Fish in the Sky (15 page)

I shrug and put on the pity-you-but-no-mercy look.

“It’s your own fault, isn’t it?” I say, and stand up and go into my room. She follows me, her voice breaking into weeping.

“Josh, please, huh? Don’t. Please.”

She sits on my bed with her hands in her lap. I sprinkle some fish food on the surface of the water in the tank. I didn’t imagine this would have such a dramatic impact on her. I thought she’d get mad and would maybe try to beat me up like the other day and maybe try to kiss me again. I’m a little put off, not sure what to say.

“Josh. I’ll do anything you ask, anything you want, help you with your homework or whatever, if you just promise not to tell.”

“Maybe,” I say.

She sits on the bed, weaving her fingers together, uneasy and anxious. I hadn’t expected this. I was hoping for a fight.

“I’ll think about it,” I say.

Then she jumps to her feet and walks right up to me and it’s really the first time I realize that she’s at least a head taller than me. Maybe she’s going to beat me up after all. She puts her hand in her pocket and takes out some money.

“Here,” she says, and hands me the money. “You can have all my lunch money if you keep quiet.”

I look at the money in her hand. I could do a few things with this much money, buy things. And since I’m an outlaw from society, it’ll be good to have some money in my pocket.

“All of it?” I ask.

“All,” she says.

I take the money and put it in my pocket.

“But if you tell . . .” she says threateningly, and raises a finger.

“As long as you pay, I won’t say,” I reply.

And so our mutual trust is secured with mutual suspicion. She gets her schoolbag and says good-bye with a silent look. I’m home alone, free, with my pockets full of money.

Everything downtown is gray; the red houses are red-gray, the yellow ones yellow-gray, the gray ones black-gray. I buy a stamp at the post office with my cap pulled over my face, just in case, so nobody recognizes me. But who would recognize me? Everybody I know is in school. I put the stamp on the envelope and start to put it in the mailbox. I hold it by the slot for a while — I don’t know why — but my heart is beating fast. Somebody is standing behind me waiting to get to the mailbox. I slide the envelope inside and hear it fall down gently. Did I definitely put the right letter in the envelope? Was Mom’s signature definitely on the letter? I feel a chill. There’s no turning back now. I round a corner, heading down to the harbor with my hands in my pockets and my chin to my chest; it feels like all eyes are on me. I walk hurriedly past the shipyard, then the steelworks, and then finally I feel relieved.

The man in the gas-station convenience store tells me the price for a Coke and a chocolate bar as if there is nothing more natural than a boy who should be in school standing here in the middle of the morning, buying a snack. He hands me the change without looking at me.

The shelves on the wall beside him are loaded with all kinds of things: windshield wipers, fan belts, oil cans, cotton cloths, and tool kits. Then there’s one shelf full of plastic toys, and there’s a red glider plane with a separate handle and a thick rubber string so it can be shot high in the air. I take it from the shelf and put it on the table. Then the man looks me in the eye. I hand him the money.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

“We have a day off,” I say without hesitating.

“And what? Pockets full of money?” he says, watching me suspiciously.

“I’m buying this for my dad,” I say, holding the Coke up. “He said I could buy myself something too.”

“OK, then,” he says, pushing the plane and my change across the counter toward me.

I put everything in my pockets and walk out toward my hollow. I look over my shoulder to check if he’s watching me, but he’s nowhere to be seen. It is so easy to lie, so terribly easy. And when you’ve got so much to hide, you can lie so convincingly that you almost start to believe it yourself. Then you give the best performance.

I honestly believe that I’m taking Coke and chocolate to my father, even though there aren’t any cargo ships in the docks and Dad is far out at sea. It’s just like people who believe in God, even though he doesn’t exist. And just like the people who go to church to eat a wafer and sip wine in memory of Jesus, because they believe in him, I sit down in my hollow sipping the Coke and chomping away at the chocolate bar, thinking of my father. He might as well be in heaven; although he is with me, I’m not with him. Half of me is from my father, and so my father is with me. So I wasn’t really lying when I told the man I was buying this for my father. This proves that lies can be the honest truth, when you think about it. But my cousin lies to her parents and my mom, just so she can kiss some stupid boy. She’s just a sex-crazed female whose sole objective is to find a male to satisfy her burning longings. Probably a close relative to the spider who eats her mate after he’s delivered. Is this love, then? To fondle and squeeze and cuddle like a slimy mollusk? Such brutal uncleanliness is certainly the poorest excuse for love there ever was.

