Pepsi Bears and Other Stories Read online

  He disrobes, folds his burnoose neatly, laying it in the red sand. Dressed only in a pair of boxers, covered with a cartoon rabbit in a tuxedo holding a conductor’s baton, he begins to climb the ladder. Supposing me watching he explains, ‘My classical rabbit. Not so good seller as my break-dancer.’ Standing on the top rung of the ladder his head is just below the hollow and he reaches up with his left hand, twinkling his fingers nervously at its mouth. ‘I am not like Wolfi so brave in nature.’

  ‘Just do it, man. It’s in there. The sacred ring. Juan Hoogenfeld.’ Slowly, with his teeth bared, he eases his hand down inside the tree trunk.

  Looking up at him as I hold the ladder I see high overhead a pair of wedge-tailed eagles corkscrewing aloft on a thermal, scoping the world. I wonder are they the parents of many abducted broods? Is their futile courtship beginning again? How many more of their chicks will end up in Vienna tethered to a perch with kids waggling fairy floss in their faces?

  Before we hear the clatter of the aluminium ladder on the stony ground, before we hear Lars shrieking at the pitiless desert and pleading with Smokey Bear, let us ask some questions.

  How much money can a man generate churning out rap-dancing-rabbit motifs? Because Lars’ fabric designing doesn’t sound to me anything more than an effort to fill the day and give him some whiff of relevance, something to mention at parties to offset the fact his Indiana Jones husband brings back treasure from the wilderness. Pirates’ wives, after the breadwinner had met his inevitable fate, were known to knit at home in penury. And it seems to me with Wolfi gone, hard economic times are about to swoop on Lars Schmidt.

  So, does he have any intention of returning that micro SD data card to me? The backup for all the information in Wolfi’s GPS? Coordinates of rare nests are routinely traded on the black market among the egg bandits of Europe, and a haul such as this could be sold for millions. There are endangered birds on that database, whose eggs, as they teeter on the brink of extinction, are becoming priceless. Those coordinates are a treasure map to a yearly harvest of fabulous jewels.

  He is a jolly man, Lars. In different circumstances I could like him. But he is Northern man, too. A beast from the deep megalopolis, ineluctably civilised. A victim of clarinet notes and stained glass. He said right to my face the falcon was no more than a pig to him.

  He is reaching down elbow-deep in the tree when he calls, ‘I have it, Smokey Bear. I have it.’

  Okay, now I kick the ladder. I kick it for all of us. Let his squeals ring out, this man who would consign thousands of wild birds to captivity and threaten species that took a million years to become. This product of high Europe, let him beg and thrash while I stow the burnoose and gun the quad, wheelstanding away into the spinifex. His cries are loud but they do not drown out the cheers.

  This exhibit has been eaten.

  At the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting held in Sydney in 1998 the prime ministers, presidents and principals of eighty states were chaperoned around the sights of that spectacular city and served up its wonders while trying to look profound wearing cowboy hats. Naturally most of them were brutal dictators who lived daily with the whiff of cordite and burning flesh on the streets of their own capital cities. The tribal regimes of Africa and the pitiless demigods that rose in the East when the British Empire contracted. These men, behind the smoked glass of their limousines, salivated at the wealth of Sydney.

  Sir Barnaby Lomus, the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, was one of these drooling potentates marvelling at the requisite jewels of a modern capital and feeling his own country’s deficiency. And while he recognised the structural magnificence of Sydney’s bridge and the beauty of her opera house he also recognised that Port Moresby, with so few cars, was not in need of the one and was perhaps not quite ready for the difficult musical form played out in the other.

  Happily, at the Taronga Park Zoological Gardens Sir Barnaby saw a jewel that might be replicated back home. Gobsmacked by the residents in their fur and feathers that were prodded forth to greet the leaders, he leant over to his wife and whispered, ‘A zoo. Do not our citizens deserve a zoo?’ She nodded. And as the bison lowed and the ocelots mewed he determined Port Moresby would have a zoological garden to rival any.

