by Carmody, Sam
That night Paul found himself hovering over the night ocean, straining his eyes into the murk, calling for Elliot, swearing, curses muffled by the sea. The horizon was a flat darkness and there was no light in the water except for the gold slick of the moon against the black water.
The President parks on the roadside in the shadow of the white gums. A clear line of sight between the trees. I mount the .308 on the car bonnet.
From three hundred metres I watch the boy from the city carry shopping from his Pajero to the cottage. Glass over his torso with the rifle scope.
The President leans on the bonnet beside me. Talks me through it all. And with the President there I find those half-seconds where my mind is as clear as the mind of a dead fella. When I’m empty of breath and my heart is still. And I know then I’m ready.
The next morning it will be done with.
The Professor
IT WAS EARLY AFTERNOON WHEN PAUL’S phone rang on the carpet beside his bed.
Paul. It’s Fred.
Yeah.
Your father has just landed. I’m bringing him back to the health centre, opposite the station. We’ll be there in twenty minutes.
There were several police vehicles in front of the station. A small crowd standing on the brown lawn. Grey suit jackets. Duty belts. Shielding their eyes from the sun. Scanning the town around them. He saw a news reporter in front of a lone camera, trying to secure his tie in the sea breeze. Paul stood beside Fred’s boat and watched it all, barefoot in the sandy grass.
Fred pulled up alongside the throng. When his father got out of the car he stood tall, as if he were approaching an audience. He fixed his collar, combed his hand through silvery hair. His father nodded when he saw him. Paul walked over.
What are you doing here?
I called the police yesterday, said his father, turning to Fred. I said I could assist.
How, Dad?
This is something I can do.
Paul turned to Fred. What’s the point?
Enough, his father said.
A woman walked up to the three of them, crisp white shirt tucked into pants.
Professor Darling?
Yes.
Deb Costello. Coroner. The office spoke to you?
They did.
And they explained the condition of the body.
He nodded.
Okay, she said. Would you come with me?
The coroner led Paul’s father across the road towards the health centre.
I’ll come then, too, Paul said after them.
The coroner stopped in the middle of the road, turned. His father looked at him, blank.
Paul, Fred said, held his arm. Don’t.
Paul shrugged off the sergeant’s arm but stayed where he was, beside her. He watched his father turn and go through the opened doors of the clinic, ambling behind the coroner, hands at his back.
After dark, Paul and his father ate at the Sri Lankan Cafe next to the deli, the small restaurant run by Shivani’s parents. They sat at the wooden table outside. Paul couldn’t eat. Couldn’t look on while his father did. He looked at his hands, nicked calluses off his palms with a fingernail.
When you going back?
Fly tomorrow, his father said. Thinking I could stay with you?
Paul nodded.
Good curry, his father said. I hadn’t expected much from Stark but there you go.
He winked at Paul. Wiped his mouth with a napkin.
You going to tell me what you saw?
His father scrunched the napkin, placed it down. Breathed in.
I couldn’t say, his father replied. I didn’t know if it was him.
But what did you see?
Paul. I couldn’t tell if it was him.
Did you know you wouldn’t be able to tell?
What are you talking about?
Did you just want to see a corpse?
I’m Elliot’s father, he said forcefully. The Professor’s face shook for the briefest moment. He combed his hair with his fingers. Straightened his back.
When they got back to the house, Shivani pulled a sleeping bag and pillow from the linen cabinet and put it in Paul’s room, alongside his mattress. Paul offered his father the couch or his mattress but the Professor insisted that the carpeted floor and the sleeping bag would be fine.
So what now? Paul said after the lights were off, the room dark and hot.
The body will go back to the city, his father said. They’ll do tests.
Paul rolled on his side. Listened to the wind outside. Closed his eyes.
Paul? his father said. Can I tell you something?
Yeah.
This afternoon, when I left the morgue, they asked me to fill out a form. Another bloody form. And I know your mother had filled something like this before. More than once. These nuisance bloody forms.
Okay.
Elliot’s height. Elliot’s weight. All of that. And a person can’t just know this always, his father said, sounding amused. Not off the top of his head. Can they?
Paul didn’t answer. The wind buffeted the thin walls.
Then they wanted to know if he had tattoos. What colour his eyes were. His hair colour.
There was a long silence. For a moment Paul thought his father had fallen asleep. But he heard the Professor inhale, as if he was trying to find the breath necessary to speak.
But I should have known those things, he said eventually. Surely I should have known that. I could see it in their faces. They couldn’t believe I didn’t know that.
Paul heard the staggered rhythm of his father’s breathing.
I don’t know why I don’t know that, his father said. Then the man cried.
Paul lay with eyes open, unmoving, wondering why it was so hard to listen to his father’s crying. But the sound angered him. How hopeless it was, now that it was all done, that it was all too late. And it angered him that even now, in the act of confession, there were things his father wouldn’t admit to.
In the morning, on the front verge, his father hugged him, his cheek hot against Paul’s. He pulled away and looked his son in the face, as if hoping for some response. But Paul didn’t say a word.
