The Jesus Man

A dark novel from the author of THE SLAP, about the effect of pornography on a family

Christos Tsiolkas

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781782397267
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

From the international bestselling and Booker Prize nominated author of The Slap comes a blazingly brilliant new novel. One of the earliest Christos Tsiolkas novels - a dark, violent, pornographic and vividly imagined portrayal of family life behind closed doors. The Jesus Man tells the story of one family, trapped between conflicting identities - while the parents were born Greek and Italian, the three sons, Dom, Tommy and Louie, have grown up as Australians. Haunted by their history and increasing inability to relate to each other, Tommy inexorably descends into a cycle of violence, pornography and madness. When he commits a terrible crime, his family must try to come to terms with the terrifying stranger he had become, and the hell that living had been for him. With page-turning, thrilling urgency, Tsiolkas' uncompromising and darkly humorous examination of the soulless void that life can become, detached from reality by technology, is an extremely powerful and timely novel, reminding us once again of his talent and originality as a writer.

SECTION TWO

Thomas Stefano

When you stand in front of me and look at me, what do you know of the griefs that are in me and what do I know of yours? And if I were to cast myself down before you and weep and tell you, what more would you know about me than you know about Hell when someone tells you it is hot and dreadful? For that reason alone we human beings ought to stand before one another as reverently, as reflectively, as lovingly as we would before the entrance to Hell.

FRANZ KAFKA

1

Blonde Mary

The television was on. The women were preparing the table, the men were round the barbecue. Tommy was alone in the lounge room, watching the TV. The birth of Christ. Mary was blonde, an LA nymph. Joseph was soap-opera handsome, young and smooth.

Tommy was thinking, sipping at his beer, how cheap Mary looked, what a cheap American slag. There was dancing in Jerusalem, the young Mary had just spotted the pretty Joseph. The camera cut back and forth, back and forth, to the blonde Mary with the silicon breasts, to the bearded Joseph with the sculptured chest. Their eyes met. Commercial break.

—What are you watching?

—The Christmas story.

Lou was going to be handsome, no doubt about that. His eyes were dark, his skin, even at the height of adolescence, smooth. His body was trim from swimming. And he was tall. Tommy patted his paunch, put down the beer.

—How’s things?

—Good. The boy had become fixated on the television.

Their conversation was always stilted, always short. Between Dom and Lou it was different. Dom spoilt him, that was that. Dominic had never indulged Tommy. Sometimes, Tommy thought, watching the Virgin’s face, lewd at Joseph’s advances, he wanted a world in which there were no brothers.

Punch hard, punch fast. Dominic had a great right fist.

Lou got up.

—Looks pretty boring.

—Go and help Dad.

—No, you go and help Dad.

In the kitchen his mother and his aunts were baking. Greek pies. His Aunt Sophia was across from the west, with Duke, her fat dull husband. Sophia was trying to help.

He was going to bring Soo-Ling, introduce her around, but at the last moment he couldn’t. He couldn’t bear the tension, the looks, the judgements.

A Chinese girl’s slash is horizontal not vertical. Dom once told him that. And nigger cunt smells like mango.

I’ve got an Asian girlfriend.

—Get up, Tom, go help your father.

His mother still carried a trace of the Mediterranean in her voice. The thick vowels and the soft consonants. He didn’t take his eyes off the screen. Joseph was stripped to the waist, drawing water from the well. Mary’s tits were plastic. They didn’t move with her body.

He went to the toilet. Splashed piss on the floor and had to clean it up. Sometimes he pissed a split stream, as if his cock had two holes. He wiped the floor with tissue paper. In the bathroom he pulled up his shirt, looked at his belly. The fine black hair, the stretch of fat. He clutched at the flab, shook it, wished he could tear it off. He dropped his shirt and washed his hands.

Outside, Artie handed Tommy the fork. Look after them. The meat was still red, seeping blood. Tommy turned the pieces over. His brother was kicking a soccer ball across the yard, back to boyhood. He kicked the ball over to Tommy and it shook the barbecue.

—Watch it!

Dominic too was getting fat. His legs were thick, the T-shirt he wore stretched tight across chest and stomach. But he still looked good, still played footy, still worked hard. His arms were long and strong, the arms of a carpenter. His hair, never black, had been dulled by successive summers to a dull bronze with flashes of red.

When he was young, Dominic’s pubic hair had been bright red. The flamed bush, when he first spied it, had shocked Tommy.

The air sizzled with the smell of charcoal and meat. His Uncle Duke was already drunk, slurring and smoking cigarettes. Maria, inside the house, had her lips closed, her mouth thin, she hated her husband’s family. Tommy watched her through the window, at the sink, her long dyed hair. His mother always had long hair, refused to cut it with age the way other wog women did. She still looked beautiful. Tommy turned away.

—How’s work?

Dominic opened a beer, sat on a plastic chair and wiped away sweat.

—Okay, replied Tommy.

—They still talking of getting rid of people?

—They always do.

Work, thought Tommy, I don’t want to talk about fucking work.

—And how are you going?

