Tench

by Inge Schilperoord

  After a few long minutes she started talking again. “Tinca isn’t going to die, is she?”

  “What do you mean?” Tell her something to reassure her, he thought, talk about facts, about the fish. That’ll give you more time to think.

  “Because it’s more than 30 degrees. That’s too hot. It’s too hot for people too, that’s what Mum says, she almost suffocates behind the bar.” At those last words, she shook her head slightly, releasing a lock of hair from her ponytail. The wispy lock fell down over her forehead. She blew it away. Like always, it flopped back immediately.

  “Not if we look after it properly,” he said. “It won’t die then.” He had to think of the cichlids he’d had last year. From his mother’s letters he knew that they’d all died during his very first week in jail. She’d put them downstairs in the living room. He figured they were too sensitive to change. I’ll keep this fish here, he suddenly thought, changing its environment another time would be too much for it.

  “Before, when I was sick, Dad would always make me ice lollies. Pear-flavoured. That’s my favourite.”

  Together they looked at the tank with the fish swimming slowly behind the glass, heavy and sluggish, its tail gaunt, its eyes dull. A murmuring emptiness suddenly spread through Jonathan’s head. The last few days the fish had spent almost all its time lying in the mud. Hardly touching its food. With this weather it was almost impossible to keep the temperature of the tank low enough. Losing the fish didn’t bear thinking about. He’d be alone in the room again, alone with his thoughts. Talk, he thought, say something, anything, cover it up with words. “We just have to be nice to it,” he managed. But a stream of anger was bubbling up inside him.

  “What’s her favourite food?”

  “It likes snails.”

  “What, just ordinary snails?”

  “No, water snails, the common bithynia.”

  “So we have to give them to her to save her?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Where do they live?”

  “In the ponds in the dunes.”

  “Have you got some here?”

  “There’s a few left.”

  “Then we have to go and get some more with the club.”

  He nodded. One of these days he’d have to go back into the dunes, but he knew she’d want to go with him. That was too dangerous. He decided to let it rest, and to distract her he said, “Hang on, you can feed it a couple now.” He fetched the jam jar he kept the snails in out of the bathroom.

  She sat down on the floor with the big round jar in her hands. “What funny snails,” she laughed. She traced each snail’s twisting movements on the glass with her index finger.

  For a while he limited himself to sitting there quietly and studying her from the side, ready to jump up quickly if she made any unexpected movements or came too close. But she concentrated on the snails and didn’t pay him any attention.

  After watching her for a while, he was struck by the strange feeling that he was under observation. As if the judge and the psychologist could see him sitting there in his own bedroom. Look, he wanted to say, look how well it’s going. He cleared his throat. “Just give it all of them,” he said.

  “You sure?”

  When he nodded, she carefully extricated one snail from the tangle in the jar, raised it up above the tank between her thumb and index finger and dropped it in. A little ring formed in the water, smoothing over again almost immediately. While changing position, he realized that before he’d got to know the girl there had never been anyone else in his room apart from his mother. And that it was also the first time that someone had understood him so well and without words. He swallowed.

  The snail was floating motionless in the water. For a moment the fish drifted just above the mud, steering with gentle movements of its tail, then rose up and slowly approached its prey, opening its jaws just wide enough to swallow it before sinking back down again.

  “She ate it up!” she cried. “Did you see that?”

  “You did that really well. Now it’ll be sure to get stronger fast.”

  She smiled at him. Very cautiously he smiled back. He mustn’t show his feelings too much. He stood up and moved further away from her with a couple of short steps, but she was already coming towards him again. Without knowing it, she left the circle he had drawn around her in his thoughts, but he still stayed where he was, concentrating on his tense breathing. She’s crossed my boundary, but I can do it.

  “Look.” She was holding her exercise book under his nose. He smelt a vague smell of soap rising from her body.

