6

Hilda was woken from her afternoon sleep by a sudden stampede of footsteps downstairs: the commotion of a crowd queuing for tickets on the ground floor of Hagenbeck’s home. She sat up quickly and reached across to the bedside table for her mother’s pendant watch, its gold hands now partly obscured by a mist of water captured on K’gari. She tilted the watch face and read that it was ten minutes past four. Her friends’ first performance would begin in less than half an hour, and she wondered why her father had not woken her. He had said she looked tired, but she hadn’t realised the extent of it or how good it would feel to once again sleep in a proper bed with fresh white sheets and a pillow stuffed with down. Herr Hagenbeck’s maid, Martha, had brought her a small meal of cheese, bread and ham and that was the last thing she remembered, that and the sublime sensation of being safe, warm and heavy, and the shame that Bonny, Dorondera and Jurano were instead in a hut at the back of the dusty thierpark grounds.

Hilda flicked back the bedcovers and went to the window, drawing back the white lace curtain to a full view of the thierpark, bathed in late afternoon light. People were spilling into the garden; some were already heading towards the Australneger enclosure. Hilda found herself smiling. It was a good afternoon for her friends to perform – not too cold or windy. She was excited and looked for them in vain from her vantage point. Nor could she see her father. Soon she would be standing beside him as his daughter and fellow traveller, although she suspected the idea of any real recognition flowing to her, a young woman, was as ludicrous as the notion that a horse and not its rider should be congratulated for winning a race. She waited, telling herself her father would come knocking any minute and inform her it was time to go downstairs together. Hilda imagined Hagenbeck leading the way for them, the crowd parting as they advanced towards the performance space. The thierpark owner had said the show would be in all the newspapers tomorrow. Perhaps a journalist was speaking to her father now, Hilda allowed. Perhaps that was why he was still not here. Hilda looked down at her crumpled dress, shut the curtains and quickly changed into her floor-length blue dress, a tan-coloured jacket and bonnet. Gloves. She slipped the pendant watch over her neck as she fed her feet into her boots.

She parted the curtain again and pushed open the window. Where was her father? Impatient to be amongst the activity, she forced herself to wait a few minutes more. Her father would be angry if he came to find her and she wasn’t here.

She continued to take in the scene. A crowd was gathering at the raised iron cage that housed the polar bears, spotlit by a low-angled sunbeam filtered through an elm. Hilda saw Herr Hagenbeck in his grey hat and dark suit, climbing the metal steps to a platform that jutted from the cage. She waved to him but he didn’t see. He removed his hat and waved it above his head until his audience fell silent. Then, holding the dented crown to his chest with one hand and gently stroking the curved felt brim with the other – as if the hat, too, were a living creature – he began. In a booming but unforced voice, he told the visitors that the animals in his care were trained by kind methods, never hot irons. Never heavy ankle chains.

‘Here, we believe in kindness over cruelty,’ he said. He pointed at the white bears. ‘Polar bears are expert hunters and highly intelligent. They deserve to be treated well. One day, when we expand the zoo, I will not even use enclosures.’

There were gasps of surprise and people shook their heads, which Hilda took to be disbelief rather than disrespect. It was clear Herr Hagenbeck was a celebrity in his home town.

A squeal drew Hilda’s attention, and she leaned out the window. Directly below, children were riding three Galapagos turtles on the small patch of lawn. A young girl looked up from atop a turtle and, seeing Hilda at the window, pointed as if she were an exhibit. Hilda took a step back, then, not wanting to seem ungenerous, raised her hand to wave, but the girl was already looking away. Two boys in sailor suits and hats, ribbons trailing down their backs, were running from the polar bear cage towards the bamboo huts where the Sinhalese families were seating themselves around a small fire, over which sat a large basin of water. A man wearing a grotesque mask and a shaggy costume began a dance, and Hilda guessed he was one of the devil dancers Hagenbeck had mentioned to her. The audience clapped enthusiastically, and Hilda looked again at the time: a quarter past four. She watched as a Sinhalese woman positioned herself, straight-backed, outside one of the huts. The woman wore a white cloth draped over her shoulder and a long skirt; her arms were heavy with silver jewellery. Silver rings glinted in her nose and ears, and a long ornate silver ‘v’ dripped from a comb positioned on top of her head, brilliant against her coal-black hair. Hilda had never seen such a beautiful woman; it was no wonder people were staring. The exotic woman’s infant fed at her one exposed breast, stretching the nipple to look back at the audience, who were standing just feet away. There was no barrier. The infant extended its hand to the crowd, and some of the children laughed and waved back. A boy in a neighbouring apartment house threw a saucer-sized pretzel into the grounds near the Sinhalese huts, and a dark-skinned boy wearing a web-like arrangement of shells across his chest picked it up and began to eat. What must it be like, Hilda wondered, for children to go to sleep with the sounds of tigers and polar bears? She noticed a German woman give a Sinhalese girl a small basket of fruit.

