When I Saw the Animal by Cohen Bernard;

Author:Cohen, Bernard;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
Published: 2018-07-31T01:44:19+00:00

Waltzing Matilda

Brown-bound menus offer the usual egg and chips, sausage and chips, steak and chips choices.

One of four uniformed police at the next table stands up and begins to sing operatically.

‘We don’t need the fucking requiem,’ shouts his colleague. ‘Just get on with what you’re saying.’

‘Amen,’ says another.

‘Amen to you too, you unappreciative buggers. I was merely trying to illustrate a sense of the solemnity of his crime and to prefigure his tragic end. But if your foreshortened attention spans will only bear the abridged version, that’s what I’ll give you,’ says the singer. ‘Okay then, there’s wool and blood all over the fucking camp. His trousers are red from the thighs down. He’s red-handed too, you could say. And his rucksack’s practically still trembling with the poor creature’s rigor mortis. The grazier’s tut-tutting from his horse. Robbie and Tom – know them? – are no doubt gearing up to give him a bit of a hiding on the way back to the station, and I’m the one who sticks to the rigmarole.’

‘Constable fucking Procedure,’ mutters the shouter.

‘You got me right. So I tell him, “We’re going to arrest you for the sheep, you silly coot.” He stands up and he’s looking like he’s going to come quietly. I’m thinking, there’s a first time for bloody everything. Nice and easy, hands forward ready for the cuffs. World needs more criminals like that, if you ask me, head bowed, fully cognisant of the crime and his likely incarceration.’

‘Dead set, mate,’ says the amen-er. ‘Next thing you’ll be inviting him to the Christmas barbecue.’

‘A feller like that, and he admitted anything at all,’ agrees the first opera-hater. ‘Miracles in our lifetime.’

‘Ha! Not fucking likely. No cooperation actually happened. Instead he says, “Okay then, haul me in from here, bloody coppers,” and he jumps into the bog. No help from us, I swear, much trouble as that stupid bugger has been over the years.’

The fourth begins to laugh. ‘That what you told the coroner, is it?’

‘What do you think, John? “Yes, Your Worship, whilst we had no part in the unfortunate man’s actions, and had indeed taken all care to prevent self-harm on his part, we had previously consulted on optimum launch angles and velocities.” Wouldn’t have minded too much, but of course I wouldn’t do it. All my friends’d agree to that about me. In fact, many have in earlier circumstances. Besides, as you know from your own extensive training, such courses of action are against the rules. I don’t have a rule-breaking bone in my body.’

‘The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks,’ says John to the other two, who laugh briefly.

‘Well,’ admits the storyteller, ‘we might not have stood by in entire and unreserved idleness.’

More laughter.

‘And the stains on his trousers did require immediate rinsing. But let’s agree he pretty much propelled himself. Say 70 per cent self-propulsion. Or at least 60. Anyway, I genuinely liked him, despite his deep-seated recidivist criminality.’

‘Yeah right,’ says John.

‘John, I was a broken man afterwards. I wept for weeks.

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.