MISSING PAGE!!!

THE LAST PAGE OF "THE ELEPHANT VANISHES" IS MISSING FROM YOUR PACKET!

HERE IT IS:

“I don’t know,” I said. “All I’m trying to do is recall what I saw with my own eyes, as accurately as possible. I’m hardly thinking about what happened after that. The visual image I have is so strong that, to be honest, it’s practically impossible for me to go beyond it.”

That was all I could say about the elephant’s disappearance. And, just as I had feared, the story of the elephant was too particular, too complete in itself to work as a topic of conversation between a young man and woman who had just met. A silence descended upon us after I had finished my tale. What subject could either of us bring up after a story about an elephant that had vanished--a story that offered virtually no openings for further discussion? She ran her finger around the edge of her cocktail glass, and I sat there reading and rereading the words stamped on my coaster. I never should have told her about the elephant. It was not the kind of story you could tell freely to anyone.

“When I was a little girl, our cat disappeared,” she offered after a long silence. “But still, for a cat to disappear and for an elephant to disappear--those are two different stories.”

“Yeah, really. There’s no comparison. Think of the size difference.”

Thirty minutes later, we were saying goodbye outside the hotel. She suddenly remembered that she had left her umbrella in the cocktail lounge, so I went up in the elevator and brought it down to her. It was a brick-red umbrella with a large handle.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Good night,” I said.

That was the last time I saw her. We talked once on the phone after that, about some details in her tie-in article. While we spoke, I thought seriously about inviting her out for dinner, but I ended up not doing it. It just didn’t seem to matter one way or the other.

I felt like this a lot after my experience with the vanishing elephant. I would begin to think I wanted to do something, but then I would become incapable of distinguishing between the probable results of doing it and of not doing it. I often get the feeling that things around me have lost their proper balance, though it could be that my perceptions are playing tricks on me. Some kind of balance inside me has broken down since the elephant affair, and maybe that causes external phenomena to strike my eye in a strange way. It’s probably something in me.

The papers print almost nothing about the elephant anymore. People seem to have forgotten that their town once owned an elephant. The grass that took over the elephant enclosure has withered now, and the area has the feel of winter.