This happened in a hostel for Australian workers which was the best one in the whole state. Food, accommodation, service — everything was better there than in the migrant workers hostels. Hence, there were only few migrant workers living in it, most of whom were employed not outside, but inside the hostel, carrying various duties of lower nature, like those of cleaners, kitchenmen etc.

Olev Kangur, an Estonian migrant, was directed, upon his arrival in Australia, to duties in that exclusive hostel.

Why he was picked up for such a privileged position, he did not know. It could hardly be because of his educational standard, for although he was a university graduate and spoke a number of languages, Radko Petrovic, a Serbian migrant of no education, was directed to the same hostel together with him.

Rather it was an allowance for his surname, pleasing to Australian ears, for it sounded similar to the word 'kangaroo'. Owing to the similarity, none of the Australians, with whom he happened to come in contact since the day of his arrival, failed to express astonishment that a migrant from a remote European country had such a nice Australian name. Hence, all Australians were very friendly and helpful towards him, and there was no end to the enthusiastic remarks about his delightful surname.

At first he used to go out of his way to explain to his Australian friends that his name 'Kangur' meant weaver in Estonian, but it was of no avail. They still preferred to associate his surname with the name of the Australian marsupial.

As to Radko Petrovic, he owed his luck to the happy fact that the first half of his first name sounded like the word 'rat' and that it offered fun to the people from the Employment Office to send Kangaroo and Rat together to the duties in hostel.

When Olev Kangur arrived at the hostel in the company of Radko Petrovic, two positions were vacant. One was that of kitchenman, and another of assistant steward.

It was a foregone decision by the administration of the hostel, made on the basis of surnames only, that Radko Petrovic alias Rat would work in the kitchen and the man with the nice Australian name in the mess room.

So Olev Kangur started his work in the hostel as one of the two assistant stewards, and from the first day he established friendly relations, with all members of the staff, except for the Chief Cook, who took an unfriendly attitude towards him.

The Chief Cook, an elderly Englishman, was not a bad man in himself, but he was, for some reason, prejudiced against all European migrants and used to spite them in a petty way whenever he could. He made no exception of Olev Kangur and used to embarrass him likewise. He derived a particular pleasure from calling him Kangaroo.

There was nothing Olev Kangur could do about that, for the Chief Cook was an important and influential person in the hostel, who could cause a lot of trouble to any New Australian member of the staff. It was therefore wiser to put up with him somehow in the hope that things would change in the course of time, or that before long he would be able to leave the hostel and get rid of him.

He even entertained the hope that one day he might have an opportunity to teach the Chief Cook a lesson, or to revenge himself in some mild, non-evil way for all his little unpleasantnesses, particularly for being called Kangaroo.

He had many duties in the mess room, one of them being distribution of soup in the evenings, when the residents of the hostel gathered in the mess hall for their main meal.

They used to get their meats, vegetables and sweets at the counter, behind which the Chief Cook and his five assistants served. There was always a big range of that sort of food at the counter. However, there was never any choice of soup, as every day only one kind of it was prepared.

Soup traditionally bore various glamorous names which appeared daily on the menu lists on the notice board of the mess room.

Preparation of soups was a favorite pastime of the Chief Cook, who always did it himself, whereas the procedure was uniform and simple. Whatever was left over from the previous day's soup remained in the cauldron; the remnants of the previous day's cooked or fried meat and vegetables were cut in pieces and thrown therein; water, salt and pepper added; finally some new ingredients, like noodles, peas or rice were supplemented, the mixture boiled, and the soup, bearing some resounding fancy name, was ready.

Owing to more or less the same basic ingredients and the uniform way of preparation, soup, made by the Chief Cook, differed little from day to day as far as their taste went, the main difference being in their names only.

One day the menu list on the notice board featured a soup, which bore a puzzling name: Brown Windsor Soup.

When Olev Kangur had a glimpse of the list and noticed the name of the soup, he felt, for some unexplicable reason, a strong premonition that this soup would have a fatal significance for him.

He waited impatiently for the evening meal and was sure that something was going to happen to his advantage.

