Winton - An Open Swimmer

T HE POOL of yellow slag was dry and hard beside the blanket left in a crumpled ball. Green, fleshy leaves protruded through the tin. Out the window, the sky was the colour of dead skin.

Pain was more distant than he anticipated, much of it from lying on the wooden floor so long. His back was tight. On his forehead there was open skin, hard already with drying, and he found grazes on his arms, and a thin pain like little barbs in his hip. He limped out into the pale light.

Guttered with washouts, the sand track wound slowly NO faint and puffy wound in the bark until he saw the knotted masses of foliage in the clearing; a shred of canvas impaled on a branch; vomitty flour pooled on the mud. Wide black puddles reflected the thin clouds. The VW, toppling on its side, was fused to a thick gum, fenders crushed. Unmelted hailstones of glass lay on the ground. He peered in. The steering column a splintered tangle; panels buckled; boxes spilling. Black blood, stinging scent of eucalyptus, wet blankets. He reached in for his shoes. He found two oranges and his coat. Matches. The shoes might have been anywhere. He put the oranges in the pockets of his coat. The old man will be hungry, he thought, wondering where he might be.

Weed and shells were strewn up on the sand; heaps of piled weed, buzzing with little insects. The bottoms of the dunes were eaten away and deep gouges ran part of the way up the beach. Jerra heard the gulls. The old man was not here.

He went up the track, stumbling barefoot in the deep open veins in the mud, pulling his coat tight around him, the shit-stink following. Bird noises. He thought perhaps the old man would be back at the shack. Gulls hahed high in the trees. Others were skirting the treetops, crowding in.

Ah, bastards.

He cut into the bush.

The gulls moved back without blinking when he came close. The old mans face was in the mud, feet in the air, ankles pecked raw where his trousers had crept up, skin open, sunk with piano wire that gleamed dull. A little puddle of blood and mucus bathing the old face. The ringbolt on the ground, next to the puddle.

Jerra sat keeping the birds away for a while. He knew what he would do.

A single witness shall not prevail...

On the beach, he wrapped the old man in the tattered canvas sheets. He tied his diving weights around the middle, threaded the ring through. He undressed. He took the old mans boots off the cooling feet. He waded out to the shallow part of the reef, the icy water gripping his shins. Beneath his numbing feet, the fur of algae yielded softly. He steered the bundle out stopping every few moments to unsnag it, until he manoeuvred it over a hole, using the ring at the waist as a handle, and lowered it over the edge, watching it sink slowly into the green, grey hole. The water stung his cuts. He watched the green.

Seagulls were gathering on the water as he pulled his clothes back over his blue limbs. The old mans boots were rank, but soft inside. He went up to the clearing. Digging into the mess he found sultanas, and socks for the boots. Packets, boxes, coils, blankets spilling. Birds in the trees, mostly gulls, were showing their pink tongues, one close in the fallen tree that crushed the VW. It laughed at him with those red Sean-eyes, squinting, edging closer.

Bugger off, yer bastards! he yelled.

The gull came closer. Blinking.

Jerra lit a match, smelling the dead breath of its smoke, dropped it into the fuel tank and ran.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tim Winton has published twenty-one books for adults and children, and his work has been translated into twenty-five languages. Since his first novel, An Open Swimmer , won the Australian /Vogel Award in 1981, he has won the Miles Franklin Award four times (for Shallows , Cloudstreet , Dirt Music and Breath ) and twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize (for The Riders and Dirt Music ). He lives in Western Australia.

ALSO BY TIM WINTON

Novels

Shallows

That Eye, the Sky

In the Winter Dark

Cloudstreet

The Riders

Dirt Music

Breath

Stories

Scission

Minimum of Two

The Turning

For younger readers

Jesse

Lockie Leonard, Human Torpedo

The Bugalugs Bum Thief

Lockie Leonard, Scumbuster

Lockie Leonard, Legend

Blueback

The Deep

Non-fiction

Lands Edge

Down to Earth (with Richard Woldendorp)

Smalltown (with Martin Mischkulnig)

Plays

Rising Water

Signs of Life

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (Australia)

707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia

(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

Penguin Group (NZ)

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(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London, WC2R 0RL, England

First published by Allen & Unwin, 1982

First published in paperback by Picador, 1983

Published by McPhee Gribble/Penguin, 1991

This digital edition published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2012

Copyright Tim Winton, 1982

The moral right of the author has been asserted

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Cover design by John Canty Penguin Group (Australia)

Cover photograph by Pete Seaward

ISBN: 9781742537368

penguin.com.au

This book is for John and Beverley Winton,
two of my best friends.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to offer my thanks and respect to Michael Henderson and Denise Fitch for their patience and assistance in the writing of this book.

The lines from Diving into the Wreck, from Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972, by Adrienne Rich, copyright 1973 by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., are reprinted by permission of the author and W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes

whose breasts still bear the stress

whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies

obscurely inside barrels

half-wedged and left to rot

we are the half-destroyed instruments

that once held to a course

the water-eaten log

the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are

by cowardice or courage

the one who find our way

back to this scene

carrying a knife, a camera

a book of myths

in which

our names do not appear.

Diving into the Wreck, Adrienne Rich

prologue

I T HAD been a long fight between Jerra Nilsam and the fish. He pressed the flat end of the oar against its brow. Globes of moisture clustered on its flanks. His father grinned in the stern. The engine was chuckling. Water parted like an incision behind. The fish grunted. His father said it was a turrum. The long fan of tail slapped the gunwale, the gills were pumping, and blood globbed the bottom of the boat.

In the water, the black diamond, the mate, cruised. When he had gaffed the turrum over the side and was cuffed on the chin by the tail, the diamond had been there, silver when the sun caught its flanks.