Authors: Alan Duff
T
oday he was following some compelling urge to test his limits by going out diving alone and deeper than he ever had before. He’d been angry at first when Danny had informed him that Frederick hadn’t been living in his apartment for many months, but then filled with dismay and sorrow that a person was so afflicted by depression he could willingly become homeless again.
Over the years a few of his bar patrons had disappeared for a period to get treatment for depression. A couple of them had committed suicide, a subject he was in two minds about. On the one hand a cowardly act or, the softer Johno Ryan conceded, a decision beyond the person’s control since Nature had dealt them a bad hand.
Ostensibly, he was trialling a new boat, inflatable, that he was definitely buying. It could be driven on wheels into the sea and then, at the flick of a switch, hydraulics hauled the wheels up.
The city he grew up in was no more once he’d rounded Sydney Heads and went north into virtually no wind. He had a depth gauge to guide where he’d dive. It felt strangely exhilarating being out here alone without a dive buddy, as was mandatory practice. Some might put it down to childish macho vanity spurring him. But it wasn’t that.
Just an intuitive thing needing few words, more a picture in his mind of being in an extreme situation and seeing what it would be like. Any dive is an immediate welcome to another world, met by blue light, inhabitants of the sea, the visual splendour he could never describe even to himself, and knew no diver who could or was even
inclined to. The experience spoke for itself.
Descending, as his air bubbles ascended in a stream to the surface; the silence profound except for his breathing tank air, and always that marvellous sensation of flight, of weightlessness.
Not long before the twenty-metre mark came up on his depth gauge; the colour starting to bleed a little. At thirty metres, a hundred feet in old terms, the most he’d ever dived, colour had faded more, and there was an ominous semi-gloom. Everything had a grey-purple sheen, rock formations looked more like uncarved tombstones, though fish moved in and out of cracks and caves and plants.
He thought again of why he was doing this, though it didn’t stop his descent. He just wanted to know.
At forty metres the cold registered on his bare hands and face, and it was quite a bit darker. Yet he could lift his head and see the brightness above, his air bubbles like a flimsy connection between common sense and plain foolishness. Look down and it was a deep, foreboding
blue-black
, a tone dreams understand but not the body, or the brain behind the eyes. Thought then it was like the start of hell and adrenalin trickled into his system.
He felt, literally, the increased weight of the sea upon him, squirting air into his compensator to control his descent. With quickened breathing his expended air broke into thousands of tiny balls, all intent on rushing to the surface, though when reaching it they would dissipate and die.
But something more basic took over: the need to get his breathing under better control. He was using too much air. A man could lose his head down here and be gone in moments. Who would take care of Danny? How many storeys high is forty-six metres? Why was he doing this?
Free-divers regard this depth as a joke, he told himself. He recalled his dive instructor saying that the world record — without a tank, just a lungful of air, and no fins — is a hundred metres. Well, he had a tankful of air, if down already by a quarter. Had to relax his muscles
so the breathing was less frantic. What was there to be anxious about?
But then he was just a man without much experience and none at this depth. And still he descended, even as fear began coming at him in waves and he felt part of the great weight pressing — pushing him — down every moment. He could end this right now, this reckless act become too much like a death-wish, and just head back up. No decompression stops would be necessary, not if he had no bottom time. End it, Johno.
At fifty metres he felt suspended between life and death. In a world reduced to: Up there. Down here. Above, where sensible humans dwell. Below, where fish live. Plain and simple.
Kept sending air puffs into his compensator so the metres crept by. Fifty-three … fifty-four …
At sixty metres he stopped. He looked up, expecting to see a faintly shining surface, but it had gone. Just a blanket of blackness at a depth impossible to gauge. Panic threatened to seize him and registered in air bubbles hurtling past his face mask. Needed to focus on something outside of himself.
Still life down here, of course. Groper live at this depth and deeper; a big black one emerged from the murk and checked him out. A few schools of fish, but there were more individuals and the smaller fish must thrive in shallower water. Shapes became sharply defined pictures of scaly life forms, then disappeared back into the gloom. He knew from his and Mel’s dive buddy Ross that sharks were the least of a diver’s worries. Yet in his mind every larger fish turned into a shark. Self-discipline was number one. Not doing stupid things like this.
He wondered how colour appeared to a fish’s eyes, pulled forth a memory of his son exclaiming after their first sea dive how brilliant the hues were, how he saw ‘party ribbons and Christmas sparkles of light’. So what kind of responsible father would be down here doing this?
