Barracuda

by Christos Tsiolkas

  He began at his feet. But almost immediately there was another rush of words around his head, a burst of blood to his ears. You’re the luckiest bastard we know.

  Danny breathed in and tried again.

  He began again at his feet, rushing through the meditation this time, moving quickly from calves to thighs to buttocks to stomach to lungs, calling for sleep. He was at his hands, his forearms, and it was beginning—his arms felt like lead, still against the cool cotton sheets. I hope you don’t ever forget how fortunate you are, mate. The blood surged, his ears burned and his head pounded. He breathed out. He’d have to start again.

  His spine was stretched, he had to move. He shifted in the bed. And as he did, as he twisted, the sheets crawled up his body and the cotton rubbed at his crotch, caressed the shaft of his penis, the glans. Danny’s body shuddered as the wave of pleasure rushed, as the semen squirted. But immediately he felt overwhelming panic, shame, as the sticky warm fluid seeped over his thigh and belly and onto the white sheets.

  He was wilted, spent. He forced himself to breathe slowly. And this time he didn’t call on sleep, he called on rage. He spat it out, a loud coarse whisper, and he didn’t care if Wilco heard. Let him hear, let him wake; he hoped that at the very least the words terrorised the older boy’s dreams, that they were carried by the wave of his fury all the way back home: It is not luck, it has never been luck, it is because I am the best and I am going to get gold and what you can’t stand is that I am better than you.

  Why couldn’t it be Taylor with him? He was nauseated: his body had betrayed him. The sensation was strange, terrifying; he had never experienced it before, his body and himself not being one.

  Danny realised that the world was rushing in again, that he was listening to the mechanical vibrations of the cooling system, he could hear the boy’s snores from the next bed. His body had betrayed him but Danny was spent. It had worked. He went to sleep.

  He sits on a plastic chair in front of the third-lane block, his legs sprawled out in front of him, his arms dangling behind the orange chair back. Danny knows he is in the Fukuoka Swimming Centre, he knows there are five other swimmers, he knows that a small crowd is sitting in the decks. They are all waiting for the race to begin. There are Australian flags, Japanese flags, US and Canadian flags fluttering above him, red and blue and white festoons garlanded all around him. He knows all this but he sees none of it. Danny is looking straight ahead, down the barrel of lane number three, fifty metres of clean water, a mirror of blue, a highway of black line ahead of him. He sees the water, he sees the lane, he sees the race. He sees himself dive, he sees himself swim, he sees himself win. That is all he needs to see.

  And it is his, he knows it, as soon as the starting pistol cracks, as soon as he dives from the block, as his body enters and dolphins and is accepted by the water. As he breaks the surface of the water, his chest, his arms, his legs, his feet, his whole body is an indomitable threshing machine, but even so, in the foam arms of the water, he is cocooned by a tender calm. He doesn’t have to think. His mind and his body and the water are one. All his work, all his effort, all his talent, they are being vindicated. He has won. The water is the future and he has always belonged to it.

  It is at the final turn that the water betrays him. His execution is perfect, he feels what it is to be divine. But as he momentarily glimpses the world reflected in the underside of the water’s surface he finds that one of the other swimmers has completed the turn before him. That other swimmer is already racing towards the end. Which can’t be, for that end is his.

  And then it is like vertigo when the water drops away and it is only a flicker of time, a second within a second within a second, but Danny is scrambling, struggling in the water. He and the water are no longer one. He can’t understand why his arms are arcing so slowly, as if they have lead weights on them, or why his legs kick so sluggishly, why his chest is tight with every breath out of the water, why the end of the lane seems an impossible horizon. The race isn’t finished but the exhaustion is a flood. He is depleted. He roars his denial into the water itself and it is then that the water answers. Danny kicks, finds confidence again, reasserts the power and drive of his body. He must not think, he can only trust in his body and in the water. It is his race. He pushes forward, he charges, he punches and he owns the water once again; the water has parted to create space for him. He is not thinking of the other swimmers. His body has not failed him, and his mind has not failed him. Of course he will win. Of course he must win. There is no hesitation, no doubt, as his body hurtles through the water, his muscles pumping to his command, his will driving him to swim faster than he has ever swum before, to chase the other swimmer. But the water knows what his body knows. This is his race. His body, the water, they will not betray him. He lunges towards the finish, his hand smacks the tile. He cocks his head out of the water and the sound and the lights and the colours of the outside world explode all around him.

