Barracuda

  Mr Celikoglu said, �Danny, are you alright?� but he couldn�t answer, his breathing was rasping and it hurt but that didn�t matter because he was there on time, and then Demet came out of her bedroom and she was rushing down the hall and almost knocked her father out of the way as she threw her arms around Danny, holding him so tight that now he really couldn�t breathe, but it didn�t matter, he was home. Demet�s arms were around him, he was home.

  �Excuse me,� he said, wincing.

  �Listen to you,� Demet taunted. �Excuse me.� She made it sound so prissy. She folded her arms and leaned back in her seat. �Do you realise your voice is changing?�

  �What are you talking about? Leave the boy alone.�

  Demet ignored her father. The look she threw Danny was contemptuous. �Your voice is so gay and polite since you started at that new school.�

  Demet got up and grabbed his hand. �Come on, come to my room.�

  �Demet.� Mr Celikoglu�s voice was quiet, he was tapping a cigarette on the table. �Please, no more crying.�

  �Fuck you!� It horrified Danny how much spite was contained in her words. He saw the flare of anger on the man�s craggy thin face, and then it settled into weary disbelief.

  �Cry, cry, cry, for some foolish rich rock star. Cry your heart out for the idiot who leaves a widow and a child behind.�

  �Shh, Ohman,� counselled his wife. The man slammed his hand on the table, but he said nothing more.

  Demet did cry. She sat on the floor and began a long steady lamentation. Danny knelt beside her, holding her shaking body, his chin pressed down on her thick matted hair. But he was aware that part of her outburst was aimed at defying her father. He wouldn�t dare say it but there was something rehearsed about her bawling. He knew Dem too well. She was crying to punish her father as much as she was crying for Kurt Cobain. She pulled away from him. Her eyes were red, her face blotchy, and a line of snot hung from her nose.

  Demet�s crying had eased but she couldn�t yet talk. She tried to form words but they stalled, fell back into her throat. The two of them sat there, up close to each other, their backs now against the bed, feet outstretched, Demet playing with a frayed thread on the collar of Danny�s t-shirt. He laced his arm through hers.

  �You smell of chlorine.�

  Danny exhaled, relieved. Her voice sounded normal, or near enough. �I had a really quick shower, I didn�t want to be late.�

  �Good,� she sniffed, still pulling the thread, loosening it further.

  �Do you want me to put some music on?�

  �Nah,� she said, shaking her head vigorously. �I can�t bear any music today.�

  Something had changed in her room�she had taken down all her old posters of the Carlton Football Club. Now there was only a small photograph of a sullen Kurt Cobain taped to her bedroom mirror, an advertisement for Hole�s Pretty on the Inside ripped from a magazine and glued to the wall; pinned next to it was the sleeve for Nirvana�s Bleach. He could see the dust lines on the wall from where the football posters used to be. He didn�t understand it and didn�t like it but he wouldn�t mention it. He knew what she would say: �You can�t talk to me about change�you�ve gone off to Cunts College and left me behind.� So he just kept hold of her arm.

  Then she wriggled away and sat cross-legged across from him, taking his hand. Her palm was sweaty, it felt soapy and sticky, but he couldn�t let go.

  �I miss you.� She made it a wail.

  �I miss you too.�

  Their parents joked about it, teased them both about it, how Demet and Danny would get married one day. Demet and Danny belonged together. Not that they were boyfriend and girlfriend, nothing as frivolous as that; he couldn�t imagine kissing Demet, even if they were old enough to do that. But he knew that they were right, everyone knew that about them. He would look after Demet forever and she would always look after him. There had to be a word beyond marriage, he thought, there had to be a word that would fit.

  �When did you find out? About Cobain . . . offing himself?� She meant to sound nonchalant, but she hesitated and stumbled over the word.

  �At school, one of the guys told me.� Sullivan: his voice hushed, fearful.

  �Like they care.�

  �They do. Everyone was really upset.�

  Her eyes rolled. She didn�t believe him and he knew that for Demet those boys he was at school with would never be flesh, would never be real�would always be alien.

