The Angel on the Roof

by Russell Banks

  Shortly after the soldiers lined up at the shore, the fish broke the surface of the water halfway across the pond. It was a silver swirl in the morning sun, a clean swash of movement, like a single brushstroke, for the fish was thought to be a reincarnation of Rad, the painter, an early disciple of Buddha. The soldiers readied their weapons. Lieutenant Han repeated his order: “Wait until I say to fire,” he said, and there was a second swirl, a lovely arc of silver bubbles, closer to shore this time. The crowd had gone silent. Many were moving their lips in prayer; all were straining to see over and around the line of soldiers at the shore. Then there it was, a few feet out and hovering in the water like a cloud in the sky, one large dark eye watching the soldiers as if with curiosity, delicate fins fluttering gently in the dark water like translucent leaves. “Fire!” the lieutenant cried. The soldiers obeyed, and their weapons roared for what seemed a long time. The pond erupted and boiled in white fury, and when finally the water was still once again, everyone in the crowd rushed to the shore and searched for the remains of the fish. Even the lieutenant and his band of soldiers pushed to the mud at the edge of the water and looked for the fish, or what everyone thought would be chunks of the fish floating on the still surface of the pond. But they saw nothing, not a scrap of it, until they noticed halfway across the pond a swelling in the water, and the fish rolled and dove, sending a wave sweeping in to shore, where the crowd cried out joyfully and the soldiers and the young lieutenant cursed, for they knew that Colonel Tung was not going to like this, not at all.

  Colonel Tung took off his sunglasses and glared at the lieutenant, then turned in his chair to face the electric fan for a moment. Finally, replacing his glasses, he said, “Let us assume that in that pond an enemy submarine is surfacing at night to send spies and saboteurs into our midst. Do you have the means to destroy it?” He tapped a cigarette into an ebony holder and lighted it. The lieutenant, like the colonel, a man trained at the academy but rapidly adapting his skills to life in the provinces, said yes, he could destroy such an enemy. He would mine the pond, he said, and detonate the mines from shore. “Indeed,” the colonel said. “That sounds like a fine idea,” and he went back to work.

  From a rowboat, the soldiers placed in the pond ten pie-sized mines connected by insulated wires to one another and to a detonator and battery, and when everything was ready and the area had been cleared of civilians, Lieutenant Han set off the detonator from behind a mound of earth they had heaped up for this purpose. There was a deep, convulsive rumble, and the surface of the pond blew off, causing a wet wind that had the strength of a gale and tore leaves from the trees and bent the bamboo stalks to the ground. Immediately after the explosion, everyone from the village who was not already at the site rushed to the pond and joined the throng that encircled it. Everything that had ever lived in or near the pond seemed to be dead and floating on its surface—carp, crayfish, smelts, catfish, eels, tortoises, frogs, egrets, woodcocks, peccaries, snakes, feral dogs, lizards, doves, shellfish, and all the plants from the bottom, the long grasses, weeds, and reeds, and the banyans, mangroves, and other trees rooted in the water, and the flowering bushes and the lilies that had floated on the surface of the pond—everything that once had been alive now seemed dead. Many people wept openly, some prayed, burned incense, chanted, and others, more practical, rushed about with baskets, gathering up the unexpected harvest. The lieutenant and his soldiers walked intently around the pond, searching for the giant fish. When they could not find it, they rowed out to the middle of the pond and searched there. But still, amongst the hundreds of dead fish and plants, birds and animals floating in the water, they saw no huge silver fish, no carcass that could justify such carnage. As they began to row back toward shore, the lieutenant, who was standing at the bow, his hand shading his eyes from the milky glare of the water, saw once again the rolling, shiny side of the giant fish, its dorsal fin like a black knife slicing obliquely across their bow, when it disappeared, only to reappear off the stern a ways, swerving back and suddenly heading straight at the small, crowded boat. The men shouted in fear, and at the last possible second the fish looped back and dove into the dark waters below. The crowd at the shore had seen it, and a great cheer went up, and in seconds there were drums and cymbals and all kinds of song joining the cheers, as the soldiers rowed slowly, glumly, in to shore.

  The reputation of the fish and its miraculous powers began to spread rapidly across the land, and great flocks of believers undertook pilgrimages to the pond, where they set up tents and booths on the shore. Soon the settlement surrounding the pond was as large as the village where the colonel’s district headquarters was located. Naturally, this alarmed the colonel, for these pilgrims were Buddhists, and he, a Catholic, was no longer sure he could rule them. “We must destroy that fish,” he said to the lieutenant, who suggested this time that he and his soldiers pretend to join the believers and scatter pieces of bread over the waters to feed the fish, as had become the custom. They would do this from the boat, he said, with specially sweetened chunks of bread, and when the fish had become accustomed to being fed this way and approached the boat carelessly close, they would lob hand grenades painted white as bread into the water, and the fish, deceived, would swallow one or two or more whole, as it did the bread, and that would be that. Colonel Tung admired the plan and sent his man off to implement it instantly. Lieutenant Han’s inventiveness surprised the colonel and pleased him, although he foresaw problems, for if the plan worked, he would be obliged to promote the man, which would place Han in a position where he could begin to covet the colonel’s position as district commander. This damned fish, the colonel said to himself, may be the worst thing to happen to me.

