ARJUNA’S ELEPHANT

Arjuna’s elephant—a mountainous white behemoth with flashing eyes and curved, jewel-studded tusks—was a living repository of all knowledge in the universe. One had only to pose a question on any subject, and the creature would lift its trunk and trumpet the answer to the whole neighborhood. Arjuna, standing nearby, provided translation.

“Why does the moon wax and wane?”

“Because a sculptor lives inside who continually scoops clay from one half to the other.”

“How does a baby know when to be born?”

“The metronome on its mother’s windowsill begins to swing faster.”

“Where do dreams go when we wake?”

“They collect in a volcano on an uninhabited island in the Pacific.”

“What makes the fireflies flash?”

“Advanced fiber optic technology.”

One day, following an afternoon performance, Arjuna waited for the children to disperse—sprinting away in all directions—then rested the elephant’s trunk on his own shoulder and set out for a stroll around the subdivision. The animal marched serenely behind him.

Now came Arjuna’s turn to ask questions. Outwardly, the elephant remained silent but answered in Arjuna’s mind.

“If a boy leaves Kolkata for America, how do the gods know where to find him?”

In the world behind the world, the mighty Ganges flows through every nation. Even now you walk along its banks. You are never far from its rejuvenating water.

“Who stands at the gate between these worlds?”

I.

“Does my father remember the Taj?”

He knows more than you are yet able to imagine. The full span of the cosmos girds his every thought.

“And mother?”

She is an aviary for the radiant birds of paradise.

Arjuna watched the curb as it passed and tried to envision the river he missed so powerfully. He’d never seen a river in America; in fact, the country as he knew it too closely resembled the technology it seemed blindly to worship—all grids and circuits and tawdry plastic boxes. That his father worked as a computer engineer only made Arjuna’s ambivalence more awkward. To relieve his homesickness, Arjuna sometimes washed dishes at the restaurant his mother ran down at the shopping center—but not even the smells of the familiar spices and oils could transport him home again.

And so it had come as a wonderful surprise the day the elephant appeared in the driveway.

At the approaching intersection, an old man turned the corner and walked toward Arjuna, pulling a red wagon. Its axles squeaked. A large mound of dirt rested inside, molded into a smooth cone. As the old man drew near, his pale eyes blazed.

“I recognize you,” said the man.

“Oh?”

“We met once in another time and place.”

“I don’t recall.”

“One day you will.”

“Do you have a question?”

“Of course.”

“Please address the elephant.”

“What is the ultimate source and substance of reality—that which produces all things and of which all things are produced?”

The elephant raised its trunk and roared.

Smash the idols! Strike through the enveloping shell! Beyond these lies the royal road—the bridge you create from yourself as you travel, spinning cables like a silkworm, casting girders across the void, plunging piers down through the bottomless deep. What begins in darkness ends in a panorama of delight, the old world made new, formed in the image of your truest essence.

“Consciousness,” said Arjuna.

He stared at the wagon.

The man smiled. “That’s my marigold—or will be, once it germinates. I’ve been perfecting it for years. The seed within this pile of soil is my own personal chrysopoeia.”

“Philosopher’s stone,” said Arjuna.

“It will yield the most beautiful, the most sublime marigold the world has ever known.”

The old man circled the elephant until he stood on the opposite side, facing the same direction as Arjuna.

The three set off again together.

On the next block a woman in cardboard hair curlers, flapping bathrobe, and fuzzy pink bunny slippers came waddling across her lawn with both arms extended, bearing a heart-shaped box with a sprig of basil clipped to its lid by a wooden clothespin. She stood bouncing on the grass as they approached.

“I’ve heard about your elephant!” she cried.

“Calm yourself, my good woman,” said the man. “The time allotted us is more than ample.”

“I want to feed him truffles!”

“He’s not that kind of elephant,” said Arjuna.

“Well, these aren’t that kind of truffle!” snapped the woman.

She unclipped the basil and placed it between her teeth, dropped the clothespin into her robe pocket, then pulled off the box’s heart-shaped lid and flung it like a dinner plate back toward the house. She stepped into the street. Standing before the elephant, she tickled the end of its trunk with the basil, inviting the animal to smell the herb. When it did so—and then lifted its trunk in rapture—she plucked a truffle from the box and lobbed it into the elephant’s mouth.

For a long time the creature stood motionless. Gradually, as the truffle melted, shivers of joy rippled across the elephant’s hide. It tapped its feet—then brandished its trunk once more.

