Fish in the Sky (23 page)

The church bell rings out a bright note, and the ravens fly silently into the sky.

There’s a large photograph on the front page of the morning paper. It shows a tiny black child in the arms of a fat white nurse. Beside the nurse is the child’s skeleton of a mother. She is kneeling in the yellow sand beside the nurse, holding the child’s limp fingers. The white nurse is embracing the child, holding him tight to her large breast. The nurse is looking very sad because the child is dying while the photographer is taking the picture. Although dying from hunger is a horrible way to die, still this child dies in a beautiful way, because it dies in somebody’s arms. There are children in this country who starve as well, maybe not from hunger, not because the harvest was ruined or because of drought or floods or wars. Here children die without anyone noticing it. They die silently on the inside, but the body is condemned to go on living, forced to pretend that everything is fine, while the dusty corpse of the soul dries up. Everybody pretends that nothing is wrong, just like Peter’s parents did while Alice was crumbling in their midst, like a flower without water. I wish the parents of this world had the courage to embrace their children and tell them, “I’m here for you because you’re my child. And when I’m not with you any longer, you will know that I have loved you.”

I’m a little bit anxious about Dad calling tonight. Maybe he won’t call until tomorrow. I hope he’ll just forget as usual. Mom said I could take the phone into my room if I wanted to. The cord isn’t long enough to reach the desk — it only reaches the bed — so I put the phone on the bed and close the door. Then I sit at my desk and struggle on with my homework. I want to call Peter to ask if everything is all right, but I don’t. There’s nothing I can say that would matter, anyway.

I wrestle with my math exercises under the watchful eye of Christian the Ninth. Trudy has gone to bed. She’s going to school tomorrow. Mike has called twice, but she hung up on him. Mom doesn’t know anything about what happened, and I don’t think Trudy will ever tell her. She seems to be over it; at least she no longer wakes up in the middle of the night to come over to my bed for a chat. I kind of miss that, though. Everything changed when she was sure that she wasn’t pregnant. That night she slept like a log. I’m fairly sure that it’s going to be a long time before she gets another boyfriend. That much is obvious.

Algebra is the most incomprehensible thing in the world. Why can’t you do math with words instead?

It makes no difference how I arrange this problem; the result is always disappointment. But maybe I’m not putting this together right; maybe what’s wrong is the word
love,
because without love there wouldn’t be disappointment.

I’m absorbed by this new mathematical theory of mine and have long forgotten my unsolved algebra problems that Pinko gave me this morning, when suddenly the phone rings behind me. I jump to my feet and knock my notebook off the desk to the floor. The black telephone lies heavily on the soft comforter. Before it rings again, I’ve sat on the bed, raised the earpiece, and placed it by my ear.

“Hello, Josh,” my dad says.

“Hello,” I say.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“Math,” I reply.

“I see. That’s good.”

“Yes,” I say.

“So, son,” he says. “So that’s what you’re doing.”

“Yes,” I say.

He clears his throat, and then he’s silent for a while. There’s some strange eagerness in his voice when he starts to talk again, not anger or anything like that, but like he honestly wants me to know that he understands completely.

He says that Mom told him what happened. He says it was a real surprise because he thought I was happy at school and with Mom; he hadn’t imagined anything else. But then he says he started to remember how difficult and unfair life could seem when he was my age. How passing remarks could hurt and small problems seemed insurmountable. He says that he started to remember things that he thought he had forgotten long ago.

He goes on talking as if he is not in a hurry at all. His voice is easy and warm, and I hold the earpiece close to my ear and listen to every word. He starts to tell me about when he was my age and played hooky himself. He took Granddad’s little boat and rowed out, because he wanted to be a sailor like Granddad. He saw no use in hanging around in a classroom when the sun was shining over the blue water of the big lake. When Granddad heard about it, he didn’t say anything.

“But the next morning, he woke me up at four o’clock, ordered me to get going, and all that day we were hauling the nets on his motorboat. When we came ashore, he ordered me to fillet the catch, and when that was over, he sent me to the fishing sheds and told me to stay there until he came to fetch me. And there I stood, long into the evening, threading the bait on the hooks on the line until I could no longer feel my fingers and was dreaming about going back to school. He did exactly the same thing the next day and the day after until I gave in and pleaded with him to let me go back to school.”

“Was Granddad always so mean?” I ask.

“He knew it wouldn’t work to tell me anything. I had to figure it out for myself. And I certainly did after those three days.”

Then he’s silent, and for a while, I hear only the low buzz on the line and look at Christian the Ninth on my desk, illuminated by the light from the lamppost outside.

“How was the checkup, by the way?” I ask, hoping to keep this conversation going for as long as I can.

He replies that he is fine now, and that he has resigned from the
Orca.

“You know Suzy is expecting?” he says.

“Yes, I know,” I say.

