ll be hot food for everyone in the convoy, which is no small miracle if one bears in mind the general lack of facilities and the uncertain weather. Luckily, it stopped raining. The men took off their heavier clothes and placed them on poles to dry by the heat of the fires they had lit. Then it was just a matter of waiting for the big pot of stew to arrive and of enjoying the consoling pang in the stomach when they smelled it, knowing that their hunger was finally going to be satisfied, and of feeling just as much a man as those who are brought a plate of food and a slice of bread at regular hours, as if such things were ordained by some beneficent fate. This commanding officer is not like other officers, in that he is as concerned about his men, soldiers and non-soldiers alike, as if they were his children. More than that, he is little concerned with hierarchy, at least in the current circumstances, so much so that he has not gone elsewhere to eat, but is here, taking his place around the fire, and if he hasn't yet participated very much in the conversation, this is only in order to put the men at their ease. One of the cavalrymen has just asked the question that has been preoccupying them all, And what are you going to do with the elephant in vienna, mahout, Probably the same as in lisbon, nothing very much, replied subhro, there'll be a lot of applause, a lot of people crowding the streets, and then they'll forget all about him, that's the law of life, triumph and oblivion, Not always, For elephants and men it is, although I shouldn't really speak of men in general, I'm just an indian in a foreign land, but, as far as I know, only one elephant has ever escaped that law, What elephant was that, asked one of the laborers, An elephant who was dying and whose head was cut off once he was dead, That would be the end of him, then, No, the head was placed on the neck of a god called ganesh, who was also dead, Tell us about this ganesh, said the commanding officer, Sir, the hindu religion is so very complicated that only an indian can really understand it, and even then not always, Now I seem to recall you telling me that you were a christian, And I recall answering, more or less, sir, more or less, What does that mean, though, are you or are you not a christian, Well, I was baptized in india when I was a child, And then, Then, nothing, replied the mahout with a shrug, So you never practiced your faith, Sir, I was not called, they must have forgotten about me, You didn't miss anything, said an unknown voice that no one could quite locate, but which, incredible though it may seem, appeared to have come from the embers of the fire. A great silence fell, interrupted only by the crackling of the burning wood. According to your religion, who was it who created the world, asked the commanding officer, Brahma, sir, In other words, god, Yes, but he's not the only god, What do you mean, It's not enough just to have created the world, there has to be someone to preserve it, and that's the job of another god, called vishnu, Are there more gods apart from them, mahout, We've got thousands of them, but the third most important god is shiva, the destroyer, Do you mean that what vishnu preserves shiva destroys, No, sir, with shiva, death is understood as the main creator of life, So, if I understand you correctly, those three gods form part of a trinity, indeed, they are a trinity, just like in christianity, In christianity there are four, sir, if you'll forgive my boldness, Four, exclaimed the commanding officer, astonished, and who's the fourth member, The virgin, sir, The virgin doesn't count, we have the father, the son and the holy ghost, And the virgin, If you don't explain yourself, I'll cut off your head like they did to that elephant, Well, I've never heard anyone ask anything of god or jesus or the holy spirit, but the virgin can barely cope with the torrent of requests and prayers and supplications that arrive at her door at all hours of the day and night, Careful now, the inquisition's out there somewhere, so for your own good, don't go straying into dangerous waters, If I get to vienna, I won't be coming back, Won't you go home to india, asked the commanding officer, No, I'm not an indian anymore, And yet you obviously know a lot about hinduism, More or less, sir, more or less, Why do you say that, Because it's all words and only words, and beyond the words there's nothing, Is ganesh a word, asked the commanding officer, Yes, a word, which, like all the others, can only be explained by more words, but since the words we use to explain things, successfully or not, will, in turn, have to be explained, our conversation will lead nowhere, the mistaken and the true will alternate, like some kind of curse, and we'll never know what's right and what's wrong, Tell me about ganesh, Ganesh is the son of shiva and parvati, who is also known as durga or kali, the goddess of a hundred arms, If she'd had a hundred legs we could have called her centipede, said one of the men with an embarrassed laugh, as if regretting his words as soon as they were out of his mouth. The mahout ignored him and went on, It has to be said that, exactly as happened with your virgin, ganesh was engendered by his mother, parvati, alone, without the intervention of her husband, shiva, who, being eternal, felt no need to have children. One day, when parvati had decided to take a bath, it happened that there were no guards around to protect her should anyone chance to come into the room. And so she created an idol in the form of a little