Where the rocks end, the sandy beach begins, reaching as far as the eye can see. I run on the beach, for warmth. It’s chilly sitting in my hollow drinking Coke. I fasten the wings to my glider, tie the rubber band to the handle, and shoot it into the air. It flies, red and shiny under the blue-gray clouds, and glides high above the beach. I run after it, run from the small waves searching the sand, run and run over seaweed and kelp, run until I see it lower and glide gracefully down, landing next to a gray stone. I pick it up, put the rubber band in the hook on its belly, and shoot it up into the sky again, high and far, higher than the seagulls, higher, higher, until it rests its wings on the mild breeze, flying straight in the air, soaring forward, high above the sand, high above everything.

I eat lunch in my hollow — the sandwich that Mom made this morning. I’m a free man, looking over the blue bay like a king over his realm. I throw the leftovers to my subjects, the seagulls, who dive down and grab the pieces in the air with a strong flutter of wings, cackling and fighting; that’s their lot.

They fight over the bread crumbs till everything is eaten, then they hang around for a while, floating in the air over the rocks in hope of some more, but then they lose interest and fly back to the sewage outlet.

I’m warm after running on the beach, and it’s nice to sit in the shelter of my hollow and listen to the lapping of the waves, listen to how they trickle between the rocks. The long-haired seaweed moves lazily to and fro just beneath the surface, and farther out on the bay, a group of eider ducks,
Somateria mollissima,
rises and falls on the undercurrent.

I leaf through my writing pad and read the poems to Clara, each one a sigh from the deepest dungeons of my heart. I think that when I see her in a dream, our souls are meeting. I know it. Even though she laughs with Tommy and makes it look like she thinks he’s exciting, I am the one in her heart. It’s just so difficult for her to show it. Nobody can understand that better than me.

A loud cackle from a gull tears me from my thoughts. On a rock, not very far away, sits a huge white gull with a black back,
Larus marinus,
looking at me threateningly. He opens his beak and hisses and cackles, loud and clear. He isn’t afraid of me in the least and shows no sign of flying away. He is king here, not me. I feel a chilling tingle in my legs; I want to run away but I don’t dare to move. He stares at me with one flaming-yellow eye. The coal-black pupil, round like a shirt button, stares without blinking: cold, unscrupulous, merciless. Then he cackles,
He’s here! The traitor! The truant! Come and see!

He fixes this one eye on me and screams,
Away with you! Be gone! To school, to school, to school!

His wings spread out like two huge swords and beat heavily at the air, flapping and pounding, until I’ve had enough. I jump to my feet and run. I fall on the rocks, scraping the skin on my hands and knees. I push myself onward, sweating and scared, my heart jumping out of my chest, not looking back, sensing only his yellow beak snapping right at the nape of my neck.

My heart doesn’t beat normally again until I’m downtown strolling the streets, jingling the coins in my pocket. I wander into the bookstore. There is a thick scent of paper and pipe tobacco. A man with gray hair sits behind the desk. He’s wearing a white shirt and a black vest, and he is talking on the phone when I come in. He notices me, nods in a friendly manner, and continues to talk on the phone. I walk farther into the store, looking at the shelves; there are loads of books here, old books that many hands have touched and caressed, new books that are waiting for someone to open them up and disappear into the world that they hold inside them. Right at the back of the store are shelves of magazines, and there among them is the latest issue of
National Geographic.
Next to it are the women’s magazines Mom loves so much, in a long row. On the top shelf are magazines with naked girls on the cover.

I quickly grab
National Geographic
and start leafing through it, pretending to be reading, but my eyes are searching upward, up naked legs, up naked stomachs, up between large breasts. The old guy says good-bye on the phone. Without thinking twice, I reach up, snatch a magazine from the top shelf, and shove it inside my jacket. At the same instant, I hear him put the phone on the hook. I lower my head into the
National Geographic,
put on my most serious natural-scientist face, frown a little, and pretend I’m reading a very interesting article about kangaroos in Australia. I can’t see the words for the fog in my eyes; I can’t wait to get out, out, out.

