Christos Tsiolkas - Barracuda

Danny groaned. The prick was not going to let him sleep. ‘Melbourne is one hour ahead, mate.’ How could Wilco not know that? How could he be so uninterested in the world?

There was a rustling from the next bed; there was the slow trickle of water into the cistern in the bathroom. Danny couldn’t help it, he shifted around to look across. Wilco was on his side, the sheet only covering him from the waist down, and in the faint beam of moonlight coming through the window the boy’s skin gleamed silver; his eyes were pinpricks of light.

‘I hope we both get gold, Danny,’ Wilco whispered. ‘I really want both of us to get gold.’

Danny held his breath. Did he trust him?

‘Dad says that if I win a medal here I’m sorted for a place at the AIS next year. No fees, everything paid for, the best coaches in the world.’

Danny didn’t need to think about uni for another year at least — of course he’d be going to uni and of course the Australian Institute of Sports would want him. He didn’t need to think about that shit, he needed to sleep. Bloody Wilco, putting it in his head. He couldn’t help it, it burned him that Mr Wilkinson was encouraging his son to go to the AIS. It made Danny think of his own father. ‘This fucking country,’ Neal Kelly would say, with a laugh undercut by sourness. ‘There’s no money for health and education, nothing for the arts, but we shovel a shitload to sports.’

Danny couldn’t help it; it needled him that Mr Wilkinson, unlike his own father, was encouraging his son. He made his voice sound nonchalant, spoke somewhere between a yawn and a whine. ‘Jesus, bloody Australia, all that money poured into sports. I’m not sure I want to go to the AIS — I don’t think it’s fair that sportspeople get a free education when every other student has to pay.’ He’d made himself sound exactly like Neal Kelly.

‘Yeah, you reckon?’ Wilco sounded unconvinced. ‘You got a point, Kelly, but come on, you know sports is the only area where Australia punches above its weight. If we didn’t fund sports we’d be shit at everything.’ Wilco rolled over. ‘You’ll get there, Kelly, you’re a shoo-in. You got a scholarship to school and you’re going to get a scholarship to uni.’ Wilco let out a long tired yawn. ‘Psycho Kelly, you’re one lucky bastard. We all think that, mate, you’re the luckiest bastard we know. Everything falls into your lap.’

Danny had been right about Wilco. He should never have trusted him. Wilco was a golden boy, he didn’t believe Danny belonged there. He was outraged to hear a light snore coming from the next bed. He’d got there — Wilco had got under his skin. Danny’s body was rigid, his breathing was out, he had to chase air, otherwise he thought he might choke. The bile was bitter and chemical on his tongue. He had to sleep. He had to sleep.

He began again at his feet, tensed and relaxed them to rest, then his calves, cajoling the muscles there to yield. From his calves to his thighs, and then he traced a line up the centre of his body, to his buttocks, made a command in the form of a prayer: Let me sleep. Let me sleep. You’re one lucky bastard . Those words ricocheted through him, his body clenched; he had to begin again. He concentrated on his toes, his feet, his calves. Everything falls into your lap . How could that be true? He wasn’t a golden boy, he’d never had what they had. It was envy, a poison, that had made Wilco say those words, it was the poison of jealousy. Why couldn’t it have been Taylor with him? He would never have said any of that, he knew what Danny was. He began again at his feet.

Danny’s eyes flicked open. The moonlight sliced the room in two. He’d been fighting against acknowledging it, but the force of his hard-on beneath the sheets strained the cotton of his jocks, made concentration impossible, sleep unattainable. He tried again.

He began at his feet. You’re one lucky bastard. He moved to his calves, his thighs. The head of his penis had come out of his underpants and rubbed against the sheet. Danny had to force himself to ignore it, not to move; he had to call back sleep, to catch it and ensnare it. He could do it, he had control over his body. He tried again.

He began at his feet. But almost immediately there was another rush of words around his head, a burst of blood to his ears. You’re the luckiest bastard we know .

Danny breathed in and tried again.

He began again at his feet, rushing through the meditation this time, moving quickly from calves to thighs to buttocks to stomach to lungs, calling for sleep. He was at his hands, his forearms, and it was beginning — his arms felt like lead, still against the cool cotton sheets. I hope you don’t ever forget how fortunate you are, mate . The blood surged, his ears burned and his head pounded. He breathed out. He’d have to start again.

His spine was stretched, he had to move. He shifted in the bed. And as he did, as he twisted, the sheets crawled up his body and the cotton rubbed at his crotch, caressed the shaft of his penis, the glans. Danny’s body shuddered as the wave of pleasure rushed, as the semen squirted. But immediately he felt overwhelming panic, shame, as the sticky warm fluid seeped over his thigh and belly and onto the white sheets.

He was wilted, spent. He forced himself to breathe slowly. And this time he didn’t call on sleep, he called on rage. He spat it out, a loud coarse whisper, and he didn’t care if Wilco heard. Let him hear, let him wake; he hoped that at the very least the words terrorised the older boy’s dreams, that they were carried by the wave of his fury all the way back home: It is not luck, it has never been luck, it is because I am the best and I am going to get gold and what you can’t stand is that I am better than you.

Why couldn’t it be Taylor with him? He was nauseated: his body had betrayed him. The sensation was strange, terrifying; he had never experienced it before, his body and himself not being one.

Danny realised that the world was rushing in again, that he was listening to the mechanical vibrations of the cooling system, he could hear the boy’s snores from the next bed. His body had betrayed him but Danny was spent. It had worked. He went to sleep.

He sits on a plastic chair in front of the third-lane block, his legs sprawled out in front of him, his arms dangling behind the orange chair back. Danny knows he is in the Fukuoka Swimming Centre, he knows there are five other swimmers, he knows that a small crowd is sitting in the decks. They are all waiting for the race to begin. There are Australian flags, Japanese flags, US and Canadian flags fluttering above him, red and blue and white festoons garlanded all around him. He knows all this but he sees none of it. Danny is looking straight ahead, down the barrel of lane number three, fifty metres of clean water, a mirror of blue, a highway of black line ahead of him. He sees the water, he sees the lane, he sees the race. He sees himself dive, he sees himself swim, he sees himself win. That is all he needs to see.

And it is his, he knows it, as soon as the starting pistol cracks, as soon as he dives from the block, as his body enters and dolphins and is accepted by the water. As he breaks the surface of the water, his chest, his arms, his legs, his feet, his whole body is an indomitable threshing machine, but even so, in the foam arms of the water, he is cocooned by a tender calm. He doesn’t have to think. His mind and his body and the water are one. All his work, all his effort, all his talent, they are being vindicated. He has won. The water is the future and he has always belonged to it.

It is at the final turn that the water betrays him. His execution is perfect, he feels what it is to be divine. But as he momentarily glimpses the world reflected in the underside of the water’s surface he finds that one of the other swimmers has completed the turn before him. That other swimmer is already racing towards the end. Which can’t be, for that end is his .