Fish in the Sky

by Fridrik Erlings

  I raise my voice, and the words burst out of me.

  “The bee is one of the greatest wonders of nature and the bee community is one of the most advanced in the whole animal kingdom!”

  I fill my lungs with air, and I can’t even hear what Pinko is saying.

  “After impregnation takes place in the air, the male bee dies, but the queen bee preserves millions of eggs, which she lays gradually over the course of her lifetime!”

  The shark grabs my shoulder, shaking me harshly, but I’m not going to let him stop me. I tear myself free and grab a tight hold on the teacher’s desk, and the words come screaming out of my mouth.

  “The first bees to hatch are the worker bees, then service bees, who take care of the queen and bring her food day and night, and the worker bees go out in the field to gather nectar from thousands of flowers, which they change into honey!” I scream, my face boiling with anger.

  “Shut up! Go back to your seat!” Pinko just barely manages to shout. He grabs my arm to loosen my grip on the desk, but then I grab his jacket tightly and hang there and scream straight into his face.

  “The bee has tens of thousands of eyes and fourteen thousand delicate sensors that sense the environment, but these are the most important sense organs because with their eyes, they map the position of certain flowers, and their sensors are indispensable in communicating with other bees in the colony, but the communications of bees are much more complicated than we thought they were!” I scream at the top of my lungs, hanging on to Pinko’s jacket.

  He’s trying to drag me to the door and is reaching for the doorknob. The whole class is standing now, staring in paralyzed horror.

  “In the bee community, individuals work together and help one another and no one is left out, because every bee has a unique position and is indispensable to the whole!”

  Pinko opens the door, rips me off him, throws me out of the classroom, and slams the door. I jump to my feet and try to open the door, but he pushes against me until I hear the key turn as he locks the door. Then I scream the last sentences into the keyhole.

  “And we humans could learn a lot from the bees if we would admit that everybody is equally important and that everyone has their value and that without them, the work of the others would come to nothing!”

  I hear the class laughing and whistling on the other side of the door. A few are clapping their hands, chairs and desks screech on the floor, and the teacher’s stick smacks loudly when Pinko hits the desk with it, howling, “Silence! Silence!”

  I sit in the school yard, waiting for the bell to chime so I can go in and get my schoolbag. I couldn’t care less if anybody laughs at me or if Pinko punishes me; it doesn’t matter. I’m not afraid of anything. The bee is, and always will be, a greater miracle than all the math in the world. And if you understand the bee, it doesn’t matter what you know about math. What’s the mathematical formula for honey? Nobody knows that. Except the bee.

  The bell rings loudly, and immediately the screeching sound from desks and chairs carries out of the open windows across the playground. Then the trembling drum solo begins as each class runs down the steps and the children jump out the door and run like darts over the playground, out of the gate. Some take it easy and start kicking a ball around. Someone is talking about going on a ski trip. Another about all the Easter eggs that are waiting for him. The third sings the national anthem.

  I move behind the trees so I can’t be seen from the front door when my class comes running out.

  “He’s crazy!” I hear someone shout.

  “No, it was great!” another one says.

  “He’s mental. Where did he go?”

  I peek around the tree truck and see Peter standing by the steps, holding my schoolbag, looking around. But I sit tight because I don’t want to talk to him right now. I listen to the crunching gravel when he, the last of the crowd, leaves the playground. When he has disappeared out the gate, I stand up and start walking toward the gate.

  “There you are,” her voice says. I turn, and she’s standing before me in her red coat with the silk scarf around her neck and pearl drops in each ear. She’s holding my bag in her hand.

  “There you go,” she says, and hands it to me.

  “Thanks,” I say as I take it.

  She has white mittens on and there are blue frost roses knitted on the backs of the hands.

  “That was one great speech,” she says, smiling.

  I’m a little awkward and don’t know what to say, but try to smile and look for a while up in the clouds and then I look sternly over the playground like I’m searching for something specific to rest my eyes on.

  “He was so mad, the old geezer,” she says with a laugh.

  “Yeah?” I say, and run my fingers through my hair.

  “Shall we walk?” she says.

  “Yeah, sure,” I say, and we walk across the playground and out the gate.

  We don’t talk for a long while, but the sound of our steps on the sidewalk is almost in rhythm.

  “Did you just make all that up, or do you know all about it?” she asks.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see her put her hair behind her ear so the pearl drop is more visible.

  I hear myself start to speak and tell her about my notebook, Life and Creation, and that I’ve written down everything I’ve ever learned about natural history and zoology. And my mouth goes on talking, telling her that I think we can learn so much by researching animals and nature, because life isn’t just math, like Pinko says, but something quite different and far more magnificent. And my mouth continues on and on, and she listens intently and asks questions and my voice answers her. And her voice starts to tell me about some things that she’s been thinking about along those lines. And my ears listen. My voice agrees with her, and we talk like that and listen alternately. Our voices are braided together in front of us and around us and weave around each other, like long colored bands of silk. They untangle and tangle again, like fingers searching for each other so they can hold hands.

