Loose Living by Frank Moorhouse Read Free Book Online Page B

familiar, has the mooches , taons and aoutats , cousins of the moustiques. I’ve had scandalous trouble at family reunions back home with cousins. As with Mozart, I can never remember what the Bible says about cousins.
    At least they don’t have the African worm which breeds in the human eye and grows to ninety centimetres, which I had to deal with on my great treks there.
    Up in the pine forests, I fell in with some mountain folk and drank the strange wines of the Jura with these hoary men armed with shotguns, bandoliers of cartridges slung across their chests.
    As we sat around the camp fire, they spoke that special wisdom of the folk of the Jura. The direct earthy sense of their observations and the smell of burning pine wood cleared both my intelligence and my respiratory system, taking my mind back to the deepest origins of existence.
    Up there in the mountains they taught me another form of analysis which predates Lacan by centuries—the Forest Catechism of the Six Questions.
    â€˜By your answers you shall be known,’ the elder said.
    I admit that I shivered at his words but sat, humble and poised, awaiting the Questions.
    The first question was: You are on a path in the forest—how do you portray this path and where do you locate this path?
    I closed my eyes. They sat in silence around the fire. I heard the crackling of the burning wood.
    I replied that I saw the path as being through the Jura pine forests, I saw the time as now, but I saw the forest spreading for thousands of square miles in its original primeval state, alive with all its animals and birds, at the very centre of ancient Europe.
    I said that I saw my comrades back then as being of the same stock as those reclined around me now.
    At the mention of ‘my comrades’ they smiled and looked at each other. One stood and poked the fire. Another chuckled and drank from the wineskin, which he then passed to me.
    The elder spoke again: ‘The path divides three ways. Which fork do you take?’
    I pondered this and replied, ‘I choose the path least travelled.’
    He said, ‘That is the path straight ahead. Most people turn to the left or to the right.’
    The third question was: You come to the place of thorns. What do you do?
    I replied that I pushed on through the thorns. I said that in my country we have a saying, ‘He loves dancing well, he who dances among the thorns’.
    They all nodded at this.
    The elder then asked: ‘You come to a large épicéa log across your path, and then?’
    I thought for a moment and said that I would surely look over at the other side of this log before jumping or climbing over it. One did not move blindly in any forest.
    I said merrily that I would apply a ‘logistical’ solution to the Question of the Log. Or perhaps use ‘logarithms’.
    They stared at me blankly.
    They did not understand these puns. I took the opportunity to teach them both the use of logarithms and the military science of logistics.
    Upon hearing my explanations, they laughed heartily. They all slapped their calloused hands on their leather trousers in appreciation of my wit and learning.
    The fifth question was: You come across a bear?
    The mountain men looked at me closely as I prepared to answer. I said that from my experience in northern Canada I knew the nature of bears and the terror of bears. I had found that it was pointless to run from a bear and pointless also to climb a tree. The bear could outrun a human and could either shake you from the tree, climb into the tree or pull down the tree.
    There were knowing grunts from the Jura mountain men.
    I said that in the past I had found that throwing my rucksack to the bear was the best defence. Thebear would tear the rucksack apart and devour all that looked like food.
    Because of this, I always carried heavy-duty tranquillisers and strong sleeping tablets when in bear country, both for myself and for the bear.
    As the bear