That afternoon, I met the old man in the woods. I think it was mid October, because my birthday was coming up. I was walking aimlessly, absentmindedly.
After an hour or so I came across this man, long bearded and old, very old. He was sitting on a rock over the creek, holding a string in his hand.
I laughed, I couldn’t help it. The water was so shallow I wondered if he was hoping to catch a frog, or a caterpillar. But I said nothing. I was about to go on my own way when he called out in my direction.
“Hey boy!” he said. It made me kind of angry. I know I’m not the prettiest of girls, but still… He called again “You hear me?”
“Loud and clear” I answered.
“Wanna hold this for me, son?” he asked, holding out the string in my direction. I nodded, held the string between my fingers and watched as he slowly lifted his scrawny body from the rock. “I’ll be right back” then added “I gotta pee”.
I was left there, under the embers of the late afternoon sun. The string fell into the shallow stream of clear water; not a fish was in sight, nor a frog, nor a caterpillar for that matter; only rocks, dry leaves and an eventual bug.
About an hour passed. I was beginning to wonder where the old man had gone, when I felt a tug on the string.
I looked down, half expecting to find a very small fish at the other end, something one couldn’t even consider edible. But no. Among the several small rocks that covered the waterbed, I distinguished the shiny, round eye of something much, much larger than a tuna.
The thing pulled on the string again; the eye gave out a twinkle. I rubbed my own with my free hand, thinking it might have been a trick of the dying light. Maybe the string had tangled on some rocks? The truth was the round, shiny eyeball was there.
Holding the string tightly around my fist, I leaned closer to the water; I could hear its rhythmic gurgling. I pulled on the thread, but whatever it was holding onto felt solid. Had I kept pulling, it would’ve broken.
I reached into the stream with my free hand. At that moment, I heard a noise behind my back, which soon became a yell, which then turned into desperate screaming. The old man was running towards me, limping, his pants unbuckled, halfway down his thighs. His left hand held his trousers up, and the right one was high above his head, clutching a stone.
Violently, he took the string from my hand, pushed me out of his way and kneeled beside me. His right hand begun striking into the waterbed, splashing water all around us. As he did, something pulled hard on the thread, and the thread pulled him forward. “Help me, boy!” he called.
I grabbed him around the waist. Soon, the both of us were being dragged by the creature whose eye I had seen among the rocks. I held on for my life, while the old man screamed revenge against what he called The Fish.
After a few minutes of being dragged around the mud, the string was cut loose. The old man was soaked; his crooked legs were full of scratch marks. I looked like I had been rolling around like a pig.
The old man cursed out loud, stomping on the dry leaves that covered the floor. “He gets away every time!” He said. “But you! You!” he pointed at my face with a crooked finger, his eyes completely wild. “You did a great job, boy! You almost had him! I saw you! You!... You” He spaced out for a moment, then asked “How’d you do it?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know” I said. “I’m not even sure what it is”.
“Oh…” he said, shooting a weird glance in my direction, then sitting over the stream, his bum on one shore, feet on the other, folding the thread around his hand. “The Fish is something really, really special” he said. “But there is no point in explaining it. I’d never do him justice, would I? Hehe!” He spat on the floor. “It’s an evasive little devil”.
The hoot of an owl above our heads made me aware of time. “I better go” I said, getting up, trying to make my clothes as decent as possible.
“Will you come back tomorrow?” asked the old man, tying a shoelace.
“I’ll be busy tomorrow” I said, which wasn’t a total lie. I felt apprehensive around the crooked old man and wasn’t sure whether I wanted to meet him again. “I’m sorry” I added.
“C’mon!” he insisted, childishly. “I’ll bring a book. You’ll like it, I promise!”
I couldn’t help it. I promised I’d be there the next day at about the same hour and help him catch The Fish. He smiled a wide, crooked smile in show of appreciation.
The day after, he saw me coming towards him and smiled, waving a leather bound book on the air. “As promised!”. He offered me the rock to sit on and stood next to me with the book in one hand and the string in the other.
“You like poetry, son?” I shrugged, wondering if I’d ever find it in me to tell him I was a girl.
“Never read one”.
“Then you’ll like this one” he said, and began to read, with a rhythmic cadence, as if chanting a prayer.
“So many winters passed
Alone, by the hearth
Waiting for spring
So impatient-ly
So many nights I have had
No one sing by my side
And my own tune alone
My sad company sung.”
