Christos Tsiolkas - Barracuda

‘Can’t you wait till your dad’s up? I said I’d wake him at four.’

He couldn’t wait. He needed to be in a proper pool, he needed to do serious training. The long weekend had seemed to stretch forever. He wished that Monday was already over, that it would be Tuesday tomorrow so he could go to training. Coach would be yelling at them not to be pussies, and Martin and Danny would be crushing the other boys. He had to be in the pool.

‘Mum, can you drive me in?’

‘No, Danny. I want to be here when your dad gets up.’ She didn’t get how important it was.

‘Fine. Tell Dad I’ll see him when I get home.’

He dived into the water and all the pieces came together: everything was liquid and it was in being liquid that everything became clear. The water parted for him, the water caressed him, the water obeyed him. He swam, he propelled himself through the water; the muscles that moved as they should, the power of his limbs, his lungs and his heart which breathed and beat in a harmony that was clean and efficient. Only in the water were he and the world unsullied. He swam, far beyond mind, aware of only body; and then, coming up for air, he had left even his body behind, and though the exertion continued, though every muscle kept working as it should have, he was wondering if on those long drives through desert and plain, through morning and night, his father’s body didn’t also seamlessly forget pain and forget time — that the drive, like the swim, was the only constant, the heart beating and the lungs breathing, and whether the long desert roads were liquid as well, not heat and dust but clear and clean like water. Danny calculated the distance his father had just travelled. He knew that it was nine hundred kilometres to Sydney from Melbourne; he drew a map at the edge of his vision, a palimpsest over the solid black lines and the blue tiles, it was etched out on the floor of the pool. He hurtled across the continent, an Atlantis beneath his torpedo body. It had to be at least three times that distance from Melbourne to Perth, four times that from Perth to Sydney. Melbourne to Perth, he breathed, three thousand, Perth to Sydney, he breathed, four thousand, Sydney to Melbourne, he breathed, one thousand; eight thousand kilometres in just under a week. Danny’s body came back to him, he felt a strain in his right deltoid, not pain exactly, but a soreness, a twitch, a paper-thin faultline from favouring his right. That was why Coach said he had to change his stroke. He’d poked Danny in the chest, hard, so Danny had to stumble back: ‘You are lazy, you are not doing enough work, there, there. ’ Coach punched the triceps on his left arm. ‘ There , you must do work there.’ Danny let his left arm separate the water, and the water split and created a space for him, searching his body for other fissures and creases. He exhaled, he kicked, he brought his hand to the wall and touched the cool tile. His body shuddered from the pain, burning as it fed ravenously on itself, consuming the fluids released over the last two hours. He let his forehead touch the wall as he floated in the water, trembling, shuddering. Eight thousand kilometres. He could have swum that, Danny thought. He could have swum forever.

When he got back his father was in the kitchen, Theo on his knee, and he was listening to the boy read. They both looked up when Danny entered and his father said, ‘How was it?’

‘How was what?’

‘The beach party.’

‘It wasn’t a beach party.’

It was as though they couldn’t be in the same room; they had to circle around each other, there was no topic or words or action that was safe.

‘Where’s Mum?’ Danny opened the fridge, took out a Tim Tam and wolfed it down. Theo was looking eagerly at him and the Tim Tam.

‘She’s just gone down to the supermarket for a minute.’

‘Is there food?’

‘In the stove.’

Danny dangled a Tim Tam in front of Theo then pulled it away as the little boy tried to grab it. As Theo clamoured to get off his father’s lap, the man swiped the Tim Tam from Danny and gave it to Theo, who poked his tongue out at his brother before stuffing the chocolate biscuit into his mouth.

There was half a vegetarian lasagne under foil. He tossed all of it on a plate and hungrily attacked it, spoonful after spoonful, the sweetness of the peppers, onions and tomatoes, the tartness of the olive oil and the heaviness of the pasta sheets, the slight bitterness of the zucchini. He finished it all, listening as Theo continued reading from The Happy Prince .

Once Danny had read this story out loud to his father, and so had Regan. Oscar Wilde was one of the great heroes of Ireland, his father had told him when he first gave Danny the book, and a great injustice had been done to him. Danny had only very recently discovered exactly what they had done to him, and why they had done it to him, in English class, accompanied by a chorus of barking and laughter that kept erupting from the boys. Danny couldn’t bear to hear the story of the happy prince anymore — the loneliness of it overwhelmed him. It would make Theo cry, he knew it would, as it made him cry when the sparrow fell dead at the statue’s feet, when the statue was melted down to molten lead. He tightened his hands into fists, he swallowed. He was glad to hear a car pulling up outside, his mother’s footsteps coming up the path.

‘OK, little man,’ his father said to Theo. ‘We’ll read more of it tomorrow.’

His mother came in carrying a six-pack of beer, Regan following behind her, munching on a Bounty. She was getting fat, thought Danny disapprovingly. He couldn’t understand why his mother or his father didn’t say something to her. His mother handed his father a beer and opened one for herself. He watched his parents drink. His father’s arms were ropy, strong, speckled with fair hair, the tan a varnish over his pale skin. There was grey at his temples. Every year his paunch got bigger — the constant driving, the cheap and greasy food. His mother was also going grey but she hid it by sometimes dyeing her hair blonde, sometimes red, mostly jet-black. As she lifted the beer to her mouth, her upper arms wobbled, they were getting flabby. Danny sat still in his body, feeling the straight lines of it, the tautness of it. There was no flab there, no paunch, nothing ugly.

‘Did you eat all the lasagne?’

‘There was only half of it left.’

She came over, wrapped her arms around him. ‘I just don’t know where it goes.’

He smelled the sour yeast of the beer, felt the loose flesh of her forearms squashing his own firm skin. It is energy, he wanted to say, I convert it all to energy . It was simple, it was basic physics. Danny pulled away from his mother’s embrace and got up from the table. ‘You’re still gunna drive me to training tomorrow, aren’t ya?’ He was looking at his mother, but he could sense his father’s body tensing, a sudden snap of air.

‘Your mother is sleeping in tomorrow.’

There was no space, no possible space between himself and his father that was safe.

‘Fine, then.’ Danny opened the fridge to get another Tim Tam. ‘I’ll just have to catch public transport.’ He slammed the door. ‘Again.’

Regan’s eyes were darting from the fridge, to the Tim Tam, to Danny, to her father, back to Danny. They found her mother, who smiled at her reassuringly.

‘It’s a holiday, son,’ his father said. ‘You can swim in the afternoon.’

No, he will swim in the morning and he will swim in the afternoon. He was already behind from spending the last two nights at the Taylors’ beach house.