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Fibber Exclusive : Read the first few chapters of Salman Rushdie's
Next to the Vulcano: a guide to pregnant women
Introduction
At times in life the human male encounters situations,
which confound, astonish and terrify the soul. Filling out your
first tax return, liberating countries whose people had no idea
that cable TV is a human right, attempting to read Joyce's Ulysses,
making sense of the big bang, being chased by your neighbour's attack
poodle, solving the clitoris enigma, or finding a thesis topic that
is of interest to more than two people on the planet come to mind.
To the faint of heart, this short list is cause for a slight shutter;
a brave soul might shrug and then get on with these tasks. Yet,
braves and cowards alike will be shaken to the core when confronted
by the puzzle that is wrapped in an enigma, hidden under a mystery
and entwined in primer cord: the pregnant human female.
Anyone who has faced this creature quickly realises that behind
every conqueror stands a pregnant woman. Human history must be viewed
in a new light. Alexander the Great's pummelling of the Persians?
A ploy to leave home for a few years. Attila the Hun's promenade
through Europe? A mere excuse to get a good night's sleep. The list
is virtually endless. From Angincourt to the Zulu wars, from Scott's
polar expeditions to the Buddha's sojourn under a tree: all the
great feats that the human males ever undertook should not be interpreted
as acts of bravery or as a quest for wisdom, but, instead are rooted
in the deep cowardice that the female of the species can instil
in the bravest of warriors once one of her eggs decides that company
is needed. Nobility is thus not a trait found in of those who fought
and conquered, but instead it is nestled in the hearts of men that
never left at all.
An army needs a manual to tell it to attack buddys "A"
in positions "B" using weapons "C", or vice
versa. Similarly, the stay at home warrior needs tactical information
in order to survive his nine-month tour of duty unscathed. What
follows are some basic tenets of modern day wombfare. Far from exhaustive,
the instructions are meant as a starting point to be adapted, revised,
then adapted again, only to be thrown out in the midst of battle,
when the reader will realise that there is actually no way to get
out of there with one's hiney intact.
The Trumpets of Jericho:
At some point during the nine-month that it takes
to incubate a member of our species, you will notice a strange transformation
occurring. Be aware that there is little warning. One night your
fall asleep to the quiet rhythm of your partners breath, when all
of a sudden you wake up to a cacophony that can only be approximated
by camping in the middle of a herd of mating walruses that is hosting
a Harley Davidson convention. Sleep becomes as impossible as having
a snort at a Mormon convention, for the decibel level of your partner's
snoring falls somewhere between the roar of a defective fighter
jet, and the sound a politician makes when asked to undergo a lie
detector test.
Under no circumstances should get up and set up
permanent camp in another part of the house: this would be interpreted
as desertion and punished accordingly. The wise tactical move is
to a) leave all the bedding intact, simulating a common sleeping
quarter, followed by b) the establishment of a stealth camp hidden
a few rooms away. After making sure that your little bagpipe is
soundly asleep, utilised your secondary camp and when confronted
the next morning, explain that you simply did to want to wake her
up. The alternate method is to sneak out in the middle of the night,
crawl to your emergency camp, then return in the morning, a laborious
process fraught with the danger of discovery.
The Book:
The phenomenon of the book starts the moment your
partner suspects that she will have little use for tampons in the
next few months. Be she a philosopher, a devout Muslim, an Oprah
devotee or a librarian, the results are the same. For the period
of her pregnancy the only reading material of any consequence, is
the book. Although it has many authors and comes in a wide variety
of titles and pastel colours, its content is universal, in that
the tome in question it is bereft of any facts not connected to
pregnancy.
Archaeological evidence shows that the book has
been around in one form or another for many thousands of years.
Cleopatra, for example, had a copy engraved on the walls of her
bedroom. Haida women had a book canoe, a finely crafted vessel that
was read continuously whilst fishing. Whether they managed to drag
it to their sleeping quarters at night to study it by the light
of the evening fire remains a point of contention. A Viking version
of the book carved into a series of skulls was recently found in
Iceland, and some archaeologist even speculate that the great library
of Alexandria was started by men who wanted to read something that
did not have the word "uterus' in it.
