He knew at his final turn that the race was his. That didn�t make him punish the water less. The butterfly was never effortless, the butterfly was always work: one lapse of exertion led to failure. The stroke wasn�t about being part of the water, it wasn�t becoming one with the substance and matter and DNA of water. The stroke was a machine, the stroke was about making his body into a craft that razed a path through the water. It was fighting and twisting and transforming the element. On the second turn, his chest and lungs and sternum had morphed into one distinct muscle; his arms a wheel and his hips and legs and feet a threshing machine that kicked in one unified motion. By the last turn he was a perfect mechanism and the water had disappeared, bowed to his will, and it was flight now, the water was defeated, and he was energy working in a cyclical precise motion and the race was his. There was no water and there were no other swimmers and there were no black lines and there was not even the pool. All there was, all that existed, was Danny. He could feel the power of his chest and the strength of his back and the hardness of his abdomen and the potency of his arms�the capabilities of a flawless body�and that was how it was no surprise when he touched the tiles: he knew he had won. He was exhausted, he was breathless, his chest felt as though it would explode, but he was not spent. If he had to, he knew, he could have done it again. He had become the stroke, the stroke was now his. Coach had been right. And even as he punched the air, even as he heard his name called, as he shook the hands of the other swimmers who dived under the ropes to congratulate him, he was pushing a thought to the back of his mind. Not yet, not yet. He was the strongest, the fastest, the best. He was in the finals. He would prove it in the finals.
And he did. At the 1997 Australian Swimming Championships, Danny Kelly placed first in the two hundred metre men�s butterfly.
It was in the showers that he had time to think. He thought through every moment of the race. It was mind. He understood for the first time exactly what Coach meant, what the great athletes and swimmers meant when they said it was all in the mind. It couldn�t have been done without the strength and power of his body, but that strength and power was also inside of him. He was as strong and as powerful inside: the body and the mind were one, and so they could not break, they could not fail.
A stocky unshaven man came up to him after his shower, congratulated him and explained that he was a journalist for one of the Brisbane papers. He wanted to ask Danny a few questions. The man reeked, a sour odour, of too many cigarettes and curdled milk, but Danny eagerly answered the man�s questions.
�And your name is Danny Kelly, that right?�
�Daniel Kelly,� he corrected him.
As the man scribbled in his notebook, Danny looked around for the photographers. There were none. But next time�next time he knew there would be photographers.
He was prepared this time on the plane for when the craft had to prove its strength, when the machine had to convince gravity that it was the more powerful. Again, as the plane rose he experienced the sensation of being dislodged, thrown away from his own body. Then he was one again, and again it was like swimming and there was a tingle in his belly and a tingle in his crotch.
This time, when the plane had climbed above the clouds and was floating in the canopy of sun and sky, Danny didn�t look out the window. He was thinking of Wilco up in business class, thinking of when he, Danny, would be flying first class. But it would be his own money, he wouldn�t be dependent on anyone. He would fly his parents first class to exotic places for their anniversaries, he would shout Regan trips to Europe and Theo trips to South America and the Poles.
It was then, with the snow of cloud beneath him, the sharpest, purest light in the universe on his face, that he let himself travel to the corners of thought and allowed himself to give shape to the heresy he had been holding back for days. He knew that he was strong, that he was fast, that he was the best. Body and mind. Inside and out. It was that he was convinced that one hundred metres was too short for him. He was strength, he was power; he laid a palm across his chest, where the muscles could unfurl at will, where they twitched, hungry and alive. The Coach had not let him swim that extra one hundred metres, because he thought that it would sap his energy, deplete him for his other race. Concentrate on the butterfly, that is your stroke. But he knew now that with that extra one hundred metres, he would have found the pace, he would have found the power. He could fly as high as he wanted to, he could touch the sun. He knew it. He looked out at the infinite cloud. Frank Torma had never coached an Olympian. That was why he couldn�t give it back, that was why he had let Ben Whitter get away with it. Coach did not know what Danny was capable of.
