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Patsy and the Pig Tree

Lynne Newnham

One taste of a Bacon Kip had been enough to get six-year-old Patsy Goldblatt into serious trouble. Whilst by no means her first time to face censure, it certainly set the tone for her future. Her mother had wept and made loud noises about hours of labour, years of raising such a mischievous child - such trials and tribulations.

"But they taste so good," explained Patsy.

"The Torah says no pork," said Mother.

And that, one would have thought, would be that.

But pork, it turns out, was to be Patsy's nemesis. It would get her into more trouble than she could possibly have imagined.

So that you understand where this story is going and can click to another story before things get utterly out of control I feel I must give you some forewarning. Dear reader, please be aware: given Patsy's general proclivity for behaving badly, there are some shocking and disturbing facts to be relayed in this story. Ones that might offend the more sensitive individuals among us. Switch off now if you are easily upset by sex, violence, bad language and the consumption of pork with wild, even crazed, abandon. This is a tale of dastardly deeds.

So it may have started with a Bacon Kip, but things were to become significantly more ominous during a family lunch at Patsy's home. Given that she was one of the littlest, and by far the noisiest and most disruptive, of the children, when Patsy was being quiet nobody bothered her much. They were generally relieved that she wasn't around being a pest and asking questions. Patsy asked far too many of those for anybody to feel terribly comfortable.

Nobody paid much attention to the fact that she was talking to the children next door. Or to the way in which food surreptitiously changed hands over the fence.

It was only when Alan Rabinowitz, a chubby and particularly obnoxious child, gave the shriek "Patsy's got pork!" that the grownups paid attention to the little girl. And not a good kind of attention, you understand. It was indeed a Ham and Cheese Sandwich. Great wedges of the stuff, between doorstop sizes of bread. It practically oozed. Her momsie was mortified. Such shame in front of the family! A child that liked pork! Who had ever heard of such a thing?

"Come here, young lady," said Dad.

"Oh crap," thought Patsy, shovelling the remainder of the sandwich in until she looked like a hamster as she walked over to her father. Everyone watched in silence as Dad took her to one side and tried to explain how the Universe worked.

"The Torah," he began, "specifies that the camel, the rock badger, the hare and the pig are not kosher. We cannot eat them. The very essence of being a Jew is obeying the Torah. Sometimes we don't understand why we have to do things and not do others, but we do as we are told."

"Who wants to eat a sodding rock-badger?"

There was a collective intake of breath at this unsuitable, indeed unsavoury, reply.

Casting about for a suitable punishment for his child that would not prove too disruptive for everyone else, while planning a series of brain (and mouth) cleansing sessions later, Dad's eyes alighted on a tree.

"Go over there, young lady, and stay under the fig tree until it's time for bed."

"Pig tree? What the f---?" Patsy said to herself and headed off towards it more out of curiosity than obedience. A pig tree?

While under that f(p)ig tree, Patsy developed some serious resentments against her parents, her faith, her God and her age. She swore a lot. Patsy knew and understood pretty much every swearword that a marine on board the USS Invader did. She used those words in context even at six years old. A kinder soul than I would have labelled her precocious.

Over the years Patsy spent a lot of time under the fig tree. Often for dietary related infringements, bad language and a generally Poor Attitude. After two years of paying great attention to the miniature fruit that grew, she realised it was just a fig tree. Not a piggy in sight to her great culinary disappointment. But the circumstances surrounding her initial introduction to the tree had planted a seed in Patsy's cunning and rather powerful mind.

It was under that f(p)ig tree that Patsy hatched a plan that would change the world. Well, that might be somewhat dramatic, but it certainly changed the eating habits of a great many nations. And, in my humble opinion, not for the better.

Patsy grew up smarter than most folk and learned to hide her borderline behaviour from people she knew would not approve. This was almost everyone in her early years. Who, let's face it, really wants to spend time with a Jewish nerdette who swears so often it seems like Tourettes Syndrome, and eats pork at every opportunity?

By and large, her genius made up for her sociopathic tendencies. Indeed, in certain university circles it is considered quite fashionable to behave the way Patsy did.

After many years of hard study, cigarettes, alcohol and kinky sex with anyone that would have it, Patsy was a fully-fledged Genetic Engineer. One with more bad habits than you can count on both hands - but still, she could put the letters MD GEp after her name and begin looking for funding to support her through her life's work.

It was not long before someone recognised the brilliance of her plan and gave her money to work with. It was not a great intellectual body, as one might think, but rather one of the pork producing companies in South Africa that saw the outrageous potential of her design. (This is not a story about how large corporations make obscene amounts of money from spurious and dubious products or services. Although, in case you were wondering how it turned out, the board members of the company were able to buy most of Eastern Europe from the profits in the first two years alone. This is a story about Patsy Goldblatt - a bad little girl who simply got worse.)

