The Best Australian Stories 2015

by Amanda Lohrey

  I will do my best to explain what it was like, listening to the little beast speak. It began as a kind of intuition – by this I mean that I had a vague sense of what he was thinking or hoping to say. These intuitions gradually began to formalise themselves into words, into complete sentences – not out loud, you understand, but as a kind of silvery whisper in my mind – and soon we were able to conduct entire conversations. No subject, no idea, however abstract, seemed beyond his grasp.

  Toki was clear in expressing his needs and desires and it made perfect sense to me that having taken on a living shape he now required sustenance, nourishment. The only trouble was that his appetite grew and grew. At first he made do with the occasional snack – a few gummi bears, some crisps, the chocolate mint from the pillow – but it seemed that the more he ate the greater his appetite became. I began smuggling leftovers from breakfast and lunch and dinner into the hut for him, which soon became a risky business. In the end, though, when I became too weak to leave the hut, Toki simply polished off everything that was brought to me on a tray. This confused the clinical picture. Why, my parents wanted to know, if I was eating so much did I appear to be wasting away? The less I ate, the more he needed to. By the third day I had no appetite at all – and when my parents forced me to eat, I could not keep it down.

  In the morning I sat just outside the hut on a folding chair watching the zebras graze and the other guests traipse to the pool and back, white towels slung over their shoulders. I overheard my mother and father arguing about me. How sullen I’d become, how remote! My father said that I was heading towards adolescence and that this sort of behaviour was to be expected; but my mother made the point that I hadn’t been like this a week ago.

  I grew anxious. How long before they made the connection? After an hour or so I went back to bed and cleaned out Toki’s drawer. Perhaps I should explain here, for the curious or practical-minded, that once he started eating he also started shitting. This too made perfect sense. He was now a living thing and I suppose that what goes in must come out. I spread out in the bottom of Toki’s drawer some two-day-old newspaper and this I replaced twice a day. Even when my whole body ached, when fever swept through me, when I was too ill and weak to reach for my glass of water, I scrupulously cleaned out the whiffy little pellets he left in a corner. I hated the thought of Toki sitting in his own shit.

  That afternoon I managed to walk the 500 metres to the watering hole and there I sat watching as first the warthog and then twenty minutes later the nyala drank their fill. By the time I walked back to the hut, the sheets had been changed and there was a new chocolate mint on the pillow. I unwrapped it and gave it to Toki; he ate it eagerly. I rolled the green foil into a little ball and flicked it high into the air. Toki and I watched it rise. Toki and I watched as it fell down near my feet.

  6.

  It was on the third night that I received my first ever blow job. My parents had booked a night game drive and by this point it was obvious that I was far too unwell to come along. They didn’t like to leave me alone, they said, but this was precisely what I longed for, to be left alone, or rather to be left alone with Toki, and so I insisted that that they go.

  Little Toki was an expert cocksucker – he managed to keep his sharp little fangs well out of the way, and seemed to have no gag reflex. You might argue that I was still young and that size wasn’t likely to be much of an issue, and in a sense you’d be right; but bear in mind that Toki, for all his growth, was himself only a small beast – smaller than an infant – and the way he took my little prick all the way down to the shaft, his cold wet nose pressed into my sparsely haired crotch, is surely to be applauded.

  I wasn’t ejaculating in those far-off days, but I did reach what I’d now call a dry orgasm: a tingling sensation in the tip of my cock built to climactic shiver, which then ran through my balls and even up into my stomach. Little Toki, his tongue flickering at the corners of his mouth, crawled down my leg, nestling comfortably against my right ankle and here, for the rest of this our second-last night together, he slept soundly.

  7.

  It was on the fourth day that the doctor was summoned. The Zululand Safari Lodge did not have one to call its own but they did have an arrangement with a larger hotel in nearby Ubizane. Dr Traugott was a sandy haired man with great big freckled hands, small yellow teeth and a chattering mouth.

  Even now I can feel the cold chill of his stethoscope on my bare chest and on my back, and smell his warm, sour and not entirely unpleasant breath. Examination over, he asked my parents whether he could have a few moments alone with me. I saw their hesitation but they did as he asked.

