Paul nodded.
“Start small,” the man advised. “Ten gallons, max. Decide if you like it, then move up gradual. You’ve got all kinds of time.”
“I already know I like it,” Paul said.
The man crammed more popcorn between his lips. “Oh, yeah?” he said. “How can you tell?”
“I just can,” Paul said. “I’m like that.”
“Well,” said the man. “Fine then. If you know yourself that well, fine.”
Paul came upstairs at six-thirty. His parents were in their living room now—he’d heard them turn the lock fifteen minutes before, he’d given them time to get settled. The television was on: news. His father sat in the wing chair with his feet across an ottoman, listening through headphones to the CD player, pieces of the mail scattered on the floor beside him. His mother—her feet pulled up beneath her on the sofa—leafed through a mail-order catalog.
“Hello,” Paul said to them. “You’re home.”
His father pried off the headphones. “Hello,” he said. “Did you use the VCR after school, Paul? I noticed someone left the power on.”
“No,” Paul said. “I didn’t.”
“You’re wasting electricity,” his mother said.
“I didn’t use it,” Paul repeated.
They stopped talking in order to watch a television advertisement. A car rose up from the surface of the road and flew off into the glitter of deep space. Then it returned, a woman got into it. A man in jeans, leaning jauntily against the side of a barn, watched her flash by. She went around a corner, got out in front of a nightclub. A man played a saxophone beside a water fountain, sweating. The woman was driving again, her lavender fingernails trailing across the upholstery. A man sitting in front of a gas station, the sun setting in the mountains behind him, scratched his head as she blew past.
“Boring,” announced Paul’s mother, and turned a page in her mail-order catalog.
Paul wandered into the kitchen. For a while he opened cabinets, looking at things—noodles, canned olives, bottled salad dressing. His father came in and went to the refrigerator, pulled out a beer, snapped it open and drank leaning against the counter.
“We can microwave,” he said, loosening his tie. “Sound okay to you, Paul?”
Paul nodded.
His father opened the freezer door. “Beef stroganoff,” he announced. “Halibut in cream sauce, pasta marinara, shrimp gumbo—what’ll it be?”
“Beef stroganoff,” Paul said.
“I’m for halibut,” said his father.
His father opened the microwave oven. “Can I get an aquarium?” Paul asked.
“What?”
“I want to buy an aquarium,” said Paul.
“An aquarium?” said his father. “What for?”
“I just want one, that’s all. Can I?”
“I don’t know,” said his father. “You’d better ask your mother, Paul.”
They went into the living room together.
“An aquarium,” said his mother. “Where do you want to keep it?”
“In my room,” Paul answered. “Please?”
“Is it messy?”
“No.”
“Who’s going to clean it when it needs to be cleaned?”
“I will. I promise, Mom.”
“I don’t know,” said his mother.
She turned the pages of her catalog.
“It’s not like a dog or a cat,” said his father. “Personally, I’m for it, Kim.”
“Why do you want fish?” said his mother.
“I don’t know,” answered Paul.
“All you can do is look at them,” said his mother.
“I know that,” said Paul.
“How much money are we talking about?”
“I don’t know,” Paul told her. “I could use my Christmas money, though.”
His mother tossed her catalog on the coffee table. She stood, tossed her bangs from her eyes, brushed a wrinkle from the front of her skirt and—stretching toward the ceiling, only her toes still touching the carpet, her hands balled into fists above her head—she yawned.
“No,” she said. “You leave your Christmas money in the bank, all right? I’ll pay for the aquarium.”
“I want to pay for it,” Paul said.
“You can’t,” said his mother. “I want to.”
Ken, a friend from school, a boy who wore a ski parka and who put gel in his blond hair, came to look at the new aquarium one afternoon.
“Weird,” he said. “That one with the thing on his nose.”
“That’s an elephant fish,” Paul said.
“What’s with this one?”
“That’s a severum. He got his tail chewed. That guy there—the Jack Dempsey?—he does it. He’s rude.”
“Cool,” said Ken. “Do they fight?”
“No.”
“You ever see a Siamese fighting fish?”
“No.”
“I saw it on television,” Ken explained. “It’s so cool. They kill each other. You throw them in a tank together and watch them brawl.”
“Really?”
“People bet on them, I think in China.”
“Really?”
“It’s so cool,” Ken said.
“You ever see two cats wrestle?” Paul asked. “It’s so cool. They—”
“They’re screwing,” Ken said. “That’s different.”
Paul fell silent.
“What’re the ones with the stripes?” Ken asked.
“Those are tiger barbs.”
“They’re kind of small.”
“Yeah. Sort of.”
“Maybe the Jack Dempsey fish could eat those guys. How come they’re not all chewed up?”
“They’re fast,” Paul said. “They get away.”
“Well, what about the blue ones? They don’t look so fast.”
“I don’t know,” Paul said. “Those are gouramis. The Dempsey leaves those guys alone.”
“What’s this?” Ken said, tapping the glass of the tank. “This one? Right over here?”
“That’s a red-tailed shark.”
“Cool,” said Ken. “What does he eat?”
