Barracuda

by Christos Tsiolkas

  �Eh, Scooter, you�ve got nothing to laugh about, mate. You weren�t swimming today�that was fucking paddling.�

  That silenced them. The Coach was the only one who could get away with swearing at them. Even Principal Canning pretended not to hear when Frank Torma let fly with his curses and insults. The school needed Coach Torma. He was one of the best swim coaches in the state, had coached Cunts College to first in every school sports meet of the last seven years. That was power. They immediately shut up and continued to the showers. Danny went to follow them.

  �Kelly, you stay behind. I want to talk to you.�

  The Coach was silent until the other boys had disappeared into the change rooms. He looked Danny in the eyes for the first time. �Why do you take it?�

  �What?�

  �Why do you take their shit?�

  You could hear his accent in the way he pronounced the word, �chit�.

  Danny shrugged. �Dunno.�

  �Son, always answer back when you receive an insult. Do it straight away. Even if there�s a chance there was nothing behind it, take back control, answer them back. An insult is an attack. You must counter it. You understand?�

  One side of Danny�s mouth started to twitch. He thought the Coach must be joking; he sounded like Demet�s mother or Sava�s giagia, as if an insult were the �evil eye�, as if he needed to wear a nazar boncuğu to ward against it. Danny�s jaw slackened, his head slumped back. He was not even aware of it, he had just assumed the pose; that was how you reacted to instruction back at his old school, the real school: you just looked bored when an adult was giving you a lecture.

  But Frank Torma�s expression remained serious and Danny realised this wasn�t a joke.

  �Listen, you stupid boy, if there is no spite, no hate or jealousy in what they say, then it does not matter. Nothing is lost.� The Coach patted his enormous stomach, the huge gut hard and round like a basketball straining his t-shirt. He was pointing to something beyond his gut, something inside, but Danny didn�t know what that could be. �Trust your instincts, son, don�t let them poison you. You have to protect yourself.� He pointed towards the change rooms. �They�re all jealous of you.�

  �That�s bullshit.�

  For a moment Danny thought the man was going to hit him: the Coach�s right hand danced, spun, jerked in the air. Instead his fat finger drilled hard into Danny�s chest. �Listen to me, they�re jealous of you�of course they are. You have the potential to be the best in the squad. The others can sense it.� The Coach�s finger was now pushing harder. �They�re going to want to get under your skin, and they�re right to. You are not friends, you are competitors.�

  It hurt where the Coach�s finger was stabbing Danny�s chest. But he didn�t care about the pain at all. He was the best, he was the best in the squad. Better than that dropkick Scooter, that chickenshit Morello, that poofter Fraser, that spineless rabbit Wilkinson, that up-himself spoilt-rich-kid Taylor. He was better than all of them. Stronger, faster, better. Strongest, fastest, best.

  The Coach followed him into the showers. Danny was relieved; the boys wouldn�t have a go at him with Frank Torma there. The others were still showering, making lame jokes about soap and Wilkinson. The silly faggot was taking it all, giving nothing back to them. The Coach was right, Danny realised. You had to give it back. Hurt them before they hurt you.

  Torma sat on the bench as Danny slipped off his swimmers and got under the shower. He turned on the hot tap but the first blast of water was freezing. Only when the steam began to rise did he loosen the cold tap. He soaped himself all over, scrubbing vigorously, almost violently, using the friction to warm himself up.

  �Having a wank, Dino?� It was Taylor, his tone full of pretend disgust. The rest of the morons brayed again.

  Danny looked over his shoulder to the Coach, who was silent, sitting on the bench, looking straight at him. Always answer back. He understood now what the man meant. Take control, always take control.

  Danny turned to the boys, his feet planted apart, hands by his sides: let them look at him. The water falling on him, drilling his back and shoulders, made him feel powerful. �Yeah, Taylor,� he said, tugging at his foreskin. �Why ya asking? Did ya want me to come in your mouth?�

  He could tell he had struck Taylor; the boy�s eyes were immediately averted, he was floundering hopelessly for a comeback. Then Morello laughed. And Frank Torma was grinning, his eyes aglint.

