Fish in the Sky (22 page)

I’m almost asleep when Trudy tiptoes across the floor and sits on my bed.

“Can we chat a little?” she asks, and lies down, putting her head on the pillow.

Then she’s silent for a while.

“Why did you do it?” she finally asks.

I don’t know if it’ll help explaining it to her, not sure if I know the answer anymore.

“You know,” I say. “Just wanted peace. To be alone.”

She turns over to me in the half-light, and her brown eyes gleam. Behind her, on the other side of the room, the curtains are half open and the glow from the lamppost seeps through the window. The light falls softly on her cheek, beside me on the pillow.

“You know very well the shower warden isn’t a cannibal,” she says. “You didn’t really mean that, did you?”

“It wasn’t just her. It was everybody. I just needed some time to think.”

“You think too much,” she says. “It’s unhealthy to think as much as you do. Maybe you should write some poetry,” she adds. “It gives your mind some rest. And your heart.”

I smile in the twilight, but I don’t answer.

“I love poetry,” she whispers. “But there are so few boys who dare to be honest. Why are boys so strange?” she asks. “You think some guy is the man of your dreams and hope that he’s kind too. But then he’s just a brute. Why is everybody tying to be something they think other people admire? Why doesn’t anybody want to be themselves?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

She’s silent for a while, her thoughtful face lit up by the lamplight from outside.

“Maybe there is a good boy somewhere, just a normal boy, who would maybe have known how to love, who would have written poems for me. But I didn’t see him because those boys always fall in the shadow of the others.”

We lie side by side in silence for a long time, and I understand what she means.

“Do you think Dad was one of the others?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I was so little when I saw him last, I wasn’t thinking things like that then.”

“Don’t you find it strange,” she says after a while, “that sometimes it’s like you’re alone in the world? You have parents and friends as well, good friends even, but still you’re utterly alone.”

I look at the soft pool of light that envelops Trudy and me, and wonder at how two souls can be so alike, when we’re so different from each other in every other way. So this is how she thinks, just like me. And here I was, believing that nobody in the world had the same thoughts as me.

“Will you promise me one thing?” she asks.

“What’s that?”

“Promise me that when you have a girlfriend, just be who you are and don’t try to be anything else. Just so she knows that there’s one good boy in this world.”

Mom walks me almost up to the school gates, just like on my first day, six years ago. Dad had just left, and she couldn’t walk me all the way because of the prying eyes of the happy parents who would notice she had been crying. I’m carrying her old schoolbag because mine is ruined and she can’t afford to buy me a new one after buying new books and notebooks. The shouting and the screaming from the school yard don’t disturb me. I’m not afraid, but I’m not at ease, either.

Mom stops and looks at the school yard for a while. I stand by her side and wait. She hasn’t told me off, not a word.

I wait for her to leave, and I wonder if I should say “Good-bye” or “I’m fine from here,” but I don’t want her to think that I feel like hurrying, like I’m ashamed of her or something.

“You have your lunch?” she asks.

“Yes,” I reply, a little surprised because she put it in my bag.

“And your books?”

“Of course,” I say, but still she stands there as if she wants to say something, tell me something.

“Well, I’ll be home at the usual time, but there’s food in the fridge.”

Suddenly, the shrill school bell rings and I feel the anxiety knot tighten in my stomach.

“I have to go now, Mom.”

“I talked to your father,” Mom blurts out.

I look at her, astonished. Is she really going to tell me off right now? But then I notice she’s not angry; her voice is not trembling. Her cheeks are blushing a little, and somehow her face looks younger.

“Did you tell him?” I ask.

“Of course I told him what’s been going on. He is your father. Maybe he understands all this better than I do. What do I know about what thirteen-year-old boys are going through? He’ll call you soon to have a chat,” she says. “Go on, now, don’t be late.”

I run toward the school yard and then turn at the gates. Mom walks slowly down the street. Not in a straight line but carelessly wandering from side to side like she’s not in a hurry, like she’s enjoying herself, like a happy child playing in the twilight of the morning. She called him after six years of silence. And now she’s free.

Pinko gives me a significant nod, then he leans against the corner of the teacher’s desk and reads our names out loud. Peter isn’t here; his seat is empty.

“Does anyone know about Peter?” Pinko asks, but nobody knows anything. “Let’s hope he hasn’t been infected with the hooky disease,” Pinko says, smirking. Half-muffled giggles are heard here and there around the classroom, and I feel my face turn red as blood. Then math begins, but fortunately Pinko leaves me alone and asks me nothing. My class is obviously way ahead of me, so there’s no point calling me up to the blackboard. But then, Pinko does tend to call up those who aren’t so good. Just so he can show us how wise he is, just to scare the stupid ones into working harder at their homework. I don’t know why he does this. But I know this one thing: next time he calls me up to the blackboard, I’ll have my revenge on him. I feel my anxiety subside, and suddenly I don’t give a damn what anybody thinks about me. And I can’t wait for Pinko to call me up. But it won’t happen today.

In class with Miss Wilson, Tommy throws a couple of paper balls at my head out of habit. I peek over my shoulder and look at Clara, but then she looks up and our eyes meet for a split second. I look away instantly. She seems to have grown and matured since last I saw her; she’s almost a woman, and more beautiful than ever. My face warms up and the sweat starts to run, gluing the shirt to my back.