  Once they were gone from the hut he sat down on the bed beside me, fished about in his coat and retrieved a pipe that, after elaborate preparations, he lit. I thought this a strange thing for a doctor to do during an examination, even in those days. I watched as he puffed. His pale eyes had taken on a misty vacant look but when he turned to look at me they had cleared to a new lucidity. He asked me whether I’d been seeing strange things.

  A part of me wanted to point to the drawer where Toki sat, to be rid of my secret. But I did not reply.

  ‘What about strange dreams?’ I was silent. That was when he asked, ‘Are you eating the food they bring you – or are you disposing of it?’ I nodded.

  ‘Which? Disposing?’ I nodded again. After some more questioning – and I was honest in my answers, though without ever giving Toki away – the doctor called my parents back in. The problem, he told them, was not within his competence. They asked, what sort of problem was it, then? It was a spiritual matter, said the doctor – the German word he used was seelisch.

  ‘I’d like the boy to see my colleague,’ said the doctor. ‘Dr Mngabu is his name. He’s what we call a sangoma.’

  ‘A witch doctor, you mean.’ This from my father.

  ‘Dr Mngabu is a traditional healer,’ replied Dr Traugott, coolly. ‘He lives and practises in a nearby village.’

  ‘Will he come here?’ asked my mother. ‘No. We will have to go see him. Tomorrow.’ Thereupon ensued much uproar, much debate. But eventually an agreement was reached: my father would accompany me and Dr Traugott.

  8.

  I feel a little embarrassed setting down what happened next. Suffice it to say that sometime between midnight and breakfast I felt a long Toki cock sliding up inside me. My arsehole when I woke on that fifth morning was raw and bruised and burning and I finally understood what Iris warned about all those years earlier. There was even some spotting on the sheets and I remember thinking what a good thing it was that we weren’t home: it would have been a challenge there to hide the laundry from my mother. Here at the lodge the sheets were changed each day as if by magic and I knew that by the time I’d returned from my visit to the witch doctor the sheets would be fresh and tight and crisp. And if I didn’t return – well, then it wouldn’t matter, would it.

  9.

  I wish I could describe the journey from the lodge to the village but for most of the trip I was stretched out across the back seat, the plush velour against my hot cheek, my eyes closed. At one point I turned onto my back but all I could see were snatches of vast sky and the odd power line. We turned onto a rocky track, unsuited to the long wheelbase and soft suspension of the Chevvie, and then the car stopped. Staggering out of the back seat, I could see what appeared to be a small village, a few scattered beehive huts. We were greeted by a youthful woman bedecked in beads who kissed the doctor on both cheeks and lightly touched the top of my head before directing us to the second hut on the left. My father wished me luck, shook my hand. The doctor bent low and explained, his hot sour breath tickling my ear, that I must upon entering the hut lick the sangoma’s hand. I did not argue, so glazed and dazed and emptied out was I.

  My impression of the inside of the hut was a blurred and queasy thing; I felt uneasy. I remember that cow-tail fly whisks hung on the walls; that there were a great number of glass jars; and that herbs lay drying on w
hat looked like tea towels on the ground. It was dark and warm and there hung in the air a resiny smell.

  The witch doctor, who crouched in front of a wall of glass jars, was wrapped in a cloak of leopard skin. Tied about his waist was a pouch made from the dried-out bladder of a goat. He extended his hand, palm up, and leaning over, I licked it. The sangoma nodded, gestured for me to sit straight, and stared at me for a long time. Then he began to ask, all in gestures you understand, for not a word passed between us, a series of questions.

  Once I had answered gesture with gesture, as honestly as I was able, he began to burn what smelled like sage in a small ceramic pot, adding to this various dried herbs and who knew what else from the glass jars arrayed behind him.

  When he gestured for me to get undressed, I felt no scruple. Nor did I feel fear when he took from his pouch a razor blade. The small incision he made, just above my right temple, was painless. But when he dipped his right index finger into the medicine, the muti he had made, and began to massage the potion into the cut, I winced. It stung and it throbbed. He repeated this procedure at my left temple, at the point where my collar bone met my shoulder, and – turning me gently about – on each cheek of my bum. Then he indicated for me to get dressed.

