This is a strange and terrible tale.
I have wanted to tell it for a while, but I felt the main character was not yet dead, so I could not tell it. I did not want to cause him any embarrassment because I loved him a great deal. So, I felt it best to wait until he was dead. And I hope he is, because I’m now writing this bastard, so if he’s still alive, I’m thinking he’d be too old to murder me.
After reading this piece, unkind souls might remark this was the absolute nadir of man-swine relationships. I would disagree. Indeed, the sheer emotional and fiscal costs incurred by all parties involved demonstrates quite the opposite. This, in fact, was an apogee in man-swine interactions.
I was fourteen when it happened and almost 16 when it ended. It began with death, death occurred while it was happening, and it ended, rightly, but also a little tragically, with some more death.
But among all that death there was great joy. Not a lot, but now and again in small and very civilised amounts. Did it balance itself all out? Hard to say. There are no rules in these things, and nothing is ever fair – in this life or the next, if there is one.
The hero of this tale is called Pane. That is pronounced “Pah-neh”, because he is Serbian and that is how his name is pronounced. Pane was a skilled engineer and a draughtsman, and he ran his own engineering company. He made good coin and lived with his wife and two young daughters in a very nice house overlooking the water in the Sydney suburb of Putney.
Nice suburb that. I’d lived there myself for a short time. I’d lived there with my best friend, Mark, in what was the worst house in the whole suburb. Which was fine by us, because we were hands down the worst people in that suburb and a few surrounding suburbs as well. Our awfulness was to be expected because we were starting to get seriously involved with an outlaw motorcycle club, so no-one liked us and we did not care. Our landlord, a nice young Italian bloke whose father had bought him this shitty house in a great suburb as an investment, was too scared to evict us. The one time he’d felt he should have a word, Mark said we would plant drugs in his car and call the cops if he kept paying attention to the neighbours’ complaints. It was an empty threat. We did not have near enough the drugs to waste planting on someone, and the only way we could have gotten into his car was by breaking a window, and that would have looked very suspicious when the cops came to investigate.
The house Mark and I lived was not all that far from where Pane’s house was. But by the time I was living in Putney, he was long gone. And you will soon understand why.
I met Pane when I was a few years younger than 14. It was on my very first hunting trip with my Serbian father and his Serbian war buddies. I wrote about that HERE if you have some need of context.
I liked Pane because he was kinder to me than my father and his friends. I think this was because Pane was in his thirties and my father and his mates were in their fifties. He spoke great English, was smart, funny, and had a lot of time for the wide-eyed tubby kid with glasses out on his first hunting trip. He stank like a corpse in a kimchi barrel, but that was because he ate pretty much nothing but onion, salted bacon fat, and chilli peppers, and farted endlessly.
Like my father and his friends, Pane was also an ex-soldier. He had done his two years national service in the Yugoslav Army, but since there had not been any wars at the time, he’d missed out on seeing what battle was all about. Consequently, he was not able to relate all that much to the half-a-dozen steel-eyed old Nazi-killers who made up my father’s hunting trips.
So, when they all got nostalgic and crazy and started singing the “old songs” with tears running down their faces, Pane would take me out and supervise my target practice. It’s not like he didn’t know the songs. Hell, I knew the songs and I was only eleven. All Serbs know those songs. We learn them via the mother’s milk we suckle on as babes. Thing is, those songs take on a different meaning for the actual soldiers who fought in the wars.
Anyway, by the time I was 14, I considered Pane a friend, even though he was way the hell older than me. But the older I got, the closer he and I got. I ended up being friends with him way into my early twenties. I even worked for him for a while as a draughtsman.
But after the terrible events of 1975 and 1976, he was never the same. And soon, you will know why.
That was the year we came across a wild sow with a new litter of piglets. We were hunting in the vast swamps and wetlands of the Macquarie Marshes, and the hunting there was always good. It was especially good that year.