He says he owns a small motorboat and is going to do some fishing in the spring, because nothing is like being out on the boat on a fine bright morning. Then he’s also been laying nets with another guy, and that’s good money. And he’s been fixing motors for some people and is thinking about starting up a small repair shop in the spring. Then he’s silent for a while and clears his throat.

“It would be nice to have a helping hand around here with this and that,” he says. “I’ll need to paint the boat soon. Then there’s a lot to do when a child comes into the world.”

“Yes,” I say. “I guess so.”

“Would you maybe like to try and spend some time with me?” he asks.

“Me?”

“You haven’t been here since you were a little boy, when your mother and I went to your granddad’s funeral. Lots of people here are asking after you.”

“About me?”

“Your cousins and aunties,” he says.

“Really?”

“I’m sure you would love it on the boat with me. You don’t get seasick, do you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You should have enough sailor’s blood.”

“I guess,” I say.

We’re silent for a while, and I hear down the phone that he lights his pipe. I can almost smell the scent of his tobacco. I close my eyes and imagine that we’re sitting side by side in his house in the country, where the summer is so warm that you can run in your shorts all day long.

“When can I come?” I ask.

He hesitates for a second, and I hear him blow the smoke out slowly.

“Whenever you want, Josh. Whenever you want.”

“When are you going to paint the boat?” I ask.

“Oh, I don’t know. After Easter, I guess,” he says.

“So soon?”

“As a matter of fact, I have to come to the city, right after Easter,” he says. “There are things I need for the motor. Then I’m going back the next day.”

“I see.”

“If you want to come with me then,” he says thoughtfully and hesitates, “well, then I guess I have to speak to your mom soon.”

“Yes,” I say. “I guess that’s best.”

“Well, son,” he says. “It’s settled then.”

“Yes,” I say.

We say good-bye and he hangs up, but I hold the phone in my hand for a long time, listening to the dial tone.

Mom bids me good morning with a smile and strokes my hair like she used to before. This is the first time she’s done this since Pinko visited. And like she used to, she hums along to the radio as she butters my sandwich while Trudy and I crunch our cornflakes. Then she puts on her coat and her hat, and then Trudy stands up. I can hear their footsteps on the path through the open kitchen window, and their voices grow fainter.

Peter’s seat at school is still empty, and it worries me. I start to think what he must have imagined when my seat was empty day after day. I’m sort of considering running to his house at lunch, but then I notice all the girls have gathered around Clara’s desk, whispering and shooting suspicious glances all over the classroom. Her girlfriends stand around, stretching the chewing gum out of their mouths, swinging it around their fingers, and putting it back into their mouths; then they make a series of cracking sounds, drag it out of the corners of their mouths again, then back in their mouths again, and then they chew with great speed. And now everything is said in secret whispers, and they glance with their suspicious eyes down the row of desks, scrutinizing each boy with their eyes and whispering in one another’s ears. And then there’s the occasional giggle. I’m on tenterhooks because I think I know what they’re talking about. That’s why I don’t dare to move, because it could make me look suspicious. So I sit quiet as a mouse and eat my sandwich.

After school, I take the shortcut down the alleyway and go to Peter’s. I ring the doorbell. His mom comes to the door, holding the little one in her arms, and from inside the house, I can hear Peter’s younger sisters arguing. She looks tired but smiles and talks in a happy tone of voice like nothing at all has happened.

“Hello, Josh, dear. Such a long time since I’ve seen you. Are you better now?” she asks, and strokes my cheek briefly.

“Yes,” I answer, but when she asks what was wrong with me, I have some difficulty answering, because somehow I can’t lie to Peter’s mom.

“It was just some kind of flu,” I force myself finally to say.

“Well,” she says, and gives me a warm smile, “it’s good that’s over then.”

“Is Peter in?” I ask.

“No, he’s not,” she says, and her smile becomes somehow stiffer and her eyes a bit colder, like I insulted her in some way by asking.

“He went to visit our Alice at the hospital,” she says. And suddenly I get the feeling that she’s not at all comfortable answering me.

“She’s a little sick,” she explains so I won’t go thinking that this is anything serious.

The little one starts to cry in her arms, and she shushes her gently and looks at me and puts her hand on the doorknob.

“I’ll tell him you came by,” she says, and closes the door.

I don’t go home right away but take a long detour into the neighborhood where Clara lives. I stand on a corner and peek my head around the building. From here I can see her house, a large white-stone house with two floors and a flight of steps up to the front door. On the gable at the end facing me is a small balcony on the second floor. A woman pushes a stroller past me, and an old man in a black coat and a gray hat walks carefully on the sidewalk, slow and out of breath.

Finally I see her coming up the street along with her girlfriends. They’re chatting and laughing and stand for a while outside her house. She’s holding her bag in front of her with both hands, kicking it lightly with her kneecaps every now and then. I purse my lips and clench my fists in my pockets, peeking around the corner with one eye. Eventually they say good-bye, and she runs up the stairs and disappears into the house.