  That evening he began to dictate orders to his aide, Pumpo Haddings. ‘Populate it with the most extremely exotic beasts. Blackmail the usual donors. Tell the Japanese the Chinese have given a panda and we are on the verge of establishing a “special relationship” with them. Let the Australians be aware we have an enclosure suitable for either orangutan or koala. Let the Indonesians know the same. First in, best dressed. Tell the Americans the Russians are giving a Siberian tiger, and that only moose, bison and bear will suffice to diminish the scope of such kindness in our eyes. Wheedle a badger from the English by inventing a French goat. And give this goat a name. Call it “Churchill”. Tell the Zimbabweans we thank them for their munificent offer but South Africa is already sending us rhinoceros. A hippopotamus will arrive wearing a postage stamp bearing a likeness of that rascal Mugabe within the month. Exclude the Germans entirely. We will make them beg before we accept their boar.’

  It was as Sir Barnaby had predicted. Nation states were happy to box and ship the animals on their heraldry, the creatures of which they were most proud, knowing they were superior animals to those sent by their rival states and thus an endorsement of their own national doings. And after the animals arrived it only remained to contact the donor countries and inform them their donated animal was deteriorating in health and spirit because of the inadequate and unsuitable conditions in which it was housed. Pumpo Haddings sent diplomatic correspondence to the Russians informing them their tiger, in its pit, was moulting, moping, and probably of flawed character; but, in happier news, the bears and bison either side looked sleek and suave in their new digs. He next alerted the Indonesians that an orangutan in a corrugated iron shed looked, despite its seeming efforts to smile, an ungrateful critter and paltry gift when set alongside a koala in a virtual palace. Using this gentle diplomacy, within a year the Port Moresby Zoological Garden was populated and constructed.

  Within another year all the animals were eaten by the zookeepers. It is said Moresby is a hungry, lawless town where your life is worth less to your fellow man than a can of Campbell’s Tomato Soup. And this is said because in 1994, when Oz Aid sent a shipment of relief provisions to that town including One Gross Cans X Campbell’s Tomato Soup and the soup was pilfered, in the ensuing investigation and retribution one hundred and forty seven people died. It is furthermore said Moresby is a town where, if the rodents ran naked-faced through the streets, they would be seen to blush at the behaviour of men. There is not as much evidentiary basis for this assertion. But it is true that necessity leads people to explore all things and if a creature arrived in Papua New Guinea from outer space, the highlander would fall on his knees and begin to worship it, while the Port Moresby man would wrack his brain for a suitable recipe.

  It began with a golden pheasant. A toothsome poultry to even the sophisticated palates of London and Paris, what a sensation it created here in Moresby where the staple protein was tinfish. The bird had damaged a wing trying to mate with a hessian sack and was in the animal infirmary being inspected by the Chief Veterinarian who, having had no breakfast, pronounced it suffering abominably and picked up a coffee mug, crushed its skull and roasted it in the incinerator. The smell of the bird drew zookeepers from all points of the facility and each plucked their morsel and cooed over its piquancy.

  A pheasant was delicious, but it could hardly sate an entire staff. A Tibetan sun bear who, contemplating hibernation, had taken on a sluggish mien was pronounced by the chief veterinarian to be suffering inoperable ague. She was brought in to the infirmary, clubbed and basted with Jimmy’s Satay Sauce, woke during her preparation and began feverishly licking this delicacy from her forearms, before being clubbed more diligently and crammed into the incinerator.

  After she was
eaten the zoologists and zookeepers sat back from the table and declared her the finest repast imaginable and suggested the ague had softened her flesh to a nicety and they toasted the Chinese, who had trounced the Tibetans and donated their bears, with SP Lager.

  The day after this they ate a Scottish terrapin laced with betelnut juice that had been observed to look peaky. Tasty, but tiny. The following day, becoming more brazen, they ate a she-camel without hint of medical condition. After this all were forced by their digestive exertions to take a nap. When they woke they agreed she was stringy and over-herbed. The next she-camel the Saudis sent would be slow-roasted while being basted with mutton fat. The zookeepers were becoming gourmands, food snobs, bon vivants.

  Yet none could share the delights of their new passion with their loved ones for fear they might think it wrong or want to join in. So they formed a clandestine cult of gastronomy over exotic lunches. They remarked to each other on the subtle and lingering tinctures of fennel in a rotisseried hedgehog. They dabbed their mouths with napkins and observed that a lion, for all the meat it ate, tasted quite fruity. A jaguar, though an excitable beast, was made of plain, glutinous stuff and needed much paprika, chili and dill to enliven it.

