The more I watched Kari and the other animals, the more I came to understand why Kari and I loved each other. We had a soul in common. I played the flute for him and was deeply moved. I felt that if I could be dumb like he, I could understand him better. This was the lesson the fire taught me: do not hate and fear animals. In them is the soul that is God, as it is also in us. Behind each face, human or animal, is the face of the Christ. Those who have eyes to see can always find it. CHAPTER X KARI IN THE LUMBER YARD Not long after this Kari was sent to the lumber yards. It was very interesting to see that he learned all the tricks of the lumber trade in a few days. He would pull heavy logs out of the forest into the open, lift the lighter ones with his trunk and pile them up, one on top of the other. He had such a good sense of symmetry that his piles were always extremely neat. Soon an older elephant came to help him. Whenever there was a log which was too heavy for Kari to lift, they would each take one end of it and lift it on the lumber wagon. An elephant, as you see, can do the work of a truck. We had reached a stage in the history of the world when motor engines did a large part of the work of the jungle. The elephants would bring the lumber from the forest and deposit it near these engines where it would be cut into proper lengths and then thrown out again to be piled up by the elephants. The mechanics who ran these engines ate meat and drank liquor. It is very strange that when Western people come to the East, they do not give up their expensive ways of living. Drinking wine and eating meat is one thing in cold climates, where one has to keep warm, but in a hot climate a man is sure to go to pieces if he eats and drinks much. Kari had no objection to wine drinking, but he did not like meat-eating men any more than he liked meat-eating tigers. He never hated them or feared them, simply he somehow did not enjoy their company. But these white engineers who came from afar did not know that an elephant had a soul. Kari always woke up at half past five and then went to work. Toward noon I would bathe him and put him in his shed. Early in the afternoon he would begin to work again. Later on he ate lots of rice of which he was very fond. In the evening I would tie him up in his shed while I went to sleep on a hammock outside. One night, I heard a terrible trumpeting. I jumped down from my hammock and went into Kari's shed, where I found two drunken engineers lighting matches and throwing them at him. Kari, who was afraid of fire, as all animals are, was trumpeting angrily. I protested to the men, but they were so drunk that they only swore at me and went on flinging matches. Seeing that there was nothing else to do, I loosened all his chains except one, and let him stay there tied to the ground by one foot only.