All hail Yashoda! Sing praises to her resplendent mercies! Peaches, incense, starfish, clove, bananas, tigers, mangoes, fire—dream a dream of these and enter the nautilus spiral of eternal becoming. Emerge, then, into the rich darkness of infinity’s vault, a region lit by electric flashes, sibilant with the whispers of mystics and the gaudy spirits of the recirculating dead.

“Do you have a question?” said Arjuna.

“Can I ride on his back?”

Arjuna paused, vexed—then smiled. “Of course,” he said.

The elephant raised a foreleg, and the woman clambered up, hoisting herself by the animal’s prodigious ear. Moments later she sat sidesaddle between its shoulders, grinning and giggling. She’d brought the box with her—losing a few truffles in the process—and now cradled it like a decalogue in the crook of her left arm.

As the party resumed its march, Arjuna reflected that the scene now coalescing around him, despite its contemporary trappings, would not look out of place on a mural in an Indian temple—but that, here in this American suburb, he still felt as displaced as ever.

In the distance, just where the road fell away behind a cluster of trees, two young men appeared, strutting right down the middle of the street, talking excitedly and waving their arms. As the pair approached, Arjuna saw that, although both dressed in plain T-shirts with jeans and stood at roughly the same height, one sported a bright red pompadour complete with mutton-chop sideburns, while the other wore a black crew cut with a vampiric widow’s peak.

Suddenly the pair stood still and silent, gawking at the impending procession.

“What?” said Black.

“How?” said Red.

“Who?” said Black.

“Why?” said Red.

“Those are more difficult questions than we’re used to,” said Arjuna.

The two young men folded their arms across their chests. Each widened his stance. Their eyebrows rose and fell as they puzzled, nodding.

“I get it,” said Black.

“Me too,” said Red.

“It’s symbolic,” said Black.

“Like a dream,” said Red.

“Gestalt,” said Black.

“Rorschach,” said Red.

“Visual parable,” said Black.

“Cosmic joke,” said Red.

The elephant interjected.

Tat tvam asi! Thou art that! The manifest world is your polished looking-glass, a radiant panoply of your myriad being. True perception requires imagination—a conscious act of self-begetting. Thus you participate in the creation of the cosmos. The stars are your allies. The earth is your friend. Therefore, seize the reins! Drive your chariot on toward the future you have fashioned.

“You are what you see,” said Arjuna.

The midday sun, a disk of white fire, burned overhead. Red and Black spun on their heels, stood briefly at attention, then led the group forward, moving at a brisker pace than before.

They ascended a slope, a curve skirting the contours of a gentle bank. As soon as the road leveled out and straightened atop a plateau, it ended in a cul-de-sac circled by the most opulent homes in the neighborhood. At the center of this circle stood a young woman of delicate, angelic beauty. Dressed in a diaphanous gown, her golden hair pulled back and fastened with a silver clasp, she held her slender arms outstretched. Her feet rested on a chipped marble plinth that might have come straight from the Acropolis. When she spoke, her voice pierced their ears at the highest possible register—yet carried such power that they all fell immediately under her spell.

“My name is Phoebe,” she said. “And now you will listen to me!”

As she pronounced this last sentence, the air grew prickly with electrical charge. The scent of ozone floated in on the breeze. The woman in curlers climbed down from the elephant—then, as though each followed an unspoken command, the group spread out around the cul-de-sac to form a ring encircling Phoebe. She lifted her face to the sky.

“When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.”

“Wrong tradition—” said Black.

“Yeah, that’s—” said Red.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Arjuna.

“My marigold!” cried the old man. “It’s blooming!”

Just then a column of fire engulfed Phoebe. Simultaneously, the surrounding pavement dissolved, and a cylindrical wall of water fell like heavy curtains along the circumference of the circle. The roar was deafening. Arjuna, the elephant, the old man, the woman, Black, and Red all hung suspended in space between the tunnel of water and the tower of fire—both of which extended up and down as far as anyone could see. Soon it became clear that, just as she’d foretold, Phoebe stood unharmed within the flames. Far below, a churning cataract of thick fog spun—while daunting rolls of blackened clouds boiled, flickering, above.

Phoebe’s face glowed with rapture. Her throat burst with triumphant song as a full-grown zebra leaped suddenly out of her heart, crashed through the fire, and trotted joyfully around her. Arjuna’s elephant, instantly smitten, chased the zebra with loping strides until both began to float, higher and higher, as though mounting a spiral staircase, until at last they disappeared together and, by doing so, transformed the ominous skyscape into a kaleidoscopic sunrise.

In an instant, the fire and water disappeared. Arjuna’s friends lay passed out in the street. Still standing on the plinth, Phoebe smiled.

Arjuna, bashful, waved.