The Jesus Man

by Christos Tsiolkas

  —They were cruel, Lou, people back then. Don’t ever believe the bullshit about the good old days. They were savage days. It was a cruel life for Nonna. She could be cruel too. That’s what makes me think she’s the crow now, watching me, wanting me to be better. Always wanting me to be better, stronger. His faltering voice broke. Angry at me for my failures.

  Tommy was around them, between them, over them.

  —No! urged Lou. The youth tightened his grip around the man. You haven’t failed, Papa, you haven’t. You haven’t.

  Artie pulled away from his son.

  —Thanks, Lou. Gruff, he did not bother to wipe away his tears. I’m going to bed.

  Lou turned up the volume but the television was far away from him. He still felt Tommy next to him. But also another presence. Lou was not frightened. If there is a curse, he thought, I refuse it. He realised, his eyes shut tight, his hands fisted together, his body rocking, that he was in the throes of prayer. He had not prayed since childhood. Go away, go away, his breathing was a chant. He opened his eyes. The colours of the television and the American accents. He clumsily loosened his body from the submission of prayer. The room was empty.

  When his father persuaded Maria to visit Greece, Lou had decided that he too would go and he too would make a pilgrimage. Certainly not to seek an answer from God. At sixteen, as the silent earth covered his brother’s body, Lou had discovered the profound silence of God. But his father’s story had promised something stranger. The overwhelming presence of the past.

  Lou ordered another ouzo, surprised at the lackadaisical attitude the Greeks had to age and drinking. He was drunk and tomorrow he was to visit the place that maybe he had come from. Or some part of him. He sung as he staggered down the steps. It was the Violent Femmes, ‘Add It Up’. Why can’t I get just one luck? A memory of being twelve and listening to Tommy’s old records.

  The ferry left early in the morning. His mother came with him to the wharf and slipped a small gold crucifix around his neck. Lou squirmed.

  —Shh, answered Maria in Greek. This is protection.

  All through the journey, as the boat slid east across the Aegean, Lou felt the weight of the cross around his neck. But he did not remove it. Instead, he received comfort from the gift, a superstition that calmed him. Swedish and American tourists tanned themselves and drank beer. On the radio REM were again singing ‘Losing My Religion’ and Madonna was answering with ‘Like A Prayer’. And, then, as everywhere in Europe that year, Massive Attack brought calm with ‘Unfinished Sympathy’.

  In the Macedonian village up in the mountains Lou had become aware that an old Greece existed. It struck him as funny that it was the absence of cisterns that was most indicative of the distance between himself and Greece. He really was Amerikanaki. At the back of the Church of, the Prophet Elijah he went to have a shit. Flies circled around the small back hole that dived deep into the earth. He could not release. He was embarrassed at his softness but kept his shit inside till they reached the Europe of Thessaloniki, ancient walls and modern plumbing.

  Cos had cisterns, where the tourists stayed. His great-grandmother’s village, however, no longer really existed. Many of the houses now belonged to fourth generation American Greeks and to first generation Germans and Australians. There was rubble. And two old Greek women.

  He approached them. They were sitting in the shade of an awning, a small village store. They started whispering to each other as he approached. Lou, who had learnt all he knew about Greek women from his mother and her factory mates, bowed, smiled widely and asked in halting Greek: Aunt, Aunt, can I please speak to you?

  But they were content in their age and dismissive of charm. So he blushed and one of them laughed.

  —Where are you from?

  The other was still not smiling. She stared at the tattoo of the snake.

  —Austra-lia. Lou scratched at his arm.

  —Far, far, my son. She now smiled and patted the bench next to her. Lou sat down.

  —I have children and grandchildren in Australia.

  —Whereabouts?

  —What do you mean?

  —Which …? Lou stopped. He had forgotten the word for city. He looked around the square. It was late afternoon but the sun still caked the land. The village, high in a cleft on a cliff, was sheltered from the sea but also from its breeze. Lou mopped his forehead. The old women had fallen silent.

  —My family from here. He pointed down at his feet, not confident in the words he was using.

  —From here? From Cos? The old women turned straight back to him.

  —What’s your name? they demanded.

  Lou hesitated.

