Breath

by Tim Winton

I couldn’t have put words to it as a boy, but later I understood what seized my imagination that day. How strange it was to see men do something beautiful. Something pointless and elegant, as though nobody saw or cared.

We talked about skill and courage and luck – we shared all that, and in time we surfed

to fool with death – but for me there was still the outlaw feeling of doing something graceful, as if dancing on water was the best

and bravest thing a man...

One surfer seemed to show up on only the very biggest days. He was quite an old guy and his board was so long and thick that he’d carry the thing on his head down through the peppermint scrub to the beach. Then he’d jog to the water and launch himself into the crunching shorebreak and aim straight for the rip, paddling on his knees, always as casual as you like, whatever the conditions. You’d barely see him for half an hour and then a set would break out wide,

like a squall rolling into the bay, and you’d suddenly pick out the white squirt of a wake on the grey-brown crags of a wave big and ugly enough to make you shiver. There he would be, that tiny figure, strangely upright and nonchalant, rising and swooping until he was close enough to be more than just a silhouette. His skill was extraordinary. There was something special about his insouciance and the princely manner in which he cross-stepped along his long, old-timey board, how he stalled and feinted and then surged in spurts of acceleration across the shoaling banks, barely ahead of the growling beast at his back, and when the wave fattened toward the deep channel in the middle of the bay, he’d stand at the very tip of the board with

and his head thrown back as if he’d just finished singing an anthem that ...

I will always remember my first wave that morning. The smells of paraffin wax and brine and peppy scrub. The way the swell rose beneath me like a body drawing in air. How the wave drew me forward and I sprang to my feet, skating with the wind of momentum in my ears. I leant across the wall of upstanding water and the board came with me as though it was part of my body and mind. The blur of spray. The billion shards of light. I remember the solitary

watching figure on the beach and the flash of Loonie’s smile as I flew by; I was intoxicated. And though I’ve lived to be an old man with my own share of happiness for all the mess I made, I still judge every joyous moment, every victory and revelation against those few seconds of living.

That summer he taught me how to play the didjeridu, to sustain the circular breathing necessary to keep up the low, growling drone you could send down the valley from his front steps. The noise of it made the dog go bush. I liked the way it

sucked energy from me and drew hard feelings up the way only a good tantrum could when I was little. I blew

It wasn’t Eva this nightmare repetition reminded me of – it was the memory of my former self – and the slow-motion replay an illustration of how my mind had worked for too long.