Christos Tsiolkas - Merciless Gods

‘That’s the best bit,’ I told her afterwards.

‘Yeah,’ she answered, ‘I know.’

•

My wedding was small, a ceremony in a garden and lunch at a pub. I invited Zazie but she couldn’t make it. She sent us a card, addressed to me and Tania. Good luck, kids . That’s what it said.

•

Tania comes into the bathroom. I’m taking a shower. She’s got the TV Guide in her hand. She says something but I don’t catch it. She pops her head in and I kiss her on the lips. The Guide gets wet. ‘Look,’ she points to the page, ‘next Friday they’re playing Zazie in the Metro on SBS.’

I jump on the phone as soon as I get out of the shower. I ring, there’s a long wait, and some guy answers.

‘Is Zazie there?’

‘She doesn’t live here anymore. I don’t have a number.’

I watch the movie with Tania, tape it. It’s about a young French girl who always misbehaves. She even looks like Zazie — I mean, the real Zazie. It is shot all around Paris and I turn to Tania. ‘We should go. I’d like to take you there one day.’

Tania says, simply, ‘We will.’ I rub my face all over her, smell her, touch her, kiss her, and I forget about watching the movie.

•

I come home from work and the house is empty. Tania’s still at college, evening classes. The answering machine is flashing three messages. After a call from Mum and a message from the plumber, Zazie’s voice crackles and laughs.

‘Anyone there? Anyone there! Jesus, this is costing a fortune. I’m in Alexandria — it’s ugly. They’ve ruined it. They must have burned down everything, it’s all fucking concrete boxes. Except for the Mediterranean. Now, that’s beautiful. I got my tarot done by this Egyptian woman. She spotted I was a Virgo straight away. Probably all crap but it was fun. She let me videotape her. Jesus, I wish you were home. We haven’t talked for ages. I don’t know when I’ll be back. Maybe never. I’ll write, I promise I’ll write. Or maybe I’ll phone from New York. Sorry, this is costing a fortune. Love to Tania. Goodbye.’

The machine spurts out a few weak beeps, the tape wheezes back on rewind and then clicks to a stop. I make myself a sandwich, munch on Vegemite and bread. I go outside. There’s still a few hours of light. I start digging and planting.

I WISH WILLIAM BURROUGHS HAD NEVER done the Nike ad. As Barney says, he lasted into his eighties without compromising his credibility and then he blows it all to sell sports shoes on television. Trying to be generous, I argue that the approach of the millennium is screwing with lots of people’s heads.

‘Sure, sure,’ mutters Barney, ‘but how’s he going to stand up now and recite poetry that tells multinationals to fuck off and go to hell?’ He bangs his fist on the steering wheel.

‘Why does everyone end up disappointing you?’

I’ve come to expect to be disappointed by people. The faces that stare down on me from my bedroom wall are all dead. I mean the famous faces: Monroe, Clift, Rainer Werner. Janis, River and Jean Seberg. They are all dead and they all died young. I’m much harder on the living: not so much with family and friends; you learn to tolerate the vulnerabilities of the people around you. It is harder to do that with those beautiful faces caught timelessly on film, photograph or screen, who one moment are expressing their love of art, or talking passionately about their dreams, about changing the world; then flick, another image and they have reneged, become fake. There’s a photograph of Jane Fonda, black and white, limp hair over her face, her fist raised in support of the Vietcong; and then there’s that video of her, with her airbrushed body outstretched, doing aerobics to bad disco. Once you lose someone’s respect it is the hardest thing to win back.

•

We are travelling to Sydney. The sun is beating down on us and the inside of the Valiant feels like an oven: our skin sticks to the vinyl seats. Barney is driving, his hands steady on the wheel as the sun tans his naked torso.

‘Whoo hoo, baby,’ he sings out to me, ‘ain’t it fucking great to be out of the city?’

It takes around eleven hours to get from Melbourne to Sydney, nine if you put the foot down on the accelerator and evade the cops. We take three days. The first night we stop at Bonegilla, just before the New South Wales border. Barney wants to see the skeleton of the migrant camp. It is an obsession for him. Many nights at dinner at my folks’ he would spend the evening asking my father about his life in the camp, his voyage to Australia. I would let the two of them talk, occasionally butting in with an observation they would both ignore. Often I’d leave them talking in the lounge and I’d go in and help Mum wash up. Their intimacy never disturbed me. I never had a close relationship with my old man but through Barney’s persistent questioning I discovered my father’s history.

The sun is retreating when we arrive in Bonegilla. Barney wants to go straight to the camp but we can’t see any signs showing where it might be. When we book into a caravan park on the edge of the lake, I ask the owner if she knows where the old camp is located.

‘Love, it was over there,’ and she points across the lake to a small stretch of land jutting out into the water. ‘But there’s nothing left, you know. It all belongs to the army now. Were your parents at the camp?’

‘My father was,’ I reply.

•

That night we get fish and chips and watch a science-fiction movie on the TV. I roll a joint and Barney pokes fun at the stilted dialogue. I lie next to him and blow smoke into his face. He cradles me in his arms and kisses me softly. I taste the beer, the nicotine, the marijuana. A thin layer of grease and salt lines his lips.

‘Baby,’ he tells me, ‘I can’t believe they haven’t put up some kind of museum here. Think about the fucking history.’ He shakes his head and goes back to watching the movie.

I finish the joint and lie back in his arms. As the drug begins to take effect I can hear sounds outside: ghosts murmuring in a discordant chorus of many languages. But it is only the wind blowing over the water and through the trees. The nocturnal music is punctured by staccato bursts of gunfire coming from the television.

Barney whoops with exhilaration every time there is a glorious, bloody death. He tickles me and kisses me again. ‘Hollywood is bullshit, ain’t it, mate,’ he whispers to me, and he returns to watching the movie. I don’t answer. It isn’t a question.

•

Next morning it takes me a long time to wake from the depths of sleep and enter the real world. I drag myself into consciousness and Barney is above me, video camera in front of his face.

‘Happy birthday,’ he yells and I pull the sheet over my face.

‘Fuck off,’ I manage to say in between fits of giggling. He drags back the sheet and films up and down my body. He hands me the camera and I focus on the top of his head as he licks my thighs, rolls his tongue over my balls and cock. I film myself shooting cum over his face, onto his neck and shoulders. A little unsteady, I zoom into the white patches of sperm. He wipes his face and body with the sheet and stands above me on the bed, holding his hard cock in one hand. The roof of the caravan is low and he has to crouch. I film his face, move down his body and zoom into the wrinkled skin of his balls; they flap wildly as his masturbation becomes more vigorous. As he nears coming I zoom out and frame his upper body. He is silent until a trickle of clear liquid coats his cockhead. He comes in a small white spray and I cut to his moaning, sweating face. He kneels next to me, covers the camera lens with his hand and whispers, ‘That’s enough.’ I turn off the camera.