by Carmody, Sam
You know this place, Stark? Kasia whispered, her chin on his shoulder. It is so harsh. It is funny this place, you know? It can be the worst thing ever. Be really shit. And then it will be beautiful. Maybe it is just like everywhere else in that way. Shit and beautiful. Or maybe it is special. That is what I don’t know yet.
Paul felt the girl shift on his waist, her hand move down on him. The bluff towered above them. The surf sang out.
You see us going through deserts. Through the heart of everything. But before this? There’s not so much I can tell you. There is not so much that I know. I never did meet my dad. Know my mother wasn’t well and she was dead when I was small. Then it was just me and my gran and I was twelve when I found her stiff in her bed. She’d died in her sleep but had a look on her face like she’d tried like hell not to.
Must have been sometime after that some bikie fellas in Tennant Creek were looking after me cos I was thirteen when they got me into the business. Just dealing at first, then they taught me how to cook. Back then I swore it was the smartest thing I ever did. Like I’d been given the keys to a bank. Learning different methods, different recipes. Learning the whole shebang. Markets. Profit margins. They would pick me up from my house and drop me at the edge of town someplace where it was safe from coppers or anyone else and then they’d leave me alone. A farmhouse or a van. A demountable shed. A shipping container. Leave me with as much ice as I could smoke. You’d OD before you got anywhere near through any of it. Cooking an ounce a day. Four or five days straight before they’d drop me home to sleep.
Then I met the President and he got me out of cooking. Said I was too smart a kid to rot in a lab. Said the chemicals were killing me and I sometimes wonder if he was too late.
And I don’t expect no sympathy. Why should you give it. I never ran. I could have tried. There’s a lot that I don’t know but I do know there were times that I could have tried to run. And you don’t know some of the things I’ve done. Everything’s got its price. I’ve done things that should never be asked of anybody.
But after everything you wonder what is left. You can wonder what is underneath your skin. And you reckon there will be a time when you will see it. When it will be clear and decided like some kind of judgement. A reckoning. That is what it feels like. A wheel on a gameshow that spins and its finger rakes over the different shades of your insides. Flickers over it. The dark and the light. Good and the evil. The human and the parts of you that are not human at all. And the wheel spins and it is all the waiting to find out where the wheel will stop is what keeps you awake. The dark or the light. The good or the evil.
Afterglow
HIS FACE SCRATCHED AGAINST THE cracked leather of a couch. There was the sound of dishes being put away. Daylight stormed his eyes when he opened them and his whole body tensed. He sat up and looked around the living room.
There you are!
Paul turned to see Matthew standing in the kitchen, a wide smile on his face despite the wound above his eye. The skin of his brow looked tight. The stitches bulged like upholstered leather.
That was some night, hey? Matthew said, the words singing off the tiles, his English accent bright and melodic.
Paul nodded.
Twenty-three stitches. Can you believe that? The bastards. It’ll look like I’ve got a train track on my head. My mum is going to have a fucking freak-out. Matthew laughed. Can I get you something? he said. Would you like a cup of tea? Or we’ve got coffee.
Water? Paul asked.
Matthew reached for the cupboard above the fridge and removed a glass. Kasia just went to the shops, he said. She’ll be back soon.
I might go see if I can find her.
Suit yourself, Matthew said. He walked around the kitchen counter and handed Paul the tumbler of water. Here, get that into you. You look like shit.
The air outside was windless and hot. The sun bit his arms and the nape of his neck, a sharp burning, like the heat from a flame. As he walked Paul inspected his chin with his fingers. He could feel the bruising. He opened his mouth and closed it again and could hear a clicking within the hinge of his jaw, near his ear.
You going home? a voice said from behind.
Kasia stopped her bike next to him, putting a bare foot down to the pavement.
Paul shrugged.
Somewhere you have to be? she said.
No.
I have lunch if you want some.
Okay, he said.
She hopped off her bike and he followed her, the two of them walking without speaking.
