Fish in the Sky Read online

  “He’s great,” says Peter, but I don’t know whether he’s talking about the falcon or Dad.

  It gives me a strangely good feeling lying about Dad coming in to sit beside me last night. Maybe it’s because I know Peter believes me or has no reason not to. Or maybe it’s because I feel I have to even the score. It’s actually Peter’s dad who’s great. Every summer he takes his family abroad on vacation, and while Peter’s mom and sisters sunbathe on the beach or go shopping, he takes Peter to natural-history museums, national museums, and zoos. His dad is even a subscriber to National Geographic. While my dad sends me postcards from foreign places, Peter has actually been in those foreign places with his dad. While my dad is out at sea, Peter’s dad is at home reading Peter long articles out of the National Geographic. And while my dad is divorced and has a girlfriend somewhere miles away, whom he spends all of his time with when he’s ashore, Peter’s dad is tirelessly making more children with his mom to make his family even bigger and happier. Sometimes I think that although God was a bit mean to saddle Peter with five sisters that he constantly complains about, he was also merciful to him because at least he has a dad who actually lives with him and who’s a National Geographic subscriber to boot. What more could he ask for?

  “I know what we’ll do,” says Peter. “I’ll borrow my dad’s camera, and then we’ll take the bird out and stick him in a few places and take pictures. Then we can make our own magazine,” he adds. “Our own National Geographic.”

  “You take the pictures,” I say.

  “And you write the articles,” he says.

  “Maybe your dad can help us.”

  “We could call it Nature in Words and Pictures,” says Peter as if he didn’t hear me.

  “Or Wildlife and Nature,” I say, trying to play down the importance of my proposal.

  “Or Mother Earth,” says Peter.

  Peter is always full of ideas that he can almost always make come true. But that’s also because he gets help from his dad. Once he made a crossword magazine and went around the neighborhood selling it for the Red Cross. He thought it was a smart idea: crosswords, Red Cross. It was called The Red Crossword Magazine. And he sat there for a whole weekend with his dad in his office, photocopying the magazine and painting the front page red with India ink. It sold well, and he donated the proceeds to the Red Cross. Another time he got the idea of making a dovecote and breeding pigeons and training them as carriers. His dad supplied the wood and chicken wire, and we spent the whole weekend in his garden making this big shed-like birdhouse for the pigeons to live in. Then we spent days hunting pigeons with a stick, some string, and a cardboard box, but when we’d caught eight of them, the cat went into the cote and killed them all. The cote is still there in Peter’s garden. In spite of everything, it was a great idea.

  We discuss the magazine and decide that the first issue should have a photograph of the falcon on the cover. I walk Peter to the door, and he says bye and thanks to Mom. When he is on the doorstep, he gives me his stiff salute and strikes his tough military pose.

  “Farewell, Sergeant Stephenson.”

  And I do the same — give him a salute with a perfect swing of the hand and a stern frown.

  “Dismissed! Farewell, Private Johnson.”

  Auntie Carol is still sitting in the living room, smoking cigarettes and sucking sugar cubes with her coffee as I come back in for just another slice of pear tart. Carol is saying she envies Mom for working at a clean chocolate factory, but Mom says Carol’s the one to envy because at least she gets to dip her hands into the healthy slime of blessed fish, which is a lot better than the chocolate gunk she has to bury her hands in and the clouds of sugar that give her migraines. Carol has a husky smoker’s voice, and it really suits her because that’s the kind of person she is: a tough, determined, thickset ball. She suddenly turns to me and peers into my face as if she were looking for ringworm in a cod fillet or something.

  “Well, then, kiddo, so you’re thirteen now, are you? Have you started smooching girls yet?”

  I gulp down the pear tart I’m chewing and my face sets on fire because I can’t come up with an answer, but Mom laughs gently and Carol wheezes from deep inside like the laughing bag.

  “No? Well, that’s all right, boy — plenty of time for that.”

  I avert my gaze and swallow the slice as fast as I can. How can she see that I haven’t started kissing girls? I might have, for all she knows. Or is the truth so blatantly obvious?

