way. Kasun barked some instructions in Sinhalese, and all Harris understood were the English words ‘National Wildlife Department’. The curious villagers and passengers from the train immediately moved aside.

Before them lay the little elephant and beside it knelt a young woman, stroking its head.

‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ she said, choking back the tears.

The animal’s eyes were wide open, it was biting its trunk and its hind legs stuck out at an unnatural angle. Harris put down his case and opened it.

‘Are you a vet?’ the tourist asked him in her American accent.

Harris nodded. He took out a syringe and filled it from an ampoule.

‘Will she be okay?’ the American woman asked, worried.

Harris nodded. He lifted the injured animal’s right ear. The network of veins on the back stood out prominently. Harris chose a swollen one as thick as a finger, positioned the needle, and injected the contents of the syringe.

‘Painkiller?’ she asked.

Harris nodded once more. ‘Painkiller,’ he muttered, checking his watch.

The elephant seemed to relax. The tongue slid from her mouth and lay on the trampled grass like a weary snake. The American tourist kept stroking the baby elephant’s head, which was dotted sparsely with long hairs. ‘Shhh, shhh,’ she said, as if to a child going to sleep.

Harris checked his watch again and made a sign to Kasun. He understood and touched the woman’s shoulder, who flinched and looked up at him.

Now Harris could see how young the tear-stained face was.

‘Let’s go, miss,’ Kasun said.

The American looked at Harris for help.

He nodded. ‘Everybody leaves now. We have to do some surgery.’

Slowly she got to her feet, looked back down at the baby elephant, wiped the tears away with the heels of her hands and looked at Harris. ‘You put her to sleep, didn’t you?’

He didn’t reply.

She turned around and was led away by the train guard to the group of passengers waiting a few carriages further on in the shade of the trees at the edge of the forest.

Harris took off his sweat-drenched shirt and replaced it with a green surgeon’s gown. Kasun clapped him on the back and handed him the disinfectant. Its glycerine content made it easier to put on the surgical gloves.

The vet listened to the little elephant through his stethoscope. After three minutes he nodded to Kasun, who was also now wearing sterile, disposable gloves. Kasun took the large scalpel from the instrument case and passed it to Harris.

Harris set the blade beside the eighteenth rib below the spinal column and opened up the lumbar region of the dead elephant.

5

The same day

Seat 11A had two advantages: there was no seat beside it and it was the furthest back in business class aboard this Boeing 787-9. Behind was room enough for the cool box carrying the baby elephant’s ovaries.

Harris had just managed to catch the Etihad 265, which would take him from Colombo to Zürich via Abu Dhabi in a little over fourteen hours. He’d drunk his way through the champagne, claret and liqueurs on the menu and was now on his goodnight beer. Perhaps he’d get a little more sleep in the remaining four hours of the flight.

Business class was only about half full. Most passengers were asleep, but here and there he could make out the pale flicker of a screen.

All of a sudden a light went on above one of the seats. A few moments later the curtain of the galley moved and an air hostess emerged, went over to the light, bent down, exchanged a few words with the passenger and left. Shortly afterwards she returned with a tray carrying a glass and a can of beer.

Someone else who couldn’t sleep.

Harris was pleased that this mission was coming to an end. He’d had enough of the tropics and was looking forward to Europe, cool nights and talking shop with colleagues. And to the recognition he’d receive – in the short term at least – for the project’s success.

He put on the headphones and selected the Country channel. ‘Lucille’ by Kenny Rogers was playing, the song that had acted as a soundtrack to the most difficult period of his separation.

He was awoken by the captain’s composed voice. They were entering an area of turbulence, he explained, and all passengers were requested to fasten their seatbelts.

In the past Harris used to suffer from a fear of flying. A pathological fear. Until the age of thirty-two he’d only got on a plane once. He was sixteen at the time and had won a round trip in a competition held by a cigarette firm. From Queenstown to Milford Sound in a Gippsland GA-8, a single-engine Australian aeroplane that seated seven passengers.

The aircraft got caught in a storm high above the rugged fjord and Harris swore he’d never get on a plane again if he survived this horror.