The Slap

LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2010

Christos Tsiolkas

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Year: 2010
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781848878600
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

WINNER OF THE COMMONWEALTH WRITERS' PRIZE 2009
LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2010 'A tremendously vital book in every sense.' - Sunday Times At a suburban barbecue one afternoon, a man slaps an unruly boy. The boy is not his son. It is a single act of violence, but the slap reverberates through the lives of everyone who witnesses it happen. Christos Tsiolkas presents the impact of this apparently minor domestic incident through the eyes of eight of those who witness it. The result is an unflinching interrogation of the life of the modern family, a deeply thought-provoking novel about boundaries and their limits...

Contents

Cover

THE SLAP

Also by Christos Tsiolkas:

Copyright

HECTOR

ANOUK

HARRY

CONNIE

ROSIE

MANOLIS

AISHA

RICHIE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

New Barracuda end matter Sept 2013

HECTOR

His eyes still shut, a dream dissolving and already impossible to recall, Hector’s hand sluggishly reached across the bed. Good. Aish was up. He let out a victorious fart, burying his face deep into the pillow to escape the clammy methane stink. I don’t want to sleep in a boy’s locker room, Aisha would always complain on the rare, inadvertent moments when he forgot himself in front of her. Through the years he had learned to rein his body in, to allow himself to only let go in solitude; farting and pissing in the shower, burping alone in the car, not washing or brushing his teeth all weekend when she was away at conferences. It was not that his wife was a prude, she just seemed to barely tolerate the smells and expressions of the male body. He himself would have no problem falling asleep in a girl’s locker room, surrounded by the moist, heady fragrance of sweet young cunt. Afloat, still half-entrapped in sleep’s tender clutch, he twisted onto his back and shifted the sheet off his body. Sweet young cunt. He’d spoken out loud.

Connie.

At the thought of her, sleep surrendered its grip on him. Aish would think him a pervert if she had overheard him. But he was definitely not that. He simply loved women. Young, old, those just starting to blossom and those beginning to fade. And sheepishly, almost embarrassed at his own vanity, he knew that women loved him. Women loved him.

Get up, Hector, he said to himself. Time for the routine.

The routine was a series of exercises that he executed without fail every morning. At most, it never lasted more than twenty minutes. Occasionally, if he woke with a headache or hangover, or with a combination of both, or simply with an ennui that seemed to issue from deep within what he could only assume to be his soul, he managed to complete it all in under ten minutes. It was not strict adherence to the routine that mattered but simply ensuring its completion—even when he was sick, he would force himself to do it. He would rise, grab a pair of track-pants, throw on the T-shirt he’d worn the previous day, and then perform a series of nine stretches, each of which he would hold to a count of thirty. Then he would lie on the rug in the bedroom and perform one hundred and fifty sit-ups, and fifty push-ups. He’d finish with a final set of three stretches. Then he’d go to the kitchen and switch on the coffee percolator before walking to the milk bar at the end of the street to buy the newspaper and a packet of cigarettes. Back home, he would pour himself a coffee, walk out onto the back verandah, light a smoke, turn to the sports pages, and begin to read. In that moment, with the newspaper spread before him, the whiff of bitter coffee in his nostrils, the first hit of sharp tobacco smoke, whatever the miseries, petty bullshits, stresses and anxieties of the day before or the day ahead, none of it mattered. In that moment, and if only in that moment, he was happy.

Hector had discovered from childhood that the only way to challenge the inert, suffocating joy of sleep was to barrel right through it, to force open his eyes and jump straight out of the bed. But for once, he lay back on his pillow and allowed the sounds of his family to gently bring him to complete wakefulness. Aisha had the kitchen stereo turned to an FM classical music station, and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was flooding the house. From the lounge room, he could hear the electronic squeaks and tinny reverb of a computer game. He lay still for a moment, then threw back the sheet and looked down at his naked body. He raised his right foot and watched it crash back on the bed. Today’s the day, Hector, he told himself, today’s the day. He leapt out of bed and put on a pair of red Y-fronts, pulled a singlet over his head, took a long, loud piss in the ensuite, and stormed into the kitchen. Aisha was breaking eggs over a frying pan and he kissed her neck. The kitchen smelt of coffee. He switched off the radio in mid-crescendo.

