An Elephant in the Garden by Michael Morpurgo

Author:Michael Morpurgo [Morpurgo, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2010-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

Two

I remember standing there in Aunt Lotti’s kitchen watching this confrontation, and feeling very confused. I could not understand how Mutti could be like this. It seemed to me to be so hypocritical. All my life she had made herself out to be this ardent pacifist, always speaking out against the war—after all, there had been a huge rift in our family because of it—and now here she was full of unforgiving anger, and hateful, vengeful even, towards someone who may have been in the uniform of our enemy, but who was trying all he could to be kind and conciliatory and helpful. I wanted to tell her what I thought of her there and then, but I just did not feel I could do so in front of Peter. It was not the moment.

And there was something else that was troubling me even more than this, something I was feeling and knew I should not be feeling, something I could not speak of, least of all to Mutti, and certainly not to Karli. I could tell no one because it was too terrible, because no one would understand. My mind was in turmoil. I had to get out. I ran out of the house, and went out across the farmyard to be with Marlene. It was as I was sitting there in the hay, watching her chomping away, that I told her the dreadful truth that I dared tell no one else.

When I speak of it now, all these years later, I sound like a silly, romantic girl, and of course, that is just what I was. I sat there, and I cried my heart out, and I told an elephant, an elephant if you please, that I loved this man—this airman, this enemy, whom I had not known even for twenty-four hours—that I knew I would love him till the day I died. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but that was how I felt, and when you are sixteen you feel things very immediately, very strongly, very certainly.

“How wicked is that, Marlene?” I said. “How wicked is that, to love someone who should be my enemy, who has just bombed my city, killed my friends? How wicked is that?” I looked up into her weepy eye.

For an answer she wafted her ears gently at me, and groaned deep inside herself. It was enough to tell me that she had listened, and understood, and that she did not judge me. I learned something that day from Marlene, about friendship, and I have never forgotten it. To be a true friend, you have to be a good listener, and I discovered that day that Marlene was the truest of friends. For some time I stayed there out in Uncle Manfred’s hay barn. Marlene was the only being in the entire world that knew my secret, and I wanted to be with her and no one else. It was hard to bring myself to go back inside the house. I think it was only the cold that drove me back inside.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.