Inside, Matthew and Francesca lay on the couch, looking at each other. Francesca was touching Matthew’s eyebrow with her fingertips. Kasia stood behind the counter of the kitchen, scooping ice-cream into the jug of milk and coffee. Paul sat on the kitchen stool, racking his brain for something to say. The blender relieved the silence. Paul cleared his throat.
Kasia pushed a glass of iced coffee towards him. Paul thanked her, the words catching in his throat and arriving somewhere between a whisper and speech. She looked at him, eyes serious as she sipped from her own glass, remaining stern when she drew the cup away, melted ice-cream across her upper lip. Paul laughed and she smiled.
When they’d finished their drinks, Kasia took his hand and led him to her room. Once through the door she kissed him, and he tasted the sweet and sour of sugar and coffee. She pulled her phone from the pocket of her shorts and put it on the bedside table then sat down on the bed, a brown leg tucked under her.
Come here, she whispered.
They lay down and watched each other, not touching; the girl sizing him up, and Paul waiting for the moment to abandon him, as if she might see the error in what she was doing and who she was doing it with.
She smiled.
What? he said defensively.
I do not know, Kasia said. She leant in and kissed him, in a confident, deliberate way that seemed worldly. Slow and purposeful. He did his best to follow her. She kissed the smooth membrane inside his lip, and when he reached for her tongue with his she pulled away and he could sense the smile on her mouth. She kissed him softly, then hard, and he laboured behind, like a toddler imitating adult movements, each action a second late. But he heard the soft intonation of her voice, the hum and murmur that he read ecstatically as pleasure, and he knew that, even if it were just for the present moment, she wanted this. Wanted him there.
Then they held each other, still clothed. He sensed the weariness from the night before returning like a tide. He listened to Kasia’s breathing deepen. Felt the slight spasm of her legs as she fell asleep.
It could have been hours that they lay there. Paul wasn’t sure. He had noticed the colours changing in the room. The light that knifed between the curtains had softened, and the sharp lines of sun on her bedroom wall that had glowed like molten glass were now redder and less defined. However long it had been, it mattered little. Sometime later he opened his eyes and there was no more sunlight on the walls, the room cast in a pinkish light that was almost dreamlike and that made the sleeping girl look beautiful in a way that was frightening. He knew he should leave before she woke and came to her senses, but he couldn’t move. So he just watched her. He played with the string bracelets on her wrist, feeling so much like the curious boy in Elliot’s room. He traced the words of a tattoo on her hip. He didn’t understand what it meant, didn’t recognise the language or the script. There was so much to Kasia he didn’t understand and didn’t know.
Elliot would have known what it was to feel the heat of another body against his. Paul imagined telling Elliot about Kasia, about the way she looked right at that moment, and how happy and afraid and sad he felt, how all those feelings had swirled in him at once.
Paul was tired but he resisted sleep for as long as he could. He couldn’t shake the feeling that this was the last time he would be this close to Kasia, as if this proximity were a licence that would soon expire. In a few hours he wouldn’t be permitted to hold her waist in his palm. He kissed he
r cheek and savoured the warmth of her skin on his lips. He hung on to consciousness, watched her like she was the last thing he would ever see.
When he woke the room was dark. Kasia was still there, asleep, under her sheets with her back to him. He checked her phone on the table next to the bed: 11 pm. She didn’t stir as he put on his shoes. He thought for a moment about waking her but he didn’t.
The swimming speed of sharks
PAUL AND ELLIOT HAD SHARED A BEDROOM right up until Elliot finished high school and the family moved to the newer, bigger house in Cottesloe with a third bedroom. Elliot had found their proximity frustrating, of course. He was neater than Paul, and he hated Paul going through his things. Even when they moved and Elliot gained his cherished room at the end of the hall, there was no lock on the door, and Paul would often go in there when his brother wasn’t home. But it was a lie to say Paul knew everything about him. He knew some things, but not the details, not the indecencies, the secrets. Although Elliot and Paul talked a lot, there was a line they never crossed.