Be forewarned that although the content of the book
is about as exiting as an accounting manual, you will be expected
to read great swaths of it. Any attempt at playing book refusnik
will not be tolerated for long. In any case, since your bulging
beauty will quote from it on an hourly basis, you will become familiar
with its prose, unless of course you have the good fortune of being
temporarily deafened by a small explosion.
The best tactical advice is as follows: skim the
book, by reading every page furtively. Memorize a couple of key
words, then belt them out on a regular basis whilst nodding knowingly.
Note that the same term must not be used in succession for it will
arouse suspicion: you can not get away muttering " Braxton-Hicks
Contraction" ten times in a row without being shown up as a
fraud. Terminology should also be relevant to the stage of pregnancy,
since starting to babble about the "Placenta Previa" in
month three (should use the term "The height of the Fundus"
at that stage) instead of month seven will result in a sharp rebuke
and you will be made to re-read the entire oeuvre.
Finally, you must be aware the book must never be disparaged or
downplayed. If you are an adrenaline junkie, I would encourage you
to go out and burn an American flag at an NRA convention, or to
go to Iran wearing only a thong, rather than to utter some nonsense
about the remote possibility that the book might contain one or
two factual flaws. Calling it a "boring bunch of alarmist fluff"
will save you the expense of having your vasectomy done at a proper
clinic.
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Just when you thought that
your life could not get worse, a Jehovah's witness is shot to
death in front of your door. Bury the body in the backyard and
burn the left-over Watchtower magazines. As Yahoo's Horoscope
states: "this situation could, however, involve a lot of
adjustments, not to mention hard work" .Good luck.
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Your job will move to India.
So will your husband, your dog and your dentist. The good news
is that your dental coverage will expire, so you don't have
to worry about the last bit. Oh, and your love life will improve.
Cheers |
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Your will finally notice
that your child looks at lot like the plummer whom you hired
thirteen years ago. |
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Fire!! |
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That book you have been
meaning to write all your life: forget about it. This month,
you will realise that you simply don't have the talent to pull
it off. Don't fret about it: eventually, even Shakespeare's
stuff cannot survive the ever expanding universe |
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If you are Canadian, you
will be paying taxes this month. A chunk of them will be used
to study what exactly happened to the other chunk. It's all
for the good. If you are not Canadian, you must have pissed
off the gods at some point |
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You will join the Sheffield
Wednesday fan-club. I know that you are utterly familiar with
this fine soccer team, but since the stars have decreed that
it be so, there is bugger all that you can do about it. Look
for blue and white striped items of clothing, practice your
chants, and then go out and bash your New York Mets supporting
neighbour's head in. Remember: think like a hooligan and act
like one. |
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It turns out that your 'metrosexual'
husband is a homosexual after all. You should have guessed it
yourself, since even metrosexuals don't have a stash of "Hung
Hunks" laying around next to pile of slightly used hankies.
Fret not, for, the stars have another special surprise for you:
your father is about to join the Scientologists . |
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While you are surfing the
net for porn, your wife will secretly join a swingers club.
The worst part is, you don't notice a bloody thing except for
the fact that she actually looks happy for a change. Remember
though to "check and double-check any important figures
that cross your desk" (Yahoo Horoscope) |
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So what if your daughter
is pregnant. See it as a life affirming change, predestined
from the moment the universe sprang to life. The fact that you'll
be a grandmother at the ripe old age of 40 is just the star's
way of saying that it's time to put away those low-cut trousers
and start driving a big-assed Buick. |
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This could be the month
when you chuck it all and escape to live the bohemian life in
Greece… but it's not. Instead, you will mow your lawn,
ask your partner about his or her day and watch hour upon hour
of TV. |
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If you happen to live in
Equatorial Africa, chances are good that you and your neighbours
will be dead sooner rather than later. Because you are not white,
I'm afraid that no-one on this side of the Atlantic will give
a rat's ass. Better luck next time. Almost forgot: according
to Yahoo's Horoscope "the office will survive just fine
without you". |
" I am who I am " declared
Bob Jones on Friday, April 15th 2004. " Me and the subway,
we've always had a thing".
And with this statement, my dear readers,
we can finally lay to rest one of the silliest terms to grace the
English language in recent years.
--- yours , in semantic devotion
The Fibber
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