Steve Toltz - Quicksand

‘I know.’

‘I’m not sadistic, but —’

‘That’s like that thing racists say. I’m not racist, but …’

‘Yeah. Like, I’m not racist, but to die and find God in blackface would be hilarious.’

‘Exactly. What were you saying?’

‘I’m not sadistic but sometimes I think about chemical castration, though only if I get to choose the chemical. Hydrochloric acid.’

Poor Aldo. In the right light you could see his organs fail.

‘Hang on,’ he says in a cracked voice, ‘I’ve got an idea.’

He paddles over to the rocky island and collides with it. He paddles backwards and then takes another lunge at the rock.

‘Careful! What are you doing?’

He guides the nose of the board and manages to wedge it in a crevice between two egg-shaped boulders. Great curtains of spray cover him as he manoeuvres alongside and slides himself across onto the narrow ledge, the rope from the board sluicing the sea. He pulls himself upright and sits on the island’s edge, his emaciated legs dangling in the water. You can’t even call him a biped without fiddling with the definition.

With the rope he drags the board onto the ledge and secures it. He slides himself over an inch, stops, then another inch, as if in slow pursuit of something. I can’t understand what he is doing.

I paddle over. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m staying here the night.’

‘The whole night?’

Aldo shakes his head, which doesn’t answer my question. The dark is chilling. Using his forearms, he makes a painfully slow, furtive tour of duty around the island, grimacing as he gropes his way along the uneven plateau.

The waves start up again. I struggle to remain on my board. Aldo pushes himself into a hollow under an overhanging ledge and shouts, ‘Off you go!’

He settles in as if he’d programmed this destination into his GPS at birth. He sits stiffly, as remote and inhuman as the character in one of my earliest short stories from adolescence, ‘The Elephant Man in the Iron Mask of Zorro’. I say, ‘You know who you look like?’

He doesn’t say anything.

I say, ‘Are you serious?’

‘Go home, Liam.’

It’s unsafe for him there. All afternoon I’ve been watching that island. I swear birds flew in that didn’t fly out.

‘I can’t leave you stranded on a rock.’

‘You’ve got better things to do than worry about me.’

‘Yeah, but I’m not going to be doing them.’

‘Think of this as like being supportive when your girlfriend confesses she wants to get a breast reduction.’

‘What?’

Aldo retreats further still, until his face is consumed by shadow. The waves grow bigger now, tossing me about, and start crashing over the island. Aldo is soaked in his little alcove and he shuffles back out, looking for a better position.

‘It’s getting rough,’ he says.

I stare at him for a couple of minutes then swivel around. For some reason I remember that during high school Aldo had a dog that barked itself to death.

‘Hey, remember Sooty?’

‘Of course I do. She was my dog.’

‘What the fuck was up with that bitch?’

He scowls at me then slithers and drags himself towards what I imagine is the dry centre of the rock. He slips and falls into a crevice and pulls himself out. It’s tough going. It would be easier if he were a double amputee. What use are those legs to him now? They just get in the way, I think, watching him gimping around the rock in the starlight, peering into crevices, a look of surprise on his face.

‘What is it? What are you looking at?’ I ask.

‘Shit!’

‘What? What happened?’

He holds up the palm of his hand — blood streams from it. He laughs.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘Not long ago I was worried about bedsores. Now I’m worried about barnacles.’

‘What?’

‘Go home, Liam.’

Aldo waves me away one last time. What choice do I have? Other than physically dragging him back to shore, I’m out of ideas. I float on the dark and oily water.

Aldo says, ‘Coo-eee,’ but there’s no echo. He’s disappointed. ‘We’re too far out, I guess,’ he says.

‘Seriously,’ I say, ‘I’m heading back to shore.’

‘Ta-ta.’

I wait, but he doesn’t move.

‘OK,’ I say. ‘Nighty night. Sleep tight. Don’t let the box jellyfish bite.’

‘Adiós, muchacho.’

I paddle in, the island sliding into darkness at my back, and I make it to shore on jelly legs with the taste of salty foam in my mouth. On the wet sand I sit bewildered and gape at the sombre outline of the jutting rock, at the steep waves rising and falling, the white peaks staring out of the dark. I can’t see Aldo but for a brief moment I spot the flare of a lighter and the glow of a cigarette.

As the hours pass, the night grows darker still; the headlands dissolve into it. The whites of the breakers gleam faintly, then they don’t. The waves disappear, the rock can’t be seen, nothing. It’s easy to mistake wind for outright hatred in the night.

I strain to hear if Aldo’s calling me but I can’t separate land noises from sea noises. I’m shaking from the chilly air as I take a couple more of Aldo’s painkillers from his wheelchair bag, lay my head on the cold sand, and close my eyes. The blissful monotony of sleep. I dream we are on our boards, drifting along a dark, wet corridor in crystal-clear waters, looking down at a valley of wet bones buried beneath us. At four in the morning I wake to see the clouds have cleared and the sky is jam-packed with stars and the rock looks huge. Everything seems out of place — as if it has been shuffled, or put through some kind of filter. I can see the shape of Aldo sitting up. He’s not moving, and I remember his physical immobility back in that interrogation room, once I had forced him down in his chair, with the charge of infanticide hanging over his head, and the eyes of the gravelly, mute Sergeant Oakes and Senior Detective Doyle gazing at this friend of mine who they saw as a lost and evil cause …

This is a tape-recorded interview by Constable Liam Wilder of Aldo Francis Benjamin. Also present to corroborate is Senior Detective Jason Doyle and Sergeant David Oakes. The time is three p.m. Please state your full name and address.

Aldo Francis Benjamin, 242 Botany Road, Sydney.

You don’t have to lean into the microphone. Age and date of birth?

Sixth of May 1973 was the benighted moment. I’m nearly thirty-nine.

Are you an Australian citizen?

Yes.

Are you a permanent resident of Australia?

Of course.

Are you an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander?

Jesus Christ. For the record, the constable and I are old high school friends. He knows very well what I am and what I am not.

Tell me what happened, Aldo. Why are we here? From the beginning.

OK. Stella had been bugging me to stop starting startups, to drop my dreams of sudden and undeserved wealth, to forget the whole notion of total financial security and just settle down to some steady, gainful employment and repay my debts even if by the tiniest of instalments.

I’ve been saying the same thing since forever, but go on.

Sometime in late January or early February, I acquiesced and found myself in a job interview in the low-lit, empty lobby of the Railway Hotel, trying to look vital, eager and responsible. I felt none of those things, obviously, opposite her uncle Howard. You’ve met him.

The Scientologist.

That’s him. He read my CV with menacing stillness. Behind us a couple dragged luggage on broken wheels to the reception desk, and I was saying something like I’m a fast learner or maybe that I was a team player, in any case one of those phrases that make you feel as if you’ve let someone urinate on you for a dollar.