Danny Kelly could be the best in the world. He knew he could conquer both strokes, it was inside him, it was a revelation written inside him, inked over his muscles, imprinted in his brain, etched into his soul. The butterfly was a given; the freestyle had always been his stroke. The thought brought a shot of guilt, a shock of illicit danger: the best coach would have known this, a better coach would have made it happen.
He shut his eyes. He was flying and he was swimming and it felt as one. He was swimming and he was flying into his future.
‘I AM SO SORRY. I JUST CAN’T forgive myself for not coming to see you.’
She has no idea how relieved I am to hear her say those words. We are in the courtyard of a bar off Lygon Street, it is a dark winter evening and she is shivering, but she wants to sit outside to smoke. It is the kind of place where there isn’t a house wine and the beer is all imported. I am warming my hands between my thighs. The wind bites, the cold is close to painful, but I don’t mind. It is the smoking that reminds me of the old Demet; it is the tight scissor grip that she has on her cigarette, the fierceness with which she drags on it, the way her fingers play with the packet between each smoke that brings her back to me.
‘I don’t care,’ I reply, smiling. ‘It doesn’t matter. In that place visitors make you feel your isolation more keenly. I always felt worse when Mum came, I always felt like shit afterwards.’
My words tumble into each other in my rush to convince her that there is no hurt, that I bear no grudge. That’s what I learned in there, that was the most important lesson: that I did something wrong and that I had to pay for what I did. You construct a ladder and you climb that ladder, out of the hell you have created for yourself and back into the real world. That is atonement, a word I discovered in there; it is in such places that the word resides and makes sense. And I am not there yet, Dem, I want to tell her, I haven’t got there yet. I have enough of my own guilt, I still have nights when sleep won’t come because I am reliving the piercing shame. I have enough guilt. I don’t need hers. I don’t want hers.
She takes out another cigarette, lights it, looking at me out of the corner of one eye. I want her to be sarcastic, to be sneering and opinionated and strong. I want the old Dem, I don’t want this polite stranger.
‘Luke visited, didn’t he?’
That’s more like it. There’s the old rivalry. He’s your best friend, she’d always say, but we’re soul mates.
‘Yeah, Luke visited.’
The first change I noticed is that she’s lost weight. She’s something I never thought she’d be: she’s fit. I’d place a bet that she’s working out, going to the gym. And that makes me want to laugh, that’s something I could never have imagined, after all the shit she used to give me about my training.
‘You’re working out, aren’t you?’
A resonant laugh comes from deep in her gut. It is so good to hear.
‘Yeah, I’m working out.’ She ruefully eyes the cigarette in her fingers. ‘But I’m still fucking fagging.’
I have to restrain myself from saying, Don’t stop, it is part of you—that fervent passion she has for the cigarette. It is a mark of her character and of her personality. I can’t imagine Demet without the fags. Something would be missing. The smoking centres her.
She’s cut her hair. It is a buzz
cut, so short you can see her scalp. The explosion of raven curls, the mad mop, have all gone. The new cut suits her. Demet will never be pretty; now that’s an inadequate word for how she looks. The new hairstyle accentuates the blockish severity of her face, the strong ridge of her brow, the heavy hooded eyes, the sharp line of her nose, the prominent mouth, that mouth that dominates when you look at her. I haven’t seen her for years and I am struck by how none of the components of her face should fit together: everything—eyes, brow, cheeks, nose, mouth—seems oversized, too much. But that’s Dem, she is too much. And that’s what I love about her.
It feels good, I let that thought sink in, and I take hold of her free hand. ‘It’s really good to see you. I’ve missed you.’
I’m the one who should be apologising. For not once getting up the courage to call her to find out where she had moved to, for not once writing a letter to tell her that I hadn’t disappeared, that she hadn’t vanished from my thoughts. But I didn’t know if she ever wanted to see me again. No, that’s not true. I believed that there was no way she would ever want to see me again.