‘Hey, I was listening to that.’

Hector flicked through a nest of CDs stacked clumsily next to the CD player. He pulled a disc out of its case and put it into the machine. He pushed through the numbers till he found the track he wanted, then smiled as the first confident notes of Louis Armstrong’s trumpet began to sound. He kissed his wife’s neck again.

‘It’s got to be Satchmo today,’ he whispered to her. ‘It’s got to be “West End Blues”.’

He performed his exercises slowly, counting up to thirty in slow, measured breaths. Between each set he swayed to the slow-building sensual progression of the jazz music. He made sure that with every sit-up he felt the tightening of the muscles in his belly, and with every push-up, he was conscious of the pull of the muscles on his triceps and pecs. He wanted to be alert to his body today. He wanted to know that it was alive, strong and prepared.

On finishing, he wiped the sweat from his brow, picked his shirt off the floor where he had flung it the night before, and slipped his feet into his sandals.

‘Want anything from the shop?’

Aisha laughed at him. ‘You look like a bum.’

She would never leave the house without make-up or proper clothes on. Not that she used much make-up; she had no need to—it was one of the things that very early on had attracted him to her. He had never been fond of girls who wore thickly applied foundation, powder and lipstick. He thought it was sluttish, and even though he was aware of the ridiculous conservatism of his response, he could not bring himself to admire a heavily painted woman, no matter how objectively beautiful she might be. Aisha didn’t need the assistance of make-up. Her dark skin was supple, unblemished, and her large, deep-set, obliquely sloping eyes shone in her long, lean, sculptured face.

Hector looked down at his slippers, and smiled. ‘So can this bum get you anything from the shop?’

She shook her head. ‘Nah. But you’re going to the markets this morning, aren’t you?’

‘I said I would, didn’t I?’

She glanced up at the kitchen clock. ‘You better hurry.’

He said nothing to her, irritated by her comment. He didn’t want to hurry this morning. He wanted to take it slow and easy.

He picked up the Saturday paper and threw a ten-dollar note on the counter. Mr Ling had already reached for the gold packet of Peter Jackson Super Milds but Hector stopped him.

‘No, not today. Today I want a packet of Peter Styuvesant Reds. The soft pack. Make it two packs.’ Hector took back the ten-dollar note and placed a twenty on the counter.

‘You change smoke?’

‘My last day, Mr Ling. This is going to be my last day of smoking.’

‘Very good.’ The old man was smiling at him. ‘I smoke three a day only. One in morning, one after dinner and one when I finish in shop.’

‘I wish I could do that.’ But the last five years had been a carousel of stopping and then starting again, promising himself that he could smoke five a day, why not, five a day would not do much damage; but he could not stop himself rushing through to the end of the pack. Every time. He envied the old Chinese guy. He’d love to be able to smoke three, four, five a day. But he couldn’t. Cigarettes were like a malignant lover to him. He would find the resolve, soak his pack under the tap and chuck it in the bin, determined to never smoke again. He had tried cold turkey, hypnotism, patches, gum; maybe, for a few days, a week, once even a month, he could resist all temptations. But then he would sneak a cigarette at work or at the pub or after a dinner, and immediately he would fall back into the arms of his spurned lover. And her revenge was exacting. He would be back to worshipping her, not able to get through the morning without her. She was irresistible. Then one Sunday morning, when the kids were at his parents’ and he and Aisha had a graceful morning of slow, easy, delightful sex, and he’d wrapped his arms around her and whispered, I love you, you are my greatest joy, you are my greatest commitment, she’d turned around with a sardonic smile and replied, No I’m not, cigarettes are your true love, cigarettes are your true commitment.