  He was shocked. Think. ABC: Activating Event. Your feelings don’t need to lead to Consequences. And your Beliefs, rational or irrational, how did that go again? Why had it all escaped him now, just when it was so important? Just when his own thoughts were getting entangled, catching on each other, twisting into knots. And for a moment all of the air between the thoughts was sucked out and made way for an oppressive vacuum in his head. He had to get free.

  “Are you hungry, maybe?” he asked to distract himself. His voice was so thin, a thread, an air bubble that would burst before anyone heard it. He coughed and tried again. “I could make you something to eat?” That was better. Mentally, he took a step away from her. In his pocket, he clenched his right fist.

  She shrugged and pouted. “You didn’t even look.”

  “I did.”

  “Here.” She came even closer. “Look, this is you with Milk and Tinca.” A drawing of the three of them. He felt like going up on tiptoes to get a bit further away from her.

  “Nice,” he said. “The fish especially. It looks just like it.” He moved his gaze from the exercise book to the window. Watching the curtains moving very slightly in the breeze. Swaying slightly to and fro. Inside he was tottering. As if he might fall forward at any moment, tumbling down inside himself. Carefully, he moved his weight from his heel to the ball of his foot. You need to be alone, get your thoughts in order. He walked towards the door.

  “Is your mother home this evening? She cooking for you?”

  “She has to work. She won’t get home until I’m asleep.”

  “Wait here, I’ll make something for you. I’ll be right back.”

  Standing at the stove, he warmed up last night’s leftover fish. His hands were shaking. But there was also a kind of calmness inside him. Tensely he followed the rhythm of his breathing, slowly expanding waves that seemed OK. Things weren’t going quite the way he’d planned them—she’d come too close. He’d smelt her. But despite the blood he could feel beating warmly in his ears and the rapid pulse under his skin, he felt good about it.

  He began to push the chunks of fish around the pan with a fork, too impatient to wait for the butter to heat up properly, and spread a couple out on two slices of bread. I forgot to warm up the sauce, he thought, looking at the pan. It’s OK like this though. I’ll give her some salad dressing to go with it. He stood still for a moment. Emphatically, opening his mouth wide, he took a deep breath. Then he talked to himself, forming the words without making any sound. It’s crucial that you stay alert. Keep a close watch on everything, don’t be distracted by what she says, keep an eye on the time. Quarter to four, he read on the oven clock. Get a move on.

  A little later he was back upstairs with her, feeling calm but watchful. She was eating quickly but respectably, cutting off bite-sized pieces and using her knife and fork.

  “Would you like some more bread?” he asked when she was finished.

  After giving it some thought, she shook her head, then sat there quietly for a moment. Again he was surprised by how gently peaceful it was in his room, even though she was there with him. “Come on,” he said, noticing that he had lowered his voice, “we’ll give Tinca some more to eat.”

  While he grabbed the feed, the girl crawled over to the tank. She bent over it and accepted the pot from his hands. The glow of the aquarium lights lit her throat, chin and lips from below. He watched, tensed his back under h
is T-shirt and looked away.

  “It’s actually a bit sad that Tinca’s been caught and has to live here by herself in the aquarium,” she said thoughtfully, without taking her eyes off the fish. “If you’re by yourself all day long, you get lonely and it hurts.”

  She sounded wise beyond her years, as if they were borrowed words, not her own.

  “Who says that?”

  “Dad.” She looked around quickly as if somebody might catch her out. “He called yesterday. Mum had forgotten her phone and I answered it. He’s alone.” That look was back. Her eyes so big and bright. “He’s not like everyone thinks. He’s sorry.”

  He turned away and fiddled with the aquarium.

  For a few seconds she didn’t say anything else, then talked on, her voice so quiet. “He’s sorry he wasn’t nice to Mum. That he was mean to her. I think it’s kind of sad for him.”

