Praise

by Andrew McGahan

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘let’s see how it goes.’

  Frank pulled the column shift into drive and we started. We picked up speed. I was watching the speedo. Ten, twenty, thirty. The engine revved higher, then higher, then higher.

  ‘Whoa,’ I said. Frank slowed down. ‘Are you sure you’re in drive? Not second or low?’

  He jiggled the column shift around. ‘No. I’m in drive.’

  ‘Try it again.’

  He tried. By the time we reached forty the engine was screaming. He slowed down again.

  ‘It’s the transmission,’ I said. ‘We’re stuck in first gear.’

  ‘Fuck,’ said Frank. ‘I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. It was due to go anyway.’

  We crawled home. By the time we hit Brisbane it was almost dawn. The engine was overheating and the wine was all gone. We drove to Frank and Maree’s house and parked.

  ‘A cab,’ I said to Cynthia.

  We went inside and dialled. Frank and Maree went to bed. Rachel settled down on the couch. Cynthia and I went back outside and sat on the front steps. Cynthia nuzzled her head into my lap. I looked at the Kingswood. It was depressing. The only thing, perhaps, that I truly loved without question — and there it lay, dying in the cul de sac.

  The taxi arrived. The driver was in a cheerful mood.

  ‘Had a good night?’ He had an Arabic accent.

  ‘Not so bad,’ I said.

  ‘I love the morning!’ He started humming.

  The sun was rising now.

  ‘What’s your accent?’ Cynthia asked him. ‘It sounds Middle Eastern.’

  ‘I am Persian.’

  ‘Prove it. Sing something Persian.’

  ‘I will.’ He started singing. He wailed. I couldn’t believe it. Five thirty in the morning and I was being sung to.

  Cynthia leaned over. She unzipped me.

  ‘Cynthia.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  She had my penis out and in her mouth. I looked at the taxi driver. He was singing, really singing. I looked out the window. At the sun rising, the early Sunday morning Brisbane traffic. I could feel Cynthia’s head moving against my legs, but there was no sensation. I couldn’t even tell if I was erect or not.

  But the singing was fine.

  Cynthia pulled her head up. I looked down and saw a vague half erection. It looked tasty, like that. Warm and soft and suckable. Cynthia looked up at me and whispered, ‘Can you come?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ She lay her head on my thigh and took it back in her mouth, but didn’t do much. Just held it there, rolling her tongue around. I still couldn’t feel anything. I was too drunk.

  ‘You like the song?’ the driver asked.

  ‘Yes. Do you know any others?’

  ‘I do.’

  He started up again.

  Cynthia kept sucking.

  The singing got us home.

  TWENTY-NINE

  That afternoon I called up Morris, from the Capital. He knew about cars. We chatted about life since we’d left the bottleshop. He was living on Social Security, the same as me. We agreed it was a good life.

  Finally I said, ‘I think the transmission on my car is gone. Could you take a look at it?’

  He drove over, picked me up, and we headed out to the car.

  ‘So you and Cynthia are living together now?’

  ‘We are. It’s good.’

  ‘I’ve left Karen. I’ve just started up with someone new.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Her name is Hillary.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Sixteen.’

  ‘Sixteen?!’

  ‘She looks about twelve.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Take a look at my mouth, go on, look at it.’

  I looked. His lips were scratched and puffed.

  ‘She did that,’ he said. ‘She’s an animal. On our first night she tied me up and started whipping me. I’ve got cuts all over the place. I couldn’t believe it.’

  Neither could I.

  Other men had it all over me when it came to things like that. I’d learnt that at the bottle shop. The staff had been exclusively male and all we’d ever talked about was sex. There seemed to be a lot it of going around.

  And in various ways. One of my co-workers, a weightlifter called Arthur, was obsessed with sex in the cold. He lectured us at length on the topic. Had any of us ever been sucked off by a woman with icecubes in her mouth? Had any of us ever fucked in a freezer?

