Merciless Gods

by Christos Tsiolkas

  Clearing his throat, the white officer had then informed them that their son had been HIV positive.

  Her husband had made a whimper, like a frightened animal, and then, rising, his voice cracking, he had excused himself. She had put out a hand to him but he had refused to take it. She was alone with the strangers.

  ‘I don’t understand. AIDS?’

  The white officer had nodded.

  ‘Oh.’ She felt nothing. He was dead, what did it matter?

  The older man swallowed. ‘Mrs Pannini, did you know your son was homosexual?’

  ‘Yes.’ She knew, she had guessed. Of course, she had always known. Always.

  ‘Did you know the work he was doing in LA?’

  She stared confusedly at the man. ‘Acting? That’s what he wrote to us.’

  ‘Mrs Pannini, I’m sorry to inform you of this, but your son worked as an actor in pornographic movies.’

  There was silence. The black officer had lowered his eyes.

  ‘Did he use his real name?’

  ‘No.’

  She then addressed the black officer. ‘Can I please ask for a cigarette?’

  He rose immediately to obey her request but the white officer frowned and looked directly above her shoulder at the no-smoking sign next to a portrait of the grinning President Bush.

  She turned again to the younger man. ‘Please, I must have a cigarette,’ she pleaded.

  ‘Of course, ma’am.’ She was astonished at his old-fashioned courtesy.

  The first inhalation of smoke hurt, she had a fit of coughing, and then she felt a dizzying euphoria. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’m a smoker too, ma’am.’

  For the first time she glanced down at the tag on his shirt. James B. Franklin. ‘Thank you again, Mr Franklin.’

  ‘You’re welcome, ma’am.’

  ‘Can you please not tell my husband about my son? The pornography? Please, let me tell him—I need to tell him in my own time.’

  She saw the two men glance at one another. They seemed unsure of how to proceed. They were embarrassed. Of course they were. It was sordid and awful and disgusting. The foolish, foolish boy; so easily led, never thinking of consequences.

  ‘We thought it best to inform you directly.’ Officer Franklin cleared his throat. ‘Sometimes people can be cruel.’

  She thought immediately of her sister-in-law. Oh, how Sonja would gloat over it all, her sympathy poisonous and insincere. ‘Thank you, I do understand you had to tell me.’

  When her husband returned, his eyes were red and there was a trickle of snot on his top lip. She moved to wipe it, and he broke out into wounded, terrified sobbing. They had collapsed into grief, watched quietly by the two Americans. Her arms encircled him, she held him tight. He must never know. It would destroy him. She made up her mind: if he ever found out she would deny it. Of course not. Of course not. How can you say such things? Nick would never do such things.

  •

  On entering the house, she was conscious of a strange vibration all around her: the walls, the floor, the very air seemed to be pulsating. She walked through every room, her hand still clutching her bag, as it had done throughout the train journey. She was alone. She opened her bag and laid the video on the coffee table.

  She looked around and closed the lounge curtains, blocking out the daylight. She deadlocked the front door and took the phone off the hook. The house still seemed to be breathing.

  She slotted the video into the machine and fingered the remote control: there was the hum of the television coming to life, the sunburst of snow, and then colour flooded the screen. The volume blasted music and noise, a woman was exercising on a bike. She grabbed the second remote and pressed a button. The screen went black and there was silence. She waited.

  The music began and she was struck by the harshness of its sound. She pressed the remote, and the five green bars became four, then three, and then finally one. She had reduced the volume to a whisper. She fixed her eyes on the screen and took her glasses out of their case. Names flashed across the screen, and then a series of close-ups. Her son’s face appeared, his hair shorn to the scalp in a military cut. He was smiling, and winked at the camera. The pseudonym he had chosen for himself, Pallo, had been the nickname of Con Pollites, his best friend in primary school. They had lived in Brunswick then, at 33 Edwards Street, and the Polliteses had lived at number sixteen. The children were always running in and out of each other’s houses.

