Christos Tsiolkas - Merciless Gods

Saverio was horrified. Mel had started to cry.

‘Fucking bitch, I hate her!’

Anna wrapped her fingers around Mel’s hand. Saverio, confused, looked away. A line of surfers, black and grey and silver strokes, was visible against the vast blue of the ocean. Mel blew her nose into a tissue one more time then glanced down guiltily at Anna’s cigarettes.

Anna nodded.

‘I shouldn’t.’

‘Today doesn’t count.’

Mel laughed. ‘Yeah, that’s right.’

She was looking at Saverio. He couldn’t smile, he didn’t know what she wanted from him. All he could think was what an unlikely lesbian she seemed. He had thought she was a bikie’s moll, an ex-stripper, a small-town mum. Of course it was possible she was all of those things, and a lesbian to boot. Though Dawn wouldn’t find much communion with her. Just like him, Dawn wouldn’t know what to say to Mel.

The woman was standing up. ‘Thank you for the smokes.’

Anna jumped to her feet and hugged her. ‘You’ll look after yourself?’

‘Of course.’ Mel seemed embarrassed by the spontaneous affection. She slipped out of Anna’s embrace and held out her hand to Saverio, who had also risen. ‘Mate, again, I’m really sorry. Your brother was a real good man.’

He couldn’t speak. They watched in silence as Mel walked back into the pub. She was shaky on her feet.

‘She shouldn’t drive,’ he said gruffly.

‘I know, but her girlfriend’s just left her for a younger woman so of course she’s just going to do whatever she likes tonight. We’d all do that.’ Anna pointed to the empty glasses. ‘Another round?’

‘One more.’ He pointed to her empty chair. ‘But you sit. I’m buying.’

‘You bought the last round.’

‘I work. I’m a corporate cocksucker, as my brother used to so fondly put it. You’re young and a student. I’m paying.’

Anna looked as if she was about to protest again. Then, suddenly, she beamed. ‘Sure. Thank you.’

At the bar, Mel was arguing with two men, one of them in a khaki uniform with an orange and yellow National Parks and Wildlife insignia stitched on the pocket, the other in football shorts, a paint-splattered work singlet and Blundstones. She winked at him as he walked past. Saverio noticed that the painter had his right hand sitting flat against her wide buttocks.

‘I hope our friend is alright in there,’ he said to Anna as he delivered the new beer.

Anna shrugged and drank greedily. ‘She looks like she can take care of herself.’

That was not his impression. She looked tough but Mel hadn’t struck him as being tough.

The dying afternoon sun was still strong, but finally a breeze was coming off the darkening water.

‘She really liked Leo.’

‘Yes.’ He would keep his answers short, non-committal, give nothing away.

‘It’s good to be reminded of what a wonderful man he could be. You could always talk to Leo about anything. He’d always listen.’

He sipped at his beer slowly.

‘One of the things I loved about him was that he would never give you the standard adult answer, he’d always take you a little by surprise. When I was ten I found a stash of Julian’s pornos in the house and wanted to read them, but Leo asked me if I had started masturbating. I said no and he wouldn’t let me have them, said it might dull my imagination. That was so unlike him, usually he let us watch and read anything we liked, no censorship whatsoever. Not this time. But he was right.’ Anna sniggered. ‘’Course, once I started doing the old five-finger dance he let me have them.’ She winked at Saverio. ‘He was such a character. Was he always like that?’

‘I guess so.’

Anna was frowning. For Christ’s sake, what did she want from him? She lit a cigarette, sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. ‘Saverio, I think you should forgive him.’

Sin, confession, absolution. These children of communists and feminists and true believers were just as moralistic as the old believers.

‘Anna, I’m sorry, but you’re a child. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.’

He had humiliated her. He could see that she was holding back tears and felt immediate regret. Again, she so reminded him of Adelaide. She was young, she had yet to learn how to hide her emotions from the world. He knew he should apologise but he was enjoying the relief of being harsh and uncompromising. There was a thrill to punishment, he had learned that raising his own children; the thrill of deflating them, confronting them with their own limitations, ignorance, powerlessness, foolishness, inadequacy. What did she know about him and Leo? She should just keep her fucking mouth shut.

Don’t cry, please don’t cry.

She wasn’t crying. She was looking out to sea.

‘Four years ago, for my seventeenth birthday, I came to stay here with Rowan, who was my boyfriend. I thought Rowan was going to be the love of my life. He was two years older, he played guitar in a band, he was at university, his mother was a feminist academic and his father was an actor. I thought he was so cool and so handsome and so wonderful and that I was going to be in love with him forever. I wanted Row to meet Leo and I wanted Leo to meet Row. I thought they were both the most fabulous men in the world and I wanted them to know each other.’

Her voice was detached, she stumbled a little over her words, but she sounded confident and deliberate. He was aware that a large part of it was a pose, that there was something theatrical in her delivery. She kept her eyes out to the horizon of sea and sky, but he knew that she was fully conscious of his stare.

‘Rowan took to Leo immediately. He loved how funny he was and he loved all the gossip. We stayed up all that first night smoking ice while Leo told him the Germaine Greer story and the Sasha Soldatow story and the Jim Sharman story and who fucked who and who blasted heroin and who really should have taken the credit for what, and of course Row was like a grateful child, just lapping it all up.’

Anna took a big breath. ‘Do you want to hear all this?’

She was hesitating for effect. She would be crushed if he said no. He wanted to say no, that there was nothing that he could hear about Leo that would make his own heart feel any lighter.

‘We all fall asleep at dawn, all in the big bed, and I wake a few hours later and decide to take a walk in the forest. It’s a beautiful day and I’m still feeling fantastic because of the drugs and I walk all the way to town to the bakery and pick up some croissants and rolls and I walk all the way back to Leo’s. I get there and Leo is cooking in the kitchen and Rowan is playing his guitar on the porch and when I come up the steps and I’m smiling he looks at me and bursts into tears. He just keeps saying, “We had sex, Anna, we fucked, Anna, I’m so sorry.” I drop the bag of croissants and rolls and look up at the door where Leo is standing, a stupid apron on, a fork in one hand, and he just says, “Rowan wanted to tell you, I didn’t. But he’s still young and foolish. I told him you didn’t have to know.” Then he goes back into the kitchen and continues making us breakfast.’

Saverio couldn’t believe that the bowerbirds continued their whispering song in the trees above, that the drumroll of the waves echoed off the coast below. He could barely control his voice as he asked, ‘What did you do?’

‘I cried and I asked them both how they could do it to me and Row was crying as well and he kept saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and I ran after Leo and said, “Are you going to apologise, are you going to say you’re sorry?” and he just said, “Anna, you know I am an anarchist and a libertarian. You don’t possess Rowan and he doesn’t possess you. There is nothing I have to apologise for.” ’