  We hadn’t

  ‘It’s great. The air’s so fucking cold your prick’s about to drop off, and then she wraps her mouth around it and it burns. Fucking amazing.’

  ‘You do this a lot, Arthur?’

  ‘Every chance I get.’

  Morris and I made it to the Kingswood. There was a new dent in the right front panel, but otherwise it looked fine. Dents were no problem. They gave a car dignity.

  I went and knocked on Maree and Frank’s door. No one answered. Morris was on his back under the car. ‘Look at this,’ he yelled.

  I went over and peered under.

  ‘See?’

  I looked. I knew very little about the underside of a car. I could see a hooked metal rod hanging down.

  ‘This is the problem.’

  He pulled it up, affixed it to a spot I couldn’t see, and crawled out.

  ‘That’s it,’ he said.

  ‘What? It’s fixed?’

  ‘Sure.’

  I drove home, tired and confused. I knew nothing about my car. I neglected it. I drove it badly. I let drunken fools do what they wanted with it. And yet it kept on going for me, mile after mile. Year after year.

  It’s love, I thought.

  Again.

  THIRTY

  Fucking with Cynthia got harder.

  There was less and less of me there. I went through the motions. Cynthia could tell. Sometimes she’d stop in the middle of sex and roll off me. She’d be crying. I didn’t know what to do.

  Then the Kingswood got stolen.

  I went out one morning and it wasn’t there. The day had come. It left a wide gaping hole in my heart, but I wasn’t suprised. Cars got stolen all the time.

  The loss was worse for Cynthia. It was her car as much as it was mine. Now she had to walk to work. Every night I walked up to the pub around closing time to meet her. I found it depressing. I took it as a sign. We’d lost our mobility. We couldn’t get further away from each other than walking distance.

  It was finally happening. We’d been together for four months. In all that time we’d barely been apart. I was faltering at last, running down. Life with Cynthia was good, it was better than anything I’d ever experienced, but things were starting to close in. I was all she had. Her family was two thousand miles away in one direction, her own friends six hundred miles away in the other. I couldn’t replace them all. There wasn’t enough in me.

  And somewhere in my mind I was beginning to realise that I’d always assumed that she would see there wasn’t enough. That sooner or later she would pack up and leave me. Go back to her real life in Darwin or Sydney. Write me letters and call me on the phone.

  But there was no sign of that. She wasn’t happy with the way things were going, but she wasn’t going to leave. And I wondered how long I could go on fucking when the spirit was finally all gone, and Cynthia was still there.

  Two weeks passed without the car.

  Cynthia and I were lying in bed.

  ‘Cynthia,’ I said, ‘I don’t know if I can go on with this.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘With us, the way we are now.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I can’t really explain. It’s getting hard. Do you think we could stop fucking at least? For a while.’

  ‘Jesus, Gordon.’ She sat up. ‘Jesus. Don’t say things like that.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Look, I still feel the same abo
ut you. I’m not going to leave you or anything. I just need a break. From the sex at least. It’s killing me.’

  ‘Why? What did I do?’

  ‘You didn’t do anything. It’s not you.’

  ‘Just tell me. I’ll stop it, whatever it is. It’s because I’m so ugly, isn’t it. Because I’m so fat.’

  ‘Cynthia, no, you’re not ugly, it’s nothing like that.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I’m just ... tired. I need a rest.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I can’t say. I don’t know. There’s no reason for it.’

  ‘Oh fuck.’ She choked, lit a cigarette. ‘Fuck! It’s happening again, it’s fucking happening again. Just when I’m happy, just when I think I’ve really found someone, they start taking it away.’

  ‘It’s not over. It’s not forever. I just need a while.’

  ‘How long is a while?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You can’t just say you don’t know. You have to tell me how long. You have to tell me why.’

  I wasn’t sure what to say. It was a matter of self-preservation. I wanted her to stop re-arranging the way I sat. I wanted her to stop playing with my hair, opening my shirt. I wanted her to stop picking the blackheads out of my shoulders. I was sick of the mothering. I wanted her to let go for a while.

