Christos Tsiolkas - Merciless Gods

We take a seat and I use a chopstick to sketch lines in the sugar bowl. ‘Why come here?’ I ask. ‘The coffee will be crap.’

‘To feel normal,’ he almost shouts. He quietens down. ‘Sorry, babe, this bloody town gets glitzier and more superficial every passing year. And whiter. Where have all the ethnics gone?’

I break out into a grin. ‘You’re just a sucker for wogs.’

‘Definitely,’ he agrees. He leans over and kisses me. We are interrupted by the waiter who serves our coffee. He looks indifferent.

‘You reckon that was alright?’ I ask when he leaves.

‘What was alright?’

‘Us kissing.’

Barney laughs. ‘He works in Darlinghurst, mate. I’m sure he’s seen worse.’ He pauses and pours sugar into his coffee. ‘What makes you think he’s straight?’

The question embarrasses me. ‘I just assumed it,’ I admit. ‘Why, what do you think he is?’

Barney shrugs his shoulders. ‘How would I know?’

After coffee we take a walk around Surry Hills. Barney points out houses and shopfronts to me. This is where he played soccer. That’s the house he lived in when he first came to Sydney. We pass a corner pub, its door wide open to welcome the breeze. Inside, a few old men are drinking beer, huddled around a cheerful barman. Across the street, a fancy café with discreetly angled table umbrellas is pulling in a younger, more stylish crowd. Barney stands precariously on one foot, his other raised inches off the ground. He is staring across at the café.

‘That used to be. . that used to be. .’ He puts his foot down firmly. ‘Not a café. An old couple used to fix radios in that shop.’ He turns around and enters the pub. ‘Let’s have a beer.’

•

Barney and I have never had much money. That makes a big difference; that’s why we are still together. Money, as the song goes, does change everything. Who you know, what you know, how you know. Rich people don’t mix with poor people, not necessarily out of conceit or malice, but maybe because they can’t understand the anxiety that comes from worrying about money. I’ve noticed that you can never talk to a rich person about money, whether it’s paying the rent or getting screwed at work. They get uncomfortable. No matter what they might say they believe, a rich person can never trust a poor person. And vice versa. At some point, over some dumb argument, the rich person will utter the words: that’s mine, I paid for it, I own it. And there’s no fucking way the poor guy can compete. I don’t have to explain any of this to Barney. He understands automatically.

In fact, he goes further. ‘It’s a different world, idiot,’ he once screamed at me. ‘I thought you understood that.’ It was early in our relationship and I had bragged to some university friends about how Barney was selling sticks of dope. ‘They’re rich kids and they don’t have to break the law. Don’t ever trust them.’

Being poor means you have to break the law. That’s how it works. They make laws about everything, to protect everything. It’s breaking the law not to pay a fine; it’s breaking the law not to pay back credit; it’s even breaking the law to steal sugar sachets from a restaurant. If you’re poor it’s hard to live within the letter of the law and survive; even harder to do that and have a good time. It is impossible to do both. Barney never lets down his guard around the rich, not even when he was at uni, where he first met them.

‘You and me,’ he told me soon after we’d met, ‘we got here because of our brains. The rest of them are here because mummy and daddy have got money.’ His smile was radiant. ‘That makes us better than them. And they know it.’

•

The next few days rush by. I cannot shake the feeling that I am intruding. The father and son spend hours together while I take long, solitary walks through the neighbourhood, check out the coffee shops and write stilted, distracted journal notes. I watch a lot of television. One evening we visit Sheila and I relax a little. Barney loosens up around his mother, loses the distilled intensity that he has with Dan. Sheila herself, loud, kind and abrupt, responds affectionately to her son, and he feels free to argue with her, to bait her. We arrive back at Dan’s very drunk.

As soon as we open the door the heat hits us. The night outside is warm but the heater is whirring furiously and Dan has wrapped a blanket around himself. He is watching our Bonegilla footage.

‘Dad, you should be in bed.’

The old man ignores him. ‘What’s this?’

Barney and I sit down and we watch the limpid colour of the video. Barney has framed me staring out of a broken windowpane. I’m unaware of the camera and my eyes seem huge, very bright.

‘It’s Bonegilla. My father was at the migrant camp there when he first arrived in Australia.’

‘When was that?’

‘Nineteen fifty-nine. The camp lasted into the late sixties, I think.’

Dan is racked by coughing. Barney fetches a glass of water. On the screen a sheaf of yellow grass obscures the gnarled timber wall of the Bonegilla administration hall.

‘Never heard of the bloody place.’ Dan shook his head slowly. ‘I’ve been all over this country and no one ever told me about this place.’

‘Let’s get you ready for bed, old man.’ Barney puts a gentle hand on his father’s shoulder.

Dan yawns an agreement. The video images falter, the screen goes black and disintegrates into static.

As he gets up, Dan turns a wrinkled, mischievous face towards us. ‘I saw the first part of the video. Afraid I did not find it very erotic.’ He laughs as he shuffles towards his bedroom. For the first time in a long time I see Barney blush.

•

The days rush by but I am conscious of every passing minute. Between them Dan and Barney are making decisions, tying up loose ends. Dan does not own very much but what he has is going to his son. It’s the music that matters most. To both of them.

Barney reacquaints himself with his old hometown as he completes chores, paying his father’s final rent, organising the funeral. He remains warm and considerate of me, especially when we are alone, but his concentration is fully on his father. I understand — or rather, I try to understand — and step to the sidelines. On the eve of his father’s death, Barney has a sleepless night, sitting very still on the balcony, watching the moon. I wake up four or five times during the night and each time see that he is lost in a place so unimaginably far away that I cannot be there with him. I fall quickly back to sleep. In my dreams I hear him praying.

From early morning the small house fills up with people. Men and women, some young, but mostly around Dan’s age, come and go, bidding him farewell. The whole day Dan is beaming, drinking whisky and, for the first time since his immune system started to collapse, smoking the odd cigarette. Barney gets drunk quickly but he remains attentive to Dan; his main task is to keep the turntable spinning. A cornucopia of music is played this day. I keep registering favourite songs, and I recognise tunes and melodies I can’t put a name to.

I am introduced to dozens of people but I am only aware of Barney. I watch him all day, watch how he interacts with Dan. Sheila arrives in the afternoon and she pours drink after drink for me. From time to time she breaks down and cries, and someone close will put their arm around her. The conversation is lively, many stories are exchanged about Dan, and every new arrival brings more to drink. At one point Dan puts the Bonegilla video on and I face the embarrassment of a roomful of strangers watching me ejaculate when he rewinds back too far. There are squeals of laughter. As the camp footage begins, Barney comes over and takes my hand. He is trembling. After it is over, people come up and ask about Bonegilla. I’m drunk enough to make it up as I go.