  I sat before him and watched as he began throwing an assortment of bones and coloured pebbles onto a mat. This he stared at for a time, before smiling broadly, apparently pleased with what he saw. He gave me a very small pebble to swallow and this I did baulk at, but he persisted and I gave in. The last thing I remember is that he began making crosses in the air above me and in front of me, to the left of me and to the right of me …

  It was night when I came to, and cold. The witch doctor was gone. There was a gas lamp in the corner, and by its flickering light I could see the anxious face of my father peering over me. The doctor, who stood beside him, wore a satisfied look, a little complacent. I was feeling much better that night as we drove back to the lodge: still weak and frail but somehow in possession of myself. It would have been impossible to navigate the way without the directions of Dr Traugott. I sat upright this time and as we drove through the not-so-dark night – for it was the night of the super moon – I saw illuminated by its pale light no end of wonders.

  Back at the lodge, I went straight to my hut. The bed was made as I knew it would be. And there was the mint chocolate on the pillow. I sat there for a moment on the edge of the bed, and began unwrapping the chocolate. I bit into it and watched with pleasure as the lurid green filling began to ooze out. I caught it just in time with my quick tongue. I chewed, swallowed, and placed the remaining chocolate in my mouth. Only then did I pull open the drawer and peering in saw all that was left of Toki – a few sticks, a twist of twine, and a smear of stinky mud.

  Meanjin

  The Abduction of Ganymede

  Gay Lynch

  The male human is beautiful when his cheeks are still smooth, his body hairless, his head full-maned, his eyes clear, his manner shy and his belly flat.

  Germaine Greer, The Boy

  You rest your arm on the balustrade of the stairs leading to the railway concourse while checking your phone app for the platform number and departure time of the train to Freo. You hear the tapping of rubber shoes on the black filigreed metal steps, a whoosh of air that flaps like clothing or wings and smells of perspiration and fried food. Someone cannons into you from behind. As you fall, you half turn, to see a thin boy using his arm like a paddle in turbulent waters to shore you up against the rail. You gasp at his face. At the piece of red leather tied around his hairless neck; at the tatty lace scarf veering to one side during the collision. At his beauty.

  His full lips tremble, his eyes dart across your face and away as if in terror of a commuter in a silk shirt calling a transit guard. Or the police. Panic travels across his soft childish face. You want to press your thumb against the cleft in his tilted chin, like the god who placed it there.

  When he sees you swaying in the right direction, he retracts his arm and pulls his too-small, dirty-green jacket across his chest, sweeps his fingers through shaggy fronds of yellow hair as a girl his age might do, shakes a bracelet of threaded plastic seeds down his arm to his wrist. He looks about thirteen.

  Next he splays two uncertain fingers in a V against his lips and gasps as if he’s been hurt before and he thinks you, not he, effected this collision, exposing him to danger. You feel his indecisive breath on your neck, before he leaps past you onto the platform. As he rounds a newsstand he swings back to look at you, his face pink and parchment-gold against the green of his collar, like an angel boy in the morning light.

  Curving your hand round the flesh at your side, you draw in a sharp painful breath, registering an abrasion that may stain the only article of clothing remaining after a week of all-day conference-going and long boozy dinners. In fact, you had been wearing the shirt the previous night when, in the pursuit of knowledge and under the influence of Benedictine, you had kissed a postdoc not much younger than you in a taxi on its way to Miss Maud’s Swedish Hotel. Such irony that his semen had not so much flown like tap-water but damned up when he passed out – before you had chanced to read his three-line bio.

