Boy Swallows Universe. Trent Dalton

Boy Swallows Universe - Trent Dalton


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salted and peppered, and whole deep-sea leviathans from the Mekong and beyond, Neptune maybe; big fat awkward bottom lips and slimy tentacle whiskers in colours of green and moss green and blue green and grey green and brown, black and red. Bich Dang owns acres of land at the back of Darra, beyond the Polish migrant centre, with soil like chocolate cake where her old and wrinkled and wise farmers grow the piles of rau ram coriander, shiso leaf, hung cay mint, basil, lemongrass and Vietnamese balm that guests pass between themselves tonight like they’re playing some children’s party game called Hands Across the Table. An oversized mirror ball twinkles above us and a Vietnamese lounge singer twinkles on stage, purple glitter make-up on her cheeks and a turquoise sequined dress that shimmers the way a mermaid’s scales might shimmer beached on the banks of the Mekong. She sings ‘Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft’ by The Carpenters, sways to the crackly backing track, alien somehow, like she just flew into Darra on the kind of craft she’s calling through that old microphone. Red tinsel lines the walls, running above fish tanks with catfish and cod and red emperor and fat snapper fish with balls on their heads that look like someone’s clubbed them with a cricket bat. There’s two more tanks dedicated to the crayfish and the mud crabs who always seem so resigned to the fact they’ll form tonight’s signature dish. They sit beneath their tank rocks and their cheap stone underwater novelty castle decorations, so breezy bayou casual all they’re missing is a harmonica and a piece of straw to chew on. They’re so unaware of their importance, so oblivious to the fact they’re the reason people drive from as far away as the Sunshine Coast to come taste their insides baked in salt and pepper and chilli paste.

      A staircase to the right of the restaurant runs up to a second balcony level with ten more round tables where ‘Back Off’ Bich Dang seats her VIP guests, and tonight there’s only one VIP and his name is stretched across the birthday banner running across the balcony rail of the top level: Happy 80th Tytus Broz.

      ‘Lyle Orlik, son of Aureli!’ Tytus Broz says grandly, his arms raised welcomingly in the air, standing over the balcony rail. ‘It seems Bich has pulled out all the bells, all the whistles and all the stops to celebrate my eighth decade on this good planet!’

      The thing about Tytus Broz that reminds me most of bones is that every time I see him – and this is only my second sighting of him – I get a shiver down my spine. He smiles at me now and he smiles at Mum and he smiles at August, but I don’t buy that pistachio-nut-sucker smile for a second. I don’t know why. Just something in my bones.

      *

      The first time I met Tytus Broz was two years ago when I was ten years old. Lyle was taking me and August to the roller-skating rink in Stafford, on the north side of Brisbane, but on the way he had to drop in to his work at Moorooka to fix a faulty lever on the machine that shaped the artificial arms and legs that paid for Tytus Broz’s bone-white suits. It was the old warehouse back then, before the business was overhauled into the whole Human Touch modern manufacturing plant of today. The warehouse was an aluminium shed the size of a tennis court, with giant ceiling fans to fight the suffocating heat of all that sun-baked metal housing a thousand fake limbs spread across hooks and shelves that led past plaster-makers casting body shapes and mechanics turning screws into fake bent knees and fake bent elbows.

      ‘These are Frances’s boys, August and Eli,’ Lyle said, ushering us into Tytus Broz’s office at the back of the warehouse. August was the taller and the older so he walked into the office first and it was August who captivated Tytus from the start.

      ‘Come closer, young man,’ Tytus said.

      August looked up at Lyle for assurance and an exit out of that moment, but Lyle didn’t give it, he just nodded at August like he should do what was polite and walk closer to the man who was putting the meat and three veg on our table every night.

      August offered his right hand and Tytus cupped it gently in his own two hands.

      ‘Mmmmmmm,’ he said. With his forefinger and thumb he squeezed each of the fingers of August’s right hand, moving his way along the hand, thumb to pinkie.

      ‘Oh, there is a strength in you, isn’t there?’


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