Fish in the Sky (17 page)

We stay like this for a long time without saying anything, just listening to the water boil in the potato pot; the steam pushes the lid gently so it tingles lightly by the brim of the pot and the boiling water rumbles in a deep voice underneath, but now and then a single drop falls with a sharp hiss on the hot stove.

There’s a thick stench of medicines and cleaning products in the elevator; the walls are steel, but the floor is pale-green linoleum. I step out on the fifth floor and walk along a hallway, peeking into the rooms. He wasn’t on the fourth floor or the third; at least I didn’t see him there. I don’t dare to ask the nurses because I’m not sure about the visiting hours; maybe they’ll tell me to go away and come back later. I’ll just have to find him myself, and I will look in every room, on every floor, until I do.

There are a lot of old people in these beds. They’re sleeping on the snow-white pillows in snow-white shirts under snow-white sheets in snow-white rooms. They’re like newborn babies in cradles, their hair ruffled, their faces wrinkled, eyes closed but mouths open; their souls far, far away somewhere in a peaceful dream. But some of them wince, and then one shouts and it echoes down the hallway. A nurse is pushing a cart in front of her, but two others go into the room where the shouts are coming from. I try to stay invisible, but the nurse stops the cart right in front of me.

“Are you looking for somebody?”

“Yes.”

“Grandmother or grandfather?” she asks, smiling.

“Dad.”

“And he’s supposed to be here?”

“I think so.”

“What’s his name, dear?”

“Oliver.”

“And last name?”

“Stephenson.”

“He’s not on this floor,” she says, looking at me with suspicion, as if I’m wandering here on false pretenses.

“What’s he here for?”

“A checkup, I think.”

“What was the matter with him?”

“There was this accident on board the ship he works on, the
Orca
?”

“Oh, yes, I know. Are you his son?” she says in a gentle tone, suddenly becoming very concerned, all suspicion gone. She asks me to wait and walks to a glass cage, where she talks with three nurses, who turn their heads simultaneously, looking in my direction and talking all at once. One of them picks up a phone, but the others look at me through the glass. When the phone conversation is over, they whisper something among themselves and the one who was talking on the phone comes out into the hallway. She has a watch hanging on the left side of her chest and a name tag that says Brenda.

“Hello, dear,” she says, and sits beside me on the bench. “My name is Brenda. What is your name?”

“Joshua.”

“Well, now, Joshua. There has been some kind of misunderstanding, about your dad, I mean.”

I look at her, and I don’t understand what she’s talking about. There’s a contraction in my throat.

“He left this morning. He was fine, so we didn’t need to keep him. He was hurrying home — long trip back to the countryside, he said. Didn’t he call your mom? Didn’t you know he was on his way home?” she asks, placing a gentle hand on my shoulder.

But I can’t answer. Everything’s stuck, and my eyes are burning. There aren’t any simple answers to those questions. She thinks we’re all a happy little family, dad, mom, boy, and beautiful countryside. She thinks Mom and I have come all this way to fetch an injured dad, to take him home and care for him. This woman doesn’t know anything.

I stare at the pale-green linoleum that smells of floor wax, and my throat is aching. I purse my lips and try to swallow. Usually that works fine. But now it’s not working quite as well. Maybe it’s the smell of the floor wax; maybe it’s this woman sitting beside me, smelling so clean and a little of perfume, with her thick, warm hand on my shoulder. And the harder I purse my lips and the more I try to swallow, the worse the aching in my throat and the pain in my eyes is. It reaches far into my head. Then I feel the strong and warm hands embrace me, and I fall into her sweet-scented bosom, and the watch hanging on her chest is right by my ear, ticking almost in rhythm with my heart.

I wish she was my mom and would carry me into a snow-white room, undress me, lay me in a snow-white bed, cover me with a snow-white sheet, and sit by my side until I fall asleep like the old people, like the little babies, so I could dissolve somewhere far way into a peaceful dream, maybe to the end of the world, where the summer is so warm that you can run in your shorts all day long, where the scent of nature is so strong you can taste it.

I don’t know why she is so especially kind to me. Maybe she is like that with everybody who comes here and doesn’t find who they’re looking for.

I sniff vigorously and dry my nose carefully on my jacket sleeve.

“Where’s your mom?” she asks.

I can’t answer right away because my nose is clogged and the linoleum is just a haze before my eyes.

“Home,” I say.

“And where is ‘home,’ dear?” she asks in the same gentle tone as if she’s doing wordplay with a little boy who’s just begun to talk. She reaches into her pocket and hands me a tissue.

“Can I call someone to pick you up?” she asks.

“No,” I say, and blow my nose.

“Are you sure, dear? Shouldn’t I call your mom?”

“There’s no need,” I say, and try to think of something to say so she doesn’t call anyone.

“I’ll just go to my auntie’s,” I say. “She lives close by.”

I rise slowly from her soft chest, hanging my head. I can’t look up, am paralyzed with shyness and shame.

“I’m awfully sorry,” she says, and strokes my cheek.

“It’s all right,” I say, and stand up but can’t look up and don’t know what to do or say, but I want to thank her for being so kind to me, so I put out my hand.

“Thanks.”

But she doesn’t take my hand. Instead she holds out her arms and embraces me warmly. Then she leads me to the elevator. She pushes the lobby button for me, and just before the door shuts, I can finally look up and watch her where she stands, raising her hand like she’s saying farewell to somebody she cares about: blond hair, dressed in white, like an angel.