  �So they were upset, were they?� Her eyes narrowed. �You making friends there, are you?�

  She was jealous. It was sweet that she was jealous, it warmed him. He would have liked to tell her about Luke, who read books and played chess; he would have liked to tell her about how he had defended him. But he knew not to say anything today.

  �Nah,� he said, �I�ve got no friends there.�

  She was nodding as if to music in her head. He wondered if she was even listening to him.

  �I beat the shit out of this arrogant wog today, this total Greek dickhead.�

  Demet snorted. �You? That proves what pussies they must be at that school. Man, I can beat you up.� Then she frowned. �So there are other wogs at Cunts College?�

  �Yeah, but you know, Templestowe wogs, with trust funds and beach houses in Lorne.�

  �Yuck,� she said dismissively. �They are the worst kind of wog.�

  He giggled at her exaggerated disgust. She was still glowering, but his giggling started her off and then they were both laughing so hard that tears were forming, so hard that it aggravated the pain in his ribs. But they couldn�t stop laughing and that was when Demet said, her eyes opening wide, �Can you see it, Danny, can you see it?� She was pointing to the space between them, then drew a line from his stomach to hers. �See, Danny, can you see it? There�s this light there, look, it�s connecting us! Oh wow, Danny, can you see it?�

  He understood it was the exhaustion and the sadness of the day. He had seen her etch the line in the air. But there was no light. �Yes,� he lied. �I see it.� He wanted to see it. He wanted it to be there.

  Demet clapped her hands. �We are soul twins!� Her voice was full of joy. �That means we are soul twins forever. That means we�ll be best friends in the next life and the life after that.�

  Mr Celikoglu knocked on the door before coming in. He asked his daughter if she was alright but Demet just snarled and looked away. �Danny,� the man said, �it�s nearly eleven o�clock. It�s time to go home.�

  �Let him stay.�

  �No.� Her father was firm. �The boy has practice in the morning.�

  Danny was grateful that he understood that swimming came first. Demet shrugged.

  �See ya,� he said.

  �See ya,� she answered, not lifting her head. But as he was walking out she added, �I love ya, faggot.�

  �I love you, ho,� he responded.

  �Call me tomorrow?�

  �Straight after training,� he promised.

  The man and the boy stood at the front door. Mr Celikoglu was wearing a white singlet and blue pyjama bottoms. �I�ll drive you home, wait till I change.�

  Danny shook his head. �Please, no, it�s not far. I�ll be fine.�

  The man reached out and lightly pinched Danny�s nose, gently cradling his cheek, as he had done since Danny was a toddler. �Say hello to Neal and Stephanie. And thank you for helping Demet.� The night was chilly and Danny wished he had brought a jacket. He had to hold himself in tight to ward off the cold.

  There was not a soul about. It was just him and the hum of the streetlight above, the sound of traffic off Murray Road. But a song was running insistently through his head. It wasn�t Nirvana and it wasn�t hip-hop or techno, not a golden oldie or one of his parents� rock �n� roller songs. He couldn�t quite grab at the music, couldn�t quite recognise it, but he knew it was there, just above him. He tried to snatch the s
ong out of the air, to recall a lyric, a rhyme, but it was no use. He couldn�t remember the words to the song at all.

  At the end of the day, at the other end of the in-between, he hummed that song all the way home.

  ‘HAVE YOU APPLIED FOR THE FUCKEN visa yet?’

  I have to tell him. This is the moment I have to tell him. ‘I haven’t had time.’

  Clyde looks at me like I am an idiot, as if he is wondering how he could have ever got involved with such a fool. This is when I have to tell him.

  ‘Dan, the tickets are booked. We need to get ready. Time’s running out, pal.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Then fucken make the appointment, man. I’m sick of this.’

  He charges off to the bedroom. I can hear his shoes bang against the wall as he kicks them off. This is when I have to tell him. I walk into the room and he is lying on the bed, his eyes closed, his tie unloosened. He senses that I have come in and opens his eyes. They are wary, unwelcoming. I sit down next to him on the bed. He doesn’t move.

