Tench

by Inge Schilperoord

  “She’s helping me look after the tench.” He had to keep it simple, giving her something she could understand. But he felt his mouth drying out.

  His mother took the cross on her necklace lightly between her thumb and index finger and gave it a quick rub with the tip of her thumb.

  “It’s really important for it to eat properly now, and to keep the temperature right and for that girl…” he began, intending it to sound respectful. It was so strange: talking about her, about them together, made him feel bigger, more important. But he still felt embarrassed saying these things to his mother. Meanwhile, he thought about the girl’s throat, with its soft hollows. Again he slid back and forth, bent forward, slumped a little, making himself smaller.

  “The water’s not allowed to warm up to more than 23 degrees, but that’s not always possible. It’s not eating.”

  He could almost feel the glow of her skin on his fingertips, the heat of her body. Strips of sunlight fell into the room through the venetians; the dog walked to and fro over its own shadow and he tried to concentrate on a fly that had settled on the armrest of the sofa. He looked at the gossamer threads in its transparent wings and felt his face cramping.

  “I understand that that girl likes coming here, son,” he heard her saying. “With Milk, who she walked all this time, and now that beautiful fish.”

  He nodded. It was true. And she had no one.

  “But, Jonny, she’s a child.”

  He followed the progress of the fly, which had taken off and was now buzzing up and down in front of the blinds, searching for a way out of the room.

  “Why don’t you just give that club a try, son?” she asked. “People your own age? Who you can talk to?”

  He closed his eyes. Maybe he needed to give her that much? Maybe it was the only thing he could do for her. Show his good will by signing up to the Bible club. How could she know about the methods he had learnt to find peace within himself? That was something he could never explain to her. The figures for repeat offenders. This therapy programme significantly lowers the percentage of repeat offenders, he said to himself, quoting the workbook. What had the psychologist said again? Thirty-three per cent less? Or was it 23 per cent or… Significantly lower, anyway. And that meant: a lot. How could he ever explain to her how it all worked?

  “The meeting’s Thursday, isn’t it?” he asked, though he already knew.

  “At four o’clock.”

  “That’s tomorrow, after work.” She nodded.

  “I’ll go and check it out.”

  “That’s all I’m asking.”

  He took the plates through to the kitchen while she changed channels again. In between washing-up, he pressed gently on his stiff neck muscles with his knuckles every now and then. An itch rose along his sweaty hairline and he had to think of the piece of scrap paper, the sheet of paper covered with writing he’d found just before he went to prison while cleaning her room, some Bible verses she’d copied out. Something about life being beyond your understanding and having to submit to the wisdom of God, and never being able to know another person completely. Some of it went over his head, but some things he did understand, and that bit about others being unknowable had stayed with him. Somehow he knew it was about him and it hurt. Every time he got a letter from her, it brought it back to him. No matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t forget it.

  At ten past eight he took the dog out for a quick walk, came back and sat down again, wanting to spend some more time with her after all. He’d wanted to say that he’d be careful, but instead he asked if she wanted anything else. “No, thank you, son,” she said. “It’s sweet of you to ask.”

  It was half past eight. He had to keep going. Fill four boxes, the exercises. It was difficult. Today he cleared out the cabinets in his mother’s bedroom. Everything he found annoyed him. Old bracelets she hadn’t worn for years, a stopped watch, tarnished silver, empty medicine boxes. Why did she keep all this stuff?

  At quarter to ten, too late, he was finally upstairs. Although he was three exercises behind, he wanted to have another look at an assignment from a couple of weeks ago. He felt confused. He didn’t know if he was angry or sad, or something else. He couldn’t hold them back, but what kind of tears were they? The exercise in the workbook said that he needed to be able to distinguish all of his emotions. But he had no idea which name went with the feeling he now had. He stared at the letters in front of him, which suddenly seemed much closer together, sometimes even bleeding into each other. There were so many. He sat there for minutes, staring hard at the words.

  Then he walked to the bathroom, spat hard into the washbasin, filled a jug with water—after letting the tap run for a while first—and drank, but the feeling in his stomach wouldn’t settle. He decided to repeat the exercise from all those days ago and tried to stay calm. Back in his room he leafed through the exercise book. He still felt sick; there was a heaviness in his stomach.

  Finally, he found the exercise. And his answers. He saw his small, clumsy handwriting. A page of it, in four sections. Suddenly it all seemed silly. There were four basic emotions, it said: happiness, sadness, fear and anger. He’d had to come up with an example for each emotion. Something from his own life. For sadness he’d written: “When Mum’s alone and I can’t do anything to help.” He crossed it out and started again. At first his head stayed empty, but then the thoughts slowly started joining up. Next to sadness he now wrote: “If the girl is unhappy and I can’t give her anything.” For happiness: “When she’s happy too and she smiles and I see her broken tooth glistening.” And: “When she gives snails to the fish and the fish eats them.” That was all he could come up with. Furious, he tore the pages out of the workbook, screwed them up and threw them into a corner of the room. Half an hour later he regretted it and smoothed them out again, using paper clips to reattach them where they belonged.

