Christos Tsiolkas - Merciless Gods

‘Yes.’ She knew, she had guessed. Of course, she had always known. Always.

‘Did you know the work he was doing in LA?’

She stared confusedly at the man. ‘Acting? That’s what he wrote to us.’

‘Mrs Pannini, I’m sorry to inform you of this, but your son worked as an actor in pornographic movies.’

There was silence. The black officer had lowered his eyes.

‘Did he use his real name?’

‘No.’

She then addressed the black officer. ‘Can I please ask for a cigarette?’

He rose immediately to obey her request but the white officer frowned and looked directly above her shoulder at the no-smoking sign next to a portrait of the grinning President Bush.

She turned again to the younger man. ‘Please, I must have a cigarette,’ she pleaded.

‘Of course, ma’am.’ She was astonished at his old-fashioned courtesy.

The first inhalation of smoke hurt, she had a fit of coughing, and then she felt a dizzying euphoria. ‘Thank you.’

‘I’m a smoker too, ma’am.’

For the first time she glanced down at the tag on his shirt. James B. Franklin. ‘Thank you again, Mr Franklin.’

‘You’re welcome, ma’am.’

‘Can you please not tell my husband about my son? The pornography? Please, let me tell him — I need to tell him in my own time.’

She saw the two men glance at one another. They seemed unsure of how to proceed. They were embarrassed. Of course they were. It was sordid and awful and disgusting. The foolish, foolish boy; so easily led, never thinking of consequences.

‘We thought it best to inform you directly.’ Officer Franklin cleared his throat. ‘Sometimes people can be cruel.’

She thought immediately of her sister-in-law. Oh, how Sonja would gloat over it all, her sympathy poisonous and insincere. ‘Thank you, I do understand you had to tell me.’

When her husband returned, his eyes were red and there was a trickle of snot on his top lip. She moved to wipe it, and he broke out into wounded, terrified sobbing. They had collapsed into grief, watched quietly by the two Americans. Her arms encircled him, she held him tight. He must never know. It would destroy him. She made up her mind: if he ever found out she would deny it. Of course not. Of course not . How can you say such things? Nick would never do such things.

•

On entering the house, she was conscious of a strange vibration all around her: the walls, the floor, the very air seemed to be pulsating. She walked through every room, her hand still clutching her bag, as it had done throughout the train journey. She was alone. She opened her bag and laid the video on the coffee table.

She looked around and closed the lounge curtains, blocking out the daylight. She deadlocked the front door and took the phone off the hook. The house still seemed to be breathing.

She slotted the video into the machine and fingered the remote control: there was the hum of the television coming to life, the sunburst of snow, and then colour flooded the screen. The volume blasted music and noise, a woman was exercising on a bike. She grabbed the second remote and pressed a button. The screen went black and there was silence. She waited.

The music began and she was struck by the harshness of its sound. She pressed the remote, and the five green bars became four, then three, and then finally one. She had reduced the volume to a whisper. She fixed her eyes on the screen and took her glasses out of their case. Names flashed across the screen, and then a series of close-ups. Her son’s face appeared, his hair shorn to the scalp in a military cut. He was smiling, and winked at the camera. The pseudonym he had chosen for himself, Pallo, had been the nickname of Con Pollites, his best friend in primary school. They had lived in Brunswick then, at 33 Edwards Street, and the Polliteses had lived at number sixteen. The children were always running in and out of each other’s houses.

She almost laughed at the contrived nature of the first few minutes of the film. A tall, blond young man entered an office where another man was sitting behind a desk, largely empty except for a few pens and a notebook. There were two long close-ups of the actors, one licking his lips, the other raising an eyebrow. The man at the desk was playing the boss of the younger man, who was apologising for being late for work.

Is this necessary? She was furious. Just fornicate — that’s what it’s about, isn’t it? That’s why men pay money for this filth. Just fuck!

It was not her first experience of viewing pornography. Early in their marriage her husband had brought home a few reels of Super 8 film and he had made her watch them with him, taking out the family projector and showing the images on one of the walls of their lounge room. She had been unnerved by them, most repulsed by the hairiness of the women’s privates. That night in bed she had been silent and unmoving as he mounted her. He had never shown her such films again.

She told herself to look at the screen. The man playing the boss had removed his trousers and his shirt was unbuttoned. Both actors had smooth, waxed skin. It reminded her of the burnish on a not-yet-ripened Fuji apple. She did not fast forward though her fingers were curled tightly around the remote control. She was glad that this first scene featured two strangers, other women’s sons. As the men kissed, she experienced a sensation akin to nausea. Disgust. But it rapidly dissipated as she watched the gyrations of their mouths. The two men were handsome, strong, and the kiss was passionate. She reached for her cigarettes, her eyes firmly on the screen. The boys were now undressed.

Oh, sweet Lord, oh, Mother of God. This was a different world. She felt a sweeping melancholy as she watched the two men kiss and fondle each other. She had been with only two men in her whole life, and the first had been a quick humiliating moment in her sister’s bedroom during a party. She and the man had remained clothed the whole time and he had pressed her against the bedroom door and rubbed himself on her for a few minutes. They had not kissed once. When he had finished she discovered that he had stained her skirt, and she had spent the next hour in the bathroom, washing and squeezing dry the garment, crying the whole time. And after that, it had all been with her husband.

Who are you? she quizzed the screen. They were American, obviously, they looked fit, healthy, they looked as if they had enough to eat. The images had relaxed into an inert succession of poses and she was distracted, bored even. Did their parents know? No, of course not. She could not conceive of a parent knowing. She was alone in this.

She turned away in distaste. The blond man was on his knees, mechanically devouring the other man’s penis. She noticed a fine spider’s web beginning from the light globe in the lounge room and reaching the cornice just above a portrait of her mother and father. Her parents’ faces looked down at her, stern and distant. Her father, standing, was wearing a suit and a collarless shirt. Her mother, sitting so her head was level with her husband’s chest, was wearing the pale yellow summer dress that he had given her after she had accepted his proposal.

Aware suddenly of the muted grunts and moans coming from the television, she turned away from her parents’ forbidding gaze and forced herself to watch the screen again.

They were having intercourse now, sodomy. She scrutinised the blond’s face every time there was a close-up. Surely he could not be enjoying this. He was grimacing but his words seemed to be encouraging the other man. She had to stand up. She went into the kitchen and wet her lips. Didn’t the silly finocchio know how much he was debasing himself? They were not actors. Whores. That’s what they were. Whores.