Christos Tsiolkas - Barracuda

On the other side of the fence a sensor light switched on, a yellow glow, and an old man was calling out, ‘Pssh psssh, Caruso, where are you?’ Both brothers laughed as a slim tabby cat jumped out from the bottom of the garden and scaled the fence.

‘So the Rizzos are still next door?’ Dan’s voice was back to normal.

Theo nodded, scraping the butt of the joint on the sole of his sneaker and flinging it into the garden. ‘Well, I fucking loved Annalise and I still do. And you didn’t fail me, you dumb fuck — not when you didn’t make it as a swimmer. You failed me when you left us, when you wanted nothing to do with us. That’s what fucking hurt.’

I want to run away, Dan thought. I can’t bear this, the crush of it, the shame of it. But he just sat there. He would not get up, he would not leave. He was alert to it now, how the shame began in the belly, how bile flooded his insides, seeped into his blood. He was aware that the anger, the poison inside him needed to escape, as if his shame could transform into wrath and he could spew it all out, turn on his brother, wring his brother’s bloody neck: It wasn’t about you, I couldn’t think about you, I was drowning and I was falling, I was plunging down to earth and I couldn’t think of you, or of Mum, or of Dad, or of Regan, or of anyone. He could spring up from the cold stone of the step, smash his brother’s face, wring his neck: It wasn’t about you, you little cunt, I was falling. I was drowning. The excuses and the defences came to his lips — he was ready, to strike, to run; his muscles tensed, his jaw clenched. Dan turned to his brother.

Theo was a young man now, an adult; his hands were callused and large, his skin was the darkest shade of honey from the sun. He was scratching the inside of his arm, something he had always done whenever he was nervous or afraid.

Dan could smell the eucalyptus, the old tree at the back of the garden, its bark shining silver in the light of the moon, its canopy gleaming golden from the light of the street lamps. He released his breath. ‘Mate, I’m really sorry for what I did. I’m really sorry for hurting you.’

The two brothers sat in silence on the steps. Finally, Theo put his hand on Dan’s shoulder, then flicked a finger hard at the back of his head, so hard it hurt. The younger man cackled and slapped his knee, enjoying Dan’s outrage. ‘Evens?’

Dan couldn’t help laughing at the infantile term, the word that brought back childish skirmishes and teasing. ‘Yeah, OK, we’re even.’

He got up from the step, stretched his arms out into the night sky, he breathed in the air. ‘It smells wonderful,’ he marvelled, ‘the eucalyptus and the pure night air.’ He was being reminded that it wasn’t just the horizon, not just the light, but even the sounds and smells in Australia that stretched to the infinite.

Theo snorted. ‘You’re an idiot. All I can smell are the fumes off the bloody highway. What the fuck is so wonderful about that?’

Dan then said, ‘Tell me about Annalise.’

‘What do you want to know?’ Theo’s tone was hesitant, sulky.

‘What does she look like?’

Theo went into the house and came out holding a laptop. He sat back down on the step and Dan came to sit beside him again as his brother turned on the computer. The screen was white, then blue, and then an image washed across it: Theo and a young woman. She had smooth pale skin, her mouth was serious and unsmiling, her eyes were solemn and gently hooded — they dominated her face. Theo was smiling, his hair much shorter. Dan could see the adoration in his brother’s eyes, the limpid submission in them as he pulled her into him. Her eyes gave nothing away, but he could tell exactly what his brother was feeling at the moment the photograph had been snapped. Annalise had not allowed the camera to glimpse anything of her.

‘She’s beautiful.’

‘Yeah, tell me about it.’ Theo’s voice broke, and then he slammed down the top of the computer. ‘So now you’ve seen her.’ His voice was distant.

‘Are you seeing each other at all?’

‘She’s visiting family in Townsville. She’ll be back next week.’

Dan could hear the choke in his brother’s voice.

‘But she doesn’t want to see me, she reckons it’s best that we don’t see each other for a while.’

Dan didn’t think there was anything to say. Words wouldn’t do Theo, couldn’t do Dan himself any good.

Theo pulled out a pouch of tobacco and began rolling another joint. Dan stared up at the dark sky, the distant tremor of the stars. It felt like looking at the ceiling of the world, he thought to himself, it was so much higher here than it was in Europe. Here the stars had to exert themselves, had to struggle harder to shine their light.

Only after the first puff of the joint did Theo speak again; the nicotine and marijuana steadied his voice, pushed back the tears of rage and longing. ‘How did you realise you weren’t in love with Clyde? How did you know?’

Because I can’t see him. Because I can’t recall his eyes, his mouth, his skin, his cock, his balls, I can’t picture his stride, I can’t hear his voice, I can’t bring back the smell or even the taste of him. Because of how quickly he has gone from me.