Fifty yards away in the back corner of the garden, behind a high stick fence, Jurano ventured from the doorway of the hut assigned to the Aboriginal group. The audience that had gathered on the other side of the fence cheered. Jurano went to a leaning arrangement of small branches and pieces of timber, which appeared to be the beginnings of another shelter, and tried to stabilise it, but from his body language Hilda could tell it was a lost cause. Alongside him, the two wallabies cowered under an elm, jumping at the stick fence every so often.

A young woman near the polar bear cage pointed to Jurano in his cut-off trousers covered with a loincloth. She tugged at the man beside her, perhaps her husband, to go there instead.

‘Ah, Fräulein, I see you have spotted one of our Australneger,’ Hagenbeck boomed. He moved his hands downwards in the air as a conductor instructs an orchestra to lower their volume. The crowd obediently hushed and Hagenbeck continued. ‘The natives are newly arrived, as you have no doubt heard. There is much excitement across all of Europe over their upcoming tour. Here at the thierpark, you are the first to see them!’ Someone gave a cheer. Hagenbeck went on, ‘You can approach, but I ask that you stand back when they demonstrate their weapons. They have strange contraptions called boomerangs and sharp spears, both of which they use to catch their meat and to defend themselves against enemies.’

‘Aren’t they the same thing, meat and enemies?’ a man called, lifting his top hat in appreciation when the audience laughed.

Hilda saw Hagenbeck shaking his head, but he failed to correct the man. She searched again for her father. If he was nearby, he would step forwards and correct the statement. But he did not.

Bonny was next out of the hut, also wearing short trousers overlaid with his loincloth. He appeared tall in comparison to the audience and had painted several white ochre stripes across his bare chest. Hilda felt a rush of pride and took a steadying breath. The audience would soon see for themselves what he was really like, what he was capable of. Bonny began to stretch his arms overhead and Hilda glanced again at her mother’s watch. The performance was due to start in ten minutes. She could not wait any longer. She quickly shut the window and drew closed the curtains before snatching her shawl from her suitcase and pulling the door to behind her.

She started down the stairs, conscious of the mounted reindeer head gazing at her from its hook on the high wall. She almost tipped a stuffed tiger cub from the chair where it sat on a landing halfway down. The wooden chair’s armrest was in the shape of a serpent, its tail extending down the seat’s sides into a lush, engraved garden where carved natives carried bowls of fruit. Only then did Hilda see that the line of people queuing through the ground floor of the residence were watching her. Perhaps they thought she was one of Hagenbeck’s children or a visiting cousin. She slowed her step.

The crowd let her through and she nodded to the man taking the tickets, who eyed her open jacket and trailing shoelaces, suggesting, without saying so, that she might like to dress herself properly before entering the thierpark. She squatted discreetly behind his ticket booth to tie her laces and stood again to button her jacket.

‘Have you seen my father?’ she asked the ticket seller, whom she had not met before. ‘Herr Müller?’

‘He’s over with the Australneger.’ The thierpark employee pointed to the time on the wall. ‘They are about to start.’ The men, women and children in the queue shifted their feet and muttered irritably at the delay.

‘Will they perform again tonight if we miss this show?’ an old woman called, and the crowd looked at the man selling the tickets.

‘Meine Damen und Herren,’ he began, ‘I will have to consult with Herr Hagenbeck. We did not expect quite so many people. Please just keep the line moving.’ He nodded at Hilda to hurry, and she flushed with the exhilaration of being so central to Europe’s sweeping interest in seeing people from far away.

Hilda was jostled from side to side as the audience drew into a tight pack outside the Australneger enclosure. Jurano and Bonny were using small axes to cut the timber it seemed had been provided to them to demonstrate hut building. Hagenbeck had said audiences were fascinated about ‘everyday tasks’. Dorondera was nervously looking out of the existing shelter’s open window, but Hilda could not attract her attention for the sea of people.