  I said, ‘I’m feeling owned, Cynthia. And I don’t enjoy it any more.’

  She didn’t buy it. Cynthia wasn’t into graceful acceptance of the truth. She got angry. She accused me of wanting other women, of playing power games, of being sadistic, of lying to her.

  She said, ‘Why all this sudden concern about sex? You said it never did much for you anyway. You said it didn’t matter. And now you say it’s not good enough?’

  ‘I was wrong. It does matter. It’s not right if there’s no feeling there.’

  ‘I don’t care if there’s no feeling. You can just fuck me, can’t you? It doesn’t take much, for chrissake. I’m easy to please.’

  ‘How could you be happy with that?’

  ‘It’d be better than nothing. I love you. You can’t just take it away. You can’t just say it’s over. I won’t let you.’

  ‘Look. It’s not over, Cynthia. I’m not going anywhere. I don’t want you to go anywhere. I just need things to stop for a while.’

  But it went on all night. Cynthia got frantic. Screamed at me. It was a barrage. There was no defence against it. Just a gut dread that told me not to give in. If I gave in, it’d only last another month, another two months, and then it’d be over. Really over. It’d turn into hatred.

  I didn’t want that.

  Nothing was resolved. We slept and woke up and started again.

  The days passed. Cynthia alternated between rage and depression. I went for long walks on my own. They didn’t help. Long walks were a waste of time. Being on my own was a waste of time. I’d go back to the flat and it’d be like entering a boxing ring. We went round for round. Cynthia threw everything she could at me. I just put my hands over my head and took it.

  In bed it was worse.

  She clawed at my body, tugged at my prick. ‘It’s mine, it’s mine. You’re not going to take it away.’

  ‘It’s not yours, Cynthia,’ I said. ‘It’s mine.’

  We’d exhaust each other. Sleep. And then when she went off to work I dragged out the old porn magazines and masturbated. Once or twice a day.

  Vass came to my door one afternoon. Cynthia was at work. I was watching TV, slumped in the couch.

  He sat down and we talked for a while. He didn’t look too good. The emphysema was bad. He rambled on about the women he’d known, the ones that’d destroyed him, the one that’d saved him, his wife, his children, the time Jesus Christ came to him in a vision.

  I listened. I was looking into my own future again.

  His talk ran out.

  ‘How’s that little woman of yours?’ he said, finally.

  ‘She’s okay.’

  ‘No she’s not. I walk up and down that hall and I can hear you two at night. Something’s wrong. Are you hitting her? I never thought you were the type for that.’

  ‘Jesus, Vass, no.’ I sat up. ‘What makes you think I am?’

  ‘I hear, I hear. I’m not as deaf as all that. I hear her crying, and I hear her saying, Stop it, stop it.’

  ‘No. I’m not hitting her. I’d never do that. It’s just that things aren’t going too well at the moment. I think we might be breaking up. And Cynthia doesn’t want us to.’

  ‘Hitting is no good. It never is. You’re a lucky man. You’ve got it all with her.’

  ‘I know. It’s just not working, that’s all. But I’m not hitting her. Honestly.’

  But I sounded guilty.

  I felt guilty.

  It got worse.

  There was nowhere for Cynthia to go, nowhere for me to go. We weren’t drinking, we weren’t smoking anything, weren’t taking anything, we weren’t going out. There was only us. And Cynthia wasn’t going to quit.

  Three weeks after the car was stolen I was cooking dinner. Steak and rissoles again. Cynthia was sitting in the other room, watching TV. She’d been quiet for the last couple of days. Lying in bed. Staring at nothing. Scratching her face. Chain smoking. Not eating much. I couldn’t rouse her.

  I brought the plates out, steaming. ‘Here it is.’

  Cynthia looked at it. ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘You gotta eat, Cynthia.’

  ‘What for?’

  She got up and went and lay in bed. I sat down, ate my rissoles. I felt very, very tired. Then I got up, went into the bedroom.