  It soon appeared that Lieutenant Han’s plan was working. The fish, which seemed recently to have grown to an even more gigantic size than before, was now almost twice the size of the boat. It approached the boat without fear and rubbed affectionately against it, or so it seemed, whenever the soldiers rowed out to the middle of the pond and scattered large chunks of bread, which they did twice a day. Each time, the fish gobbled the chunks, cleared the water all around, and swam rapidly away. The throng onshore cheered, for they, too, had taken the bait—they believed that the soldiers, under the colonel’s orders, had come to appreciate the fish’s value to the district as a whole, to Catholics as much as to Buddhists, for everyone, it seemed, was profiting from its presence—tentmakers, carpenters, farmers, storekeepers, clothiers, woodchoppers, scribes, entrepreneurs of all types, entertainers even, musicians and jugglers, and of course the manufacturers of altars and religious images and also of paintings and screens purported to have been made by the original Rad, the artist and early disciple of Buddha, now reincarnated as the giant fish.

  When finally Lieutenant Han gave the order to float the specially prepared grenades out with the bread, several soldiers balked. They had no objections to blowing up the fish, but they were alarmed by the size of the crowd now more or less residing on the shore and, as usual, watching the soldiers in the boat in hopes of seeing the fish surface to feed. “If this time we succeed in destroying the fish,” a soldier said, “the people may not let us get back to shore. There are now thousands of them, Catholics as well as Buddhists, and but ten of us.” The lieutenant pointed out that the crowd had no weapons, and they had automatic rifles that could easily clear a path from the shore to the road and back to the village. “And once the fish is gone, the people will go away, and things will settle back into their normal patterns again.” The soldiers took heart and proceeded to drop the grenades into the water with an equal number of chunks of bread. The fish, large as a house, had been lurking peacefully off the stern of the boat and now swept past, swooping up all the bread and the grenades in one huge swallow. It turned away and rolled, exposing its silver belly to the sun as if in gratitude, and the crowd cried out in pleasure. The music rose, with drums, cymbals, flutes joining happily and floating to the sky on swirling clouds of incense, while the soldi
ers rowed furiously for shore. The boat scraped gravel, and the troopers jumped out, dragged the boat up onto the mud, and made their way quickly through the throng toward the road. When they reached the road, they heard the first of the explosions, then the others in rapid succession, a tangled knot of bangs, as all the grenades went off, in the air, it seemed, out of the water and certainly not inside the fish’s belly. It was as if the fish were spitting the grenades out just as they were about to explode, creating the effect of a fireworks display above the pond, which must have been what caused the people gathered at the shore to break into sustained, awestruck applause and then, long into the day and the following night, song.

  Now the reputation of the miraculous fish grew tenfold, and busloads of pilgrims began to arrive from as far away as Saigon and Bangkok. People on bicycles, on donkeys, in trucks and in oxcarts made their way down the dusty road from the village to the pond, where as many of them as could find a spot got down to the shore and prayed to the fish for help, usually against disease and injury, for the fish was thought to be especially effective in this way. Some prayed for wealth or for success in love or for revenge against their enemies, but these requests were not thought likely to be answered, though it surely did no harm to try. Most of those who came now took away with them containers filled with water from the pond. They arrived bearing bowls, buckets, fruit tins, jars, gourds, and even paper cups, and they took the water with them back to their homes in the far corners of the country, where many of them were able to sell off small vials of the water for surprisingly high prices to those unfortunate neighbors and loved ones unable to make the long overland journey to the pond. Soldiers, too, whenever they passed through Colonel Tung’s district, came to the pond and filled their canteens with the magical waters. More than once a helicopter landed on the shore, and a troop of soldiers jumped out, ran to the pond, filled their canteens, and returned to the helicopter and took off again. Thus, when Lieutenant Han proposed to Colonel Tung that this time they try to destroy the fish by poisoning the water in the pond, the colonel demurred. “I think that instead of trying to kill the fish, we learn how to profit from it ourselves. It’s too dangerous now,” he observed, “to risk offending the people by taking away what has become their main source of income. What I have in mind, my boy, is a levy, a tax on the water that is taken away from this district. A modest levy, not enough to discourage the pilgrims, but more than enough to warrant the efforts and costs of collection.” The colonel smiled slyly and set his lieutenant to the task. There will be no promotions now, he said to himself, for there are no heroics in tax collecting.

