The Slap

by Christos Tsiolkas

  Craig dropped him off at Ringwood station. Richie went to fling open the door but Craig reached over, grabbed his shoulder. He seemed agitated.

  ‘I know it’s your birthday next month.’

  Richie mumbled, fast. ‘It’s okay if you don’t get me anything.’

  ‘Of course I’ll fucking get you something.’

  Why? You’ve just sent cards before.

  ‘It’s your eighteenth, it’s important.’ Craig let go of Richie’s arm and smiled. ‘Your grandma and me are thinking of pitching in and getting you an iPod.’ His smile disappeared and he looked concerned. ‘You haven’t got one, have you?’

  ‘No.’ Wow. An iPod. Brilliant. He wanted to ask if he would get one with heaps of gig, that could play video. But that wouldn’t be right.

  ‘Thanks,’ he mumbled.

  ‘I guess you’ll be having a party.’

  ‘I guess.’ Did his father want an invitation? No way, he couldn’t do it to Tracey. It wasn’t going to be a party anyway, just a dinner.

  ‘Or are you just going to go out with your girlfriend?’

  She’s not my fucking girlfriend. Richie’s right leg began to twitch. The air in the car felt old, it stank. Can I just go?

  Then Craig did something completely unexpected. He playfully brushed his hand over Richie’s hair. The boy automatically shot out his arm to his head but stopped himself in mid-motion.

  ‘I’ll call you on your birthday. Maybe I’ll take you out for a legal drink.’ Craig switched on the ignition. ‘See ya then.’

  ‘See ya.’ Richie slammed the door shut and ran all the way up to the platform, not looking behind him. He sat on a bench and breathed out slowly. He tapped the ventolin in his pocket. It was okay, he didn’t need it. He felt safe now. He took out his phone and checked for messages.

  Everyone was waiting for Tuesday, which was when they’d all get their ENTER scores. Richie hadn’t thought much about what they meant while he completed the school year but now that high school had finished—had finished forever!—it slowly began to dawn on him that the future was not a straight linear path but a matrix of permutations and possibilities, offshoots from offshoots. The map of the future was three-dimensional—that thought had literally never crossed his mind before. School had made him blind to that truth. The school years were flat, two-dimensional: sleep, school, study, sleep, school, study and some holidays. That world was splintering, and no longer made sense: and that, more than anything, that filled him with both a ferocious excitement and an anxious confusion; he could never go back to that other world again.

  His hope, of course, was that he would pass. It was unlikely, impossible—surely it must be impossible?—that he would fail. He was an average student, not brilliant, but certainly he was not lazy or an idiot. He had filled out his preferences diligently but without much thought. Mapping and Environmental Studies were kind of what he wanted the future to look like. But just after Christmas he and Nick had taken the tram into the city and smoked a joint in Melbourne Cemetery and then walked across to the university. Nick wanted to do Medicine. That was all he wanted to do, what he’d wanted to do all along. If he didn’t do Medicine, his life would fall apart. They had wandered the buildings, mostly empty in the height of summer and Nick had pointed out a tall, ugly concrete edifice on the edge of the university. My uncle helped lay the bricks to this fucker, he told Richie. He says that if I make it to this place I will be the first one in my family. Nick’s face had looked ecstatic that day, had looked alive and dangerous. Richie stood next to his friend and looked up at the building. My uncle’s hands built this place, Nick uttered again, and then his face tightened into a grimace. I have to come here. He then turned to Richie, elated, excited. And you know what that means, don’t you, mate, if we get here? We’ll be better than all the private school rich cunts who make it here. We’ll have made it because we’re the best, because we’re smart—we don’t just have to pay for it. Richie had nodded, not quite understanding his friend’s passion. But on the bus, as they made their way back home, Richie suddenly spied the future, its complicated, mulitfarious possibilities.

