Barracuda

by Christos Tsiolkas

  And then Dennis was looking straight at him, his eyes gleaming, a sardonic trembling on his lips. Dan, uncomprehending, stared back.

  ‘Get up, you dumb poofter. We’re going to get laid.’

  As Dan dropped Dennis at home, he said quietly, ‘Mate, I have to go home. We’re heading back to Melbourne in the morning.’

  Dennis made no answer. But before getting out he leaned over and embraced Dan, folding him in tight, squeezing him. It was a forceful hold; it was all the words they needed. When they finally pulled apart, Dan’s face was damp with his cousin’s sweat.

  Dan and his mother stopped at the hospital before they headed home. The Samoan nurse was there. Dan noticed the tag on her uniform: her name was Naomi. She was washing his grandmother’s arms.

  ‘Can I do that?’

  Naomi gave him the sponge. Dan took the old woman’s hand, hardly believing how light it was, like holding a twig that had fallen from a tree. Carefully he washed her right arm, cleaning around her armpits and shoulders; he squeezed the sponge, and returned to gently wiping his grandmother’s neck.

  ‘He’s got good hands,’ the nurse said to Dan’s mother, who was weeping. Dan squeezed the sponge again over the kidney dish and looked expectantly at Naomi.

  ‘It’s OK, honey,’ she said softly, taking the sponge. ‘I can do the rest.’

  It had felt good to wash his grandmother, it had somehow felt right. But when he kissed the papery skin for the last time he still felt nothing. For there was nothing there.

  His phone buzzed as he and his mother were leaving the hospital. It was a message from Dennis. Drive safe. You know I MEAN IT! D. It made him smile.

  In Dimboola they stopped for coffee and sandwiches. His mother ran across the road to the newsagent to get the paper. Dan could see that she was crying as she came out of the shop.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, thinking it had to be something about Iraq, something to do with what the Yanks and the Poms had done in Iraq. But it wasn’t.

  ‘Nina Simone has died,’ his mother said shakily. ‘I know it’s silly, but I just burst out crying in the shop when I read it. You know how much I adore Nina Simone.’

  Back in the car, his mother searched through the glove box, CDs and pens and paper tumbling out and around her feet. She found the CD, she turned the volume up loud. All the way to Melbourne they sang along to ‘Mississippi Goddam’, ‘Feeling Good’, ‘Obeah Woman’, ‘Put a Little Sugar in My Bowl’. They sang Nina Simone all the way to Melbourne.

  He was aching to be alone in his flat, to sit on the sofa, to look out the window, to watch the world outside without seeing it. But when his mother asked to come in, he couldn’t say no.

  ‘It’s a nice place,’ his mum said. She opened the kitchen cupboards, looked into the fridge. ‘I’m getting you some pots and pans,’ she told him, and wouldn’t allow him to protest. ‘When I come back from up north, I’ll come over with your dad. We owe you a housewarming present.’

  She looked around one last time. ‘The walls are too bare, Danny. You need something for these walls. There,’ she pointed above a makeshift bookshelf he had constructed from discarded red bricks and timber palings, ‘I’ve a poster of Irma Thomas that will be perfect there.’ She swung around. ‘And I have a Matisse print that will do very nicely over there.’

  She hugged him for so long before leaving, held him so tight that he had to stoop, that his shoulders started to hurt. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you, Danny,’ she said. Eventually she had to let him go.

  He couldn’t help it: he sighed in relief when she had gone.

  The sun was setting, the sky was slivers of indigo and gold, scarlet and blood. He sat, his back straight, his palms resting on his thighs, looking without seeing, listening to his breathing, as slowly the sounds of the other flats became distinct. The old woman turning on her taps, the children watching television. He sat for a long time, enjoying the bliss of being alone, until he was in darkness and he started to shiver from the cold. He grabbed a jumper from his bedroom and turned on the light. He listened again to his breathing, waiting to feel the warm rush, the salve that came from being alone.

  He was breathing in, he was breathing out.

  What was he going to do?

  Dan picked up his phone. There were only a few numbers in his contact list—his granddad and nan, his parents, Leon the parole officer, the numbers for work. He found Dennis’s number and sent a message: Arrived safe. He hesitated, then quickly typed again. And mate, anytime you need you got a place to stay in Melbourne. My casa is your casa.