  She almost laughed at the contrived nature of the first few minutes of the film. A tall, blond young man entered an office where another man was sitting behind a desk, largely empty except for a few pens and a notebook. There were two long close-ups of the actors, one licking his lips, the other raising an eyebrow. The man at the desk was playing the boss of the younger man, who was apologising for being late for work.

  Is this necessary? She was furious. Just fornicate—that’s what it’s about, isn’t it? That’s why men pay money for this filth. Just fuck!

  It was not her first experience of viewing pornography. Early in their marriage her husband had brought home a few reels of Super 8 film and he had made her watch them with him, taking out the family projector and showing the images on one of the walls of their lounge room. She had been unnerved by them, most repulsed by the hairiness of the women’s privates. That night in bed she had been silent and unmoving as he mounted her. He had never shown her such films again.

  She told herself to look at the screen. The man playing the boss had removed his trousers and his shirt was unbuttoned. Both actors had smooth, waxed skin. It reminded her of the burnish on a not-yet-ripened Fuji apple. She did not fast forward though her fingers were curled tightly around the remote control. She was glad that this first scene featured two strangers, other women’s sons. As the men kissed, she experienced a sensation akin to nausea. Disgust. But it rapidly dissipated as she watched the gyrations of their mouths. The two men were handsome, strong, and the kiss was passionate. She reached for her cigarettes, her eyes firmly on the screen. The boys were now undressed.

  Oh, sweet Lord, oh, Mother of God. This was a different world. She felt a sweeping melancholy as she watched the two men kiss and fondle each other. She had been with only two men in her whole life, and the first had been a quick humiliating moment in her sister’s bedroom during a party. She and the man had remained clothed the whole time and he had pressed her against the bedroom door and rubbed himself on her for a few minutes. They had not kissed once. When he had finished she discovered that he had stained her skirt, and she had spent the next hour in the bathroom, washing and squeezing dry the garment, crying the whole time. And after that, it had all been with her husband.

  Who are you? she quizzed the screen. They were American, obviously, they looked fit, healthy, they looked as if they had enough to eat. The images had relaxed into an inert succession of poses and she was distracted, bored even. Did their parents know? No, of course not. She could not conceive of a parent knowing. She was alone in this.

  She turned away in distaste. The blond man was on his knees, mechanically devouring the other man’s penis. She noticed a fine spider’s web beginning from the light globe in the lounge room and reaching the cornice just above a portrait of her mother and father. Her parents’ faces looked down at her, stern and distant. Her father, standing, was wearing a suit and a collarless shirt. Her mother, sitting so her head was level with her husband’s chest, was wearing the pale yellow summer dress that he had given her after she had accepted his proposal.

  Aware suddenly of the muted grunts and moans coming from the television, she turned away from her parents’ forbidding gaze and forced herself to watch the screen again.

  They were having intercourse now, sodomy. She scrutinised the blond’s face every time there was a close-up. Surely he could not be enjoying this. He was grimacing but his words seemed to be encouraging the other man. She had to stand up. She went into the kitchen and wet her lips. Didn’t the silly finocch
io know how much he was debasing himself? They were not actors. Whores. That’s what they were. Whores.

  When she returned to her armchair, the same monotonous exertions were taking place. Her disgust had disappeared. She had expected that she would find the images foul, not necessarily because they were pornographic, but because they depicted sex between men. Yes, the actors had seemed effeminate and ridiculous when they were kissing or performing oral sex on one another. But now that the older man was sodomising the younger one, frowning in concentration as he pounded away at the prostrate body spread over the desk, it seemed all too familiar. It was shockingly normal.

  She closed her eyes. She would not look, she would keep her eyes shut. She heard the men on the screen barking out their orgasms. When she finally opened her eyes again the boss was zipping up his pants and the blond youth was sheepishly putting on his shirt. Now don’t ever be late again, the boss counselled. She laughed out loud.

  Her body tensed as the next scene began. A large stocky man, older than the previous actors, was entering a toilet. He unzipped in the cubicle and lowered his pants. His penis was thick, so unlike her husband’s lean organ. The actor took off his shirt, revealing a flabby belly covered in fine brown hairs. She thought him ugly, obscene; he reminded her of all the sweating rude men who called her love at work, the men who scoffed down their meat pies.