All of us would take the pork we had killed and butchered back to our families. And Serbs, in case you didn’t know, love pork. My people are some of the greatest pig farmers on earth. We take our pigs very seriously. We even went to war with the hated Austro-Hungarians over our pigs in 1906. The vile proto-Nazis imposed a customs blockade on our little country. We therefore had to kill a bunch of them, and some nosey Bulgars, before they all came to their senses. It lasted for two years, and considering what came not long after that – the two Balkan wars and WWI – the Serbs have always felt they simply didn’t kill enough Austro-Hungarians back in 1906.
Anyway, someone shot this sow, and her piglets all ran around their mother, squealing. They were very young, and from what I understood by the enthusiasm with which I was yelled at, quite delicious. So, fuck my mother, I had best set about catching as many of them as I could. I caught one by falling on it. It was about the size of a silky terrier, but covered in very coarse black hair. It was also almost as strong as I was, and very vocal. I was laying on top of it, and it was kicking and squirming and squealing, and then it started to bite me.
Now we were both squealing and squirming, and if Pane hadn’t grabbed it by the back leg and pulled it out from under me, it would have run off, likely with a chunk of my belly in its mouth. Then there would have been a lot more discussion about fucking my mother, fucking the sun that shone on me, fucking my blood, fucking my dumbness, and so on. If you’re not familiar with Serbian swearing, you should check it out. It’s pretty fucking awesome.
Pane and the others admired the squirming piglet, announced it was a male, then shoved it into a hessian bag and made me carry it back to camp. This was not too bad, because it calmed down inside the bag and other than the odd little cloven hoof hitting my spine now and again, it was no great chore. It was just a little weird, as you can imagine.
It was after all this weird stuff, for me, anyway, because I was very new to man-pig interactions, that shit got even weirder. And I mean batshit, moon-howling, slap-your-mamma weirder…
We left for home the following morning, an epic fourteen-hour drive. I can now ride the same distance in less than six. You might need to read the aforementioned piece on my first hunting trip to understand why it took so long back then. The only reason I am even bringing the drive-time into all this was because the piglet was under my feet the entire time. In the hessian bag, of course. I felt very sorry for it because I was a child. But I also understood that it was slated for Pane’s dinner table in the near future.
Have you ever eaten young pork? You should try it. It’s quite incredibly delicious when spit-roasted over coals by someone who has mastered this skill.
This spit-roasting was discussed in detail the night before we left. The piglet was in its hessian bag, silent and not moving around all that much, and it would have heard what its future held. Pretty basic, really. Pane would bring the piglet home, feed it wondrous food designed to make it fatter and even more delicious, rid it of any parasites, then, at the appropriate time, cut its throat, sear off all its coarse black hair, spit-roast it, and invite us all over for a feast.
My opinions and feelings about all of this were not under any consideration at all. The piglet travelled with me in the back of the car, it on the floor in the sack under my feet, as I sat on the seat with the now traditional wooden orange-crate full of things Pane, my father, and the driver Sima, would like to eat as we travelled – so salted bacon fat, onions, salami, chilli peppers, tomatoes, and bread. I was also welcome to eat as and when I felt like it, and given this was my sixth hunting trip, I was getting pretty used to these unique munchies. I adore salted pig-fat (or slanina as the Serbs call it) to this day.
I may have been young, but I was not a naïve kid when it came to understanding where my food came from. I had seen animal slaughter, engaged it in myself, and even learned how to butcher meat at a very early age. I was not at all squeamish, and I harboured no cutesy animal-rights ideologies when it came to food-animals.
So, the bag full of piglet under my feet for fourteen hours was nothing more than an ongoing physical discomfort for me, rather than a conscience-eating morality crusade. The animal had of course pissed and shit itself several times, so it smelled pretty bad – the urine stank more than the scat – and when I did make an enquiry about maybe watering it, I was told feral pigs are among the hardiest animals on this earth and can go several days without food or water. I was also told to consider how such a thing could be accomplished on the side of the road with a wild animal that would immediately try to escape the second it was removed from the sack.
We eventually arrived in Sydney, and dropped Pane and his piglet off at his home in Putney, and I very quickly forgot all about it. Weeks and months went by and no invitation for a spit-roast came from Pane.