  —Luigi Stefano, he said proudly.

  The women looked away, bored.

  —He’s Italian, he heard the second woman say.

  —And Greek, he interrupted. My mother and my … Again he had to stop. He didn’t know the words for kin beyond immediate family. The mother of my father’s mother was Cos, he finally managed to say.

  The first woman said, quietly, That’s a long time ago. She looked Lou in the eyes and saw a question there. This time she took his hand.

  —And her name?

  —Marta, he whispered.

  His father knew her as Nonna Marta and he remembered what she called her village, a thick dusty Turkish word. But he could not recollect her maiden name. His uncles, in Victoria, they were the Pippas. That, an abbreviation, said nothing; it was only a migrant shorthand, assigned to them as they got off the boats. He was unsure of the original Greek word. Pirratiris, Patitis? Pappipadis?

  Pappappapalopolous, thought Lou, wishing to laugh but not wishing to offend the old women. He stood up.

  —Thank you, he said, but all I know is her name was Marta.

  The two women made the sign of the Cross, to protect him. He walked into the shop.

  A half bottle of retsina later, he was alone on a beach, an unbuttoned white shirt and loose skater shorts. He was watching the setting sun, the vanishing waves. He sat on sand and hard round rocks. He threw them into the sea. On the horizon he could see land and the vaguest silhouettes of cliff and buildings. The only sounds the splashing water, his breathing. And the faint beginning of a hungry note.

  —That is the Caliphs.

  He swirled around. A woman, tall, blonde, a khaki singlet and the darkest of tans. He began to stand up but she stopped him and then sat beside him.

  —I’m Anna.

  A German accent.

  —My name is Lou. He offered her the bottle. She accepted. The note, still faint, was very sweet.

  —That’s Turkey, said Anna. She pointed to the horizon. It’s very close, no? They’re calling for prayer.

  He nodded. Her English was excellent. She had a joint in the pocket of her trousers which they smoked. There were lines around her eyes.

  They talked into the night, about Berlin and about Melbourne. The fall of the Wall, the civil war in Yugoslavia, but those subjects were very soon abandoned and instead they talked of music and film, about Greece and the sea. The smoke was hash, intense. In between worlds, touching Europe, touching Asia, Lou came close to saying everything. To talking of Tommy. But before he found the way to put the words together, stumbling in the pleasant fog of intoxication, she placed her hand on his thigh.

  He had not thought of sex.

  She was flirting, she was strong and insistent. He spread his legs and she worked at his crotch. But feeling young and silly, he could not build to erection. She laughed it off.

  —It’s all right, she said, and lay back on the stubbled beach. And because she was beautiful and because he was stoned, and because it was the end of a long day in which he had discovered the impossibility of answers, he kissed her and placed his hands beneath her shorts and forced his hand slowly inside her. He kept kissing her and his hand led her to orgasm. Almost embarrassed, he brought himself off, sniffing the punch of her sweating arms and neck.

  They washed in the water, splashed, a
nd walked back together to the village. They did not touch again. He slept on the bench outside the store and she went back to the room she was sharing with her girlfriends.

  The next day he visited the cemetery, a pitifully squeezed block of land, and he walked beside the rusting iron and the eroded stone. He found a small square patch of earth, yellow weeds, and he began digging. He placed an icon, given to him by his father, an icon of a child with an old man’s face held in the solid arms of the Madonna, into the earth. He finished, sweating, and he made a clumsy sign of the Cross, forgetting which side was first for the Orthodox and hoping that for his ancestors it might not matter.

  His father had said to him, handing him the icon, just before he was leaving for the airport: If you are going to visit her island, take this with you and leave it there. That was a promise I made my grandmother which I could not manage to keep.

  Marta Euginia Papapouchitis would have believed that by her grandson ensuring his son accomplished the task, the promise had finally been honoured.