  She was smoking, her eyes were red, vacant.

  I thought about what I was going to say. I thought I should be angry, but the energy wasn’t there.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll give it a try for a while longer. I can’t stand this any more.’

  She kept smoking.

  I got up and went back to my meal. After a while she came out and ate in silence.

  I looked at her. ‘I can’t promise anything, I’ll just try, okay?’

  She nodded. ‘I’m going out for a minute.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Just somewhere.’

  She went. She came back about twenty minutes later with a carton of beer. Toohey’s Old. Cans.

  That night we got back to fucking. It was a decent, drunken attempt. If I was giving in to her, I thought, I might as well put my heart into it. For as long as I could.

  ‘I love you, I love you,’ she said, when it was over.

  ‘It’s a terrible sort of love,’ I said. ‘It’s gonna kill us both.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘It was only my first run, Cynthia. I’ll try again.’

  ‘I’ll be ready.’

  Next day, after Cynthia had gone to work, the phone rang.

  ‘Gordon Buchanan?’ a voice enquired.

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘Detective Terry Kindle here, Valley C.I.B. You reported the theft of a yellow Holden sedan, registration 467 NOS?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, we’ve found it.’

  ‘You’re kidding!’

  ‘We do find them occasionally, y’know. It turned up in a street in Albion. It’s been sitting there for weeks.’

  ‘How is it?’

  ‘Fine. A few dents ...’

  ‘It already had quite a few.’

  ‘Oh? Well, we’ve fingerprinted it, so you can come and pick it up if you like.’ He gave me the details, I gave him my thanks, we said goodbye.

  I put down the phone.

  THIRTY-ONE

  For a while, things weren’t too bad.

  If I was trapped with Cynthia, there was no need for it to be all pain. Just as long as I didn’t struggle. She was good company. We got on well. It was only when I was very drunk, or sometimes when we fucked, that I understood how depressed I was.

  I needed to be alone for a time.

&n
bsp; It wasn’t going to happen.

  Cynthia’s next period arrived. Her periods had been irregular ever since the abortion, but this time it was bad. Painful. The pre-menstrual cramps went on for days. And when the bleeding came it was black, clotted and dead. It was wrong. She was worried. I was worried. I kept my mouth away from it.

  By that time I knew Cynthia’s cunt almost as well as I knew my own prick. In fact, I knew it better. I’d never seen my penis from all the angles. That honour was Cynthia’s. She had even discovered a mole on the underside of my balls. I’d never known it was there. It was her mole. Maybe it was all hers. Balls, prick, the lot of it.

  In which case, her cunt was mine. The whole thing, right down to its dark and dangerous depths. I had four months of exploration behind me. I’d stretched and pulled and poked. I knew my way around. I knew how deep it was, how wide it could go, how far I could suck the lips back into my mouth before it really started to hurt.

  Cynthia’s cunt was my responsibility. I could tell when something was wrong with it. And something was definitely wrong with it.

  It was my tongue that picked it up. It was two or three nights after the bleeding had stopped. We were fucking in the dark. I was down between her legs. My mouth was latched on. And my tongue encountered lumps. Dozens of them. The inside of her vagina felt like the sole of a sandshoe.

  I waited until after we’d finished. Then I told her about it.

  ‘Lumps?’

  ‘Lumps.’

  She sat up and switched on the light, then turned her back to me and examined herself. ‘Oh. Oh yuck.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look at this.’

  She turned around and I got down between her legs. She spread the lips. I looked in. The skin was spotted with what looked like pimples. Small, white-headed pimples.

  ‘Jesus,’ I said.

  ‘How far back do they go?’

  ‘Far as I can see.’

  She took her fingers away and lay back. ‘What’s wrong with me?’

  I didn’t know.

  I drove her up to Family Planning the next day. We went to Family Planning for everything like this. They were free. Cynthia wasn’t looking forward to it.

  ‘I hate vaginal examinations.’

  The doctor won’t enjoy it either.’

  ‘How would you know?’