In a week’s time, in the thick of the Tasman forest, my father came to the conclusion that a diet of wombat droppings and eucalyptus leafs was not sufficient to sustain any life-form, even one as low as himself. What he needed was the bounty of the sea – fish, oysters, anemones. He was aware that he was upon an island and one much smaller than his beloved Britannia (intellect did not always elude the man). He was also aware that he needed to acquire a coastline. He needed to set forth in any direction with considerable speed, a physical emotion the chains on his legs stole so viciously from him (it can be seen that deduction, of this he was also capable). Yet here is where his dull mind took hold. Instead of removing the chain by force of rock on rock, the insufferable jester decided to remove one of his legs. Applying a tourniquet of vines to his upper thigh, he proceeded to gouge into his flesh with a sharpened kangaroo bone, found in a dingo den where he had foolishly taken shelter. Passing out for the loss blood, he awoke hours later to find a dingo had finished the task for him. His left leg was removed and the wild dog had itself a glorious feast.
Now it has been said that this should have been the end of him. Damn the man who ever uttered that phrase about my father. For it has always been false. Like the mythological phoenix, he rises from the filth of his ashes, only to emerge more ill tempered and destructive than before. For five days and five nights, in the dank of that den, unilegged and thoroughly bled, the man endured fever dreams the types of which are saved for the gothic novelties of the pervert poet. I only write of them here to elucidate the horror of the predicament. I would not normally descend to such base trivialities. Nevertheless, it sets the scene.
Naked flesh, adrench in perspiration, writhing bodies were the protagonists of my father’s visions. Yet not the bodies celebrated by that most talented Italian, the beloved Michelangelo. The painter closer to the spirit of these creatures was that peddler of the rank and doughy, the hog loving Rubens. Your instincts guide you right if you suspect the dreams were set within a landscape of rolling hills. Vile things did occur upon these earthy mounts and my father reveled in the visions. Yet like any fever dream, the visions were not merely the fruits of fiction. As he tumbled through his hallucinations, I fear to say he was simultaneously befouling the colony of well-fed dingoes that had grown fond of his presence. You may deem it strange. You may wonder why they had not taken their razor teeth to my father’s throat. The only explanation I can offer is that the man has often been compared to a dog, and a dog adores a dog, especially one so possessing of carnal knowledge.
After about five days, a group of native hunters happened upon this atrocity. Skilled hunters, all of them, they proceeded to spear the dingoes and knock them into the hereafter with their boomeranging sticks. It was not until later that they realized the animals were sharing pleasures with their companion, not supping upon him. So impressed were they by my father’s dominion over the fearsome dogs, that they immediately took it upon themselves to nurse him back to health. All their attempts at achieving such a level of conversation with the dingoes had ended badly, bloodily, and they were eager to learn of my father’s seduction. To them, he may not have been a pagan god figure, but he was a white light, a beacon for their foggy culture.
Wrapped in a hammock of wallaby fur, he was carried for miles, fattened on the meat of emu and the juice of rain forest plums. A band of prehistoric minstrels, the Aboriginals sang as they traveled, not the railroad spirituals of the American Negroid, but rather a form of hideous shrieking, the only purpose of which, it seemed, was to drive away civilization. It was the furthest my father had been from civilization, there in that land swarming with nettles and vines. He had reason to believe he might never again feel the comforts of a four-post bed or see the lovely snowy skin that clothes a person of the Lord. Yes, he was alive, but a life among such company is hardly worth living. A second escape had to be devised.