  Of course he has won. He has given it all that he has. He has no more to give.

  In the two hundred metre men’s butterfly at the Pan Pacific Games in Fukuoka, Japan, an Australian golden boy comes first, an American second and a Japanese swimmer third. Danny Kelly comes fifth.

  Danny Kelly has lost.

  Danny Kelly is heaving, bawling, crying like a baby, his body shaking and convulsing. His body has so deceived him that he is scared he’s going to piss himself in the pool. Spit is foaming at his lips; he won’t remove his goggles even though they have fogged up, even though he can only see the world through a mist of cloud and tears. He doesn’t want to see the world, he can’t imagine how to be in this new world. He senses a swimmer glide under the rope next to him, he feels a hand on his shoulder. He jumps back, alarmed, rips off his goggles and sees the golden boy in his lane; the golden boy’s grin seems pasted on, enormous, all teeth and gums, his eyes are sparks and fire and heat, and he is trying to shake Danny’s hand but Danny doesn’t take it. Danny turns to face the cool surface of the tiles. Danny won’t look at the golden boy, he won’t face the world. Come on, mate, he hears, Come on, shake. Danny refuses.

  The other swimmers have leapt out of the water, will be extending congratulations or commiserations, facing cameras or enduring the lonely walk of the defeated back to the warm-down pool, but Danny won’t leave the water. The only thing he wants is to go back in time and begin again. If he can just do it again he knows that he will win. He can prove them wrong rather than right.

  He gave it his best. Strongest, fastest, best. Fifth? It is impossible. His best cannot be fifth.

  ‘Come on, kid, get out of the water.’

  It’s a young man, one of the Australian coaches, kneeling on the tiles, looking down at him, holding out his hands. He sees the pity in the man’s eyes but he also sees something else—relief, embarrassment. Danny is shivering, his body is beginning to cramp, all his muscles are seizing. He feels hands reach for him, hands grab him and pull him up and he is screaming, he doesn’t want to keep it all inside, he doesn’t want to forgive them all their envy and jealousy, all their anger that he had taken the place of one of their golden boys, they didn’t want him here, they didn’t think he belonged here. Arms are pulling him out of the water and Danny is thrashing and twisting and Danny is shouting, ‘It’s all your fucking fault! You didn’t want me here. I fucking hate you, I hate all of you cunts. You cunts. You cunts. You cunts, I hate you more than you could ever hate me.’ But then the sobs come so strongly that all words and motions are stilled. He is being supported by two men, who lift him, almost carry him past other swimmers who can’t look at him, who turn away from him, past a man with a camera on his shoulder, past the Japanese volunteers who can only look down at the ground, past the splash pool, into a corridor, into the locker room, where he is pushed onto a bench and someone is holding him and he is racked with sobbing and one of the medics on the squad is holding a syringe and someone has gripped his arm. Danny is still sobbing and trying to find the
energy to push them away but he is as weak as if he had swum a thousand miles not two hundred metres, and he is so exhausted that he is as light as a leaf and as heavy as a boulder and he lets them pat his arm and he watches the needle enter his vein and bile slips from his lips as the plunger fills with his blood and then he is quiet. He looks straight ahead and the world too has gone silent. He can’t hear a sound, not the doctor talking to him, no noises from the pool outside, nothing. He tries to rise, he is thinking, I have to get up, I have to move. But his muscles no longer belong to him, his body is not his own. I can’t fly, thinks Danny, and his chin slumps to his chest, I’m stuck to earth. And out of the corner of his eye he can just see the young coach who pulled him from the water, he is saying something to the doctor, and he realises that this coach is not so young because there are flecks of grey in his short beard. And though he can’t hear any sounds he knows exactly what this man is saying to the doctor. He can’t hear but it is as if the words enter through Danny’s heart not through his ears, and what he hears are the words: He’s going to be ashamed of this moment for the rest of his life.

