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James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 1

Apple Mash

Apple Mash

a moral fable

‘Thou whoresun tidy little Bartholomew boarpig.’ (Doll Tearsheet to Falstaff).

Once upon a time a sow gave birth to a litter of eight. The first seven piglets were robust enough children, whose sole interest lay in grunting in chorus and devouring their apple mash at breakfast, dinner and tea. But the last one was small and a bit poorly. What he lacked in stature, however, he made up for by an inquisitive and analytical turn of mind. As is often the case, his mother doted more on him than on the other seven put together. She named him Bartholomew, in memory of his father who had been made into bacon the year before.

As little Bartholomew grew in bulk and wisdom he took stock of his surroundings. The roomy pigyard in which he lived was bounded to the east by the sheds in which the pigs sheltered at night; to north and south by high stone walls; and to the west by a gate which was always barred except when the farmer’s men came in to sweep the yard or to dole out to the pigs the apple mash which was their sole diet.

‘Mama!’ squeaked Bartholomew one fine day. ‘Mama! What is there on the other side of that gate, and why is it always kept shut?’

The old sow gave a nervous squeal and dropped the piece of soggy mash she had been munching. ‘Oh, Barty!’ she cried. ‘Whoever have you been talking to? Nice piglets don’t ask such questions. If your poor dear father had been alive he would have explained it to you. All I can tell you is that there’s a dreadful, dreadful place called an orchard on the other side of the gate, and any pig who eats an apple from the trees will be very sick indeed. But you must go tomorrow and see Methuselah Boar. Tell him the Widow Sow sent you. He’s the best and wisest pig in the yard and he will tell you all that it’s proper to know.’ Widow Sow had begun to perspire with embarrassment and emotion.

Bartholomew, in the manner of children, said nothing: but his brain was working overtime.

That evening at dusk he squeezed under the gate (he was still very small for his age) and ventured along the track in to the orchard. The dark treespage 199 hung overhead. And from the green grass rose a strange, rich smell that made his little snout twitch. He turned and saw hundreds of great, ripe windfall apples lying in rows among the grass. I am afraid Bartholomew remembered his mother’s advice for approximately three seconds. One could say literally that he made a little hog of himself. After the fourteenth apple he raised his quivering snout and stretched himself blissfully. A sense of energy and well- being such as he had in his brief life never known was coursing through his pork. Electrical shivers ran down his spine. He imagined that he was a giant boar in the primeval jungle. It was emphatically, transcendentally, the best bit of apple he had ever tasted.

As he ambled stealthily back toward the sty he heard a rustle in the grass ahead of him. A great dark mass darted to the gate and disappeared. It was nearly night, but Bartholomew’s eyesight had always been acute. There was no doubt in his mind. Methuselah Boar, the custodian and exemplar of pig morality, had been in the orchard too! But when Bartholomew reached the gate there was no trace of him; only the snuffle of pigs going to sleep, with the occasional squeal of a sow bitten by an irritable neighbour.

That night Bartholomew had the worst bellyache in all his born days.

Next morning Bartholomew somewhat timidly approached the place on the south wall where Methuselah Boar was engaged in scratching his back on a projecting stone.

‘Reveren Sir!’ he squeaked, ‘The Widow Sow, that’s my mother, wants to know if you can tell me about the orch— what’s on the other side of the west gate, and why it’s always kept shut.’ The last few words came out in a shrill quaver.

Methuselah Boar finished his toilette before he answered Bartholomew. Then he gave such a savage glare that Bartholomew thought he was going to be bitten in two. It melted into a deadpan pious expression. ‘Well, son,’ he rumbled at last, ‘your mother did right to send you to me. My, you’re a fine sturdy piglet! The image of your dead father. But a bit small, a bit small – you must eat up all your apple mash. It’s the only way to become a strong, clean- living pig. But about your question. I’ll be frank with you, son – on the other side of the gate there’s an orchard. The apples there may look all right, but they’re rank poison – no pig who eats apples from the orchard can ever come to anything. I’ve lived a long time, and I’ve known pigs who did it – none of them friends of mine, mind you – and they all broke down physically, mentally and morally. A weedier, more stunted-looking lot of pigs you never saw! They got worms, went mad, and stank horribly. There’s a reason for it, of course. The Ancestor of all pigs lived with his family in a yard far bigger and better than ours. He had an orchard to root in too. All the apples were good for eating, except for one tree whose apples were poisonous. That one tree, for his own good, he was forbidden to touch. And what did that poor silly pig do? He ate the poisonous apples. And so the farmer put him in a sty and fedpage 200 him on mash made from the good apples. All the apples in the orchard come originally from the poisonous tree. I hope that you, for one, are never tempted to eat them. You know now why no self-respecting pig ever goes into the orchard and why the gate’s barred, as a warning. Well, son, if you ever have anything else that worries you, just come and ask me about it.’ Methuselah Boar gave Bartholomew a penetrating stare and lumbered off down the yard.