  “Your genes are sure to take over sooner or later,” she adds, squinting through the smoke.

  “God forbid,” Mom scoffs, and they both giggle at their idiotic joke.

  I suddenly feel uncomfortable sitting here listening to them. They’re just two stupid old bags. What are they poking their noses into my business for? Why doesn’t the old camel just buzz off home? Don’t you have to be on the assembly line at seven o’clock tomorrow morning, old bag? my mind yells at Auntie Carol. But I don’t say it out loud. I just say thanks for the tart and take my plate into the kitchen.

  “He’s really moody,” I hear Carol saying back in the living room.

  “He’s reached that age.” Mom sighs. “But I’ve been so lucky with him, never have any problems with him. He’s awfully good.”

  “Then he gets that from your side,” Carol says (she’s Dad’s sister). “But it’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for,” she adds.

  I turn the kitchen faucet on to block out their voices.

  I have a double reflection in the kitchen window: two split personalities vying for power inside me. My right arm is against my left arm; my right leg wants to stand still, my left leg wants to run away, my brain is screaming, but my lips are sealed.

  Dad hasn’t called yet. I fiddle with the laughing bag in my hands and inadvertently press the button. Hee, hee, hee.

  I keep a small shoe box locked in a drawer in my desk. Inside, there’s an old watch with cracked glass. It stopped at eighteen minutes past seven somewhere, some day, and hasn’t ticked since. There’s also a tiepin. The silver coating has started to peel, and you can see the iron underneath. Then there’s Dad’s old pipe, with its chewed stem and yellow and green electrician’s tape holding it together in the middle. There’s just a tiny bowl for the tobacco, so tiny you can barely get one smoke out of it. It has a sour smell.

  Then there’s an old photo of Dad, with sideburns, in an unbuttoned shirt, unshaven, with a big smile and straight white teeth. If I sniff the box carefully enough, I can still get the faint odor of his aftershave, Old Spice. Or maybe I’m just imagining it.

  And because I’ve only just turned thirteen, I can feel the tears welling in my eyes again. Stupid blubbering! my mind yells, but my lips tighten. I put my father back into the shoe box, lock it inside the drawer, and trigger off the laughing bag. Ha, hee, ho!

  Then the phone rings.

  I fly down the stairs in a flash, and my hand is already touching the phone before it has a chance to ring again. I tighten my grip around the black receiver, my knuckles turning white, my forehead breaking into a sweat. The earpiece weighs a ton as I place it to my ear.

  “Hello?” I call over the racket and wait with a lump in my throat.

  A distant voice roars something I can’t make out.

  “Dad!” I shout.

  “Happy — birthday — son — how — the bird?”

  These are the only words I can just about make out through the racket and screeching with the phone pressed tight against my ear.

  “Where are you?” I yell.

  “Middle of nowhere — broke down — old truck,” I think I hear.

  Dad! my mind cries out. Thanks for the awesome birthday present — you — great — miss — you — couldn’t you have waited one day?

  But I say none of these things. I take a deep breath and yell through the racket as loud as my vocal cords will allow.

  “Auntie Carol brought a pear tart!”

  Buzz, click. Then nothing mo
re.

  “The line broke down,” says the switchboard operator. “He’s on some kind of a ship radio — he’ll call again, son.”

  Another click and then a long tone. The receiver grows heavier in my hand, slithers away from my sweaty face, and slides back to its place.

  Hee, ha, ho floats into the hall from my bedroom.

  There’s a nature program on TV, and I’m lying on the floor with my Life and Creation book in front of me, and I write down the things the narrator is telling me about bee communities. Mom sits by the sewing machine in the middle of the living room. Multicolored threads and balls litter the carpet around her feet like cobwebs. There she sits, sewing for someone, on most nights of the week, after a whole day at the chocolate factory, except the night she cleans the printer’s place. And the sewing machine hums and plods along.

  There’s a pile of material she has to sew on the ironing board, and another pile of washing she has to iron. In the old washing basket beside her, there’s a bundle of some really fancy material that’s going to be used to make some really posh people’s curtains, and the material is so fancy that it isn’t even allowed to touch the multicolored web of threads on the floor. The sewing machine hums and plods along, and Mom sits there stooped over it, as if chained to the thing. She runs the heavy green material under the needle as carefully as she can, because you’ve got to get the hemline right first time around.