Finally, Hilda saw her father in the deep shade of the elm at the back of the enclosure. He was securing thick straw wadding and an apple to the tree trunk. Hilda waved her hand above her head and called out ‘Papa’, but he didn’t appear to hear. She told herself not to be disappointed or angry for there would be plenty more shows. There would be more newspaper reports, too, as evidenced by the numerous framed clippings hanging on the walls of Hagenbeck’s home. A young man of Hilda’s age smiled, and she smiled widely back. She was about to tell him who she was when Hagenbeck held up his hand to begin.

‘May I introduce Herr Louis Müller,’ the showman announced, holding out his hand to Hilda’s father, who walked to the showman’s side and bowed deeply beside a sign that read Die Australneger aus Queensland. Hilda had never seen her father bow like that. Following Hagenbeck’s lead, Louis held his hand high, acknowledging the large crowd. Hilda waited for her father to ask if she was in the audience, but he did not. He must assume I am still sleeping, she thought. Had he knocked on her door earlier and she hadn’t heard him? He always worried when she was overly tired that she might become sick, just as Christel had. Hilda raised her hand again but with so many people, including children on their fathers’ shoulders, Louis still did not see.

‘It is to Herr Müller that we owe our thanks,’ Hagenbeck continued. ‘He transported the Australneger to Germany for our education and viewing pleasure. He speaks their language.’

Hilda drew back and could again feel her cheeks flushing. Her father was still far from fluent in Badtjala.

‘These fat people have come to see you,’ Louis began, mistaking the Badtjala word for ‘fortunate’ or ‘lucky’ for their word for ‘fat’. Hilda almost laughed but felt a rush of sympathy for her father, expecting him to be ridiculed in front of his first audience, yet Bonny and Jurano maintained their composure, perhaps seeing her father’s comment as a statement of fact.

Her father continued, ‘They want to see you throw your spears –’

Bonny immediately extracted his spear from the dirt.

‘Wait, Bonny!’ Louis shouted in Badtjala, and many in the audience stepped backwards, as if fearing a confrontation. The woman in front of Hilda stepped on Hilda’s toes with the heel of her boot but did not apologise. Hilda’s father held up his hand to placate the mob, and Hilda saw Hagenbeck quietly smiling. The showman was delivering on his promise of a presentation that was exotic and wild, yet it seemed to Hilda the audience would believe whatever they were told.

‘I say when you throw. Yes?’ Louis asked Bonny. Louis planted the spear firmly into the ground. ‘Then Herr Hagenbeck gives you good food.’

Bonny and Jurano glanced at each another, amused. Some of the elders on K’gari had warned that going to the white strangers’ land, where food was brought to your door and there was no need to hunt, would make them lazy and fat.

‘And the fat people give us money?’ Bonny asked.

‘Yes.’ Louis smiled at them. ‘They give me. I give you.’

‘Or …’ Bonny held his fist threateningly over Louis, playing along as a joke, yet the crowd again gasped. Hilda suspected Bonny was as surprised as she was by their gullibility. She longed to meet his eye and share the joke. Instead, it was Jurano who laughed.

‘Are they ready, Herr Müller?’ Hagenbeck asked in German and Bonny nodded without the need for a translation. Hagenbeck’s brow furrowed as his eyes scanned the crowd, but the slip appeared to have gone unnoticed.

Louis extracted the spears from the dirt and handed them to the Aboriginal men. Hilda watched as fathers and mothers protectively took hold of their children.

‘There’s nothing to be afraid of,’ Hilda whispered to the people nearest her, but they laughed as if she were just a foolish girl.

Bonny, however, appeared to enjoy the audience’s unease. He had their attention, and he would show them what he was capable of.

‘Go, Bonny!’ Louis ordered, pointing at the tree.

But Bonny, spear in hand, was in no hurry and walked away from the elm, right to the perimeter fence, parading himself. He held his spear over his head and told the crowd, loudly in Badtjala, to watch closely. He said, ‘Ganay ngadju dhing’kanj.’ I will throw a spear.

He continued, ‘I am a Badtjala man and learned this when I was just a boy.’