“They all eat the same stuff,” Paul explained. “This.” He held up the can of Tetramin. “It’s like leaves and stuff,” he said to Ken.
“Maybe you ought to throw in some meat,” Ken advised. “So they can get bigger—they’re pretty dinky looking.”
“They don’t get big,” explained Paul. “You want them to get big, you put them in a bigger tank.”
“You ever see that movie?” Ken asked. “This girl goes down to South America with her dad. He’s a scientist or something. She takes her clothes off to go swimming and these piranhas eat her. It’s so cool,” he added.
“I saw that,” Paul said. “Gross.”
“It grossed my friend out,” Ken said. “I didn’t get grossed out, though. You remember when that scientist guy gets it?”
“That was gross. That was really gross.”
“Yeah,” said Ken. “You want to go to the arcade with me?”
“I can’t,” said Paul. “My parents won’t let me.”
“Neither will mine,” Ken said.
At night, every light turned off but the one in the aquarium, Paul watched his fish from the safety of his comforter. Their eternal passivity struck him as offensive: their hearts should boil over, they ought to dash their brains against the glass. But they were only fish and so they hovered, ghosts of themselves, unrealized souls. They could not concoct a plan of escape or rail against their condition. There was no identifiable question for them to ask, and anyway their world was warm and luminous and food appeared in it at regular intervals. What would it mean to be a fish and did they hear him when he spoke out loud? And when his face was pressed against the glass was he there for them, or was he nothing? And what did they make of the formality of their world, its lines and corners, its cramped geometry? Were their brains pitched to the proper degree of uselessness, in o
rder that contented lives might be lived in such conditions as these? Even a fish must experience captivity as some agonizing, ceaseless form of suffering. There together, living out entire lives in maddening, langorous comfort, they must gently become unhinged in the head; either that or die. And so they circled, or hung in the void, or sulked, inert, above the gravel. They hated and ignored one another endlessly, and when the light in their home went off at night they slept with thankfulness that their world had been erased until morning returned it to them. And this they lived through—Paul decided—with thoughts commensurate to their station in the order of being, as it had been explained to him at school recently: these fish, because they were not anything but fish, were condemned to only the faintest understanding of matters, perhaps to none at all; no one knew.
Paul, on the other hand, would grow older and understand. In fact he was beginning to understand already; he was twelve.
“Piranhas?” the man at the pet shop said, cleaning his glasses on his shirttail. “Piranhas are vicious, all right? They’ll mess up your other fish in no time.”
“I saw this movie,” said Paul. “They eat you.”
“Only if you go in the water,” said the man with a wink. “Come here and have a look.”
They went down between the rows of aquariums. They came to a tank with rust-red gravel, algae mottling its sides. The man stopped by it, grave-faced. Then, strangely, he began to hum the theme from Jaws.
“Piranhas,” he announced. “There.”
Paul looked in. A dozen fish traveled in a group restlessly, silver, deep-bodied, blunt-headed animals, no bigger than fifty-cent pieces.
“A lot of people buy them,” the man explained. “Basically you’ve got two choices. You start a separate piranha tank—nothing but, just piranhas, that’s all. Or you throw them in with your other fish and raise them vegetarian-like. Never let them get the taste of meat, pretty soon they’re docile like the rest. You have to figure there’s an instinct, though. They start in chewing on someone’s fins or tail, pull them quick—they’re trouble.”
“Pull them?” Paul said. “Where?”
“You can flush them down your toilet,” the man explained. “They won’t live up around here—too cold.”
He leaned down and tapped on the aquarium glass. The piranhas flashed away for a half-second, a wave of movement, undulant, then fell back into their silent weaving.
“Check this out,” the man said. “Their teeth are like little triangles. That’s real teeth—dentine and enamel. Little razors, two rows of them.”
Paul leaned down with his hands on his knees. The man put his index finger against the aquarium glass and pointed, absurdly, at the moving fish. “Teeth,” he said. “Vicious little suckers.”
“How much are they?” Paul asked.
The man looked at him. He took off his glasses, then looked again. He kept blinking.
“You’re interested,” he said. “Well, let me tell you something. Piranhas are a habit, okay? You get dedicated or you flush them. There’s no in between. You feed them meat they get expensive, you don’t they get boring—just another fish. You understand what I’m saying?”
“I think I do,” Paul answered.
“Good,” said the man. “Fine.”
They stood there for a moment looking in at the piranhas. “Well,” said the man. “I’ll leave you alone here so you can mull it over. You let me know what you decide.”
“I’ll take eight,” Paul told him. “How much are they?” “Eight?” said the man. “You’ll need another tank for that, you know. Eight? That’s a lot to start with.”
“I like them,” Paul said. “They’re interesting.”
Ken stood looking into the new aquarium, situated next to the first one. “All right,” he said, bending down to look more closely. “Just like the ones in the movie.”
Paul sat down on the edge of his bed. The piranhas spoke for themselves.
“What do you feed them?” Ken said.
“Whatever,” Paul said. “You know.”
“Like what?”
“Like tuna fish, mainly. Other stuff.”
“Insects?”
“No.”
“Like what then?”