He watched his father go towards Fred’s waiting vehicle; shoulders hunched forward, hair blown in the sea wind.
Mirage
JAKE SUGGESTED THAT PAUL STAY ON SHORE. But he didn’t want to. Didn’t want the opportunity to think about what they had seen above the Delft shipwreck. Didn’t want to dwell on what his father had said to him or how broken he had looked as they stood on the verge; the forgiveness he needed that Paul wouldn’t give him.
And then there was Kasia, too.
And he recognised it in Jake’s face that morning as they rode the skiff from the beach, saw in him the same guilt he felt. It was a feeling that didn’t settle. As if his blood flicked and turned over on itself, like a windy sea. Thoughts rushed in at a pace that he could not slow down or even truly understand.
They picked and dropped pots on the inshore reefs, tracking south of town. They were targeting the crays the fishermen called ‘residentials’, the ones that had never run out to sea. Paul worked hard through the morning, emptied and stacked pots with a strange energy, something near a rage. The whole time he sensed Michael watching him warily, the German unsure what to say. But there was a mercy in punishing yourself, shelter in the regime of a day’s work.
And by five in the afternoon, when they’d set the last of the pots after twelve hours at sea, and when Jake turned the boat north towards Stark, Paul felt despair.
On the way back Michael slept, laid out on a leather bench in the cabin.
Paul sat on the toilet, the seat buzzing against his naked arse. He heard the wind humming against the aluminium box. He gripped his cock in his hand. He stood up when he was about to come and turned back towards the toilet. He leant against the wall, tried to scrub the mess with a boot. And then he cried. He looked into the mirror, saw the sunscreen smudged on his cheeks, his face
red and creased.
When he stepped out into the bright light the deck was empty; Michael was still sleeping. Jake drove the boat close in, parallel to the coast, only five hundred metres or so from shore. Paul looked for Elliot’s Pajero within the hot white of the dunes, the coast hazy in the heat. Scanned for the flash of sun on car paint, the glint of windows. There was nothing, of course. No one. For kilometres, nothing. Nameless beaches and coves, impossibly big and endless. Paul had the urge to call out, to scream and yell shorewards. Not in the hope anyone would hear. Just to feel his own voice disappear, have it taken by the sea wind.
Paul thought of that last night with Kasia. The words he had said to her, the memory of them, ran cold through his body. Sharp. The knife from abdomen to neck. It was tempting to blame Stark, its silence, its wretched empty spaces. The distance it put between people.
And Paul thought maybe at that moment he understood how Elliot might have felt all those years, the torment of living in your own skin sometimes, alone with their father’s secrets.
Whitebait
HE WAKES TO DARKNESS, FINGERS ON his shoulders, the rude smell of whitebait on them. Paul keeps his eyes shut. He stays as still as dead. Elliot hisses his name and Paul tenses at the sound of it, his brother’s urges somewhere between encouragement and harassment, and a kind of pleading. But Paul can picture the night sea. He can feel the reef, cold and sharp against his heels. He grips the bedsheets with his fingertips as if they’re the thing keeping him from the squishy insides of a great white shark. Elliot gives up. He says he is going without him. Paul hears him pad out into the hallway. He returns a few minutes later. Paul senses him there, watching from the doorway.
When he knows his brother is gone, Paul relaxes, the relief in him spoilt by guilt. The feeling stays with him until he falls asleep.
It was midnight when he woke. He reached for his phone, listened to the irregular dance of the trees outside, the day’s wind in its final throes.
Kasia, he said.
There was silence.
You there?
Hey, she said eventually, her voice low and composed. The calmness in it terrified him.
Where are you, Kasia?
That is not important, is it?
I’m sorry.
Do not beat yourself up. That is not what I wanted.
What should I do?
You do not need to control everything.
I fucked up.
You cannot expect everything to be how you want it to be. You have to learn that.
Are you leaving? Are you going back to Poland?
I have to go, Paul.
Home?
No, I mean I have to go now—they need me. I have to get off the phone soon.
Where are you?
Paul, she said, in a voice that sounded like a warning.
Will I see you again?
You want to know how everything will work out. You want everything so neat and perfect. She sighed. I cannot give you an answer you want.
Please just tell me if I will see you again.
You are not listening to me.
I am. I’m listening. I just really wish you were here.
They found Elliot, she said. Jules told me.
Yeah.
He heard her draw a breath. How are your parents? You should go home, Paul.
Why?
For them. They need you.
But I need you.
You should all be together.
I’m so sorry, he said. The things I asked. I said such stupid shit. It was dumb, Kasia. It was wrong. You are perfect.
God, Paul.
You are, he said again, not caring how desperate it sounded.
I do not want perfect, she said, the warning returning to the words. There is no such thing, not on this planet anyway.
I love you, he said.
He listened to her breath fill the line. He inhaled, trying to draw it in.
They are calling me, she said. I must go now.
Okay, he said, and could hear the defeat in his own voice. She waited a few seconds before hanging up.
Poppy
AFTER A PINT PAUL’S VISION HAD GONE milky. The air filled with phantom smoke.
