Christos Tsiolkas - Barracuda

And then it is like vertigo when the water drops away and it is only a flicker of time, a second within a second within a second, but Danny is scrambling, struggling in the water. He and the water are no longer one. He can’t understand why his arms are arcing so slowly, as if they have lead weights on them, or why his legs kick so sluggishly, why his chest is tight with every breath out of the water, why the end of the lane seems an impossible horizon. The race isn’t finished but the exhaustion is a flood. He is depleted. He roars his denial into the water itself and it is then that the water answers. Danny kicks, finds confidence again, reasserts the power and drive of his body. He must not think, he can only trust in his body and in the water. It is his race. He pushes forward, he charges, he punches and he owns the water once again; the water has parted to create space for him. He is not thinking of the other swimmers. His body has not failed him, and his mind has not failed him. Of course he will win. Of course he must win. There is no hesitation, no doubt, as his body hurtles through the water, his muscles pumping to his command, his will driving him to swim faster than he has ever swum before, to chase the other swimmer. But the water knows what his body knows. This is his race. His body, the water, they will not betray him. He lunges towards the finish, his hand smacks the tile. He cocks his head out of the water and the sound and the lights and the colours of the outside world explode all around him.

Of course he has won. He has given it all that he has. He has no more to give.

In the two hundred metre men’s butterfly at the Pan Pacific Games in Fukuoka, Japan, an Australian golden boy comes first, an American second and a Japanese swimmer third. Danny Kelly comes fifth.

Danny Kelly has lost.

Danny Kelly is heaving, bawling, crying like a baby, his body shaking and convulsing. His body has so deceived him that he is scared he’s going to piss himself in the pool. Spit is foaming at his lips; he won’t remove his goggles even though they have fogged up, even though he can only see the world through a mist of cloud and tears. He doesn’t want to see the world, he can’t imagine how to be in this new world. He senses a swimmer glide under the rope next to him, he feels a hand on his shoulder. He jumps back, alarmed, rips off his goggles and sees the golden boy in his lane; the golden boy’s grin seems pasted on, enormous, all teeth and gums, his eyes are sparks and fire and heat, and he is trying to shake Danny’s hand but Danny doesn’t take it. Danny turns to face the cool surface of the tiles. Danny won’t look at the golden boy, he won’t face the world. Come on, mate, he hears, Come on, shake. Danny refuses.

The other swimmers have leapt out of the water, will be extending congratulations or commiserations, facing cameras or enduring the lonely walk of the defeated back to the warm-down pool, but Danny won’t leave the water. The only thing he wants is to go back in time and begin again. If he can just do it again he knows that he will win. He can prove them wrong rather than right.

He gave it his best. Strongest, fastest, best. Fifth? It is impossible. His best cannot be fifth .

‘Come on, kid, get out of the water.’

It’s a young man, one of the Australian coaches, kneeling on the tiles, looking down at him, holding out his hands. He sees the pity in the man’s eyes but he also sees something else — relief, embarrassment. Danny is shivering, his body is beginning to cramp, all his muscles are seizing. He feels hands reach for him, hands grab him and pull him up and he is screaming, he doesn’t want to keep it all inside, he doesn’t want to forgive them all their envy and jealousy, all their anger that he had taken the place of one of their golden boys, they didn’t want him here, they didn’t think he belonged here. Arms are pulling him out of the water and Danny is thrashing and twisting and Danny is shouting, ‘It’s all your fucking fault! You didn’t want me here. I fucking hate you, I hate all of you cunts. You cunts. You cunts. You cunts, I hate you more than you could ever hate me.’ But then the sobs come so strongly that all words and motions are stilled. He is being supported by two men, who lift him, almost carry him past other swimmers who can’t look at him, who turn away from him, past a man with a camera on his shoulder, past the Japanese volunteers who can only look down at the ground, past the splash pool, into a corridor, into the locker room, where he is pushed onto a bench and someone is holding him and he is racked with sobbing and one of the medics on the squad is holding a syringe and someone has gripped his arm. Danny is still sobbing and trying to find the energy to push them away but he is as weak as if he had swum a thousand miles not two hundred metres, and he is so exhausted that he is as light as a leaf and as heavy as a boulder and he lets them pat his arm and he watches the needle enter his vein and bile slips from his lips as the plunger fills with his blood and then he is quiet. He looks straight ahead and the world too has gone silent. He can’t hear a sound, not the doctor talking to him, no noises from the pool outside, nothing. He tries to rise, he is thinking, I have to get up, I have to move. But his muscles no longer belong to him, his body is not his own. I can’t fly, thinks Danny, and his chin slumps to his chest, I’m stuck to earth. And out of the corner of his eye he can just see the young coach who pulled him from the water, he is saying something to the doctor, and he realises that this coach is not so young because there are flecks of grey in his short beard. And though he can’t hear any sounds he knows exactly what this man is saying to the doctor. He can’t hear but it is as if the words enter through Danny’s heart not through his ears, and what he hears are the words: He’s going to be ashamed of this moment for the rest of his life .

LUKE HAS BECOME A STRIKING-LOOKING MAN. He has some heft to him now, a solidity that suits him. When we were young I used to think that physically the Vietnamese and Greek genes were ill-matched. Back then he was so tiny that there was an almost simian look to him. I never said it to him, I was too ashamed of even thinking it. But in adulthood his face has acquired symmetry. He is a handsome man.

He is talking nervously, scratching at one elbow, unable to stop himself looking anxiously at the guard, starting at loud noises. His nervousness doesn’t worry me. I used to jump at every clanging gate, every heavy footfall, any raised voice. But he has nothing to fear. We have been allowed to sit together on a bench in an anterior courtyard, watched over by Jackson, the youngest guard, who is stupid but well-meaning. There is no meanness in him. I wish Luke would stop shuffling and radiating anxiety, but I am not annoyed. I am grateful that he is visiting me.

I am trying not to think about my shirt chafing the tender welts below both of my shoulder blades. I sit as still as I can because every time I shift my body the thick fibres of my work shirt scrape against the wounds of the new tattoos and a violent pain jolts my body. It is three days since Angus finished the last tattoo; and for the past three nights every time I have taken off my shirt it tears away the skin trying to heal there, and the blood keeps flowing. But I am marked — the scar of who I was and who I am is permanently part of me now.

I sit still and smile at Luke, who is going on about study and work, about life outside. He doesn’t say it but every word reveals his concern that I am missing that life, that I am waiting for the day when that life will return to me. I just keep smiling, not really listening to his words. What I notice is the fine line of his nose, the dimples in his cheeks, the dark hairs on his pale arms. He talks to me about study and work, about life outside, and I sit there imagining the shape and colour of his nipples — they are dark, small, his chest hair is sparse, I imagine it a swirl around each nipple — and I think of the fine hair forming a line down from his chest to his belly to his crotch. I imagine his cock, long and thin, the pubes thick and soft. I keep smiling, and with every pump of my heart the blood bursts against the tender markings on my back. I lean over with my elbows on my knees to hide my erection.