  He was the man who was going to abuse her son. She knew it even before Nick appeared. There was a hole in the wall of the cubicle. Her jaw clenched when Nick came in, stood at the urinal.

  Her gaze was still locked onto the screen but the images had fallen away. She had removed herself into a memory, nothing concrete, not a vision or an image; the tender sensation of Nick falling asleep at her breast. She fell back into the room. Outside, birds were trilling and she heard schoolchildren laughing on their way home.

  ‘Fuck me.’

  It wasn’t Nick’s voice. It was an American voice. For one small moment, happiness descended—this was not her son. But her relief quickly vanished. It was Nick, his wide grin, his lazy left eye that made his face still seem goofily adolescent. She saw the Scorpio tattoo on his neck, the tattoo that had caused her husband to hit out at him that first time he had run away.

  It was not Nick’s body. She knew him as a skinny young man, still vividly remembered his embarrassment as the first sprinklings of black hair appeared on his belly and his chest, how he would try to hide his body at the beach by crossing his arms. ‘Don’t be embarrassed, Nicky,’ she would laugh at him, scratching at his belly. ‘You’re becoming a man. Be proud.’ He would snap at her, push her away from him.

  This was not Nick’s body. He had muscles now, his torso and chest were smooth. She rose, began to pace, not looking, looking. He was on his back, the ugly man was sodomising him. She hated him, she detested him.

  ‘Why?’ It was a scream. ‘You didn’t need money. We gave you everything. Why? Why? Why?’ The choked word was her defence, she threw it at the screen, no longer caring who heard: the neighbours, the laughing children, the whole world. She wanted Nick to hear it, wanted him to understand her fury.

  She roamed the room, cursing him and wounding herself, smashing her palms against her temples, sinking her fingernails into the flesh of her arms, making herself bleed. She strode around and around the room, damning him to the devil. On the mantelpiece was a photo of the family. Nicky, her little Nicky.

  She stopped and turned back to the screen. She watched, appalled, as Nick, with joy in his eyes, licked at the semen dripping from the other man’s penis.

  She took the remote and shut off that world. There was a last fleeting glimpse of her son, the camera in his face, his eyes to heaven, as his mouth and jaw were bathed in semen. The video whirred to a halt inside the VCR.

  An advertisement was on the television. She watched a young woman hold up a box of detergent, the pristine whiteness a shock after the muted yellows and oranges of the video. It too seemed obscene, contaminated by all that she had just witnessed. Her breath was retching. She threw the ashtray against the wall with such force that she stumbled and collapsed. She lay curled up on the floor, with no tears but with her entire body shaking and convulsing.

  When she finally rose, the room was dark. She turned off the TV and threw open the curtains, allowing in the winter’s fading sun. She ejected the video from the player, and dropped it and its cover into the kitchen sink. She opened the window, switched on the fan above the stove, and took out a bottle of methylated spirits from the cupboard underneath the sink. She doused the video, struck a match, threw it and moved away. The flame leapt, grabbed the edges of the curtains. She rushed to put out the flames, ripping apart the fabric, throwing the still-burning material into the sink. She stood in awe as the flames flared and leapt almost to the ceiling, washing the kitchen in their fiery light. Slowly, the fire stopped dancing and she approached the sink. The video was now two shattered solid white wheels afloat in a thick black ooze. The smoke smelt toxic. She coughed and fanned the smoke towards the window. Covering her mouth, she leaned over the sink and blasted the foulness with water. There was a sizzling, more black smoke, then finally nothing. She scooped the coagulated mess into her gloved hands and threw it in the bin, spitting on it before she slammed the lid.

  She scrubbed, scoured the kitchen with disinfectant. The sink she attacked mercilessly, her face, her arms, her back dripping with perspiration; she bathed the sink in vinegar till it shone silver, till all signs of blackness had disappeared.

  When she had finished, when the house was once again neat and clean, when the shards of the ashtray had been collected and deposited in the bin, when all was as before except for the reproving nakedness of the kitchen window, she took a bottle of brandy and sat cross-legged in the spare room, his old room.

