LIVING ON MARS

$5.40 – $15.00

Henry had one good eye until the surgeon lost its lens down some drain. He had a wife he could call his own until she started to shack up very noisily with some young turk Australian postgraduate in his (Henry’s) own home. He had a housekeeper until she left claiming he had confessed to some unspeakable crime in the past. He had this itch which his new housekeeper – his wife’s cousin – could keep in check with her very personal fingernails. He had a house full of valuable furniture until his new housekeeper’s husband came along and proceeded to clean him out.

What he couldn’t get rid of was his famous father’s specimen jars of Australian Aboriginal parts... an internationally acclaimed collection which no one, not even the housekeeper’s husband, wanted to rid him off. If only, with the specimen jars, the situation was as fate had conspired to rob him of his morning banana.

He also had his telephone. But he didn’t have his Australia anymore because he was stranded in Port Moresby. And, in Port Moresby, they were also going to gather off the street and come to get him because that is what is done. Still, he always had the driven-self of living on Mars, if only he could have gotten around to it.

APT