Christos Tsiolkas - Barracuda

Coach sees me examining the photograph and clears his throat. ‘They are my parents,’ he announces. ‘That is my father and mother.’

I can’t help it, I say, ‘But it looks really really old.’

And he surprises me again, he tilts back his head and roars. A real laugh, a genuine and generous laugh. ‘Back then in Hungary, boy, everything looked really really old.’ He takes my bag from me and points to the bed. ‘You will sleep here.’

It is both statement and question, and I just nod my head; I can’t stop nodding.

Above the bed there is a painting, of a courtyard high on a mountain, there is a pond and fountain and below stretches a calm and tranquil sea. It looks like a fantasy, like the mansion you’d imagine if a genie were to appear and grant you three wishes. I can’t wait for morning, I’m already thinking of waking and having breakfast sitting on that wide sill, looking at the street and beyond it to the world; then turning around and gazing at the painting, imagining that Coach’s house will be my house when I am famous and rich enough to live anywhere I want to in the world. I would never feel cramped in this house, I would never feel lost.

I put my bag on the bed and Coach takes me through the rest of the house. There is a second bedroom, with a single bed in it, one small, lopsided bureau and a bank of gym equipment piled up against one wall: a treadmill, a rowing machine, barbells and a bench. A fold-out has been put next to the equipment, like a bed in the army or a camping bed. It is made up with clean sheets and a duvet. I feel pleased with myself as I look at it — it won’t be me camping out tonight.

In the shadow by the door, I suddenly spy a cluster of photographs on the wall. They are all of swimmers. Two of the photographs are ancient, in black and white, and the bathers on the guys look more like underpants. Then there are three other photos, more recent, in colour. I don’t take in the other boys: in the centre is a photo of myself, grinning like a dickhead, but proudly, clutching my shivering body at the edge of the pool.

‘That was when I won the Interschool Championships last year, isn’t it?’ I say excitedly to the Coach.

‘Yes,’ nods Coach. ‘That’s you, Danny.’ He is pointing out the other swimmers but I’m not really listening to him. He’s got me on his wall, I am smack bang in the centre. I must be the one he considers the strongest, the fastest, the best.

There is wallpaper in the hallway and a dank smell. But I ignore it as Coach rushes me through the lounge room, into the small kitchen and out into the backyard; not really a yard, not like home with all the grass and flowers and vegie garden, more like a courtyard with a set of weatherworn garden chairs. There are no flowers, no vegetables, there is only a yellow patch of grass and a path made of concrete. But it doesn’t matter, because when I look down from the slope of the courtyard I can see the lights flickering in the city below.

‘Wow,’ I say to the Coach. ‘Wow, the city is so close.’

Coach points to the back fence, to a bolted gate made of cast-off wood panelling, and he says, ‘You can walk through that door, Danny, and turn left into the alley, and if you follow it all the way then you are at the river.’

‘This place is amazing!’

I didn’t think I’d said the words out loud, but Coach is beaming, Coach is nodding his head and beaming.

We sit inside at the kitchen table and Coach slices some salami, putting it on crackers and handing them to me.

‘Wait till you have the pizzas tonight, wait till you boys taste them. Marika’s pizzas are not like that shit you eat, full of that cheap cheese and those bland vegetables.’ Coach clicks his fingers, he is almost swaying. ‘Marika’s pizzas are the best in the world. You’ll eat them, you’ll see — you’ll say, “Coach, these pizzas are the best in the world.”’

There are just three of us from the squad going across to Adelaide: Taylor, Wilco and me. Coach will drive us there tomorrow. It is not the national championships, nothing as important as that — I can’t wait till I get a chance to shine at that event —but it is an under-sixteens meet and Coach wants us to compete. He says he wants Swimming Australia to sit up and take notice, he says he wants those stuck-up pricks to see what real talent is. It is under-sixteens, which is why there is no Fraser and no Scooter, and Wilco has just scraped in. If he’d been born a month earlier, it would have been just me and Taylor. How brilliant would that have been?

Coach asks, ‘Are you hungry?’ and the three of us bellow, ‘Of course we are.’ He rings and he orders, and afterwards he clicks his fingers again and again, saying how Marika’s pizzas are the best in the world.

When he’s driven off to get the food, Taylor says, ‘Can you believe how he’s going on about those fucking pizzas? And what’s with his being so cheerful? What’s got into him, what the fuck is going on?’

I bite my lip. Coach is happy, can’t Martin see that? Coach is just happy.

Wilco says, ‘He’s always like this when he’s got the squad over, always in an up mood. Fraser reckons it’s ’cause no one else ever visits, says he’s just a fat lonely bastard.’

I can’t answer, I can’t look at him. I don’t dare open my mouth. If I did, I’d say, ‘Coach isn’t lonely, Coach has us.’ But that’s not what really gets me, that’s not what is causing the churning in my gut. It’s that Wilco has been here before, Wilco knows this house. Wilco has known it before me.

Coach is right, it is the best pizza I have ever had. At first, the crust seems too thin, the toppings weird, there doesn’t seem to be any cheese. There is capsicum and pumpkin, there are thin slices of potato, eggplant, even mince on one of them. But as soon as I taste them, I can’t stop wolfing them down. I take a slice, I take two, I have to stop myself from having more than my share. Not that Taylor or Wilco would allow me to — they are also stuffing them in, they seem to be guzzling them down whole. When we’re finished we’ve got grease around our mouths. I burp, and Martin grins and says, ‘Good one, Dino,’ but I know now that it isn’t an insult, that he means nothing by it. I burp again and now I am the one grinning.

‘Coach,’ I say, ‘they are the best pizzas in the world.’

Coach takes the boxes outside and as I wash the plates and Wilco dries, Taylor wipes down the kitchen table. Not one of us has said a word but it is clear that we have come to an unspoken agreement, that to show our gratitude to Coach we’re cleaning up for him. When we’re finished he herds us into the lounge room, reaches under the coffee table and pulls out a pack of cards.

We play gin rummy, then Coach introduces Taylor and me to poker, teaching us about straights and royal flushes, about bluffing. He tells us that gambling is nothing like swimming, that it is about luck. We three boys steal looks at each other whenever Coach is dealing or shuffling the cards. None of us has ever seen him so talkative or so animated. I can’t believe how much he is talking. Of course, it’s all about swimming, and it’s all about the competition in Adelaide. But he’s enthusiastic and laughing, and I wonder whether I have ever heard Coach laugh before. He teases us, he scolds us, and then he teases us again. And when he wins a hand, he’s loud and gloating, like Theo gets when I let him win at Snap. It’s not like he’s the Coach — it’s like he’s one of us.

He wins another round and then he says, ‘That’s it, boys, it is a long drive tomorrow. Let’s get ready for bed.’