Authors: Kenneth Cook
'He's
gotta be standing at the end,' said the younger man, sullenly, now
sounding worried.
'He'll
be standing. Come on, Ivan. Sink 'em.'
Ivan
was looking at the ten stubbies. You could see he was thinking by the
contortions of his face. You could almost hear him. The three men
were now the centre of a large circle that had formed as the concept
of the bizarre bet was grasped by the other drinkers. Money was
appearing from dusty pockets as side bets were laid. Ivan was still
thinking.
'Come
on, Ivan.' 'I want a hundred bucks,' said Ivan.
The
older man was shocked. 'What do you mean, you want a hundred bucks?'
'I
mean I want a hundred bucks.'
'Whaffor?'
'Drinking
the beer.'
'But
you're getting the beer free.'
'I
want a hundred bucks.'
Conversations
tend to be limited on the opal fields.
'You
can go to hell.' 'Right.'
Ivan
turned back to the bar and ordered another beer. The older man looked
at this disbelievingly. Ivan downed his beer. Obviously he intended
to stand by his position.
'All
right then,' said the older man desperately, 'if you drink all of the
hundred stubbies, I'll give you a hundred bucks.'
'A
hundred for trying,' returned Ivan, without even turning around.
'God
Almighty. What happens if you drink fifty beers and pack it in? Do I
still give you a hundred dollars?'
'A
hundred for trying,' said Ivan.
The
older man stared at the impossibly broad and unyielding back. You
could tell that he was thinking, struggling for a solution. 'Tell you
what,' he said finally, 'a hundred and fifty if you make it, nothing
if you don't. How's that?'
Ivan
was thinking. A long pause. 'All right,' he said, and reached for the
first stubby.
'Take
if off the top,' said the older man to his companion, which
presumably meant that the winner would have to pay Ivan's fee.
This
seemed reasonable to the younger man, but he was slow to make up his
mind. By the time he had nodded assent, Ivan had already drunk six
stubbies.
His
technique was impressive. He picked up one of the little squat
bottles in each hand and flicked the tops off with his thumbs. Most
men need a metal implement for this, but not Ivan
—
he
had thumbnails he could use as chisels. Then he raised his right
hand, threw back his head and poured the beer into his gaping mouth
all at once, the whole bottleful, one continuous little jet of beer
until the bottle was empty. Then he did the same with the bottle in
his left hand. Both bottles empty, he put them down neatly on the
counter and reached for two more.
There
are 375 millilitres of beer in each of these bottles. Legally, if you
drink three in an hour, you are too drunk to drive a motor car. One
hundred bottles would be 37 500 millilitres. The mathematics are
beyond me, but it must be a monumental weight of beer. I timed him.
It took just on eight seconds to empty a bottle, one second to put
the two bottles on the counter, one second to pick up two more, one
second to flip off the tops. He was swallowing a stubbie every eleven
seconds.
Swallowing's
not the word. There was no movement in his throat. He was just
pouring it straight down into his stomach. A stubbie every eleven
seconds. At that rate, he would be able to drink 100 in 1100
seconds
—
that's less than an
hour. But he couldn't keep that up. For obvious reasons; he'd burst,
for one.
I
wasn't the only man in the bar making these calculations. In the
great circle that now surrounded Ivan, men were looking at their
watches and counting. To save time the barman had put twenty cold
stubbies on the counter just as Ivan downed the tenth. Ivan didn't
pause. He was drinking, or working, as rhythmically as though he were
on an assembly line: pour down one bottle, pour down the next, both
bottles on the counter, pick up the next two, flip off the tops, pour
down one bottle, pour down the next.
The
only sound in the bar was the slap of the bottles on the counter and
the metallic rattle of the bottle tops hitting the floor. All the
drinkers were silent, watching in an almost religious awe, their own
glasses held unnoticed.
