Sweetness and Light

by Liam Pieper

  It was hours until Dad came home, merry, singing Springsteen at the top of his lungs. He headed straight to the fridge and the carton of beer inside. His dinner was cooling in the oven and Connor, who had already eaten, was warm in bed. When Dad came in and stood for a silent moment, silhouetted in the door-frame, Connor shut his eyes tight, pretended to be fast asleep.

  In the morning Connor woke with a fever and a dull ache in his ear that grew steadily worse through the school day. He became confused – his head felt overstuffed and the world around him soft and uncertain. All sound was muffled, as if he were underwater, and when the lunch bell rang and he tried to stand, his knees gave way and he sat down again heavily.

  School sent him home, then his mum sent him to bed. The pressure in his ears grew unbearable. He tried to relieve it by holding his nose and blowing, the way he’d been taught after diving too deep with a snorkel. He took a deep breath, a huff, and then there was shattering pain as something gave way in his left ear.

  A creaking, septuagenarian house-call doctor was called who took his temperature and prescribed antibiotics. Connor’s dad thanked him politely, saw him out, then scrunched up the prescription and binned it.

  ‘My boy’s not taking antibiotics,’ he announced. ‘That shit ruins your immune system.’ He turned to his wife. ‘He’s an athlete, he’ll be better in the morning.’ His voice had the particular conviction of a man with five beers under his belt.

  In the morning Connor was worse. The fever deepened, days drifted past in a blur with Connor in too much pain to sleep but unable to get out of bed. On the fourth day, he found a congealed syrup of blood and pus on his pillow where his ear rested. His mother wanted to call the doctor again, but Dad had made a decision and he wouldn’t go back on it. No antibiotics. Connor would beat it on his own.

  The fever broke – right after lunch one day, Connor woke from a nap and found his pillowcase soaked with blood, but he thrummed with the energy of a body back from the brink. He sat up, took stock, found the pressure in his ear much reduced, his appetite returned.

  A can of tomato soup later, he was propped up on the couch when Dad returned from the RSL, saw Connor sitting up.

  ‘See?’ he said, his parenting vindicated. ‘Right as rain.’

  Early next morning, Dad woke Connor by waving a paper bag under his nose. He had driven to McDonald’s and returned with a feast – Connor was usually banned from junk food, anything that might be detrimental to his training, but this was a special occasion. The Commonwealth Games were in full swing, and this morning was the 1500 freestyle. This time Dad was championing Daniel Kowalski, having soured on Perkins after his piss-poor performances in the lead up. Grant Hackett was the favourite, but Dad couldn’t bring himself to put money on him, put off by his goofy good looks. Besides, the odds on Kowalski were ten to one, and Dad was confident of a dark-horse effort and a massive windfall for him.

  Connor knew by the timbre of Dad’s smile that he had a great deal of money on the line; his grin, close-mouthed and twisted up to one side, was ironed onto his face. It didn’t dip through the interminable chatter of the television commentators, or the races gearing up to the big one. The camera panned past Perkins sitting poolside before the race. He looked sullen, scared, and Dad snorted, confident in his choice.

  His expression barely flickered when Kowalski slipped behind Perkins, both of them half a lap behind Hackett nearly from the start. When Hackett was called to the podium for gold, the smile remained a vestigial thing as the rest of Dad’s face crumpled – then his body collapsed into the chair.

  Nobody spoke. Kowalski hadn’t even placed. The tinny burble of the televised cheers and the commentary dissecting the race was the only sound, until Dad reached out for the remote and switched off the TV. Still smiling, he stood, and without looking at his family walked out of the room.

  Connor and Mum sat, eyes locked on the television, where a tiny dot still glowed in the centre of the set, before blinking out of existence. Neither of them wanted to look at the other, scared of what they would see confirmed there. Instead they listened to the fridge opening and closing, the pop of a beer bottle opening, and then to the slamming of the screen door. In the driveway, the ute roared to life, then purred down the road.

  It was dark when he was shaken awake. Gently at first, then, when he protested, more vigorously.

  ‘Con. Con! Wake up, buddy.’

