Christos Tsiolkas - Barracuda

Danny stepped into his trackpants, slipped on his t-shirt, sat on the bed and pulled up his socks. ‘I can’t sleep. I’m going for a walk.’

Wilco looked at the clock on the sideboard. It was just past eleven o’clock. ‘You fucking idiot, mate, your swim is tomorrow.’

Danny could tell that Wilco was about to lecture him. That was how it was between them; only a year’s difference in age, but Wilco thought that made him superior. Wilco opened his mouth but Danny rushed to speak first.

‘I won’t get to sleep. I need some air.’

Wilco switched off the light and pulled up the sheet. ‘If they catch you, you’re dead.’

He was tempted to take the stairs, race down them all the way to the ground floor, then saunter through the lobby. He was confident he could say casually to the concierge at the front desk, Konbanwa —that would be the right word, not konichiwa, everyone knew konichiwa but that was hello; he wanted to be more formal. He would say good evening and he would pronounce it correctly, clipped, with the slightest inflection on the last syllable — those were the instructions that Mr D’Angelo had given him at school. Konbanwa , then push through the revolving doors; he’d be breathing in foreign air, he’d be looking up at a new night sky, with unfamiliar constellations, he’d be stepping into a different world. The buzz began in his belly and spread in sharp bursts of electric energy to every part of his body. He was in another world. He didn’t want to be locked up like the other swimmers, he didn’t want to be trapped behind the windows of the bus that ferried them from airport to hotel to shinkansen to swimming centre to hotel. He didn’t want to be looked after, checked off, observed. He wanted to step off, to fly into that other world.

If they catch you, you’re dead.

The buzz was gone. And he knew Wilco was right. He couldn’t give them an excuse to punish him, or a reason to drop him from the team. They didn’t want him. He’d come out of nowhere and he wasn’t one of theirs. He’d beaten a golden boy, and was taking a golden boy’s rightful place at the Pan Pacific competition, and that was why they threw him resentful looks, made him repeat every question and every request. What did you say, Kelly? Speak clearly, kid. Do you always have to mumble, Kelly? They didn’t believe he belonged there. They didn’t want him there.

Danny hesitated in the narrow, white-walled corridor. A pulse thumped, a dull tattoo from the airconditioner vents. At the end of the passageway was a door with a black kanji and next to it a small diagram of a stick figure descending a staircase. Danny made up his mind and headed for the fire exit.

It was just a hunch, it might not have led anywhere, but he would try it. He needed to be in the open air, he felt as though he was choking in the artificial mechanical atmosphere; he wanted to escape the suffocating in-betweenness of the accommodation. He ran up three flights of concrete steps and pushed hard on the door at the top of the stairwell. The frame groaned, shuddered, but the heavy door swung open.

He felt the humidity in the air as he walked over to the railing at the edge of the rooftop. The view was surprisingly dark. He had expected Japan to be all neon bursts of light at night, holograms and screens everywhere. But below and across from him most of the buildings were shrouded in shadow. He could hear the rolling of the surf, he could smell the sea, the fish and salt from the port, and the fetid stench of seaweed rotting on the beach.

Arigato gozaimasu, he whispered to the city. He inhaled, taking it all into his lungs, wanting the city to be inside him.

Danny was the only one on the Australian swimming team who had bothered to learn any Japanese. Mr D’Angelo had printed out a list of words and phrases and Danny had memorised them on the plane trip over, how to say please, thank you and you’re welcome, hello and goodbye. That was all he had committed to memory — but they were five phrases more than anyone else had bothered to learn. And not only the swimmers. The coaches and their assistants, the doctors and the physios, the administrators and the child protection officers assigned to look after the under-eighteens: none of them had bothered to learn one Japanese word.

He looked out over the unknown dark. I’m in Japan, he said to himself, an elated grin on his face. China was just across the sea, Russia up to the north. He’d started to see the world. His parents had never got further than Phuket; they’d made it to Bali twice. He would not be them, he had already seen more than they had. He had beat Demet to the world. Most of the boys at school had got to the world before him. Martin had been to Europe twice, Wilco had been to Los Angeles, the Grand Canyon and Disneyland, Luke had been to Vietnam and Cambodia, Greece and Rome. They had travelled but they had not seen , not like him. Wilco didn’t want to eat Japanese food, complained loudly that he thought more people would speak English there. He had looked startled during a walk through the fish markets of Fukuoka when Danny had pointed excitedly to an old yellow-toothed woman packaging a tray of tiny shoal fish. ‘So? What about it?’ It was then that Danny had realised that Wilco couldn’t see, was walking blindly through it all and not taking in a thing. He couldn’t see the thin translucent beauty of the rice paper, the neat symmetry in the way the old woman laid out the fish, the fine lines of emerald script etched on the thin paper wrapping. Danny hadn’t bothered explaining it; Wilco and the golden boys would never get it. Demet should have been there with him, she’d have got it. The golden boys and the golden girls had no interest in experiencing the world — they wore goggles in the pool and blinkers out of it. Not him. He was going to take in, possess the whole of the world. Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi? Fuck off. He wanted more.

He breathed in, savouring the unfamiliar scent of the humid air. There was a blinking red light on the horizon where the black ocean met the night sky.

Alone, high above Fukuoka, Danny allowed himself to speak the words: Yes, sir! I want it, sir. He would beat the golden boys. He was stronger, faster, better.

On the way to the airport his father had said, ‘Good on you, Danny, I’m proud of you.’ But then he’d had to add, ‘I hope you don’t ever forget how fortunate you are, mate.’

That was why his father had never been further than bloody Phuket and bloody Bali. Coach knew, it was Coach who said it: ‘There is no such thing as luck. There is only work and discipline and talent and courage.’ Danny was here in Japan because he was the strongest and the fastest. He was the best.

Danny exhaled.

Wilco’s bed was empty when Danny crept into the room. There was a light under the bathroom door and he heard a blast of farting and the sound of turds splashing into the toilet bowl. It set him off giggling. He stripped to his jocks and flung himself under the sheets. The toilet flushed and when Wilco returned Danny was holding his nose with one hand.

‘Jesus, Wilco, it pongs!’

‘Fuck off, Kelly.’ But Wilco too started a fit of giggling. He leapt into bed. ‘Can you sleep?’

Danny knew that he shouldn’t answer, that he should pretend to snore. He needed to sleep, and mentally he started coaxing his body to unbend, first the muscles in his feet, then moving up to his calves. He was thinking himself towards drowsiness.

‘What time do you think it is back home?’