Don't Call Me Ishmael

by Michael Gerard Bauer

  ‘Scobie? If I ever see Kelly Faulkner again, what could I possibly say to her?’ I asked hopelessly.

  Scobie pushed his lips to a pout, wrinkled his brow and put his mouth through the full range of twists and stretches. ‘Well … I think you have to try to see the big picture. This could turn out to be one of those interesting stories people tell about how they first met. So perhaps you could say … ‘ Scobie stopped and his eyes flicked towards Razza.

  ‘What? What could I say?’

  ‘… thanks for the mammary?

  33.

  THE REALLY UGLY PART

  What followed wasn’t pretty. Scobie’s joke finally kickstarted Bill Kingsley’s motor. Unfortunately he had just filled his mouth with strawberry milk and he immediately began to moan and buck like a cow giving birth. Razza, in turn, let out strangled cries like he was being stabbed and leapt about pointing at Scobie and Kingsley and shaking his head in disbelief. Prindabel, meanwhile, began shaking like a boiling kettle and making high-pitched humming noises, as if he were trying to keep a swarm of bees inside his mouth. Scobie just twisted his face into a knot and tried to look innocent.

  The really ugly part came when strawberry milk bubbled out of Bill Kingsley’s nose like pink lava and Ignatius Prindabel, under the immense strain of keeping everything inside, broke wind like a trumpet hitting three octaves above high C. This caused Razza to bolt from the room wiping tears from his eyes with one hand and clutching at his groin with the other. He was followed closely by Bill Kingsley sputtering like a pink fountain and Ignatius Prindabel tooting like a brass band. It was quite a parade.

  Needless to say, I was overwhelmed by how supportively my friends had rallied around in my time of personal crisis.

  Only Scobie remained in the classroom, smiling sheepishly back at me.

  ‘I’m a complete drop kick.’

  ‘I don’t think so. You showed the true St Daniel’s spirit last night–you entered the lion’s den.’

  ‘Yeah, and fainted,’ I said glumly.

  ‘But not before you stood up.’

  ‘What difference does that make?’

  ‘Well, it’s like what Miss Tarango’s been saying about the short stories we’re writing-about not going on too long and knowing when to end them? Well, I think your story ended when you got up in front of that audience. That’s all we really needed to know about you.’

  At home that night I tried desperately to erase the whole Kelly Faulkner groping disaster from my mind. But it wasn’t that easy to just edit out all the excruciatingly embarrassing chunks of your life like they never existed. Maybe Razza had the right approach. Maybe I was taking it all too seriously Maybe it was best to just laugh about it and try to put things into perspective. After all, I still had my family and I still had my friends (even though their sense of humour left a lot to be desired) and my life was still relatively Barry Bagsley-free.

  Yes, when I looked at the big picture, I realised that things could definitely be worse for me–a lot worse, in fact.

  And before I knew it, they were.

  34.

  DROWNING IN OUR OWN OFFAL

  It was on the first day after the short September holidays that we heard the news.

  ‘What do mean, he won’t be back for the finals?’

  ‘Look, Ignatius, I’m just telling you what Miss Tarango told me. Scobie’s with his father in Sydney for some reason and he won’t be back in time for the finals.’

  ‘But he is coming back, right?’ Razza asked.

  ‘Sure, yeah, of course.’ But the trouble was, I wasn’t that certain.

  When I asked Miss Tarango the same question all she said was, ‘As far as I know,’ and for a moment there she seemed to have lost her dimples.

  ‘Without Scobie we’re dead.’

  ‘That’s the spirit, Prindabel. Need any help hoisting the white flag?’

  ‘Well, I suppose that you’re going to take Scobie’s place are you, Orazio?’

  ‘No, but at least I’m not throwing in the towel before I even know the topic’

  ‘Ahhh …’ This was going to be delicate. ‘That’s another thing Miss Tarango told me. For the semi-final rounds … it’s a secret topic’

  ‘What? Secret topic? How will we know what we have to talk about?’