Hello.
The girl was standing at the end of their table in the beer garden, hands clasped and smiling like she was about to sell them something. She had belts of sunburn across her arms and thighs. Her skin glowed red.
My name is Poppy. May I sit down?
It was often possible to pick backpackers or new arrivals from their energy levels. Poppy’s laughter and enthusiasm for everything said accentuated the deadness of the table.
Shit, she exclaimed, looking at Paul. You’ve all got eyes like the devil! She laughed.
Yeah, the sun, Paul began to explain and didn’t finish.
Are you all from here? she said, and someone started answering the question. Paul felt her thigh against his, their skin immediately slick with sweat, and his cock went hard.
So, where we going after this? she asked, nudging Paul in the ribs with her elbow.
Bed, someone said.
Oh, we’ll find a club somewhere, Michael assured her.
Really? Poppy gasped.
There are no clubs, said Paul.
Oh, damn, she moaned, and laughed. When does the pub close?
Twelve, someone said.
No! she moaned again, mock whimpering. I really want to go dancing!
Later, in his room, Poppy straddled him as he sat on the edge of the bed. He struggled with the buttons of her denim shorts.
I told myself I wouldn’t, she whispered.
Wouldn’t do what?
I told myself I wouldn’t do this.
Poppy pulled her t-shirt over her head. Kissed him as he wrenched her shorts down. He rolled her onto her back, pulled her legs up underneath him, levering her thighs up with his forearms until she locked her knees over his shoulders. He would never have done that with Kasia. He would have been too nervous. Too cautious. Kasia had occasionally urged him to let himself go, but he never could. Was it out of respect? Or fear of not pleasing her? He wasn’t really sure. But he did know that with Kasia sex had always felt like a precarious thing, like he was always on the verge of being overwhelmed. Telling him to let himself go was like telling him to do a cartwheel on the edge of a tall building. Just being there, with her, occupied his mind more than enough. He didn’t want anything else.
Here, with Poppy, he didn’t care. She pulled him inside her. He thrust into her, hard. The sensation seemed blunted, numb. He was drunk. Drunk and indifferent. He went faster, as if trying to rush time itself. Her eyes went lazy, her face slackening with pleasure in a way that seemed melodramatic to him.
She pulled the condom off and said something about it getting in the way.
Her mouth only made things worse. Feeling her teeth through her lips, he felt himself softening. At some point the bed consumed him and he pulled the sheets up over himself.
Paul woke to hot damp on the sheets underneath him, the hair matted on his legs.
Poppy lay next to him, staring at the ceiling.
Morning, she said. You’re a big sleeper.
What time is it?
Ten.
Oh, Paul replied. He had guessed it was already afternoon.
Paul held his hand over his face, as if to hide himself.
Poppy placed her palm on his back, her fingers drumming softly on his skin. Paul stayed still and she soon stopped.
You want to go for a swim?
I might need to work on the boat.
On a Sunday?
Yeah, we sometimes work Sundays, Paul replied, drawing on the half-truth to say the words with confidence. They weren’t going out.
I need to drink something, he said. You want some water?
Um, yeah, thanks, she said, sounding sad. As he left the room he saw her reach for her clothes.
Who wants to go to the beach? she called out behind him. Paul’s a
sad arse, has to work.
In the kitchen Paul avoided the German’s look.
Communion
I AM NOT GOING BACK, MICHAEL SAID above the sound of the engines. Beyond Arcadia’s roiling wake the town scowled, still in darkness.
Yeah? Paul said, only half listening.
I told him, last night. I told my father I will come home when it is time. I said if there is a God, and if this God has such a big interest in my career, he can tell me about it himself. Friedrich was not a happy man. Oh my goodness. Michael chuckled to himself. It is great, no?
I need to go back, Paul said. Back out there.
The wreck? Michael said. Jake is not going back to that place. And I am definitely not. Neither are you, Paul.
Once more they worked the inshore reefs south of Stark, sometimes less than fifty metres from shore.
Paul ignored the German’s attempts to cheer him. Instead he worked hard, didn’t slow for the twelve hours they were at sea, endlessly restless and impatient.
That afternoon when they had returned to the house Michael went into his room and closed the door behind him.
Paul lay on his bed and listened to Michael and Shivani through the wall. He heard the jaunty tone of the German, telling some story, and Shivani’s laughter. Paul felt the burn in his eyes and swore at himself.
Kasia. He missed the way she had made him feel, how good it had been to be caught in the flux of her. She could shake him with a look, and she knew it. And he mourned for the peril he felt lying next to her, the feeling of being at the mercy of something, or someone. He cursed himself for ever letting himself want to resist it. How wretched the stillness felt.
Back into that void came all the familiar guilt. Elliot had been alone, tied to a marker at the edge of the earth. Paul thought of how afraid he must have been. It was beyond bearing.
At three in the morning, an hour before first light, Paul got up from the bed and slipped on his thongs. Hid the sheathed fillet knife under his jumper. He closed the front door behind him as quietly as he could.
