Ivory

Prologue

Prologue

It was early on the morning of his fifth birthday that he saw his first elephant, and for as long as he lived he would never forget that moment.

The mist hung low over the plains, and stretched as far as he could see as he peered over the black dashboard of the Land Rover. The vinyl still gave off that oily new smell when the sun slanted in through the square windows, as it did now.

‘Ponha o seu casaco novo, Alexandre,’ his mother said. Even though it was still cold, he didn’t want to pull on his new jacket. Reluctantly, he let his mother pull the scratchy garment over his arms and button it. The coat was a birthday present, but so too was his shiny new toy Land Rover – an identical miniature of his father’s Series IIA. He wanted to play with the car, but his father kept telling him to look for animals.

‘Ai, não pareces elegante?’ his mother said, but Alex didn’t think he looked smart at all.

‘Come here, Alex,’ his father said. ‘It’s time you learned how to drive.’ His father always spoke English and his mother Portuguese. It had always been that way and he answered each in their respective tongue. At five he was fluent in both languages, and thanks to his friend Jose, whose father worked for Alex’s father at the hotel, he had a good command of the local African language, Xitswa, too.

He dropped his toy car and clambered onto his father’s lap. He gripped the steering wheel and squealed with delight when his father let go.

‘Donald!’ his mother shrieked.

‘The boy’s doing fine. Look, Alex.’

‘Buffalo,’ Alex said proudly. He had seen a herd yesterday when they had arrived at the national park. His father had said there were at least a thousand buffalo in the herd, scattered like black marbles across the close-cropped green grass of the floodplain. This one was by himself, though, and he loomed out of the thinning mist like a black ghost.

‘Good boy, steady as she goes. He won’t hurt us.’

Alex turned to watch the huge head with its curved horns that seemed as long, from tip to tip, as he was tall. The steering wheel bucked and turned in his tiny hands as the tyres bounced in and out of ruts and the embedded footprints of animals that had churned the road to mud during the last rains and since dried as hard as pitted concrete.

‘Maybe we’ll see some lions today,’ his father whispered in his ear. ‘In the wild this time.’

Alex growled in imitation of the caged beast he had seen in Vilanculos, awaiting shipment to Portugal. His father had said it was bad to keep wild animals in cages, but his mother had scoffed and said there were far too many lions in Africa as it was and they should all be shot or shipped to zoos around the world.

‘Olha, elefantes!’ his mother called.

His father took back control of the steering wheel and slowed the Land Rover to a stop. Alex turned and caught sight of the elephants. The nearest was barely twenty metres away. Alex climbed off his father’s lap and onto his mother’s as she was closer to the great grey beast. His father killed the engine.

‘It’s a female. She could be the same age as you, my boy, judging by those thin little tusks.’

The elephant turned, startled, shook her head and raised her trunk, sniffing the air. Alex reached out of the open window, but his mother snatched his hand back inside. He heard a funny sound like a tummy rumble, but much, much deeper.

‘They’re talking to each other,’ his father said.

She was the biggest thing he had seen in his young life and he stared at her in silence, drinking in every detail of her wrinkled grey body. The huge head, the white tusks that shone pale gold in the growing light, the hairy tuft at the end of her tail and the pink mouth that seemed to smile at him. He found it hard to believe that she was only five, like him. ‘What’s wrong with her ear, Papa?’ There was a large v-shaped rent in the left one.

‘I don’t know, my boy. Perhaps a lion tried to catch her when she was a baby. If so, she’s a very lucky elephant indeed.’

‘Can a lion kill an elephant, Papa?’

‘Only a little one. Once they’re this big they’re safe from everything in the wild, except man.’

‘What do you mean, Papa?’

‘People are killing elephants all over Africa, Alex, for their tusks, and it’s wrong. We need to protect these animals. They’re the future of our country – your future, Alex.’

Alex’s mother said, in Portuguese, that there were more things in Mozambique to worry about than people hunting elephants, and that his father should not fill the boy’s head with such serious words on his birthday. Alex let the conversation flow over him and continued to stare, open-mouthed, at the elephant with the tear in her ear.

The elephant started to walk towards them. His mother told his father to start the engine, but his father shook his head. ‘She won’t hurt us. She’s made the decision to approach the vehicle – we’d only be in trouble if we were invading her territory.’

‘Donald!’ his mother hissed, unconvinced.

Alex could feel his heart beating in his chest and he looked back over his shoulder at his father, who smiled at him and winked. His mother put her hands over her eyes and scrunched down so that her head was below the level of the dashboard. Alex wriggled off her lap so that he was next to the door and reached his hand out of the window again.

As the elephant drew closer, he could see the tip of her trunk was pink and that rather than being flat like a pig’s snout, it had two protrusions, like funny little fat fingers. Alex could smell her musty scent and see her long eyelashes and the glistening eye that watched him.

He held his hand steady and felt the soft exhalation of warm breath on his palm as she kissed him.