Читать книгу The Akimbo Adventures - Alexander McCall Smith - Страница 9

Imagine living in the heart of Africa. Imagine living in a place where the sun rises each morning over blue mountains and great plains with grass that grows taller than a man. Imagine living in a place where there are still elephants.

Akimbo lived in such a place, on the edge of a large game reserve in Africa. This was a place where wild animals could live in safety. On its plains there were great herds of antelope and zebra. In the forests and in the rocky hills there were leopards and baboons. And, of course, there were the great elephants, who roamed slowly across the grasslands and among the trees.

Akimbo’s father worked here. Sometimes he drove trucks; sometimes he manned the radio or helped to repair the trucks. There was always something to do.

If Akimbo was lucky, his father would occasionally take him with him to work. Akimbo loved to go with the men when they went off deep into the reserve. They might have to mend a game fence or rescue a broken-down truck, or it might just be a routine patrol through the forest to check up on the animals.

Sometimes on these trips, they would see something exciting.

‘Look over there,’ his father would say. ‘Don’t make a noise. Just look over there.’

And Akimbo would follow his father’s gaze and see some wild creature eating, or resting, or crouching in wait for its prey.

One day, when they were walking through the forest together, Akimbo’s father suddenly seized his arm and whispered to him to be still.

‘What is it?’ Akimbo made his voice as soft as he could manage.

‘Walk backwards. Very slowly. Go back the way we came.’

It was only as he began to inch back, that Akimbo realised what had happened. There in a clearing not far away were two leopards. One of them, sensing that something was happening, had risen to its feet and was sniffing at the air. The other was still sleeping.

Luckily, the wind was blowing in the wrong direction, or the leopard would have smelled their presence. If that had happened, then they would have been in even greater danger.

‘That was close,’ his father said, once they had got away. ‘I don’t like to think what would have happened if I hadn’t noticed them in time.’

It was not leopards, or even lions, that Akimbo liked to watch. He loved the elephants best of all. You had to keep clear of them, too, but they seemed more gentle than many of the other creatures. Akimbo loved their vast, lumbering shapes. He loved the way they moved their trunks slowly, this way and that, as they plodded across the plains between the stretches of forest. And he loved the sound of an elephant trumpeting – a short, surprised, rather funny sound.

There used to be many elephants in Africa, but over the years they had been mercilessly hunted. Now there were fewer and fewer.

Akimbo could not understand why anybody should want to hunt an elephant and asked his father why.

‘It’s for their tusks. They’re made of ivory, and ivory is very valuable. It’s used for ornaments and jewellery. Some rich people collect it and like to show off elephant tusks carved into fancy shapes.’

‘But it’s so cruel,’ said Akimbo. ‘I’m glad it doesn’t happen any more.’

Akimbo’s father was silent for a moment.

‘I’m afraid it does still happen. There are still people who hunt elephants – even here in the reserve.’

‘Can’t you stop them?’ he asked.

Akimbo’s father shook his head. ‘It’s very difficult. The reserve stretches for almost a hundred miles. We can’t keep an eye on all of it all the time.’

Akimbo was silent. The thought of the elephants being hunted for their tusks made him seethe with anger. He wondered whether there would come a day when all the elephants in Africa were destroyed. Then all that we would have to remember them by would be photographs and, of course, the ivory from their tusks. The reserves would be empty then, and the sight of the elephants crossing the plains would be nothing but a memory.

‘I don’t want that to happen,’ Akimbo said to himself. ‘I want the elephants to stay.’