Echlin, Kim. Elephant Winter. Toronto: Penguin, 1998.
Elephants are among the world’s most potentially dangerous animals, capable of crushing and killing many other animals, including humans. As I mentioned earlier, elephant social communication and perception is a relatively new concept and this pioneer research is highlighted in a novel that seems more real than fiction, Elephant Winter by Kim Echlin.
In this novel, Canadian author Kim Echlin tells the story of thirty-year-old Sophie Walker, the Elephant-keeper. When Sophie returns home from Zimbabwe to rural Ontario to care for her mother who is dying of cancer, she can’t fight the curiosity to meet her unlikely neighbours. Directly behind her mother’s house is a safari, with 5 elephants and the animal-keeper, Jo.
Sophie is intrigued, to say the least, and is inspired by the elephants’ daily discourse to record and explore elephant language. The results of which are transcribed and included throughout the book in the form of an Elephant-English Dictionary. Sophie begins regular visits to the safari and ends up falling in love with the elephants living next door.
The elephants aren’t the only things Sophie fell in love with — Jo, the animal-caretaker, also listens to the elephants. He is one of them. He sleeps in a cot next to the elephants—waiting for one elephant in particular, Kezia to give birth. Sophie and Jo fall quickly into bed, and continue with an “easy” relationship. Sophie’s life becomes complicated when she becomes pregnant. Sophie is a nurturer by nature, not only caring for her dying mother, but the elephants, her unborn baby and her lover as well.
Sophie’s mother is a wildlife painter who lived a rather unconventional life and is now dying a slow and painful death. The reader gets a chance to enjoy the last stages of Sophie’s relationship with her mother. Once an active person, her mother is now withdrawn to the seclusion of her bedroom, visitors have ceased and she is now relying on Sophie.
Sophie knows she is going to lose her mother, and learns quickly how to best spend what little time they have left together.
Seemingly out of nowhere, a strange man appears, who says he knows Jo without the details of how he knows him. He’s a mute, but he carries with him a slate which he uses to converse. His name is Alecto and he too, knows elephants. Alecto is a highly publicized scholar and animal physiologist whose reputation is premised upon performing sadistic experiments and has a history of massacring elephants to perform autopsies. His presence is heavy and he seems to wait around in anxious anticipation for one of the elephants to expire. When a male elephant turns violent, Alecto kills the elephant, which saved Jo’s life, but ruined his spirit. He is interested in himself, paying no attention to the “sounds” of the elephants, or the discourse, which is taking place. To Alecto, elephants are merely tools for learning, ready to be sliced and reported on.
Seriously wounded, Jo leaves Sophie to deal with not only the elephants, but also her impending birth.
Sophie records the animals. In this passage on page 160:
“The Safari directors put me in charge of the elephants and asked me to do Jo’s work. I told them I didn’t know enough, didn’t want to work so much, couldn’t do it, but they shook their heads and said, “There’s no one else”. I couldn’t submit and I couldn’t leave and I couldn’t die. There were elephants hungry and needing exercise. There was Kezia, pregnant, and the Safari would open soon. I didn’t know all I needed to know to take care of them. Slowly Kezia accepted me as her keeper and I felt her wondering, What do you ask? I often didn’t know what to answer but I pretended. I want you not to hurt me. I want you not to kill me. I want you to hold your foot ready to work on. I want you to walk out into the elephant yard with me. I want you to stand while I bathe you. I want you to sleep. I want you to allow me to put the howdah on you, to bear weight, to raise your trunk, to walk beside me and safely carry small children. She had the power to do all these things. When I was too tired to go on I stood among them and felt their graceful acceptance of a life they had not chosen. I made our daily routine as simple as I could. More and more I recorded their silence, took the tapes back to my mother’s house and when she was sleeping I listened to their low rumbles. One afternoon when I recorded, not knowing if they were speaking or quiet in the dark barn, I whispered to them, “What do you want?” And on the tape I heard for the first time the lowest of all their calls, aaaaaaaaa, a sound I have come to understand as mercy.” (p. 160, Water for Elephants)
The climax of the book comes with an attempted rape, an elephant charging, an elephant birth, Sophie’s birth, the death of her mother and an elephant escape … all capturing the compassion of animals.
Only Kim Echlin could put Sophie’s love for elephants into words.