If someone in the crowd had wanted to touch him, they needed only reach out a hand. Instead, Bonny did a mock throw towards them, and the audience shielded their faces with folded arms and moved further back. Hilda saw Bonny’s shoulders shake with amusement. He was playing with them. It was hilarious, a comedy not a drama. Still, he had to be careful, she considered. The German public would not react well if people realised he was making buffoons of them. He rubbed his arms to get the blood flowing and shook out his legs. Show them how well you throw, Hilda thought. They will be amazed.

‘This way, Bonny,’ Louis called again, concerned, perhaps, that he had not communicated his request clearly, but Bonny was a master of dramatic tension, as well as of spear throwing.

‘Don’t worry,’ Bonny answered in Badtjala.

He walked slowly along the fenceline allowing the crowd to study him, his back as straight as Hilda had ever seen it. A boy reached between the crooked sticks at the base of the fence and touched Bonny’s foot. Bonny laughed, before again assuming a serious expression and a warrior stance. What did he make of them, the people looking on, Hilda wondered.

A woman asked the man beside her if he thought they were safe, her finger smoothing her arranged, long blonde hair as her eyes examined the scars on Bonny’s chest. Bonny was taller and more muscular than her husband. When Bonny smiled in the young woman’s direction, Hilda felt a stab of envy.

Bonny turned to face the tree and held the spear over his shoulder, the long triangle of muscle that ran down either side of his back flexing and moving against his ribs. He cried out and took a series of quick running leaps before throwing the weapon directly at the tree. The spear struck the apple, which miraculously remained pinned to the tree without splitting, and the crowd whooped. Bonny turned and bowed in the way he had seen the crew do on the Wilhelm when they received applause for their ditties. Hilda imagined he felt he had reached them now, that they recognised him as a fellow human, a powerful man of ability. He had brought them joy and shared with them something they had never seen before.

‘Very good,’ Louis said in Badtjala, relaxing his shoulders and grinning. ‘Now, Jurano.’

Jurano followed Bonny’s example and walked to the fence but stopped slightly further from the audience. He turned and without any theatrics ran towards the tree and cast his spear, splitting the apple and knocking Bonny’s spear from the straw wadding. The crowd erupted into applause and roars of elation.

Hilda clapped her hands, delighted.

‘Good throw, Jurano!’ she called in Badtjala but only the young man beside her heard. He stared at her bemused.

‘Oooh,’ Hagenbeck incited along with the audience, raising his arms to animate the crowd further. He jogged to Louis and quietly said something.

‘Herr Hagenbeck wants you show people fight,’ Hilda’s father said uneasily in Badtjala.

‘We do not have our nulla-nulla,’ Bonny said. ‘Where is it?’

‘Use the bar’gan. Pretend. They want see you strong. Pretend angry.’ He pointed back and forth between the two of them. ‘Jurano angry Bonny. Bonny angry Jurano.’

Bonny laughed.

‘No. You angry, Bonny!’ Louis said more severely than Hilda thought was warranted. ‘Show them.’

Bonny faced his friend and growled, but Hilda could see the humour still in his eye and could hear the suppressed laughter in his voice.

Louis handed them a boomerang each.

Bonny rubbed his forehead and reluctantly agreed. He stood apart from Jurano and called out to him that he was an ugly fool with a small penis. Hilda, shocked, laughed once to herself and again her young neighbour regarded her curiously.

‘You are not afraid?’ he whispered.

‘No,’ she shook her head, her hand across her mouth now to hide her grin. ‘I am not afraid. Actually, I –’

‘At least mine is straight!’ Jurano challenged. He held a bent finger at Bonny.

Hilda gasped behind her gloved hand. Still, to her astonishment, the audience seemed persuaded that the dispute was genuine, even frightening.

Her father was standing at the door to the hut, talking to Dorondera. He appeared to be trying to coax her out. Hilda tried to step forwards, but it was impossible. When Dorondera finally emerged, she startled as the horde’s full attention swung to her. A chill moved through Hilda, and she tried more forcefully to step forwards, to go to her friend, but the woman in front of her glared.

‘We paid to see them, too,’ the woman said.

‘Actually, I –’ Hilda began again.

Bonny lunged at Jurano, who was distracted by Dorondera’s presence, striking him on the back with the edge of the boomerang. It must have hurt more than Bonny anticipated, for Jurano winced. The audience hollered, then went quiet. Jurano thrust out against his opponent and clipped him audibly on the shin. Bonny shut his eyes and held his leg.

