The Art of Waiting Read Online Free PDF Page A

‘It’s to have with your fish.’
    The man took the lemon, scratched at the skin with a nail, and sniffed. For a moment he looked like a little boy. ‘I tell you what,’ he said. ‘The next fish I catch is yours. A present for a present, all right?’
    â€˜All right.’
    â€˜And then you must promise to go home. Promise now?’
    â€˜Promise.’
    A little later the float ducked under the water, the quill rose up again, then slid across the surface and slowly submerged, like the periscope of a departing submarine. The man pulled the line tight and it moved across the surface in irregular jags and pulls as the fish turned with the current and nodded a repeated acceptance of its fate.
    â€˜It’s a big one,’ he said.
    â€˜Really? How big?’
    â€˜Very big. A whale.’
    â€˜A whale’s not a fish.’
    â€˜Very good – a whale is not a fish.’
    He swung the fish up onto the quayside and it slapped around on the stones. He struck it across the head with the spanner he carried in his bag for that purpose and it lay still.
    â€˜Here, it’s yours. Must be nearly a kilo.’
    Katerina took the fish in both hands.
    â€˜It’s a perch,’ he said. ‘Have you seen one before?’
    â€˜No. Is it good to eat?’
    â€˜Very good, especially fried with a little garlic. Take it home to your mother now. And watch the spines on its back – they’re sharp.’
    Katerina turned and went. On her way she stopped off at the museum. The woman from the previous day was behind a desk in the entrance hall. Katerina walked in with the fish in her hands. ‘Hello,’ she said.
    The woman looked up. She regarded Katerina with studied reproach from behind her glasses, then raised a single arched brow. ‘Yes?’
    â€˜Do you like my fish?’
    The woman looked back down at her work.
    â€˜I said do you like my fish? It’s nearly a kilo.’
    â€˜No, I don’t like your fish.’
    â€˜That’s because you’re an idiot.’
    Katerina turned and walked out and across the bridge again, heading towards home. As she turned the corner near her house she saw that the door of Mrs Ilieva’s house lay wide open. She paused in the street outside and peered down the hall. A huddle of black shifted around the base of the stairs and then parted as the visitors began to move up towards the first-floor room where Mrs Ilieva’s daughter lay in her wedding dress, her eyes closed. Katerina slipped in through the door as more figures in black arrived. She followed them up the stairs to the landing and peered through a gap to where Mrs Ilieva sat by a table in the middle of the room, the placesuspended in a twilight of candles, their flames slowly dying in the small airless space. Mrs Ilieva looked towards the doorway and her son rose from his place beside her and ushered the newcomers in. They stood a respectful distance from the table and bowed their heads in silence. Someone nudged Katerina to the front. She stood clutching her fish in both hands and stared at the coffin. They had adorned it in the red cloth of the young and the dead and had dressed Nadia Ilieva in the bridal clothes she had never been able to wear in life. Her fiancé stood alone in the corner furthest from the door and watched in empathy as the flame of the candle struggled with its own existence. Then the pall-bearers arrived and they lifted the coffin and carried Nadia Ilieva down into the street. She stared through closed eyelids into the grey of the sky as the mourners followed her to the cemetery, passing between the headstones that lay among a riot of nettles and ivy. Katerina followed somewhere near the back and watched from one side as the coffin was placed next to the empty grave. The remnants of an earlier passing squall leapt from the lid as the nails were driven home, and then Nadia Ilieva was lowered into the ground. The mourners