Then a great fear came upon him as the cold had come some twenty metres above. Felt like prison gates had slammed shut on him but with
even greater finality. This was the end. He’d messed up and of his own crazy-minded volition.
Is this how Frederick feels? Is it so dark and oppressive, with death a moment away?
The air gauge told him his breathing rate had not gone down. His wetsuit felt claustrophobically tight. The weightlessness now felt as if he couldn’t tell which was up or down. The fear felt alternately like ice in his veins or as if he were drowning in it, filling his lungs so that soon he’d not be able to breathe the precious bottled air. No jail cell ever felt like this.
Was he afraid of dying, or the manner of death? Had he really thought about it? No, he hadn’t. He’d been in a reckless, devil-may-care state of mind from the moment he drove that new craft on a trailer out of the boatyard, having told Mel he wasn’t diving today, that he was looking at boats. Knew he was going to do something crazy. But not why — unless it truly was to try to understand Frederick and, in turn, gain some insight into how his son’s mind worked.
But this was far enough. Time to get the hell out of here before he couldn’t. And it might be too late.
Panic — as Danny had known it on his last dive — hammered loudly on the door of his inner self. He could see it like the arrival of a cloaked figure. Except this figure wore a big grey overcoat. And he was shaking his wild-locked, bearded head at Johno, clicking his tongue at this foolish exercise of supposed empathy.
From his training he remembered the dangers of nitrogen narcosis, a befuddlement that causes a diver at depth to get the giggles, lose the sense of where he is, hallucinate, believe he can breathe underwater. Every diver knows the stories.
At what mark was his first required decompression stop? He’d forgotten. All he wanted was to get to the surface, but that would mean suffering the bends from failing to expend the inert gases in his tissues and dying anyway. An agonising death, every diver is told.
Forty metres, that’s right. Two or three minutes suspended there?
How much air did he have left? When was the next decompression stop? Looking at his watch slowly ticking the seconds by, too afraid to look up lest that stolen surface give its dark face back to him.
Did he have air enough for three minutes with another two stops to come? Daren’t — couldn’t — look at his air gauge: too much like looking at his time of death. Why had his vision got restricted? Why had visibility greatly reduced? Had he hit a silt cloud from some underwater disturbance? Had panic got a hold?
He ascended to thirty metres — was he required to stop here? No, damn it, stop at twenty. Then he could look at his air gauge and, if as he feared his air was near exhausted, he could head directly to the surface and take his chances with the bends. Better than drowning.
Why were there no fish? Had he read his depth gauge wrongly? Did he have nitrogen poisoning and was headed
down?
The decompression tables he’d studied only cursorily became confusing numbers jumbled up in his mind. He wanted to go to sleep and not wake up.
With the final decompression at only three metres from life, at last the panic subsided and he broke the surface to a sky smiling blue and bright on the fool.
P
aolo said, ‘That’s her …’ He didn’t lean over the steering wheel to show he was watching her. Just sat there and exclaimed, ‘Jesus, she’s fat.’ They were looking at the exit doors of Melbourne international airport.
‘Yeah …?’ said Shane, wondering what her size had to do with it.
‘They compensate, don’t they, fat people?’
‘Why she’s a mule you mean?’ Shane still didn’t get Paolo’s attitude. ‘You know, like eating ’cause she’s scared.’
‘She was fat when we recruited her. And that’s no mule,’ Paolo said. ‘It’s a fucking hippo.’ His laughter filled his car, a five-year-old
Honda-something
no one would notice. One of his secrets, and he had a few. Main one: Keep your head down. Drive a nondescript car, live in a working-class suburb, even if you’re in the best street in a better house. Never let your ego betray you.
But talking like this about someone supposedly on the same side? Shane didn’t think Paolo’s kids knew this callous figure. He didn’t.
‘That’s right. But carrying our living on her person,’ said Shane. ‘What a job. What I mean is—’
‘I know what you mean, Shano. But it isn’t a job, it’s something she does. Hey, come on.’
‘Compensate for what? I don’t get it.’
‘How we live, yeah? How she lives? Sheesh. Why can’t she eat less? Says she’s greedy. Right?’
‘And we’re not?’
‘Listen, ours is a different greed. We’re not filling up our plates, are we, and going up for seconds? Just going about our business in a cool, professional way that happens to make us dough. Whose fucking side you on?’
‘Hey? How has this turned into taking sides?’
