Tim Winton - Breath

We were in the kitchen one day, as Sando ground the spices for his special fish curry, when I saw a photo that I'd never noticed before. It hung in a sheoak frame on the dado beside the stove and its glass was speckled with oil stains. The image was a figure in a red snowsuit, a skier more or less upside down against the whiteness of a mountain. In the background were pointed trees like something from a TV Christmas.

Hey, I said. What's this?

Sando paused a moment with the mortar and pestle. The smells of coriander and cumin and turmeric were not the sort of thing that ever came from my mother's kitchen. My eyes were already itching from the vapour of crushed chillies.

That, Pikelet, is my wife.

You're shittin me.

I peered closer. Between goggles and hood there was a tuft of blonde hair. Her whole body was inverted, with her skis in the sky and her face tilted toward the ground somewhere below.

I shit you not.

Far out!

Yeah, I guess that about covers it. Pretty heavy-duty, eh.

How did she do it?

Off a jump. Big downhill run and up the ramp. Full 360.

And lands on her feet.

Well, that's the plan.

She's done it more than once, then?

Mate, she's pretty well known. It's freestyle. It's a whole other scene. They're the bad boys and girls of skiing. That's Utah in '71. She's there now.

Skiing?

Jesus, no — not with that knee. Nah, they're trying another operation.

Ah, I murmured, beginning to see.

She's been out three years now. More.

I thought about the pills, the limp, those bleak moods.

She's had other operations?

Sando nodded grimly.

Maybe this time it'll work.

Yeah, but it's a long shot.

There's no snow here, I murmured. How can she stand it?

Sando rammed the pestle against the grist of spices. I rested my chin on the benchtop and I could feel the force of his arms pulsing in the wood.

I think she prefers it here. I mean, if you couldn't surf anymore, would you want to live by the sea?

The ocean's beautiful. That'd be enough for me.

Bullshit.

No, really, I said. It'd be enough just to see it.

Believe me, you're talkin shit.

I stood up, stung by his casual certainty. It seems odd to have remembered it but in later life I had cause to recall the moment.

I was in my thirties before I learnt that I too would prefer not to see what I could no longer have.

Don't sulk, he said.

I'm not, I muttered.

She's got guts, that girl.

Yes, I agreed, seeing that I'd underestimated her. Eva's photo was on the wall but none of him could be shown. I didn't get it. They had so much in common. She'd been thwarted, but as far as I could tell he'd pretty much walked away. I wondered which had required most guts.

You're not from here, I said.

Nah, Melbourne originally, he said, ignoring my peevish tone.

So, why here?

Forest. Empty beaches. Waves nobody's ridden. Came here in the sixties for a while. Had a hut up there in the trees. I was after something pure, I guess.

Pure, I said.

Yeah, I know. Is anything really that pure?

I shrugged and there was a kind of detente between us again while he ground the spices and heated the skillet and fried them slowly until the house filled with smells enough to nearly lift the place off its poles.

Loonie was sacked from the mill before he could quit. In the new year his old man told him to get work in Angelus at the cannery or the meatworks, but it was a thirty-mile drive each way and without a driver's licence there was only the school bus to get him there, so he wound up washing glasses and sweeping up at the pub. He bought an old trail bike and started riding unlicensed out to Sando's along the back tracks. Whenever he blasted up the drive in a gust of dirt and two-stroke fumes he changed the atmosphere. He came more and more often those holidays and before long my interlude with Sando was over.

Sando never said a thing about the trip to Indonesia. He certainly didn't tell me that he planned to take Loonie with him. I didn't know Loonie even had a passport or how he'd conned his old man into letting him go. Maybe he had something on him; it was the only way I could see him getting his way. I didn't know a thing. They were just, quite suddenly, gone.

The dog was left with only a pink dune of dried food and a water bowl replenished by the tap dripping at the watertank, but Sando must have known I'd keep coming out there to check on it. I sat with the dog several days in bitter silence. One afternoon I went out to find that Eva was back. She was on crutches and as pissed off as I'd ever seen her. I asked her what was going on and she called me fifty kinds of fucking bastard and told me to piss off and never come back.

It took me a week to work up the nerve to go out and claim my board from beneath the Sandersons' house. I had hoped that Eva might be away again, but when I pushed my bike up into the clearing she was out on the verandah with the dog which barked and came skittering down to see me. She climbed awkwardly to her feet. She wore cut-off Levi's. Even from down there I could see the colour of her knee.

I just came for me twin-fin, I said, still clutching the bike.

There's coffee, she said.

Nah. I'll just get me board.

Pikelet, you don'rhave to take the goddamn board.

But I'm gunna.

Oh, whatever, she said, bracing herself against the verandah rail.

Look, I'm sorry I chewed you out. It was a shitty thing to do.

I stood there.

Come on, have coffee. Peace.

I hesitated. The breeze had swung onshore anyway and I didn't really feel like turning around right now to pedal straight back into town. So I relented and went up.

The house was in disarray with empty plates and mugs and bottles everywhere. The sink looked like a salvage yard and everything stank of garbage and pot.

Eva's limp was so painful to see that I went ahead and got the coffee myself. I came back out onto the verandah to sit at a safe distance.

The other day, she said. I was pretty bummed out. I apologize. I shrugged, crosslegged on the boards. I sipped the coffee without pleasure. I was still a tea man. It was quiet for a while and when I looked over she was staring out across the roo paddock. There were dark smudges around her eyes and her hair was greasy. The suture line on her knee was vivid.

How did the operation go? I asked.

No dice. I guess it was worth a shot.

I saw that photo of you. It's radical.

Well, she said too brightly. That's one for the archives now, isn't it?

I didn't know how to respond. The only things you could say were stupid.

Well, here we are, Pikelet. We're both abandoned.

He didn't tell you anything?

He left a note.

But he knew when you'd be back?

She nodded. Way to go, Sando.

So, what'll you do?

Oh, she said. I'll sit here and be pissed at him. What else am I gonna do? A few weeks he'll be back, all smiles, full of stories. Normally I wouldn't care so much, you know. But I could have done with some. . well, some help. And you?

Me?

The lone musketeer.

I shrugged again, reminded of my humiliation.

You couldn't have gone anyway, she said. You got school and stuff. What are you, fifteen?

In a few weeks.

Your time'll come.

He coulda told me, I said. I was here every day and he coulda said.

Guru shit and bad manners are pretty much the same thing,

Pikelet.

I guess, I murmured, but I didn't really know what she meant. I sat there long enough to drain the mug but I was anxious to go.

You need help with stuff? I asked, hoping that she didn't.

No, I'm fine. But thanks.

I was halfway down the stairs when she called out that some fresh fish would be nice, if I ever went spearing. I said I'd keep it in mind, but I had no plans to be back.