  JONATHAN LEFT straight after getting back from work and had to wait at the bus stop for a few minutes. He’d wanted to take his workbook with him to catch up on some exercises on the way, but had decided that wasn’t a good idea because of the risk of others seeing what he was doing. He sat on the bench, picking at the bits of skin around his nails. A drop of blood welled up next to his thumbnail, a pinprick. He sucked it up, staring in the direction the bus would come from. He searched the cloudless sky for gulls but there wasn’t a bird to be seen, as if they too were too exhausted to fly.

  He’d looked it up exactly: the three-fifteen bus arrived in town at three twenty-four. Eight minutes’ walk and he would reach the centre where the youth meetings were held just after half-three. The bus appeared on time and was already slowing down for the stop when he waved it on with a vague gesture, his face averted. The bus sped up again.

  I’ll take the next one, he thought. That’s due at twenty-five past; then I’ll get to the square at quarter to and be at the centre just before four. Still on time. He rested his hands on his lap, intertwined his fingers, then separated them again and studied the odd shadows his arms were casting on the sunlit road.

  The next bus arrived at twenty-five past. This time he stood up, but even before the driver had time to slow down, he’d turned and walked off. He stopped a distance away and peered at the bench he’d just been sitting on. “I can’t do it,” he whispered.

  The meeting would last until six, he knew that. The bus back left at seven minutes past six and reached the village at six twenty. That meant: home at half-six. Until then he wandered through the dunes, this time without the dog.

  He thought about what to say later, when his mother asked him how it had gone. Carefully, as if something was holding him back, he tried to imagine that unavoidable moment, testing the words he had come up with, gently mumbling them with moving lips, even though he was saying them firmly in his imagination. He had to sound convincing. “It was good, Mum,” or “interesting”, or—what did you say when you came back from something like that? He couldn’t think of anything appropriate. What it came
down to was that he wasn’t a good liar. And wasn’t that one of his best qualities? He’d given that as one of his answers too, after “I am most satisfied…” Thoughtful and proud, he’d written: “…that I never lie”.

  At home he found his mother in the kitchen, where she’d started peeling the potatoes. She was sitting on a stool with the pan between her legs and pulling the knife back towards herself with short, nervous cuts. Her face looked overheated. She looked up at him with an expression that was expectant but tense at the same time. He was sweating in the heat and walked, after a cursory hello, straight to the fridge for a jug of water.

  “It was really good,” he said, facing the other way and with his head back to pour the water down his throat. “It was good.” He didn’t need to turn around to see the expression on her face, to know that she knew he was lying. But also that she wouldn’t say anything about it.

  LOOKING OUT from under the sheets, Jonathan saw low clouds suffocating the gloomy grey sky. Six o’clock. For the first time he’d forgotten to set his alarm clock. He should have been awake ages ago. He sat up with a groan and swung his legs over the side of the bed. The springs squeaked wearily and creaked under his weight. He sat there for a while, rubbed his eyes with his knuckles and forced himself to focus on what he could see—his folding chair, the table, the aquarium—to convince himself he was really home.

  He had slept feverishly and had an intensely realistic dream in which he was lying on the girl’s warm naked body. He was in his cell and the girl was in his bed, slowly changing into Betsy and then back to herself. He was paralysed, his nerves severed, watching. An observer. He saw his own hand, his fingers, the way they pushed against her crotch, tugging at the elastic of her knickers and did what he had just managed to avoid doing to Betsy by quickly wanking over her instead, catching his come in his T-shirt just in time and pushing her face away, only realizing later that he had grazed her chin in the process. And it wasn’t until it was much too late that he noticed her tear-stained face. And heard her “Mummy, Mummy, I want my Mummy.” And he’d whispered “Sorry”. “Sorry, sorry.” She was sitting with her back against a tree, hunched over with her face strangely contorted.

  He sat there motionless for minutes. Behind his eyes he felt a faint, gnawing pain. Eventually he turned his head and saw that the alarm clock already said seven minutes past six. He stood up and began slowly pacing. I have to go to work, he thought, but I can’t get moving. He stopped in front of the tank and peered at the fish, which was floating lifelessly in the water. It had hardly moved in the last two days and was scarcely eating. He knew that tench could sink into apathy in hot weather, but this was so extreme he was starting to get seriously concerned.

  Downstairs he went to the toilet for a long, unsatisfying pee, hardly daring to touch his dick, then made a sandwich in a fug of worry, cutting it into four equal pieces and eating it before forcing himself to go to work. Almost an hour late. Preparing himself for a reprimand, he walked past the small office with his head down. But the boss was busy on the phone and didn’t even notice him.

  He dragged himself through the morning and went out to wander around the harbour during his lunch break. Today he didn’t have the concentration for reading. Nature stayed in his bag. He walked past the fish market and, after several short, restless bursts of staring at ships, carried on to the dyke behind the harbour. The abandoned shipping gear he always loved the sight of was scattered here and there, but today everything looked different. On the horizon vague mists were floating over the water. On the wharf there were traces of spilt fuel oil. Rolled-up rope with floats watching him like eyes.