  �What are you laughing at?�

  Morello shut up instantly at Taylor�s words. Danny turned his back on them again but he had a grin on his face as big as the pool, the school, the universe. He was better than all of them. He was the best. He was the strongest.

  What am I doing here?

  The Monday of that week had been Valentine�s Day, his first day at Cunts College. His mother had taken a day off work and driven him all the way to the school gates. She�d also arranged to pick him up after practice at the new pool. �Only today,� she�d warned him. �From tomorrow you catch the bus and the train.�

  They drove for what seemed like hours, down the spine of the city then across to the east, stuck in gridlocked traffic, inching ever closer, everything getting greener as they went, the houses getting bigger and further apart. He was sulking all the way, his face pressed against the car window. He didn�t want to go to a new school. It�ll make you a better swimmer. He didn�t want to change to a new pool. It�ll make you a better swimmer. He didn�t want a new coach. It�ll make you a better swimmer. His mother stopped outside the gate that didn�t look like it belonged to a school, that should have belonged to a mansion from the movies, a mansion with a thousand rooms and with butlers and maids and ghosts. The walls were solid bluestone, the ironwork of the gate was black and shiny, the school emblem set on a plaque over the bars and covered in gold leaf: a lion rampant with a crown on its head, its paws resting on a crucifix; there was a burning torch and Latin words. Beyond the gate, the drive wound to a massive grey-stone building with two wings and a huge dome. It looked more like a temple, thought Danny, than a school building. Behind it the grounds stretched out endlessly, with no visible fence, no shops or warehouses or homes to be seen.

  And then there were the boys. The boys in single file, the boys in pairs, the boys in threes and fours and fives, in the lavender-and-yellow striped jackets and the charcoal thick long pants that Danny had put on with great discomfort that morning, the striped tie that he didn�t know how to knot, that his father had tried to knot for him last night, but hadn�t been able to do it, had kept knotting and unknotting, knotting and unknotting till he was cursing the school for taking his son, cursing the scholarship for making it possible, cursing his wife for wanting Danny to go there, cursing the tie, fucking bloody shit of a tie, and all the time Danny was thinking, He is cursing me, he is cursing my swimming. The knot in the tie was now pushing into his Adam�s apple, it was the flat of a knife pushing against his throat. The crisp white shirt his mum said he had to wear, that had made his dad curse even more. �Why new shirts, what was wrong with his old shirts, what the fuck�s all this shit costing us?� �Nothing!� his mother threw back, raising her voice, the danger there, and Danny had seen his father waver. �It costs us nothing, the boy�s on a scholarship,� to which his dad had replied, his own voice now lowered: �I still don�t see why it all has to be new. I don�t know why his old school pants and shirts aren�t good enough.�

  Danny�s mother retorted something under her breath, in a tone that indicated the subject was closed. She hadn�t wanted Danny to hear it. But he had. �I don�t want him to be embarrassed, I don�t want him to think he doesn�t belong there.�

  The gold leaf of the lion�s crown and the crucifix and the burning flame. Cunts College. It�s my first day at Cunts College, thought Danny.

  His mother pushed him out of the car and he was trying to hide in the folds of the jacket which seemed heavy on his shoulders and the thi
ck fabric of the trousers was chafing the skin between his thighs and behind his knees. He thought he must stink of chlorine, and that he must be walking like a retard, he was walking slowly up the drive that seemed too long and too wide, too grand for a school, all that bluestone and gravel, all those statues and granite steps, the buildings reeking of the centuries, not looking like a school, no portables, no concrete sheeting, looking more like a cathedral, a cathedral where the Pope would live. Danny walked up one two three four five six seven steps, following the stream of boys through an arch and into an entrance hall as big as a house, taller than a house, lined with stained-glass windows that towered above him, smooth cream walls from which portraits of old men stared down at him, all moustaches and bald pates.