  Suddenly we’re standing in front of her house. She takes her keys out of her red coat pocket. On the key ring hangs one of the seven dwarfs, holding a lantern.

  “Would you like to come in?” she asks.

  “Sure,” I say.

  The hall is about the size of my bedroom, the living room as big as our whole apartment. There are three big windows with cream-colored blinds with lace trimmings and heavy dark-green curtains on each side trimmed with golden cord.

  “Go in,” she says, and I walk slowly into the living room, past two vases, about the size of a six-year-old child. By a light-brown leather sofa stands a coffee table with gold feet and a smoky glass top. Beyond that are two leather chairs, matching the sofa, square with low backs and arms and soft corners. A painting on the wall shows a glorious mountain view, and another, large fields overgrown with birch in the glimmering sunlight. On another wall are several items from distant corners of the world: an African mask, an Arabic knife, a Chinese drawing.

  “Have a seat,” she says, and points to the sofa.

  The pleasant-smelling leather creaks softly as I sit down. I stare at the bookcases, which reach up to the ceiling. The luminous gold lettering on the red and brown leather spines glints under the lights inside the cases.

  By another wall is a huge cupboard with sandblasted glass containing a single row of porcelain teacups on a glass shelf. The dining-room table is shiny with six chairs around it. In the middle of the table is a finely knitted cloth, and on it stands a blue glass vase with fresh-cut flowers.

  “Would you like something to drink?” she asks, but disappears into the kitchen without waiting for an answer.

  I feel strange and dig my toes into the thick carpet and feel it move and squash under the weight of my feet. It’s like time stands still in here, like nothing will ever change. There’s enough time for everything, like sitting for a long while in a soft leather chair, reading a good book. Enough time to sit a
t the table, chatting with guests. In this great house, the whole family can live their independent lives in spacious bedrooms and large living rooms, enjoying their family rituals and deep family traditions forever.

  She appears in the door between the two vases, with lemonade in two tall glasses that must be for special occasions, and fetches two pearl-knitted coasters from a special box on the glass table. She probably made these coasters herself in Sewing Club at school. It’s like they have been made for the single purpose of being placed on this table. She places one mat in front of me and hands me the glass.

  “There you are.”

  “Thank you,” I say, and take hold of the ice-cold glass.

  She lights two lamps, and the warm light glitters off every object. It’s also like no dust ever falls on anything in here, and that’s why nobody ever has to vacuum or wipe or polish or scrub the floors. Everything here is perfect and constant. There are no worries or troubles, only harmony and tranquillity.

  “Did you have fun at the dance?” she asks as she puts her glass on the mat and pulls her feet in close to her onto the chair. She’s wearing a short black skirt and black tights.

  “It was all right,” I say. “You just disappeared?” I add.

  “I was hoping you’d come out to walk me home,” she says.

  “I didn’t see you.”

  “I waited anyway. I really wanted to talk with you.”

  “Really?” I say, and tighten my grip around the thick bottom of the glass.

  “Yes,” she says.

  “Oh,” I say, and try to find a spot for my eyes to rest on.

  She looks at her glass on the smoky tabletop and slowly puts her hair behind her right ear so the pearl drop glitters.

  “I wanted to thank you for your poems,” she says, and I feel the heat rise and fall in my face. “It was you who put them in my bag, right?”

  “Yes,” I whisper into my glass.

  “They’re really beautiful,” she says.

  I look away, red in the face, not knowing what to say next. Then I see the dark-green curtains that weren’t supposed to touch the floor of our living room while Mom was sewing them. So here they hang, obviously never used to cover the windows; they are just for decoration. All those nights she slaved and stayed up late to finish them on time. For decoration. I can’t remember a single poem, as if I never really wrote any of them. But I did write them to her, whom I loved more than anything in this life. And there she is sitting opposite me, a little shy, like me, waiting for me to say something, to explain why I wrote these poems and put them in her schoolbag. But I can’t say anything because I have nothing to say. I don’t know anymore if the one I love is real or not. Maybe she exists only in my little notebook; maybe that’s her real home.

  “I’m thinking about taking some dance classes after Easter,” she says. “There’s a spring course in ballroom dancing.”

  “Really?” I say, relieved that she broke the silence.

  “Yes,” she says. “I love to dance, you know.”

  “I see,” I say, even more embarrassed, remembering my clumsy steps at the costume ball.

  “I was thinking, you see, because I really need a partner, if you were maybe interested in coming with me.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You know, it’s not the kind of dances you dance at school dances; these are real dances, waltzes and things like that. It’s maybe twice a week. Then we would have to practice, of course, on our own. Don’t you think it would be fun? We could easily practice here in my basement. There’s lots of room. And Mom and Dad have tons of CDs with the right kind of music.”

  She goes on talking and explaining waltzes to me and quickstep and rumba, and I can’t put a word in because she is so eager and happy to be able to talk about something so we aren’t just sitting in awkward silence.