  ‘How was work?’

  He doesn’t respond.

  I blather on, asking after his colleagues, trying to remember the projects he is working on, what campaign he has just finished, which one he has just begun. I babble and stumble until he groans and says, ‘Just shut it, just shut it, I don’t want to talk about my work.’

  So I shut it, and I don’t move and I don’t say a thing.

  ‘How was your day?’

  Is he relenting? Is he letting me in?

  ‘I had to clean up the cache on Stanley’s computer, had to erase what seemed like a million photos of tits. No wonder there was no speed on the bloody thing. I think all he does all day is look at porn and wank.’

  ‘What else is he gonna do? The man will never be well again.’

  Is he baiting me? I try not to get angry, try to let it go. There is a cruelty buried deep in Clyde. It isn’t hot and spiteful, it is rational and cold. He thinks that men like Stanley, the men I work with, are broken and cannot be fixed, that it would have been better if Stanley had died in the car crash. He doesn’t want them in our home, he doesn’t want to think about them. ‘I couldn’t live with brain damage,’ is what he claims. ‘I couldn’t be half a man.’ Somewhere deep inside him, he is cold. I am scared that he is too unforgiving.

  This is when I have to tell him.

  ‘I’ll make that appointment tomorrow.’

  ‘Good.’ He still won’t concede. He wants me to do the work, he wants me to beg. I can’t, because if I start to apologise I won’t be able to stop. I am sorry for being lazy, I am sorry for being deceitful, I am sorry for not being good enough brave enough tough enough.

  This is when I have to tell him.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  His hand moves, I feel his weight shift behind me; he is gently rubbing the small of my back. ‘I don’t think you want to move to Scotland, pal. I think that’s why you aren’t doing anything about organising the visa.’

  This is when I have to tell him.

  He stops massaging my back. ‘Is that it, Dan?’

  I don’t have to tell him.

  He is sitting upright now, our shoulders are touching. I can smell the stale odour of the office on him and traces of the takeaway he had for lunch.

  He sighs, a deep unhappy sound, and it comes from somewhere beyond the callousness and the aloofness. It is where the tenderness is, where I will find the staunchness, where he will do anything for me. He’s scared I don’t want to go and I am scared that I can’t go. I am so terrified I can’t bring myself to say anything.

  ‘I guess that means you don’t want to go,’ he says frostily.

  This is when I have to tell him. That I do want to go, that I want to be there when his sister Nina has the baby, that I want to meet his half-brother, meet his mother, his father and stepmother, that I want to see the neighbourhoods he grew up in, the schools he went to, the friends he made, walk the grounds of the university he attended, go to the clubs he danced in, the pubs he drank in, that I want to get to know his city, the stink of it and the beauty of it, the poverty of it and the inspiration of it. And I want to believe that when I am there I will shed my skin, become a new man. I want to go. I have to go.

  But I’m scared. I’m scared that I won’t be able to.

  ‘Dan?’

  I love the whisper of warmth he offers to my name.

  This is when I tell him.

  It takes an age for the words to come, to take shape, to transform into sound. I am hollowness, my voice is not my own, my body seems drained of everything that makes me human: blood and tissue and muscle and guts. But I don’t cry. I can’t cry.

  ‘Clyde, there’s something I have to tell you.’

  He is the one afraid now, he senses the vast distance between us. His whole body has tensed, his eyes are wide and frightened.

  ‘I’ve been to prison.’

  I haven’t really thought of his face for years, not really. I have thought of the moments before and all those millions of moments afterwards, but not of the man’s face, how it became jelly under my blows, of the blood, the cuts on my fist as I broke his face. How I did this to someone, made him insensible, took him to the edge of life.

  ‘I’m scared they won’t let me into the UK, Clyde, and I think they have every right not to let scum like me in.’

  I can see the face, for the first time, I can see what I did, how I destroyed something. But there is that calmness inside me, it is flowing through me, sedating me. It is as though I am speaking through the narcosis of a dream.

  And it is Clyde who is crying.