  Boys were pushing past him and around him and in front of him and behind him, and they had the clearest skin he had ever seen and the best cut hair and the whitest and most perfect teeth. He felt dirty and ugly and he was conscious of the pimples on his brow, the chain of them on his chin, the ugly red welt of them along his neck. The boys were all shouting to one another, they all knew each other but no one knew him and he was pushed, pummelled, carried through another entrance of granite and bluestone and he was now on a clean cobblestone path that wound through an expanse of immaculately mowed lawn, perfectly level, perfectly green, not a trace of dry yellow in the grass. A gardener was working in a patch of gold and lavender flowers. The boys rushed past, ignoring him, but Danny halted, watching his wrinkled face and sunken cheeks, and Danny smiled. The man didn�t return the smile; instead he looked down at the flowers and kept weeding around them. It was then that Danny realised that the flowers were the colours of the school uniform, that even the flowers here had an order. And it was beautiful and overwhelming because he had never before seen such turrets nor imagined such opulence and he wondered again where the squat ugly portables were, the ones that were furnace-hot in summer, wondered where the dry piss-yellow ovals were, where the graffiti was. And then a bell rang, not a siren, not a drill in your ear but a real bell, like a church bell, and the boys all suddenly disappeared and it was just Danny there and the gardener who wouldn�t look at him, who only looked down at the ground, at the yellow and purple flowers the colour of the school uniform and the school crest. The flowers that none of the boys noticed. And in that moment, Danny thought of how much the girls at his school�his old school, the real school, with the shitty portables, the ear-ripping electronic bell, the tags and graffiti on the ugly stretcher-brick walls�how much the girls would love to walk past a garden filled with such lovely flowers. But of course there were no girls here, no girls were allowed at this school.

  That thought was terrifying. That thought made him want to run away.

  It�ll make you a better swimmer.

  That�s when he heard: �Hey, you, what are you doing here?�

  The first words anyone said to him at Cunts College: What are you doing here?

  It wasn�t a teacher who was asking the question. It was an older boy, flaxen-haired, clear-skinned except for a dark birthmark the size of a thumbprint on his left cheek. He marched across the yard to Danny.

  �What house are you in?�

  House? Danny stood there, confused, trying to decipher the question. He wasn�t going to live here; there was no way he was going to stay in these grounds a minute longer than he needed to. He knew that boys boarded here, slept here. He wasn�t one of them, he would never be one of them.

  �You�re new, aren�t you?�

  Danny could answer that. �Yes.�

  �Name!�

  �Danny.�

  �Surname!�

  �Kelly.�

  �Right, Kelly, I�m Cosgrave. I�m a prefect.�

  Cosgrave seemed to think this should mean something to Danny. He wasn�t sure what it could mean. It meant that somehow this older youth was in charge, that somehow this older youth was perfect. Perfect golden hair, perfect clear skin.

  Cosgrave sighed impatiently and pointed across the lawn to steps leading to the main building. �March.�

  Danny was conscious of Cosgrave in step behind him. He felt like he was in a war movie, that he was a new recruit. He was Private Daniel Kelly, Blue House.

  All that first day it was as if he was slipping away from himself and becoming the uniform. He didn�t know how to sit still behind the solid, freshly varnished wooden desks in the classroom, he didn�t know what to do, what to say, when to look up, when to speak, when not to speak. He didn�t trust himself in the large airy classrooms filled with equipment that all seemed to be new, books that seemed to have been opened for the first time, teachers who assumed they would be listened to and not interrupted. And it all smelled different: full of air, full of light, but also of locker rooms�the nitrous nutty smell of boys, mixed with the fetid whiff of sweat and the acrid stink of deodorant. There was no scent of perfume, of hand cream, none of the sweetness and floral odours of girls. There was no sign of girls anywhere in this world.

  With his tie so tight, the flat of a knife pressed against his throat so he couldn�t breathe freely in those large and airy rooms, Danny was vanishing and all that was left behind was a uniform, an outline to be coloured in. He was becoming Kelly.

