In my absence, the center of the square had been taken over by an elephant. It was kneeling, a heap of fresh dung close by its hindquarters, and Riel stood at its side, like a princess beside a weathered castle wall, talking to a boy in shorts, twelve or thirteen, mounted behind the animal’s neck. A farmer’s son, I thought, who had ridden the family tractor into town to show it off. I found a stall adjacent to Lucy’s wizard that sold coffee sweetened with condensed milk and sat on a rickety folding chair and watched Riel trying to entice the boy into giving her a ride (he kept wagging his finger no, and scowling), while the elephant flexed its trunk and blinked away flies, presenting an image of stuporous discontent.
The crowds were thinner in the square than they had been on the side streets, so Riel was the object of much attention, especially from the male stallkeepers. I sipped my coffee and thought about the gun pushing against my pelvic bone, imagining it had been snatched from the hand of a dead officer during the Vietnam conflict and wondering how many lives it had snuffed out. It had been an impulse buy, although the impulse was informed by a lifelong fear of and fascination with guns and was given a quasi-rational basis by the idea that I might need it once we reached the delta. It was a steel phallus, a social ill, all those things that left-wing politics said it was; yet its cold touch warmed me and added weight to my purpose, enabling the fantasy that my mission there was important.
Lucy finished her consultation and joined me for coffee. “It’s going to rain,” she said.
The clouds had gone from a nickel color to dark gray brushed with charcoal; the muggy heat and the smell of the elephant’s dung had thickened. I laid an envelope on the table by Lucy’s hand.
“What’s this?” she asked, fingering it.
“Severance pay,” I said.
She met my eyes steadily, and I thought she would object or demand an explanation; but she only looked away, her face neutral.
“So what did he tell you, your guy? What’s in your stars?” I asked, breaking a silence.
“Obviously not a trip south,” she said. “Oh, well. Like they say, all good things …”
“I hope it’s been good.”
She appeared to rebound. “It’s been an adventure …and good.” She grinned. “No complaints on this end.”
“It’s about time you went home and kick-started that career, don’t you think?”
“Advice? And from someone who should know better?” she said merrily. “I shall have to reevaluate my impression of you.”
“Just a thought.”
The stallkeeper switched on a radio and tuned into a station playing reggae—Peter Tosh and elephants, the essence of globalization. Lucy inspected the contents of the envelope. “This is a lot of money,” she said. “It’s too much, really.”
“I was hoping you’d see to Riel.”
She nudged the envelope over to my side of the table. “I don’t want to be responsible.”
“I thought you fancied her.”
“The lesbian thing …it’s my exhibitionist side coming out. It works for me when the right guy is around. Otherwise …” She wrinkled her nose.
“Look, I’m not expecting you to spend much time on this. Give it a week or so, and try to pass her off to someone decent. That shouldn’t be much of a problem. Maybe you can trick her onto a plane back to Winnipeg. If she stays here, she’s bound to run into someone who’ll fuck her up worse than she already is.”
“All right. I’ll do my best for her, but …I’ll do my best.”
I took her hand, letting my fingers mix with hers. “I’m going to be in London next spring. I’ll give you a call, see how you’re doing.”
“I’m likely to be busy,” she said after a pause. “But, yes. Do call, please.”
We held hands for ten or fifteen seconds, reestablishing the limits of our limited affection, and then Lucy said, “Oh, my gosh. Look what she’s doing now.”
Riel had stepped around to the front of the elephant, facing it, and was dancing, a slow, eloquent, seductive temple-girl dance, arms raised above her head, hips swaying, as if trying to charm the beast. The elephant appeared unaffected, but everyone in the square had stopped what they were doing to watch. A livid stroke of lightning fractured the eastern sky, its witchy shape holding against the sullen moil of clouds, and was followed by a peal of thunder that rolled across green fields into the city. As it passed, the sky flickered, the clouds shifted in their conformation; but such phenomena had grown so commonplace, I would not have noticed except that it added a mysterious accent to the scene.
“Do you think she’s in any danger?” Lucy asked.
“From the elephant? Probably not,” I said. “The boy seems calm.”
“We should fetch her, anyway. It’s time we went back.” She tucked the envelope into her bag, yet made no move to stand. “Whatever comes, I think we’ve helped her.”
“We provided a place where she didn’t have to worry about survival. But I don’t think we can claim to have helped.”
“What should we have done? Put her in a clinic? She wouldn’t last a day. We’re not her parents …and it’s not as if she cares a fig about us. She’d be off in a flash if something better happened along.”
“Maybe something better will come along. That’s why I gave you the money.”
Lucy acknowledged this gloomily.
“She may care about us more than you think,” I said. “Her attachment to the world is flimsy, but we became her world for a few weeks. Flimsy or not, she formed an attachment.”
“Isolate one moment, if you can, when she demonstrated genuine affection.”
“That little speech she gave at the Heart of Darkness. I …”
“I knew you’d bring that up.”
“I realize it was done for shock value. But it was inspired by a kernel of affection.”
Lucy’s fortune-teller scurried out from his stall and made a playful run at Riel—his shoulders were hunched and arms dangling, as though he were pretending to be a monkey tempted by a piece of fruit yet afraid to touch it. She continued to dance, and he wove a path about her, feinting, lunging at her, and scooting away; whenever he came near, he scattered some sort of powder at her feet. The scene held a curious potency, like a picture on a card, the representation of an archetype in a Cambodian Tarot, an image that seemed easily interpretable at first glance, but then, in the way of many Asian scenes, came to seem an impenetrable riddle: the wizard scuttling forward and retreating and the mystery void girl, the blonde sacrifice, lost in abandon, in holy, slow dementia, dancing before the massive, dim-witted, iconic beast. Lucy mentioned again that we should be going. Another peal of thunder, an erratic rumbling, hinted at something souring in the darkened belly of the sky. Vendors hastened to cover their merchandise, unrolling cloths and makeshift awnings. A sprinkle of rain fell, yet still we sat there.