  ‘I’ve got a hunch, Billy Boy,’ Razza said, putting his arm around Bill Kingsley and speaking like a kindergarten teacher, ‘that maybe, just maybe, if we’re extra specially good and eat up all our vegetables, they might let us in on the secret before we actually start debating. Would I be right, Ishmael?’

  ‘Right. We get the topic on the night. Then they lock us in a room with some encyclopaedias and a dictionary. We can’t talk to anyone outside. We’ve only got an hour to prepare.’

  ‘An hour?’ Razza said in disbelief. ‘Last debate it took us an entire week just to explain the topic to Kingsley’

  ‘Now do you want to hear the really bad news? Our opposition is Preston College.’

  The looks on their faces said it all. If you went to Preston College and didn’t become at least prime minister you were considered a disappointment. At Preston College they started debating in the womb. We were certainly up against it. The trick was to remain positive.

  ‘They’re going to kill us. They’re going to chew us up, spit us out and grind us into the dirt. They’re going to massacre us. It’ll be a blood bath. We’ll be ripped to shreds and torn apart. We’ll be drowning in our own offal.’

  ‘Tell me, Prindabel, have you ever thought of a career as a motivational speaker?’

  ‘And Orazio, I suppose you think we can actually win?’

  ‘Actually I don’t. That’s about as likely as Kingsley here outrunning a three-toed sloth, but at least I’m willing to pretend that we can win.’

  ‘Well, I’m not. Why kid ourselves? I think we should forfeit. We’re down to four already. If a couple of us say we’re sick, what can they do? Look, we made the finals, didn’t we? We’ve done better than anyone expected. If we’re going to lose anyway, what does it matter? Orazio might want to make a fool of himself, but what about the rest of you? Kingsley, what do you say?’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘That’s the way, Billy Boy!’ Razza said, punching him on the shoulder. ‘What’s one more humiliation after a lifetime, eh? What about you, Ishmael?’

  ‘That’s not fair. What’s he care? He doesn’t have to get up there while those cyborgs from Preston cut us to ribbons.’

  Prindabel was right. I couldn’t really say whether we should debate or not unless I was willing to be part of it. I thought long and hard before I replied.

  ‘I don’t think we should forfeit. I think we owe it to Scobie to at least try’

  Prindabel looked wildly around the room. ‘Is anybody listening here? Hello, can anybody hear me? We haven’t got a hope–I repeat, not a hope.’

  ‘Neither did Peter Chung when he took on the Magnon.’

  ‘Ishmael’s right,’ Razza said. ‘Don’ give rup! Don’ give rin!’

  ‘Well, I think you’re all mad.’

  ‘Look, Prindabel, we really need you there on the night. We need all that stuff you’ve got in your head–all those facts and figures.’ I had to brace myself before I could go on. ‘Look, I’ll make a deal with you. If you don’t want to speak on the night … if you don’t want to do it … then I’ll take your place. Just as long as you’re there to help us out with our case. OK?’

  ‘O? … Yeah, that’s fine by me … I’ll be there.’

  So it was done. I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or depressed. I guess it’s the sort of feeling you’d expect when you’d just succeeded in driving the last nail in your own coffin.

  35.

  DEATH BY LETHAL INJECTION

  Two weeks later we were locked in a classroom at Churchill Grammar. I looked out the window. It was three floors down to a hard concrete playground. I’d almost convinced myself that I could survive the jump w
hen the door clicked open.

  One of the adjudicators stood in the doorway holding a folded slip of paper. As I was closest, I took it from him and brought it to the table where the others were waiting. Prindabel was pale. Bill Kingsley was disturbingly calm. Orazio was as jumpy and as pumped as the Energiser Rabbit.

  ‘Here goes nothing,’ I said opening the paper, half-expecting to see the words Death by Lethal Injection.

  ‘Well? What is it? What’s the topic?’ they all chorused.

  ‘The topic is, That science-fiction and fantasy films have little relevance to the problems facing today’s world.’

  After a few seconds of silence and quickly exchanged glances, Prindabel was the first to speak. ‘Well that’s not too bad,’ he said slowly with a flicker of hope in his eye. ‘You know, when you think of actual problems in the world … stuff like AIDS, pollution, global warming … drugs … well, what do movies like Spiderman or Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter or Star Wars have to say about those?’