  He watched her from under his lowered eyelids. A part of him didn’t want to know. But at the same time he could have listened to her for hours. He wanted to hear it all, how she thought, what she did, even stories about her family, as long as she kept talking and he could hear her words filling the emptiness of his room. His fingers gripped each other and pulled loose again, too nervous to stay still. He rubbed his hands together and pressed on his joints until the knuckles cracked. I have to do something, he thought, confused by how she sounded, what she’d said. Do something, anything, as long as it’s something that’s just for her. To make it up. Something seemed broken and he wanted to try to make it whole again. But how? He turned his hands palms up in a kind of apologetic gesture, reaching out to her and then pulling back—an insignificant movement.

  “Where is he? Your dad?” Oh God, that too, why was he asking that? He was only making things worse. He chewed lightly on the inside of his cheek, on his lip, felt once again the slight trembling of his hands. Calm down now. Keep your thoughts under control. Don’t ask. Cut it out.

  “Where he always is, in our town. Mum wanted to get away from there.” She sniffed. “Now he wants me to come back and live with him, but he doesn’t know where we are.”

  He didn’t want to look at her any more, but he did anyway. He looked at her eyes in the afternoon light, eyes that just kept getting more and more beautiful.

  “You don’t have to tell me about it,” he said, whispering now.

  “I am telling you.”

  Your voice is still too weak, he thought, and straightened his back. Self-confidence, he thought. Calm. You are the boss of your thoughts.

  “Mum wants to go away—we’ve been here too long,” she said. She started chewing on her thumbnail.

  Now something started gnawing at the bottom of his stomach. Why was it all so complicated? Was it too complicated for him? Here you are, he thought, with all the things you’ve read, all the exercises you’ve done, and you don’t have a clue what to do. Everything inside him had fallen silent. He suddenly felt an intense longing to escape the situation.

  In the meantime, the girl had sat down next to Milk, who was asleep in the corner of the room, and started whispering to him. Jonathan couldn’t hear what she was saying and didn’t want to hear. He got up and walked past behind her and into the bathroom, trying to think. But his thoughts weren’t cooperating. They weren’t racing like they sometimes did, but jumping up and down on the spot. Sometimes they stopped for a moment and fell quiet, so that he could see them, but there were so many and he had no idea which ones to focus on, which ones were right. Send her away, leave her here, ask more questions, mind your own business. Grab that workbook, quickly read some of it, no, don’t, solve it your own way.

  His own eyes looked back at him questioningly from the mirror. He turned on the tap and let the water trickle down his forearms, his wrists. Little droplets splashed into the washbasin, trying to escape, fleeing over the smooth porcelain, but irrevocably sliding down to form rivulets to the drain. You’re halfway through your workbook, he reassured himself. Actually more than halfway. And it’s going better and better. You mustn’t forget that. Don’t forget it, he whispered, exaggerating the movement of his lips. It can only get easier. Better.

  “Hey, when are we going to look for those snails?” she called through the bathroom door.

  He cleared his throat. “Shhh, a bit quieter. My mother’s asleep. I’ll just be a sec.”

  He found her back at the tank, mouthing words to the fish. He sat down a couple of metres away and thought about what to say. It was almost four o’clock, he saw. She should leave. Wringing his hands, he pondered how to get her out of the room without being mean.

  But while he was still trying to get his thoughts together, she turned and broke the silence. “I don’t think it’s true, what Mum said.”

  “What?” He felt another hot flush passing through him. What was this leading to?

  “I think you are nice.” She was now looking him straight in the face, her eyes clear and serious. “You look after Tinca and Milk, don’t you? And me? I think that was a really terrible thing for her to say.”

  His muscles tensed up again and his back straightened. He looked away from her, incapable of reacting. He knew what he did last year was bad, and ever since he’d wanted to know what it meant, what it said about him. He’d thought about it so much he had sometimes felt like he was driving himself mad with all those contradictory ideas, and now this.