  “The bee community is one of the most perfect communities in the insect world,” says the narrator in her silky-smooth voice. “Each and every one of them performs the tasks he was born to perform. We can only marvel at the organization and diligence of these bees, who work tirelessly and slave away for the benefit of the others.”

  I write that into my book and watch the busy bees buzzing on the screen.

  The sewing machine stops humming behind me. I glance over my shoulder and look at Mom, who is threading the needle. Mom is like those worker bees. She never stops from dawn till dusk. In fact, she’s the perfect worker bee, and unlike her, they don’t have to pay rent or make money to buy food. The bee sits at the sewing machine in her apron. The bee lifts her heavy black head, her antennae drooping in all directions.

  “What’s this program about?” asks the bee.

  “Worker bees, mainly,” I answer.

  Then the bee looks sadly out of the living-room window and gazes into the darkness awhile. No matter which way you look at it, bees have the advantage of having no worries. And they’re never lonely.

  “The worker bee,” she mutters as the antennae sadly dangle over her head, as if she feels neglected that no one thought of making a program about her, the sewing-machine bee, mother bee, chocolate-factory bee. Then she bows her heavy head over the sewing machine again and presses her foot on the pedal, and the needle zigzags through the thick green velvet material that is too plush to touch our carpet. I wish I knew who insisted on her sewing these yards and yards of thick curtain. It obviously didn’t occur to them that she has to work into the small hours, night after night, to finish this job on time. Why can’t they just buy them from a shop?

  “Have you done your math yet?” Mom asks, looking her old self again.

  “Yeah,” I lie.

  “Your lunch is in the fridge. Don’t forget to take it tomorrow morning, and put all your books in your bag before you go to bed so you won’t forget anything. I’ll wake you up before I go to work.” It’s as if the sewing machine’s eating its way through the material to reach Mom’s fingers, so that it can grab her and gobble her all up.

  I still have to go over my math homework once more. But it’s my birthday, so I’m legally excused. Besides, there’s more to life and creation than math. Would Mom and Dad never have separated if they’d been good at arithmetic? And would Dad have become a managing director maybe, like Peter’s dad, if he’d learned the multiplication table by heart? Shouldn’t I be thankful that neither of them turned out to be math nerds, because I might never have been born? But it’s also because I was born that Mom has to slave away in the chocolate factory and get migraines and rheumatism.

  I’ve got a dad in a shoe box and a mom who’s struggling for her life against a famished, cannibalistic sewing machine.

  “Life itself is founded on mathematics,” says the headmaster, who takes our math class. He always teaches as if he were trying to rouse a washed-out platoon to victory in a battle he knows is already lost. Even though Pinko is the headmaster, such is his passion for mathematics that he cannot even consider trusting another teacher with the task of imparting the wisdom of this subject to us, his students.

  “Mathematics is the mother of all arts, the basis of creation, and the nexus that keeps the earth and planets spinning in their orbits. Mathematics is life, and life is mathematics.”

  Then he shuts up and peers through his horn-rimmed glasses, his bald pink head glowing. His gray suit, white collar, red tie, and sparklingly polished shoes bear witness to his refined taste and form an impeccable equation. He is God Almighty and holds the work of creation together with all his sums and divisions. He has given humankind the multiplication table and theory. No one utters a word during Pinko’s classes. What can anyone possibly say once the Lord has spoken? And he isn’t really waiting for answers, just waiting for the great truths he has uttered to become engraved in our minds, like the Ten Commandments on Moses’s stone tablets, so that we’ll never forget his words. He takes a tidy pile of papers off his desk and starts to hand out the test we took last week. Peter gets a 7.5; I get a 3. For a while there is nothing but the rustle of paper and suppressed sighs and groans from different parts of the classroom.

