The Windy Season (22 page)

In the hallway leading to his bedroom, Kasia pushed him
against the wall and kissed his neck. Paul groaned when she grabbed his cock through his shorts. He slid his hands under her wet shirt and felt the warmth of her stomach against his palm. He sensed the grimace of her lips against his when his fingers found her nipples and she grabbed his forearms as though to slow him down. Her breasts were cool. The soft skin roughened, her nipples stiffening. She pulled the wet shirt over her head, unclipped her bra.

They dumped their clothes in weeping piles on the carpeted floor of his bedroom. On his mattress their bare skin dried quickly. Paul lay on top of her, his wet hair in his eyes. Once more thunder detonated above them and Paul flinched.

It is okay, Kasia whispered, smiling. Her eyes watched his as she reached a hand down and pulled him into the heat of her.

The lightning storm passed but the rain continued: a constant drumming on the roof that Paul thought might never end. He listened to it while Kasia slept, the creak and groan of the gutters, twitching under the weight of the water. The sound made him think of his brother.

Elliot would drag him outside whenever there was weather. Once, when Paul was five or six, Elliot had made him come and watch him surf out in front of the house in a huge winter storm. They had snuck out the laundry door and sprinted across the road in the rain, Elliot leaning his foamie into the gale and Paul carrying a beach towel that would prove useless, wet through before they made it to the beach and then stolen from the sand by the rising tide. Elliot had run up the beach checking the current, a nine-year-old with a foam surfboard, tackling a deserted ocean all on his own. Paul had taken position up near the dunes, the sea making him retreat into the scrub as it crept over the beach.
He hated being made to watch. It felt like he was there to watch his brother die. And he quickly lost sight of Elliot. After some time, when Elliot hadn't reappeared, Paul stepped out from the relative cover of the scrub and raced down onto the beach. He called out for his brother, young voice howling into the wind. Then he had run back to the house in tears, tormented by the dilemma. Should he tell his parents, and risk getting his brother in trouble, or leave Elliot out there on his own, in danger? He was huddled in the bushes in the backyard, still crying, when Elliot found him. His older brother's eyes were big with adrenalin and he laughed at the look on Paul's face.

What are you smiling about? Kasia said sleepily. She put a warm hand to his chest.

Elliot would love this, he said. This weather.

Why? she murmured.

Listen to it, he said.

Kasia turned to face the ceiling and they both lay there. The beat of the rain against the roof had an urgent, frantic presence to it. It was as if the weather was a living thing, an animal thundering against a cage.

It is wonderful, Kasia said.

When we were little, Elliot was always out in storms, Paul said. And even now, if he was here right now, he would want to go do something in it.

Like what? Kasia asked.

Anything. Surf. Fish. I think he liked the fact that you got the world to yourself when the weather was in.

That is very strange, Kasia said. I cannot imagine wanting to be alone.

I never really understood it.

Do you miss him?

I think about him. See him sometimes. He's like a ghost, almost. But then he's not. He could be out there still.

Do you think he is?

I don't know. Kasia combed the hair from his eyes with her fingers.

What's he like? she asked.

Shy, he said, and he turned to her.

Like you.

Elliot was never scared of anything, Paul heard himself say, like he had heard himself say before.

Kasia nodded. How are your parents?

Dad's himself. Acts like nothing's even happened. I think Mum feels alone with everything, Now she's at Grandma's, staying there.

She ran a hand through his hair. They listened again to the rain, hearing the building music of it.

What does that mean? he said, touching the tattoo on her hip bone. Is it Polish?

Ah, my tattoo, she said. You have seen it.

I don't know what it means.

Have you always been so nosy? She laughed.

Sorry, I was just curious.

I know that, she said. For a boy who never tells very much of himself, you are very curious. She ran her finger along the words. It says:
Im yesh l'adam menora, eyno pohed m'hosheh
.

What does it mean?

It is Hebrew. It says that if you carry your own lantern you will endure the dark. It was something my grandmother used to tell me, like a saying.

She was Jewish, your grandmother?

Yes. Like me. Kasia pointed to the last word inscribed.
Katarzyna
. That is my grandmother. I got my name from her. She is no longer with us though.

Katarzyna, he repeated. Did you ever meet her?

Only when I was very little. But I remember her. And I can remember her saying that. She used to tell me that I have to always be positive, no matter how terrible things can be.

I like it, he said.

She would say it when I was sad about something. My father said she would always say it to him, too. It was like the thing she lived by; it was what got her through so much pain.

What kind of pain? Did something happen to her?

Yes, Kasia said, a melancholy smile on her lips. A war happened.

Mid-morning we pull into a farmhouse. It's still some distance from the coast but I see the ocean west of us, big and dark blue, and it makes me feel uneasy, like I'm looking at something I shouldn't be.

The farmhouse belongs to an old lobster-boat skipper. We sit out on the veranda and I listen to them all talk.

The President says his bit about cleaning things up. If something went wrong out there he says we are all in the ground. The old skipper promised there was no trouble out at sea. The President leans back in his chair and watches the old skipper. The old man looks in his hands like he is looking for a ditch to jump in and finally says that there were some things in town to clean up. A fella who knew things he shouldn't know.

