Passengers
Bob Palmer - Pilot
Levague has written –
Bob struggles with his large bulk as he exits the vehicle; he’s a big, fat pilot - very rare in the tropics. As a young man, he achieved modest celebrity as a Hell Cheaters motorcycle thug of all things. At a Sydney rock concert in the 1980s, he was filmed severing the jugular of a rival biker in a knife fight and staying to watch his victim bleed to death. There was blanket TV footage on all the news.
He was ‘fat-beefy’ in those days, a true gladiator, wearing several inches of fat like it was body armour thick enough to absorb a flick knife to the hilt without catastrophic damage to vital organs, and he moved much faster than a dying man would credit a fat man. He’s clinically obese now, even for a 185cm tall man. He’s about fifty. He’ll have a coronary anytime soon, possibly within the next three or four hours.
Sue Tran – Caterer
Levague has written –
Sue Tran works as the caterer for the agreement signing ceremony dinner and came over with us on the charter from Darwin yesterday. She’s just younger than me, mid-fifties perhaps. Being small and slim, she doesn’t seem too bothered by the tropical heat. She dished out cold chicken and salad and served drinks to about 20 people until late last night without breaking a sweat.
The thought crosses my mind briefly that overwhelmingly, Sue Tran looks fit, petite, and cross-culturally feminine, and despite her age, still fertile. This thought scurries into a dark corner of my brain where a rather large rodent lives, and soon, the image of a reflector-striped orange ball, naked below the waist, is bouncing lustily on my lap, sending faint tickly itches to my sixty-year-old crotch.
Normally, at about this time, Dr. Levague sweeps Jack-the-Rat back to his hole in my brain, or rather, it’s the mental image of Pam’s ceremonial Shoshone Indian knife slicing up the orange bouncing ball and then my nuts. The jealous kitten has a traditional name for this blade, which roughly translates as Mrs Skinning, bearing that quaint Shoshone linguistic trait of naming sharp things with female names.
Mattius Korda
Levague has written –
One of my fellow charter plane passengers, RCC boss Mattius Korda, apparently has terminal cancer. He told me this last night over drinks. He seemed robust enough during dinner at the mining village, even after we shared several bottles of wine. But as the night wore on, he lost interest in cheap plonk, a sick pallor drained his face, and his chemo-bald head started dripping sweat profusely. Well, better him than me.
He has a GUMO cap on his bald head, and when he turns it, I can see the brain surgery scars - ugly red zipper lines across the base of his skull. His suit jacket and tie must be in his bag or Mrs. Korda’s large green tote bag. Both probably have something semiformal to do this evening when they get back to Darwin, a tad far-reaching by the look of him.
Julie Korda
Levague has written –
Mattius Korda and I kicked on through two or three bottles of red, and if not for the free wine and Mrs Korda walking around from time to time in those bun-hugging shorts, I’d have got bored and repaired to my room for joints. A dying man’s conversation is surprisingly tedious - all self-centred - and finally, when I offered myself as the sympathetic company for his wife as she faced the sadness ahead and asked what she might be doing after the funeral, they’d met the Rat, and that was the end of the night.
I’ll probably be close behind her when she climbs into the plane.
Footnote by Athol Pine - I considered redacting this and previous lecherous comments out of decency. However, I believe they highlight certain character flaws that are germane to the author’s motivations and general conduct. Few women are described in the Journal without decent moral turpitude.
It is relevant to point out that Levague has been formally reported to the Anthropological Federation’s Ethics Committee at least a dozen times, and his file is large enough to require an index (with subject headings: Inappropriate and Lewd Conduct, Drugs and Alcohol Complaints, Financial Irregularities and Other Official Corruption).
Sister Mary
Levague has written –
Sister Mary wears a wash of white: white laced shoes, white stockings, and a strangely well-starched short-sleeve, blindingly white nurse’s uniform that falls just above her thick knees and buttons up to the top of her breasts. Evidence that’s available only to the Rat leads him to conclude that the sister’s underwear is almost certainly similarly spotless.
There are small red crosses stitched in her uniform lapels, not Red Cross medical crosses but Roman crucifix torture devices. A large dark wooden one about four by two inches hangs from a thick silver chain around her neck and nestles on her chest, contrasting with the clinical white. I’m unsure if she’s a medical ‘sister’ or a nun disguised as a nurse.
She seems in her early twenties, a bit young for responsibility, and while her demeanor is reasonably self-assured and competent, I’m sure she has cerebral conceptualizing abilities similar to those of a lemming, and she appears insufferably cheerful and eager to confirm the assessment.
Chirp Kunmubilpilguru
Levague has written –
“What’s wrong with the kid?” I ask, wondering if he’s likely to freak out during the flight. “It’s a case of solvent abuse syndrome,” she replies matter-of-factly.
I just hope he’s in control of his bladder and bowels for the next three hours.
I put my arm around his slumped shoulders, and he straightens a bit, raising his head slightly. I don’t force him to look at me - there’s probably no one home - but I speak into his ear using the dialect of Yolngu lingo for his country. “Watch out for that white woman’s ‘cross’ nephew,” I say, using the specific kinship term for the younger sister’s oldest son.
“In the woman’s Dreaming, her crucifix means death.” I continue softly, whispering, “Sister Mary and her Catholic mob eat the body of a dead man hanging from the cross they call Jesus …and they drink his blood.”
Dr. Jacques Levague
Prof. Athol Pine has written –
He has become a conceited and argumentative social curmudgeon; a transformation from an empathetic to a misanthropic anthropologist is apparent. He has externalised causality in his life and noted once that ‘One person can make a difference, but it’s not me, and if you only listen to one bozo, you’re just as much a bonehead.’
Some of Levague’s comments and observations in AM are regrettable and will be considered insulting by a wide range of groups and individuals. Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Pentecostalists, as well as Armanistanis, Australians, Berbers, Brazilians, the Dutch, the Edo Tribe of the Amazon, Germans, the Kunmubilpilguru Aboriginal Clan of the Northern Territory, Mexicans, and residents of Alice Springs, may find some AM entries particularly disturbing.