  I SMASHED IT. I ABSOLUTELY KILLED IT. The others didn’t even come close, I was three, four, maybe even five lengths ahead of the guy behind me. Go Kelly, Taylor is hooting—I can hear his voice ringing clear above the cheers and the chants across the pool. The whole school is standing up on the benches, they are stamping their feet, I can’t see it but hearing it is better than seeing it, hearing makes me feel like I am seeing it from on high. I can look down and see all the other schools sitting down, they are silent and sullen, but my school, all of them, from the little pissers in Year Seven to the won’t-deign-to-look-at-you-scum Year Twelves, they have their hands out of their pockets, they are stomping their feet, banging the benches, singing our school song out at the top of their lungs. I have dominated the carnival, I have thrashed swimmers three years older than me. I have broken the Schools Swimming Competition record in two events.

  I feel it at this moment, just as the cold tremors begin, just as the shivers start, as the slog of the last few minutes starts to bubble in my blood and in my gut, I feel it, I know it. I can be the best. I killed it. I can be the best.

  I can hear Martin Taylor. He’s calling out, again and again and again, Go Kelly, Go. I hear his voice, it rises higher and higher to reach me. I am in the sun, I am higher, further—beyond the sun.

  The acid is starting to eat at my body, starting to twist and strangle my muscles. I am back in the water, the cheers and the stomping are dying out. I push back into the water, I stretch my arms, push out, feel the muscles tighten; the cramps start pinching into my flesh and my teeth are chattering so hard I think they will shatter.

  ‘Warm down,’ orders Coach. He is at the side of the pool, his fat gut bulging but tight as skin stretched across a drum. He is unsmiling, his arms are crossed.

  ‘I did good, Coach.’ I can hardly get the words out, my teeth are shards of ice. I can hardly speak.

  ‘Kelly, warm down, now!’ He won’t smile, he won’t congratulate me, he won’t say well done. But he doesn’t have to, he knows how good I was. All he does, all he has to do, is wrap a towel around my shoulders as I get out of the water. My legs wobble, like they aren’t attached to my torso, aren’t connected to me. He wraps the towel around me, supports me, just for a second, just a hand placed at the small of my back.

  That’s all he needs to do. He’s proud of me, he’s so fucking proud of me. But his only thought is to stop the acid that my body has just spewed out, that is filling my veins and my blood and my belly and my head, so it won’t make me sick.

  ‘Now, now,’ he insists, ‘straight to the warm-down pool. Now!’

  It hurts, it is fever—the swim has put poison in my body. But it is also how I know how hard I have worked. This is how I know it is worth it.

  On the bus back to school, I’m at the back, in between Taylor and Wilco. I don’t say much, I just look ahead; all the Year Sevens are turning their heads, looking at me, whispering about me. I am silently telling myself, Don’t look conceited, this will be what it is like when you win at the Commonwealth Games, when you get a medal at the Olympics in 2000. I’m going to be there, I know it now, I know it after today, I am going to be there. You don’t get overexcited, you keep it cool. Everyone will be whispering then, everyone will be looking at my picture in the paper, at my swim on the television, everyone, every single person in the country will be looking at me, talking about me. This is the future, I know it, I see
it. It has been given to me.

  A few seats in front of us two of the Year Eights are arguing. One of them, with a mop of maple-syrup hair that explodes from his head, is nudging the other one, smaller, blond and pale, who is holding on to the competition program and keeps turning back to look at us, then quickly looking away. I can hear him saying, ‘No, I can’t.’ Shaggy Mop elbows him. ‘Do it,’ I hear him say. ‘Do it.’

  The small blond kid gets up from his seat and comes up to us, clutching the program, trying not to stumble from the sway and roll of the bus. He is blushing so hard that his face is all tints of pink and red. He’s so scared he squeaks: ‘Excuse me, Kelly, can you sign my program?’

  He’s so scared he’s shaking. The kids around us start to laugh. But not me, not Taylor or Wilco. The kid blushes even harder. He holds out his program and I take it.

  ‘Got a pen?’

  He can’t even speak. He’s so in awe he can’t even speak to me. He just shakes his head stupidly, looking dazed, as if the question is too big for him, as if he can’t make sense of it.

  ‘I’ve got one,’ Shaggy Mop calls out, as though getting my autograph is the most important thing in the world.

  They want my autograph, my autograph.

