by Trent Dalton
‘Details, Eli,’ Brian Robertson said. ‘I want every last detail. Everything you remember.’
I said nothing.
‘What do we call it?’ Brian asked at the editorial meeting. ‘What’s our headline for this whole insane saga? Give it to me in three words.’
I said nothing.
*
I knock on the door of the house. My old house. A man comes to the door. Mid-forties. Deep black skin of an African man. Two smiling girls around his legs.
I explain why I’ve come. I’m the boy who was stabbed by Iwan Krol. I once lived here. This is where Lyle Orlik was taken away. This is where the story began. I need to show my colleague something inside my old house.
We walk down the hall to Lena’s room. This room of true love. This room of blood. Sky-blue fibro walls. Off-colour paint patches where Lyle once puttied up holes. It’s a girl’s bedroom now. There are Cabbage Patch dolls on a single bed with a pink quilt. My Little Pony posters on the walls.
The African man’s name is Rana. He stands at the entry to Lena’s old bedroom. I ask him if he would mind me looking inside the room’s built-in wardrobe. Rana nods. I slide the wardrobe door along. I push against the back wall of the wardrobe and the wall pops out. Rana is puzzled by this secret door. I ask him if he would mind if Caitlyn and I slid down into the secret void built into his house. He shakes his head.
Our feet meet the cold damp earth. Caitlyn clicks on her small green flashlight. The little circle of white torchlight bounces off the underground brick walls of Lyle’s secret room. The circle stops on a red telephone resting on a cushioned stool.
I look at Caitlyn. She takes a deep breath, stands back from the telephone, like it might be a thing of witchcraft, a thing accursed by dark magic. I move closer to it because I feel compelled to. I stop on the spot. Stand in silence for a long moment. Then the phone rings. I turn back to Caitlyn, confused. She gives no reaction.
Ring, ring.
I move closer to the phone.
Ring, ring.
I turn back to Caitlyn.
‘Do you hear that?’ I ask.
I move closer.
‘Just leave it, Eli,’ Caitlyn says.
Closer.
‘But do you hear it?’
Ring, ring.
My hand reaches out to the phone and I grip the handset and I’m about to raise the handset to my ear when Caitlyn’s hand rests gently on mine.
‘Just let it ring out, Eli,’ she says softly. ‘What’s he going to tell you’ – she puts her other hand behind my head, her perfect and gentle hand sliding down to the back of my neck – ‘that you don’t already know?’
And the phone rings again as she moves into me and the phone rings again as she closes her eyes and presses her lips against mine and I will remember this moment through the stars I see on the ceiling of this secret room and the spinning planets those stars surround and the dust of a million galaxies scattered across her bottom lip. I will remember this kiss through the big bang. I will remember the end through the beginning.
And the phone stops ringing.
Acknowledgements
With them the seed of wisdom did I sow,
And with my own hand labour’d it to grow:
And this was all the harvest that I reap’d –
‘I came like water, and like wind I go’
Into this universe . . .
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
Arthur ‘Slim’ Halliday was a brief and unique friend from a brief and profound chapter of my childhood. Two wonderful books on Slim’s extraordinary life helped fill in some factual blanks for this book: Slim Halliday: The Taxi Driver Killer by Ken Blanch, and Houdini of Boggo Road: The Life and Escapades of Slim Halliday by Christopher Dawson. Thanks, as always, to Rachel Clarke and the library staff at the Courier-Mail archives.
Catherine Milne built this universe with the most assured and encouraging nod of her head. She believed from the start and so did all the extraordinary people at HarperCollins Australia, from James Kellow to Alice Wood to hawk-eyed genius Scott Forbes. Thanks also to copy editor Julia Stiles and proofreaders Pam Dunne and Lu Sierra for your sharp, tender and invaluable work.
