“I like all animals,” he said. “But I have to get this one into some cold water soon because otherwise it’s going to get too hot.”
“Yes, that would be sad. If the weather gets too hot, maybe it’d get sick. And if the weather gets super-hot, people get sick too, don’t they? Sometimes, if they’re old, they even die,” she said without taking a breath. “I saw it on the news.”
“Yes, that can be very dangerous. I’m going inside now.” He looked away, but when he looked back he saw that she was standing there with her feet turned in again, as cute as yesterday. He glanced at her tooth. She smiled, but there was something in her eyes that made him feel uncomfortable. Maybe he’d disappointed her by wanting to go away already, maybe she was feeling lonely. He didn’t want to think about it.
At home he wanted to go straight upstairs so he could quickly let the fish glide into the water and be alone again. It was all too much. Too many impressions, too many unexpected events. He imagined himself lying stretched out on the floor next to the aquarium, his T-shirt off, the window open, the fan turned on. He longed to hear nothing but the water pump and the pigeon’s feet, feeling the air on his sweaty body.
But his mother must have already heard or seen him, because when he went inside she emerged from the living room to meet him in the hall. He wondered if she’d already started on the wine. He’d seen the cards on the sofa through the window. She’d been playing patience all afternoon, of course, mumbling the scores to herself, counting them on her fingers, TV cackling in the background.
She came closer. To his relief he saw the glint he knew so well in her eye. A sign she was in a good mood. She wouldn’t be too hard on him. “So,” she said, “has my boy had a nice day today?”
He hadn’t had a chance to formulate an answer before her eyes had latched onto the bucket he was holding. She came a little closer and bent over. “Good heavens, Mother of God, what have you got now?” Her forehead puckered up in horror.
He curled his fingers tighter around the handle of the bucket. “It’s a tench.” He wondered what to do. He’d seen on the church clock that it had already gone four. Getting the fish set up properly would take a couple of hours, he wanted to rest, Milk would need walking again later, he still had to hoover. A force inside him, or maybe outside, was pursuing him, casting its shadow over him and making him feel like something ominous would happen if he left a single minute unfilled. It pressed against his knees from behind, for a moment it was like his legs were going to buckle, his breath was taut, he had to go on. But an irresistible flood of words was also rising up inside him.
“It’s a tench,” he began again, explaining that it was a member of the carp family but not a real carp. “It’s a very special fish. They used to call it a doctor fish too.”
“A doctor fish,” he heard his mother repeating quietly. “What a strange name.” She bent closer to get a better idea of the length of the fish. “It’s enormous.”
He kept talking about the characteristics of tench, what he could remember at least, but soon noticed that her thoughts were already wandering. He stopped talking, sniffed and thought about what the psychologist had told him: that he didn’t have good radar for when others didn’t share his interests and had to pay more attention to other people’s “signals”, their body language and silences. A muscle in his eye started to quiver.
“Lovely, son, but try not to let yourself get carried away so much, with your fish and whatnot, OK?”
That abrupt stabbing behind his eyes again. He gulped. He didn’t want to say another word, just get upstairs as fast as he could. He remembered one of the psychologist’s exercises, part of the social-skills training. He hadn’t got that far yet, but had already read a few of the modules in his workbook. “You don’t need to react to everything,” it said. “Focus on you,” he told himself.
When his mother asked what that was on the fish’s stomach, he couldn’t ignore it. He explained that it had probably been pecked or bitten, probably by a cormorant or some other bird, and that it needed rest and would make a full recovery. Then he started talking about tea. Later, at six, he’d make a nice omelette with bacon and cheese, warm up some soup and toast some bread. That seemed to satisfy her. She laughed and teased him, calling him her game warden, her fish whisperer, her doctor-fish doctor.
He smiled absently as unwanted images of the girl drifted through his mind again. Warm blood thrummed in his ears; he made a futile attempt to ignore his drumming heart. He needed to be alone, upstairs, he thought, then he could do his exercises. That way he would learn how to deal with it, how to manage his behaviour, the habits he could break. I am not bad, he thought, it’s the actions I’m learning to control. So he blurted that he was going up to his room and she replied that she’d watch a bit of telly. But halfway up the stairs he already regretted being so short with her. I’ll be nicer tonight, he thought, more sociable. I’ll cook so well, take my time, make it up to her.
Through the floor he heard his mother’s footsteps as she walked from the TV to the sofa and back again. She said something he couldn’t make out to the dog. Jonathan gritted his teeth, got a layer of fresh water into the tank and connected the pump. Immediately a quiet bubbling sound filled the room into the furthest corners. The sounds from downstairs were diluted, spreading and subsiding until they were just a quiet hum, a distant murmur. Even though they didn’t disappear completely, he still sighed with relief and felt almost like the new sound, the soft bubbling, was streaming out of his own body.
He quickly shrugged off those thoughts and set to work, excited to be able to refill the aquarium again. Routinely, as so often before, he fetched the scales from the bathroom and lifted up the fish, staring excitedly at the trembling needle and establishing that it weighed 1,250 grams. Not enough for an adult male tench of this length. “But I’ll build you up again,” he whispered; with good care he’d make it healthy again.