  He gazed out of the window onto the shimmering asphalt footpaths of the northern suburbs and suddenly, chance, accident, fate, will, they all made sense to him. And they made him scared. Nick would get into uni or Nick would not. He and Nick would be at uni together or they would not. That was only the one strand to the future, the one path out of all those myriad possibilities he cared about. He had looked across at his best friend. Nick Cercic was looking straight ahead. He looked calm. But Richie could see that his own hands were shaking on his knees. The hurt in his chest that was a bullet tearing him apart in slow motion, that hurt, that pain that he hoped would never go away, that was love, wasn’t it? It fucking had to be. It was so strong it was like the force of the universe inside him. It could be a Big Bang, it could shatter him into infinite fragments, annihilate him. Richie held his breath and looked out the window. If he could make it to sixty, slowly, not rushing it, not cheating, in real time, if he could hold his breath for sixty seconds, then Nick would get into Medicine, he would get into a diploma of spatial engineering, they would be at the same uni, they would be in the same future. Richie took a huge breath and counted down to sixty.

  The Friday night before that crucial Tuesday they went to see Marie Antoinette at the Westgarth. Nick had been suspicious about it, thought that it sounded chick-flicky, gay. ‘Anyway,’ he complained, ‘I’ve got too much on my mind. I can’t concentrate on a movie.’

  Richie wondered what his friend would do if he didn’t get into Medicine. Go fucking apeshit, that’s what. He’d want to take himself out and everyone around him.

  ‘It’s got Kirsten Dunst in it.’

  That did the trick. At the last moment they were joined by Connie, which made Nick even more agitated. They took their seats near the front of the cinema, Connie almost forcing Richie to sit in the middle. As the theatre darkened and the first trailer screened, Richie took a sideways look at Nick. He had already started fidgeting. During the course of the feature he went off to the toilet twice, the second time coming back smelling of smoke. After the film ended they went for an iced chocolate down the road. Nick had nothing to say about the movie at all. Richie had liked the music, the sensuality of it all. Connie had been bored, though she too liked the music. She thought Marie Antoinette was a dick. Nick’s eagerness to finish his drink and get out of the café was almost comical in its urgency. The boys walked Connie home. Usually she would kiss and hug Richie on saying goodbye but she never did when he was with Nick. They walked back to Richie’s house.

  His mother was up, with her friend Adele, sitting in the booth in their tiny kitchen. The boys squeezed in next to them.

  ‘Have you guys eaten yet?’

  Richie shook his head.

  Tracey pointed to the stove-top. ‘I made some stir-fry. There’s plenty left over. Heat it up in the microwave.’

  Nick suddenly shot up from his seat. ‘I’ve got to go.’ It almost sounded like a wail.

  ‘Come on, love. Eat. Then you can go.’

  Nick shook his head furiously. ‘No,’ he squeaked, then made a gesture halfway between a salute and a wave towards Richie and bolted down the hall. They heard the door slam.

  Adele laughed rudely. ‘What the fuck is up with him?’

  Richie scooped two ladles’ worth of stir-fry onto a plate and placed it in the microwave. ‘He’s strung out,’ he answered defensively; he never wanted to hear any criticism of Nick. ‘We get our results on Tuesday.’

  Adele clucked, a strange abrupt sound that seemed to come from deep in her throat. It could have been meant sympathetically or dismissively—you couldn’t tell with Adele. She was snappy and curt, looked like she drank and smoked too much—which she did—and she was overweight. She and his mother had been friends before he was born. In a way, he often told himself, she was like an aunt; and like an aunt you never gave her too much thoug
ht.

  The microwave beeped, a sound he always found infuriating. He sat down and started to attack his food.

  ‘Are you nervous about it?’

  What do you think? Our whole freaking future depends on it. His mouth stuffed with food, he nodded at Adele.

  ‘You’ll both be alright.’

  Richie kept munching at his food, hoping his mother and her friend would not start talking about the future. The future was about to ram itself right into his face in five days’ time. The future was about to happen: the exams had been sat, the results were in and now there was nothing to do except wait for the future to call. He wanted to explain all this to Nick; he wished he could comfort his friend. He didn’t know how to. Just shut up, he silently willed his mother and Adele, just shut up, we don’t need to hear any more about it. He took a last mouthful, gulped it down in one swallow and burped loudly.

  ‘Charming.’

  He grinned. ‘Sorry, Mum. Good grub.’

  ‘What’s your first choice?’

  He looked across at Adele. He was sure he had already answered this question. She had forgotten, as she would forget again.

