Trawler

by Redmond O'Hanlon

  “Yeah, yeah, but Luke—your lifeboatmen, what can’t they know?”

  “Aye! About no sleep of course! You’ve lost it—you’ve lost the point! How are they to know, even Rob and Brian, how could they know? How are you to understand unless you’ve been through it? Does the judge in court allow for it? Of course not! He or she has no idea! And you can’t blame them for that, because it’s not something you can just imagine—the mind won’t have it! You can’t imagine it, because it’s a physical and chemical disruption in the working of the brain itself! It’s like real madness, schizophrenia, deep depression, whatever, and the whole point about that kind of change in the brain is that it can’t be imagined. And no judge, OK, no one in their right mind, wants to go mad, even for two or three weeks!”

  “Oh, shit, OK, if you say so … thanks …”

  “Jesus! Stop moping. You’re moping like a teenager! And look, Redmond, I’ve had enough of it—I thought you were tough, well, not physically, obviously, look at you! But mentally, yes, mentally tough, at least… But hey! You’re not! … So come on…” He bent to his left and picked some trophy, or rather, he lifted, with both hands, with reverential care, some small piece of flesh, from the nearest red basket. “Look at this!” he said, so loud, right in my ear, mankind and its problems suddenly and completely forgotten—and what a release, what an escape from tension-in-the-brain. “This’ll cheer you up! This would make anyone cheer up!”

  In his right palm he held a 6-inch-long fat little brown glob of a fish: its small black eyes sat on top of its head, and such a big head, an upward-tilted mouth, a huge double chin; yes, a fat-old-man of a head, a glutton of an old man, dribbling a fork-load of spaghetti which had slipped from his lower lip and stuck to his protruding neck. “What’s this?” I said, flicking up the spaghetti-ends with my right forefinger, “Spaghetti? Worms?”

  “Barbels,” said Luke, calming down so instantly it seemed not right; it was a small betrayal of sorts, considered emotionally, man to man: Luke had re-entered his world of quiet scholarship, of gentle science, and left me all alone, outside. “I’ll be honest with you,” he said, so happy, so excited. “When I first saw this in the hopper I thought it was a new species! And I went all hot and cold, you know, dizzy. But at least I had the sense just to lay it gently in the basket and try to forget about it and to get on with life—and when the haul was over and you’d gone to the galley and I was all alone in here, I felt calm enough to go to the shelf in the laundry-room (I’d named it, just for now, the snotfish!) and I got out volume three here, and I compared it… I knew it had to belong to the family Liparididae, the sea-snails, you know, their bodies gelatinous, jelly, full of water for their life at ridiculous depths, down to 7,000 metres. Anyway …” He placed the snotfish in front of me on the steel shelf. And beside it he laid volume three of Fishes of the North-eastern Atlantic, the book of books, protected in its multiple brown-paper covers, open, the Liparididae. Luke’s right index-finger hovered above the drawing of Careproctus longipinnis, Burke, 1912. (“Common Synonyms: none. Common names: none.”) It would not be a good idea, I realized, to touch the pages of this sacred book, especially not with a fish-wet-slimy finger—if I do that, something told me, Luke will slit my throat. But hey—come on—in the illustration the sleek line of the downward-curving head, the level mouth, the swept-back barbels, the gaunt and muscled flanks: apart from its printed measurements, the picture bore no resemblance whatever to our beautiful fat little slob of a fish, a fish that had enjoyed life to the full, and drank, and slurped spaghetti… “But Luke!” I said. “I thought you had balls. It’s obvious—this is a new species. And you—you’ve lost your nerve!”

  “Oh, fuck you,” said Luke, but at half-power, unsure of himself. “This must be it: because the map fits” (a cross-hatching, so thin, stretching from north of the Faeroes to Bear Island in the Arctic Circle). “And you must remember, always remember, fish are described in museums from preserved specimens—fish in formalin or alcohol—whereas ours, this” (he stroked it, with affection), “this has just come up from 1,000 metres plus, so fresh, and the colours are right, sure, but with the release of pressure its poor little stomach has blown up inside it, poompf! So give over, don’t be silly…”

  “Oh yeah? And the eyes on top of its head?”