The closest Paul ever felt to him was at night, in the room they shared before the move. In the dark his brother would emerge. His voice became clearer. Paul would ask him questions just to revel in the sound of him speaking. But eventually Elliot tired of Paul’s questioning, and then he would talk about sharks. Remind Paul of how a great white shark has forty-eight exposed teeth, two hundred and fifty set back in its mouth, hidden by tissue, like knives sheathed. Or how a fully motivated great white shark could reach speeds of up to fifty kilometres an hour. As fast as a car on the road. There was no outswimming it. No chance. And you wouldn’t be seeing it anyway, Elliot would tell him. The preferred attack trajectory of a great white shark was near vertical, two tonnes of animal striking from underneath, and hard enough to make you leave the water with it, arcing through the sky in a violent rainbow of fish and boy. The impact of a bite at that velocity could break a person clean in two, and the last sight you would ever see would be the great fish swimming off with your lower half. That’s if you were lucky. If you were really lucky it would try to finish you with the one bite. A less hungry shark, or a more cautious shark, well, that might just take a lower leg, or a foot, or gouge you in the thigh. After that it would wait until you bled out, disappearing to a depth at the edge of your vision, like a spider in the shadowed corner of a web.
And no matter how hard you look you will never see it coming, Elliot would say. There is always something you cannot see.
Arm in arm with a hippy
THE WIND CAME IN JUST BEFORE lunchtime but it felt different. It blew from the north-west, thick and warm. The horizon blue-black. He had scanned it throughout the morning, and held his breath each time he saw the tell-tale silhouette of a cray boat; the tall cabin perched at the bow, the over-long flat deck. But none of the boats he saw were Deadman. Paul thought of Kasia, too, and it made his body tremble with nerves. He wanted her so much but couldn’t bear the idea of her changing her mind on him. For three days he had avoided the tavern, despite Michael’s urging. He tried to imagine the right words to speak to her. For hours on deck he rehearsed what he might say. But even in his mind the sentences fell apart and he could picture the doubt on her face. He could hear her gentle voice letting him down. The politeness of it cut through him like a fishing knife.
The German was edgy too. Paul could tell he had spoken to his father again; he muttered to himself as if replaying a difficult conversation, forehead furrowed.
He thinks I am avoiding my responsibility, Michael said. Not to him. To God. Can you fucking believe that?
What would God want you to be doing in Stuttgart? Paul said.
That is a good question, Michael said. I do not know. Friedrich, he knows. He and God have been speaking lately, and God is not happy with me.
Paul nodded his head, solemnly. You don’t want that, he said.
There are just two things you need to know about my old man. He worships money, and he worships God. In that order. And he talks a great deal about Jesus. He talks about him all the time, as if he is his business partner.
How do you mean?
Jesus gave us our big houses. Jesus blessed Friedrich with Lamborghinis and boats. He is always telling me that I should be thankful, that I must thank Jesus. He gave you your place at Oxford, Michael, he says to me. Jesus gave you your business smarts. Michael’s eyes bulged. Friedrich is a big fan.
Jesus Christ, Paul said.
Michael grinned. The thing is, Michael continued, if Jesus were alive I cannot imagine my father inviting him over for dinner. I have read the book. I know what it is in it. I do not think Friedrich would like Jesus very much if he met him in person. Imagine the conversation. So, Friedrich, do you know that a rich man has as much hope of getting into heaven as a camel does passing through the eye of a needle? What do you think of that? Would you like some more wine? I’ll make it run from the fucking taps.
Paul laughed.
But still he always has that Bible with him, my father. It is there in his briefcase. It goes where he goes.
A cyclone was passing a thousand or so kilometres north-west of the town but the deckhands had seen its swell in the ocean that afternoon. The sea became bloated as the sun lowered and by the time they reached the jetty and the waiting freezer truck the tide was pressed hungrily at the foot of the dunes.