  She’d turned her back on him again. He looked at her, the beautiful, subtle curve of the back of her head, the gentle quiver of her ponytail. Was her saying this a good thing? Was it something he could be proud of? Was it maybe the very thing he should do? Be with her, he thought, look after her.

  It actually seemed very logical to him. Like what he’d written in the psychologist’s questionnaire where there were parts of sentences and you had to complete them. Things like “I am best at…” And he wrote: “I am best at… caring for other people.” But only after giving it a lot of thought. Because it wasn’t really something you could say about yourself, was it? He’d worried about it, chewing the end of his pen, walking from the table to the window and back, before finally deciding that it was allowed. And it was true.

  He went back into the bathroom, drank some water, stood at the mirror and looked at his reflection. When he went back into his bedroom she was sitting on the floor with her legs spread wide, bent over her exercise book. There was a tiny stain in her crotch. He felt his gaze clamping onto it. The blood surged through his temples.

  Five minutes late, according to the daily schedule, he and his mother were sitting in the living room watching yet another quiz show that didn’t interest him. Today he’d brought cod from the factory and hastily fried it, peeling some potatoes and putting them on to boil. But because he’d done an exercise in the meantime he’d forgotten to watch the clock. The potatoes were soft and mushy and, to his fury, he had to bin them. Quickly he peeled some more and stayed in the kitchen while they boiled.

  He just couldn’t calm his head. There was so much to think about. He kept seeing the expression on the girl’s face when he sent her away just after four. An hour later she was already ringing the doorbell to show him a drawing in her exercise book: a fish, the club logo. His mother, who had dozed off again, woke up and he saw her peering out through the curtains. He sent the girl back home.

  He served tea at twenty-five to seven after opening the windows on both sides of the house. They ate on the sofa. The fan was blowing warm air into their faces, but it was all in vain. The heat in the room was heavy and immobile, there to stay. His lungs were throbbing. He was tired and knew his mother was too. Her face seemed smaller than usual. Faint shadows under her eyes.

  He sat next to her for a while with a steaming plate on his lap. She ate slowly, slumped back on the sofa. He was drinking squash; she had wine. The sound of her laboured breathing was almost unbearable. He knew she needed to take more medicine in weather like this. He’d seen the pots and torn-open sachets on the side of the washbasin. Drowsiness was
one of the side effects.

  After the quiz show, he surfed through the channels without speaking. There wasn’t a single programme worth watching. At ten to seven he started getting restless. Five to, three, two minutes to seven, and she still hadn’t finished her tea. He had to do three exercises today and so far he’d only done one. How was he going to manage?

  She’d stopped eating again and her cutlery was resting on the side of her plate. She looked at him and sucked on her inhaler. That rattling sound. As if she was sucking little balls up through a straw. After that there was just the sound of the TV. He got up from the sofa and thought once more about the girl, the way she’d pushed her lower jaw forward again today, something he’d seen her do before. The way she’d shown him the pages full of notes about Tinca.

  “I’m going to be a vet,” she said, and when he asked, “Weren’t you going to be a writer?” she laughed and her laugh was different from the one he was used to, rolling through the room like a gently bouncing ball.

  Don’t think about her, he told himself. Later, upstairs, when you’re back in your own room. But it was like his mother could see straight through him.

  “That girl from next door was here, inside the house, wasn’t she?” she asked. Her nostrils were trembling.

  A wave of warm, murky nausea rose within him. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to let it fade away, thinking in the meantime about what he could say to reassure her. Talk, he thought, talk. Say something. It wasn’t the way she might be thinking. But how could he explain it? He could hardly claim that he himself didn’t entirely understand what it was about the girl, how her company helped him. And how he helped her. Her being hungry, yes, that he could say. But that wasn’t all, that would give a wrong impression. Her having to choose between her father and her mother. Needing a place, a home. But that too didn’t add up to the wonder of it, the strangeness he couldn’t pin down. He fidgeted on his chair, looking nervously at his mother.