  “Look, it’s OK,” said Luke, shutting volume three, picking up volumes one and two. “You learn to allow for pressure-release, you know, you get sophisticated! … And besides,” he said, carrying the books, like chicks under his wing, those vital few yards back to the safety of the high-silled laundry-room shelf, “the Galathea, the research ship, she trawled up a sea-snail from nearly 7,000 metres—and the brotulids, they look just like our snotfish, same shape, and there’s one species that’s the deepest-living fish, at abyssal or hadal depths all over the world—Abyssobrotula galatheae. But the present record-holder, as far as I know, was taken from the bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench—the absolute number-one deepest point in the whole Atlantic! Big time!”

  “Hadal? What’s that?”

  “I’ve told you.” Luke was preoccupied again, grubbing about, head down, woolly hat almost beneath the rim of the first plastic basket. “Abyssal—4,000 to 6,000 metres. Hadal—below 6,000. Trenches! Canyons! Places you could drop Everest into and make no difference! Yes—places that you and me and no one else can begin to imagine! Right here! Right here on earth!”

  “Yeah, well, that’s as may be” (why did I say that?), “but Luke, I don’t believe you… about the snotfish…”

  “That’s as may be?” shouted Luke, who was usually so very mild, so absurdly tolerant. He straightened up, to his full height, which was not that high, but his hat helped, and besides, I was sorry, so that gave him an extra foot. Luke held a new fish right in front of my face—and, I thought, a conscious slither of a thought: to give me a surprise like this with a mere fish, after all the fish I’ve seen lately, in waking life, in my dreams, search me, so many fish, and this one is thick and eely and all blotched black with white rings around its muscly slime of a body… it’s hooped with rings of white …

  “No, no, Luke, I’m sorry, I only meant the snotfish… Of course it’s a new species, and I’m going to get a camera, to prove it!”

  “Are you? I wish you would! I saw it all, your posh Nikons and that flash unit and all those lenses! So heavy! Aye … And you … you haven’t touched them!”

  “Of course not!” I said, determined not to take off my oilskins or sea-boots, trying to open the bulkhead door. “Jesus! You forget who you’re talking to? Look—I haven’t been able to hold myself level, let alone a camera! So lay off, OK?”

  In the cabin, I bashed my head on the bench-cupboard top, as I lifted it. I pitched backward into the space between the bunks. (And this is a nothing? A Force 9?) But at least, I realized, as I rolled myself up and forward on to my knees, I am now, officially, annoyed, I’m active, which is good, really good, because I am no longer in despair. I am not begging for help. And all I need is that camera which I bought specially, just for this, for four hundred whole pounds, and that’s enough to make anyone anxious, a new Nikon FM2, all manual, no computer-nonsense to go wimpy on you the moment it gets wet, and the really sharp 50 mm Microknickers, just right for a snotfish. And, at last, falling about, as angry as a cat in a box, I managed to screw the camera base-plate to the flatbed-arm of the flash that I’d also bought specially—which was not the best, it has to be admitted, a Sunpak G4500 (so comforting, all these names), but it did look and feel like the real thing: a big black ribbed dick of a stand, with a head that promised massive and explosive power …

  “OK!” yelled Luke, as I made it back through the bulkhead door, the absurdly oversized camera and flash suspended on its wide strap from my neck. “Let’s see! I’m prepared to waste time on this—it’s worth it—so let’s see if you can take photographs in a Force 8 gusting 9! Aye—so take your snotfish!”

  Luke had it all prepared—the snotfish lay f
lat on a white plastic backdrop: the upturned base of my fishbox-seat. And neatly, so carefully positioned beneath the snotfish (which told me: whatever these are, they matter to Luke), were two deep-red prawns. And I’d never seen prawns like them, and hang on, get a grip, I thought, because of course you haven’t, because I’m prepared to swear that these blood-red prawns have not been cooked—and yet they’re dense to the eye, and red, dark red. But stop this, I thought, harder, because you’d better concentrate with this exquisite machine, this camera, so black, so beautiful, so accurate, so precisely tooled—and the fact is, you don’t really know how to use it, do you? Not something as advanced as this, not under pressure. Because in your jungles the camera had to be simple: a heavy, green, insulated, anti-wet, anti-mould Nikonos, a primitive range-finder, an underwater camera with its greased seals, a 35 mm lens (one big chrome knob-screw to your left, for distance, one big black knob-screw to your right, for aperture). And what a friend, what a comfort it became, didn’t it?—three or four months in—so much so that you’d take to sleeping with it in your right hand, a fetish, a miraculous object, a sorcerer’s reminder that another world really did exist…

  “Hey Redmond! You still there?”

  “Uh?”