  He was looking for a spot where he could look out at the water and the few passing container ships without anyone seeing him, but almost immediately his thoughts returned to her. He saw her flesh: young, unspoilt, the undoubtedly soft spot where the curve of her bottom met the dimples of her lower back. He tried to resist but almost immediately had a hard-on. He looked around nervously. He couldn’t go back to work like this. He scanned the deserted wharf. This was an emergency. He hurried around to the back of the fish market where it reeked of guts and offcuts, leant against the low wall and undid his fly. With trembling hands he pulled out his dick and closed his eyes, coming before he could change a thing about the picture in his head.

  Ignoring the outside world, he trudged back to work, too tired to be angry at himself. It was so hot that even sounds were hardly carrying through the air. He heard his own breathing and the blood in his temples and even those sounds felt like they were coming from outside.

  In the course of the afternoon he searched the pages of his exercise book for the telephone number of the therapy practice the psychologist had given him. “For people with the same kind of problems as you. You can go there voluntarily.” Maybe that would be best. At the same time, he knew more than ever that he would never dare.

  He waited until his mother had dozed off, then moved the telephone cabinet down the hall as far as the cable would go. A farce, he thought, and who for? Still, it felt important to at least act as if he might be considering it, to convince someone or something that he was serious about it.

  Before typing in the number, he stood in front of the hall mirror for a moment, holding his exercise book. The face he was staring at was pale and tired. Vague shadows under his eyes. His skin was getting as dry as his mother’s. The same kind of cracks were appearing at the corners of his mouth. He tried to see something in his eyes, an answer to the questions he felt but couldn’t express. His face in the mirror was looking at him from very far away. Out of reach.

  The telephone rang three times.

  “De Waag, clinic for forensic psychiatry, can I help you?”

  He didn’t answer, listening to his own breathing.

  “Hello? Hello?”

  In the evening the fish was still motionless and drowsy in its lonely aquarium. Again it hadn’t eaten. The flakes of dry food were floating untouched in the water. Half sunk into the mud, it had turned its back on him.

  Maybe you haven’t done things well after all, Jonathan, he thought. A few seconds passed in which he waited nervously for the fish to show some sign of life. It didn’t. “Come on,” he said, “turn around.” Finally, the fish did turn its head slightly in his direction, only to turn away again immediately and resume its motionless floating in the mud, listing to one side. Tensely, Jonathan walked around to the other side of the tank and tapped on the glass to get its attention, to no avail.

  In his thoughts he saw the girl standing before him with the look she’d had on her face when she was alone in the room with him. His hand slid down the inside of her thigh, he slid her knickers aside with his thumb. She kept looking up at him with a vague smile.

  He sniffed, stood up, grabbed his head with both hands, squeezed his eyes shut and tried to think himself away from what he’d imagined. Think of something else. Now. Zoom out. Now he saw and felt himself. Dripping from head to toe. His wet boots, limp hands, broiled thoughts. Was this the end of the strength he’d felt in himself?

  No, that couldn’t be right; he was better than this. He needed to go by new daily rules. Include more rest. He sat back down at his table, his head pounding. The fan was moving the warm air around the room.

  He looked at the panting dog on the floor next to him. Now and then he gave his coat a furious scratch with one hind leg. Tufts of hair would come loose and float aimlessly through the air around them. He sniffed. Animals had it easy. They were what they were. They only ever used their brains for the purposes for which they were intended: investigating the surroundings, estimating danger, finding their way. They didn’t worry about what had happened or what might happen or whether they were good enough, or so worthless they should be punished or put down.

  The itch came back. Shit. It was so hot he could hardly bear it. When was it going to stop? His throat was hot and burning and so were his armpits and crotch. He started scratching. But every time the itch lulled for a
moment, it was only to flare up somewhere else. He twisted his shoulders, pushing them back against the chair, rubbing them on the hard wickerwork.

  Now and then he felt sentences rising from somewhere far away, but before he could write them down they’d already dissolved into a kind of soup in his head, big sloppy lumps floating around each other. He turned the fan to a higher setting and tried again. A little later he draped a wet flannel over his forehead, but that was no help either. He leafed through to the next item.

  “Don’t give up,” he read. If you couldn’t manage to relax, it might mean that you weren’t working hard enough. That you were suffering from internal blockages.

  Suddenly he was furious again. As if it had a mind of its own, his hand tore the page out of the workbook, screwed it up and hurled it into a corner of the room. What did that book know about what he was going through, how hard he was working? What did they know about who he was? How could a method someone else had made up, a complete stranger, ever help him? He stood up, walked over to the bed and lay down. He stretched out but was too hot and too angry to sleep. With his fists clenched he sat down in front of the aquarium. The water was trickling down his cheeks. The fish was in the mud with its back to him.

  After a while he stood up again. In the bathroom he ran water over his hands and wrists, then put his head under the tap too. In no time he was hot again. It’s no help, he thought. This heat is driving me crazy. If it wasn’t this hot, everything would be better. But there was no sign of any let-up. And there was that noise too.