The Best Australian Stories 2013 Page 23

  Miloš rose quickly, standing as Sima had taught him to do when a woman leaves the room, but he lurched with the movement of the train, and Babydoll flinched and hurried towards the doors. He fell back against the seat as the train pulled on. He travelled several stops for no reason before changing trains and riding all the way back towards his aunt’s.

  Aleksei Nikolić was in Miloš’s science class. On Friday, when Miloš was due to present his biology project, Aleksei threw a pair of wooden chopsticks at Miloš’s back. Miloš tried to pretend he didn’t notice, but the chopsticks lay there on the floor in his peripheral vision. When Ms Nicholls called him to the front to give his presentation, Miloš caught his knee on the table leg and dragged the desk forwards with him as he stood up, and the laughter stirring here and there around the classroom began to spill over.

  Miloš held out the grainy photocopy he’d made in the library, and began to read fast from the notes written on the back. ‘The lungfish can only be found in Africa, South America and Australia. Instead of deriving oxygen from water through the gills like most other fish, the lungfish has lungs, and can breathe air. Lungfish live extremely long lives. One lungfish is known to have lived in an aquarium in Chicago since at least 1933.’

  ‘Miloš,’ Ms Nicholls interrupted, ‘I can’t give you a pass for this task if you just read from your notes. You need to show that you’ve absorbed the research. Could you stick the page up on the board, please?’

  Without a word, Miloš turned and placed the picture on the whiteboard under a magnet. He turned back to the class and breathed out slowly.

  ‘One of the reasons these fish survive for so long is that they are able to face conditions that other species can’t survive in. The swampy habitats that they thrive in can dry out completely during summer, and so they’ve evolved features that let them survive in a sort of suspended state, a bit like hibernation. As summer approaches, they burrow deeper, and their skin changes to retain moisture. As the mud dries out around them, their metabolic rate slows down drastically, and so they are able to live for weeks or even months without feeding, until the dry period is over.

  ‘African people have discovered living lungfishes encased in the walls of mud houses that they built years earlier. Fossils of the lungfish have been found that show that the species has barely changed in the last three to four million years, and scientists refer to it as a “living fossil.” It’s basically a great example of the relationship between evolution and survival.’

  After class, Ms Nicholls called Miloš over. ‘I just wanted you to know that you’ll be getting an A for your project,’ she said quietly. ‘You did a really good job.’ Miloš felt a warm stirring of pride, unbidden and surprising. Sima would be so proud.

  During the final period, Miloš was called to the school office over the P.A. system. Sensei Suzuki looked up at the clock and told him to pack up and take his bag with him. When he approached the school secretary’s desk, she said, ‘Phone call for you, love,’ nodding towards the desk phone without taking her eyes from the computer screen. He lifted the handset cautiously.

  Aunty Dora’s voice was pitched slightly higher than usual. ‘Something’s happened, beba. Your father needs to go to hospital. The ambulance is coming. I’ve taken some soup out of the freezer and left it by the sink for you, just in case we’re not home by dinnertime.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘He might need to have surgery straight away. We think … well, he bumped his shoulder getting out of the shower, and it looks like his arm might be broken.’

  ‘He broke his arm?’ In the corner of his eye Miloš saw the secretary glance up at him. The school bell sounded, tinny and dislocated in the background.

  ‘It doesn’t look good, beba. It probably means that it’s spread to his bones.’

  Miloš opened and closed his mouth. He suddenly had a hard, painful feeling in his throat that reminded him of the time a whole slice of apple slipped down accidentally and stopped somewhere under his sternum. Aunty Dora went on quietly and he could hear her trying not to breathe too hard. ‘We know he’s going to go, Miloš. Probably not right away, but soon. I think we’ll be home when you get there. I just needed to ring in case he ends up going into surgery straight away, but he’s probably too weak for that right now. Try not to worry.’

  As Miloš left the school, the world took on an overexposed look. He didn’t register the sight of Aleksei Nikolić and his buddies lounging at the end of the platform until it was far too late.

  ‘Hey, fishboy,’ Aleksei called. He strolled towards Miloš. ‘We liked your project.’

