The Dead Fish
I was there too, in front of the restaurant, among the onlookers pushing to get a look at the dead fish. Though they kept jostling me and treading on my feet, I couldn’t bring myself to leave. My satchel felt heavy on my shoulders; a woman was leaning against it, and she was fat and had a sharp, angry voice.
“What funny people! What a bunch of weirdoes!”
It was early; the restaurant was shut. Three blocks of ice on top of one another, together with a few discarded flowers, lay in the alleyway leading to the kitchen. Next to them, the fish.
“A dead fish, that’s all,” the woman said, reaching out protectively and taking my hand in hers. It felt hot and sweaty. Her squeaking tone grated on my eardrums.
The glassy eye of the fish stared past us. Its scales were like green fingernails, blue at the edges. It lay facing the gutter, half in the alley, where there was ice, half on the wet asphalt of the sidewalk.
“What’s a fish doing on the sidewalk?”
“They must have brought it for the restaurant. .”
“And so big!”
A tall man, dry as a salted herring, clutching a yellow briefcase under his arm, made his way out of the crowd. He looked distrustful and waved a finger at me in admonishment. Some others took the opportunity to leave.
“A fish. .”
People shrugged. The woman beside me was still wondering: how could they leave it there like a museum exhibit? And she shook her head reproachfully. Then she brightened up.
“You could put it on a spit, like a calf. It would feed a whole wedding!”
“What a plump little morsel!” someone said, beginning to stroke my hair. “Wouldn’t be bad in a fish soup either.”
They were joking and chortling, some even licking their chops. It was a workday morning, the sun was only just up. I couldn’t make up my mind to leave. Dead like that, it seemed bigger and longer — the size of a man. Its whitish belly was gradually turning mauve; the scales no longer glistened and looked kind of smoky. Only its eyes still had a gleam in them. People were leaving. The woman with the trumpet voice scolded me:
“What are you gawking at there? It’s just a dead fish. Haven’t you got anything better to do? Shouldn’t you be at school?”
Everyone agreed with her, gesticulating and moving their heads up and down in unison. I walked away. But at the street corner I looked to see if the woman was still there, and went back. Not many onlookers were left: a stooped old man, holding a kid by the hand, plus a few others. People were hurrying to work and rarely even stopped, content to cast a sidelong glance in passing. I leaned against the restaurant window and looked at its eye, but it didn’t say anything to me. All fish have the same eyes. I didn’t dare to touch it. And I didn’t know if it was the one, I didn’t want it to be — the fish that came to my window in the evening when I was alone. On those days its scales gleamed like amethyst drops. Its fine head with thick lips stuck to the glass pane, and it stayed there with me until the moon rose above the house opposite. When I was sad it danced in front of the window, by the yellow light of the streetlamp. It was a strange dance, heavy and awkward, and sometimes it lost balance and flipped over on its belly, hitting its tail against the post and almost banging the sidewalk with its mouth, but correcting itself in time. I became fond of it and laughed merrily at its pranks. I don’t know if the dead fish was the same one. Soon afterward I moved with my parents to another neighborhood, to a big block where we had a balcony. And I liked to go out onto the balcony and look at the city lights, those little golden fishes.
Then I started secondary school.
Insomnia
The wind is making the window frame creak. I must have dozed off. Mechanically, I reach out to feel the wall on my left. It is cold and rough. Boots are pounding in the street, louder and louder. They are resolute steps, the steps of someone who has an order to carry out. I raise myself on my elbows. The pounding suddenly stops. I strain my ears: a weak sound of grating iron and muffled lapping, then silence. The bulb of the streetlamp on the opposite pavement casts a dirty, yellowish light. It is no longer raining. There is a house across the street, without balconies. During the day a fat man appears at one of the windows; he wears a policeman’s cap but no jacket, only a shirt with shoulder straps. He has a smile on his face. A church tower can be glimpsed over the rooftops. From where I’m standing, all I can see of the building to my right is one window illuminated by a blood-red light, a little above the level of mine. Again I hear the pounding, quicker than before, as the steps go off into the distance. Sometimes the policeman’s daughter, or perhaps his wife, also shows herself. I can’t tell if she’s pretty; sometimes it seems to me that she is. The pounding has faded away. I usually have a chair to the right of my bed, in place of a night table. I reach out for my cigarettes. My fingers knock against the ashtray. I get up and go to the window. Quite a large fish, with gleaming purple scales, floats around the window frame. It is attached to the jamb by a piece of string or wire and spins at an even speed, like a gramophone disc, always at a distance of about one meter. In the morning you can hear music in the house across the street, from the girl’s window. Now it’s dark everywhere, except for that window on the right, where they’re probably developing photographs and need a red light. It is no longer raining, but the street is wet: the asphalt glistens artfully beneath the lamp.
“You’ll never make a good engineer.” What could I say to that?
The fish keeps turning at the same speed; its scales now have a reddish glint.
The sky is still cloudy. There will be more rain. A soldier runs toward the entrance to the park. He stops and looks around. He starts running again. I’m cold. I sit up in bed and pull the blanket over my ears. My left knee hurts. I remain huddled under the blanket, knees bent, face to the wall. Aunt Luiza is walking barefoot in the room next door. The window creaks again. Is the wind making the fish turn around the frame, or is there a hidden mechanism that. .?
The policeman’s daughter must be very tall; she has long thin arms. She never appears at the window beside her father. Nor have I ever seen her leave the house. It’s true that I haven’t kept watch for hours at a time. I sometimes see her in the morning: she opens the window, takes some deep breaths, strokes her hair down over her shoulder, maybe looking across toward me, or maybe not, closes her window, and disappears. Then the policeman looms up, always with a cap on his head, stout and smiling.