She squeezes my hand. ‘Missed you too, fucker.’
The third thing I noticed is how finely cut her clothes are, how fashionable she is. Not that Dem didn’t always have style: she always stood out in high school. But back then her fashion was a jumble of shapeless long op-shop coats, Che Guevara badges and thick-soled workman’s boots. Her appearance is still masculine—it’s there in the severity of her haircut, in the pragmatic cut of her long pants, the flat-heeled shoes—but the red coat she has buttoned up to her neck is made of a thin fine textured leather; the fabric of the shirt that peeks from under the cuffs of her coat is delicate, her trousers tailored and stylish.
She lets go of my hand and sips her wine. ‘Have you heard from Luke?’
I shake my head. ‘Not lately. I got a card from Beijing a few months ago, but nothing since. I imagine he’s busy.’
‘I think he’s riding the Asian tiger for all it’s worth. I guess that’s our future. I got an email the other day from him, a group one, telling us all about the money to be made in totalitarian capitalist China. Blah blah blah. You sure you didn’t get it?’
‘I’m not on email.’
‘What?’ She is incredulous. I’m used to that response. Not having a computer places me outside the world, renders me invisible. But I also know my time of concealment is coming to an end.
‘I do have to get a computer. I’m starting a course next year and as much as I can’t stand the bloody things I’m going to need to be on email.’
‘What’s the course?’
‘Human services. Or “community services”, they’re calling it. It’s a certificate course, nothing fancy. I’m working as a volunteer at the moment, working with adults who have acquired brain damage—you know, through injury or accident. I thought doing the course might make it easier to get a job.’
I find that I am blushing, that in revealing something of myself to another person I am awkward and embarrassed; I almost fear that I don’t know how to stop. I haven’t talked intimately with someone for a long time. It strikes me, speaking to Demet beneath the gaunt naked elm trees in this freezing courtyard, that I have almost forgotten what it is to reveal oneself to another.
‘Anyway,’ I mumble to a close, ‘that’s the plan.’
She is looking at me intently, squarely in the eyes. It is disconcerting. ‘Good for you, Danny. I am so proud of you.’
Because I am not fucking up? Because I am not embarrassing you? Because I am not a loser?
I had literally crashed into her in Lygon Street. I’d been rushing to catch a movie, something I had been doing for a few months, catching a film, any film, on half-price Monday. Attending weekly gave me both the pleasure of routine—and routine is still everything to me—and at the same time forced me into the world. I only saw movies on my own, and conversation was limited to the dry transaction with the cinema staff over tickets. But it was still a forward step into the world. I was running late because when I got home from the night shift at the supermarket I’d started reading Philip Roth’s The Human Stain and found myself still engrossed in it by mid-morning: here was shame, here was rage, here was indignity, and here was retiring from the world. I’d set the alarm but slept through it and had only forty-five minutes from waking to get to Carlton. I’d jumped off the tram in Swanston Street, had run blindly down Cardigan Street, frantically weaving through the crowds of students, and as I was careering down Lygon Street I bumped the shoulder of a woman coming out of Readings. Hey, she had complained, and I, puffing, was drawing in my breath to prepare an apology when I noticed—no longer overweight, her hair short, her clothes stylish—that it was Demet. Her face turned from a scowl into shocked recognition. Danny? Yeah, I answered, Yeah, it’s me.
At first I thought that she didn’t want to talk to me, assumed that she wanted nothing to do with me. She wouldn’t look me in the eye, it seemed as if she wanted to draw away.
‘What are you doing?’ It was a stupid question but all I could think to ask.
‘Just browsing,’ she’d replied, and then added, ‘I’m working at the uni, just up the road. And you?’
‘I’m heading off to a film,’ and I pointed across the street to the cinema. I had quickly glanced at my phone; if I didn’t cross the street now I would be late for the movie. I had to say goodbye. She hadn’t even kissed me or hugged me—she wanted nothing to do with me.
