“As many as we can find,” he said. “But I’d settle for at least eight. That’s enough for two groups, including our own people—one variable, one control. Then we’ll start getting somewhere.”
The amnesiac looked down at the binder in his hands, the copy of the one Hemu Joshi’s doctor had given him, at the list of names he had added as the very first page. Everyone inside the assisted-living facility: ten nurses, one doctor, ten Alzheimer’s patients, one case of total retrograde amnesia due to vehicular trauma, and the three newcomers they’d found—including Michael. Next to the names of all three of the new people, two of the Alzheimer’s patients, and one of the nurses, the amnesiac had drawn stars. Shadowless, the symbol meant. Shadowless, but still alive.
INDIA NEWS, INC. [INI] REPORTER: And you are—?
ELIZABETH HERRERA: Catholic. Born and raised.
The amnesiac scooted the list of names over farther so he could see the page beneath. It was one he knew well. An excerpt of a decades-old interview with the American biologist—the one with the prosthetic leg who had taught Gajarajan’s elephant sister to paint.
INI: Which you offer as proof that you’ve never met the elephant, Gajarajan Guruvayur Kesavan?
HERRERA: Guruvayur Temple’s rules are very clear: only Hindus are allowed inside the gates. I did try, though, when the story about Gajarajan first broke. I called and explained who I was—I got halfway through my speech before it clicked. Immediately they were all yelling. They called for the head priest. And still, I couldn’t get in.
INI: What happened after that?
HERRERA: All bad ideas, none of which worked either. I tried to bribe them, I tried to reach someone in government to help, I even briefly considered trying to break in—I just wanted proof. To be told something like that had happened; that I’d successfully taught painting for the first time in history to a wild elephant born in 1998, some twenty years after her elder brother had been captured and permanently stationed at the temple, and then a few days before my research rotation in India was over, the elder brother spontaneously painted a picture . . . Of me?
INI: It is uncanny.
HERRERA: That’s a word for it. I have another one. Magic.
INI: It’s hard to disagree.
HERRERA: Well, what happened next was even more . . . uncanny. After I finally threw in the towel, I had only about a week left at Thiruvananthapuram before my research visa was up and I had to return to the United States. I hardly had time to finish the work I had left, but on the last day, I blocked off an hour to go see Manikam, to say goodbye. That’s her name, the one I taught to paint. The much younger sister of Gajarajan.
INI: That must have been hard.
HERRERA: It was. But it’s always that way. There are only so many elephants left in the world, you know? To get the data you need, the sample size you need, you’re always traveling between sanctuaries. India, Thailand, Tennessee.
INI: Go on.
HERRERA: I was with her, alone in the main pasture. Well, she started making the motions she always made when she wanted to paint—it’s a specific trunk movement and the ears flapping in a certain way. I had learned to recognize it. I took out her easel and canvas and paints and set them up for her. Sometimes Manikam knew what she wanted to paint, sometimes she didn’t, but this was one of those times she did—it was like she’d gotten an image in her head and had just been waiting for me to get there so I could help her set up the easel and paints.
INI: Did she paint?
HERRERA: She did. Immediately. Normally, it’s a slow process. She sometimes had trouble holding the brush with her trunk—she’d lose her grip on it, drop it. But this time, she jammed the bristles into the paints on her big palette almost before I’d finished preparing it. She worked . . . desperately. That’s the word I’d use. When she finished, it was all at once. Usually it was hard for me to tell when she was really done, because she’d dawdle, and I’d go to remove the canvas and she’d get upset. But this time it was a fury of color, then suddenly it was over. She stepped back and stared at me, as if inviting me to look.
INI: What did you see?
HERRERA: I didn’t know at first. It was so detailed. I thought it was a pattern of some kind. Sort of geometric and repeating. It was.
INI: I don’t understand.
HERRERA: I didn’t either. But that evening, one of the interns came into the main lab. I had the easel sitting by my desk so the canvas could continue drying. She took one look at it and asked me if Manikam had done it. “Why?” I asked. She said it was because it reminded her of the painted walls of the temple her mother used to take her to when she was growing up—one county over, in the town of Guruvayur.
INI: No.
HERRERA: I didn’t believe it either. I printed a scanned copy and mailed it to them.
INI: And was it—
HERRERA: Yes. It was an exact replica of the pattern of the northern wall of Gajarajan’s residential enclosure. Down to the centimeter. [Smiles.]
INI: It’s not, it’s not—
HERRERA: I know.
INI: [After a long pause] What happened then?