  Prindabel’s eyes began to flash madly about as if he were seeing ideas leap around inside his head. ‘Yeah … Hey, I know … we can even argue that science-fiction and fantasy movies are just escapes … you know, that they just distract us from facing real problems … Hey, that could be part of our theme!’ Prindabel snatched up a pen and began writing feverishly. ‘Look … we can do this … those movies are totally irrelevant to world problems … here, these could be our three main arguments … first we could say that …’

  ‘Ignatius. We’re Negative. We have to argue that science-fiction and fantasy films are relevant.’

  Prindabel’s flurry of writing ground to a halt. Then he turned over his sheet of paper, printed something calmly on the other side and held it up. It said in big capital letters, ‘We’re stuffed’.

  No one said anything as we each struggled to find a way to rebut the persuasiveness of Prindabel’s last point.

  ‘I reckon science-fiction and fantasy films are relevant. You know a lot of them show what could happen in the future if we don’t deal with the problems we have today. Bit like a warning. Like, have you ever seen Gattaca? … Well, it’s about the dangers of cloning and genetic engineering-Jurassic Park does that too … and Terminator sort of shows the danger of relying too much on machines and computers … Oh, and Ignatius … you mentioned Lord of the Rings … Well, it’s about standing up to evil and forgetting about differences and helping each other and about war, and that stuff’s relevant today, isn’t it? … and even Spiderman … couldn’t you say it shows how scientific experiments can go wrong and how we have to be careful about …?’

  Bill Kingsley stopped, not because he had run out of things to say, but because there were three faces gawking at him as if he had just stepped out of the mother ship.

  ‘What? What’s the matter?’

  Razza leant in for a closer look. ‘Who are you and what have you done to Bill Kingsley?’

  It wasn’t just the shock of hearing Bill speak or the fact that he was almost animated that had stunned us–it was more the realisation that what he was saying actually seemed to be making some sense.

  ‘Bill, what about the other fantasy-type stuff like Harry Potter? Do you think that’s relevant to … what was it … the problems facing today’s world?’ I asked, reading from the topic sheet.

  ‘Well, I guess you could say that part of it’s about how power can be used in a good way or a bad way and you could tie that to things like the power that big companies or politicians or dictators have today, I suppose. And Harry himself faces a lot of problems that I reckon would be relevant to a lot of people–you know, like coping with death and trying to fit in when you’re different … and bullying. And Ignatius, you said movies like that distract us from facing up to real problems, but maybe it’s good to escape those problems-at least for a while–’cause it might help people cope with them.’

  Bill Kingsley blinked and looked from Razza to Prindabel, who stared back at him as if he had just made an elephant appear in the room and they were trying to figure out how he did it.

  I wasn’t staring, though. I was frantically trying to write down every word Bill Kingsley was saying. ‘Ignatius, Razza, don’t just sit there. Ask Bill some more questions about the topic. Argue with him. Just keep him talking.’

  ‘OK … what about all those superhero dudes with all their special powers?’ Razza ventured. ‘What’s that got to do with normal people and their problems?’

  ‘But just about all of the superheroes are normal people most of the time and, like I said, it’s how they use those powers that’s the thing. And we have powers today that are pretty special and amazing, you know, with all the scientific discoveries going on, so maybe they’re relevant because just like them, we have to choose how we’re going to use our powers … I guess a bit like choosing between being superheroes or super villains.’

  ‘All right then,’ Prindabel joined in, ‘you said a lot of these movies act as a warning to us today–give us some other examples?’

  ‘There’s heaps. What about I Robot and the dangers of artificial intelligence or …’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Razza interrupted, still staring at Bill Kingsley in disbelief, ‘and what about that one where New York freezes over … you know, the Morning After or something …’

  ‘The Day After Tomorrow?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s it … that’s about global warming, isn’t it? Cool!’

  And that’s the way it went for the next twenty minutes. Razza and Prindabel fired in questions and arguments, Bill Kingsley fired back answers and counter-arguments and I wrote it all down. When we didn’t seem to be covering new ground I said, ‘I think we’ve got enough. There’s a heap of rebuttal ideas, and I can divide Bill’s main points up between the first and second speakers.’

