Pepsi Bears and Other Stories by Anson Cameron Page A

Australians is stilted with their five sets of ears listening. To lighten the air Chris decides to tell the turtle soup joke he heard from a Jesuit accountant in Wollongong. ‘You boys can listen in,’ he tells the Red Guards of the Nicaraguan Liberation, knowing they can’t. ‘It’sfunny. It’s a funny joke.’ He puts his hand flat on his belly and mimes laughter. ‘You remember Russ Hinze? Well … you boys wouldn’t, but, anyway, a great big fat pollie. A minister in Joh Bjelke’s hillbilly government. Enormous dude.’
    He turns then and begins to tell the joke to his sister and friend. ‘So, anyway, one time his chauffeur drives Russ down to Sydney for a big conference of politicians and Russ checks into the Hilton and he’s feeling a bit peckish, like always, so he rings room service and says he’d like a bowl of turtle soup sent up, which is a favourite of his. He waits quarter-of-an-hour. No soup. Waits half-an-hour. No soup. And big Russ isn’t a dude who likes to be kept waiting, you know. He says “jump” and people Fosbury flop all over the shop. So he sends his chauffeur down to the kitchen to see what the hell’s going on.
    â€˜This chauffeur is really his secretary and manservant and everything, you know, but we’ll just call him a chauffeur. So, the chauffeur bursts into the kitchen at the Hilton. “What the hell’s goin’ on here?” he asks. “Big Russ Hinze is up there waiting for his turtle soup.” And he sees this French chef guy, tall hat and all, with a turtle up on the bench and a cleaver raised over it. “Eez not possible,” says the Frenchy. He’s crying, at his wits’ end, dabbing at his eyes with his apron. “I cannot kill zis turtle. Every time I raise zee cleaver to chop off his head he pull it into zee shell.” “Here, give us a go,” says Russ’ chauffeur. And he takes the cleaver in one hand and with the other he jams a finger right up the turtle’sarse. The turtle thrusts its head out of its shell all popeyed with surprise and the chauffeur brings the cleaver down, wham , and voila, the turtle’s history. Decapitated. Well the French chef, he’s in raptures. “Oh, sank you, sir. Sank you. You are the genius, sir. A master chef of the marine creature. You have made much turtle soup in your life, yes?” “Never made any turtle soup at all, mate,” the chauffeur says. “But, sir, it must be that you have made turtle soup before. How else do you have zee technique?” The chauffeur shrugs his shoulders. “How do you reckon I get Russ’ tie on in the morning?”’
    The three Australians laugh and when they are finished a soft voice asks from the darkness, ‘Did you tell this tale because our Great Leader Jorge Luis Enriquez is an obese man?’ From the darkness into the candlelight, the face of El Capitan Zambro of the Red Guards of Nicaraguan Liberation. An ugly, chiselled face covered in a craterscape of acne scars. ‘No. It was a joke,’ Chris tells this face.
    â€˜Did you tell it because of the mythic appetite and subsequent morphology of the Great Leader, my friend? Did you, perhaps, know of our Great Leader’s predilection for turtle soup?’
    â€˜No, dude. Hey, I didn’t even know turtles lived in Nicaragua.’
    â€˜Could it be …’ El Capitan Zambro leans further forward into the candlelight, ‘you were speaking of Jorge Luis Enriquez?’
    â€˜Hey, come on,’ Amelia chips in. ‘Presumably a revolutionary leader doesn’t wear a necktie, the trademarkgarment of the bourgeois capitalist.’ She smiles at the undeniable logic of her argument.
    â€˜A red cravat,’ El Capitan Zambro tells her. ‘Made from the silk shirt of a would-be assassin hired by the imperialist Satan United States to kill Fidel Castro. A well-known story. This