‘Fuck me.’ The insistent words now almost shouted. The demon words did their work, they aroused him further. Ghassan looked down at his cock, wet from lubricant and spit, flecks of shit visible on the shaft. He stared in fascination at the pink hole that was stretching, opening up to receive him. It was the raw red of blood and the pitch black of night. Ghassan was not wearing a condom and the stranger had not asked for one. He wished for death, he trusted in death, his words were a call to death. Fuck me. Ghassan pushed the whole of himself into the European, as if through his cock he was splitting in two the very universe itself. Ghassan moaned in the darkness and from deep inside his ecstasy and his loathing, he spilt himself. He shuddered, jerked like an epileptic as he dissipated into the whiteness. The body underneath him also began a relentless jerking. The stranger groaned, he called out into the void. Shamelessly, he was calling out to God, not knowing that God abhorred him. A trail of white splattered across the vinyl arm of the couch.
Omar had pointed out the building to him not long after they had first met. He had described, coldly, what went on inside it. Ghassan had listened, shocked, as Omar told him that children were taken there and violated, how iniquitous orgies as vile and blasphemous as those of the time of Sodom and Gomorrah were committed there inside the deceptively innocuous simple brown brick facade of the building, how men were ensnared and made insane by demons who corrupted the holy books with their bodily excretions. A small rectangular plaque the colours of the rainbow was the only indication of the depravities performed inside. Is it not scandalous, Omar asked, that the very symbol of God’s promise to man has been taken by these devils and become a promise of death and sin?
The building sat tucked in between an alley and a large warehouse stocking parts for automobiles and motorbikes. Across the road was a bank. On the corner diagonally opposite was a twenty-four-hour convenience store. Their friend worked there and they were waiting for him to finish his shift. As they were talking, an emaciated girl turned into the alley next to the store and crouched behind a large square industrial bin. Ghassan had been trying to take in Omar’s words, could not believe what he was hearing, was ashamed by how those words made him feel. The girl walked back out from behind the bin and he was staring right at her. She looked startled but then flung a syringe at his feet and jeered, ‘Fuck off, curry muncher.’ She stumbled as she lurched past them and then her gait slowed. Her white skin was the pallor of ghosts.
‘She is the walking dead,’ Omar said quietly. ‘They let their young die on the streets here, alone. And inside, they have their orgies.’
Omar must always be proud of him. Omar would never know his shame.
The stranger wiped his wet cock with a tissue, and then, shyly, again like a little boy, he offered a clean tissue to Ghassan. Wordlessly, Ghassan took it, wiped himself clean and then pulled up his trousers. The European did the same, both of them with their backs to each other, ludicrously embarrassed by their nudity, as if the last few minutes of primal intimacy had not occurred.
Ghassan was about to undo the latch on the door when the stranger spoke.
‘Do you smoke?’ He was offering a cigarette. Ghassan reached over and took one. The man lit the cigarette for him and their hands touched. Ghassan pulled away.
‘I think you are in my lecture. At uni. I do engineering as well.’ There was a hopeful glint in the man’s eyes. He was waiting expectantly for Ghassan’s answer.
And for a moment Ghassan wished to answer thus: I know you and I know who and what you can be. I have loved you for months now, and I have wanted to communicate to you all the wonder and joy and pain that is in this world. I have dreamt that together we would discover God and in our submission and faith we would also discover that there is a union of souls in love that the body and its base functions can never compare to. Oh, how I have wished for this and how I regret that this is not possible. Come now, take my hand, and I will lead you out of here. This place is death and destruction, and if it did not occur today, it would happen tomorrow or the day after, for this place is an abomination. Will you come with me?
Instead, Ghassan shook his head. He made his accent deliberately thick, his speech broken. ‘No, no me. I no go university, I no student.’
He thought the man would object, contradict his deceit. But instead the man nodded, and a rueful half-smile appeared on his face. ‘My mistake.’ The smile vanished. ‘Got a girlfriend, have ya?’ Then, more spitefully, ‘Or maybe a wife?’
Ghassan said nothing. He dropped the cigarette and stubbed it out on the dirty wet floor.
The man sat back on the couch and unzipped his jeans. ‘You can fuck me again.’
Ghassan unlatched the door and pulled it open. The whiff of chemicals and offal, men visible in the shadows.
‘Leave the door open,’ the man called out, in a tone both defensive and accusing. ‘I’m not finished.’
The corridor was full of shadows, naked ghouls—luminescent, poisonous white skin—whose hands groped at him. Ghassan pushed them all away, refusing to look at the bodies surrounding him. The noise of fornication was all around him, but he ignored it and maintained his purposeful walk. He walked past the showers and sauna and into the small alcove with the lockers. He pulled the key from his pocket.