‘Because I don’t miss him.’

‘But that’s now.’ Theo’s tone was insistent, as though Dan could tell him something that could make his pain bearable. ‘Did you realise you didn’t love him when you were with him? Do you think you ever loved him?’

Martin Taylor’s voice was a deep vibrato from the back of his throat, a man’s voice even in youth; he had a pronounced cleft in the middle of his chin — Dan could remember that clearly, how he wanted to place his finger exactly there. He could see the splash of sandy-coloured hair under Martin’s arms, wet and splayed across his fine, pale skin, skin that was flushed and pink after a swim. The stone-grey transparency of his eyes, the fixed assurance of that gaze. And Martin’s smell, a drug composed of all the boy’s emissions, heady, almost hallucinatory, the smell of his body and the smell of chlorine. In the night, Dan could smell him, he could smell Martin Taylor. He could remember everything about Martin Taylor.

‘No, I don’t think I ever loved him.’

‘Then why the fuck did you stay with him? Why the fuck would you go all the way to Scotland for him?’ Theo’s tone was unsteady again, the languid pull of the drug fighting the rage inside.

It came to Dan: she had never told him that she loved him, she’d never given him that.

‘I didn’t go to Scotland for him,’ Dan answered, as he saw it all with clarity, shocked at the severity in his voice, the ruthless calm of the truth. ‘I went for myself.’

Theo shook his head, not comprehending.

Dan sighed. Would he only ever feel the burden of words? He had spent the previous six months in virtual silence, alone in London, knowing no one, having no one. All he’d had was silence and he’d been content with that. Now he was back to the treachery of words — what to say and what to withhold, what to create and what to destroy.

What to create.

‘I had a future,’ Dan found himself saying, and he was astonished as the words began to flow: the sounds were coming out first — that was what shocked him — and then words were forming from the sounds, the words and the sentences and the meanings were originally sounds, originally breath. ‘I had a future, and I was going to be one of the greatest swimmers that ever was and I wasn’t good enough and it had nothing to do with talent or skill or my body — it had to do with who I was. I just wasn’t good enough. All I had was that future and when that future was stripped from me, there just wasn’t anything else there — and I’m sorry that even you, even all of you, all my family, you weren’t enough. There was nothing but this hole and all I was was just this hole. All I knew how to do was swim and all I wanted to do was swim and I couldn’t ever swim again, so I was just this hole where a man should be, and I hated myself for not being strong enough and not being good enough. I don’t give a fuck what everyone says about how all I could do was give it my best shot, and how not everyone can be a winner, and not everyone can achieve their dreams. That’s bullshit — without my dream, I was just a hole, an absence, that’s all I was. I failed; the failure was within me and all I knew was that I wasn’t strong enough so I was just floating. My whole life was floating and that’s what I never could bear about the water, just floating on it — what I loved about swimming was that I could fly in it, it wasn’t liquid for me, it was air. So Clyde came along and he kept me afloat and he wanted to go back to Scotland and that too kept me afloat, and Glasgow was alright, Glasgow could even be home, but I was still empty and only floating, and Clyde knew it, Clyde could see it and he began to hate me for it, because how can you love an emptiness? And then one day we were in this place called Luss, this fucking freezing loch in the Trossachs, and it was summer and the place was full of holidaying Scots having a great old time. I looked out at the water and it was calm and still and I knew it was deep enough to kill me if I wanted it to and I just stripped off my clothes and I dived in there and I swam for the first time in years, as fast as I have ever swum, and even though the water was so cold it was squeezing my lungs and my heart, I kept on swimming because I wanted to fly and because I was sick of being nothing. And then I just stopped, I just stopped swimming and the people on the shore were calling out to me and I could hear Clyde shouting for me and I just lay on my back in this icy, Arctic water, thinking, Let it fill me up, let me not be a hole, and nothing happened, nothing changed. I realised then that there was nothing left of my dream to lose, so I just turned around and headed back to the shore. People were staring at me and Clyde was drying me, going, “What were you doing, man? What the fuck were you doing?” and I was just standing there and I thought, Well, I’ve swum, and I’ve been so terrified of swimming and I’m still here and I am still empty and swimming won’t take me back to my future and my future begins now. Clyde was asking if I was alright, calling me a mad bastard, and I said to him, “I don’t want to stay here, mate, I can’t. I want to go back home,” and he said, “I cannae go back with you, Danny,” and that’s how it happens, Theo, that’s sometimes what just happens. You can’t dream the same future. I didn’t know what the future was going to be but I knew it wasn’t going to be in Glasgow and Clyde knew his wasn’t going to be here and realising that, understanding that, was more important than the question of whether I was or was not in love.’