—Good, good. Business is fine, Dominic replied, and they fell into uncomfortable silence.

Few people guessed, on first meeting, that Dominic and Tommy were brothers. They shared dark skin, their mother’s delicate mouth, but that was all.

Dominic took off his T-shirt. His skin was olive, tanned by the sun. His chest and belly an explosion of fine blond hair. He’s not fat, he’s bulky, thought Tommy, and again he wished he could rip through his skin, get to the meat, to the flab, to the excess. Rip it up and start again.

—Put your shirt on.

Dominic laughed at Eva’s taut command. He slapped his belly.

—Aren’t you proud of your old man?

Eva was tall and thin, and Tommy thought her sophisticated. He envied his brother his wife.

She did not reply. Instead she took a seat offered to her by Duke and ruffled Tommy’s hair.

—You all right?

—Sure, he smiled, it’s Christmas.

The Stefano men all loved Eva.

—Where’s Soo-Ling?

—With friends.

—When do we meet her? Dominic sat up.

—Soon.

—How soon? Artie was looking up, squinting from the smoke. He was balding, he was all grey.

Tommy didn’t answer.

Eva quickly changed the subject.

—Dom, go check on the baby.

—You do it, answered her husband.

—Please, you go, Eva turned away from Dom, I want to talk to Tommy.

Dom went in and checked on his child.

The lunch was on the verandah, under the grapevines, with lots of beer and wine. Yiota arrived with the gangly Spiro and she brought octopus, salad and fresh bread. Their daughter, the dark gorgeous little Ourania, ran into the yard and jumped into Artie’s arm. Hello Uncle Thanassi, she whispered in his ear. Yiota joined Maria in the kitchen.

The food was good, very good, and the group ate rapidly and ferociously. Maria kept refilling the wine, Artie the beer. Yiota kept serving the food.

—Sit down, ordered Maria to Yiota, in Greek.

—She never sits down, not till we finish. Spiro.

Which is true, thought Tommy, Yiota rarely sat still. He smiled at Yiota, she came around to the back of his chair, hugged him. My little Thomas, she whispered, Thomaki.

The day Spiro and Yiota had left the old house, stopped being boarders, Tommy had cried all night. Inconsolable.

The conversation kept to family and work. That was safe. Lou took no part, just kept eating, until politics came up. It started with Dominic, who winked slyly to both his brothers and mentioned the word. Maria responded immediately.

The argument was simple. The responsibility that government had to working people and to people unable to find work. Maria was defending socialism, Duke and Sophia arguing that Australians expected too much from welfare. Artie did not speak, he quietly ate. Lou, too, was quiet. Dominic didn’t give a shit.

—I’d like to take some of those bludgers out to the farm and show them work. They don’t know what work is.

—Farming isn’t work. Not in this country.

Duke nearly choked on the barbecued meat. He glared at Maria.

—I get up at four-thirty in the morning, he warned her.

—And you’re drunk by midday. Only labouring people, factory people, know work.

Dominic and his mother smiled at one another.

Tommy felt the weight of his white collar.

—Farmers work too, Mum.

Maria turned to him, angry at his betrayal.

—And what would you know?

Tommy could not look at her. It was his father who interrupted.

—As much as you do, Maria. Now shut up.

His mother snorted, rose and went to the kitchen. She clicked on the stereo. A Greek song; they heard her softly singing. When she came back with a platter of fruit, she was smiling.

Tommy was still hurting. He was scared by how much he did not understand of his parents. He had spent his childhood listening to arguments, shouting and bickering, but also to the breathless fucking from across the thin walls of the Clifton Hill house. He had been happy that when they moved out into the suburbs he was given the back bedroom. He was spared the sounds of his parents loving each other.

His mother thought him soft because he did not believe enough, his father thought him soft because his body and his work was, and Dominic thought him soft because that’s what everyone thought of Tommy. Except Lou maybe. Lou never insulted him. The boy was sitting down next to the Christmas tree, dividing up the presents. Lou was now firmly a teenager and not a child; he looked awkward performing this traditional activity. Soon, in a year or two, baby Lisa, now asleep, would be doing the honours. Tommy wondered what kind of man his youngest brother would be.

Lou handed Tommy the first parcel.

—That’s yours, mate.

He got a towel from his Aunt Sophia and his Uncle Duke. Body Shop cosmetics from Dominic and Eva. Fifty dollars in an envelope and a tie from his parents. And a CD from Lou.

—What’s this?

—It’s a rap thing.

—Oh. He never listened to rap.

—It’s good, urged Lou, You should listen to it.

Strictly Business. EPMD. Which was the band, which was the title?

—Rap sucks, complained Dominic. Lou had given him and Eva a CD as well, the soundtrack to Bagdad Cafe.

Eva was excited by the present. She gave Lou a huge kiss.

—I really want to see this movie.

—It’s good, said Lou, embarrassed by the kiss but grinning widely. Mum and I saw it ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Section One: Dominic Stefano
• Section Two: Thomas Stefano
• Intermissions
• Section Three: Luigi Stefano
• Section Four: Epilogues
• Copyright