  ‘I’ve got one!’ he calls again and rushes up to his friend, just as the bus makes a hard right turn and sends him sprawling across the laps of two kids in the seat in front of us. He’s gone red too, and his mouth is like a fish’s, open shut open shut.

  The skinny blond kid snatches the pen and hands it and the program to me.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  His squeak is so high that I can’t make it out.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Byron!’ He yells it now.

  And I write on the top of the program, To Byron, and then I hesitate and I think, How big do you make your signature?, and I know that Taylor and Wilco are looking over my shoulder, waiting to see what I’m going to do. I’m thinking it can’t be too big because that will be showing off and it can’t be too small because that will look stupid, so I just scrawl across the page—and it is big, I can’t help it, it looks enormous—I sign it Daniel Kelly. That’s what I will be, how I am going to sign my name—that’s how they are going to know me. Not Danny, not Danny the Greek, not Dino. I am going to be Daniel, Daniel Kelly.

  ‘Give it here.’ Taylor grabs it out of my hands and I think, You can’t sign it, they don’t want yours, you came fourth, mate, a piddly fourth, but he doesn’t sign his name, he just writes in very neat capitals under where I have signed my surname: AKA BARRACUDA. Taylor hands the program back to the kid.

  The kid’s face is still flushed but he is pleased, this is gold, my signature means something. He squeaks, ‘Thank you,’ and goes back to his seat but he and Shaggy Mop keep turning around and whispering.

  Taylor leans into me, and whispers, ‘You’re a hero, Kelly.’

  ‘Shut up!’ I say, punching his arm. I can’t stop grinning.

  That night Theo wants to ride on my shoulders as soon as I get home. I give him the ribbon and the trophy—he’s building a shelf of my trophies and ribbons in his room. I run through the house with my little brother on my shoulders and he’s chanting, ‘Danny’s a champion, Danny’s a champion.’

  Mum says, ‘Congratulations, son,’ and hugs me, can’t stop hugging me. Regan chokes up and can’t speak, but the pride in her eyes is almost as good as a medal, as good as any trophy, her eyes are shining brighter than when sun strikes metal.

  And even Dad, who has been home for three days, who hasn’t got out of his pyjamas in all that time he’s that tired, all he’s been doing is playing rock and roll and reading on the couch, he too says, ‘Good on you, Dan, I’m proud of you.’ He says it. He’s proud of me.

  I’m a fucking champion.

  Or I’m a fucking champion till dinner. I shovel in the food, can’t stop speaking, I’m telling them that Coach is having me and Taylor, Scooter and Wilco over for dinner at his place, we’re going to eat the best pizzas in the world and Coach will tell us all about what competitions are coming up next and who we have to beat and what Swimming Australia is doing and who is putting in the money and who we have to watch and who we have to impress. I have signed my first autograph and tomorrow night we’re going to be celebrating at Coach’s place for dinner. I’m so excited that I eat and talk at the same time, food sprays from my mouth as I rush the words out. And then I realise that no one is saying anything.

  Dad pushes away his plate. ‘Tomorrow night is Theo’s birthday.’

  It sinks in. I forgot: tomorrow is Theo’s birthday and we’re taking him bowling. He’s already organised the teams: Mum and Dad and Regan on one team, Theo and me on the other.

  I look across at my little brother. He’s sliding his fork around the plate, not looking at me. I feel like shit but I know I’m not going. I know I am going to Coach’s house, I have to be at Coach’s house. I deserve to be there. Don’t spoil it for me, Theo, I am thinking, please don’t spoil it for me.

  ‘You’re coming with us.’ It isn’t even Dad, it’s Mum. I can’t believe it’s Mum.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I begin. ‘I know I should have remembered—’

  ‘Danny has to go to pizza with Coach, he has to.’ It is Theo who’s blurted it out, Theo who is glaring at Mum and Dad.

  ‘No, Theo, he’s going bowling and then to dinner with us for your birthday.’

  ‘No!’ Theo bawls it out so loud that we are all shocked. Theo’s never been a brat, he never loses it. But now he’s smashing his fist on the table; plates jump, his water spills. ‘I don’t want to go fucking bowling, I don’t want to.’ And my little brother is crying, real weeping, the kind that makes you think his insides are tearing. It is a storm that wraps all of us inside of it: the kind of crying that hurts to listen to. Mum has rushed over to him, she’s trying to hold him and he won’t be held, he won’t stop. ‘I don’t want to go, I won’t go!’

