White Turtle

by Merlinda Bobis

  But her—how did she conduct her sessions with the first six petitioners? Why did the girl with the windmill laugh in surprise the moment she entered the tent? Why was Excelsior in shock-horror? And Chef Pierre— why did he embody all the world’s contempt even after believing, for a moment, that she could facilitate his “palatory-olfactorisation” project? So who was she? The last question I shall not engage; the state’s dossier on her, which was eventually turned over to the national archives, can answer that.

  So back to the blue tent and the woman who was only heard but never seen. You probably want a proper denouement with the usual concluding prattle, so I’ll give it to you.

  Longing might seem to be all gas, full steam ahead, because it is after all a wind in the gut, some kind of air festering in there. Longing rests in the stomach which breaks up the daily nourishment of our wants. It is in our intestines digesting these wants, though not all the time succeeding and often missing the point—which is the true want, the fake want, the want-want—and in our anal passages that is never allowed to betray this excreta of failure in public, this inability to feel content, this sense of never having been fully nourished despite our thorough process of feeding, digesting and eventual elimination of the superfluous or the indigestible. Longing is at gut-level. No, I’m not trivialising the issue by relocating it and thus robbing the heart of its claim to desire—but where were we? Or where should we be? Of course, at the actual locus of the story, the gut of the narrative. The blue tent in Victoria Road, Darlinghurst, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

  So back to the resolution, the consequence of all these actions that had just been staged.

  At twelve noon, after Chef Pierre walked out on his craving, because its fulfilment was too demeaning, Numbers Seven, Eight and Nine still hoped to get into the tent, but the dispersing queue and the sobering, normalising personal interrogations that went on in each desiring heart, that is if we decide to still locate desire in that particular organ, warned all to keep away from the tent until they found out who she really was and what her motives were, until her tricks were made public—

  “Who are you? Show yourself. What’s the trick? Who are you? Show yourself! What’s the trick?” and so on and so on.

  It was a different roar this time, like a rugby game cheer in tempo and pitch, but with a different sonority, because it had a sneer in its reverberations. At last, everyone’s uncool vulnerabilities of a moment ago, their left-footed affirmations of this or that silly wish or, worse, desperation and, of course, the incredible shame at having admitted that they were all led by the nose by some desire or despair, and finally that utter embarrassment at having been caught out in their privation, were masked by the most respectable sneer.

  The tent kept silent, no more wind-noises, but the tension inside was relayed to every spectator’s gut. It was as if the inhabitant were struggling towards the most major decision of her life.

  The hand that received the list earlier demurely raised the blue flap.

  All were hushed.

  A very pale—cheek?—the crowd couldn’t quite make out what—

  And another—

  Cheek!

  Jesus! A photographer caught the image up close and closer—

  It was the palest, smoothest pair of cheeks he had ever seen—and the brownest eye.

  Hands flew over eyes or mouths and the most indignant cry of shock-horror ever made in the history of humanity rose up in the air, which began to take on an alien quality as the Wind Witch wiggled her bottom and let out a most resonant fart!

  A lingering, wondrous, wind-driven, percussive explosion that no doubt echoed the prrp!-prrp?-prrp! and the gardenias, mildew, apples, sweat, basil, apricots, mother’s tears, fish entrails, jackfruit, corpses! and the puuuuu-huuuu-huuuu-huuuu-uuuuuuuuut-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t… and the huffing and puffing while reciting an unintelligible nursery rhyme, with all but the consonants disintegrating at the end of each line, and the whoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooo? and more, all air that can be packaged, bottled and treasured in the receptacle of one’s dreams—

  But the audience before that palest ass only heard the biggest fart ever and smelled the full foulness of their communal embarrassment!

  Well, different versions of that climactic scene were still all over the papers a month after the tedious court hearings which, expectedly, resulted in a compassionate verdict. First, she was not really convicted, but was instead handed over to a psychiatrist, who could fathom the depths of her psyche, and then to a proctologist, who could do the same for her lower regions, and then write about their findings in a proper book. Second, the parliament passed a bill against farting in public, unanimously voted upon, of course, but which was amended the next day. They could not resist this addendum: No one must give anyone the brown eye. Not ever again.