There was just enough light once they were done loading crates for Paul to navigate the flooded beach of the inlet and pick his way along the path in the bush to Deadman’s mooring.
The boat wasn’t there, but he sat on the bank and stared at the black water. Heard thunder somewhere far-off. He couldn’t help but feel he had tripped some wire with Roo Dog and Anvil, started something that would find its own ends, beyond his control.
He waited until nearly all light was gone, mosquitos buzzing in the murk around him, before he got up off the riverbank and headed back towards town.
I lie flat in the earth and the President he doesn’t lie down next to me with the spotting scope but stays on his feet somewhere at my back. My hands are greasy on the stock and I dry them on the thighs of my jeans.
You have heard some of the things I’ve done? the President says.
Yes, I tell him.
I’ve done some things, Swiss.
Yes.
I’ve done some things. Taken things.
You mean stolen them.
Well I’m a fucken bikie Swiss yes I’ve stolen things.
I know.
No you don’t know. That’s not what I’m saying. Not what I’m saying at all.
Well what are you saying? I turn to look at him. White sun back-lighting him so that his features are a fuzz and he looks like some sort of angel. A fattish angel in all black and heavy boots.
Take your shot, the President says. He gestures with a thick finger for me to turn around.
What am I shooting?
Just shoot the fucking rifle Swiss.
I fire. Swear under my breath at the roaring call of it out across the desert. Wonder how far the sound carries beyond our vision and who might be there to hear it. I pull back the bolt and the casing spins into the air.
You heard of San Pietro in Vincoli, he says.
I shake my head.
You probably did hear of it. There is not a soul out there that doesn’t know about it.
San Pietro? I ask him.
St Peter in Chains. It’s a school Swiss.
Okay.
It’s a primary school.
Yes.
Take your shot, the President says.
At what?
Take it.
I close my eyes and the gun roars and I grip the fore-end as if it could strangle the sound.
You don’t know it, the President says quiet. You going to ask me why I am talking about San Pietro in Vincoli, Swiss?
I turn to look at him again.
He flicks his head for me to turn back.
It was all a big bloody mess Swis
s. His name was Jamie. Jamie was a good worker. Had been with us since he was about your age. I’d taken care of him. Like I have taken care of you Swiss. Take your shot.
I curse. Fire. Hear the President breathe out behind me.
Got a big house on the Pacific, the President says. Manly Beach. Fuck’s sake. Got himself a wife on the outside. Catholic. And they had a little boy and Jamie wanted out. For years he asked me if there was a way out and I warned him there was no going anywhere. It wasn’t clean to have men on the outside and I couldn’t have it. It was his problem, you understand. His wife and his little boy. He had complicated things for himself. It was not my problem. Take your shot.
I fire the round. Reload. My eyes are closed now.
And then Jamie fucking left, the President says. Said he was out. Just like that. You know what I did?
I shake my head.
I went to San Pietro in Vincoli. Mid-morning when all those kids were running about on that school oval. I walked on that oval through all those kids. Walked up to Jamie’s little boy and I shot him in the face.
There is silence between us when the President says that. Just his breathing quick in and out of his nose. Then the President says, take your shot.
I don’t know what you want me to shoot. The President doesn’t seem to hear.
Why would I do something like that? he asks.
But I can’t speak. I listen to the shuffle of the President’s boots on the hard ground behind me.
I didn’t have to do it, he says. Didn’t have to shoot a little boy, Swiss. Take your fucking shot, the President says.
I breathe in. Fire.
When I turn he has gone.
Angela
PAUL SAT HUNCHED OVER A TABLE IN the beer garden, watching Kasia through the window while Michael smoked, standing square to the sea, considering the windblown inlet and the starless sky above them. In the beer garden the sea air around them was dense and warm, the atmosphere carrying the weight of the storm behind it. Thick raindrops tapped intermittently on the wooden table and beaded their pint glasses.
