Christos Tsiolkas - Merciless Gods

•

I ring her on a Friday night. I leave this message on the machine: ‘Zaz, it’s me. Got a call from Kayla yesterday. She’s getting married. She’d like you to come along. It’s a small do, no big church bullshit. Call me.’

On the following Thursday, Dad tells me Zazie called. She wants to know when the wedding is.

I call back, leave this message: ‘Zaz, the wedding is on March twenty-third. Can you make it? Call me. I want you to be my date.’

Three weeks later I get a call. I’m home alone, watching a porno. I pause the video and grab the phone. The TV screen flickers on a bright yellow image, a close-up of a woman’s face, her eyes closed, her head tilted back, simulating ecstasy.

Zazie rushes into a conversation, stumbling and sliding through words and emotions. She can’t make the wedding. Too much study. She’s in love. Her video is going to be shown in some festival in St Kilda. Anyway, she doesn’t like weddings. Tells me to give her best to Kayla, bitches about her buying into the suburban dream. She sounds as if she’s speeding. Abruptly she tells me she has to go. Someone’s at her door. I say goodbye. There’s a click, then the dial tone.

I continue the video but I’m wanking without a hard-on. When I come, it’s nothing, a zero instead of a feeling; it’s like taking a leak but there’s less sensation.

•

There were between seven hundred thousand and a million scrolls in the ancient library in Alexandria. Writings from Phoenicia and Persia, from across the Mediterranean. Mathematics and astrology, plays and epics.

In Zazie’s video, simply called Hypatia , a woman is seen walking through a library, touching the spines of books. A security guard comes into the library and arrests her. There is a fire and books are thrown on it. Then the video cuts to the woman’s head being shaved; her hands are cuffed and her clothes are stripped away. Cut. A scroll is thrown on the fire. A flash to a computer screen being logged out, then a hammer smashes through the screen. The end.

There is light applause after the screening. I cheer, I whistle, I stamp my feet. Zazie is in the row in front of me and she turns around with a wicked smile. ‘Quiet, you dag,’ she whispers. She’s blushing. I keep cheering. I am — there is only one possible word for it — I am proud.

•

Five postcards and a letter.

Greece, 5 May 1992, a statue of Athena on a suburban roof, crisscrossed by television aerials. I write: Zazie, this place is chaos. The banks are always on strike, the streets are always crowded, day or night, and it stinks. I kind of like it. I met up with a German woman who speaks very good English and what sounds like passable Greek. She and I are going to travel to some of the islands together.

Lesbos, 23 May 1992. Three naked women, all blonde, lying on a beach. Zaz, saw this card and immediately thought of you. I’ve spotted many dykes here but there doesn’t seem to be any Museum of Lesbian History. Did you make that up? It is stunning here, but I miss Australian spaces. You can’t get away from anyone here, too many tourists. All the Greeks seem to have a brother or sister or cousin in Melbourne. Write to me at 17 Rue d’Alsace, Paris. Claudia, who I’m travelling with, has got a friend who’ll put us up there. Write. I underlined this final word twice.

Paris, 8 July 1992. The Eiffel Tower. I love this city. It is beautiful in the morning light, in the bright sun, it’s glorious at night. I feel cheap and nasty, everyone else is dressed so well. Australia seems very far away and Melbourne seems so limp in comparison. The flat we’re staying in is small and cramped, it overlooks the railyards. But I don’t give a damn. It took less than a minute, Zazie, less than a minute to love this place. P.S. Visited Morrison’s grave. Placed flowers on Oscar’s tomb, from both of us.

Dublin, 16 October 1992. An A4-sized advertisement for Sinéad O’Connor’s new CD, I ripped it off a shop window and I write on the back. Gorgeous, isn’t she? I’m so glad to get out of London. Everyone was whingeing and gloomy. Ireland is obviously poorer but people are friendlier. Also, too many Aussies in England. I wanted to escape all that. I’m going to Belfast, to visit some of Dad’s family. I feel at home here in Ireland. Does that sound weird? I don’t think it’s a pretence. I am relaxed here. There’s a Palestinian student I met at the hostel that you’d really like. Her name is Anna and she’s doing a PhD on Gertrude Stein. Do you know her? She was a dyke writer long ago. Of course you probably know her. I’ve got one of her books, QED . I’m sending it to you surface mail along with some other things. Anna is good to talk to. She talks about Israel, Palestine, war. She explained to me the differences between Christians and Muslims. I just listen to her, keep my mouth shut. I’m realising I know nothing.

New York City, 3 January 1993. The Chrysler Building. Happy New Year, Zaz. It’s fucking freezing and the hotel room is sucking up all my cash. I’m going to try and hitch down to the south tomorrow. Is the Chrysler still your favourite building? I keep trying to look inconspicuous on the streets but I can’t help looking up and then standing like a stunned mullet in awe of the architecture. Don’t write now, I’ll be back home soon. Unless some rich yank wants to be my sugar mummy or daddy (at this stage, I’m open to all offers). You’ll have to visit here. You’d love it, it is so exciting. At the bottom of the card, two sentences are scrawled out with heavy ink.

This is what I crossed out, what I couldn’t send to Zazie: Mate, I hate this place, I hate NY, I am lonely and I’m cold and no one speaks to me. I hate their fast chicken, fast ribs, fast burgers, fast fries, fast lives.

And from San Francisco, 10 January 1993. A crumpled paper napkin. Across it, scrawled in blue pen, were the words: Zazie, Australian girls are cool . It was signed Jennifer Jason Leigh.

I add a note. Zaz, she was sitting, reading a paper, in a booth across from me. I felt like a deep dag but I had to get her autograph for you. You’re absolutely right. She’s fucking beautiful! The USA, mate. What a trip!

•

She picked me up from the airport. She had her hair shaved. I hugged her tight. Driving into Melbourne, the city looked fragile, deserted and flat. We had a coffee in Smith Street and all I could think of was how big the streets were, and how white everyone’s face was. Zazie was very white. Not just pale, but skin that came close to the perfection of white.

‘Sorry I didn’t write. I was so busy, I’m making another film, a real film this time.’

‘The other one was a real film.’

‘No, that was video.’

She kept talking, I sat there watching Australia go by. Home. I was missing Europe.

•

Her film is called Trace . It’s eight minutes long and shot in black and white. It opens on an old woman’s face; in voiceover we hear her talk about an old pub in Richmond where dykes used to hang out. It was called the Kingston. Then we see the old woman climb some stairs and enter a dance club. The music is loud, something not quite techno, not quite house. The old woman takes a seat by herself and watches young women in leather and vinyl on the dance floor. Another close-up on her face, lashed by the strobe. The music fades. She starts talking to the camera, telling us about the Kingston. There’s a cut to a group of women sitting around a pub table. The camera pans across their faces. Some are middle-aged, the others are much older. They are drinking and laughing. Two of the women kiss, a long, passionate, wet kiss. Then up come the credits.

Zazie’s film did have an effect on me. It was the kiss. There was something unique in that screen kiss. It wasn’t that they were women; it was that they were old.