According to Kiri Banda, the domestic elephants of Ceylon belonged to two professions.
“Some walk in peraheras,” he told Sunil. “The others pull logs.”
“What about Sumana?”
Kiri Banda looked towards the elephant, who was standing beneath a jak tree, scratching one hind leg with the other.
“This one has joined a wealthy family.”
It was an accusation often made against Sumana, though never with much bitterness. While other elephants hauled timber through mud or spent long evenings beneath embroidered cloth and lights, she passed her days between the garden, the stream, and the kitchen door.
Her only regular duty was carrying paddy to the mill at Pujapitiya.
This generally happened once a week, because Punchi Banda disliked rice that had been milled and stored for too long.
“A man who owns all these fields ought to be able to eat fresh rice,” he said.
Menike considered this a troublesome opinion.
“A man who owns all these fields could also eat what is put before him,” she remarked in the kitchen.
She did not repeat it on the veranda.
On milling mornings, two gunny bags of paddy were brought from the granary. Sumana gripped their gathered mouths with her mouth and set off for Pujapitiya, carrying both together while Kiri Banda walked beside her.
At the mill, she gently lowered the bags to the ground. Once the paddy had been milled, she carried the bags of rice home in the same way.
Sumana knew the journey as well as he did.
She turned at the right junctions, stopped outside the mill, and waited beneath a spreading tree while the sacks were unloaded. The machinery rattled inside, sending a dusty smell of husk and warm grain into the yard.
When the rice was ready, the sacks were loaded again.
At the mill, Sumana received a plantain. At a roadside boutique, she sometimes received another. By the time she returned home, several people had contributed to her wages.
“She could do the whole journey without you,” the mill owner told Kiri Banda.
“Of course,” he replied. “But who would tell you which rice belongs to our house?”
“She knows that too.”
“Then perhaps you should give her my salary.”
The mill owner laughed.
Sumana reached towards the plantains hanging beside his doorway.
The illness began on a morning when she left part of her food untouched.
At first, Kiri Banda blamed the servants.
“Who has been giving her things?”
Everyone denied it with the readiness of people who had been giving her things for years.
By afternoon, she had eaten very little. She stood quietly near the shed, shifting her weight. When Malini came with a piece of ripe papaya, Sumana took it, held it briefly in her trunk, and dropped it.
Malini fetched Kiri Banda.
He examined the ground around the shed, then walked along the garden path and behind the cattle enclosure.
“What are you looking for?” Sunil asked.
“Dung.”
“There’s plenty near the lower gate.”
“Old dung.”
By the following evening, there was still none.
Sumana drank, but scarcely ate. Occasionally she looked back towards her belly. Once she lowered herself awkwardly and rose again almost at once.
Kiri Banda slept beside the shed that night.
On the third morning, the household woke to his shout.
Sumana had finally passed dung.
For a few moments, relief spread through the yard. Then Kiri Banda bent down, picked up a stick, and began pulling something from the dark heap.
A length of pale blue material emerged.
He drew out more.
Menike covered her mouth.
“Good heavens.”
It was a sari.
Not an old cotton cloth or something discarded for cleaning, but a blue Nylex sari with a narrow silvery border.
For a while, nobody spoke.
Then Somawathie said quietly, “That is mine.”
In those days, a Nylex sari was a possession to be remembered.
With imports severely restricted, such things were difficult to obtain. Women discussed who had brought one from abroad, who had paid an outrageous price for one, and whose daughter had received one as a wedding gift.
Somawathie’s blue sari had come through a relative returning from overseas. She wore it on special occasions, folded it carefully afterwards, and trusted its washing to one particular woman.
It had disappeared from the clothesline several days earlier.
The servants had searched the bedrooms, the washing place, and even the linen cupboard twice. Nobody had thought of searching the elephant.
Somawathie stared at the ruined length of fabric.
“So that is where it went.”
Sunil looked from his mother to Sumana.
“Why would she eat a sari?”
“Perhaps,” Appuhamy said, “she thought your mother was receiving too much attention in it.”
Nobody laughed quite as much as he had hoped.
Kiri Banda continued working with the stick. The sari was twisted and torn, coated beyond recognition in places.
He looked troubled.
“What is it?” Punchi Banda asked.
“I don’t know whether all of it has come out.”
They sent for Alibera from Pujapitiya.
He was an old elephant physician, a spare man with a lined face and a small knot of grey hair at the back of his head. He arrived carrying a cloth bag and an umbrella whose handle had been repaired with wire.
He did not hurry towards Sumana.