  LUKE HAS BECOME A STRIKING-LOOKING MAN. He has some heft to him now, a solidity that suits him. When we were young I used to think that physically the Vietnamese and Greek genes were ill-matched. Back then he was so tiny that there was an almost simian look to him. I never said it to him, I was too ashamed of even thinking it. But in adulthood his face has acquired symmetry. He is a handsome man.

  He is talking nervously, scratching at one elbow, unable to stop himself looking anxiously at the guard, starting at loud noises. His nervousness doesn’t worry me. I used to jump at every clanging gate, every heavy footfall, any raised voice. But he has nothing to fear. We have been allowed to sit together on a bench in an anterior courtyard, watched over by Jackson, the youngest guard, who is stupid but well-meaning. There is no meanness in him. I wish Luke would stop shuffling and radiating anxiety, but I am not annoyed. I am grateful that he is visiting me.

  I am trying not to think about my shirt chafing the tender welts below both of my shoulder blades. I sit as still as I can because every time I shift my body the thick fibres of my work shirt scrape against the wounds of the new tattoos and a violent pain jolts my body. It is three days since Angus finished the last tattoo; and for the past three nights every time I have taken off my shirt it tears away the skin trying to heal there, and the blood keeps flowing. But I am marked—the scar of who I was and who I am is permanently part of me now.

  I sit still and smile at Luke, who is going on about study and work, about life outside. He doesn’t say it but every word reveals his concern that I am missing that life, that I am waiting for the day when that life will return to me. I just keep smiling, not really listening to his words. What I notice is the fine line of his nose, the dimples in his cheeks, the dark hairs on his pale arms. He talks to me about study and work, about life outside, and I sit there imagining the shape and colour of his nipples—they are dark, small, his chest hair is sparse, I imagine it a swirl around each nipple—and I think of the fine hair forming a line down from his chest to his belly to his crotch. I imagine his cock, long and thin, the pubes thick and soft. I keep smiling, and with every pump of my heart the blood bursts against the tender markings on my back. I lean over with my elbows on my knees to hide my erection.

  It is just before we are sent to our cells. Carlo is sitting on the chair next to me, his knee touching mine—that’s all the contact we have but it is enough to send a charge through me, a pulse that repeatedly pounds through my body. He leans into me and whispers, ‘That mate of yours who visited you today: tell him he can’t have you.’ The words slip into me and through me, I have to control myself not to react to them. I am careful not to reveal anything, that no expression disturbs the look of feigned boredom on my face. It was one of the first lessons I received here, the importance of appearing oblivious and unmoved.

  So my eyes don’t move from the television screen, my body is still, my legs outstretched, my arms folded, all insouciant carelessness; but I feel his warm breath on my face, a light spray of his spit against my cheek. Later tonight, in bed, I will trace my finger along that cheek, then bring my finger to my mouth, and taste him. That is all I need to bring me to orgasm. I will come into a tissue and that tissue I will hand to him in the morning, and he will hand me the one he spilled himself into. I will tear tiny strips from it during the day, in the kitchen, in the library, in the yard. I will chew on them, and I will taste his semen and through his semen I will taste his cock and through his cock I will taste all of him. Sometimes he will shake the last drops of piss into a tissue, sometimes he will have wiped his arse with one; I ask him to keep one in his armpit throughout the long night. In the morning, as I take the still-damp tissue he will wink at me, daring me to guess what secretion I am to imbibe. You jerked off into this one, I say. Or I might whisper, I am tasting your piss, aren’t I? Or, I am licking your arse. Or, I am drinking your sweat. His thrill is so acute that his words are hoarse. You’re a dirty bastard, Danny Boy, you’re filthy. He loves that word, it is an endearment and a come-on and a plea. I so want to fuck you.

