Christos Tsiolkas - Merciless Gods

•

The hair on his chest is now white, and the brown knot of his belly button protrudes obscenely from his pink, fleshy belly. I strip him of his pyjama top and he steps out of his bottoms; I have to hold my breath from the stink of his piss and sweat. I fill the small basin with warm water, take the sponge and begin to soap down his body. I wash his neck, chest, shoulders, belly; I crouch down and wipe his thighs, his calves. He turns around and the soiled white underpants drop to his feet. His buttocks sag, pale as the moon. I wash him there, spread his arse cheeks and scrub vigorously between them. I run water to rinse the shit from the sponge and when I turn back he is facing me. The hair on his groin is white, sparse, as if he has gone bald down there. His testicles, bloated, almost purple in colour, hang low; his penis is wrinkled, speckles of white along the flesh of it. Carefully I lift his cock to wash under his scrotum: it feels limp and heavy in my hand, like a fillet of chicken thigh, like dead meat.

My father’s cock stiffens at the touch of my hand.

‘Alice, Alice,’ he sighs. But there is laughter in his voice, a tone I haven’t heard in years. ‘Alice,’ he repeats as he exhales, his bright eyes staring straight into mine, ‘we shouldn’t do this.’

Alice is not my mother’s name. I don’t know an Alice. But my own cock has swelled, pressing so hard against the denim of my jeans that it hurts. My hand tightens around him.

‘Do you want me to stop?’ My voice is hoarse, my skin is flushed. I am looking at my father, I am looking him straight in the eye and he is smiling; there is strength there again.

‘You crazy bitch,’ he whispers back to me, ‘of course I don’t want you to stop.’

My fist is sliding up and down, up and down. I know the door to the room could open any moment, I know we might be caught. But I don’t stop. My father’s eyes are closed but the smile still plays at the corner of his lips. He shudders, there is a groan, his jaw trembles; a thin liquid dribbles over my hand.

I grab the sponge again and wipe him clean. He is sheepish, embarrassed, the underpants still around his feet. I open a drawer in the dressing table next to his bed.

‘Lift your foot,’ I order. Obediently he lifts his right leg, then his left, and I put a clean pair of jocks on him. He lets me dress him in freshly ironed pyjamas.

When I am finished he takes his seat and watches me rinse out the sponge. ‘How’s Jimmy?’ he asks tenderly. ‘How are the kids?’

‘They’re fine, mate, they’re fine.’ I am thinking that he’s never asked after Mick with such affection, never inquired into my life with such warmth.

He starts speaking. I sit on the bed and listen to him as he starts talking about the time we were neighbours in Coburg, the house in which his son was born but which they had moved out of before Davey started to walk. He tells me how he has never found neighbours as good as Jimmy and me, how he misses the Sunday mornings he and Jimmy would go out to the bay to fish, the weekends we’d go shooting rabbits in Dandenong.

‘You know I loved Jimmy,’ he tells me.

‘He loved you too,’ I answer.

Then there is a knock on the door and a young nurse enters, all cheer and beaming smile, a small plastic container of apple juice in her hand. ‘How are you doing, Nick?’

The cheer has vanished from my father’s face. Unperturbed, she places the juice on a tray and motions for me to get off the bed. I obey and watch her strip the sheets.

‘We’ll change your bedding, Nick, you’ll have lovely clean sheets for tonight. You’ll like that, won’t you?’

Sullen, my father turns away from her.

‘I see your son has given you a wash, Nick, and changed your pyjamas. You’re very lucky to have a son like that.’

My father is looking out of the window, at the too-perfect lawn, the ugly red-brick buildings beyond, the grey sky above.

At the doorway to his room, I look back. ‘Bye, Dad.’

He offers no reply, he doesn’t look my way. The nurse calls out a farewell but I don’t answer.

Walking down the corridor, I glance through a window to the common room. An old woman sitting in a wheelchair is rocking back and forth, back and forth. Her right arm is raised and it shakes uncontrollably. She is mouthing words but I can’t hear them. Two other women, one in a pink nightgown, the other in a lemon-coloured robe, are sitting on chairs in front of the television, studiously ignoring the woman in the wheelchair.

I find the men’s toilets and walk in. I lock the door. I stand before the mirror and raise my hand. I can smell my father on me, the sour fish-sauce smell of semen. A small streak of it is drying, claggy and white, on my index finger. I bring it to my mouth, I lick at it. I taste of my father. My father tastes of me. I wash my hands in the basin, I wash my dad off me.

•

It’s alright, Davey, I’m not angry with you, son, it’s alright.

Holding me tight against his chest, my arms wrapped around his broad shoulders, walking past the couples and families sprawled on the beach towels on the sand, curious children peering at us, my howls seemingly unstoppable, my tears still falling, my father carries me back to my mother and sister on the beach. Gently he puts me down.

My mother is about to say something, to scold me, but my father motions for her to be quiet. She shrugs and takes up her book.

He is looking down at me. The wide black lenses of his sunglasses hide his eyes. I see a little boy reflected in each lens, pale and skinny and frightened.

I muster all the strength I have, I take in a breath and hold it, I force myself not to cry; I need not to cry, I have to show my father that I can not cry.

My father, a colossus soaring over me, a hero, a god, proffers me a dazzling smile and points out to the sea. ‘Go and play, David,’ he says. ‘Just go out there and have fun.’

At the water’s edge, the waves rushing at my feet, the gulls screaming above me, the sun beating down on me, I build myself another sandcastle.

THERE’S NOT MUCH HAPPENING OUTSIDE THE window. There is just sound and violence. I’m looking down on cars slowly inching their way up the street, stalled by the trams. People are shopping. It’s a mid-afternoon, midweek crowd. The sun is still high in the sky, a thick sheet of heat.

The cat is asleep, sprawled across my lap. I’m touching my lips to the cool glass of my water, sniffing the drops of lemon I’ve squeezed into it. A drunk girl is cursing the world, stamping through the crowd below. She’s fat: her oversized Adidas shirt can’t hide the flab. I’m stroking the cat, drinking the water.

I can see Dirty Harry; he’s knocking into people, they’re cursing him. He’s eating paper. He tears it into strips, then sucks on it, chews it, swallows it all up.

‘Why do you do that?’ I asked him once. Drunk.

‘I like it.’ He asked me for another drink. ‘It lines my stomach,’ he slurred, ‘slows down the effect of the booze.’ He was scratching at a soaked beer coaster, scraping off the cardboard and rolling the scraps along his tongue. Washing it down with a whisky.

The telephone rings and I push the cat off my lap. She lands expertly on the floor, licks at a paw and then wags her bum disdainfully at me. I grab the receiver.

‘It’s me.’

I’m silent.

‘Aren’t you walking over?’

‘Maybe.’ I give in, I can feel a smile breaking through.

He senses it, the bastard can always sense it. ‘You glad I called?’

‘Where were you?’ I’m not giving in, not straight away.

‘Got pissed.’

‘I figured that.’