In the evening, just before the opening of the mess hall doors, Radko Petrovic brought in, with the help of another kitchenman, a big kettle of Brown Windsor Soup, and placed it, as usual, on the soup table. Olev Kangur took his usual position beside the table with a long soup scoop in his hand, ready to start the distribution as soon as the door opened. First of all, he took a curious look at the soup and noticed that it really was brown, so that whatever it actually was, it still deserved the name as far as its colour went.

Then the assistant manager, as usual, opened the door and a big, noisy crowd of residents, who had just returned from work and were hungry, filled the big room and started to queue for their food. Owing probably to a cold and wet day, an unusually big number of people queued, first of all, for hot, steaming Brown Windsor Soup.

Before long, Olev Kangur ran out of soup and the second big kettle was brought in. This, too, was empty pretty soon. As there were still a number of people in the soup queue, Olev Kangur called out to the Chief Cook behind the counter for more soup, and the Chief Cook went to the kitchen door and shouted: "Hey, you there! More soup!"

Radko Petrovic immediately responded and brought in a smaller kettle with additional soup. Olev Kangur noticed that the colour thereof was not brown, but grey, and that it was much thinner than both previous lots.

There was, however, nothing unusual for an additional lot of soup to be different from the bulk of it. Olev Kangur knew well that whenever more soup was required than was cooked, the Chief Cook would hurry in the kitchen, hastily take some cooked or fried meat and vegetables, cut them in pieces, threw them in a kettle, pour in some hot water, add salt, colour the brewage with burned sugar or something else, stir it energetically with a paddle, and then send the fresh soup with Radko Petrovic to the mess room for distribution.

It was, furthermore, not his business to question or to query the actions of the Chief Cook, as many a previous experience had made clear to him, so that he immediately gave a good go to the additional grey brewage.

The unexpected demand for soup continued to be as never before, so that in a few minutes even the additional lot was gone. None of the additional soup's samplers said anything, only one man looked at his plate and quietly remarked that soup, contrary to its name, was rather grey than brown. Inspite of the difference in colour, soup obviously tasted well, for some chaps took even a double portion thereof.

Hardly was the kettle empty as the Chief Cook, who in the meantime was in the kitchen, came running, red faced and panting, to the soup table.

"Kangaroo!" he whispered with anxiety. "Have you given anybody anything out of the last kettle?"

"Of course, I did," answered Olev Kangur.

"And to how many persons?" asked the Chief Cook in panic.

"To a lot of people," answered Olev Kangur. "There is no soup left any more."

The Chief Cook seized his head with both his hands in desperation.

"Heavens!" he moaned. "Gracious Heavens! It was not soup, but dishwater that this idiot Rat brought to you by mistake!"

"Sorry!" said Olev Kangur. "I didn't know that."

"And what did people say? Was there any comment on what you gave them?" asked the Chief Cook in despair.

Now Olev Kangur felt that his premonition was coming true. He, furthermore, felt that his great hour of revenge had arrived and that it now was his turn to embarrass the haughty Chief Cook.

"O yes," he said as innocently as he could. "A lot of people made their remarks about the additional soup."

"Good gracious! Good gracious!", moaned the Chief Cook, pulling his rare thin hair like an ancient Hebrew. "And what did they say?"

"O, nothing in particular!" replied Olev Kangur. "Most of them just remarked that the soup tonight tasted even better than usual. The only thing they objected to was the colour, for most of them thought that it was not Brown Windsor, but Grey Windsor Soup."

The face of the Chief Cook took a queer expression and the corners of his mouth twitched. He looked at Olev Kangur in an enigmatical manner, said nothing and retreated to his kitchen with the air of an army commander, who has suffered a devastating defeat.

Olev Kangur noticed that even his neck was red like a tulip.

After that the Chief Cook considerably altered his soup recipes, so that his soups became greatly different from their prototypes which used to bear a close similarity to dish water. He, furthermore, stopped calling Olev Kangur Kangaroo and began to address him as Mr. Kangur. But he continued to call Radko Petrovic Rat.

David Marquis

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