boy, made out of a paste, a kind of soap I suppose, that she herself had prepared. The goddess breathed life into the doll and that was ganesh's first birth. Parvati told ganesh that he must let no one in and he followed his mother's orders to the letter. A short time afterwards, shiva returned from the forest and tried to get into the house, but ganesh wouldn't let him, and that, naturally, made shiva very angry. The following dialogue took place, I'm parvati's husband, therefore her house is my house, Only the people whom my mother wants to come in can enter here, and she did not tell me to let you in. Shiva finally lost patience and launched into a fierce battle with ganesh, which ended with the god cutting off his opponent's head with his trident. When parvati came out and saw the lifeless body of her son, her cries of grief soon became howls of fury. She ordered shiva to bring ganesh back to life at once, but unfortunately, the blow that had decapitated ganesh had been so powerful that his head had been thrown far away and was never seen again. Then, as a last re-sort, shiva asked for help from brahma, who suggested that he replace ganesh's head with that of the first living being he met on the road, as long as the creature was facing north. Shiva then dispatched his celestial army to go in search of just such a creature. They came across a dying elephant lying with its head to the north and, once it had died, they cut off its head. They returned to shiva and parvati and gave them the elephant's head, which was placed on ganesh's body, thus restoring him to life. And that is how ganesh was born again after having lived and died. Fairy tales, muttered a soldier, Like the one about the man who, having died, rose on the third day, retorted subhro, Careful, mahout, you're going too far, warned the commanding officer, Look, I don't believe in the story about a boy made out of soap who turned into a god with the body of a paunchy man and the head of an elephant, but you asked me to explain who ganesh was, and I did as asked, Yes, but you made some rather rude comments about jesus christ and the virgin that didn't go down at all well with some of the men here, Well, I apologize to anyone who may have felt offended, it was quite unintentional, replied the mahout. There was a conciliatory murmur, and the truth is that those men, both soldiers and civilians, cared little for religious disputes, what troubled them was that such arcane matters should be discussed beneath the celestial vault itself. They say that walls have ears, well, imagine the size of the stars' ears. Anyway, it was time to go to bed, even though the sheets and blankets were the clothes they had worn during the day, the main thing was that they wouldn't get rained on, and the commanding officer had achieved precisely this by going from house to house asking the residents if they would be prepared to provide shelter that night for a few of his men, who thus ended up sleeping in kitchens, stables and haylofts, but this time with a full belly, which made up for these and other inconveniences. With them went a few villagers, too, most of them men, who had walked over to the camp, attracted by the novelty of seeing an elephant, although, out of fear, they dared not approach nearer than twenty paces. Coiling his trunk around a bundle of forage that would have been enough to take the edge off the appetite of a squadron of cows, solomon, despite his poor sight, shot them a stern glance, making it clear that he was not some fairground animal, but an honest worker who had been deprived of his job by unfortunate circumstances too compli cated to go into, and had, so to speak, been forced to accept public charity. At first, one of the village men, out of bravado, went a few steps beyond the invisible line that would soon become a closed frontier, but solomon shooed him away with a warning kick, which, even though it didn't hit its target, gave rise to an interesting debate among the men about animal families and clans. John mules and molly mules, jacks and jennies, stallions and mares, are all quadrupeds who, as everyone knows, some by painful experience, can deliver a kick, and that's perfectly understandable, since they have no other weapons, either offensive or defensive, but an elephant, with that trunk and those tusks, with those huge great legs that look like steam-hammers, can also, as if this weren't enough, kick with the best of them. He may appear to be mildness incarnate, but, when necessary, he can turn into a wild beast. It's odd, though, that, belonging as he does to the aforementioned family of animals, namely, the family that kicks, he doesn't wear horseshoes. One of the villagers said, There's not much to an elephant really. The others agreed, When you've walked round him once, you've seen all there is to see. They could have returned to their homes then, but one of them said he was going to stay a little longer, that he wanted to hear what was being talked about around the fire. His companions went with him. At first, they couldn't understand what the topic of conversation was, they couldn't catch the names, which had strange pronunciations, then all became clear when they reached the conclusion that these men were talking about the elephant and that the elephant was god. They were walking back to their houses now, to the comfort of their own hearth, each one taking with him two or three guests, both soldiers and laborers. Two cavalrymen stayed behind to guard the elephant, which reinforced in the villagers the idea that they needed