  Back in Athens Lou became restless. His cousins, out of duty, involved him in their activities, and two of them, Erini and Yianni, he genuinely liked and admired. But cursed with a stumbling illiterate Greek tongue, he was often mistaken for ignorant and boring. With Erini he shared a love for music. She was unapologetically into thrash and she had posters of the Hard Ons and Lou Reed on her bedroom wall. She loved his tattoo. Yianni was simply easy to talk to, free of the arrogance that Lou found in many of the Greeks. He preferred Athens in the day, when he could walk it alone and lose himself in the shrill. And he enjoyed watching European MTV. Not that nights did not also offer pleasure. He drank till nausea in a tavern in Pyreaus, and finally allowed himself to dance to the tranced seduction of Greek blues. At a nightclub call Stadium he mock-danced to Michael Jackson while he looked out across to the moon and to the Acropolis. He was high that night. But most of all he was lonely. He kept seeing it all through Tommy’s eyes.

  One night Maria went to bed early. She had made herself weary reliving the years of exile, the death of her son, the crawl for God’s forgiveness. Lou followed her, concerned and a little scared. She held his hand and she kissed it. She told him that she loved him.

  Returning to the kitchen he stopped on hearing the giggling of his aunts. Their rapid Greek confused him. He heard fragments and stayed in the shadows.

  She was always spoilt. Did you see those shoes, bet they were expensive. The good life. Australia. She thinks she’s had it hard. They’re ignorant over there. He’s a good boy but so slow. So slow. They don’t know anything. It’s true. They haven’t changed at all. Imagine crawling to the church. Only old women do that.

  Giggling and cruel laughter.

  —The poor woman, she has suffered.

  Silence. The murmuring of God’s name.

  —We’ve all suffered. So, she’s had two. A word he did not understand. The word kept being repeated.

  —What’s done is done.

  Lou coughed and walked into the kitchen.

  —What’s ektrosi?

  The aunts looked at him, surprised, guilty.

  —What’s ektrosi? he repeated.

  His older aunt, brash, large, beautiful, answered him.

  —When you’re pregnant and you don’t want the kid. You go to the doctor to stop the pregnancy. Do you understand?

  Her gaze was strong, she looked right at him. He looked right back.

  —I understand.

  His aunt lowered her eyes.

  —You’re nothing but a fucking lazy housewife. You haven’t worked a day in your life. If you think my mum’s had it easy, then you know shit. You wogs know shit. He said all this in English. It was not important to him that they understand.

  He walked into the bedroom he was sharing with his mother and put on a new shirt.

  —Where are you going? She was not yet asleep.

  —Out. Just around the block, Mum. I’ll be fine.

  Maria raised her head. She continued to speak in English.

  —I heard. You were very rude to your aunts.

  They both giggled.

  His mother signalled him over. She took his hand.

  —I had two abortions, between Tommy and you. That was a sin.

  Lou shook his head.

  —No, it wasn’t.

  Maria rested again on the pillow. She smiled up at her son.

  —There is a God, my little Louie, she said in Greek. There is for me. For you. She began a choked sobbing. There is for Thomas.

  Lou went to comfort her but she pushed him away.

  —Don’t walk far, she ordered, I’ll be all right. God help me, I don’t deserve you.

  Lou walked the streets, ignoring people, beginning to realise that he might possibly detest the European.

  After a tour of Santorini, which he loved, and a tour of Mykonos and Paros, which he hated, Lou spent his final week in Athens being taken on a circuit of farewell dinners and parties. One night at his Aunt Olga’s a group of all ages sat around drinking coffee, spirits and wine. The argument moved to politics. The platitudes of the conservatives, the bankruptcy of the left. The European Community, the New World Order and the consequences of the Gulf War. As the conversation zipped past fast around him, Lou retreated further away. His mother had become almost as fiery as the Greeks, forgetting her grief and enjoying the triumphs and castigations of argument. He himself was unable to contribute further than the most basic of observations. And beyond this he was beginning to accept their hushed derision of his unsophistication. He was ignorant, he was naive.

  Lou got up, excused himself and dropped onto his cousin Basili’s bed. He picked up the remote, switched on the television. A metal atrocity on MTV. He switched stations.

  In yellow print there was the word. Laros. He stared at the images, at first confusing them for old footage from the Second World War but then realising that the pixelated sepia of the video stock made this an impossibility. The drone of the CNN reporter came on. This was Laros, Greece, 1990.