‘Are you running late?’ she’d asked and I’d nodded, and then, even though it terrified me and broke the pattern of my day, I blurted out, ‘I can see a film anytime. How about we go for a drink?’
It was clear that the final word had alarmed her: she’d almost recoiled from it. Of course, of course, she was remembering the last night we’d seen each other. Shame beat pitilessly around my ears at that moment, shame was the earth splitting beneath my feet, shame was mortification and fire. She’s scared I’ll get drunk and become a violent ugly fool; maybe she thinks I’ll hit her. Of course she can never trust me again.
Shame. I am trying not to be overwhelmed by it, I am trying not to be beholden to it, to find a place for it where I can survive it, where I am not broken by it. I don’t know if it will ever happen, or if it can ever happen. I can’t bear the weight of all the apologies I need to make. That morning I had underlined a passage in the book where the woman working as a cleaner is asked what it is like to bear the memory of being molested as a young girl by her stepfather and she replies, Like carrying a house on your back. I’d underlined it so hard with my ballpoint pen that I ripped the page. That is shame, that is the cost and the burden and the irredeemable fact of it.
There were too many people in the street, there was too much brightness, too much noise. I wanted to be home, the door locked, just myself, my mattress, my books and my four walls. She didn’t want a drink with me, it was obvious that she wanted nothing to do with me. I was poison, I was contamination. I should just walk away, I thought, I should cross the street and go into a film, any film. I should just disappear from her world. So before she could reply, before she could lie and say she was running late or that she had work she needed to finish or a dinner that she had to prepare, I said the words for her. ‘Nah, of course you’re busy. We’ll make it another time.’ She had looked so sad then. Once again, I had misjudged words, I had made them into something despondent and crushing.
‘Danny,’ she said, finally reaching out to me, stroking my cheek tenderly. ‘Of course I have the time for you, mate. For you I have all the time in the world.’
‘It’s really nothing,’ I say. ‘I like helping them out. It’s certainly not heroic.’
And it isn’t. I feel resentment stirring in my belly, I can sense it in my sudden urge to draw away from her.
She is looking at me as if I am a child who has performed well on an exam, has brought home a prize. ‘Good for you, Danny,’ she says again. ‘You’re doing something really g
ood, you’re looking after society’s dispossessed.’ But I bet she’s thinking, What a perfect thing for a loser like him to do, to look after other losers.
I want to tell her that I like the work, that I don’t feel judged or assessed or criticised by the guys I look after. The old German man whose brain has been fried from too much alcohol; the youth who had his skull squashed, driving high, driving fast without a seatbelt; the middle-aged carpenter who’d shot too much heroin into his body and had died for a minute. Rolf and Kevin and Jeremy. I do Rolf’s washing; he pisses himself all the time. I am teaching Kevin how to dress himself, teaching Jeremy how to wash himself, I help him sit on the toilet when he needs a shit—I do all this and I am immersed and lost in it. I know about bodies, how they need to be sculpted and moulded and twisted and made to work. There’s not a lot I know, but I know this, that the body can be trained, that the body can be changed, that the body is in motion, is never static. And I know that sometimes the body will roar out its limits, will tell you there is no further to go, that some possibilities will never be realised, despite desire and hope and will. I know this better than I know anything else. The body also fails. Rolf and Kevin and Jeremy know this too. Rolf and Kevin and Jeremy and I are losers, we also know this; but not in the way the world thinks. We don’t need the world to pity us, we don’t need the encouraging word or the pat on the back. We carry our home on our back.
Demet is saying something else, going on about my altruism or my fortitude, or, for fuck’s sake no, my courage.
‘Really, it’s nothing,’ I interrupt. ‘It’s just a job.’
She laughs again and my resentment is gone. ‘OK, Danny Kelly, OK. It’s a job.’ She has lit another cigarette, has finished her wine. ‘I bet it’s better than my job.’
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