  They became experimental. An alligator stuffed with a flock of budgerigars. A goulash of anaconda and ostrich. More culinary permutations, combinations and explorations were perpetrated than at any time since the Coliseum fed its defeated oddities to gladiators. As they led each animal away a sign was placed over the plaque of its enclosure saying, This Exhibit Is Temporarily Unwell. Within an hour the zookeeper gourmands would be burning car tyres outside the infirmary to camouflage the smell of sizzling sweetmeats.

  Only one member of staff was troubled by the dwindling numbers and parboiled organs of the animals of The Sir Barnaby Lomus Zoological Gardens. Eamon Walter Aloyse was a sensitive boy who grimaced while being spoken to for fear of not understanding what was being said. He nursed injured street dogs and saved money to buy market finches and took them to the hills to release them. He wanted to be a zoologist and understood the sacred obligation owed by that profession to its charges. Unlike the zoologists at The Sir Barnaby Lomus Zoological Gardens who had been plucked from disparate government posts and promoted and educated by the pinning on of a badge that said ‘ZOOLOGIST’, Eamon was actually studying Mammalian Biology at school. He had a love of animals and no one was more happily astonished than he at the mother lode of exotic fauna that had suddenly arrived in Moresby when Sir Barnaby Lomus announced his zoological adventure. Eamon Walter Aloyse begged to become a volunteer there; to feed the animals, mop floors, cart dung, hose cages, anything. His dream came true as nightmare.

  As he mopped the grease and animal fats from the infirmary floor and cleared the bones from the tabletop Eamon’s eyes were usually wet with tears. He had known these animals and could identify them by their leftover parts. Here were the inedible extremities of a howler monkey he had named Winsi that had purred while Eamon tickled its ears through the bars of its enclosure. He stifled a sob as he emptied Winsi’s paws from a wastepaper bin. This sob woke a zookeeper who had been slumbering at table after his lunch and he jabbed Eamon in the ribs with the spine of a springbok. Eamon had known the springbok, too. He had named her Caper, and had regularly groomed her with a swatch of Velcro. He felt only bad luck could come of being jabbed with Caper’s spine and he moaned.

  ‘Hey, stop you sookin’,’ the zookeeper told Eamon, waggling Caper’s spine at him. ‘Dis fellow was tasty as tasty could be, Eamon. Why don’t you wag ’im dat school tomorrow? We set place for you here at table.’ Eamon put his face in his hands and cried and the zookeeper laughed and whipped him across the buttocks with Caper’s spine.

  After this day the zookeepers and zoologists began to taunt Eamon Walter Aloyse for his laughable compassion. In Moresby having compassion was like having three ears or twelve fingers, it was freakish and warranted punishment. They brandished the sautéed haunches of his friends at him, rubbed their bellies and extolled the flavorsome virtues of his comrades. ‘Oh, eh, Eamon, you are a good boy. You fatten that dingo up ripetenderlovely ’n’ make im such a banquet Mrs Quinn of England would gobble in her castle.’

  Eamon began to leave notes in the infirmary for the zoologists to read explaining the wondrous and laudable habits of the animals in the zoo.

  The Swan mates for life. It migrates as far as seven thousand miles back to its loved one every winter, upon which reunion the two lovers will intertwine their necks and coo a complex and symphonic love song.

  The adult male peccary is known to lay down its life for its mate and its young by goring itself and leading a jaguar away from them with a trail of its own blood before turning and making its last stand.

  The female orange-maned gibbon has a facility for language supreme in the animal kingdom. It can issue commands in a variety of over five-hundred barks, squeals, grunts and ululations.

  He hoped these notes might spark a regard for the animals in the zookeepers that would make it impossible to consume them. But monogamy seemed a trap to these gourmands and the peccary appeared merely a suicidal maniac and the female orange-maned gibbon with her five-hundred instructions seemed a pushy chatterbox of a kind with which they were familiar.

  The swans, those composers of oratorios were consumed with mint gravy. The peccary was diced in a risotto with pumpkin and coriander. The orange-maned gibbon was broiled in a quail consommé with a hundred garlics. Eamon’s notes were used to dab the gravy from the chins of the sated keepers.