  “Come on—take the snotfish, and the prawns …”

  So I took the snotfish—the lens up close: until the fat little slob of a fish filled the frame (when I took a chance, full flash at f.32)… But the prawns were different. Focusing on them through the 55 mm Micro-Nikkor (a wide-angle microscope, or so it seemed to me), their complexity made me dizzy: eight, or maybe nine, antennae of different lengths projected from the front of their heads, from the top of their extended snouts, from their protruding upper and lower jaws. And their underslung modified front legs reached forward: pincers, grabbers, sharp-pointed scoops … And from the top prawn only, half-way down its body, from the base of its armoured jacket, two chitinous whippy-string wireless aerials, one to either flank, curved way back, exuberant whiskers, right out of frame, way back—and way off beyond its rear flippers … So did only the male or the female have them? So were they to receive signals of possible pleasure, vibrations, clicks, spasms of prawn-desire, transmitted in erotic pulses down in the blacked-out depths? Or had prawn number two simply lost its delicate receivers in the brutal chaos of a trawl? Yes, I thought, it’s true, it’s so exciting, but it’s also anxious-making, this being introduced to an entire new world, and so directly…

  “Redmond! Worzel! Come on! What’s up? Over here. Please, stop it, I hate all this—your trances, you know? And besides, we may not have much time! Jason—for all I know, he may have shot the net!”

  Luke (I hadn’t noticed) was standing on the wet boards of the fish-room floor, to the right of the hopper. In his yellow sea-boots, holding a red specimen-basket by the rim beside him, to his left, he looked especially haggard, unshaven, intense, in scientific, I-must-get-my-doctorate mode: and at his feet he’d laid something big (it looked yard-long) and slimy (it glistened in the overhead lights) and it slid across the floor as the ship rolled, to port, to starboard…

  I made my way round to him—hanging on to the edge of the conveyor to the hold, to the curve of the gutting table; I clambered over the hopper-conveyor; and I stood, beginning to slide, like the big slimy fish, port to starboard, starboard to port.

  “That’s right!” said Luke, impatient. “I’ve just worked it out, a new photographic method, but you—you can have it, gratis!”

  “Thanks!” I said, only vaguely annoyed.

  “Look—it’s brilliant! You, and the fish, the object, you slide across the deck together, in time with each other. So—all you have to do is bend over it, focus, and get the exposure absolutely spot-on. Right? Because I need these pictures, I really do. OK? So stop faffing, dithering, whatever, OK? That’s the real thing you’ve got there, proper old-fashioned heavy kit—and yet… and yet, Redmond, to watch you with it, forgive me, but… it looks as if you don’t know how to use it!”

  “I don’t! I don’t! I bought it specially…”

  “Oh, bollocks!” said Luke (and bollocks, for Luke, was a very strong swear-word indeed). “What’s the ASA? The film-speed on the slides?”

  “200.”

  “OK—so you’re around six feet, aye, so you’ll bend forward as you focus, so knock off a foot from the lens to the object, and another foot as you slide … So … Why not? Give it full power at f.32! But you’ve got to be decisive, aye, and fast!”

  I stood over the yard of bulky slime—and (I could feel Luke’s muscled right hand clamped on my left shoulder) we all slid together, the basket, Luke, me, and the yard-of-slime fish. And hey, I thought, as I focused, now here’s a thing-and-a-half, and yes, that’s right, in extremis, under pressure, in the rising heat-in-the-head of a delighted imagination, you bet, it’s the clichés that jump first from the fur of the mind—and then, maybe, deeper down, if you’re lucky, you think you really see the object that confronts you. And yes, it was one of those evanescent moments in which no one else seems to share, when for a time, you have no extraneous thoughts, no outer-world, a surgeon’s moment, perhaps, when it’s just you and the object… a sheen of violet light clinging to a dark-spotted skin of grey oil: the top fin stretching from the back of its thick neck to its tiny blossom of a tail, its ventral fin, half as long, a fringe of fan from its anus to its tail; its stomach distended, its eye half out of the socket; and two orange parasitic copepods stuck to its midriff, one above the other.