“Tadpoles,” Paul said. “I got them at school. They’re in that jar over there.”
“Cool,” Ken said. “I want to see.”
“It’s not that big a deal,” Paul said.
Ken picked up the jar of tadpoles. “Can I dump some in?” he asked. “Please?”
“Go ahead,” Paul answered.
They watched together while the piranhas ate. It was quite leisurely, finally. No mad frenzy. They maneuvered, the tadpoles wriggled to no avail. Calm feeding.
“See?” Paul said. “I think it’s from living in the tank or something. They don’t go crazy like in the movie.”
“The movie was better,” Ken agreed.
“I read about them in the encyclopedia,” Paul said. “They live in this river somewhere. A cow comes in, they turn it into a skeleton. They swim around in big groups, hunting. They find another fish, they eat it. People, too, sometimes. Natives washing their clothes and stuff.”
“No kidding?” Ken said. “For real?”
Paul didn’t answer. He lay back on his bed.
“Hey,” said Ken. “Why don’t you feed them something big, maybe? Maybe they’ll go crazy eating it.”
“Like what?” Paul said.
“Like a goldfish or something. You know, a fish. Throw one in and see what happens.”
“What for?” said Paul.
“You know,” said Ken. “So they can eat it.”
“I thought about that,” Paul said.
They were evil, he saw at night, blind in their purpose, communally devoted to the shedding of blood. Watching them Paul understood the liberation that came with such a shared lust: the piranhas—it was their instinct—had stepped across an invisible boundary, relinquishing their identities in exchange for the assurances of cooperation with ten thousand others. He could not even feel, rightfully, that he owned them really; they defied proprietorship; their allegiance was to one another. They were a single organism, each a part of something larger than the self. And none was alone—they brought what made them whole with them into captivity, then clung to it in defiance of reality. As with the other fish, on nights before, he imagined them engaged in their former lives—undulating with thousands of other fish of like kind, the scent of meat propelling them all across the river currents, the warm, safe riot of the hunting attack, the rapture of blood. He dreamed that in some other life he had known this feeling, too: safe among masses of those like himself, engaged to the pit of his being in a world of purpose, passion, sustenance, action, and finding within its context that impossible thing, love, boundless acceptance, a rightful place in things.
One night, having watched them late, he went out onto the deck of the house. He wanted, if possible, to see the stars or moon—whatever was up there: anything. But instead his parents were in their hot tub kissing violently, and his father’s hands were on his mother’s breasts; they surged up out of the water together and his father’s pale, starved rump emerged and his mother’s brown heels were pinned against his father’s hamstrings. He saw that theirs was an angry passion that would not be satisfied; that love was like everything else in their lives; he felt this, watching them—the violence of their dissatisfaction with everything.
His mother kissed his father’s neck, his hairy shoulder, his earlobe, and then her cheek was against his and she was staring into Paul’s eyes. “Get out of here,” she snarled. “Honestly, Paul.” Paul’s father swiveled and stared at him, too. “Paul,” he said. “Jesus Christ.”
They fell apart into the water. His mother took a glass of wine from the edge of the tub. His father laughed into the darkness.
“What’s so funny?” Paul said.
“How about giving us a little privacy?” said his mother.
“Sorry,” Pa
ul said. “It was an accident.”
“Go to bed,” said his father. “It’s late, Paul. Okay?”
He laughed again. Paul’s mother took another sip from her wine. She moved over onto his father’s lap.
“Are you getting the message?” she said to Paul. “Leave already, okay?”
He went in and fed a blue gourami to the piranhas. They worked on it together, methodically. They nipped out a piece here, a piece there, tail and fins first, then along the flanks, finally at the back of the head. The gourami turned belly up before long. Later Paul fished out the skeleton.
He fed them the red-tailed shark the next night. It was no contest—they ate her with astonishing speed. The pair of severums went in together. The tiger barbs had to be tired out. The Dempsey fought, then died and was devoured. The elephant fish was the last to go. They accosted her from all sides; the blood was substantial. She floundered and the piranhas stripped flesh from her flanks until everything was gone but the bone.
Later the housecleaning woman, Molly, came into Paul’s room and saw the empty tank with its hood left open, the water circulating through the filters, the pump humming along, the thermostat light glowing—but no fish, nothing, just water. She mentioned this curiosity to Paul’s mother.
“They all died,” Paul explained to her. “That’s what.”
“Well, did you take care of them?” said his mother. “Did you feed them?”
“I took care of them,” Paul said. “Sure I fed them.”
“Well, then what happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, what did you do with them?”
“I flushed them down the toilet.”
“Oh, God,” said his mother. “Honestly.”
His father came into his room that night. He sat on Paul’s desk and put his feet on Paul’s chair. He looked at the fish tanks and sighed.
“I see you split up the piranhas,” he said. “How come, Paul? What’s the deal?”
“They’ll get bigger,” said Paul. “This gives them more room.”
“Don’t you think they’re big enough already?” asked his father. “They’re getting huge.”
“No way,” said Paul.
They were silent for a moment. The filter pumps hummed. The television was on upstairs.
The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind Page 7