First he stood at a distance and watched her. Then he questioned Kiri Banda about her food, her drinking, and the days that had passed.
The sari was shown to him.
He prodded it with the end of a stick.
“These creatures will put a whole forest into their mouths,” he said. “But cloth is another matter.”
He felt along Sumana’s belly and listened with his head inclined. She stood patiently, though once she moved away from his hand.
Medicines were prepared in large vessels behind the kitchen. Bitter leaves were pounded; roots were washed and cut. Water simmered over an extra fire.
Menike complained that the entire household now smelt like a medicine shop.
Nevertheless, she stayed up to watch the pot.
Alibera gave instructions, returned the following day, and changed the treatment.
For a little while, Sumana seemed brighter.
She accepted some grass from Malini and followed Kiri Banda a short distance towards the stream. Everyone watched her with such attention that the smallest movement became encouraging.
“She flapped both ears,” Sunil reported.
“She has been doing that all her life,” his father said.
But he went outside to look.
By evening, she was dull again.
The weekly journey to the mill stopped.
A cart took the paddy instead, and its departure seemed to deepen the silence around the elephant shed.
Kiri Banda scarcely went home. His wife sent meals through a neighbour, and the plates returned half-empty.
Malini sat nearby with her sewing, but little sewing was done. She watched Sumana’s trunk move over the ground, searching without interest among the scattered leaves.
One afternoon, she brought a plantain.
Sumana touched her hand but did not take it.
Malini remained beside her for a long time.
Even Menike stopped complaining about the stolen fruit.
“Let her come to the kitchen,” she said. “She can have whatever she likes.”
Alibera continued visiting.
He accepted tea on the veranda, asked for more ingredients, and spoke with increasing caution.
Punchi Banda began listening for the sound of his footsteps.
One afternoon, Alibera asked to speak privately.
They walked beyond the veranda to the edge of the coconut garden.
For some time, the old man said nothing.
Then he stopped.
“Haamu, I must tell you plainly. I do not think she will recover.”
Punchi Banda looked towards the shed.
“You said there was some improvement.”
“There was. But it has not lasted.”
“What else can we try?”
Alibera rubbed his chin.
“I have done what I know.”
A squirrel ran down a coconut trunk behind them. From the kitchen came the clatter of a lid.
At last, Alibera spoke again.
“There is a businessman I know. He is looking for a few elephants.”
Punchi Banda turned sharply.
“What has that to do with this?”
“He has timber work. He buys animals from different places.”
“This elephant has never pulled a log.”
“She is strong. She could be trained.”
“She is sick.”
Alibera lowered his voice.
“There is no need to begin with that.”
Punchi Banda stared at him.
The old man looked away, then added, “If you wait, you may lose her and receive nothing.”
“My father brought her here.”
“I know, Haamu.”
“She grew up with me.”
Alibera was silent.
Punchi Banda walked back towards the house without answering.
That night, Somawathie found him sitting on the veranda after everyone else had gone inside.
He told her what Alibera had proposed.
She listened without interrupting.
“Does the buyer know?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then he would be buying a healthy elephant.”
Punchi Banda rubbed his forehead.
“Alibera says she will not recover.”
“That does not answer my question.”
From the shed came a faint rustling.
Neither spoke for a while.
“Thirty-five thousand rupees,” he said at last. “That is what he thinks the man will pay.”
Somawathie looked out into the darkness.
“He will want her to work?”
“Yes.”
“She cannot even eat.”
“I know.”
Yet over the next two days, worry, weariness, and Alibera’s repeated visits wore down his resistance. He began to imagine the empty shed and then stopped himself. He told himself that another owner might know another physician.
At last, reluctantly, he agreed.
The businessman arrived with two men.
He inspected Sumana’s legs, her feet, and her back. He asked her age and what work she had done.
“Carrying paddy to Pujapitiya,” Punchi Banda said.
“Only that?”
“Only that.”
The man smiled.
“A comfortable life.”
Kiri Banda stood beside the shed, saying nothing.
Sumana moved her trunk towards him, and he rested a hand on it.
The businessman asked why she looked quiet.
“The afternoon heat,” Alibera said.
Punchi Banda looked down.
The price was settled at thirty-five thousand rupees.
Inside the house, Malini stood beside her mother. Sunil waited at the doorway, listening to the unfamiliar men discuss ropes and the journey.
On the veranda, the money was counted.
Punchi Banda signed the receipt.
Outside, Sumana reached towards Kiri Banda’s shoulder with the same familiar movement she had made for years.
He caught her trunk in both hands and held it.
For once, he had nothing to say to her.
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