  ‘Geomatic Engineering. Geographic Information Systems to be precise.’

  He enjoyed the blank look on her face.

  ‘What the fuck is that?’

  I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. Computers and maps, one of the treacherous paths in the matrix which is the future.

  ‘He wants to make maps,’ his mother answered for him, giving him a sympathetic wink. ‘I think it’s perfect for him.’

  Adele was about to open her mouth.

  ‘Mum,’ he interrupted excitedly. ‘Craig wants to get me an iPod for my birthday.’ He had rushed into changing the conversation without thinking. He caught a brief tremble on his mother’s lips, a quick flicker of the eyes, a moment of uncertainty. He wished he could take the moment back, let Adele ask a thousand questions about the future. He thought back to his list of certainties—it was the first one, the most important. His mother was the best mother on the planet. And he’d off himself if he turned out anything like his old man.

  ‘I told him not to get one without talking to you first,’ he lied. He peeked up at her. ‘You might want to go in it with him.’ Fucking stupid stupid stupid thing to say. Duuhh.

  His mother’s lips pressed together. She tapped Adele’s cigarette packet. Her friend nodded and his mother pulled out a cigarette. Richie stopped himself from protesting. Smoking made her look old. The kitchen already stank of Adele’s tobacco. He looked down at his plate again so she wouldn’t see his scowl.

  ‘I’ve already bought your present.’ Tracey lit her cigarette and exhaled. ‘I bought it months ago.’ She kissed her finger, leaned over and touched his lips with it. ‘I’m glad you and your father are getting along.’

  He kissed the top of his finger and blew her back a kiss. He got up from the table. ‘I’m going to bed.’

  ‘What are you up to tomorrow?’

  ‘I’m babysitting Hugo. Rosie’s got a doctor’s appointment and Connie’s working. I said I’d do it.’

  He caught the furtive look that passed between the two women.

  ‘Aren’t you working?’

  You know what time I’m working. He had found a part-time job at the Coles at Northcote Plaza. Lenin had got him the job.

  ‘I don’t start till one.’

  Adele was wanting to say something. He held in his breath; he’d count to ten. He had his back turned to her.

  ‘Hey,’ he heard her call out. ‘Tell your dad I’ll go in on the iPod. Might as well get you a good one.’

  He swung around, a big grin on his face. Adele was exactly like an aunt.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  Of course, she had known his father. They were in school together.

  ‘Thanks!’

  He kissed the two women goodnight.

  As soon as he was in his bed he reached underneath it and pulled out three notebooks and flicked through them. The oldest, its once vibrant indigo vinyl cover now faded to a pale cyan, held his maps and notes for Priam. This was a small island continent, half the size of Australia, that lay far east of Madagascar, in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The second notebook, A3, a present from his mother when he had turned fifteen, a Green Day sticker fading on the black binding, contained all the maps for Al’Anin, an archipelago of four hundred and seventeen islands off the coast of California and Mexico. The third notebook was full, and contained his sketches and designs for the city of New Troy, the capital of Priam and one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring cities in the whole world. Its deep, natural harbour ate into the lush tropical coast. The harbour city with its ancient temples once dedicated to the old Greek gods stopped at the imposing cliff faces of the Poseidons, a mountain range that had collapsed into the ocean, leaving a sheer escarpment that ran for hundreds of kilometres along the coast. Towering hundreds of metres above the city, on the enormous plateau that stretched to the horizon beyond the cliff face were the dazzling skyscrapers, mosques, churches and temples of New Troy, a shimmering jumble of silicon and marble and concrete and brick—all gold spires and silver minarets and bronze domes shining in the cobalt tropical sky.

  Richie opened the first notebook again and began to write. Priam was the place to which a group of the defeated warriors of Troy had escaped. They had discovered this continent, bred with the proud indigenous population that lived there, and named their new world after their last king and ruler. They too established a kind of Rome but unlike the founders of that city, these Trojans of Priam had disappeared from Asian and European history for over a thousand years. He had filled the book with stories of the intermarriage of Trojans and Aborigines, had detailed notes on the unique fauna and food crops of this rich, fertile kingdom.