  And we do fuck. But it is rare. We are always seeking the opportunity. Seeking that opportunity, and reading: these are what get me through the hours, get me through the days. I could not choose between the two of them, I would be rendered immobile if the gun was at my head and I was ordered to make the decision. The joy and freedom that I find now in words, and the safety and the bliss that I experience when Carlo’s prick has pierced and entered me are both experiences that in this place have become as essential to me as oxygen, as water. I need them to breathe, to live. They both allow me to escape. The first activity frees my imagination and lets me soar up and beyond walls and concrete and steel. The other liberates me from my will, and as Carlo pounds fiercely into my body, I pass through both humiliation and agony and become insensible to both. That is no small gift in prison. That is no small gift anywhere.

  ‘An eye more bright than theirs,’ I whisper back, ‘less false in rolling, gilding the object whereupon it gazeth.’ My lips just hover over his rough skin, my breath just moistens the coarse bristles of one sideburn. Like me, he doesn’t move, his eyes don’t stray from the screen. He doesn’t know Shakespeare, he wouldn’t give a rat’s arse for what I am quoting. But his knee presses more firmly against mine. I fumble in my pocket and tear another fine strip off the tissue. I have to ration these strips, I have to make them last through the night and into the morning, when I will see him again.

  What if I told Luke that I finally got Shakespeare in here? All of poor Mr Gilbert’s attempts to make me comprehend Julius Caesar, all the resources of our privileged rich school, and it is gaol that finally reveals to me the beauty of Shakespeare, the spirit in his words, the jaw-dropping audacity of his language.

  What if I said, ‘Luke, I discovered Shakespeare in here and I also discovered getting fucked up the arse. And they are both beautiful and they are both bliss.’ I wish I could explain to him that I discovered Shakespeare through getting fucked up the arse and I allowed myself to get fucked up the arse because of Shakespeare.

  ‘You’re looking good, Danny, you really are.’

  I have to stop myself blurting out, ‘Of course. It’s because I’m content here.’ But I don’t. Such words would dismay him, make him doubt my sanity. But though I am locked in prison, I have once more found routine. Luke has known me since I was a boy. He knows what routine means to me.

  ‘I’m at the gym twice a day,’ I say, ‘any chance I get. They’ve got me working in the kitchen so I’m learning some skills there.’ Then, so excited that I almost forget myself and go to grab his hand, before the shift in the guard’s stance reminds me of my place, I tell him how much I am reading. This pleases Luke more than anything and it makes me smile. Even now, so very handsome, so confident and self-assured, Luke remains a bookworm. I tell him about the books I am reading, the ancient dialog
ues, the novels of Hemingway, the sonnets of Shakespeare, the histories of revolution, the biographies of Bonaparte, of Tolstoy and Keating, and he laughs good-naturedly and says that they sound like an eclectic bunch. The remark stings like a rebuke and I press back into my chair but he doesn’t notice. University has given him something more than a confidence in his own skin, it has also made him arrogant. Whatever I say, whatever I read, he will always believe he knows more than I do. He assumes we have a full library here, he doesn’t know I am eager for anything on those damn shelves that I can open and read. Those of us in the library, we are magpies, picking at the second-hand scraps.

  ‘A Farewell to Arms is the best book I’ve ever read,’ I tell him.

  ‘I don’t really get into Hemingway. The writing is a bit too utilitarian for me.’

  I can’t help it, this further censure makes me twist in my chair.

  He notices my shift in mood. ‘You OK?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ I have to process his words, to try to make sense of his critique. I know the word ‘utilitarian’, it is a philosophical concept, I know I’ve come across it. Something about the greater good; I have no idea why he would apply it to Hemingway. I will have to ask Alec in the library how it is possible for fiction writing to be about the best outcome for the greater good. I feel stupid. Luke has made me feel stupid.

  On the way to the cells I will tell Carlo that Luke is half-Chink, that his mother is Vietnamese. Carlo’s top lip will curl in distaste. He can’t stand Asians. He can’t stand Asians or Aborigines or blacks or Arabs. For Carlo there are Italians and there are Aussies. Anyone else doesn’t matter, anyone else shouldn’t be. ‘I fucking hate Slopes,’ he hisses back at me. ‘I can’t fucking stand them.’ Luke doesn’t need to know that this is how I will get my revenge.