I remember asking my father if he knew anything about this, but he just shrugged and went about his business.
Some six months after this, the men began to plan another hunting trip and my father called Pane to tell him to make preparations. And he asked him about the piglet. That evening at dinner, he told my mother what Pane had told him.
“Pane has gone mad,” he said. “Completely. He has decided he wants to keep the piglet. His two daughters like it and play with it. His wife goes out and pats it. He has built it a pen and a little house, and he lets it come into his home.”
My mother absorbed this information. “Maybe he wants to fatten it up more and when it is bigger he will kill it and eat it,” she said.
“I asked him that,” my father replied. “He said that was totally out of the question. The piglet was now a pet, and he could no more eat it than we could eat our dog. So he’s gone mad. Is there any more soup?”
About a month later, my family went to visit Pane. Serbs often visit each other without calling ahead. It’s what they have always done, and it’s no big deal. It’s just how they roll.
I think what drove this particular visit was Pane’s madness. My old man simply had to see for himself how mad he was and if indeed the piglet was a family pet.
And it was. But it was no longer a piglet. It was now a pig and it was huge. Actually, it was more than a pig. It was a fucking razorback. If you didn’t know, this is the term Australians use to describe their male feral pigs, and it refers to the hair-covered hump that sits behind the male pig’s enormous, tusk-filled head. Sows can be bigger than razorbacks and sometimes more aggressive, but on a bad day, a couch-sized razorback is an evil-minded locomotive of hairy aggression.
“Cunt of your mother,” my father said gently in Serbian as he stared at the vast feral pig rooting around in what was once a very ordered garden. “You are completely insane.” The term he used was actually “Ti si skroz po-pizdeo” which vaguely translates as “You are totally en-cunted”, which means gone mad. Like I said, Serbian swearing is a treasure and a linguistic gift to the world.
Pane would have none of that. He just laughed and gazed benevolently at the pig, which was now looking at us looking at him. It had tusks.
“Misha!” my mum spat. “Take us home!” Then she went inside and dragged me with her. Dad also came inside while Pane went over to his pig, squatted down and was scratching it behind the ears. The pig looked very pleased with itself and nuzzled him.
Pane’s family was not home. He had mentioned this to us when we arrived unannounced, but then he immediately led us outside to meet “Svinja”, which is what he named it and which means “pig” in Serbian.
My old man was aghast. He kept muttering about how Pane was clearly insane, and how that pig would turn on him and shred him, then murder his wife and children. It had already largely demolished his backyard, which was once a wonderfully organised series of vegetable beds and fruit trees. Now it looked like it had been excavated by meth-freaks digging for treasure.
Word got around to our Serbian friends and many more went to meet Svinja and Pane. This went on for a few months and then things got worse.
Pane’s wife left him. She was apparently able to tolerate the ever-growing razorback menace in her backyard, but when Pane invited it into the house and it took to sleeping on her beautiful leather couch, and following her from room to room, she took her daughters and left.
Pane was upset. He told my father he was upset. My father told him to stop being a madman, slaughter the pig, his family would return, and we would all laugh about his mental instability as time went passed.
But Pane was having none of that. He loved Svinja. He explained Svinja was smart – and pigs are smarter than many dogs, so he wasn’t lying – and could do all sorts of tricks. He had taught it to sit, to lay down, and to roll over, but said he was struggling to teach it to beg because pig anatomy worked against such acrobatics. It would come when he called and it would curl up beside him on the couch when he watched TV. He swore it wasn’t at all destructive, just clumsy. So, he explained, there was no malice in Svinja’s porcine heart.
More time passed. Svinja had now been Pane’s adored pet for almost a year-and-a-half, and it was essentially fully grown. I went with my dad to see it. Mum only gave me permission if I swore to stay inside and looked at it through the window. I readily agreed.
Things had clearly changed in Pane’s house. We saw this the moment we arrived. Much of the furniture was gone, and Pane had put a big double-bed mattress in the middle of the lounge room so Svinja no longer had to climb onto the shredded-by-cloven-hooves couch. Pane had thrown blankets over it, but you could see the ruined and torn leather the blankets did not cover.