  A sort of calm and orderliness settled over the district, which pleased everyone, Colonel Tung most of all, but also Lieutenant Han, who managed to collect the tax on the water so effectively that he was able without detection to cut a small percentage out of it for himself, and the soldiers, who felt much safer collecting taxes than trying to destroy a miraculous and beloved fish, and the people themselves, who, because they now paid a fee for the privilege of taking away a container of pond water, no longer doubted the water’s magical power to cure illness and injury, to let the blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, and the dumb talk. The summer turned into fall, the fall became winter, and there were no changes in the district, until the spring, when it became obvious to everyone that the pond was much smaller in diameter than it had been in previous springs. The summer rains that year were heavy, although not unusually so, and the colonel hoped that afterwards the pond would be as large as before, but it was not. In September, when the dry season began, the colonel tried to restrict the quantity of water taken from the pool. This proved impossible, for by now too many people had too many reasons to keep on taking water away. A powerful black market operated in several cities, and at night tanker trucks edged down to the shore, where they sucked thousands of gallons of water out, and the next morning the surface of the pond would be yet another foot lower than before, and encircling it would be yet another mud aureole inside the old shoreline.

  At last there came the morning when the pond was barely large enough to hold the fish. The colonel, wearing sunglasses, white scarf, and cigarette holder, and Lieutenant Han and the soldiers and many of the pilgrims walked across the drying mud to the edge of the water, where they lined up around the tiny pool, little more than a puddle now, and examined the fish. It lay on its side, half exposed to the sun. One gill, blood red inside, opened and closed, but no water ran through. One eye was above water, one below, and the eye above was clouded over and fading to white. A pilgrim who happened to be carrying a pail leaned down, filled his pail, and splashed the water over the side of the fish. Another pilgrim with a gourd joined him, and two soldiers went back to the encampment and returned with a dozen containers of various types and sizes, which they distributed to the others, even including the colonel. Soon everyone was dipping his container into the water and splashing it over the silvery side of the huge, still fish. By midday, however, the sun had evaporated most of the water, and the containers were filled with more mud than moisture, and by sunset they had buried the fish.

  The Moor

  It’s about 10:00 P.M., and I’m one of three, face it, middle-aged guys crossing South Main Street in light snow, headed for a quick drink at the Greek’s. We’ve just finished a thirty-second-degree induction ceremony at the Masonic Hall in the old Capitol Theater building and need a blow. I’m the tall figure in the middle, Warren Low, and I guess it’s my story I’m telling, although you could say it was Gail Fortunata’s story, since meeting her that night after half a lifetime is what got me started.

  I’m wearing remnants of makeup from the ceremony, in which I portrayed an Arab prince—red lips, streaks of black on my face here and there, not quite washed off because of no cold cream at the Hall. The guys tease me about what a terrific nigger I make, that’s the way they talk, and I try to deflect their teasing by ignoring it, because I’m not as prejudiced as they are, even though I’m pleased nonetheless. It’s an acting job, the thirty-second, and not many guys are good at it. We are friends and businessmen, colleagues—I sell plumbing and heating supplies, my friend Sammy Gibson is in real estate, and the other, Rick Buckingham, is a Chevy dealer.

  We enter the Greek’s, a small restaurant and fern bar, pass through the dining room into the bar in back like regulars, because we are regulars and like making a point of it, greeting the Greek and his help. Small comforts. Sammy and Rick hit uselessly on one of the waitresses, the pretty little blond kid, and make a crack or two about the new gay waiter who’s in the far corner by the kitchen door and can’t hear them. Wise guys.

  The Greek says to me, What’s with the greasepaint? Theater group, I tell him. He’s not a Mason, I think he’s Orthodox Catholic or something, but he knows what we do. As we pass one table in particular, this elderly lady in the group looks me straight in the eyes, which gets my attention, because otherwise she’s just some old lady. Then for a split second I think I know her, but decide not and keep going. She’s a large, baggy, bright-eyed woman in her late seventies, possibly early eighties. Old.

  Sammy, Rick, and I belly up to the bar, order drinks, the usuals, comment on the snow outside, and feel safe and contented in each other’s company. We reflect on our wives and ex-wives and our grown kids, all elsewhere. We’re out late and guilt-free.

  I peek around the divider at her—thin, silver-blue hair, dewlaps at her throat, liver spots on her long flat cheeks. What the hell, an old lady. She’s with family, some kind of celebration—two sons, they look like, in their forties, with their wives and a bored teenage girl, all five of them overweight, dull, dutiful, in contrast to the old woman, who despite her age looks smart, aware, all dressed up in a maroon knit wool suit. Clearly an attractive woman once.

  I drift from Sammy and Rick, ask the Greek, “Who’s the old lady, what’s the occasion?”

  The Greek knows her sons’ name, Italian—Fortunata, he thinks. “Doesn’t register,” I say. �
�No comprendo.”

  “The old lady’s eightieth,” says the Greek. “We should live so long, right? You know her?”

  “No, I guess not.” The waitresses and the gay waiter sing “Happy Birthday,” making a scene, but the place is almost empty anyhow, from the snow, and everybody seems to like it, and the old lady smiles serenely.

  I say to Sammy and Rick, “I think I know the old gal from someplace, but can’t remember where.”