Ghassan began the countdown in his head. He looked out past the locker room to where a bored attendant was sitting at the counter flicking through a magazine. Behind him was the exit, the door that led to the street and to the light. Ghassan hesitated, he panicked, his resolve gone.
Every second of every minute of every hour of every day, awake or asleep, we must pray in order to resist sin. In the diabolical din of this hellhole he heard Omar’s words break through, a ray of illumination that cleaved the darkness. The words, their light, wrapped themselves around him. He would not flee; he secured the bulky belt that contained God’s fury tighter around his middle. He patted, and he set forth.
As soon as he had entered this inferno, paid the surly attendant twenty dollars and spotted the youth in the alcove, Ghassan knew that he was doomed to sin, he did not have the resolve to resist temptation. Their magazines, their videos, their films, their dirty words scrawled on toilet walls, their nakedness, their parading of their bodies, their hatred of chastity, their decadence, their sadism, their brutality, their filth: it had infected him, it was in his blood. And like a cancer, it fed on itself, bred on itself, so that the fever intensified. He had once wondered what it would be like to touch another man’s skin. Now that was not enough. He had seen too much; nothing was sacred, nothing was safe, not even a child. He had become one of them but soon he and all of them would be gone. By doing God’s work he could atone. There would be no more magazines, no more films and filthy words, no nakedness, no brutality, no sadism, no filth. He was bringing the fire.
He walked out of the alcove and back up the stairs that led to the cubicles, to the violent red and orange light. A frail old man was desperately stroking at his crotch and clutched at Ghassan as he shoved past him. He stopped in front of the scene of his sin and saw that the European was once again bent over the vinyl couch, and another man was entering him.
Ghassan was the fire. He turned away and looked down the corridor. A dark-skinned man with the fleshy jowls of a bourgeois Punjabi was looking away from him, ashamed. Your false gods cannot save you. There is only one God, my God. At the end of the corridor, a television monitor looked down at them all. On the screen a scrawny pale-skinned youth had his eyes screwed shut as a man furiously ejaculated all over the boy’s cheeks, his chin, his naked shoulder, his hair, his lips and mouth. This was what they did to their children.
He was counting down. Only a few seconds now and he would be free.
On the screen, the boy’s eyes opened and looked straight at Ghassan. The boy was smiling and the semen on his face sparkled as tears.
Then there was only the unforgiving, intransmutable silence.
Praise for Barracuda
‘There a
re shades of Faulkner in this brilliant, beautiful book. If it doesn’t make you cry, you can’t be fully alive.’
— Sunday Times
‘It swims, it soars, it is full of sap and feeling: it will enrage you, it will engage you, it will fill you with pity and wonder.’
— Peter Craven, Sun-Herald
‘I finished Barracuda on a high: moved, elated, immersed . . . This is the work of a superb writer who has completely mastered his craft but lost nothing of his fiery spirit in so doing. Barracuda is a big achievement. Not least because, for all its power and glory, for all its sound and fury, it everywhere manifests “the ruthless calm of the truth”.’
— The Observer
‘Tsiolkas writes with compelling clarity about the primal stuff that drives us all: the love and hate and fear of failure. He is also brilliant on the nuances of relationships. Some of the scenes in this novel about the hurt human beings inflict on each other are so painful that they chill the blood. At times, the prose is near to poetry.’
— Sunday Times
‘By page 70 I realised that I was reading something epic and supremely accomplished. Thereafter, I found myself more and more admiring of the subtle, profoundly human way that Tsiolkas was handling his subject. And I finished Barracuda on a high: moved, elated, immersed . . . This is the work of a superb writer who has completely mastered his craft but lost nothing of his fiery spirit in so doing. It is a big achievement.’
— Guardian
‘This involving and substantial tale—surprisingly tender for all its sweary shock-value—is carried swiftly along by Tsiolkas’s athletic, often lyrical prose.’
— Daily Mail
‘Masterful, addictive, clear-eyed storytelling about the real business of life: winning and losing.’
— Viv Groskop, Red Online
‘The Slap, Christos Tsiolkas’s bestselling previous novel declared “Welcome to Australia in the early 21st century.” The same semi-ironic sentiment echoes throughout Barracuda, which is, if anything, an even greater novel . . . It may tell an old, old story, but it has rarely been told in a better way.’