  Connor sat up, saw Dad sitting at the foot of his bed, one arm twisted back to shake him, the other holding a tally by the neck. ‘What? Dad?’

  ‘Get up. We’re going swimming.’

  He sat up, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and the caked blood from his ear. He glanced at the clock, neon red letters in a digital grid. It was 4 am.

  ‘It’s too early, Dad.’

  ‘Don’t be lazy.’ His tone was measured.

  ‘I’m sick, Dad.’

  ‘You’ll feel better for a little exercise.’

  When they reached the pool, it was shut, would be until six – almost two hours away. ‘Fuck,’ Dad said softly, reading the sign. A six-pack dangled from one hand, and he laced the fingers of the other through the chicken-wire fence. ‘Fuck.’

  He glanced up, calculated their chances of jumping the fence, took the measure of the barbed wire at the top, glanced appraisingly at Connor, who shook his head, horrified.

  ‘No way, Dad. Let’s just go home. I don’t feel well.’

  ‘Mate,’ Dad said, very softly. ‘We’re not going to do that. You need to train if you’re ever going to make the Olympics.’

  ‘Dad . . .’

  ‘Don’t you dare fucking “Dad” me,’ he snapped. ‘You ungrateful little shit. That’s the problem with your . . . no work ethic, no fucking clue about how things work . . . everything on a fucking platter.’

  Dad stopped, drew breath, swayed slightly. He looked around, his eyes hooded and fixed in place by booze, his balance wonky as he scanned the carpark for another way into the pool. With no way over the wire, he grunted in disappointment. Then his face lit up. Connor followed his dad’s gaze across the carpark, across town, to the concrete dykes that walled in the sea baths.

  The night had changed the baths, made the familiar into something slimy and gothic. He’d swum in the baths so many times growing up that their layout was woven into his muscles; he knew where it was shallow enough to sink his toes into the sandy floor and where it was deep enough to dive, knew that he could hold his breath and shoot underwater from one concrete wall to another, where he could grab a fistful of algae that would dissolve in his hand. In the moonlight he could see that algae waving its tendrils in an eerie dance, an inky darkness below.

  He tested the water with a toe, recoiled from the freezing bite of it.

  ‘Go on then,’ Dad urged.

  Connor shook his head, looked for some reason beyond the plain truth of ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Get in,’ said Dad. ‘It’ll warm up when you get moving.’

  Connor shucked himself out of the tracksuit and, knowing that if he hesitated he would never find the will to go in, dived.

  The water was colder than he had imagined, the shock of it forcing the air out of his lungs, discombobulating him before he came up again. He thrashed to the surface, panicked and found his dad laughing. ‘See, mate?’ he called out. ‘It’s not so bad, is it? A quick five kays, buddy, and then let’s go get breakfast.’

  Connor dived again, hoping to acclimatise to the cold, searching for numbness, and started across the pool. He was halfway when something brushed his leg, seaweed probably, but enough to throw him off his rhythm and to find infinite blackness where the bottom of the pool should have been. His mind betrayed him, populating the pool with sharks, octopuses, the sewer worm horror from that one episode of The X-Files, and he had to fight to banish them.

  He looked back to where his father sat on the concrete bleachers, cracking open the first of his six-pack. Connor knew that Dad was counting the distance,
would not settle for anything less than the full five kilometres, and steeled himself to finish the swim.

  His body did not adjust over time, not in the way it should. The water didn’t seem to grow warmer around him; instead, the cold seeped into him in a whole new way, slowed him down, squeezed the breath out of him. Cramps shooting through his limbs forced him out of his rhythm every time he found it.

  Worse, his ear was killing him. The dull ache that had been fading last night was now rising from a low hum to a symphony, drowning out everything else, making him forget even how cold he was. He was sure he could feel the pus oozing from his ear canal and into the baths, poisoning the water. He imagined the surfers coming out in the morning to find the whole sea stained the gnarly colour of his sickbed pillow.