  Miloš couldn’t help it; tears came in a warm, sudden rush, spilling out of him. Aleksei looked surprised – then he laughed, and shoved Miloš roughly against the chain-link fence. The train’s horn sounded faintly from beyond the bend.

  ‘Whaddaya reckon, Miloš? Ever wanted to ride the train up front?’ Aleksei’s lips drew back involuntarily, revealing perfectly straight teeth. ‘You’re a disgrace,’ he muttered, his face nearly touching Miloš’s. ‘Don’t ever let us see you in that football shirt again. Squinty-eyed piece of shit!’ He thrust Miloš against the fence again and Miloš felt his lunchbox split inside his backpack.

  ‘Hey. Hey! Cut that out!’ Miloš looked over Aleksei’s shoulder and saw Babydoll standing on the opposite platform. She tossed her cigarette to the ground and took a couple of steps towards the edge, but stopped as the train appeared down the line, its outline wavering in the haze.

  Aleksei glanced at her and called out casually, ‘Fuck off, dyke.’

  Babydoll jumped down onto the far set of tracks. It was like watching a sandbag being unloaded from the back of a truck. Her foot slid on the shale and she tipped forwards onto her hands and knees. The train, now less than thirty metres away, let out a long urgent blast on the horn. Miloš felt suddenly like he was going to lose his bowels. Babydoll hit the edge of platform two and hauled herself up, feet scrambling. She charged at Aleksei, grabbing his shoulders with both hands and jerking him backwards. ‘Fuck off!’ she screamed. The train barrelled past, the driver still leaning on the horn. ‘Fuck off, you little cunts!’

  Aleksei spun, trying to shake her off, and she tripped and fell heavily on her side, but lashed out her arms immediately and began grabbing at Aleksei’s ankles. He danced backwards out of her grasp, eyes wide, screaming, ‘Crazy bitch!’ His friends were calling from the doorway of the carriage. He leaped on board just as the train began to move, hauling the doors closed and giving the finger through the scratched pane of glass.

  Miloš was gasping for breath. As the train began to pull away from the platform he screamed hoarsely, ‘Fuck you! Jebo ti konj trudnu sestra na majcinom grobu dok ti otak retardiran gleda iz invalidskihkolica!’ His throat felt like it had been flayed. He slid down the fence and landed heavily on his arse, panting.

  Babydoll gingerly unpeeled herself from the bitumen, half-sitting up and twisting her arm to peer at her skinned elbow. Miloš glanced at her. Her shoulders trembled and she began to laugh, saying, ‘What the hell was that?’

  Flushed, puffing, he rattled off the stupid, juvenile curse in one breath, feeling shame pour down over his shoulders. They’d made a fool of him. ‘I said … May a horse fuck your pregnant sister on your mum’s grave while your retarded dad is watching from his wheelchair.’ Snot was streaming from both of his nostrils and he wiped at it viciously with his sleeve.

  Her laugh was strange: great, uncontrolled draws of breath, like a person having an asthma attack. She leaned back on her elbows on the hot bitumen, shaking her head helplessly. ‘That’s a beauty!’ she said. ‘Can you teach me?’

  Miloš tried to form the words but they clumped together in his throat. Every now and then he was grasped by a strange, quaking sob that seemed to rise up from an unnatural place inside him – but he had begun to laugh, too, and he was sha
king all over. Babydoll stood, came to him, and pulled him up by the hands. ‘Come on,’ she said.

  They walked back up the platform towards the small ticket office. Babydoll banged on the Perspex screen with the flat of her hand and the station attendant appeared, frowning.

  ‘This boy has just been assaulted on the platform.’

  The attendant took in Babydoll’s marijuana-leaf hoodie, the trickling blood on her scarred forearm, and Miloš’s blotchy, tearful face.

  ‘You were assaulted?’ He spoke to Miloš. ‘Who assaulted you?’

  ‘Some other students. I’m a witness. I saw everything,’ Babydoll insisted.

  The attendant gave her a cool look. ‘I’ll get the police on the phone,’ he said. ‘Just wait there.’ Then he glanced at Miloš again and seemed to change his mind. ‘Son? Would you mind stepping round to the side door? Just come around here into my office.’ When Babydoll moved to follow him, the attendant said flatly, ‘I’d like you to wait here in the lobby, please.’