  But the saddest day for Eamon Walter Aloyse was the day they ate Armadillo the armadillo. Eamon had named him Armadillo because he was fond of alliteration, though amateurish in its execution. Armadillo was almost the last animal to be eaten. Being so formidably armoured he reminded the bon vivants of a can of tinfish and they had shied away from him. Eamon had been very close to Armadillo the armadillo. Armadillo had often sat in Eamon’s lap while he ran a pencil back and forth over his armour, which Armadillo enjoyed, Eamon knew, because Armadillo would nuzzle his ears and make grateful groaning noises into them.

  For Eamon to find Armadillo’s head with a Granny Smith in his mouth staring at his own scooped-out armour on the infirmary table was too much. He threw down his mop and howled, an alien noise in an environment now devoid of animals. He lovingly picked up Armadillo’s head, removed the apple, and took it with him back to the armadillo enclosure. This little fellow, who had been so homesick in PNG, constantly groaning for his family and the arroyos of Texas … they had killed him, hollowed him out with melon-ballers, and they must pay.

  Eamon Walter Aloyse placed Armadillo’s head on a bed of straw in the centre of the enclosure. He then took down the sign that read This Exhibit Is Temporarily Unwell and on the blank side of it he wrote This Exhibit Has Been Eaten.

  Many illiterates wandered past the armadillo enclosure that day, stopping to stare at the armadillo’s head and wondering what had become of the rest of him. Until, just before closing, the first literate visitor stopped and read the sign. She was a mother with a swaddled piccaninny named Bravo on her hip. In anger and disbelief she thrust this child face-first at the sign as if he were literate and prone to outrage. ‘See, Bravo,’ she shouted. ‘Witness the wickedness of zookeepers. An armadillo.’ Others gathered behind her, all touched with a similar fury. Cries rang through the crowd. ‘An armadillo. An armadillo. The zookeepers have eaten an armadillo.’ It seemed a great compassion was abroad for this thing called armadillo that none of them had ever seen or suspected.

  The crowd raged through the zoo committing exciting vandalisms in its anger. An armadillo had been eaten. When the crowd came to the infirmary it tried to batter down the doors. It threw stones and broke windows while the zookeepers hid relishes and disposed of sauces before climbing into cages and covering themselves with straw, frightened and mystified by this sudden advocacy of the armadillo.

  Eventually the crowd washed up against the
bars of the zoo’s sole remaining exhibit. An edgy badger, pacing and grimacing, shaking his head in what may have been disbelief. The mother of Bravo, sole literate among the crowd, read the sign outside that cage, ‘Common English Badger. Donated by His Highness The Prince of Wales.’

  ‘Fuck im Prince of Wale,’ shouted one.

  ‘Hurryup,’ shouted another. ‘Before these greedy bastard eatimup also.’

  They kicked in the cage door and bludgeoned the badger thoroughly and built a fire from its food trough and barbecued him and portioned him out equally and fairly, as should have been done by the zookeepers with the armadillo.

  This was the last wild thing to inhabit Sir Barnaby Lomus’ famed Port Moresby Zoological Gardens and the establishment was closed on the 22nd of August 2000.

  Since then the gates have been thrown open and the visitors’ fees waived in perpetuity by the man whose name the zoo took, and it has enjoyed a second life as a housing estate for the homeless of that town. Thus, in Papua New Guinea it is now possible to visit a family living in an enclosure with a brass plaque naming them as Namibian Warthogs and telling the world they were donated by Nelson Mandela. Also possible to ogle a widow behind glass announced as a Horse-Fanged Viper. A family, happily behind bars and signposted as Dove Weasels with a warning beneath that (They Bite!).

  More people visit the housing estate than visited the zoo. The young and humorous of Port Moresby seem never to tire of their outings to the Zoological Garden Housing Estate to smirk at the many brass insults heaped upon its residents. The laughter rings out and it seems a happy place.

  Only one young man wanders there in sadness, fingering the plaques that tell of the species once incarcerated, and softly, nostalgically mimicking their chatters and cries. A man with an honours degree in zoology, living in a time after animals.