to talk to the priest urgently. The doors closed and the village shrank into the darkness. Shortly afterwards, a few of those doors swung cautiously open again, and the five men who emerged from them set off for the well in the square, where they had agreed to meet. They had decided to go and talk to the priest, who would, at that hour, doubtless be asleep in his bed. The priest was known to have a foul temper if woken at an inconvenient hour, and that, for him, was any hour during which he was safe in the arms of morpheus. One of the men suggested an alternative, Why don't we come back in the morning, he asked, but another, more determined, or simply more susceptible to the logic of caution, objected, If they've decided to leave at dawn, we risk finding no one, and then we'll look a right bunch of fools. They were standing at the gate to the priest's garden, and it seemed that none of the night visitors dared lift the knocker. There was also a knocker on the door of the priest's house, but it was too small to wake the inhabitant. Finally, like a cannon shot in the stony silence of the village, the knocker on the garden gate boomed into life. They had to knock twice more before they heard, coming from within, the hoarse, angry voice of the priest, Who is it. Obviously, it was neither prudent nor comfortable to talk about god in the middle of the street, with thick walls and a heavy wooden door between the two parties to the conversation. It would not be long before the neighbors were pricking up their ears to listen to the loud voices in which both sides of the dialogue would be obliged to speak, transforming a very serious theological matter into the latest piece of gossip. The door of the house finally opened and the priests round head appeared, What do you want at this hour of the night. The men left the other door and walked reluctantly up the path to the house. Is someone dying, asked the priest. They all said No, sir. So what is it then, insisted this servant of god, drawing the blanket covering his shoulders more tightly about him, We can't talk out here in the street, said one of the men. The priest grumbled, Well, if you can't talk in the street, come to the church tomorrow, We have to talk to you now, father, tomorrow might be too late, the matter that brings us here is very serious, a church matter, A church matter, repeated the priest, suddenly uneasy, thinking that one of the church's rotten ceiling beams must finally have given way, Come in, then, come in. He herded them into the kitchen, where a few logs were still glowing in the hearth, then he lit a candle, sat down on a stool and said, Speak. The men looked at one another, unsure who should be the spokesman, but it was clear that the only legitimate candidate was the one who had said he was going to listen to what was being discussed in the group that included the commanding officer and the mahout. No vote was necessary, the man in question took the floor, God is an elephant, father. The priest gave a sigh of relief, this was certainly preferable to the roof falling in, what's more, the heretical statement was easy enough to answer, God is in all his creatures, he said. The men nodded, but the spokesman, conscious of his rights and responsibilities, retorted, But none of them is god, That's all we'd need, replied the priest, the world would be bursting with gods then, and they'd never agree, each one trying to heap up the coals beneath his particular pot, Father, what we heard, with these ears that will one day be dust, is that the elephant over there is god, Who said such an outlandish thing, asked the priest, using a word that wasn't common currency in the village, and this, in him, was a clear sign that he was angered, The cavalry officer and the man who rides on top, On top of what, Of god, of the animal. The priest took a deep breath and, suppressing the urge to take more extreme measures, merely said, You're drunk, No, father, they replied in chorus, it's really quite difficult to get drunk these days, what with the price of wine, Well, if you're not drunk, and if despite this cock-and-bull story, you're still good christians, listen to me closely. The men drew nearer so as not to miss a word, and the priest, having first cleared his throat of catarrh, the result, he thought, of being dragged so abruptly from his warm sheets into the cold outside world, launched into a sermon, I could send you home with a penance, a few our fathers and a few hail marys, and think no more of the matter, but since you seem to me men of good faith, tomorrow morning, before the sun is up, we will all go, along with your families and the other villagers, whom I leave it up to you to tell, to find this elephant, not in order to excommunicate him, since, being an animal, he has never received the holy sacrament of baptism nor could he ever have enjoyed the spiritual benefits granted by the church, but in order to cleanse him of any diabolical possession that may have been introduced into his brute nature by the evil one, as happened to those two thousand swine that drowned in the sea of galilee, as I'm sure you'll remember. He paused, then asked, Understood, Yes, father, they replied, all except the spokesman who was clearly taking his role very seriously indeed, Father, he said, I always found that story most puzzling, Why, Well, I don't understand why those swine had to die, it's good that je sus performed the miracle of driving out the unclean spirits from the body of the gadarene demoniac, but letting those spirits then enter the bodies of