  Miloš had moved towards the door, but he stopped. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, thank you.’

  The attendant said, ‘Son, I need to take a close look at you. I’m first-aid trained.’ His eyes flicked back over Babydoll.

  ‘No, I’m okay.’ Miloš’s senses were spiking, spreading wide around him. He could hear the next train barrelling towards them already. He could hear the tracks singing and feel the layers of shale shifting with the vibrations. He needed to get home. ‘Let’s go, Babydoll. The next train’s coming.’ It was the first time he’d ever said the name aloud.

  The attendant frowned, holding the phone halfway between the cradle and his ear, unsure of the odd scenario he was witnessing. The train appeared, brakes sounding gently as it slowed. Miloš walked towards the doors, glancing back to see if Babydoll was behind him. She gave the finger to the station attendant and then followed him onto the carriage, nudging his shoulder. ‘Hey Miloš. Are you okay, kid?’

  He nodded. She laughed and said, ‘Babydoll, huh. Who’s she when she’s at home?’ He looked at her, confused, but she just shook her head, smiling, and placed a hand on his back, steering him gently towards an empty seat.

  She got off the train before his stop, saying she would go visit her old roommate. Miloš walked home through the deepening afternoon. He could feel the toughening of his skin, the changing of his body.

  He let himself into the flat. Sima was lying against Dora’s frilled pillows in the front bedroom, chalk-faced, his arm strapped against his chest in a tight sling. Miloš dropped his schoolbag in the doorway and climbed across the duvet without taking off his shoes. The movement of the mattress woke his father, who clutched at his arm and grunted. Dora appeared in the doorway and shrilled, ‘Miloš! Get down!’ but Miloš had crawled to his father’s side, putting his arms around his shoulders, and although Sima winced in agony he lifted his good arm and pulled his son’s body tight against him. ‘Miloš,’ Dora begged, ‘Beba. What are you doing?’ And Miloš didn’t lift his head but spoke with his face pressed into his father’s chest, saying, ‘I’ve just realised that he’s not dead yet.’

  The Sleepers Almanac

  Wrecking Ball

  Lucy Treloar

  It’s quiet inside the green water, just my blood pulsing in my ears and the hiss of air. The silt on the rocks around us is like moth wing. It frays at the lightest touch. So we feather our flippers – Kirsty, then Clem, then me – following the thin line Kirsty unreels. She’s already disappeared into the tight passage ahead, and all I can see of Clem is his flippers vanishing into the dark. I’m close behind, thinking of the watery cathedral on the other side. And suddenly everything disappears in a storm of silt.

  I dart forwards, plunging my hands into the murk, trying to come in at an angle so he doesn’t knock my mask. A frantic flipper hits my hand and I grab it. Clem’s like a fish in a net. There’s no room for him to turn in there, or even to move his arms back. When it’s that tight, it’s digging rather than swimming, clawing along with fingertips. It makes no sense for him to go forwards; there’s no escape that way. He’ll end up dead, wedged, with Kirsty stuck in front not knowing until too late. I have to stop him going further in.

  I hang on to that flipper and pull hard, heaving his ankle, then his leg, and pummelling him to get his attention. It is easier to hit through air – it feels like I’m having no impact – but he comes towards me.

  He’s still conscious when the crevice gives birth to him. His desperate face appears in the light of my headlamp, blurred by floating matter, pale and looming at its forward-most points like a strange sea creature. His hand is chopping his throat to show me he has no air. I take a deep breath and shove my mouthpiece towards him and he latches on, greedy as an infant at a breast, sucking and sucking. A memory of my sister, Lilla, and my mother. I jerk the line to alert Kirsty.

  I can hold my breath for two minutes if I have to – something I practise in case this happens to me. Well before the time is up I take hold of his chin and make him look at me. His eyes widen and his head rears back, but we are tied together by the umbilical cord of air. He has to stay with me. I move my hand up, down between us: slow. It calms him. I hold out my hand and he nods, takes a heave of air and releases the mouthpiece. I breathe. It is light and space. I can’t believe my sister has ever had a high to equal plain sweet oxygen. Everything expands. A few breaths and I hand the mouthpiece back and aim my light at his equipment. His cylinder valve has knocked something, somehow – that’s all. I adjust it, check it’s working, and we swap again. Kirsty comes back and we call it quits.