  “Well done!” said Luke, as we all slid back to starboard. “You got it!” And “Hold this!” he said, pushing me against the stanchion beside the hopper (I held on). “We can improve the technique!” (He tied the rope at the rim of the basket to the iron strut, at knee-level.) “So I can show you the specimens! Because this one” (he grabbed the big slimy fish from the slush as it began to slide away to port) “is difficult. The trawlermen call it a Jelly-cat, right enough, and so it is, but of course it’s not a catfish, not at all, it’s a Wolf-fish—and here’s the problem: according to my UNESCO volumes, you know, Whitehead et al, it might be the Jelly wolf-fish, Anarhichas dendiculatus, because it’s certainly soft and jelly-like, look at it! But its body and dorsal fin are covered with these spots, so maybe it’s Anarhichas minor… but it’s not Anarhichas lupus, the ordinary Wolf-fish, because whatever this is, it’s come up from around 1,000 metres … Anyway, aye, sorry. What do you care? That’s my problem, not yours … but you, you’ve got to see this…” And Luke prised the jaws open—and I got such a shock that I forgot to take a picture. The Wolf-fish indeed had a front row of canine teeth like a wolf—but worse, splayed out, all order abandoned; and behind the canines were conical rippers; and, behind them, crushing molars at the sides, where they ought to be, but they were also erupting from the roof of the mouth …

  I said: “Oh Jesus!”

  “Aye!” said Luke, flopping it back into the basket. “Jesus, right enough!” He thrust both hands deep down in, into the slop of fish—searching for some small treasure, obviously. “Jesus! Do you realize you keep saying that? And you call yourself an atheist …” In the basket, churned over by his hands, big fish sloshed against each other … “And your vicar of a dad (Redmond, you’re such a screw-up!)—your vicar of a dad would say that Jesus’s dad-God, you know—your dad would say that the Wolf-fish was created millions of years before the same guy, God, got around to making a wolf, wouldn’t he?”

  “Eh? No. No—of course he wouldn’t! The whole lot, Wolf-fish, wolves, you name it, they were all created, perfect, no changes, within a week. Exactly 4,004 years before Jesus himself was born. Bishop Ussher’s time-scale. From human generations documented in the Bible. Boompf! Although, it’s true, sometimes my dad did think the holy idiot Teilhard de Chardin got it right-that God simply started the process of evolution and made sure it was running well, from omega to alpha, from algae to angels: to perfection!”

  “Sorry,” said Luke, perhaps hearing the unw
anted passion in my voice. He straightened up; with his right hand he hid something behind his back. “Bollocks to all that, I was just making a point! And the point is this—life in the sea is so very old … mammals are not the only vertebrates which have several kinds of teeth for different needs!”

  “OK, sure,” I said, still hanging on hard to the stanchion, not wanting to slide across the floorboards horizontally and dunk the camera through the slush. “So say life began 3,500 million years ago, with those slimy raised mats of cyanobacteria, blue-green algae, you know, the stromatolites, mounds of gunge in the tidal waters of Australia and Zimbabwe—our bacterial ancestors, yes? And Luke, you’re right, in a way, eternal life, you know, isn’t it odd how we need that idea? Because this is the bit I can’t deal with, Jesus or no Jesus: in seven and a half billion years our earth will be burnt up by the expanding sun… And everything we’ve achieved—art, architecture, science, books, music, all the great libraries of the world—all dead!”

  Luke laughed. “Bollocks! Worzel! You Old Worzel! By that time we’ll be well gone to other galaxies, parallel universes, whatever—and we’ll take our records with us! How absurd—so you do believe in eternal life!”

  “Well, yes, I suppose so, put like that, yes I suppose I do … seven and a half billion years, but all the same …”

  Luke whipped his right hand out from behind his back. “This’ll cure you!” He held a foot-long dart of a fish in front of my face. The fish and I were nose to nose, but the nose on the fish was a rapier. “Get that! The Garfish! This is really fast!” He waggled the straight firm body. It was blue-green above, bright silver below. “So unlike our deep-sea fish—and why? Because it’s fast!” The rapier, I could see, was its jaws, the lower jaw slightly longer than the upper, the two together a dagger, a poniard, as surprising as the projecting jaws of a fast and elegant fish-eating crocodile that I’d hoped to see in Borneo, the gharial; yes, sure, but why had I thought of that? Of course, yes, Old English, gar, a spear, one of the few words I remembered from those wasted years of learning Anglo-Saxon: gar, gotcha, garred yer bastard! So much better than the poncy spear—except that spere was Old English too, wasn’t it? In fact, why had I wasted years smoking so much dope: when I could have really learnt Anglo-Saxon and entered the world of gar and spere and farming and conquest and ship-burials and sex and warfare and Beowulf? Jason, Jesus, yes, Jason was right, I’d thrown it all away and now it was too late …