In the back of his workbook he drew up a schedule: every morning at six, just before work, and in the afternoon at 2.45, just after work, he would check the water temperature and cool it; 18 degrees was his target—everything over 23 had to be avoided. He would feed it mornings and evenings, and put that in his schedule: 6 a.m. and 9.30 p.m.: water fleas, sweetcorn, wrigglers, snails, dog food. With a bit of cheese now and then, he hoped to get its weight up.
He filled the aquarium some more and lowered the fish into it. In the water it looked heavier than it really was. It sank a good bit then slowly floated back up, its head almost against the glass. Jonathan squatted down in front of the tank and caught its gaze. It looked sad, he thought, but proud too. With his lips pressed together, he peered at the fish for a while and eventually felt an urge to talk to it, to explain himself. As if the fish too had found him guilty. Again he thought about his guilt feelings. The psychologist had told him that experiencing guilt feelings was part of having a normally developed conscience. Things didn’t go the way I wanted them to, he thought, and that hurts. But this is my second chance—that was what the lawyer said, and he repeated the words in his head. If I do everything better than I have ever done before, he added, maybe I’ll make it all up. This thought flashed through his mind with a brief feeling of satisfaction.
He turned back to the fish, whose head looked larger and larger through the gleaming glass. Sadder too. Jonathan’s satisfaction gradually trickled out of him, making way for tension, as if a membrane inside his head had been drawn taut and could rupture at any moment. “I know the tank is small,” he said. “And that you’re imprisoned. But you’re safe here.” He listened to his own words and hoped it was enough.
For a while the fish floated dead still in the tank. Then it let itself drift along for a short distance in the gentle stream of bubbles from the air pump. It had turned away from Jonathan, but now turned back. A little later it swam slowly along the glass front of the aquarium, its whole body shining in the glow of the lights. Jonathan swallowed. Maybe this was how it had to be. The two
of us together, he thought, and stayed sitting there dead still as if to let the moment solidify in time. Suddenly he smelt the sweat slowly trickling down his face and realized he’d forgotten to turn on the fan. He walked over to it and switched it on. So much for lying down on the floor and letting it blow air over his whole body. Now there wasn’t enough time. He still had to give all the aquarium accessories a good scrub, then hoover downstairs.
First, he tore a blank sheet out of his exercise book with therapy notes, smoothed it out on the floor, used his ruler to draw long lines at right angles, then divided the horizontal axis into twenty-one blocks. Three times seven days, that should be enough time for him to nurse the fish back to health. He noted the tench’s current weight a little bit up from the bottom of the vertical axis. The line would rise up from this point. But how much? Not knowing just how much the final weight should be, he left this axis blank for the time being.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor with the graph by his side, he studied it and the fish in turn and caught himself imagining the girl sitting opposite him, her mouth slightly open, her eyes fixed on the sheet of paper, then looking up at him or the fish. He would have liked to have shown her the neatly drawn graph, explaining that he was on the right path, looking after the fish but doing his exercises at the same time. Could she remove his guilt? He thought of the empathy exercise he’d done with the psychologist. What was important was picking up on other people’s emotions, feeling what they were feeling. Those were the words the psychologist had used. It was important.
He got the workbook out as well and read what he himself had written about it. Feeling for others, sympathizing, helping. He repeated it to himself. This evening he’d look for a plaster for the girl to show how caring he was.
While sitting there looking thoughtfully at the fish in the tank, he suddenly noticed that the direction of its eyes seemed to diverge slightly. He crawled up to the glass and studied the almost luminescent orange-red eyes. It was like the fish could see more than normal. He was awed by the strength in its sturdy tail, even in this weakened state. Little drops flew up when it slapped the water and suddenly it seemed not just to see more, but to be able to do more than normal animals too.
“You know a lot, don’t you?” he whispered to the fish, and felt his pulse throbbing in his temples. It wasn’t something he could explain, but he had a strange feeling that there was a reason for all of this. His mother would have seen it as a sign from God, but not him. He thought it was something else, something too big or too complicated to understand. “You’ve come to help me,” he continued. The blood rose from his throat to his cheeks. He froze for a moment, waiting to see if the fish would react, but it kept looking past him with its splayed eyes. “Are you going to help me?” he asked. It made him feel a bit stupid, but the question still meant something to him. It still had an impact.
He got out his animal book and read that the tench’s scientific name was Tinca tinca. The reason it had been called the doctor or the physician fish was that people thought its skin and slime were medicinal and attributed healing powers to the fish. He read about a peasant woman who had used a tench to heal a wound on her hand and a tench that had cured and revitalized the carp in a pond just by its presence. “Will you help me?” he asked again. “Will you promise?” It felt right. But a little later he felt agitated again and returned to the plan he’d worked out with the psychologist. The warning-sign chart with its three phases. He looked at phase one, the phase in which things were going well. He was in that phase now—where else? Under “thoughts” he read what he had written one of those nights in his cell: “Not worrying about unnecessary things.” Feelings: “Relaxed, calm.” Behaviour: “Doing my own thing within the limits of decency and law.” And after that: “What can I do?” Here he read: “Mind my own business and keep to myself. Stick to agreements.” He wanted to expand on this and wrote: “Take care of my fish. Drink coffee and play cards with my mother.” And also: “I keep my surroundings tidy.”