  ‘I’ve been to prison, mate. I nearly killed a man. That’s what I did. That’s who I am.’

  26–27 July 1996

  He was standing in the motel bath, his Speedos on, his arms clasped tight across his chest. His mother was shaving his legs. The lather was pasted thick on his thighs, on his calves, and she guided the razor through it slowly, carefully, not wanting to nick him. She said, ‘Don’t move, Danny, stay still.’

  He didn’t like looking down at the soapy, filthy water around his feet. His mum flicked the razor into the dirty mess. Spools of black hair floated on the surface of the foam. His legs were covered in coarse black hair. He thought it was ugly, he was pleased the hair was being shaved off, that it would be gone. But now the skin on his legs was dotted with pink blotches. ‘Don’t move,’ she warned him again. He looked up at the bathroom mirror in which he could see his brother and sister sprawled over his bed in the main room. Theo was on his back, his neck and head bent over the end of the mattress, watching the television upside down. Regan was on her belly, her elbows bent, her knuckles pressing against her chin. Her feet were kicking—up down, up down—banging on the mattress. He couldn’t see the television in the mirror but he could hear the voice of the race commentator.

  ‘Hurry up, Mum, the race is going to start.’

  His mother ignored him. He looked down to see the razor scraping away what looked like a wad of thick dark fur, as though he was some sort of animal she was shearing. She flicked the razor in the water again and the clump of hair floated on the surface around his left foot.

  ‘OK, that’s your left leg done.’ His mother smiled up at him.

  He was itching all over where she had just shaved him but she poured some lotion into her hand and then rubbed it up and down his calf and the back of his leg. The cool gel instantly soothed the prickliness.

  ‘I’m going to miss the race,’ Danny complained. He craned his neck, trying to glimpse a reflection of the television. All he could see was his brother’s upside-down head, his sister’s legs still kicking the bed.

  ‘Theo,’ his mother called out, ‘has the race started yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’ll tell us when it does?’

  He could see the reflection of his brother nodding. The little boy caught his eye and gave him a smile but because he was the wrong way round it looked
like a frown. Theo effortlessly propelled his body over the bed, landed on his feet, and ran over to the bathroom door. He watched as the razor scraped down the back of Danny’s thigh.

  ‘You’re really hairy.’

  Their mother flicked some suds at him and the little boy shrieked, ‘Don’t!’

  ‘Then get out of here.’

  Theo scampered back to the bed.

  ‘Should I close the door?’ his mother asked.

  Danny shook his head. He thought it would feel strange if the door was shut, with his mother shaving his legs—it would feel a little sick. He didn’t want that thought in his head. He shivered.

  ‘Stop moving or I’ll nick you.’

  If he was nicked, he would bleed. And if he bled, a scab would form, and he would feel it in the water, he would sense it as he was swimming. It would be just a small sensation, just a niggle. But it could be enormous. Like a fly landing on his naked shoulder over summer, when it became all he could think of. All you could think of was that small, trivial thing, but before you knew it, it would be the scab he was thinking of in the water the next day, the feel of it as the water rushed past it, an itch that would want to be scratched, that would make him pause, for a third of a third of a third of a second. But that was all it took, the Coach said it all the time, for that third of a third of a third of a second to make you lose concentration and then you would slip back, fumble a stroke, and then you would find yourself a quarter of a body length then half a body length then a whole body length behind. He couldn’t be nicked, he couldn’t dare be nicked.

  He stood absolutely still.

  She had shaved both his legs and still the race hadn’t started.

  As she changed the water he ducked into the next room to check the TV. There were ads, then interviews with former Olympians. All they wanted to talk about was Perkins. Would he, wouldn’t he? Did he have it in him? Most of the commentators were dubious. He had barely scraped through the heat, one of them warned; another started listing the swimmer’s old injuries. The third disagreed, said proudly that just going for an Olympic medal brought something special out of a true athlete: Perkins could do it. The other commentators couldn’t answer that; they hadn’t been there, didn’t know what it felt like. To be in the pool, to be going for an Olympic medal. To have everyone in the world watching you.