“Like it?” he asked, looking up at me and then down at the water.
“Er… Sounds good” I answered.
“Good? It’s mine. That’s what it is…”
At that, something tugged on the thread. The old man pulled on it quickly, but it was a false alarm. The other end of the string came out with nothing on it.
“It’s the last I wrote” he continued, throwing the string back without losing his spirit. He showed me the leather bound book. The last written page was marked by his thumb; almost half of the book was still blank. The written pages showed an uneven scribble. “But this was ages ago. It’s been awhile since he’s let himself get caught”.
I stared blankly at him. The old man paid no attention and continued reading.
“Listen to this one. It’s older…
Her eyes were so fine
They were black as beetles
I loved most, her eyes
Their lively brittle
They looked at me, tender
An inviting riddle
She left me for another
So I poked them with a needle”
“HA!” he snorted. I chuckled. We stayed by the creek for another hour, then I left. I waved goodbye and promised I’d be back the next day, same hour, same rock.
We repeated this every afternoon. It took a month before I saw The Fish again. I had come to understand it was only that, a fish,somehow responsible for the old man’s hazy poetic incursions.
One day, he had gone away to pee, like the first time we had met, and left me in charge of the string. I was staring at the lights over the water when I saw it again: the shiny, round eye among the stones, staring up at me.
I was about to call the old man. He always said “If you see Him, call very softly. If you yell, He’ll run away”. I remembered how, the first day, he had come running, trying to hit the creature with a stone, and felt sorry for the poor thing. So, instead of calling, I kneeled by the edge of the creek. It was pulling on the string very gently, as if The Fish wanted to let me into some secret.
I put my free hand inside the water and removed the rocks to uncover the creature. It’s scales were bright golden, each of them larger than my fingernails. The eye, when I had it so close to me, seemed to be as big as my hand. The Fish must be way too large, I thought, to uncover.
A few inches away from the eye, there was the round edge of a mouth, lined with sharp teeth; the brim was open, streams of bubbles swarming out of it. All the time, The Fish kept his gaze fixed on me. He opened and closed his mouth several times. I felt he was trying to tell me something. I put my hand inside it.
As I did, the eye moved around in alarm. I took my hand out quickly, clutching something hard inside it. The Fish disappeared under the rocks. A moment after I felt the old man’s angry clutch on my shoulder.
“You tryin’a steal it from me, boy?” I shook my head. His eyes looked menacing. “Then what’s that on your hand?“
I showed him: a sharp, black tooth. The old man took it and examined it against the light, as you would a precious stone. As he did, something very strange happened. A single, steady note rose on the air, coming from below our feet. The tooth visibly vibrated under the old man’s grasp. A single drop of blood left his index finger and fell on the ground.
“Ah… I get it” he said, breathing heavily. “I’m sorry boy”. I thought I saw a tear swelling in his eye. “I think this belongs to you”.
The note ceased. There was a deep cut on his finger. After taking the tooth, I grabbed his hand and sunk it inside the stream. The clear water closed the wound almost immediately. The old man looked at his healed hand and heaved a heavy sigh.
“I guess it doesn’t want me anymore” he said, then spat on the stream.
“Maybe you try too hard?” I ventured.
He pondered, and then added reluctantly “Maybe… You know what to do with that?”.
I shook my head. “Take it somewhere quiet and look at it”
“Look at it” I repeated.
“Yeh… Just stare at it until something happens.”
“How will I know something has happened?”
“Hehe… You’ll know” he added, “Now go. It’s getting late. It’s better if you do it at night”.
I tucked the tooth inside my pocket. My steps created a soft rustling on the dead leaves. The wind was beginning to blow, signaling a storm to come.
Once alone, I sat on my desk and placed the tooth in front of me. It took a couple of hours to work. By then, thunder was tearing the sky and the wind and rain were fiercely crashing on my window. I had looked at the tooth from every angle, felt its texture, measured its length; I had even counted the razor like dents on its edge. I was about to fall asleep when it began to glimmer. It cast a soft, golden light. Moved by some instinct, I brought it next to my ear and heard it whisper. What it spoke to me is beyond words and imagination…
I saw the old man the day after that, for the last time, at least to this day. He sat on the same rock, looking downhearted. He didn’t have to tell me: The Fish was gone. He wasn’t under the creek any more; he’d possibly never be there again. Instead of waving his book, as he always did, he got off the rock and walked away, only looking back once, to grant me one last smile.
