Fish in the Sky (20 page)

The mind is a strange labyrinth, full of mysterious rooms with many pictures hanging on the walls, pictures of forests and castles, cities and mountains, oceans and dark, deep waters. And before you know it, you have disappeared into one of those pictures, into another world. And there is another time, different rules apply, and there are lots of people you’ve never seen, but still you know them well. And you talk to these people or walk silently by their side through green forest paths. And maybe there’s a brook there and birds are singing in the trees. Before you know it, you have stepped out of the picture, back into the labyrinth, but then you’re suddenly in another room with different kinds of pictures on the walls. And I’m not sure if all these rooms and these strange pictures are in my mind or if my life and my world are just another picture on a wall in somebody else’s mind. Maybe there’s a boy sitting somewhere, right at this moment, on a beach in Japan and another one high up in the mountains in India or in a forest in Italy. And I can meet them all in the rooms of my mind and sit by their side and talk to them and we understand each other because in the mind everybody speaks the same language. There, everybody is free.

I sit in my hollow for a long time, looking over the water, and time stands still. I’m waiting for my brother, the boy who used to be me, but he doesn’t appear. Although I’m thinking about him, though I’m calling for him in my mind, I can’t find him. I lack his courage. I still don’t believe in miracles. And I still don’t have enough faith in myself to walk on water.

I stand up and walk westward, jumping from rock to rock until I reach the sandy beach farther along the shore. The surf rolls up the sand, stretching its foaming fingers toward my feet. Above the beach is the road west, and I can hear the cars go by behind the bank. Once this beach was called the Money Beach, and Peter and I came here to find old coins that some bank had dumped on the beach, a long time ago, when the coins were out of use. We had to hack them free out of rusty clumps of iron that lay here and there on the sand. Some were made decades ago. Then we went to Peter’s and sat there with some metal polish and cloths in our hands and rubbed them vigorously until they were as good as new. Those were the good days when life was simple.

That was the life that he led. The he who once was me.

And remembering this inspires me to look around for something exciting. There are lots of different shells glittering in the froth at my feet, shoes made of rubber with no soles underneath and boots buried halfway in the sand, floats from old nets, plastic cans, and shards of glass in all the colors of the rainbow, smooth and polished by the surf. The foam from the wave weaves around my feet, and when it subsides, I see something glisten in the sand. I reach down and push the sand away as a large truck drives by on the road behind and honks its horn like a foghorn. It’s a lock on a bag. It is the lock on my schoolbag. I dig my fingers in the sand, find the handle, and pull it out. The books are a chunk of wet mass, the ink has disappeared from the sheets of my notebooks, and the pages have turned to slime that drips from my fingers. I throw the books down in the hole that the bag has left, push the sand over, and pack it down with my foot. I thought that I had gained freedom by throwing my bag in the ocean and saying good-bye to everything. But I’m more a prisoner than anyone. I live in a lie, and I’m constantly on the run.

“To run away is not freedom. To fight, that’s being free,” says the voice in my head, and I know it’s him. He led me here to the beach, exactly to the spot where my schoolbag had washed ashore.

“To fight,” I say aloud, and sit in the sand with my schoolbag in my arms, looking at the surf tumbling onto the shore.

I take the back streets with the bag in my arms to avoid meeting anybody on their way home from school. Before I know it, I’m in Peter’s neighborhood, behind the church. His dad’s gray Chevrolet appears around the corner, and I’m forced to sneak into the yard and hide behind some bushes. Then I move slowly toward the dovecote and hide behind it, watching the car glide into the parking space.

Peter sits in the front seat, and when he steps out, it seems like he’s looking toward the dovecote, like he knows I’m here. Did he see me run and hide? Jonathan strokes the paint on the hood of the car and says something to Peter that I don’t quite hear.

But I hear Peter say, “No, it wasn’t me.”

“Well, somebody has been scratching the paint,” Jonathan says angrily.

“It wasn’t me,” Peter says.

“Look at that,” Jonathan says, and points at the hood.

Peter comes closer and looks at the hood and then at his father.

“Cleaning the car is your responsibility,” Jonathan says forcefully, but Peter just looks down. “Are you telling me the girls did this?”

Peter doesn’t answer.

“Right, that says everything, doesn’t it? This is not like you, Peter. It costs money to fix these things. Well, it will be your job to polish this, young man,” his father says, raising a finger. “I’ll have to get the whole hood painted again now, and I don’t have money for that. How long has it been like this? You better start at once before the rust sets in.”

Jonathan goes into the house, cursing, and slams the door behind him. Peter fetches the car polish and some rags from the basement, and he’s out again before I can sneak away. I watch him dip a rag into the polish and smear the thick substance onto the hood, but every once in a while, he looks in the direction of me and the dovecote. His father appears in the window, knocking on the glass, pointing, and Peter bends close over the hood, polishing as thoroughly as he can. When his father has disappeared from the window, Peter jolts and runs half-bent to the dovecote. I crouch down to the ground, making myself as small as possible, and stop breathing. I hear him come closer, panting and puffing.

“Are you there?” he whispers.

I’m silent as a mouse, determined not to be found out.

“Are you there, you fool?” Peter hisses on the other side of the dovecote. “You have to come out. Dad’s home.”

I’m trying to figure out why it should be of any concern to me that his dad is home; after all, it wasn’t me who scratched the paint on the hood. But then I hear a hoarse voice drawling from within the dovecote.

“Leave me alone.”

I realize Alice, Peter’s older sister, is inside the cote.

“Are you drunk?” Peter whispers, obviously very upset.

“Oh, shut up,” says the voice. “Let me sleep.”

These words are followed by moaning and sighing like she’s making herself more comfortable, rolling around in her den.