  His balance was off, the echoes of his own thrashing underwater confused him, made him disoriented. Every time he broke the surface to breathe, he found he had veered hopelessly to the right. He gave up the underwater breaststroke and switched to freestyle, and finally, after what seemed like hours, counted off five kilometres. He reached the sea wall, giddy with relief, and reached for the metal ladder out of the pool. A shadow fell over him.

  ‘See?’ said Dad. ‘Piece of piss. Don’t you feel better for it?’

  Connor shook his head, dizzy. ‘Let me up. I want to go home, Dad. Please.’

  Dad looked to where what remained of six-pack rested at his feet. He was only three beers in, three to go. ‘Let’s stay a little longer, mate. You’ll need to get back in shape if you’re going to ever get anywhere with this.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Another five, buddy. It’ll be easy.’

  Connor shook his head, put his foot on the lowest rung, lifted himself out of the pool, and Dad’s hand was instantly on his shoulder.

  ‘You’re going to swim another five.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You can. Mate. You’ve got to toughen up a little bit. Don’t be a pussy all your life.’ Then Connor was submerged again, the hand still on his shoulder, another in his hair, holding him under. Dad was delivering a lecture, asking him if this was the sum of his ambition, to be a deadshit from a dead town. ‘Little shit. I’ve had it up to here, you fucking lazy – I’ve worked too hard to watch you throw away your dream.’

  Dad let him go, and he was swimming again, another five kilometres. The whole time he could hear Dad berating him, urging him on, alternately telling him how proud he was and lambasting him. Much later, this was how he remembered it, although he knew it couldn’t have happened exactly that way – how could he have heard Dad’s monologue from underwater? But nights like that have a way of chipping away the corners of things.

  He finished the full ten kilometres while his dad finished the six-pack. He heard the sound of breaking glass each time Dad finished a stubby, throwing it out in a wide, graceful arc, to shatter on the rocky outcrop where the sea anemones waited out the low tide.

  Connor dived, and stayed under as long as he could, and when he broke the surface again he would be far away, past the ocean wall, past the rock pools dotted with broken glass, away in a place he could not yet imagine, except that it would be as glittering and golden as the sunrise that was still hours away.

  Connor supposes the sun is coming up, although he has no way to know for sure. He has been sitting here so long that sweat is pooling under his bare thighs where they touch the plastic chair. The skin there prickles from the damp, a feeling made worse as he shifts around to get comfortable. He slouches, elbows on knees, head hanging down between them. Sweat beads on his forehead, rolls down to the tip of his nose, drops onto the floor. He does not wipe it away, lets it run its course. His hands are not bound, but he cannot move – there is nowhere to run.

  Even if he made it to the door, down the road, to the next village, someone would spot him, summon the police. He knows it, the cops know he knows it, so he sits still as they argue about what to do with him. Three cops: the one in charge, two deputies in khaki holding lathis – heavy bamboo nightsticks – and another cluster of men who seem to just appear whenever there is a spectacle.

  The cops are arguing in Konkani and he can catch only a few words.

  ‘Can you please speak English?’ Connor asks.

  They ignore him.

  He tries in Hindi. ‘Please, I can’t understand you.’ He means to sound calm, but it comes out terse, petulant. His voice sounds shrill as he tries to sharpen his consonants.

  He knows Hindi well enough, or at least the bits and pieces of cliché he’s picked up from the movies. In the summer, when his tan deepens, he sometimes tries to present himself as Anglo-Indian – and, if he’s standing by the side of the road hailing an auto, or in line to buy his lunch at the little restaurant by the beach, he could sometimes pass.

  When he speaks, though, the brutal, downtrodden Australian vowels creep into his speech and it all vanishes, the game is up. They know he’s a foreigner. He’d like to be able to speak without the slightest trace of accent. He’d like – although it will never be possible – to understand everything that’s happening in the cinema, to intuit the words and feelings of the songs. He would like to pass unseen, ungawked at. Whenever he enters a shop, the little chime goes off, the faces turn and size him up.