— Telegraph
Praise for The Slap
‘Once in a while a novel comes along that reminds me why I love to read: The Slap is such a book . . . Tsiolkas throws open the window on society, picks apart its flaws, embraces its contradictions and recognises its beauty, all the time asking the reader, Whose side are you on? Honestly, one of the three or four truly great novels of the new millennium.’
— John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
‘The Slap is nothing short of a tour de force, and it confirms Christos Tsiolkas’s reputation as one of the most significant contemporary storytellers at work today . . . Here is a novel of immense power and scope.’
— Colm Toíbín, author of Brooklyn
‘Brilliant, beautiful, shockingly lucid and real, this is a novel as big as life built from small, secret, closely observed beats of the human heart. A cool, calm, irresistible masterpiece.’
— Chris Cleave, author of The Other Hand
‘A novel of great emotional complexity; as the narrative unfolds, it becomes clear that Tsiolkas has a rare ability to inhabit his characters’ inner worlds. The Slap places family life under the microscope, and the outcome is nothing less than a modern masterpiece.’
— The Times
‘The Book of the Summer. Now and again a book comes along that defines a summer. This year that book is The Slap . . . The Slap has one elusive, rare quality: it appeals to both genders . . . The ideal summer read: escapist, funny and clever writing by a brilliant Australian novelist.’
— Telegraph (UK)
‘Strikingly tender . . . It claws into you with its freshness and truth.’
— Sydney Morning Herald
‘It’s often said that the best politicians are those who can instinctively divine the zeitgeist of their country’s centre. For the ones who can’t, I would place The Slap as mandatory bedside table reading. It’s a perfect social document of what Australia is today. More importantly, it’s also one hell of a read.’
— Venero Armanno, The Australian
‘Tsiolkas is a hard-edged, powerful writer, but glowing at the heart of all the anger among these feuding families are sparks of understanding, resignation and even love . . . The novel transcends both suburban Melbourne and the Australian continent, leaving us exhausted but gasping with admiration.’
— Washington Post
‘Think Tom Wolfe meets Philip Roth. Or The Sopranos meets The Real Housewives of Orange County.’
— LA Times
‘Fond, fractious, lit from within by flashes of casual lust and malice, it’s like Neighbours as Philip Roth might have written it.’
— The Sunday Times
‘This ingenious and passionate book is a wonderful dissection of suburban Australian living . . . this is a beautifully structured and executed examination of the complexity of modern living; a compelling journey into the darkness of suburbia.’
— Independent on Sunday
‘. . . a “way we live now” novel . . . riveting from beginning to end.’
— Jane Smiley, Guardian
‘An ambitious, state-of-the-nation novel of John Howard’s post-9/11 Australia. Tsiolkas manages to add winding complexities to each of the inner portraits—which might have spiralled out of control in the hands of a less-deft writer. Tsiolkas’s remarkable narrative fluidity proves that a fabulous page-turner can also contain great emotional power and intelligence.’
— Independent
‘A rich, provocative and poignant examination, exploring such themes as loyalty, friendship and marriage, class, gender politics, generation gaps, Aboriginal assimilation, immigrant identity and, of course, corporal punishment. It’s an ambitious agenda, but nothing ever feels shoehorned in, and that’s down to the even-handed skill with which he draws his characters. No clear lines of morality are drawn, and that’s The Slap’s greatest strength.’
— National Post
‘Tsiolkas achieves an unusual double vision that both drives the story forward at speed and generates much of its pathos. We are presented with a cast of characters whose situation reflects the affluent, insecure, globalised Australia of the early twenty-first century. Yet this also makes the novel transportable into other cultures; it is at once quintessentially Australian, and a story that resonates in our own brittle and commercialised culture.’
— Times Literary Supplement
‘The Slap could well be one of the most successful state-of-the-nation novels of our times . . . A genuinely important, edgy, urgent book that hunts big game. Nothing escapes Tsiolkas’s lacerating gaze . . . The novel keeps readers constantly on their toes, pushing boundaries, questioning lazy assumptions, provoking and, above all, smuggling in unease under the guileful blanket of a gripping read.’
— Telegraph
‘With The Slap Tsiolkas secures his place as one of our most important novelists . . . By painting an Australia we can recognise in language so good you don’t notice it, Tsiolkas has written an absolute ripper.’
— Age
‘A blistering portrait of domestic life. Tsiolkas dissects the psyche of each character with surgical precision.’
— Sun-Herald
‘One of the most astute chroniclers and critics of our age and culture, Tsiolkas is a passionate, poetic, political polemicist, but his critiques take the form of enthralling stories that are peopled with characters that bounce off the page.’
— Adelaide Advertiser
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Merciless Gods Page 25