  She took out the family photo albums, and drank and remembered. There was Nick at his confirmation, grinning proudly at the camera. There was Nick as she knew him, the real Nick, in a singlet by the sea, his arm around his cousin’s shoulder, laughing so hard his eyes were squeezed shut. There was Nick at two and Nick at five. There was Nick in his school uniform, Nick as a surly thirteen-year-old in a village square in Italy. She filled and refilled her glass, poring over the photographs, remembering, replenishing her memories, filling her eyes and her mind with her Nick.

  She finished the bottle, going through the photo albums again and again. When her husband found her, she was whimpering her son’s name, over and over, a blanket of photos spread around her. He took her in his arms, placed her gently in bed, whispered to her that she should sleep.

  But sleep would never again be peace. She lay there still, listening to the muted words of his praying.

  Porn 2

  WHERE DOES JESUS LIVE? I KNOW. He lives deep down in the sewer with me.

  I saw Jesus just the other night. I was with Mickey. He was shit-scared, couldn’t stop looking over his shoulders, jerking his body this way and that, jumping around, grinding his teeth from all the goey he had shot up. He was petrified cos he owed Dick Cheese Saunders, that big fat fuck, two thousand bucks. Mickey didn’t have two thousand bucks. He could barely scrape together a lousy twenty.

  I saw Jesus in Mickey’s eyes. For a brief moment they had stopped twitching and had swerved back to look at me. Our Saviour stared straight out.

  Then a fleshy, hairy paw landed on Mickey’s shoulder and I heard a gruff, bass voice say, ‘Where ya been, cunt?’

  Dick Cheese Saunders had found us.

  I waited outside the kebab shop, my hands deep in the pockets of my tracky daks, trying to keep warm. I tried to scam money off some drunk working stiffs going past but the turds wouldn’t even look at me.

  I was freaking out that Dick Cheese Saunders would kick the shit out of Mickey. Saunders was capable of anything when he lost it, and two thousand bucks was a lot to lose. Please, Jesus, I kept thinking to myself, please look after him. Please. That made me feel a bit better. Jesus wouldn’t let anything
bad happen to Mickey. Jesus was in Mickey, I’d seen him.

  And Jesus was there alright. Straight after, Mickey galloped up to me, all gangling arms, skinny long legs and the biggest shit-eating grin spread on his face. He wrapped an arm around me and pulled me to the ground, pretending to dry hump me. I punched him off. I had a stiffy.

  Saunders had offered a deal: if Mickey agreed to do some porno scenes in a video he was shooting, Saunders would forget about the debt. He’d even promised to chuck in a baggy of heroin.

  Mickey said yes straight away. ‘I’m gonna get fucking high,’ he told me. ‘So fucking high that it won’t be me on the video. Then I’m out of here. I’m gonna catch a bus back to Adelaide, find my mum and go cold turkey. I miss my mum, I even miss that hole of a city.’ His eyes were wide and shiny. ‘That way,’ he continued, ‘I won’t have no more debts, no reason for anyone to look for me. I can fucking disappear and never have to think of frigging Sydney ever again.’

  •

  Mickey was an angel and all of us were in love with him. All of us. There are whores in the brothels and on the streets tonight crying as they’re getting fucked because Mickey is on that bus back to Adelaide. There are men driving down to the Wall, looking for their sandy-haired seraph and returning home disappointed. After Mickey, no one else would do. I bet those faggots are crying as well. I’m not crying. I’m not sooking like a baby. I’m sitting on the beach, the waves crashing in the blackness, the waves that go all the way back and forth, back and forth, from here to America. I’m not feeling the cold. The heroin is liquid honey inside of me.

  •

  Mickey took me with him to the shoot. It was in some warehouse apartment in Annandale, around the corner from Booth Street. There was no furniture in there and the windows had all been blacked out. The whole joint was crammed with lights and cameras, microphones, cables and coloured plastic that went over the lights.

  There was me and Mickey, Dick Cheese Saunders, and two young blokes, one holding a camera and the other the sound equipment. There was an older man, who said he was the director. He had a camera as well. He spoke in a thick accent that I couldn’t place, that I never heard before.