I
realised for the first time that the clock hanging above the bottles
at the back of the bar had a chime. It chimed six o'clock just as
Ivan finished his fortieth bottle of beer. As if it were a signal, he
slammed the two bottles on the bar and paused. The silence became
intense as everybody started leaning forward slightly, wondering. I
was convinced Ivan would drop dead.
Ivan
stood motionless, his hands on the bar, his body inclined slightly
forward. The pause lengthened, the silence deepened, if silence can
deepen. I could even hear the clock ticking. Suddenly, Ivan's back
muscles convulsed and a monumental belch erupted through the bar,
breaking the silence like a violent crack of thunder. I swear the
front rank of spectators reeled back. There was a burst of cheering
and laughing and clapping.
Ivan
reached for the next two bottles and was back to his rhythm again.
Forty-five bottles, fifty, fifty-five, sixty. The impossible was
being translated into reality in front of our eyes. Then came a piece
of virtuosity: Ivan flipped the tops off two bottles but instead of
raising his right hand, he raised both hands and poured the contents
of two bottles down his throat simultaneously. It took just eight
seconds. Seven hundred and fifty milligrams of beer in eight seconds
to join the flood that was already coursing through his stomach,
intestines, bloodstream.
Technically
he had to be dead. No human tissue could withstand an assault of
alcohol like that. Perhaps Ivan wasn't human; perhaps he had never
been alive. He had stopped again. He glanced around the circle of
spectators.
'Had
it, Ivan?' said one hopefully.
Ivan
ignored him.
He
looked to his principal, the older drinker. There was something he'd
forgotten, a condition in the contract that hadn't been spelled out.
'Time
out to leak?' he said, a little plaintively.
'Sure,
get going,' said his backer.
Ivan
was away from the bar for five minutes, which wasn't surprising. I
wondered whether he had regurgitated some of the beer, but this
didn't seem to occur to anybody else.
At
eighty bottles, Ivan stopped again. We waited expectantly for the
mighty belch, but it didn't come. He paused for about fifteen seconds
and then reached for two new bottles. But there was a change of pace.
The mighty fingernails fumbled slightly before the bottle tops flew
off. His movements were deliberate and ponderous. Once he missed his
aim and a jet of beer splashed on to his chin. I wondered whether
this counted as a whole bottle but nobody raised the point. He was
pausing each time he set down the bottles.
I
was aware that gently, almost whispering, the whole bar was counting:
'Eighty-five, eighty-six, eighty-seven, eighty-eight.' The count was
slowing as Ivan's drinking rate slowed. By now he was taking fifteen
seconds a bottle, then eighteen, nineteen. At ninety-five bottles,
Ivan stopped again, one half-f bottle in his left hand. He leaned
forward. We waited again for the belch, but there was no sound.
Ivan
shook his head from side to side. I saw his eyes. They had gone
completely white, like a blind man's.
Ivan
started to sway.
'Come
on, Ivan, into 'em, boy!'
Ivan's
massive body swung around in a slow circle, his feet still firmly on
the floor. But then he steadied himself and the giant hand was
raised. But this time he put the bottle to his lips. It did not go
down in one unbroken stream. He swallowed many times with great
effort. He put the bottle on the counter and reached for two more. He
couldn't get the tops off; the barman whipped them off for him.
Slowly, painfully, his eyeballs rolled deep into his head, his body
swaying in ever-increasing circles, Ivan drank each bottle.
'Ninety-nine!'
It was a roar.
Then
Ivan drank the ninety-ninth bottle. By then he was spinning quickly,
inclining his body at an impossible angle. Only the weight and size
of his legs can have kept him upright.
Somebody
had to put the hundredth bottle into his hand. Obviously he couldn't
see it, or anything else for that matter, but somehow his hand found
his gyrating head and he got the bottle to his lips.
Down
went the beer, slowly, terribly slowly. But down it went, all of it.
'One
hundred!' It was a mighty animal scream. The empty bottle crashed to
the floor. Ivan had drunk one hundred stubbies in just under an hour.