I walk past the cemetery overlooking the sea, and it’s not until I reach the point where you can get onto the shore that I stop whimpering and sit on a rock and look out over the ocean. It’s windy, and the waves are green with white crests. The clouds sail fast overhead, and the sun, distant and cold, glimmers occasionally on the waves, flickering on the pebbles on the shore, on a blue shell by my feet, half buried in the sand.

“‘March: the sun is rising slow, but surely it will win,’” I mumble to myself and dig my toes into the sand.

He’s gone to the country. His girlfriend is sitting by his side, and they’re kissing. He’s stroking her belly, where their child is growing, the child that will be my sister or my brother. And I don’t even know if we’ll ever even meet or get to know each other. When this child is thirteen, I’ll be twenty-six, maybe married with a family, maybe living in another country. Maybe dead.

The waves rise and fall out on the bay like a silent echo of each other until they melt into the sand on the shore with a low whisper:
Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Mom comes into the living room with cookies on a plate and a mix of orange juice and lemonade in a jug. There’s a movie starting on TV. I lie on the floor, sipping the frothy mix and munching the sweet cookies. It’s been a long time since Mom and I have watched TV together. I haven’t quite brought myself to tell her what Gertrude paid me to lie about. But then she’s the one who forces me to do it by asking me.

“What’s happened to Trudy?”

“There’s a school dance, I think.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, then she’s going to her girlfriend’s after the dance. She’s babysitting or something.”

“When did she tell you this?”

“I met her outside, today, I think, I mean, I don’t remember. But she asked me to tell you.”

“She didn’t say a word to me,” Mom says, and sits in her chair.

This will be the last time I lie for my cousin, no matter how much she pays me for it. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice the look on Mom’s face; she’s worried and suspicious. But she asks no further.

“Is this a good movie?” I say to make an effort to lure back the comfortable atmosphere that was in the living room just a moment ago. But Mom has her mind elsewhere.

“Are you going to visit your father tomorrow?”

“No,” I reply.

“He would be happy to see you.”

“Peter and I are going to do stuff tomorrow.”

“Are you sure?”

“The film is starting,” I say, and turn up the television.

It’s the film about the bell ringer in Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. Quasimodo: the horrible hunchback, who is really very kind, but everybody is afraid of him and mocks him because he’s ugly and deformed. But he loves this one girl, Esmeralda, who has long black hair, almond eyes, and beautiful lips like Clara. When the mob has taken Quasimodo and tied him to the platform in the middle of the square, they shout at him and throw trash and rotten vegetables at him. He’s utterly helpless, tied up on his hands and knees. He asks for water. He shouts and cries, “Water, water,” but the mob laughs. Then, she alone steps from the screaming mob, Esmeralda, like an angel from heaven, with water in a jug. She’s not afraid of him; she doesn’t despise him. She steps onto the platform and gives him water, and everybody stares in silence at the merciful act. I don’t see Quasimodo and Esmeralda anymore, only Clara and myself; the hunchback inside me yearns for the water that only she can give me.

During the day, my mind is full of dreams of my heavenly Esmeralda, but during the night the witches appear and work over me in feverish fantasies and I go to them with disgust and longing at the same time. They dance like mad devils under my comforter right before my eyes until everything is over and I fall asleep in guilt and shame, my heart feeling like a black stone. Am I going crazy, or are girls really so double sided? Were those devil women once like Clara, innocent and pure? Maybe they aren’t even human; maybe they’re kept in cages in the offices of those magazines and let out once a month for a photo session. Is this love? This burning pressure in the pit of my stomach during the night? Or is love the bittersweet mournful bliss that I feel during the day? Which emotion is the true one, the one that burns or the other that warms?

My mind is a circus in flames where all the animals have broken out of their cages, kicking, jumping, screaming, and fighting in desperation to get out before the burning tent falls over them. I’m exhausted, and I don’t know what is right or wrong anymore, lie or truth. I want, so much, to talk to someone about all this, but I don’t know who that could be.

If I only could talk to God, man to man, then he could set me free with one word. But the only solution the Holy Book has to offer is “Go and sin no more.” That’s easier said than done. And what is sin? Is it a sin to be a human being, to hurt, to find no answers, only more questions? Or is it a sin to be a beast that wants so much to become a human being?

Mom has gone to church, and she didn’t even try to make me go with her. Maybe she’s noticed that it isn’t working. Maybe she’s given up on me. Maybe she thinks I can stand on my own two feet in front of God now that she’s given me the Bible. But maybe she just doesn’t care what happens to me anymore and can’t be bothered to try to save me by dragging me along to church. Maybe she thinks I’m lost already. Yes, I’m like the prodigal son who demanded his inheritance in advance and spent it all in debauchery and extravagance. And I’m a liar and a truant and a sinner on top of that. I can’t bear to think ahead to when my secrets are discovered; I must use the time well to find some answers, to understand my life, figure out what to do. But it doesn’t matter how much I think — I can’t find any answers, only more questions. Maybe I really am going mad. How could any sane person think of doing what I’ve done? Maybe that’s why Mom has gone to church alone. She’s figured out that I’m out of my mind, and she’s praying to God for strength to send me to an asylum. Then the doorbell rings, and I’m convinced that on the staircase are two massive police officers along with a group of male nurses in white with a straitjacket ready.