“Are you interested in these kinds of magazines?” the man asks, and for a terrible split second I think he means the ones up on the top shelf, but he must be talking about
National Geographic.

“Yes,” I say, but feel instantly that I have to add something, something spicy enough and so convincing that he won’t dream of suspecting me of anything, so he won’t imagine that I even noticed the magazines on the top shelf.

“My dad is actually a subscriber,” I say. “But we have just moved, so the latest issue hasn’t arrived yet,” I add in a very calm way.

“And you read this?” he asks with the emphasis on
you
like it’s a miracle that a thirteen-year-old boy is sufficiently interested in such things to actually read about them.

“Yeah, sure,” I say, and force a smile to show him that my interest in natural history goes without saying.

“I’ll say,” he sighs. “And I thought that old men like myself were the only admirers of that magazine.”

But now I feel myself beginning to soar inside, so while I walk casually to the desk, pay for the magazine, watch him take the money, open the register, put the coins in their appropriate compartments, and close it again, I jabber away without a single pause.

“Yeah, you know, I am the president of the Natural History Club at school, and we’re actually publishing a magazine very similar, you know. And my friend, well, he’s in the club — he’s the secretary, actually, and he has this fabulous camera and he’s always taking photographs, he even took a photo of a falcon, you know, a real-live falcon. That will be in the magazine, the picture of the falcon, you see, in the first issue that we publish.”

“You don’t say,” the old man says, smiling, when I finish.

My face is very warm and I’m sure I’m all red in the face when I raise my hand and say good-bye and walk out. He nods, holding his pipe between his teeth. There’s a mysterious gleam in his eyes; I’m sure he’s suppressing a grin. I press the
National Geographic
to my chest, mostly to stop the porn magazine from falling out from under my jacket, and then walk out stiffly like a windup toy. I stumble over the threshold and start to run as fast as I can, convinced that he’s found me out and is about to call the police.

When I’ve gone far enough, I peek around a corner and see him standing outside his store, looking around him with his pipe in his mouth. Then he bends down to pick something up and stands for a while looking at it. It’s my red glider. It must have fallen from my pocket when I ran. The old guy looks up and down the street, takes the pipe out of his mouth, and scratches his gray head with the mouthpiece, looks at the glider, shakes his head, and disappears into the store.

What a stupid mistake — my glider lost forever. One thing is certain: I can’t be seen in the neighborhood of this store ever again. At least not until I’ve grown a beard.

I’ve hardly closed the door behind me when a key turns in the lock and Gertrude appears, chewing gum with a tired look on her face and so feeble she doesn’t even bother to say hi. I hurriedly take
Tintin
from my bookcase, slide the magazine from under my jacket, throw it inside the book, and jam it back in the bookcase.

All through supper, Gertrude gives me dark looks, but I pretend not to notice. She can think what she wants, as long as she pays up. One thing is certain, though: she doesn’t trust me. After supper, she offers to do the dishes. It makes Mom really happy, and she sits down at the table lighting a cigarette.

I can’t wait for the evening to pass. After I’ve forced myself to watch the news, I pretend I’m sleepy and go to bed, leaving Mom and Gertrude in the living room. It is obvious that Gertrude is not going to leave me and Mom on our own for a while, just in case.

I hold
Tintin
on the bed in front of me. The magazine nests inside, and I leaf slowly through it with trembling fingers. I feel disgusting but at the same time really cool. This is the worst crime, the lowest place a man can fall: looking at pictures of naked girls.

To begin with, I’m amazed by the somewhat unnatural poses, but at the same time, I’m enchanted by the biological wonder that the female body most certainly is. My cheeks are burning, and I’m dripping sweat in the most unlikely places. I turn the pages, scrutinizing every picture, every spread, gobbling it all up with my eyes. There’s a new girl on almost every page, but somehow they all have the same expression: eyes half open, mouths twisted, teeth tight together. Some are on all fours, swaying and twisting with their heads upward and their butts out in the air like cats stretching. It’s like they’ve been electrocuted at the exact moment the picture was taken. The astonishing world of the flesh makes me confused and aroused, limp and tense. I don’t notice Gertrude come into the room until she’s standing by the door to her room, looking at me. I look up. My face is a shimmering blaze.