And so Patsy began work. She carefully assembled and analysed various fig trees from around the world. She was looking for the exact right size and shape: easy to pick from the branches, strong enough to hold the fruit. All of the concerns that any normal genetic meddler would pay close attention to.

Eventually she made some small changes to the DNA of a fig tree and spliced it with pig. As a mere chronicler of history I do not fully understand the details or the process, but I suspect they would put most of you into a somnolent state. The result, however, was startling. The tree produced medium-sized piglets twice a year in abundance. Small, pink, wriggling things would begin to grow and then be harvested and sold. Of course, this was no violation of the Torah or Koran or any other possible religious disenchantment with pork. These were, technically, vegetables. Of course there was debate. Global outrage. But people are intrinsically self-centred and everybody loves pork once they have had it. And so everyone got rich.

Patsy became more and more badly behaved. Simply because she could. Her sex life was notorious and she was spectacularly fond of using phrases like "makin' bacon" and "wanna pork?" when dealing with the opposite sex. She developed a bondage fetish and paid no attention to anyone who suggested it was an "issue" she should investigate with therapy. Despite loving being tied up and "porked" violently, Patsy had a problem with being tied down. Her favourite line when asked for a more committed relationship was, "I wouldn't want to risk endangering this cheap meaningless sex we have."

Patsy had a lot of sex and her language didn't improve. Her parents watched in shame as she "interfered with the workings of God and lived a life of debauchery".

Patsy did not care. She was wealthy and could do anything she liked. The company had started making Bonsai Pig Trees in Thailand and they looked set to take the world by storm. People would walk down the street and just buy a Pig-Popsicle - miniature pigs on a skewer. The fresher the better. The gentle grunting and squirming of the pigs was explained away by the marketing department as "perfectly natural involuntary movement. Even plants blow in the wind."

Life was going very well. Many people were very happy. Taste-buds sang with delight and new opportunities were looked at. Rock Badger Radishes were the latest topic of speculation. Patsy was doubtful, but had a new and intriguing lover who distracted her. An artist, whose real name I cannot use for fear of law suits. So let's just call him Martin until my lawyers come back to me on the technicalities of this.

One evening, Patsy and Martin were "making bacon" in her own private orchard of Pig Trees. He tied her up to the trunk of the largest and most heavily laden with fruit, said he was off for a cup of coffee, spanked her rump once and left. Patsy was delighted - the anticipation was most unnerving. She had always loved this kind of game. It is a generally erroneous cliché that women of power and wealth secretly like to be dominated and yet, for Patsy, this was true.

If one cared, which I don't, to dig any deeper, one might find a series of childhood traumas and punishments that led to this. The why is not important, however, although the facts of her sexual proclivity are essential to this tale.

And so now back to Patsy. She was feeling uncomfortable about Martin's absence. His absence had started to be too long. Fantasies of his rampant "pork-sword" ceased to hold attraction and she became fidgety and wretched. The light grew dim and the pig tree seemed to become a trap for her. The squirming, or as the spin doctors said, gently moving in the wind, pigs were not conducive to a peaceful frame of mind. Patsy determined to stop seeing Martin - this was just far too inconsiderate. Her mind was no longer in sex mode. She was irritable, restless and discontented.

So where was this errant young man? Truth be told, Martin had been totally side-tracked by a stick-insect thin photographic model with collagen lips he had met and had quite forgotten the foul-mouthed and filthy Patsy tied to her Pig Tree. Martin had the attention span of a gnat and far too great an interest in superficial beauty. He was easily distracted.

"Fancy a sausage?" was his pick-up line. He had spent quite some time with Patsy and a surprising number of women respond well to vulgarity.

Patsy awoke a few hours later, with hot breath on her ear and a nibbling on her toes. "Kinky, she thought - he brought a friend a long."

But, as you know from the general tone of this story, such a happy ending is simply not to be.

Alas for Patsy, the Pigs had discovered that humans can be quite appetising. Especially the little pink toes, fingers and knees. And so the little girl who ate pigs was, well, eaten by pigs. It was not slow and it was not pretty, so we shall draw a curtain over the ghastliness.

Her body was found the next morning surrounded by a tribe of bloated pigs snoring off their indulgences of the night before. The PR people for the corporation hushed it all up and Pig Tree sales continued to soar. So did the number of seemingly unfathomable disappearances of individuals who let the Pig Fruit ripen for too long and get too big. Bonsai sales increased and the diminutive trees were in almost every home.

But, remember dear reader, that these were mostly small pigs on very small trees and only in need of a nibble or two. Spontaneous Somnolent Digit Disappearance (SSDD) came into widespread use and, as you know, is a familiar occurrence today.

Lynne Newnham started life with a passion for stories and was reading at the age of three. The first six years of her working life were spent as a journalist and editor (which she does not advise as a career path for creative writers). Currently she runs a successful PR and communication agency. With two children and a loopy artist in Lynne's life, her sense of humour is well-developed and triggers for stories that need to be told are endless.

LitNet: 01 November 2005

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