  ‘Theo,’ says Dad sharply. ‘Theo, stop. We’ll go Sunday night—how’s that? Dan can go to pizza tomorrow night and we’ll go bowling on Sunday. As a family.’ Those last three words are for me, they slam into me as hard as a thumping.

  Theo tries but he can’t stop his sobbing, he can’t stop it now that he’s started, but he lets Mum hold him and he is nodding, snot running down his face.

  And I think, My first gold medal will be his, I promise, the first gold medal is Theo’s.

  ‘Don’t you have to do a drive to Sydney on Monday morning?’ Mum cautions Dad.

  He shrugs. ‘I’ll be OK.’

  ‘OK, then that’s settled,’ says Mum. ‘We’ll all go Sunday.’

  That night I look into Theo’s room before going to bed. His bedside light is on but he is asleep, holding something tight in his left hand. It’s the ribbon, it’s my championship ribbon.

  ‘I promise you, mate,’ I whisper to him, ‘that first gold medal is yours.’ It feels good to make that vow. ‘Theo,’ I repeat softly, ‘that first gold medal is yours.’

  Australia Day, 2006

  It had been a mistake to go to the beach, to go away with Demet and Margarita. Dan stepped out of the shower, grabbed the clammy towel and rubbed his body vigorously, as if the scalding under the hot shower hadn’t been enough to rid his skin of the sand that had got in between his toes, stuck in leg hair, in his arse crack. He dried himself off, put on his underwear and shook his t-shirt; fine grains of sand fell from the fabric onto the wet tiles. Fucking sand, fucking sand everywhere. Dan breathed in and held his breath.

  Clyde was smoking a cigarette on the balcony. He didn’t look up as Dan slid open the glass door and took a seat next to him. The sun was a fireball of flaring light melting into the inky dark water.

  ‘It’s amazing, isn’t it?’

  Dan released his breath. He could hear the concession in Clyde’s words.

  ‘Yeah, it’s beautiful.’

  ‘When I’m by the ocean I know why I’m living in this co
untry.’ Clyde stubbed out the cigarette and smiled at Dan. ‘Just a pity the place is full of fucken Australians.’

  Should he laugh? He should laugh.

  But Clyde was solemn, his eyes were searching. Dan had to look away.

  ‘Mate, I don’t understand. Why can’t you swim?’

  They had awoken to a glorious day. The sun’s rays through the slatted blinds were tassels of light gently breaking into their slumber. Dan had risen first. Clyde stirred, then rolled over and went back to sleep. The night before had been chilly, but the morning had banished the cold. It was not yet eight o’clock but a soft warmth already bathed the apartment. Dan had just poured the boiling water into the coffee plunger when Clyde stumbled out of the bedroom, yawning. The russet spray of hair over his torso, the thick thatch of copper bush wreathing his cock and balls, brushed gold by the light. Lust, as fierce and insistent as hunger, made Dan shudder.

  It was what bound him to this man. The brewed coffee went cold as Clyde fucked him, his body splayed over Dan’s as they screwed savagely, relentlessly, on the floor. Afterwards, as Dan came back from the toilet, he could see Clyde, still naked, standing out on the balcony, looking down over the ocean and the township of Lorne. Dan resisted the instinct to scold, to tell Clyde to put on some bloody pants. Instead he threw the plunger of cold coffee into the sink, and refilled the kettle. He heard Clyde greeting Margarita or Demet, one of them was on the balcony next door. And then he heard: ‘Put some fucking pants on, will ya.’ It was Demet. Through clenched teeth Dan whispered, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Come on, pal. Come into the water.’

  He had been reading his book, looking up occasionally to watch his lover and his friends swimming. They had driven out of town and found a cove that could only be accessed by a steep descent down a narrow cliff path that cut through a gully. People had already staked claim to the beach on the other side of the rocks, at an estuary. But the hidden cove was blessedly theirs. Dan had given himself over to the glory of the day, the sun beating down on his skin, the words in the book rolling in and out of consciousness. It was Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, and the halcyon ease of the morning meant that the language of partition and exile and displacement had trouble penetrating, and he had to reread sentences and paragraphs. The lazy hedonistic joy of being on an Australian beach in summer negated the words. So the book had been laid over his face, shielding his eyes from the fierce sun, when Clyde’s shadow fell on him.