‘Good,’ Louis called. ‘Very good.’

The crowd cheered.

‘Look, they are fighting over the girl,’ said the woman in front of Hilda, pointing at Dorondera with the sharp end of her umbrella.

‘No, it is because one was a better spear thrower than the other,’ corrected the man beside her.

‘Maybe both,’ contributed a third onlooker, a fat man with a heavy dusting of dandruff on his jacket collar. The group nodded, their eyes glued to the duel.

‘It’s pretend, let me assure you,’ Hilda said, leaning forwards. ‘They are friends.’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ the woman asserted, stamping her umbrella in the gravel without taking her eyes from the performance. ‘Look at their eyes, and their mouths. They mean it. I am grateful for the fence.’

‘She probably shares her bed with them,’ the fat man said. Hilda’s irritation turned to anger. ‘At the same time,’ the man wheezed. He reeked of beer, and the woman in front of Hilda, a wealthy woman, Hilda supposed from her hat and jewellery, clutched her throat where her gloved fingers patted a peach-coloured brooch that bore a raised image of the German Queen. It was similar to the brooch Hilda had seen the African fruit seller wearing at the market, although rimmed with gold, and it occurred to Hilda that it was a sign of the monarch’s success that she had earned the loyalty of people from such different walks of life.

Hilda held her mother’s pendant watch, hoping it might steady her. How dare the man speak of Dorondera like that?

It was almost five o’clock and still light, but Hilda felt a darkness come over the place. The distinctive copper-green dome of St Michaelis church glinted in the distance. Jurano went to strike Bonny another time, and Bonny cried out to use the flat surface instead, which Jurano did. Bonny drew back theatrically.

‘Have you had enough?’ Jurano asked. ‘Who will win?’

‘You, if you wish,’ Bonny said, striking Jurano’s thigh with the flat side of the boomerang.

Jurano hit Bonny intentionally with the hard edge again and shouted, ‘Now we are even. Go on then, lie down!’

Jurano had always had a temper and jokes quickly escalated into a fight. Bonny, taken aback by Jurano’s blow, lay on the ground, and Jurano held his boomerang high over his head, victorious. Hilda clapped along with the crowd but could see that real tensions had been unleashed between the pair.

Without instruction, Bonny stood and cast his bar’gan over the heads of the startled onlookers, who ducked in unison, their eyes and faces following the large arc that the weapon carved in the sky. Hilda thought of a field of sunflowers tracking the sun. The bar’gan returned to Bonny’s hand and the audience gushed their praise. People tried to count the number of turns. A dozen? More? This was better.

Bonny stood tall. Jurano, never to be outdone, threw his bar’gan, and the crowd cheered again as it made a similar flight path, setting into the air a flock of rooftop pigeons, which cooed noisily overhead. A cockatoo in a cage nearby called out in reply and an elephant trumpeted. One by one, the animals joined the cascading afternoon chorus. Monkeys in cages to Hilda’s left became raucous and a strange call, which she soon realised came from two lemurs, sprang up from a cage further down the side of the garden. Even the wallabies startled, but silently.

Jurano, his bar’gan again in his hand, made his way towards the hut. He embraced his niece in a square of shade cast by the shelter.

‘It must be his wife,’ said the fat man standing in front of Hilda.

‘No,’ Hilda began. ‘You have it wrong.’

‘Dorondera,’ Louis called. ‘You dance now?’

Dorondera came from the shadow of the hut into the middle of the dirt enclosure. She appeared bashful and modest in her possum-skin dress, which now boasted a red binding, courtesy, Hilda assumed, of Hagenbeck’s wife, who must have made the alteration while Hilda was sleeping. Dorondera’s strong, slender legs were bare, and her posture was hunched. Hilda’s father was attempting to reassure her, unsuccessfully. Hilda was aware now of a different kind of tension in the crowd.

All around her, people shamelessly eyed her friend from head to toe, while Dorondera gazed at the dirt at her feet. Bonny, perhaps reading Dorondera’s unease, started to sing, his voice strong and low and beautiful, and the audience stopped their mutterings to listen.