At two minutes past six he started cooking: soup and an omelette. At six thirty-three he sat down to eat with his mother. Just after eight he was strolling through the deserted, mostly demolished neighbourhood with the dog. He felt calm and unhurried. It was still hot—a dry, stony heat hanging over the expanse of sand. Sunday evening. This evening, he suddenly remembered, at twenty past eight, in five minutes, his mother’s favourite quiz show was on. The quiz show they had watched together for years. That came under leisure activities and seemed like a good, safe pastime. And also a way of distracting himself. Chasing off unwanted thoughts, that was how he pictured it, so they’d take flight like a flock of harried birds, scattered by the excited voices from the television. Fortunately, he had to work tomorrow too, he thought. His activities in the factory were the very best way of making sure he steered his ideas and all the things that could arise inside his head in the right direction.
Coming through the door, he could already hear the theme tune of the show he and his mother hadn’t been able to watch together for so long. His mother was sitting on the sofa with a bowl of crisps.
“Just in time,” she said, smiling at him. She had her feet up on a stool in front of her, her hands clasped under her bosom. He sat down next to her, intent on making a pleasant evening of it.
The first round started. Something about sport, a question about a government minister. At the third question, he asked, “Shall we join in?” And she said, “Lovely, it’s been so long since we did that.”
He’d made some more squash with ice and the cubes clicked quietly against each other when he filled their glasses. His mother already had a glass of sweet wine on the side table next to her.
He settled back on the sofa, his hands on the cushion he’d pulled up against himself, his fingers tightly interlaced. His mother slid over towards him. Have some fun now, he thought, it’s eight twenty-four; nine o’clock it’ll be over, just thirty-six minutes. Then the last bit of washing-up, air her bedroom and go upstairs.
“What are we going to win?” he asked. This was their game, almost as far back as he could remember. They fantasized about what they would win if they were standing there, guessing the contents of the prize boxes on the telly. And they told each other what they would like to have and where they’d put their new possessions.
“A microwave?” he asked, and his mother said, “Yes, that would be lovely in the new house, when we move.”
“Yes.”
A couple on TV had just won a trip to Paris.
“A fridge,” he said, thinking of their current fridge, which often left a puddle on the floor in front of it.
“What’s it look like?”
“Big and white, with an enormous crisper that keeps all the vegetables fresh for a really long time.”
“Lovely,” his mother laughed. She drank some wine, slurping now and then so he heard the sound of the liquid and air passing through her teeth. He remembered that before he’d only been able to sit there and think, “That sound has to stop,” but not now: now he could handle anything. For a moment he concentrated on his shoulder muscles, making sure they stayed relaxed, and straightened his back.
His mother leant towards him, ever closer. Her eyes were greyish blue with tiny veins in the whites, branching in all directions. He could see flecks of a darker blue in her iris and shallow wrinkles in her skin. While his mother stared at the screen, he thought about the patterns they formed. This makes her happy, he told himself. Playing cards with him, watching the telly, she doesn’t like to be alone. And he stayed calm. Try not to think about the fish, he told himself. Put your head down, let things happen. Just sitting here and saying what she likes to hear is good as long as you stay calm. I will ignore the loud, sometimes unexpected noises and the sunlight that is still shining in through the windows. Nothing upsets me; I’m just sitting here.
“And what else?” She meant the fridge, he realized after a second.
“Lots of compartments.”
> He thought about the kind of buzz the fridge they were going to win would make. A low, quiet buzz. That was good to think about.
“Wait a minute,” he said after a while, standing up. A sigh escaped his lips. He wanted to do it differently after all, properly. In the hall, next to the phone, and after that in the kitchen, he searched for a pad, but couldn’t find one anywhere. Then he went up to his room, grabbed his exercise book from under his pillow, carefully tore out a page, pulled open the table drawer, took out the pen and the ruler, and closed the drawer again. Downstairs, he knelt down at the table and started drawing up lines, two columns, one for her answers and one for his.
“Son, don’t take it so seriously.” She started to laugh. “There’s no need to be so serious about it.”
He laid the sheet of paper to one side, sat down, closed his eyes for a moment and opened them again. I’ll keep breathing calmly and keep thinking, he thought. I mustn’t take it personally, let things take their own course, don’t contradict her. I’m fine sitting here on this sofa. Time is passing slowly, but it’s passing.
“It’s just a bit of fun, Jonny,” she said a few more times. “It’s just a game.”
He resisted the temptation to stand up. His hands were folded together on his stomach. Now and then he put the tip of his tongue between his front teeth and bit down on it softly, or slowly let the spit build up in his mouth before silently swallowing.
Now he heard whooping and cheering from the TV. Someone shouted the word “roast” with a long, unnatural r, and suddenly the noise annoyed him. It was really loud. Like so many times before, he thought about how much noise there was in the world. Forcing itself on him. Suddenly he wanted to turn down the volume. But in his mind he could already hear her voice: “Hey, come on, son, I can hardly hear it like that.”
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