“The Ballad of Pip and Poop” by Zireaux
I can think of no other way to explain it; and yet without such an explanation, the story I’m about to tell, while familiar to many, will seem to others nothing short of inconceivable.
Metamorphosis, of course, is a form of travel. A travel through time. And travel can be fast or slow – which perhaps accounts for why this story, “The Ballad of Pip and Poop,” begins in Sydney’s International Airport, where every day some tens of thousands of passengers are transferred and transposed at speeds, and across distances, for which our evolution has failed to prepare us.
One such traveler was Mr. P. Gardienne. It was the morning hours of January 9th, 2011. His final destination, in fact, was Australia’s capital, Canberra – a destination he might never have reached if it wasn’t for Gopal the taxi driver waiting in the airport’s arrival hall; or for that matter, if Spit the Scribner hadn’t written the large white card that was pinned to Mr. Gardienne’s lapel when he, Gardienne, with sweat like gelatin in his thick mustache, finally emerged through customs.
Two cameramen and a midget with a boom-mike were following close behind the bewildered passenger. The arrivals hall was outside the boundary of their business; yet how could they resist pursuing this agitated twig of a fellow in an ill-fitting, silky gold, three-piece suit, silver tie, pointy polished shoes, a small leather tote-bag over his shoulder and – as if he were a piece of check-on luggage – that labeled lapel.
“Is he a relative of yours?” they asked the portly taxi driver.
But Gopal, having seen the white card, was already steering his spindly consignment away from the commotion (“please, please this way”), and the hyena film crew went skulking back to its den, to feast on another weakling from the arriving herd.
Gopal looked down at Gardienne’s oil-splotched leather tote.
“This it? This all you got?”
The shaken Gardienne, dabbing his forehead with a purple handkerchief, struggled for words, but spoke bravely: “Sorry to disappoint you, good fellow. I’d heard about the limpness of your loins, your wife’s despair. I brought a dozen frog scrotums as curative. I begged. I threatened. But apart from a million toykers, my tickets, my passport, Foofoo’s Famous Field Guide and my memories of mother, they took everything, I’m afraid. Everything.”
Gopal had a chance now to look more closely at Gardienne, to read in its entirety the big white card with its fancy filigreed script that was pinned to the man’s lapel:
MISTER P. P. P. GARDIENNE
BSC, M.PHIL, PH.D, R-TRIPLE-B TRIPLE-C,
ORDER OF THE MYNA, NUBILE LOREATE (NOMINEE)
C/O HER PRIME MINSTRELESS MADAM MISS JULYA GIZZARD
Biting his lip, looking around nervously, the hefty taxi driver gave a sharp tug to the curious tag and stuffed it into his pants pocket. “Lets’ go” – but rather than head toward his taxi, Gopal escorted his passenger to the bus terminal, exactly as instructed on Facebook by an academic cousin of his dim-witted brother-in-law’s sexy wife. Outside a yawning sun was cooking up a breakfast that smelled of cigarette smoke, car fumes and, for the few people gathered around the bus stop, the oily smell of the sea.
“Do not let him out of your sight,” Gopal instructed the ticket collector. He then turned to Gardienne, gently took the fellow’s bird-claw hand and spoke slowly, even haltingly, having forgotten so many words in his native tongue:
“Stay here. When the bus arrives, you board the bus. Three hours to Canberra. Mrs. Gypsy or Tipsy-something, I forget her name. A woman will meet you at the station.”
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