stir the swine into action.
“As you will know, Joe, if you have been keeping abreast of your hikeish reading, I have become very fond of that new artform, the mini-saga. The haiqu, if you’ll allow the pun, of our prosy age. The epic of the digest epoch. I was inspired to record our dinner at Finlays’ as a fifty word mini-saga, Joseph. If it will help improve your mood, I shall now recite this informative tale through your keyhole.” He squints again into the dusty hallway. Nothing moves. Perhaps a cat snores.
He sighs. No doubt it would be possible to go around the back and clamber over the fence, although Williams Senior, half paranoid before the cancer got him, had festooned the backyard with nasty coils of barbed wire. Besides, Joe really would not appreciate such a direct assault.
“I call this work ‘A Nice Night’s Epic’,” he cries dismally through his narrow aperture. “Are you listening? Are you poised? Not a spare syllable here, Joe. Not one phoneme wasted. For God’s sake don’t sneeze halfway through or you’ll destroy the whole majestic flow and counter-thrust of the narrative sweep. Okay. Here it is. This one is for you, Joseph D. Williams.”
Theatrically, Brian Wagner clears his throat. A blob of mucus hurtles into his mouth. As he turns to spit it into the stricken garden, he notices the interested Mediterranean faces peering down at him from the atrocious castle. He gives a jolly wave and returns to his brass hole.
“‘We went to the Finlays’ to dine. We drank, ate pate with bread. The meat was pink, cooking.’” Has there been some minor shift in the tension running from bedroom through the hallway to the front verandah, that inaudible psychic hum detected by the hairs on the back of the hands? Wagner has a flickering mental image of Joseph lifting his head from the pillow, turning a shabby unshaven face toward the heavy curtains that block the windows.
“‘We ate paté with bread, drank. The meat darkened.”’ He pauses. There is no change. To his imagination comes a whiff of pork, bubbling under a grill, crisping at its thick hard edge, the rind drying into crunchy salty crackling. Does hungry, heart-crushed Joseph respond with the same mental zest? Is his dry mouth beginning to fill with anticipatory juices?
“‘We drank mineral water, champagne.’” He hesitates through a cruel beat. “‘The meat was burnt.’” Was that the faintest snigger from the house? “‘We ate paté and bread; everybody drank,’” he concludes bleakly. “‘Back home, tired, we opened a can.’”
One of the Italians has come out onto his verandah and stares down in a menacing manner. Joseph has always maintained that this is one of the strong selling features of the area, and Brian admits that it is one of the few enviable aspects to living in the non-Anglo segments of the near-inner city residential areas. They keep an eye on one another. Much less chance of getting burgled. Unless, of course, they are the ones who do the burgling (which, by and large, they aren’t, preferring to obtain their out-of-pocket expenses by burning down one another’s pizza parlors for the insurance).
Brian straightens, rubs at his back. He’s heard none of the laughter he’d hoped to provoke. Either the bugger actually isn’t in after all, or is in worse straits than anyone had guessed.
Brian trudges to his car. The faces stare down like something banal out of a Fellini movie. “It doesn’t really work without the close-ups,” he calls to them with an idiotic smile. “If you pressed yourself against the wall we could try some Antonioni.” But they do not hear this last; he is in his car, turning the key, backing out across the damaged asphalt and the shattered spray of glass where the laughing irrepressible wog kids have smashed their drained bottles of Coke and Fanta.
1969: workers compensation
Randwick, NSW 2 December
My dear Joseph
The academic life. I’m sitting in the sun in
“As you will know, Joe, if you have been keeping abreast of your hikeish reading, I have become very fond of that new artform, the mini-saga. The haiqu, if you’ll allow the pun, of our prosy age. The epic of the digest epoch. I was inspired to record our dinner at Finlays’ as a fifty word mini-saga, Joseph. If it will help improve your mood, I shall now recite this informative tale through your keyhole.” He squints again into the dusty hallway. Nothing moves. Perhaps a cat snores.
He sighs. No doubt it would be possible to go around the back and clamber over the fence, although Williams Senior, half paranoid before the cancer got him, had festooned the backyard with nasty coils of barbed wire. Besides, Joe really would not appreciate such a direct assault.
“I call this work ‘A Nice Night’s Epic’,” he cries dismally through his narrow aperture. “Are you listening? Are you poised? Not a spare syllable here, Joe. Not one phoneme wasted. For God’s sake don’t sneeze halfway through or you’ll destroy the whole majestic flow and counter-thrust of the narrative sweep. Okay. Here it is. This one is for you, Joseph D. Williams.”
Theatrically, Brian Wagner clears his throat. A blob of mucus hurtles into his mouth. As he turns to spit it into the stricken garden, he notices the interested Mediterranean faces peering down at him from the atrocious castle. He gives a jolly wave and returns to his brass hole.
“‘We went to the Finlays’ to dine. We drank, ate pate with bread. The meat was pink, cooking.’” Has there been some minor shift in the tension running from bedroom through the hallway to the front verandah, that inaudible psychic hum detected by the hairs on the back of the hands? Wagner has a flickering mental image of Joseph lifting his head from the pillow, turning a shabby unshaven face toward the heavy curtains that block the windows.
“‘We ate paté with bread, drank. The meat darkened.”’ He pauses. There is no change. To his imagination comes a whiff of pork, bubbling under a grill, crisping at its thick hard edge, the rind drying into crunchy salty crackling. Does hungry, heart-crushed Joseph respond with the same mental zest? Is his dry mouth beginning to fill with anticipatory juices?
“‘We drank mineral water, champagne.’” He hesitates through a cruel beat. “‘The meat was burnt.’” Was that the faintest snigger from the house? “‘We ate paté and bread; everybody drank,’” he concludes bleakly. “‘Back home, tired, we opened a can.’”
One of the Italians has come out onto his verandah and stares down in a menacing manner. Joseph has always maintained that this is one of the strong selling features of the area, and Brian admits that it is one of the few enviable aspects to living in the non-Anglo segments of the near-inner city residential areas. They keep an eye on one another. Much less chance of getting burgled. Unless, of course, they are the ones who do the burgling (which, by and large, they aren’t, preferring to obtain their out-of-pocket expenses by burning down one another’s pizza parlors for the insurance).
Brian straightens, rubs at his back. He’s heard none of the laughter he’d hoped to provoke. Either the bugger actually isn’t in after all, or is in worse straits than anyone had guessed.
Brian trudges to his car. The faces stare down like something banal out of a Fellini movie. “It doesn’t really work without the close-ups,” he calls to them with an idiotic smile. “If you pressed yourself against the wall we could try some Antonioni.” But they do not hear this last; he is in his car, turning the key, backing out across the damaged asphalt and the shattered spray of glass where the laughing irrepressible wog kids have smashed their drained bottles of Coke and Fanta.
1969: workers compensation
Randwick, NSW 2 December
My dear Joseph
The academic life. I’m sitting in the sun in
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