Christos Tsiolkas - Barracuda

As if they were an audience at a play awaiting the opening scene, everyone had formed a half-circle around the end of the bed. His mother took a place on the opposite side of the bed to her unsmiling sister. She bent down and kissed the old woman’s sunken cheek. ‘Hi, Mum, how are you?’

The old woman stared blankly. A catheter was in the raised blue vein above her wrist, clear fluid dripping into her from the bag above the bed.

‘She doesn’t know who you are.’

Dan’s mother ignored Bettina and spoke quietly in Greek to the old woman, who didn’t show even a flicker of recognition. ‘Come here, Danny,’ said his mother, beckoning, ‘come and say hello to your giagia .’

There was a slow steady clicking from the heater; the room was overheated and smelled overpoweringly of antiseptic. He walked over to the bed and stood beside his mother.

‘Mamá, this is Danny. This is your grandson.’

Now that he was looking down at her, Dan could see that the old woman’s eyes were glazed over, a murky film of silver veiling each pupil. Her breathing was erratic, terribly shallow. He couldn’t believe how delicate her skin was, as if it were made of the flimsiest tissue; it looked as though it would tear at the slightest touch. The old woman’s hair had fallen away, she had no eyebrows. There was no muscle on her, no flesh; just the insubstantial skin and the contours of the bones beneath. He was acutely aware of both the lightness of her body and the dead weight of the fear in the room. His mother was sobbing. Dan looked down at the extinguishing life and felt perhaps a little pity, nothing more.

Bettina’s gruff voice said something in Greek. Then she shrugged and looked across at Dan. ‘Don’t be offended. She doesn’t recognise any of us anymore.’

‘I’m not offended.’ It made him feel more warmly towards his aunt, even though she’d been horrible to his mother, despite her lack of forgiveness. They must have thought that he was part of them, must have even wanted him to be part of who they were. But surrounded by his cousins and aunts and uncles, standing by his grandmother’s bed, he knew he would never be part of what they were. He thought of his granddad’s musical Glasgow accent, his nan’s fierce, protective love. He was them: they were alive, they were flesh and muscle and blood, they were real memory and history. They were love. He felt as much for this old Greek woman as he did for the sad circle of old people in the common room: useless pity, nothing more.

Dennis got out of his chair and Bettina snapped her head around. ‘Where are you going?’

Dan could just make out the word, the three syllables of cigarette extended and twisted into one tortuous moan.

‘Make sure you come straight back here,’ Bettina said. ‘You know how to get back here? Room eighteen?’

Dennis seemed to be looking past all of them to something high on the wall above Dan’s head, invisible to everyone else but obvious and fascinating to him.

Dan saw his opportunity to flee. He nodded over to his cousin. ‘Hey, mate, I’ll come out with you.’

‘ Sm-smoke? ’

Dan had left his jacket behind in the room, and the wind was brisk, glacial, but he didn’t care. It felt so good to be outside, away from the artificial heat of the hospital room, the disapproving strangers.

His cousin was a full foot taller than he was, and was all muscle, thick-necked and broad-backed. Dennis didn’t seem to feel the cold as the rising wind whipped around them, though Dan could see a spray of goose pimples on his forearm. Dennis spoke again.

‘Pardon? Could you say that again, please?’ Dan asked.

It was the longest sentence he had yet heard Dennis utter but he had understood none of it. Dennis finished his cigarette and put the butt out under the sole of his sneaker. He still seemed to be looking at something invisible playing out above Dan’s head.

‘ Sho, sho. Yar. Ma Ma Ma. Cuz. Een?’

’ So you’re my cousin? ‘Yeah, that’s right.’

‘ And and yar yar fru fru frumma Mel Mel Mel. Burn?’

’ Dan wanted to finish the sentence for him. He had to stop himself. ‘Yeah, you ever been there?’

For the first time, his cousin looked at him. The man’s eyes were limpid and deep-set, the grey of wet granite; his nose had been broken in the past and there was a small scar on his left temple that disappeared into the dark wave of his hair.

‘Ya.’ Dennis breathed wetly, preparing for the struggle to form the next words. ‘ I dad ant like. Mel Ba Barn. It waz. It. It waz too big-ah!’

‘I guess it is a big city.’

‘ Ya .’

‘Should we go back in? It’s freezing out here.’

Dennis didn’t respond. He was looking away again, as if he hadn’t heard Dan, as if Dan wasn’t even there. ‘Ya ya. She — she is. Is. Dha-dha-dha-dha-ng .’ His words were a blur of hard consonants and slithering sibilants that made no sense to Dan.

‘Sorry, mate, I didn’t get that.’

Dennis angrily wiped spit from the sides of his mouth. He looked flushed, embarrassed, as though he were furious at Dan. ‘ I–I wi-wish sh-sh-she wouwad. Wad. Wad. Wad dj dj djusshtd die .’

Dan was shocked at the cruelty of his words but then he saw that his cousin’s eyes had watered, he was trying hard not to cry. He wondered how long he had been coming to the hospital, watching the old woman slowly disappear. Watching her death. He hadn’t thought of his giagia as anything but a stranger. But for Dennis she would have been a real grandmother, she would have looked after him, changed his nappies, watched him grow, told him her stories: she would have loved him. And he would have loved her.

‘I’m really sorry, mate.’

‘ I–I-I hate hate this ho ho hos pi. Tal .’ It was said so vehemently that a spray of spit struck Dan’s cheek. ‘I–I fuck fucken hate. It.’

I’d fucking hate it too, thought Dan. I’d hate to be here every day, having to watch this old woman whose soul has already left, who’s nothing but skin and bone. What was happening to her wasn’t life. All of that had finished.

‘Dennis,’ Dan said, ‘why don’t you and I just go and hang out? Why don’t we just get the fuck out of here?’

His mother and his aunt had not moved from their positions on either side of the dying woman. They were both visibly surprised at Dan’s suggestion that he should drive his cousin home. For a moment Dan hesitated. His mother looked lost and fragile and he knew he was abandoning her, but the heat and the smell and the whisperings in a language he didn’t understand, all of it was overwhelming, and when his aunt Bettina handed him her keys he felt nothing but relief.

‘Come on, Dennis,’ he said brightly, then blushed at his transparency. But his mother winked at him and he knew it would be alright. He kissed her goodbye, and then looked down at the old woman on the bed, at her vacant eyes, and he knew his cousins and uncles and aunts would be expecting him to kiss his grandmother. But he couldn’t bring himself to touch her, he thought it would be like kissing death.

As he and Dennis were leaving, his aunt said, ‘Don’t let Dennis drive.’

So Dennis could drive. Or he must have known how to at some stage.

In the car his cousin was cheerful; not that he said much, just pointed to which streets Dan should turn into, but he had a big grin on his face as he looked out to the clear blue sky above them. They skirted the border of a giant park on the edge of the city. The trees had started to shed their leaves, their mottled blue-grey branches spiking and twisting high into the sky.