It’s not until lunchtime, while everybody is outside and I’m certain that nobody is in the hallway and I’m alone in the classroom, that I take a bundle wrapped in brown paper out of my schoolbag. It’s tied with a thick string and for safety I’ve also wrapped it in Scotch tape. I move slowly around the classroom toward her desk, not taking my eyes off the door. If someone sees me, I’m lost forever. Finally I stand by her desk and lightly brush my fingertips over the writing on the page of her notebook, her pen, her pencil case. Her schoolbag sits beside the desk. I press the lock, and it opens with a gentle click. My heart is beating fast. The scent of her pours out of the bag, and in between textbooks and notebooks is her colorful silk scarf that she had around her neck this morning. I take it out and press it to my face, breathing in her scent, which I haven’t smelled since I made her fall over in the playground chasing her. I want to kneel here on the floor and keep on breathing in until there’s no scent left in the scarf. But when I hear running footsteps outside, I wrap the scarf around the bundle, thrust it into her schoolbag, and run for my seat. On the other side of the door, I hear the girls chatting and laughing while they take off their coats. When they enter, I pretend to be reading with my face down in a book. Now my heart is wrapped in brown paper inside her schoolbag. Before the day is over, it will be completely at her mercy.

The bell rings for the last time; the drumbeat of running feet on the stairs fills my ears as I run along with the others into the fresh afternoon. The boys suddenly surround me, and, as usual, Tommy is the leader.

“Were you playing hooky?” he asks, and the boys giggle behind him.

“Why do you say that?” I ask.

“Nobody has fever for such a long time,” Tommy says. “And then you started to cry in front of Sandra the shower warden.” The boys laugh. “We all heard you. Then you just ran out, still in your gym shorts,” he says, and the boys are all eyes and ears, waiting for some pathetic excuse that they can ridicule.

“You know meningitis?” I say in a serious voice. “You can die from it.” I look them all in the eye with a grave face.

They calm down a little, and Tommy gives me a nod of respect, like I just scored a beautiful goal.

“That’s horrific, man,” he says, and punches me lightly on the shoulder. “Cool,” he adds.

The bells are ringing in the church tower. The clear sound travels over the neighborhood and vibrates in the air. Two ravens are circling the tower; they sit on the roof, fly up again, and finally rest on a column at the top of the tower. Their crowing, hollow and chilling, echoes in the walls of the houses that surround the church hill.

I cut down the alleyway, and as I get closer to Peter’s house, I see there’s a light on in almost every room, which is unusual because his father is really strict on saving energy.

I walk into the yard, and there’s Peter, standing with a huge sledgehammer raised up high in the air. He’s completely out of control. He is slamming it furiously at the roof of the dovecote. The wood creaks under the heavy blows. He’s wearing just his pajama pants, barefoot, hacking away like mad. He doesn’t hear me when I call his name but goes on hitting the dovecote. There’s an uncanny violence in his auburn hair and his back and in the way he moves. I’ve never seen him like this before. The ridge of the cote starts to give way, lower and lower until the roof collapses with a loud crash. Peter hits the walls with the sledgehammer without hesitating or slowing down, like a machine, like it’s a matter of life and death, that the cote be smashed to pieces, leveled to the ground this minute, so nobody will know it ever stood there. The wooden handle slides in his palms; he raises it up high and grunts angrily with every blow. The walls begin to cave in, and the thin wire net rips apart. Boards break in two, and there’s a loud crack.

“Peter!” I shout, and walk into the yard.

He turns quickly with the sledgehammer held high as if he’s ready to knock out anyone who tries to stop him. This is not the Peter I know. His face is boiling, his eyes shooting fiery sparks from under the darkness of his brows.

“What?” he cries, and I’m not sure if he even recognizes me. His lips are a straight line and he’s blue in the face.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, not daring to move closer.

“What do you want?” he screams, and raises the sledgehammer threateningly.

“Peter, what happened?” I scream back, and feel his madness affecting me.

But then he finds his bearings and lowers the sledgehammer a bit. His face goes slack, his bare chest heaves, and his lips are trembling.

“She’s in the hospital,” he cries out.

“Who?” I demand.

“Alice,” he shoots back.

Then he lets go of the sledgehammer, its heavy head sinking into the wet grass, and grabs a fistful of his auburn hair, pulling it from his scalp.

“They didn’t know a thing; they didn’t want to. I found her downtown, behind a trash can. She was almost frozen through,” he says, and his voice breaks, and he dries his nose with a swift movement, then he goes on pulling at his hair.

“I barely managed to get her home,” he says. “And I put her in the shower in the basement and turned on the hot water, but she didn’t wake up.”

He’s silent for a while and stares at the ground.

“Then I went and woke them,” he says. “It couldn’t go on any longer; I had to let them know. I thought she was dead. She just lay in the shower completely limp and didn’t move. And Dad!” he says, and spits. “He just started to yell at her when she was maybe even dead! And it was me,” he screams with tears running down his face, hitting his clenched fist on his chest, “it was me who had to call the ambulance. Me!”

As soon as he has said the word
ambulance,
he covers his face with both hands, like a little boy pretending to hide. His whole body trembles.

“Why is he always like that to her?” he asks into the palms of his hands. “She hasn’t done anything to him. Why is he such a prick?”

I stretch to touch him, but when I place my hand on his shoulder, he jolts and rips the sledgehammer from the ground, turns around, and pounds away on the heap of wood.

“Stop it, Peter!”
I shout.

“I can’t,”
he screams back.
“I’m so angry, angry, angry!”

The sledgehammer smashes the wood, the splinters flying all around him. Finally he stops and stands there, almost out of breath, panting, looking at the ruins of the dovecote. Then he sniffs vigorously.

“I’m cold,” he says. “I’m going in now.”

“Is someone at home?” I ask.

“I’m babysitting the little one,” he says. “Mom and the others are at the hospital.”

We stand side by side, looking at the ruins at our feet, and his breath slows down and the stillness in the garden is thick, enveloping, gentle. He lets go of the handle of the sledgehammer, and it falls into the shimmering wet grass with a low thud.

He turns away without looking at me, padding barefoot and exhausted across the wet lawn, stumbling down the steps to the basement, and disappears into the house.