  The first two hours on Mondays are math; human cruelty knows no boundaries in this place. Pinko perches on the edge of the teacher’s desk and scans the class. He never sits in the teacher’s chair, always on the corner of the desk. Probably because he’s the headmaster and therefore cannot stoop to sitting like just any ordinary teacher.

  The red tie works in mysterious unison with his dappled-gray eyes and somehow magnifies them. He obviously isn’t too happy with the results. It’s as if we’ve deeply wounded him, ridiculed him even, by performing so poorly on the test. Just to spoil his chances of achieving the highest average grade in math in the country. Under his leadership, the school has scored the highest results in math two years running, and this class is about to ruin his chances of a hat trick. We have dashed his hopes. He takes off his glasses to emphasize his words and puts on that same look Miss Wilson has when she’s teaching us religion, because, of course, mathematics is his religion.

  “Let us not forget,” he says, “that a good result in math is a good result for life.”

  The few who have scored high on the test sit up, erect and proud, confident in the bright and prosperous road that lies ahead of them, while the rest of us sink our heads, full of remorse and despair, with no future ahead of us.

  The school bell resounds in the corridor, but no one budges. In Headmaster Pinko’s classes, no one stands up until he says, “Class dismissed.” And we’re not allowed to dash out in a mob but have to leave in a straight line, in a civilized and orderly fashion. He waits there until the bell has stopped ringing, glances mournfully at the glasses in his hands, and mutters, “Class dismissed.”

  The worst is over. At least I wasn’t called up to the board. The knot in my stomach, that eternal dread of being asked to walk up death row to the board, untangles on my way down the steps to the playground.

  All of a sudden I’m standing by a tall mountain ash on the school lawn and glancing over at the field where the girls in my class are playing catch in the mild weather. There’s a strange warmth in the air. I’m too hot in my jacket, so I take it off to hang it on a branch on the ash tree. The girls run around, lightly dressed in the warm breeze.

  Maybe it’s because I’m thirteen years old now that I don’t see just a group of strange beings with ponytails who speak an incomprehensible language and live for nothing
but whispers and secrets. Instead I see a stunning flock of graceful gazelles, with beautiful eyes and slender, swift legs, bursting with energy and elegance.

  But there is one who stands out above all the others: Clara Phillips. Are her eyes green, or do they change color? They are like a running stream that reflects the sky one moment and the multicolored pebbles on its bed the next. Long black hair tumbles smoothly like a silent waterfall of sparkling darkness behind her. A long white neck and a soft spot where her arteries disappear behind her earlobes, right under the curved edge of her jaw, where I could feast my eyes forever. Small red lips, the lower one slightly thicker; those lips form the most beautiful smile in the world. If the other girls are like gazelles, then she’s the giraffe gazelle, Litocranius walleri. The giraffe gazelle has a long and beautiful neck and extra-long legs. She has a thin nose and very mobile lips. Her tummy is white, and her legs and inner thighs are blond. She possesses highly developed glands, highlighted by tufts of dark-brown hair. I jotted all this down in my Life and Creation book when I was watching a wildlife program ages ago, and now I picture Clara in among those gazelles, running free and majestically across the African plains. At the same time, I feel myself turning into nothing, at best a patch of lichen moss on the trunk of the ash. I’m sure if she were to look toward me now, she would see nothing but the tree. I vanish into a void.

  More classes come tumbling out onto the lawn, and someone shouts, “Boys chase the girls!”

  There is a sudden explosion of screaming and running in all directions. Screeching and wailing, but the predators charge through the thicket onto the prairie, and a stampede ensues as the gazelles desperately try to find an escape route. I feel my heart pounding and the taste of blood in my mouth; a tingle of excitement runs up my calves and tickles my thighs.

  I leap into action.

  Then everything turns to slow motion; I run in long bounds, soar into the air with high jumps, and land softly again, scattering the gravel under my heels, making it spin in midair a long moment. I’m the fearsome cheetah, Acinonyx jubatus. No animal on earth runs faster than the cheetah, who can move at seventy-five miles an hour. When he’s hunting, he quickly singles out one animal from the pack and focuses on that one alone. As soon as he comes close to his prey, his sharp claws flash out, hook his victim, and ground it with a twist.