Not a gang fella. Lovesick. Soft. Protecting his girl who owed money. The skipper says this city fella had walked right up the jetty to their boat in the inlet, told them that he knew about the ships and told them he would tip off the coppers if they didn't leave his girl alone. It was almost sweet the skipper says.
The President doesn't find anything sweet about it and tells the old boy as much. The skipper goes looking for his ditch to jump into again and then the President turns to me. He doesn't say it but I know in the way the President looks at me that this city fella is now my business.

I wonder about this fella, if he knew he'd signed his own death warrant then and there when he walked up that jetty and spoke to these men. Got his name on a list that there is no getting off without ending up in the ground.

Wake

IN THE DAYS AFTER THE CYCLONE PASSED
the sea was as flat and still as Paul had seen it. The surface was strewn with junk that the storm had ingested from the beaches and drawn up from the sea floor. But the swell had disappeared and there seemed to be no movement in the ocean, not the slightest current. Things just sat in the sea where the storm had left them, inert on the surface, suspended like space junk. Michael and Paul were amazed at the things they saw floating in between runs, and Jake slowed the boat alongside any sizeable object so they could get a good look at what it was. They found a couch, possibly from a roadside collection. Michael's highlight was the kangaroo they came across eighteen miles from shore. The carcass was dark and swollen. Michael posed with the marsupial, leaning back over the water as Paul took a photo of it with the German's phone. After lunch
they came across an upturned catamaran. Jake had circled it, sounding his horn in case there were people clinging to it. Then he called the Maritime Safety Authority and reported it. That was as much as they could do. They were too far out to try to tow it; it would be too much for
Arcadia
. A hundred-thousand-dollar boat and they had to leave it behind.

As he worked, Paul found himself smiling, just like the German. The memory of Kasia relaxed him. It didn't stop him feeling sick, but it took the dread and melancholy out of the seasickness. He was vomiting and feeling incredible happiness. He even thought of Elliot less, he realised guiltily. When he did think of his brother, he found himself resisting the thought. It was almost as if he was back under the bedsheets again, pretending not to hear Elliot calling his name. But then Kasia would come back to him and Elliot would disappear, and he had to admit to himself that there was a relief in that, in forgetting it all, at least for a little while.

Paul knew by the way she kissed and the way she touched him that Kasia was experienced. He presumed his inexperience was equally apparent, but she seemed to tolerate his efforts. Mostly he simply watched and she guided him along. He observed the change in her face as he entered her, how her eyes closed and forehead creased. Her groans resembled both pain and relief. He would look down and watch the pattern of his body disappearing and reappearing, at one moment visible and then hidden. The simple visual subtraction, his cock erased from view, concealed inside her, was almost too much to take. After a moment watching he would close his eyes and grit his teeth and try to withdraw his thoughts before he lost his grasp on them. And he never did in time. Orgasm would sweep heavily over his
body, a crushing, plunging feeling, like being driven deep down into the sea. Kasia would kiss him hard, and then she would watch him as he drifted slowly back to her from the depths, as though he was swimming up to the surface.

Big room

AT THE BEACH PAUL KISSED HER SHOULDER
. Kasia's skin was hot against his lips. She lay face down on the towel, head turned away from him.

Have you seen the shark with the eye missing? Kasia asked, voice muffled by the towel.

Circus? No one has for a while. He's probably washed up somewhere.

The easterly was strong and desert-warm. He watched gusts run out across the sea in individual lines, prickling the surface, and he imagined the downdraught of invisible flocks of birds.

Maybe we could do it, you know, in there. Paul nodded towards the ocean.

Fuck?

He shrugged, tried to not look injured by the sharpness of the word and how she delivered it.

Ha, she said. No thanks.

Paul said nothing.

Kasia sighed. It is one of those things that are better in the mind than it is in life, she said. Would you like me to flush the ocean up your pee-hole?

Paul shook his head.

Exactly.

He watched the fine silver hairs of her back. He imagined her in the sea with her hands linked around the shoulders of someone else.

You know, Paul said, Michael says we are all doomed.

Michael says a lot of stuff.

He says we are designed to fail. People. All of us. It is in our design.

That's honestly what you guys talk about?

He reckons we are a faulty product.

We are not so bad. We went to the moon, didn't we?

A long time ago.

She shrugged. But we still did it. How can anything be impossible after that?

What do you think? Paul asked.

What do I think is the point of it all? she said, amused.

Paul shrugged.

Kasia rubbed her nose on her towel and looked back at him. Love, maybe, she said. Trying to be good. I believe that the future can have good things in it. Is that enough?

Paul rolled back over and sat up. For a moment his eyes were overwhelmed with light.

What is it with boys and questions like this? she said. Get them alone and it is always these
big
questions, like children thinking about dinosaurs or aliens or monsters under the bed.

Women, she said, they worry about the world they live in but men are always worrying about some different one that does not exist. They are incapable of talking about anything real.