The fight was cruel and exhausting—they’d screamed at each other for hours. She had wounded him, shattered his pride, especially when he’d been mortified to realise that it was only his feverish sucking on cigarettes that had allowed him any measure of control in the argument. He’d accused her of being self-righteous and a middle-class puritan and she had snapped back with a litany of his weaknesses: he was lazy and vain, passive and selfish, and he lacked any will-power. Her accusations hurt because he knew them to be true.

And so he resolved to quit. To really quit this time. He didn’t bother telling her; he couldn’t bear her scepticism. But he was going to quit.

The morning was warm and he stripped down to his singlet as he sat down at the verandah table with his coffee. As soon as he had lit the cigarette, Melissa flew out of the back door and ran screaming into his arms.

‘Adam won’t let me play.’ She was howling, and he dropped her onto his lap and stroked her face. He let her cry till she was spent. He didn’t need this, didn’t want this, not this morning of all mornings. He wanted the cigarette in peace. There was never enough peace. But he played with his daughter’s hair, kissed her on her forehead, waited for her tears to end. He stubbed out his cigarette and Melissa watched the smoke extinguish.

‘You shouldn’t smoke, Daddy. It causes cancer.’

She was parroting admonishments she had learnt at school. His kids struggled with their eight times tables but they knew smoking gave you lung cancer and that unprotected sex caused venereal disease. He stopped himself from scolding her. Instead, he picked her up and carried her into the lounge room. Adam was intent on his computer game and did not look up.

Hector drew a breath. He wanted to kick the lazy little bastard but instead he plunked his daughter next to his son and grabbed the game console from the boy.

‘It’s your sister’s turn.’

‘She’s a baby. She’s no good.’

Adam had wrapped his arms tight around himself and glared rebelliously at his father, his soft belly bulging over the waistband of his jeans. Aisha insisted that his puppyfat would disappear in adolescence but Hector wasn’t convinced. The boy was obsessed with screens: with his computer, with television, with his PlayStation. His sluggishness unnerved Hector. He had always taken pride in his own good looks and fit body; as an adolescent he’d been a pretty good footballer and an even better swimmer. He could not help but see his son’s corpulence as a slight. He was sometimes embarrassed to be seen with Adam in public. Aware of the scandalous nature of such thoughts, he’d never revealed them to anyone. But he could not help feeling disappointed, and he seemed always to be telling off his son. Do you have to sit in front of the TV all day? It’s a great day, why don’t you play outside? Adam’s response was to be silent, to sulk, and this only fed Hector’s exasperation. He had to bite his lip to not insult the child. Occasionally Adam would glance up at him with a look of such hurt bewilderment Hector would feel a crushing shame.

‘Come on, mate, give your sister a go.’

‘She’ll wreck it.’

‘Now.’

The boy threw the console onto the floor, rose unsteadily to his feet, and stormed off to his bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

Grabbing her father’s hand, Melissa stared after him. ‘I want to play.’ She was crying again.

‘Play by yourself.’

‘I want to play with Adam.’

Hector fingered the cigarette pack in his pocket.

‘It’s fair that you have time to play video games as well. Adam was being unfair. He’ll come and play with you in a few minutes, just wait and see.’ He was keeping his voice deliberately even, almost making a sing-song childish rhythm of the platitudes. But Melissa would not be pacified.

‘I want to play with Adam,’ she wailed, and gripped tighter onto his hand. His first instinct was to push her away from him. Guilty, he tenderly stroked the little girl’s hair and kissed the top of her head.

‘Do you want to come to the market with me?’

The wailing had stopped but Melissa was not yet prepared to concede defeat. She stared miserably at the door that Adam had slammed behind him.

Hector shook his hand free from hers. ‘It’s your choice, sweetheart. You can stay here and play video games by yourself or you can come with me to the market. Which would you prefer?’

The girl did not answer.

‘Right.’ Hector shrugged his shoulders and put a cigarette to his lips. ‘Your choice.’ He walked out to the kitchen with her renewed cries following him.

Aisha was wiping her hands dry. She indicated the clock.

‘I know, I know. I just want one fucking smoke in peace.’

He...

Table of contents

• Cover
• THE SLAP
• Also by Christos Tsiolkas:
• Copyright page
• Dedication page
• Contents