“Why did you have to scratch the car?” Peter whispers, reprimanding. “You know he loves that damn car. And now I have to polish it and probably pay for the damage as well.”

“Can you please leave me alone?” the tired voice from inside the dovecote answers back.

“Hurry to the basement and take a shower there,” he orders in a whisper. “Alice, please! Supper’s in half an hour. If you’re not there, I’ll —” But he is cut off by Jonathan’s voice from the balcony.

“What are you doing there, Peter?”

“Nothing,” Peter says innocently, and his voice suddenly becomes childish. “I thought I saw a loose board here,” he says, and pretends he’s fixing the cote.

“Have you finished polishing?”

“Nearly.”

“Well, hurry up,” Jonathan says, and disappears from the balcony into the house.

Peter kicks the dovecote and curses in a low voice, then runs to the car and starts to polish again as fast as he can, circle after circle on the hood, so that sweat pours from his brow.

A long, tired sigh comes from the dovecote. And after a little while, I hear low snoring.

Finally Peter finishes polishing the hood and runs into the basement, and I use the opportunity to back hurriedly out of the tangled bushes, crawl over a stone wall, and then run down the street.

When I open the door, it looks like nobody’s home. Mom is not in the living room sewing or in the kitchen preparing supper. I open her bedroom door, and she is lying with a wet towel on her forehead. She looks away when the light falls into the dark room.

“Where were you?” she whispers to the wall.

“At Peter’s,” I say. “Are you sick?”

“I’ve got a terrible migraine. I’m afraid you’ll have to help yourself to something to eat, bread or something.”

“OK, don’t worry,” I say.

“Trudy isn’t home yet,” she says. “I don’t know why she’s so late.”

When Mom has a migraine, I tiptoe around because her hearing becomes oversensitive and every sound pierces her head. I curse the sound of every car that drives down the street, making the glass tremble in the windowpane, because the smallest sound is like having a nail jammed into her head.

“Do you need anything?” I whisper.

“Maybe if you could chill the towel for me,” she says.

I hold the towel under the ice-cold stream in the bathroom sink until my fingers are numb. Then I wring it out a little, tiptoe back into her room, and place it carefully on her forehead. She sighs with relief, and the light in the hallway falls gently across her face; her skin is smooth and pale, and her hands are white.

“Your dad called,” she says, and closes her eyes as a single drop runs from the towel down her temple and disappears into her dark hair. “He wanted to talk to you. You can call him if you like.”

I go into the hall and sit by the phone, looking at the number. I put my finger on the keypad and punch in the number without picking up the phone. Then I wait for a while, lift the handset, and put it back down.

“No answer,” I whisper into her room, and she sighs and turns her head to the wall.

I sit at my desk and look at the falcon, then place both hands on the base and turn it slowly. The fanned wings touch my face lightly, and its open beak gapes at my forehead. I wish it was alive. Then I’d set it free. And it would fly all the way to the country, where the hills go on for so many miles that it takes days to walk across them, where the lake is so deep you could never reach the bottom. I wish.

What happened to Alice? Why did she lock herself in the dovecote? Was she playing truant like me, being a troubled child, a black sheep? What problems can there possibly be in her life, with her family? I can’t imagine what they could be. Alice should know how I’ve been feeling. I didn’t start smoking or drinking, even though I felt really bad. She’s just a kid, a child. But maybe that’s the problem.

To actually cease being a child, that’s probably the greatest experience in life. But when do you become an adult, and when do you cease to be a child? Maybe life is not a journey along a straight road, from childhood to adulthood, like I thought, but a round trip from one cradle to the next one, until finally you are laid to rest in your grave, like a sleeping infant. Maybe you are not meant to cease being a child altogether, but rather to become a better child as you grow older. And maybe you can’t truly be considered an adult until you have become a perfect child.

“Wake up, Josh,” somebody whispers into my ear, and at once I jerk up, staring into the pitch darkness. I can’t see a thing and don’t know where I am.

The shadowy figure of my cousin is moving by the bedside.

“Are you awake?” she whispers.

“What time is it?” I ask.

“I don’t know. It’s night,” she says.

I reach for the bedside lamp and push the button. As soon as the light is on, she covers her face and turns away. There are red marks on her forearms, and her shirt is torn in two places; her hair is a mess. She smells of tobacco and alcohol.

She lowers her hands from her face, squinting at the lamp, eyes swollen from crying, mascara running down her cheeks. She’s trembling.

“Can I talk to you a little?” she whispers. “I’m so cold.”

She lies down on the bed beside me, hiding her face in my pillow.

“What happened?” I ask.

“Would you turn out the light?” she pleads into the pillow.

I reach over her and push the button, and she grabs my hand in the darkness and squeezes it tightly.

“Can I lie here for a while?” she says.

I move to the wall to make space, but she comes close to me, squeezing my hand. She sniffs vigorously, but then she lies silent for a long time, with the occasional sob and a sigh.

Little by little the events of the night gradually unfold, sometimes in a hoarse whisper, sometimes with long intervals between words. Then she utters a long sentence in a single flow, pushing it out as if she’s retching.

She’d gone to a party with Mike, and the place was full of people, all older than her, and they were drinking and Mike wanted her to drink, but it was home brew and she didn’t like it and didn’t drink much at all. Then Mike wanted them to go into a room to fool around, and she didn’t mind because she was bored anyway. But Mike locked the door and wanted her to undress. But she wouldn’t, not in a strange house, in a strange bed. But he just got even more excited.

“He tore my skirt,” she blurts out into the pillow, and her shoulders shudder. Then she says nothing for a long while. I can’t say anything either. I touch her hair gently and pat her lightly and place my hand between her shoulder blades, feeling her heart beating hard into the palm of my hand.