Bartholomew saw the way things stood. So he asked no further questions about the orchard, and visited it only at dusk, and sometimes before dawn. He soon found by experience which apples were edible and which were not. The fruit of some trees could be eaten only at full moon, and others only when the moon was waning. Some never upset his digestion; and some brought on vomiting and loose bowels. At the cost of a few belly-aches he learnt nearly all there was to know about the orchard. Gradually he found that as well as Methuselah Boar, most of the pigs in the yard visited the orchard from time to time, and that the most frequent visitors grew to be the largest, gruffest and most intelligent pigs – while those nourished mainly on mash were seedy, under-developed, and subject to skin disorders. There were some pigs, most of them sows, who had in fact never entered the orchard. These pigs were inclined to take fits, in which they would rush round the yard, snapping at their neighbours and frothing at the jaws. Publicly these fits were attributed to the effects of poisonous winds blowing from the orchard.

Though the majority of the pigs derived a great part of their nourishment from the orchard, no pig would admit to ever having been there, except in jokes – most pig humour consisted of saying, ‘I saw you in the orchard last night,’ and following this up with a great belly grunt. All the pigs combined, especially on public occasions, in extolling the health-giving virtues of apple mash. Any piglet who succeeded in swallowing more mash in a shorter time than his companions could do, was sure of approval from his elders, and might even as a high honour be given an extra piece of mash by Methuselah Boar himself. There were Mash Clubs for the younger pigs, and organisations of the hierarchy of the sty proceeded from the common belief that all good came from the mash and all evil from the orchard apples. Bartholomew became an active member of a Mash Club. He was increasing rapidly in size, and his tusks were growing longer. It was he who originated the mash initiation ceremonies, in which new members were dragged up and down a mash trough by their hind trotters and bitten on the ear by each older member present.

One morning Methuselah Boar emerged from the pig-sheds with a peculiarly ferocious and occupied air. Solemnly he mounted upon the mash- trough and addressed the assembled pigs, who fell neatly into regimental order.

‘Fellow pigs,’ he roared asthmatically. ‘I have mounted this platform for a melancholy reason. We all know that the strength, purity and progress ofpage 201 our community depends upon our adherence to one sacred principle – the joyful acceptance by each one of us of our beloved mash, and our universal abhorrence of orchard fruit. Yet one of your number (here his voice became hoarse with emotion) has betrayed a sacred trust. Were that unhappy pig’s health and integrity alone in danger, I would have spared that pig a public condemnation. But what is to become of our tradition of clean living, what is to become of the morals of our piglets, when one of our number, a pig, nay more, a sow has hidden orchard fruit in her sleeping quarters – though free as always to satisfy her appetite at the common mash-trough, has elected to pursue this abominable practice in our midst? I am forced to name her: Veronica Sow!’

The pigs turned to stare at the half-grown, pink-eared sow standing nervously on the outskirts of the group. Bartholomew, being quickwitted, was the first to act. With a noise like that of escaping steam, he rushed forward and bit her savagely on the ear and rump. The older sows were quick to follow his example. Veronica fled crying to the recesses of the sleeping shed.

From this time forward Methuselah Boar showed marked favour to Bartholomew. Little more than a year later Methuselah became decrepit and died. The funeral oration was given by Horatio Pig, one of the few male pigs who had never visited the orchard.

‘We have lost a leader, a counsellor and friend,’ he grunted shrilly, ‘but more, we have lost a boarpig whose moral calibre cannot be equalled in this decadent age. From infancy his adherence to the principles of Mash was compete and indisputable. By his consumption of mash he grew in stature and knowledge; by his example he has been a beacon of moral truth to those who follow after. We need have no doubt that in a better place than this he will consume mash from golden troughs for ever. . . .’ Horatio continued in this strain for half an hour. The pigs then struck up their common anthem – the last lines of which have a touching solemnity:

‘The rabble of the orchard,
At them our tusks we gnash
Who dare despise the holy
Delight of apple mash!’

Chorus: ‘Mash, mash forever!
No piglet should be rash.
And nothing in life shall sever
Our hearts from the apple mash!’

At the close of the anthem Horatio spoke again. ‘Beloved brother pigs,’ he grunted, ‘it is my pleasure to inform you that our departed leader, Methuselah Boar, in his dying moments named as his successor a pig, rather should I nowpage 202 say a Boar, whom we all honour and esteem – Bartholomew Boar!’

Bartholomew snorted gruffly but modestly. He became in later years even more severe and unapproachable than Methuselah had been; and his dying words were reported to be – ‘Let me at the mash!’

1954 (89)