Three
or four men tried to stop Ivan spinning and there was a general
hubbub as bets were settled and fresh drinks ordered. Then Ivan
brought instant silence with a vast bellow.
'Vodka!'
he shouted.
The
word, as much as the level of Ivan's thunderous voice, brought the
silence.
He
turned to the bar and thumped it.
'Vodka!'
Dazed,
the barman poured him a nip of vodka.
Ivan
brushed the glass off the bar with a sweep of his hand that
demolished half a dozen other drinkers' glasses as well.
'The
bottle!' he roared.
There
was silence.
Then
timidly, terrified in the presence of mystical greatness, the barman
put a bottle of vodka on the counter. It was open, but Ivan broke its
neck
on the bar in a ritual
gesture. Apparently he could see again, although his eyes were still
just blank white.
He
raised the vodka bottle until the jagged neck was a handspan from his
mouth, then poured a gush of the clear spirit down his throat. Half
the bottle gone, he slapped it down on the counter; it rolled on its
side and the vodka slopped onto the floor. Nobody noticed.
Arms
by his side, eyes pure white, body rigid, Ivan made for the door of
the bar. A quick passage cleared for him and he went through in a
stumbling rush, like a train through a forest. He crashed into the
swinging door, the bright flash of late sunlight illuminating his
huge frame, and plunged headfirst out into the street, hitting the
dust with a thud that seemed to shake the building. Just once his
head moved, and then he was a motionless heap of sweat-sodden
humanity in the dust.
'We'
d better get a truck to take the poor bastard home,' said somebody.
'Yeah.'
And two of the drinkers, kindly men, wandered off to organise the
truck.
'He's
forgotten his money,' said someone else.
'I'll
keep it for him,' said the barman. 'He'll be back in the morning.
Probably have a head.'
Vic the Snake Man
Vic the Snake Man is probably the only
man ever to survive being attacked by a python and a taipan in rapid
succession.
I
met him on the Butterfly Farm, a family picnic entertainment centre
on the banks of the Hawkesbury near Windsor, just out of Sydney. His
job was to look after the snakes on display and give lectures on them
to the farm patrons. I was doing some publicity work for the farm and
found both Vic and his snakes intriguing.
Vic
(I never did know his other name) was very tall, very thin and very
dirty. He had spare yellow hair and two or three yellow teeth that,
possibly by association, looked like fangs. He possessed only one
pair of trousers, which were very tattered, and allowed it to be
apparent that he wore no underwear. He also had a shirt with no
buttons and several holes, and the remnants of a pair of sandshoes
which he wore without socks.
He
seemed to eat nothing except patent headache powders and the handmade
cigarettes he held between two of his fangs until they disintegrated
or were swallowed. His voice was very nasal and he spoke very slowly.
His opaque yellow eyes were sunk deeply into his head, peering like
little animals from the grime-laden crevasses of his thin, craggy
face. He was never seen without a snake, usually poisonous, around
his neck and another two or three in his pockets, poking their heads
timidly out of the holes.
He
was so unprepossessing that he was fascinating, and his knowledge of
reptiles was formidable. His enthusiasm was so great that he
unaffectedly transmitted it to his audience. His strength was that if
you saw him you couldn't help staring at him and if you stared at him
you were captivated by the slow, drawling stream of information that
poured from him. Your attention was usually concentrated by the fact
that he was always brandishing some particularly deadly creature. Vic
loved snakes
—
deeply, purely
and passionately. I thought snakes loved him until the taipan bit
him. And that was just after the python tried to strangle him.
Perhaps it was just an off day for Vic.
He
had started his morning lecture session on a large wooden-railed
platform used for various demonstrations. As usual, scattered around
the platform were cloth bags of various sizes that wriggled and
bulged excitingly. Vic reached down into one large bag and pulled out
a huge North Queensland forest python. The thing was about six metres
long and had a heavy blunt black head as big as a large dog's. The
five hundred or so people in his audience sighed as metre after metre
of snake as thick as a man's thigh emerged from the bag and began
winding itself around Vic's legs.