Christos Tsiolkas - Merciless Gods

I was sitting next to a slim young thing, a blue-eyed pale-skinned woman returning home after five years in Europe. She asked me if I was visiting Australia for the first time.

‘No, I live there,’ I explained. ‘I’ve just been back to bury my mother.’

‘Oh,’ the young woman said with wide eyes, then added timidly, ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘No, no,’ I slurred, and then giggled. ‘She had an interesting life, my mother, there is no reason to feel sorry for her.’ Then I said it, wanting to be wicked, wanting to see how she would react. ‘She once sucked off Paul McCartney in the toilets of the Star-Club in Hamburg, many, many years ago.’

The young woman stared at me. ‘Oh,’ she said again, and then sighed, no doubt thinking of her own mother, of returning home. ‘She sounds amazing.’

‘Yes,’ I answered, indicating to the steward that I wanted another drink, ‘yes, indeed she was.’

I AM IMPRISONED. I AM IN here for three years. I am having to endure two years and three months longer. I don’t know if I can endure. I don’t speak. This is a curse and there is no reply to make back to a curse.

They are blaspheming all the time in here. They are beasts, and not only the imprisoned ones. The ones with the keys, they too are wild. The master too and those who are working here, they all have the stare of a beast. This gaze they all share, it doesn’t come from in here, it is carving on their faces from long ago. Their fathers too have the same stare and their grandfathers and the grandfathers before them.

It tells where they come from and what they are.

I sing yesterday. I don’t know why, I no sing from the first day here. No, from even before. From the moment when I open my eyes in the peace and in the calm and I am hearing a song from inside my body. Not from outside me but inside, a melody that is being sung by my blood and my bones. I hear my voice and I open my eyes and all is mud and dirt.

She is white, as if a leech has drunk all of her juice. I am killing her. The singing stops. She falls, a bird I shoot with my sling. Then I see that her fingers on her left hand are twitching, that her eyes are opening and closing and opening and closing. I have not killed her. I lay her before Death but He does not take her. For bringing her to Death’s door I am here for three years and I must endure two years and three months more.

I have no hunger for song and I have no right for song. Even my pain and my solitude do not deserve a song.

Even so, I sing yesterday. My voice is a clarino.

Where are the greens of the meadow, the water from the well?

Stiv hears. Stiv is the name of that poofter, sometimes they call him Stivi, the little Stiv. It is not possible such a pollution is once a child. I struggle to say their names, they makes my mouth twist, like a stone is caught there. Stiv Gharin, such a name tears at my throat. Stiv Gharin shouting at me, What’s that shit you are singing, dago? Who said you’re allowed to sing?

— I don’t need permission from you to sing, you fucking animal.

— What was that, you reffo?

I say again in Greek.

And that is when his eyes go the glare of his race and of the demons, and I swear to all the gods and all the saints and to the Mother of us all that I am speaking the truth. They are all devils, him and his father and his grandfather and their grandfathers before them. Till you reach the end of their line and you find the Satan. That is their start and that is their story. It is written in their eyes.

He makes a scream, from deepest hell. Each word is a gob of spit at my face, at my brow, at my cheeks. Speak English, you dirty fucking wog!

Where are the greens of the meadow, the water from the well?

His forehead smashes into mine and there is pain, then black, then a yellow light. Then I am throwing up an ocean of blood. Stiv Gharin, that obscenity, that demon, he is gone.

I see it then that I will kill him. A vision of a prophet, ancient and built by the gods.

I have two years and three months. Why do I care, what is there to seek from a future? I have no future, I only have fate. All future is gone now.

I see this written as if a commandment from our God.

— Are you hurtin’?

It is Tzim. He is a good lad. It is him and me and the poofter Stiv, we are the three in this cage. Tzim is good, he is tasty, he is sweet and he is handsome. He is half of that race of beasts and criminals and he is half of that black race here that is made a misery. He is good and he is handsome but the drink in here has made him slow and the pooftering here has made him a whore. That is as it is. I too jump the kid but only when we are alone. Of course I jump him. He is tasty and he is sweet. When I kiss him, his lips are soft, they are as a child. He tastes like a child. I kiss him. The others only jump him, they are a gang and they jump him together. One is in his arse and two are in his mouth and the others spill themselves all over him. But I am a man, I am still human and I kiss him.

— I no hurt.

He doesn’t believe in me. He brushes his finger on my nose and pain makes tears in my eyes. And I curse, I curse the Christ and the Mother and I curse my balls.

Tzim jumps back, a shadow in his eyes, the mark of the beast of that damned white race. And even him, even him that they spit on and they fuck and they bash and whose arse they have made the same as the cunt of an old woman who has birthed a dozen children, even he does not bear it when I speak my tongue.

That is what every stranger is like. I understand it first on the ship that takes me to these dark horizons, I understand it that the stranger cannot bear our tongue. Of course, I understand it. I too do not want to hear a stranger’s tongue. That is God’s law everywhere.

I speak in English. Thanks, mate.

He is again sweet. He smiles. He takes a scrap from his pocket, a cloth that is a handkerchief also and full of his sweat and his spit. The cloth is red now with my blood. He gives it to me the cloth.

— Come on, I’ll take you to the sick room.

Butchers they have here, not doctors. The doctors and nurses here they too have that wild stare. I don’t want to go but there where Tzim touches it my nose it begins to swing like a bell.

Fuck bloody God, I want to hear the peal of bells on the mountains and through the valleys! I want to hear a chant from a priest, even though them I can’t bear. I leave Greece and in here I leave one more time my homeland. There is no Greece anywhere left for me, not even in that toilet of shit they call Melbourne. Even there I am exile.

Two years and three months. What does that matter?

— No sick room, no bloody doctors, I say to Tzim. I tell him I want to go to the desert.

— Go bush, I go bush, I become black bastard like you.

He doesn’t like it. I take his hand.

The dog with the keys, that outrage, he laughs when he sees me.

— I want sick room.

— And I want cunt. What are you going to do about it?

Two years and three months. I slaughter him now and then they hang me with that beautiful lad, Ronilt Raen, handsome that one, a man that one, I am proud to swing next to a man like that. And I will meet Death with at least one cunt cop head hanging from my belt.

Tzim lets go of my hand.

•

The doctor is new, only here four months and not yet savage. He is a kid, he is a little darling. He has red hair and he has blue eyes. It will happen, it will happen. He is of their race, soon he’ll be a beast.

— What happened, Arthur?

He says our names, the animal with the keys doesn’t like it.

I don’t speak.

— What happened to him, Donaldson?