‘I’m saying—’ Paolo got distracted then, much to Shane’s relief. ‘Look, there’s Tito …’
Tito had film-star looks, but his eyes could be the coldest Shane had ever seen on any man, and he’d been locked up with the worst.
That time Tito accompanied him to talk to the four massive Tongans who tried to intimidate them from the off. Not Mr Handsome, he just stared unblinking, even when the lead Tongan, Pule, made a sudden movement, trying to bluff him.
‘Thought you had a nervous spasm then, Pule. Lucky I’m not the nervous type or you mighta got hurt,’ Tito calmly dismissed the big guy. ‘Our terms stay the same. You don’t like it, go find someone else to buy from. What, we look like Father Christmas or something? And don’t fucking come near his house.’
‘If we do?’ said Pule. And Shane got the ‘we’ bully’s trick.
Tito’s answer was a classic Italian shrug: done with shoulders, mouth, eyebrows. Beautiful to behold because such an innocuous gesture was so loaded with danger, clear in his icy green eyes.
‘So why’s Tito so close if the cops’ve got onto her?’ Shane asked. He liked Tito. Could be the son Shane wasn’t likely to have. Not now. He still hadn’t found a girlfriend, just physical company that afterwards left him with a dry taste in his mouth; felt like he’d slept with a slut even when he hadn’t. For some reason women didn’t measure up — yet to what or whom he couldn’t figure out. His dear mother, maybe? Did every potential relationship have her presence looming over it? Yet here he was feeling really sorry for this obese woman.
‘Don’t worry. We got someone in between. Tito’s following our tail, and we’re following the cops but from a distance, like via that taxi you can see is now sagging with her weight.’ Cruel, Daddy Paolo.
Paolo continued, ‘I can’t see the cop tail but our inside source has never put us wrong yet. Someone knows the second- or third-highest cop who might call this off. Then we’re back, profiting fatly!’ Laughing loud. ‘If she gets a crook taxi driver who takes her the long way round the ring road it’ll confuse everyone in this convoy. But not me. Now there’s a breed of men for you, down there with the rats. Cabbies.’
‘Rats, hippos and mules, eh, Paolo?’ Shane’s grin more a sneer. ‘We got a zoo for your kids later?’ It was a Saturday and Paolo often did stuff with his family on the weekend.
‘That’s funny, Shano.’
‘She’s an ordinary housewife and we—’ Cut short.
‘With a body like that?’ Paolo said aghast. ‘Would
you
touch her? She’s single, a, what they call it, spinster. In her early thirties, no man?’
‘Come on, she’s carrying for us. The least we can do is, like, respect her, even behind her back.’ Shane was getting more annoyed.
‘Says you. I speak for myself.’ Paolo sounded like a vain Italian then, and just a little bit dangerous. ‘Can’t stand a woman that size. It’s not right.’
Yeah, like dealing cocaine is, thought Shane.
‘Can’t someone call her and warn the stupid bitch?’
‘Oh yeah? And say what, when the stuff’s inside her big fat gut?’
‘If she shat it out in the back of the cab and threw it out the window?’
‘You kidding? No, you’re not,’ Paolo’s disbelief got through even his dark sunglasses. ‘Shane? If you were a cabbie and a passenger started taking a crap in your cab, what would you do?’
‘If she’s on the motorway and hurling the stuff out, what do the
cops
do? Stop and retrieve it and lose her? Or keep on her tail and find, well, an empty gut I s’pose?’ Shane kind of grinned but didn’t get one back.
‘Otherwise she goes to jail. And not for a weekend stay, either. Jesus. Three ks of coke? The courts are getting harder on drug offend—’
‘Shane, shut up. I don’t give a fuck what the courts are doing and nor should you,’ Paolo snarled. ‘We’re several layers back from the action.
No connection. Ze-ro. Can’t be linked. Where’s the contact between her, you and me?’
‘None. Which I’m glad about, of course. But at the same time, it’s not nice watching someone going down. Not as if she did anything to the Family. She’s trying to lift herself out of Struggle Street, willing to do something like this.’
‘And we care? Not as if we did something to make the cops suspicious of her,’ said Paolo. ‘You think I don’t want to drive around in a Ferrari, a Maserati, ’stead of this heap of old Jap crap? But I don’t, do I? I stay lowwww, baby. Low. Like you do.’
Yes, but too low. The view from down there was terrible. Shane had had enough: he was asking if he could shift to Sydney.