The editor of The Weekend Australian Magazine, Christine Middap, is the best magazine editor in the world and she had no clear reason to believe in me a long time ago but she did and this book exists because of her. Deep and eternal thanks also to Paul Whittaker, Michelle Gunn, John Lehmann, Helen Trinca, Hedley Thomas, Michael McKenna, Michael Miller, Chris Mitchell, Campbell Reid, David Fagan and every last glorious and dogged and inspiring mag mate, pod buddy, super sub-editor, snapper brother, byline sister and generally brilliant colleague at The Australian, The Courier-Mail and Brisbane News, past and present.
There have been several creative angels on my shoulder throughout this particular endeavour and I am forever indebted to Nikki Gemmell, Caroline Overington, Matthew Condon, Susan Johnson, Frances Whiting, Sean Sennett, Mark Schliebs, Sean Parnell, Sarah Elks, Christine Westwood, Tania Stibbe, Mary Garden, Greg and Caroline Kelly, and Slade and Felicia Gibson for all the right words at all the right times. Three genuine lifelong cultural heroes of mine – Tim Rogers, David Wenham and Geoffrey Robertson – made the whole book worthwhile just by reading it.
Eli Bell and his full beating heart would like to thank Emillie Dalton, Fiona Brandis-Dalton and every last dear Dalton, Farmer, Franzmann and O’Connor.
Special thanks to Ben Hart, Kathy Young, Jason Freier and the Freier family, Alara Cameron, Brian Robertson, Tim Broadfoot, Chris Stoikov, Travis Kenning, Rob Henry, Adam Hansen, Billy Dale, Trevor Hollywood and Edward Louis Severson III for being there then.
And, finally, thanks to the three beautiful girls who always save the boy. They got it wrong: the universe begins and ends at you. My left shoe.
WINTER WONDERLAND
Words by DICK SMITH Music by FELIX BERNARD
© 1934 (Renewed) WB MUSIC CORP.
International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved.
Reproduced by Permission Of DEVIRRA GROUP.
Unauthorised Reproduction Is Illegal.
Praise for Boy Swallows Universe
‘An astonishing achievement. Dalton is a breath of fresh air – raw, honest, funny, moving. He has created a novel of the most surprising and addictive nature. Unputdownable’ David Wenham
‘I couldn’t stop reading from the moment I started, and I still can barely speak for the beauty of it. Trent Dalton has done something very special here, writing with grace, from his own broken heart’ Caroline Overington, author of The One Who Got Away
‘This novel is a raucous, moving, hilarious triumph – a major new voice on the Australian literary scene has arrived’ Nikki Gemmell, author of The Bride Stripped Bare and After
‘Enthralling – a moving account of sibling solidarity and the dogged pursuit of love’ Geoffrey Robertson QC
‘Stunning. My favourite novel for decades. Left me devastated but looking to the heavens’ Tim Rogers, author of Detours
‘Oh my God. Wow. It’s just superb. I’ve always looked out for Trent’s work because he has a magic about him: what he sees, how he explains things. He can describe a kitchen table in a way that makes you want to throw your arms around it. After reading Boy Swallows Universe, I realise that his genius isn’t really just about writing so much; it’s about hope, and his instinctive and infectious “Yes” to one of the most plaguing questions of the human night: can tenderness survive brutality? This novel confirms Trent Dalton as a genuine treasure of Australian letters’ Annabel Crabb
‘As a brilliant journalist, Trent Dalton has always intimately understood how fact is often stranger than fiction. Perhaps it took someone like him to produce a novel so humming with truth. Call it a hunch, but I think he might’ve just written an Australian classic’ Benjamin Law
About the Author
TRENT DALTON is a staff writer for The Weekend Australian Magazine and a former assi
stant editor of The Courier-Mail. He’s a two-time winner of a Walkley Award for Excellence in Journalism, a three-time winner of a Kennedy Award for Excellence in NSW Journalism and a four-time winner of the national News Awards Features Journalist of the Year. Boy Swallows Universe is his first book.
Copyright
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
First published in Australia in 2018
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Trent Dalton 2018
The right of Trent Dalton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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Cover images: Splendid fairywren by Michael Leach / Getty Images; all other images by shutterstock.com