After reading the first book of Markham's memoir, I was captivated by her observations and writing style. However, I am a passionate supporter of bringing stalkers and all other murderers of elephants to swift and unmistakable justice. I have been a supporter of The David Sheldrick Wildlife Fund, financially, when I am able, and in getting their important message out to as many as possible. I was a foster parent of Kudup, an orphaned baby elephant that changed my life and continues to influence my life today. Tragically, Kudup passed away on the 10th of May 2011. What I'm about to write, no one will ever believe. It happened to me, my husband witnessed it, and I will never forget it as long as I live. Nor will I ever doubt the bond 2 beings (me, unable, financially to travel far, and Kudup, a little orphaned elephant living in Kenya) can share - through some metaphysical force, despite having never physically met.
I had been aware that Kudup was ill for some time before she died. Yet, I had not sent any monetary support since a donation in July of 2010. Unable to send money, I tried to get the message out to as many people as I had contact information for, as well as on Facebook. The guilt I felt was enormous. I found a little elephant statue on Cape Cod, right in the hometown of my family's summer cottage. I named the statue Kudup, and placed her next to my bed. Every night I would say a prayer and touch my little statue of Kudup and try to feel her across the miles; to tune in my love-energy toward her, and to feel what I wanted to believe was her love-energy, alive, happy and about. Roughly 2 nights after Kudup passed - as I found out about her passing on the 19th of May when I received a beautifully written personal email from the Trust - I was awoken in the middle of the night, well that's not exactly accurate. In my sleep, I was lifted, somewhat forcibly, out of my bed. My whole body was seized, lifted and then dropped, as if I were too heavy to bear. Being groggy, I thought I was having a bad dream. It happened, where I was completely lifted off of my bed, as if something very large were picking me up and trying to take me up through the ceiling, approximately 7 or 8 times. I groggily recall being a little frightened, and clinging to my husband, who was asleep. My husband said it felt as if my whole body was convulsing up off the bed. I never thought to attune what was happening to Kudup's illness and possible death. I am sure it was Kudup coming to shake me from my complacency, ignorance, insensitive lack of support...
I have never felt that type and depth of attachment to another living thing except for my children. I believe.
So, what does this have to do with West with the Night? As I began to read Book II, I was struck with terrible pains - like childbirth, and I had to stop reading. Book II talks about elephant hunting. I haven't been able to pick it up since. I don't know if I will ever finish it.
Below is what I wrote before realizing what Book II was partly about:
A memoir written with the originality and sophisticated economy more often found in a Chekhovian or Joyce short story, or among the more modern Carver or Beattie. Tons of allusion. Very sparse, yet achingly savory. Puts all other memoirs to shame with its tight and quick recollections. Will make me a better writer, I hope - a more discerning reader, for sure.
Some especially satisfying turns:
from Men with Blackwater Die
"'You don't mind being here, I hope,' he said. It's been four years since I left Nairobi, and there haven't been many letters.' He ran the tip of his tongue over his lips and attempted a smile. 'People forget,' he added. 'It's easy for a whole group of people to forget just one, but if you're very long in a place like this, you remember everybody you every met. You even worry about people you never liked; you get nostalgic about your enemies. It's all something to think about and it all helps.'"
This entire chapter, as a matter of fact, is memoir perfected. The end note - well, I wanted to reach for a drink with her.
From The Stamp of Wilderness:
"Balmy's challenge, clearly well spiced with insult, brought the old dam up on her heels and there ensued a battle of tongues that, in volume of sound and intensity of fury, would have put to shame all the aroused fishwives of literature."
From Message from Nungwe:
"Night flying over charted country by the aid of instruments and radio guidance can still be a lonely business, but to fly in unbroken darkness without even the cold companionship of a pair of ear-phones or the knowledge that somewhere ahead are lights and life and a well-marked airport is something more than just lonely. It is at times unreal to the point where the existence of other people seems not even a reasonable probability. The hills, the forests, the rocks, and the plains are one with the darkness, and the darkness is infinite. The earth is no more your planet than a distant star -- if a star is shining; the plane is your planet and you are its sole inhabitant."
and from Why Do We Fly?:
"There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing. There is the silence that comes with morning in a forest, and this is different from the silence of a sleeping city. There is silence after a rainstorm, and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same. There is the silence of emptiness, the silence of fear, the silence of doubt. There is a certain silence that can emanate from a lifeless object as from a chair lately used, or from a piano with old dust upon its keys, or from anything that has answered to the need of a man, for pleasure or for work. This kind of silence can speak. Its voice may be melancholy, but it is not always so; for the chair may have been left by a laughing child or the last notes of the piano may have been raucous and gay. Whatever the mood or the circumstance, the essence of its quality may linger in the silence that follows. It is a soundless echo."
That's all I've read. On to Book Two.
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