  He gives up on Hindi, switches back to English. The police chief sits behind his desk, watching impassively as Connor fumbles with his story. The fan overhead does not help the heat, only provokes it. Connor’s mouth is dry as he stumbles, loses his words, contradicts himself. His accent sounds more Australian than he has heard himself sound in years – the treacherous rising inflection at the end of his sentences, as though he is unsure of the facts. This isn’t my fault? I didn’t do anything wrong? If you know what’s good for you, you’ll let me go?

  The police chief’s hands are loosely steepled, resting on the table between them, his eyelids heavy and sleepy. It is very late. Connor’s patience is wearing thin. ‘Are you even fucking listening to me?’ he snaps.

  The cop standing behind him pinches his ear like he’s a truant schoolboy. Connor moves his head involuntarily, and he feels anger rising, the swift flash up the spine. The station chief waves a weary hand and his ear is released. The cop’s eyes fall on Connor. He speaks in English. His voice is high, imperious – a voice used to explaining things only once. He does so now.

  The woman Connor took out diving has not returned. They have not found the body and do not expect to. The tides would have brought her back by now, if she were coming back. She is somewhere in the Arabian Sea, caught in the currents. Food for fish.

  The chief exchanges a look with the cop who stands behind Connor’s chair, who in turn barks something in Konkani to the crowd. The men in civilian clothes file out as one, leaving only Connor, the chief, and one other officer, who leans against the desk, one hand in the pocket of his khakis, one hand loosely dropped over his lathi, which he absentmindedly uses to tap out a rhythm on the stone floor.

  When they are alone, the chief continues. They know that he has no licence to run a scuba boat, no permits, no papers. That in running the boat he’s been endangering countless tourists over the years. Also, they know that he steals from tourists, from people who trust him enough to bring him into their hotel room. There have been several complaints from foreigners. It is well known around town. The police have overlooked it until now, but nothing is forever. The whole town will attest – he uses this word, ‘attest’ – to the fact that he was the one who talked her into going out on the water, and that it is his fault she didn’t come back.

  ‘With respect,’ Connor begins, wets his lips, begins again. ‘With respect, this is not my fault. I mean . . . this is tragic but it’s . . . not my fault,’ he finishes, lamely. The chief is waiting for more. ‘People drown all the time. It was an accident.’

  The chief’s lips pull back in a grimace. ‘If that is correct, as you say, then this accident is your fault. A woman is dead, sir. She has friends, family. They
will want answers. They will want justice.’

  Connor hears the implicit threat, but believes there is an ancillary meaning to the cop’s statement.

  He’s lived in this place long enough to know there is little you can’t get away with, if you know how to navigate. People do drown all the time. Tragedies happen every day on this stretch of coast; murders, rapes, disappearances. Too many for the tiny police force to deal with. They are a provincial station, understaffed, run off their feet already. Nobody needs that kinds of paperwork.

  The truth is few crimes ever become official in Shanti. It’s bad for morale and it’s bad for tourism – without which the economy of the state would implode overnight. And so reports are lost, fatalities are processed as death by misadventure; drownings, a scooter hitting a pothole on a neglected stretch of road, accidental drug overdoses. Tragic, but unavoidable, and nobody’s fault. He suspects if he plays it right, this will be another of them.

  ‘Perhaps . . .’ Connor chooses his words carefully. ‘Maybe there is something I can do. Something to help?’

  The chief catches the hint. Connor is floating the possibility of a bribe. In these parts the euphemism is chai-pani; a little cash for tea and water. Over the years, he’s bought a lot of tea for a lot of police. ‘Of course, all things are possible. If not easy.’ The chief names a price, and Connor’s heart sinks. The amount is exorbitant.

  ‘That’s impossible. I don’t have that kind of money.’ Even if he could barter the cops down to half this sum, he could not hope to raise that money. Not in this lifetime.

  The chief reddens, all patience is sluiced from his face, and the remaining officer stands up and walks to Connor’s side. The metal stud at the end of his lathi scrapes the ground.

  The corruption in the Shanti police station is deep, but not enough to alleviate the hardships. Each of the deputy police holds other jobs around town – working in restaurants, overseeing fishing boats, running security for the better guesthouses. The chief’s one core duty is to sign in for his subordinates, to see that they receive their government cheques while pursuing these alternate careers.