  ‘Who are the first and second speakers?’ Razza asked. ‘And who’s taking Scobie’s place?’

  Prindabel shook his head. ‘Look, I’ll go first speaker if you want me to, I will, but this isn’t really my sort of topic. I mean it–I’d be better on the opposition’s side. I really think Ishmael should be first speaker. He knows the team case-he’s the one who’s put it all together. Orazio, you should go second, and that leaves … Bill at third.’

  ‘Kingsley taking Scobie’s place? No way, man. Have you forgotten that he can’t rebut? And you want to put him in third speaker where that’s exactly what he’ll have to do–for just about his entire speech? No offence, Kingsley, but I don’t think saying, “That’s quite a good point, actually,” is going to be enough to blow Preston’s case out of the water. You’re mad, Prindabel. Tell him, Ishmael.’

  ‘I think Ignatius is right.’

  Razza threw up his hands as if the world had turned insane.

  ‘Look, we can’t waste time on this,’ I said. ‘I should be first speaker because I know the overview of our case. Razza, you’ve been second speaker in three debates, so you should stick with that. That leaves third speaker. Ignatius has done his bit by helping us predict the opposition’s arguments and giving us all the scientific stuff, but if it wasn’t for Bill here we really would be stuffed. And you’re wrong, Razza, he can rebut-maybe he hasn’t ever done it before, but he’s just spent the last twenty minutes rebutting everything you threw at him. He should be third speaker. This is his debate. And … I think he should be captain tonight, as well.’

  ‘Fine by me.’

  That was the easy part. Prindabel would agree with anything if it meant he didn’t have to debate. All our eyes were now on Razza. He looked at me and then at Prindabel before turning patronisingly to Bill Kingsley.

  ‘Billy Boy, you do appreciate the seriousness of the situation don’t you–third speaker against Preston College … Preston? Remember what Prindabel said about drowning in our own offal? Well, that could be you. Do you understand how that would be a bad thing?’

  Bill Kingsley glanced up at Razza. ‘Sure … even someone who had their brain removed by ali
ens and replaced with sludge could see that.’

  Razza frowned. ‘It could be very ugly out there.’

  Bill nodded. ‘It could be offal.’

  Had Bill Kingsley made a joke? Nah, we must have misheard.

  ‘Don’t you care?’ Razza asked in exasperation. ‘This isn’t some movie, you know. We’re not part of some whacky fellowship on some stupid quest. This is real. Aren’t you just a teensy weensy bit … concerned? … worried? … nervous? … apprehensive? … scared shitless?’

  ‘Of course,’ Bill said. ‘Look, I’ll do whatever you want. If you just want me to be chair, that’s fine. If you want me to go third speaker, that’s fine too. I can’t do what Scobie does … but I’ll give it a go. Oh, and Orazio … I know we’re not headed for Mount Doom or anything, but we are on a bit of a quest, aren’t we? Maybe we’re even some sort of a fellowship.’

  Razza sprawled back in his seat and shook his head slowly from side to side as if nothing made sense to him any more. Finally he stood up, leant over the table and placed his hand on Bill’s shoulder.

  I held my breath. I had a terrible feeling that Orazio Zorzotto’s razor-sharp wit was about to slice Bill Kingsley in two.

  ‘A quest, you reckon? … And a fellowship?’

  Bill shrugged and nodded slightly.

  Razza fixed his eyes on the large form before him. ‘Then I will follow you,’ he said solemnly, ‘my brother … my captain … my … Kingsley.’

  36.

  LIKE A LIGHT SABRE THROUGH BUTTER

  At seven twenty–five we entered the debating room and took our seats. For the last half-hour we had frantically written up palm cards and tried to get the key arguments in our minds. Now the horrible reality of what was about to happen hit home. The room was full. As well as an army of Preston supporters and the three adjudicators, St Daniel’s was represented by my parents and Prue, along with Mr and Mrs Prindabel, Prindabel’s sister, Mrs Zorzotto, Mr Kingsley, Miss Tarango, Brother Jerome and one of the school prefects.