Christos Tsiolkas: Barracuda

Christos Tsiolkas is the author of four previous novels: Loaded , which was made into the feature film Head On; The Jesus Man; Dead Europe , which won the 2006 Age Fiction Prize and the 2006 Melbourne Best Writing Award; and The Slap , which was published in 2008 in Australia and has since been published all over the world. The Slap won the 2009 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the 2009 Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction, the 2009 Australian Literary Society’s Gold Medal and the Australian Book Industry Awards Book of the Year for 2009. The Slap was longlisted for the 2010 Booker Prize. Tsiolkas is also a playwright, essayist and screenwriter. He lives in Melbourne.

WHEN THE RAIN FIRST SPILLS FROM those egg-white foams of cloud that seem too delicate to have burst forth in such a deluge, I freeze. The heavy drops fizz on the dry grass as they hit; I think this is what a pit of snakes would sound like. And suddenly the rain is falling in sheets, though the sky is still blue, the sun still shining. The Glaswegians on the pebbled shore are yelling and screaming, rushing out of the water, huddling under the trees, running back to their cars. Except for the chubby young man with the St Andrews tattoo on his bicep, criss-crossed white lines on blue; he is standing in the water up to his knees, grinning, his arms outstretched, welcoming the rain, daring it.

And just as suddenly the rain has stopped and they all slink back to the beach. Two young boys race past me and throw themselves into the lake. A teenage girl throws away the magazine she has been sheltering beneath, takes out a compact and starts to powder her cheeks and nose, to reapply colour to her lips till they are the pink of fairy floss. Someone has turned the music back on and the words when love takes over roar through the valley. A pale skinny youth with broken teeth and a mop of greasy black hair dives past me; sheets of crystal-clear water splash all over the wading tattooed guy, who grabs his friend, holds him from behind in a bear hug, and ducks him under. He sits on him, laughing. A woman shouts from the shore, “Get off him, Colm, get off him!”

The chubby guy stands up, grinning, and the thin boy scrambles to his feet, coughing water.

The girls and the women are all in bikinis, the boys and the men are all in shorts, and bare-chested or in singlets. Except me: I have jeans on and two layers on top, a t-shirt and an old yellowing shirt. The sun feels weak to me; it can’t get any stronger than pleasant, it can’t build to fire, it can’t manage force.

‘Dan, I can’t go back there. I can’t. Everything is too far away.’

Clyde’s words have been going around and around in my head all day. Too far away .

In the restaurant the night before, we were eavesdropping on a nearby table: a group of friends’ three couples, one Scottish, one English, one German. They were in their late fifties, the men all with beards and bellies, the two British women with newly acquired bobs, the German woman with her grey hair pulled back in a long, untidy ponytail. She had looked up when we first started arguing, when I first raised my voice.

‘And I can’t live here.’

‘Why?’

‘Because this, for me, is too far away.’

We glared at each other across the table. One of us had to submit. One of us had to win. The young waiter arrived with our mains and we attacked them in viscous silence.

The group seemed to be old university friends, their lively conversation and loud laughter an invasion. The sauce on my steak was all salt and thick melted butter. I tore into it, was the first to finish. I pushed back the plate and headed off to the loos. Behind me I could hear the argument from their table. It seemed they got together every two years, in a different city. The German woman was pushing for it to be Barcelona next time, the Scottish man thought it should be Copenhagen and the English man wanted it to be in London.

When I returned we were both stiff with one another, miming politeness.

‘They took a vote, it’s a tie between Barcelona and Copenhagen.’

‘Really? Even the English guy voted against London?’

‘Aye, even he realised what a fucken stupid idea that was.’

That made us laugh, the lovers shared complicit laugh, a peace flag. I looked across and the German woman tilted her shoulders, smiling at me and feigning exasperation.

‘Barcelona,’ I called to them, ‘I’d make it Barcelona, the food will be better.’

The Englishman patted his big belly. ‘We don’t need more good food. We’ve had enough!’

We were all laughing then.

Clyde leaned in to me. ‘We couldn’t do that if we went back to Australia.’

I didn’t answer. It was true, and my silence confirmed it.

‘It’s too far away, Dan, I cannot go back.’

It was true. I had lost.

And then the words came from deep within me, were said without my forcing them, they just came like curses. I whispered them: ‘And, mate, I can’t stay here.’

That night, in bed, he told me he didn’t want my skin next to his, that he couldn’t bear my touch, and I obediently moved to the edge of the bed. But soon I felt him moving closer, and then his arms wrapped over mine, binding me to him. All night he held me, and all night he couldn’t stop his crying.

The chubby guy’s neck and shoulders and face are sunburnt. All the Glaswegians, sunbathing, paddling, strolling, kissing, eating, drinking on the shores of Loch Lomond, all of them have pink shoulders and pink faces and pink necks and arms. There is one Indian family eating Tesco sandwiches on the shore, and one black girl I noticed back in the village, she was with her red-haired boyfriend looking into the windows of the Scots R’Us shop or whatever the fuck it is called. And then there is me. Even with this piss-weak sun, I have gone brown. If I stay here will my colouring eventually fade away from me? Will I go pale, will I too turn pink in the sun?

The chubby guy is still only in water up to his knees.

I am at the shoreline. The waves can’t muster any energy, the waves lap gently across pebble and stone. They push at my sneakers, they kiss the hem of my jeans.

I am taking off my shoes and I am taking off my socks.

Real water punishes you, real water you have to work at to possess, to tame. Real water can kill you.

And I am taking off my shirt, I am taking off my t-shirt.

Men and women have died in this loch, men and women have frozen in the water, men and women have been claimed by this loch. Water can kill you and water can be treacherous. Water can deceive you.

I feel a twitch in my shoulder, I can sense that the muscles there are stirring.

And I unbuckle my belt, I take off my trousers.

The chubby guy is looking at me, puzzled, his expression turning into a grimace. He is thinking, Who is this bawbag, this pervert, stripped to his Y-fronts on the shore? A girl behind me is starting to titter.

I am walking into the water, to my thighs, to my crotch, to my belly. It is cold cold cold and I think my legs will snap with the pain of it. I dive. Breath is stolen from me.