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- It ought to be set straight. Who made this?
Missus Margaret’s got as an answer a silence so deep and embarrassing that I thought I heard a mosquito flapping its wings. As embarrassing as the day I was knocked in front of the class for exposing an unaccepted opinion. All around all I could see were a bunch of surprised faces trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
That scenery made her face get a more remarkable tone of crimson.
- Alright, whoever had made this, better be prepared for the consequences. It’s a
very creative and smart work, so good that sometimes is hard to believe the real author could be one of you, but this fellow chose the wrong person to fool around!
After that, she returned to her desk and wrote something in her task-book, and glanced at us her sharp black eyes again.
- To our next class, I want the three following texts of our text-book read, we’ll
have an short exam about.
Then, with no more warnings she went out the class. Left behind, remained about twenty pairs of perplexed faces.
- Hey Charles, did you understand what made missus Margaret spit the dummy? –
I asked the student next to me, trying to wear that indifferent masquerade, that’s sometimes very hard to achieve.
- Peter, Peter… you’re really not the full quid, man. It stands out like dog’s balls!
- Hey Charles, come on! What would you expect from a guy named Peter H.
Peterson? – Lisa decided to join the conversation – Listen bloke, it seems like someone forged a name and signed that project she requested to us last week about australian culture.
- Why would it drive her mad as a cut snake? – I insisted, giving my face that
stupid expression that all of them already got used long time ago.
- Better sharpen your mind tools a little bit sometimes, don’t you think? Well, the
cobber who did this, I have to tell you I’d be proud to shake her hands. Well, first of all, besides using a false name, it seems she made the best project of all.
- She? – Charles interrupted Lisa.
- Of course, I’m sure it’s a woman, whoever that had been capable to do that anonymously…
Once again, Lisa would start all that yabbering about how the girls are smarter than boys, all the prejudices about women and so on. What really bores me is how people always choose one extreme, one single view and blindly follow it. I generally do not pick up sides, to avoid getting involved. In occasions like that, I usually move to my own small corner of the world and daydream.
…A unnamed woman chained to a miserable life in the most miserable part of the country. Is that her destiny or her harvest? Hum, what’s so great about that? Well... Nothing! And it would surprise nobody at all, sometimes “the what” doesn’t mean anything, but “the how” is extremely important. I wouldn’t get the desired effect if I didn’t link that condition with some extra ingredients.
Well, first of all, what would be the most suitable australian cultural aspect, that I could explore to transform that common idea into something fancier?
Well I could use the gold rushes, who knows? a woman which her husband becomes millionaire, but loses everything in gambling and drinking, and so on? And in the end she had to raise her children alone in the poverty? Well, nice but not that nice… let’s think another thing else.
Maybe some woman who got pregnant by some kanaka before he immigrates to Queensland to work in the sugar industry… or some revolutionary leader who met Sir Samuel Griffith himself…
Many possibilities but none of them seemed to satisfy me at all…
Dammit! It’s getting cold, I bet some bollock let the window open… sometimes we just want to slap these motherfuckers!
Well I got to the window and it was shut but it was still cold… suddenly I understood what happened, and I wish some motherfucker had let it open… the glass had been broken by some bastard who thrown a stone. Looking at the room I found the bitch under my bed wrapped with a paper. I got the paper. It had a message to me…
Pet you loser! Kiss my ass you little pussy! It’s time to eat my shorts and suck my dick!
As cross as a frog in a sock I return to my desk but the cold was so hard that I reach the closet in order to wear something to warm me up. There I saw a cotton tracksuit and an australian jacket made of wool…
...australian jacket made of wool...
Cobber, I have to tell ya… God bless the cold!
Sheeps! That was the answer! All that old travels in the bush of a drover leading the sheeps to their final doom! And the good of that is that I wouldn’t have to find a justification for the husband leave the wife in order to describe how she was so alone raising her children… his travels would do it!
The following was easy, all I had to do is to use that dramatic and emotional language, and that’s it. And the last act was a piece of piss forging a false name…
Well I like the name Henry, and what name should I pick for the last name? Well, it has to be one that, who knows, maybe will be studied decades from now… at the most important universities… Lawson! Well after all I think I should honor my father one way or another, he ever wanted me instead of studying arts to be a lawyer. What about the title… let’s see…”The rude life in the bush”… no, not convincing… “The fate of those left behind”… Jesus it sounds like a horror tale… ah The drover’s wife...
That’s it cobber!
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