Christos Tsiolkas - Barracuda

The Coach held out his hand and touched Danny's chest, as though he was testing his breathing, reading his heart rate.

The Coach dropped his hand. 'Are you ready?'

The words took the boy by surprise. He wanted to snap back, 'Of course I am,' but something in the Coach's earnest enquiry stopped him. The man was not suited to the Queensland climate. His face was flushed, his shirt drenched, there was sweat on his brow, on the ridge of his chin, under his eyes. There was a small wet patch on Danny's t-shirt, where the Coach's hand had made contact.

'Of course,' Danny said quietly.

?You are a young man, Kelly,? Coach said.?Still a boy, but you are strong.?

Danny had followed all the Coach's instructions, he had worked at the gym, strengthening the muscles in his chest, his back, his arms, his legs. He had strength and power.

'The other competitors will be older boys, but you have the strength to qualify tomorrow afternoon.' The Coach clipped and rolled the final word, making it two distinct words: aftAH noorn .

And the morning? Danny wanted the Coach to say something about the morning's heat, the one hundred metre freestyle. There wasn't really any advice to be given now, it was all up to him. Still, he wanted to hear something, some encouragement. But the man had already started walking away; he turned in surprise that the boy wasn't following.

Danny didn't know how to ask the question. He thought it was unfair that he had to find the words for it. His mouth drooped, in a sulk.

'Use your strength,' the Coach said, turning back again. 'Use it in the morning and use it in the afternoon.'

Danny could smile then; he wanted to run after the Coach and hug him. He wanted to hear him say those words again and again. Use your strength . He was the strongest. He could use his strength for both races. He knew the Coach only wanted him to work at the butterfly, wanted Danny to concentrate on the new stroke. He'd been doing that, he'd been mastering it. But he could do both, he knew he could. He wasn't going to fuck it up, he'd show the Coach that he could do it. The freestyle was Danny's stroke, it belonged to him.

Danny was shaking, his body was folding in on itself. He felt as though someone had reached into his gut and squeezed out his entrails, that there was nothing left inside him. He was quivering and hollow, his teeth chattering, his balls had shrivelled and been punched up to his gut and he cradled his shaking frame, telling himself not to throw up, not to shit, not to piss, not to vomit as he limped from the pool. But the air was fighting him and he panicked, struggling for breath, so he forced his lungs to work, commanded his body to work, and he expelled a breath and water streamed down from his nose, spilled from his mouth, he was all snot and all water, a creature more marine than human. But at last he was breathing and he could force his muscles to work and his limbs to move and he was walking and breathing, slowly coming back to himself. As he walked past the tiers of seats he was aware that there were lights flashing and people rushing and that photographs were being taken and swimmers were coming out into the pool area and then he was in the shower and the cold water was raining down on his head and shoulders and he was no longer trembling, no longer thinking that his belly would split, that his bowels would explode. He could think again, he could think and see and hear. A low roar rumbled around the auditorium and all he could think of was that he was third, that he had not qualified in the heat, that the stroke no longer belonged to him, that he wasn't good enough or strong enough. There were two swimmers better than him, a golden boy, a golden boy of course, but also a young swimmer, a swimmer even younger than he was, with a lanky clumsy frame and massive feet and hands, and that boy had come first and the golden boy had come second and he had come third.

Third. A fucking lousy insignificant useless bloody third .

He had not qualified. He had lost. He was a loser.

Coach was standing there, a towel in his hand, telling him that it had been a good effort, that he had nothing to be ashamed of, that he had to focus on the next race, that the next race was his race, and Danny was listening and nodding and convincing himself that, yes, the next race was his race, but there was a thought forming at the corner of consciousness, he could almost grab it but he knew he must not, he could not. He shook his head, he flicked the thought to the back of his mind. But he knew it would be there; afterwards, after he won his next heat, once he came up on top, then he could reach for it. But not now. He knew that Coach trusted him to place in the next race and he wanted to hear that trust from Coach's lips, he needed to hear it, so he could believe it, that he was the best, the strongest, the fastest. Now he had to place all his trust in Coach. That was all that mattered.

Danny sat in the back row of the stadium to watch Wilco come first in his heat for the two hundred metre freestyle. He beat one of the golden boys. No, that's not right, thought Danny sourly, Wilco was a golden boy. Afterwards, Danny waited till Wilco finally emerged from the change rooms and then he bounced down the steps and went up to shake Wilco's hand. The older boy punched the air, raised his fist in triumph. He thinks he's such a hero, thought Danny, the spite so intense it left a foul taste in his mouth. But he knew not to show it, he knew exactly what he had to do.

'You legend,' he said, pumping Wilco's hand. 'You absolute fucking legend.'

Wilco couldn't stand still, his delight had spread across his face, animating his limbs, his whole body. It made him look like a boy again. Danny dropped Wilco's hand but continued to say congratulations. It was the only word he could think to say. He would show nothing of what was inside him, that some deadly serrated knife was carving right through him. He knew that he would not be able to bear it if he didn't qualify with his next swim. He couldn't stand it if Wilco was a champion and not him. If it didn't happen for Danny, he was sure that it would kill him. The knife would cut right through him, would carve him in half. Would destroy him.

He knew at his final turn that the race was his. That didn't make him punish the water less. The butterfly was never effortless, the butterfly was always work: one lapse of exertion led to failure. The stroke wasn't about being part of the water, it wasn't becoming one with the substance and matter and DNA of water. The stroke was a machine, the stroke was about making his body into a craft that razed a path through the water. It was fighting and twisting and transforming the element. On the second turn, his chest and lungs and sternum had morphed into one distinct muscle; his arms a wheel and his hips and legs and feet a threshing machine that kicked in one unified motion. By the last turn he was a perfect mechanism and the water had disappeared, bowed to his will, and it was flight now, the water was defeated, and he was energy working in a cyclical precise motion and the race was his. There was no water and there were no other swimmers and there were no black lines and there was not even the pool. All there was, all that existed, was Danny. He could feel the power of his chest and the strength of his back and the hardness of his abdomen and the potency of his arms. the capabilities of a flawless body, and that was how it was no surprise when he touched the tiles: he knew he had won. He was exhausted, he was breathless, his chest felt as though it would explode, but he was not spent. If he had to, he knew, he could have done it again. He had become the stroke, the stroke was now his. Coach had been right. And even as he punched the air, even as he heard his name called, as he shook the hands of the other swimmers who dived under the ropes to congratulate him, he was pushing a thought to the back of his mind. Not yet, not yet. He was the strongest, the fastest, the best. He was in the finals. He would prove it in the finals.