  He had heard the story but it had been just one of an infinite number of media bites and he had not pursued it. The images were savage. Naked men, their hands bound, shivering in the cold, were belted with a surge of water from a fire hose. They screamed and howled, fell over in the water. The camera moved across the soiled damp beds, the chains and the lashes. The EC demanded an investigation and the immediate overhaul of the Greek government’s treatment of the mentally ill.

  From inside, conversation, philosophising, the clink of glass. Laughter.

  A young boy, mongoloid eyes, being dragged along the ground screaming.

  Lou is alone in the dark room. The light from the television illuminates a pale face, the tattoo snake glistens almost silver.

  The boy is a mess, a shaking, a doubled-up quiver; blood from biting his lips to stop himself howling. Every boy, every girl, the terrified haunted strangers on the screen, every one is Tommy.

  Later, back home, Dominic asked him: So, did you like it?

  Lou answered, No.

  That was not the whole truth. He would remember, forever, dancing above the Parthenon. He would take pleasure in recalling smoking a joint with Erini and Yianni, pumping up the volume and listening to Died Pretty’s Winterland. And every time he was to hear joy in prayer, he was to be reminded of how, in reaching towards the horizon from the island of Cos, one is close to touching Turkey. And that in the isolation of that touch is a remoteness and an expanse that he once thought uniquely Australian.

  SECTION THREE

  Luigi Stefano

  Call yourself alive? I promise you you’ll be defeated by dust falling on the furniture, you’ll feel your eyebrows turning to two gashes, and every memory you have will begin at Genesis.

  NINA CASSIAN

  1

  The last record shop

  I’m in love with Soo-Ling. I’ve got to be up front about that. She laughs it off, says I’m being adolescent, but I know she’s wrong. Wh
en she’s around there’s no-one else. No, that’s not quite true. There’s Betty. She’s the best fucking kid in the world. When Betty’s around she’s the centre of everything.

  And there’s Tommy. He’s dead but not dead. Maybe that’s what happens with all deaths: the ghosts always remain, haunting us forever. But I’ve decided, just speculation, that it is different with suicides. The anger plus the guilt. Suicide ghosts are poltergeists, always capable of disturbing the peace.

  Why did he do it? Soo-Ling never asks me this question, neither does Dad. Mum does, so does Dom. I think we all ask it of ourselves. I’m nervous about the day Betty asks it. It’s going to come soon.

  —Why did Daddy die?

  Fuck knows. And that isn’t an evasion. Fuck knows is the truth.

  The world has gone mad with the vote. Booths everywhere. I haven’t voted, I’m not even enrolled. Mum and Soo-Ling bitch to me about this. They are heaps more political than I am, much more radical. I think sometimes they despair of my generation.

  —You’re all so bloody lazy.

  Mum will nod her head in agreement.

  —You haven’t lived under the Liberals, Mum yells at me. Just wait and see.

  I just shut up. What can I say? My vote don’t matter shit. I’m going to find out what it’s like to live under the capital C conservatives. That’s my fate. Too many deadheads around me, in the ’burbs, in the city, in the bush, are going to have their way. Anyway, I’ve lived through Labor. I’m paying fees again for study, I’ve spent four years getting shit pay for working sinks and staffing a counter. I shut up because I don’t know as much as Mum and Soo-Ling but they’re wrong to think my disinclination to vote is simply apathy. I wish it were. Apathy is easy. It’s really confusion. I just don’t know.

  I’m in a record shop in Blackburn, a great place to pick up cheap vinyl and cheap CDs. I want to make a tape for Soo-Ling, I’ve been working on it for a week. She’s got the best attitude to music, no pretension. She likes what she likes. We argue about rap and techno: she doesn’t listen carefully enough sometimes. It’s a mellow tape I’m making, music to sink into a bath with, but I want to find three songs for her. They’re among her favourites but because she’s no collector, she doesn’t have them. The songs are, ‘Save The Best Till Last’, Vanessa Williams. ‘Freedom’, George Michael. And ‘Ever Fallen in Love with Someone Who Loves You’, The Buzz- cocks. Now ain’t that cool? You can’t place her with those choices, can’t pigeonhole her. They come from the heart.