  How lovely and sweet she is to me, just because I fell in love with her and wrote her poems. How utterly caring she is not to make jokes about it, or tell anyone, but instead invite me into her home and give me lemonade. And as a poet’s reward, she invites me to dance with her. In a spring class, in ballroom dancing, where we would learn quickstep and rumba and then practice in her basement all summer.

  Sometimes it happens, every million years or so, that two stars come so close to each other that they almost touch. But just barely. And only every million years or so.

  “The thing is,” I say, after a short silence, “that I’m moving away.”

  “Away?” she says, surprised, her eyes growing wider.

  “Yes,” I say. “To my father’s.”

  “Where is that?”

  “In the country.”

  “So far?”

  “Yes.”

  Again there’s silence in the living room, long enough for me to hear the ticking of a grandfather clock, which I hadn’t noticed before. It stands by the wall, behind the dining-room table, and beside it hangs a small painting, a portrait of an old lady with a colorful shawl over her shoulders. The low ticking of the clock is both soft and resilient, and I can just imagine that when the clock strikes, the sound is somehow in harmony with everything in here; a refined sound, made by a small silver hammer on copper springs. And I realize suddenly that time doesn’t stand still in this house any longer.

  “When do you leave?”

  “Soon.”

  “You’re going for good, then?”

  “I don’t know. Most likely.”

  “I see,” she says in a low voice. “It’s a bit of a surprise.”

  “Yes,” I say.

  Then we’re silent for a while, sipping our lemonade. The ticking clock becomes uncomfortably loud in my ears.

  “Well,” I say, “I really have to go now.”

  I stand up from the chair, and the creaking leather follows my movement. When I’ve stood up, the leather continues to creak softly, moving back into shape, like the skin on the palm of a hand, opening slowly.

  She follows me across the carpet, into the tile-decorated hall. While I put my shoes on, she stands before me with her arms crossed over her chest and has put her hair behind both ears. Suddenly her eyes are so wide and her face doesn’t radiate the charming smile it did. When I’ve put my coat on, she looks so small and thin with her arms crossed like that, tight to her red sweater, the collar of her white shirt lying over the collar of her sweater. I try not to look straight at her but just a little past her, because her eyes are looking at me searchingly and I know my face is red.

  “Thank you,” I say, and nod, and then have just about enough courage to look her in the eye for a brief second. But then something passes quickly over her eyes; the wishing stones are glittering in the deep clear water. She places her arms around my neck, embraces my head, and places her warm cheek next to mine.

  “Oh, Josh,” she whispers.

  She holds me tight, and her heart is beating hard into my thick coat. I look over her shoulder at my hand, gently stroking her back, her long black hair. I rest it there for a while. The grandfather clock strikes the hour, and the sound is exactly as I imagined it. I close my eyes, feeling her hair under the palm of my hand, her hands wrapped around my head, our bodies tight together, her breath caressing my cheek.

  Isn’t it strange how the sweetest dreams are just about to come true, the moment you realize they’re just that — sweet dreams — and you can’t wait to wake up to the reality of your true self?

  The church is full to the brim, and the air vibrates from the thundering organ and the voices from the choir. Trudy and I move our lips with a hymn book in our hands, but Mom sings loudly by my side. All of those who endured the long winter in the half-empty church, while God slept, sit here now. But all the others praise him only on this day, just in case. There’s no loose floorboard by my feet where we sit now, but that doesn’t matter because I don’t need to wake God up today. If my mom’s singing doesn’t keep him awake and make the resurrection happen,
I can’t imagine what else could bring Jesus back to life.

  “Hear the joyful news from throne up high

  That hope will bring our world, so poor and sad.

  See angels of the Lord give out a cry:

  Our brother, Christ, is risen from the dead.”

  Dad called the other day to talk to her. I was lying on the living-room floor, pretending to watch a movie, but all my attention was focused on the hallway, where Mom was sitting with the phone in her hand. For a long time, she said nothing but just listened to what he was saying. When she finally spoke, her voice was so low that I couldn’t hear a thing. After their conversation was over, she sat by the phone for a while, distant and distracted, but then she went into the kitchen, and a moment later, I could smell cigarette smoke. When the movie was over and I had finished the chocolate cookies and my drink, she came into the living room with a cup of coffee and sat in her chair. Then I could tell that the time had come. Right there in the stillness of the evening before we would say good night to each other.

  “Do you want to go to your dad’s?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said, but immediately felt I didn’t want to have to say this. But I had to say it anyway. It was what I wanted.

  “Well, dear. So you’ve been thinking things over?” she said.

  “Yes,” I replied, picking up loose threads from the gray carpet, rolling them into a ball between my fingertips.

  “That’s good. I think it will do you both good. Boys need their fathers as well, you know.” Then she was silent for a moment, before continuing, making it sound as if these were quite practical and appropriate measures.

  “He’s going to help you with math, he told me. I think your headmaster will agree to letting you take the summer exams in the country, if it can be arranged. It will all turn out fine, I’m sure of it.”

  But when she said this it was like something had broken inside me. Not with any noise, but silently. Blinking, I crawled up on my knees and hid my head in her lap.

  “I also want to stay here with you,” I whispered.