  Clem is wild with elation when we emerge from murky pond water into ordinary day: sunny, a warm northerly, a family of incredulous magpies watching from an overhanging gum. He rubs his hair until it stands up. He’s raving. ‘That was awesome. I want to go again. Do you want to go again? When the oxygen went, I thought I was going to die. I thought I was going to lose it.’

  ‘You did lose it. You were going to die.’ A silvery emotion darts through me: envy.

  ‘And you saved me. You saved my life. I would have died.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. My agreement shocks him. It is a shocking thing, life and death.

  He throws his arms around me and his mouth is at my ear. ‘I want to fuck you,’ he says. Kirsty grins and looks away.

  Lately I feel the need to go further, further underwater, down longer tunnels to feel the calm. Still, since diving’s done for the day I take Clem back to my place and we fuck. He has a good body, but it looks better sheathed in a wetsuit – more streamlined and elegant. Naked, he looks like something that will snag. A person like that can slow you down.

  It’s three years now since I met Kirsty in the student house my boyfriend Robert lived in, a narrow terrace on a one-way street in Fitzroy, a suburb that felt like a close cave system after the open seas of Brighton.

  It was the week I moved out of home. Second-year uni. The night before, my mother had come into my room and sat on my bed, her iron curls flat, her face caved in. She looked like old cheese, sweating and greyish. I was writing an essay due the next day. Her hands writhed and tears welled and fell. I handed her a tissue and glanced back at my essay. I thought the tears would be about Lilla – I associated all high emotion with her – and I was right.

  Lilla was precious, always had been. She was born early, small and jaundiced. For the first few weeks she was forever being moved from one patch of sun to another, like a tender house plant. I can still see my mother, my father and five-year-old me standing around her white bassinet glowing in the sun, as if my sister was the light’s source rather than its destination, and we were sunflowers bending towards her. She had croup and screamed and caught colds and anything else going. By the time she was well my parents were so in the habit of worrying and hovering about her that they forgot how to stop. Perhaps they forgot they used to hang
around me; perhaps they never had.

  At first she was a novelty, brimming with entertainment potential, as my parents enjoyed pointing out. I’d be able to play with her, take her for walks, help feed her. Wouldn’t that be fun? As if there could be no greater pleasure than shovelling spoons full of banana into her mouth. I wasn’t so sure, but I did these things, and walked her to and from school, and looked out for her in the playground and helped with her homework, because that’s what sisters do, even if they’re not asked.

  They were old parents when we were small, and rushing headlong towards retirement by the time we were teenagers, but sometimes their younger selves would glance out from behind their weathered facades. My mother out in the garden in her cut-off overalls, looking up from her weeding with a girlish laugh and a flush on her cheeks, a few strands of hair gripping her damp face as if she’d tumbled from an afternoon in bed. My father with a swagger in his gait and his jeans slung low. A sideways look and a slow smile at my mother.

  My mother noticed me watching once. ‘You’re a funny one. What is going on in that head of yours?’ and she smiled, just at me. But Lilla rounded the doorway and flung herself into my mother’s arms, cheek pressed to her stomach. ‘Sweetheart,’ my mother crooned, curling her whole body around her, a shell about a snail. I couldn’t see where I fitted.

  Lilla was the sweetest thing – everyone said so – though she was slow to catch on at school. She loved to sort the collection of old family things: the tea towels, the lacework and the handkerchiefs. She baked fairy cakes, filling them with jam and cream, and threw tea parties with the Royal Doulton. Everyone was invited.

  I, on the other hand, am dark and bony and private. ‘She’s a cool customer,’ my mother used to say, and my father called me a dark horse. I wasn’t sure what they meant, but I understood my grandmother well enough. She would try to kiss me, pulling me to her powdery bosom. I’d pull away because who knew what might happen if her spit touched me?