  Kelly, are you following this?

  Kelly, are you familiar with this?

  Kelly, pay attention!

  The day crawled slowly forward, the flat of a knife against his throat, and he feared he was to be trapped in that day forever, that it would be repeated endlessly and there would be no chance of ever finding the real Danny again. He wanted to be back with his old friends, to be with Boz and Shelley and Mia and Yianni and especially Demet; he ached for the chipped desks and mission-brown plastic seats of his old school. He missed the girls gossiping, the boys flicking paper pellets; he missed the noise, the jokes, the insults, the teasing. The day crept. He had disappeared into the day. He had vanished.

  �Kelly!�

  His name had been called, it had been repeated. He struggled to recognise it. A fat man was at the classroom door, pointing to him, a man in grey trackpants, a white shirt too small for his bulging belly, his brick-like chest. All the boys had turned around and were looking at Danny. The teacher was telling him to go.

  �Come on!� The fat man was impatient. He had an accent that made syrup of every word. Danny followed him out to the corridor.

  �I�m Frank Torma. I�m your swimming coach.�

  Now he realised this was the man who had seen him swim at the meet in Bendigo, who had said to his mother, Your son has talent. This was the man who had said, I can make your boy a champion.

  The swim centre perched on a rise from which there was a sweeping view of the whole city. The other boys, all chatting to each other, grabbed their bags and piled out of the van. As Danny walked behind them through the front doors of this new pool, he felt the waft of warm moist air, the sting of chlorine, and the day suddenly heaved off its sluggishness. The day began to move again. In the cold locker room Danny kicked off his shoes, stripped off the heavy jacket, the silken tie, the stiff new shirt, the itchy trousers, peeled off his underpants and socks. Naked, it felt as if his body could suddenly breathe again, and he was so eager to put on his bathers he almost fell over.

  Torma was talking, he was pointing at various boys, but all Danny could see was the unreal blue of the pool, and he knew that any moment now he would be immersed in water, held and buoyed and merged with water.

  In the water the day splintered and coursed, and he stroked, kicked, breathed to outrun it, to be faster than the day roaring to its conclusion, but the day won. The day always won. He couldn�t believe that two hours were up, that he had to get out of the pool, that he had to go back with the others to the cold locker room and put on his clothes.

  �How�d I do, Coach?� It was the tall, lean boy, the one whose skin was so white it was almost translucent: you could see the blue of the veins showing through.

  �You
did well, Taylor.�

  The boy grinned and raised his arms into a triumphant boxer�s stance.

  Then Frank Torma pointed to Danny. �But Kelly was faster.�

  Taylor�s arms dropped as if Danny or the Coach had just punched him.

  As the boys filed out of the change rooms, showered and dressed, Danny heard his name being called. His mother had been on the benches, watching him. She almost tripped as she ran down the steps, and was out of breath when she got to him. Danny was mortified that she was there. He couldn�t bear to look at her. He knew that all the boys were staring, of course they were: at her scalloped jet-black hair in a sixties style; at the beauty spot she accentuated with a black pencil every morning; at her tight low-necked scarlet dress; at the black pumps with the silver buckles. �My wog Marilyn Monroe,� his dad called her, as he serenaded her with Hank Williams or Sam Cooke, as he danced with her in their tiny kitchen. It always made Danny and Regan and Theo laugh. But not today. He didn�t want her here today, his mother who looked like some vintage movie star. He knew that Taylor�s mother would look nothing like her. Scooter�s mum wouldn�t, nor would Wilkinson. Their mums would look normal.

  The Coach was the first to speak and he introduced her to the other boys. Danny still couldn�t look at her. But he knew the boys would be leering. Why wouldn�t they, at her fat tits on display like that? He walked away and she had to almost run to catch up with him. He�d been embarrassed by her before, of course he had, who wanted his mum or his dad around, who wasn�t embarrassed by their mother or their old man? But he�d never been ashamed, he�d never wanted her to fuck off before.