The hairs rose along Hilda’s arms and up to the nape of her neck. Jurano reached for Bonny’s bar’gan and beat it against his own – a steady rhythm – and, slowly, Dorondera began to dance the story of the making of K’gari. Hilda mouthed the words quietly to herself and was almost at the end when she noticed the young man beside her again staring. She raised her eyebrows at him but did not answer. Dorondera danced and thumped the dirt, finishing, as Princess K’gari did, by lying down to sleep.

‘She is asking for it now,’ said the fat man who smelled of beer. He wiped his lip. ‘See? I was right.’

‘No, you are quite wrong,’ Hilda said to his back. She saw his shoulders jiggle with laughter, but he didn’t turn around.

Dorondera stood, still looking down, and the audience, particularly the men, applauded loudly.

‘The bon’da’ban, Jurano,’ Louis said. ‘Show them, please.’

‘It is for ceremonies.’

‘Just to show them. No need to tell ceremony. They just want see.’

‘No.’ Jurano crossed the gravel yard to the hut and went inside.

Hagenbeck coughed. ‘I am sure you agree we have been fortunate to have been treated to such a rare display, a true copy of life in nature,’ he said. ‘The Australneger are soon going to enjoy their dinner. They are ravenous, no doubt. You are welcome to come back a little later to observe their mealtime, and while you wait …’ He pointed to the Sinhalese camp, a village in miniature. ‘Another presentation is due to start. A snake charmer and yogi will perform to music. This way.’ He extended his hand.

Hilda was dismayed by the news that her friends would be watched while they ate and was now pleased that she had not been standing at the front with her father and Herr Hagenbeck when that was announced. All she wanted to do was go to her friends.

‘Are you going to watch the next show?’ asked the young man at her side. ‘Is it good? You have clearly been here before … although I thought this was their first performance?’

‘They are my friends,’ she said. The young man’s mouth dropped open as she moved to the fence, opening the gate to the enclosure.

‘Hilda!’ her father called. He had been talking with some expensively dressed patrons. ‘Hilda!’ he called again, more sternly. He appeared surprised to see her. ‘Come and meet these fine people.’

Hilda kept walking, and, catching Bonny’s eye, waved at him. She called back to her father, ‘I want to see them. To congratulate –’

‘Later,’ he said. ‘Do not disturb them now. They are about to eat. They are hungry.’ He switched to Badtjala. ‘And we need to keep some distance.’

Hilda was perplexed by the comment but stopped walking as Hagenbeck approached and placed his hand on her shoulder. He steered her out of the enclosure. She looked across to the elephants, tied together in a long row so that people could feed them if they desired.

‘You can see your friends afterwards,’ the showman told her. ‘Otherwise everyone will want to follow you inside. They’ll get no peace.’

Hilda bit her tongue. She disbelieved the man’s reasoning, but it was not the time to argue.

‘What happened to the other elephants?’ she asked him. ‘You never finished the story.’

The showman sighed lengthily. ‘They were exhausted from the long journey, much of it by rail. It made them vulnerable.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘To the rats.’ He lifted his hand and let it fall again onto her shoulder. ‘It was very, very sad.’ Hilda shook her head, still confused. Hagenbeck explained, ‘They went for the feet. I have never seen so much blood.’

Hilda tried to hide her shock. Being strong and brave were qualities she had been encouraged to foster on K’gari, but she could not block from her mind the image of the elephants’ bleeding feet. She kept her chin high so the tears didn’t fall from her eyes.

20 May 1882

How could Papa not have invited me to join him today? Poor Dorondera would have been more comfortable, I am certain, if I had been there. I passed Martha on my way back to the house and saw the dishes with rusks and meat that she was to take to the enclosure at the back of the thierpark. I will not be surprised if I hear later that half the meals had been left on the plates.

It shames me to say so, but Papa already seems different here in the company of Herr Hagenbeck, and I want to tell him that he makes a better impression when he is in his ‘natural state’, too. When he is not holding his chin so high in his stiff city clothes and assuming a false air. I don’t imagine it will last. He is nervous and trying to hide his anxieties, but given that ‘authentic’ is a favourite word of Herr Hagenbeck’s, I fear the showman will quickly see through my father’s façade for what it really is: an act.

Papa asks that I am brave. Well, I ask the same of him. He should speak his mind and not be a puppet of the men holding the purse strings, for it is my suspicion there will be many of them, and if we jump whenever each of them asks us to, we will tire quickly.