  He had now come to the point where he had to deal with what happened to Priam with the arrival of Christian explorers and settlers. He knew that he did not want the Spaniards to discover it. He guessed he had to make the explorers English, as it was the only language he knew. He had played with the idea of making the first Europeans to land Russian, but that did not accord with any of the history he had read on European colonisation. The Renaissance and the World, his favourite unit in Year Eleven, taught by the profane, impatient Mrs Hadjmichael, who always wore a Collingwood jumper in winter and a Brasillia soccer shirt in spring, had made him hungry to bring the ideals and values of modernity to the closed hierarchical world of the New Trojans—though he knew that the old religion would survive; even in the twenty-first century there would be New Trojans who worshipped Zeus and Athena, Poseidon and Artemis.

  Vasili Grigorovich D’Estaing, the legendary French Huguenot admiral who had defected to the court of Queen Elizabeth I, was infamous not only for being the bastard child of Ivan the Terrible, but also for his ribald behaviour: it was said that he had boasted of one hundred mistresses and a dozen or so boy catamites. He was also the Renaissance World’s greatest explorer after Columbus and Raleigh, and it is often claimed that he was arguably greater than both of those men. He was certainly more courageous. For years Grigorovich D’Estaing was convinced of the existence of a great southern continent in the Indian Ocean: a land that was part of Egyptian, Nubian and Ethiopian legends. He believed that discovery of this new world would bring riches and power to England. He was driven to open up a universe to his beloved adopted sovereign, to exceed the gifts the conquistadors had brought home to Ferdinand and Isabella. After the English victory over the Spanish Armada, Grigorovich D’Estaing received permission from Queen Elizabeth to head an expedition into the heart of the Indian Ocean. This was to prove momentous for the New Trojans. For centuries, over a millennium, they had deliberately closed themselves off from the world. Their continent had proved abundant in food and ore, and any strangers who by misadventure or chance landed on their island were immediately enslaved. The children of these adventurers and pirates became citizens
of the new world. However, the rising population of the continent had been placing a heavier and heavier burden on the kingdom. Increasingly the Emperor was being besieged by his council to open trade with the world. It was into this crisis that Grigorovich D’Estaing sailed his fleet into the harbour of New Troy. His journals communicate some of the wonder his men experienced on looking at the immense splendour of the city, the towering gold statue of Pallas Athena, the Parthenon on the cliff ‘s edge, the roofs of the Summer Palace just visible beyond it. The Emperor’s regiments waited by the harbour walls, their swords and lances ready to welcome the Europeans. This confrontation, this meeting, was to shape the history of the whole world.

  He stopped writing. He turned back a few pages and looked at his sketch of Grigorovich D’Estaing. He traced the outline of the man’s face. The music thundered through his headphones. He turned the volume up even louder and the pen dropped to the floor. His wrist was sore. He had not done too badly with the sketch, especially the shading of D’Estaing’s copper breastplate, with its insignia of a dragon fighting a phoenix, which he had copied from a fantasy site he found on the internet. He shut the notebook and lay on his bed, turning the volume to its loudest setting, letting the music bash against his eardrums. When the CD was finished he removed his headphones and opened the third notebook. In the back there was a little plastic pocket he had created and in that pocket were all his precious mementos: a photograph of a drunk Nick at Jenna’s party, his arm tight around a smiling Richie’s neck; a slim ticket of shots of himself and Connie, piled into the photo booth at Northland Mall, their cheeks touching, her grin, his smile, exaggerated, hysterical; the cards his dad and nan had sent him; his ticket stub to the Pearl Jam concert his mother had taken him to for his thirteenth birthday. And finally, tucked at the end, the photocopy he had made of the photograph he’d stolen from Rosie and Gary’s place, the young Hector cast against a clear turquoise sky, his naked torso wet from the sea, his heroic profile calm and unflinching in the sun. This was the model for Grigorovich D’Estaing. The photocopy was creased, torn on one edge. He would have to be more careful with it. Richie gently pulled it out of the folder. He held the photocopy high above him, imagining that it was real, made flesh, that the man in the photograph was about to turn his face away from the sea and the sun and look down at Richie, part his lips. Richie closed his eyes and reached for his cock.