“You see how she is with me?” the man said, turning back to Zelim. “I grant her what she wants and she refuses to thank me.” He spoke with the hint of a smile upon his face; he was clearly happy to have this debate ended. “Well, Zelim, I at least will thank you for your help in this.”
“We all of us thank you,” the woman replied. “Especially Atva. We wish you a happy, fertile life.”
“You’re very welcome,” Zelim murmured.
“Now,” said the husband, “if you’ll excuse us? We must baptize the child.”
Life in Atva was never the same after the day the family went down to the water.
Zelim was of course questioned closely as to the nature of his exchange with the man and woman, firstly by old Kekmet, then by just about anybody in the village who wanted to catch his arm. He told the truth, in his own plain way. But even as he told it, he knew in his heart that recounting the words he had exchanged with the child’s mother and father was not the whole truth, or anything like it. In the presence of this pair he had felt something wonderful; feelings his limited vocabulary could not properly express. Nor, in truth, did he entirely wish to express them. There was a kind of possessiveness in him about the experience, which kept him from trying too hard to tell those who interrogated him the true nature of the encounter. The only person he would have wished to tell was his father. Old Zelim would have understood, he suspected; he would have helped with the words, and when the words failed both of them, then he’d have simply nodded and said: “It was the same for me in Samarkand,” which had always been his response when somebody remarked upon the miraculous. It was the same for me in Samarkand…
Perhaps people knew Zelim was not telling them all he knew, because once they’d asked all their questions, he began to notice a distinct change in their attitude to him. People who’d been friendly to him all his life now looked at him strangely when he smiled at them, or looked the other way, pretending not to see him. Others were even more obvious about their distaste for his company; especially the women. More than once he heard his name used loudly in conversation, accompanied by spitting, as though the very syllables of his name carried a bitter taste.
It was, of all people, old Kekmet who told him what was being said.
“People are saying you’re poisoning the village,” he said. This seemed so absurd Zelim laughed out loud. But Kekmet was deadly serious. “Baru’s at the heart of it,” he went on. “He hates you, after the way you spoiled that fat face of his. So he’s spreading stories about you.”
“What kind of stories?”
“That you and the demons were exchanging secret signs—”
“Demons?”
“That’s what he says they were, those people. How else could they have come out of the forest, he says. They couldn’t be like us and live in the forest. That’s what he says.”
“And everyone believes him?” Here Kekmet fell silent. “Do you believe him?”
Kekmet looked away toward the water. “I’ve seen a lot of strange things in my life,” he said, the coarseness going from his voice. “Out there particularly. Things moving in the water that I’d never want to find in my net. And in the sky sometimes…shapes in the clouds…” He shrugged. “I don’t know what to believe. It doesn’t really matter what’s true and what isn’t. Baru’s said what he’s said, and people believe him.”
“What should I do?”
“You can stay and wait it out. Hope that people forget. Or you can leave.”
“And go where?”
“Anywhere but here.” Kekmet looked back at Zelim. “If you ask me, there’s no life for you here as long as Baru’s alive.”
That was effectively the end of the conversation. Kekmet made his usual curt farewell, and left Zelim to examine the two available options. Neither was attractive. If he stayed, and Baru continued to stir up enmity against him, his life would become intolerable. But to leave the only home he’d ever known, to stray beyond this strip of rock and sand, this huddled collection of houses, and venture out into the wide world without any clue as to where he was going—that would take more courage than he thought he possessed. He remembered his father’s tales of the hardships he claimed to have suffered on his way to Samarkand: the terrors of the desert; the bandits and the djinns. He didn’t feel ready to face such threats; he was too afraid.
Almost a month passed; and he persuaded himself that there was a softening in people’s attitudes to him. One day, one of the women actually smiled at him, he thought. Things weren’t as bad as Kekmet had suggested. Given time the villagers would come to realize how absurd their superstitions were. In the meantime he simply had to be careful not to give them any cause for doubt.
He had not taken account of how fate might intervene.
It happened like this. Since his encounter with the couple on the shore he had been obliged to take his boat out single-handed; nobody wanted to share it with him. This had inevitably meant a smaller catch. He couldn’t throw the net as far from the boat when he was on his own. But this particular day, despite the fact that he was fishing on his own, he was lucky. His net was fairly bursting when he hauled it up into the boat, and he paddled back to the shore feeling quite pleased with himself. Several of the other fishermen were already unloading their catches, so a goodly number of villagers were down at the water’s edge, and inevitably more than a few pairs of eyes were cast his way as he hauled his net out of the boat to study its contents.
There were crayfish, there were catfish, there was even a small sturgeon. But caught at the very bottom of his net, and still thrashing there as though it possessed more life than it was natural for a creature to possess, was a fish Zelim had never set eyes on before. It was larger than any of the rest of his catch, its heaving flanks not green or silvery, but a dull red. The creature instantly drew attention. One of the women declared loudly it was a demon-fish. Look at it looking at us, she said, her voice shrill. Oh God in Heaven preserve us, look how it looks!
Zelim said nothing: he was almost as discomfited by the sight of the fish as the women; it did seem to be watching them all with its swiveling eye, as if to say: you’re all going to die like me, sooner or later, gasping for breath.
The woman’s panic spread. Children began to cry and were ushered away, instructed not to look back at the demon, or at Zelim, who’d brought this thing to shore.
“It’s not my fault,” Zelim protested. “I just found it in my net.”
“But why did it swim into your net?” Baru piped up, pushing through the remaining onlookers to point his fat finger at Zelim. “I’ll tell you why. Because it wanted to be with you!”
“Be with me?” Zelim said. The notion was so ridiculous, he laughed. But he was the only one doing so. Everybody else was either looking at his accuser or at the evidence, which was still alive, long after the rest of the net’s contents had perished. “It’s just a fish!” Zelim said.
“I certainly never saw its like,” said Baru. He scanned the crowd, which was assembling again, in anticipation of a confrontation. “Where’s Kekmet?”
“I’m here,” the old man said. He was standing at the back of the crowd, but Baru called him forth. He came, though somewhat reluctantly. It was plain what Baru intended.
“How long have you fished here?” Baru asked Kekmet.
“Most of my life,” Kekmet replied. “And before you ask, no I haven’t seen a fish that looks like this.” He glanced up at Zelim. “But that doesn’t mean it’s a demon-fish, Baru. It only