  The swell of morning commuters nudges you forward, gathers you up and you surge along with them. Before you reach the row of carriages and step up into the third, you glance at the signed route: City West; West Leederville; Subiaco; Daglish; Shenton Park; Karrakata; Loch Street; Claremont; Swanbourne; Grant Street, Cottlesloe; Mosman; North Fremantle; Fremantle (18.7 km). You like trains – their tetchy engines, their hissing doors, the steep drop beneath the carriages to the rails, signalling your strange fear of jumping, not of falling. You push past a girl with earphones threaded through her spiky absinthe-coloured hair, playing a game on her phone and past a middle-aged man reading a Manga comic, to take the only empty seat, on a bench that runs between the luggage corral and the door.

  At first you don’t notice the beautiful boy, clutching at vertical yellow poles to counteract the weight of his backpack; creeping past you like a Manna crab, heading towards the far wall of the carriage as if pursued by demons; sliding down the wall at the end of the carriage; hunkering down over his cracked running shoes. He doesn’t appear to notice you at all as he twirls the end of his lacy scarf. Well good.

  You open Germaine Greer’s The Boy to a page of text, feeling like a paedophile. Then glance around to make sure that no-one observes you flicking past Proem with its disturbing elongated illustration, to a page comprising only text. ‘Adolescence is not a moment but a process. A male child becomes a boy when it starts but may not yet be a man when it finishes,’ Greer asserts. Surely it is different, as close to actra-fraternal as you can get, for an art academic to view a photograph showing a boy’s penis, compared to the way a voyeur might: dreaming of power? After all, you are about to meet a researcher in the field of Neoplatonic readings of the male nude – in more neutral circumstances. After the meeting you’ll go with him to a gallery that serves decent food and coffee, to renegotiate your criticism of his paper.

  The boy on the floor begins to weep in a soft quiet way, using his sleeve to cover his face, but you can tell. Should you say something? It’s probably nothing to do with the small bump he gave you on the stairs. He cannot realise how vulnerable he looks, how much he invites undesirable attention. You sit up straighter, try to flick him a rueful smile as if to say ‘you’re alright … I’m alright … Cheer up,’ but he doesn’t appear to notice you at all. Not now or until he mowed you down. You cross your bare legs. Apart from the small abrasion and a fright, you have come to no harm. Sunshine warms the back of your neck through the window.

  At the next stop, more passengers exit than climb aboard. The boy remains crunched over his bag on the floor refusing eye contact. Why does he not pull himself together and take a seat? But he is not your responsibility, any more than the poststructuralist who fell asleep in your bed last night.

  *

  At Subia
co Station, two bare-chested youths of sixteen or so wait on the platform scrunching their white t-shirts in front of them. You know nothing more about Subiaco than last week’s television footage of transit guards beating unconscious pumped-up spectators from the nearby stadium. You see no resemblance between these two youths and AFL initiates. One drags behind the other in a khaki military-style jacket with epaulettes. One looks sleepy, the other nervy. Their torsos are pale and lean; their thigh muscles show little definition beneath denim jeans sagging at half-mast. Rocking against each other as they leap into the carriage, they manage to stay upright, their searchlight eyes tracking back and forth across the aisle, seeking anyone blocking their access, before they subside on the seat opposite you.

  In the warmth of the carriage, the smaller one with a thin, pointy face – ratty would be too unkind for he is pretty in an unvarnished way – slumps on the seat, one arm draped across the rise of his belly, long slim fingers dangling, head nodding on his skinny chest. He elbows his mate in the ribs. ‘Kasimir. Kasi.’

  The other starts, an aggrieved look on his face. ‘What the fuck?’ He dabs at a smear of blood from a mouth pleated with anxiety and wrings water out of his shirt onto the upholstery.

  They confer.

  ‘I don’t give a fuck, Ethan,’ he says.

  You can’t follow their conversation about not getting enough, and when it went in, and fantasy, but you know they aren’t talking about Harry Potter. That they’re off their faces on something. You glance uneasily around the carriage trying not to meet their eyes, still shielding the illustrations in Greer’s book with your hand.

  The taller one, Kasi, stares directly at you. Holds your gaze in an aggressive way. You close the book. He has handsome Slavic features: strong dark eyebrows that meet across his long nose, deep-set brown eyes, a wide mouth and a fine curly hair sprouting at his throat. He has pushed decent imitation designer sunglasses into his dark hair.