“Do not let that thing inside while we are here,” my father said to him when we arrived.
“Its OK,” Pane said. “Svinja likes people. He wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
“Leave it outside!” my father barked at him. “You let it in and I will shoot it and you.”
Pane grudgingly agreed and we went to look at Svinja through the back window. The yard was even more destroyed than before. There were now two wallows and everything was basically piles of dirt and tracks where Svinja would walk. I saw the wooden-paling fence had been braced with steel poles.
“He has tried to get out a few times,” Pane smiled. “I think he’s looking for company.”
Right then, Svinja was looking at us. Pigs have great hearing, so he had no problem hearing us through the glass. In fact, given the sheer size of him, he seemed to have no problems doing pretty much anything he fucken pleased. And he was huge. My father guessed him to be some two-metres long, about a metre high at the shoulder, and his tusks could be seen from space. Pane agreed he was close to 270kg.
“Look at how beautiful he is!” he beamed.
Svinja did not look at all beautiful to me. He looked dangerous as fuck. I had encountered razorbacks in the wild and they usually run away. Unless they decide not to for whatever reason. In which case they stand pretty much like Svinja was standing, and prance around a bit on their legs making hate-circles. But their enormous, tusk-spiked heads are always pointed at you.
And their heads are huge. Their skulls are so thick small-calibre rounds sometimes don’t penetrate. We would hunt them with big calibre guns and 12-gauges full of SG cartridges or solid balls. Even then, they sometimes proved hard to bring down if you didn’t hit them in the sweet spot.
The only difference I could see between wild razorbacks and Svinja, was that Svinja was really well groomed and clean. Pane washed him all the time – he had to because the bastard loved to wallow in the mud-holes Pane would keep filled with water from the hose. And since Svinja was allowed inside (I wasn’t actually sure how you could stop him going inside), Pane was pretty much bathing him on a daily basis.
Pane went outside and Svinja trotted up to him, and they nuzzled and hugged for a while. I was tempted to go outside, but my father had a vice-like grip on my arm and was standing in front of the closed door.
We left shortly after Pane came back inside and he and my father exchanged some hissed and rather angry words. My father did not speak to me on the way home, consumed by his own thoughts. He was no doubt wondering how to deal with a friend who was manifestly crazier than a box of bats, and liked cuddling up with a full-grown razorback.
But like all insurmountable problems, this one eventually solved itself.
Svinja got out. The work Pane had done on the fence was simply insufficient. Nothing short of some proper zoo fencing and maybe a moat could have stopped Svinja. So he got out, and went a-wandering through Putney. Pane later explained Svinja had not gone very far. Just down to the nearby park, where people take their kids and dogs. Three dead dogs, and a bunch of horrified Putny residents later, the police showed up, having followed Svinja back to Pane’s house.
I was told later something like a siege took place. Pane and Svinja were in the house, and the cops were outside the house. They wanted to come in and shoot Svinja, and Pane was not good with that, so there was a lot of yelling, much of it in Serbian. This was probably just as well, because the cops may well have shot Pane along with Svinja after he’d spent an hour or so telling them just how many of their mothers all needed fucking.
In the end, Pane shot Svinja himself. He told me later it was the best outcome, because the cops would not listen to reason, and he did not want them trying to kill his pet with their .38s. They were all shit shots, he explained, and would not have done it quickly or neatly. So, Pane took it upon himself to put a 30.30 round in behind Svinja’s ear.
Yes, of course he was arrested and charged. And Svinja’s corpse was hauled off to be disposed of. All the neighbours came out to watch, and I think it even made the local papers the following day.
Pane was heartbroken. He had to pay a bunch of fines, which he was alright about because he had money, but he was really grieving over his beloved Svinja. He did get over it, because people get over much worse things than putting a bullet into the head of a full-grown razorback they were very fond of.
A few months later, we went on another hunting trip. We shot many feral pigs. But this time, we were the only creatures that came home alive.
