Fishing for Felix

“What shall we dine on tonight?” Felix said to himself.
“As long as it’s not squirrel,” Felix replied.
“I thought a little écureuil grillé. Nothing too fancy.”
“What’s that in English?” asked Felix.
“Grilled squirrel.”
He cut and whittled a skewer of hazel then passed it through the skinny body of the beast. He fetched a tobacco tin from a hollow in an oak and took out his matches. He shook the box, producing a weak rattle. He knelt, struck a match, cradled the flame and set it to the dry grass at the bottom of a pyre. Above a spit was a structure of branches and leaves tiled with sods of turf. Very little smoke escaped. Presently, he quartered the roasted meat and sat the pieces on a tin plate atop a bed of mixed leaves: hawthorn and dandelion. He tried to cut the meat with his knife and fork but, as usual, the knife made little headway and the prongs started to bend, so he sighed and ate the meat and leaves with his fingers.
“You promised us fish,” he said to himself.
“I’ve told you a million times,” he sighed.
“Can’t you make a line from vines or bark or something?”
“Can you?”
“What about fashioning some kind of net?”
“We tried that. We nearly got caught – remember?”
“The spear nearly worked.”
“But it didn’t.”
“We gave up too easily.”
“We can’t hang around all day by the river.”
“What about at night?”
“How are we going to spear fish in a dark river at night?”
“I think you like squirrel.”
“Keep your voice down!” Felix said in a loud whisper.
“Touch a nerve?” he whispered back at himself.
Felix sat in silence listening to the sounds of the forest. The last rays of the sun fanned higher and higher through the trees until the patches of gold they cast dissolved. He walked to the little clearing and looked through the gap in the canopy to the village across the valley. Lights were coming on in the streets and windows. It was already night in the forest. He wondered if the old man was watching.

George sat at the table, fat in his vest, and watched her. Elsa opened the door of the oven and stood back to let the steam rise, ducking her head away – so her glasses didn’t mist over. Flavours rushed into the air: butter, almonds and the gentlest burn of the fish’s skin. She rolled up her sleeves, put on oven gloves, leaned down and picked out the dish, which she placed in the middle of the round table on a raffia matt. She took off the gloves and spooned brown juices over the wrinkling silver skin of the trout as he filled her glass with white wine. She wiped her hands on her apron, rolled down her sleeves and sat down close to him. Their eyes met and they smiled.
“Looks a beauty,” she said
He leant over and turned off the bare bulb above them so that the room was only lit by a slim candle in the middle of the table.
“To bigger fish,” she said and raised her glass.
“To bigger fish,” he said.

Felix couldn’t sleep, so he sauntered over to the clearing and lay on his back on the mossy ground looking up through a gap in the leaves at the starry sky. After a while he wasn’t sure if his eyes were open or closed, but he saw insects with fluorescent eyes swimming in the pixelated light gobbling woodland particles as they floated to the earth. A breeze moved the trees and flowed across the sky and he wondered if old George would ever venture into the forest to find him again, as he had on the first few nights, before he fell over one of Felix’s traps and nearly broke his leg. And Felix thought about the big brown shadow he’d seen sliding across the bottom of the river down at the foot of the woods, slipping into the deep pool by the big rock which nestled in the crook of the bend. Was there really a fish in there that big? He closed his eyes and wondered if the fish was awake and gradually he drifted off. Leaves fell all night in the woods and floated down to where he lay.

In the morning George got up, made Elsa a mug of tea and placed it on the bedside table. She whimpered and smiled but didn’t open her eyes. He ate porridge, listened to the weather on the radio, polished his old black boots on the doorstep as the sun came up. Then he wheeled his bicycle into the street. He smoothed his uniform, put on his cycle clips and hauled himself into the saddle. Through the streets he bobbled, past the church, ignoring a couple of kids who jeered as he past, “you couldn’t catch a cold!”
George cycled round the bend which turned the road back under the village and lead into the valley beneath the woods. He coasted to a halt, chained his bike to a ring he’d fixed into fallen tree, and stood by the roadside for a few minutes looking across the field at the spread of the woods on the steep side of the valley beyond the river. Felix was up there somewhere, he knew it, whatever the others might say. He stared at the bank of trees which spread along the long valley as if a ripple in its surface might be betray the whereabouts of his quarry. He took an overgrown path to the edge of a meadow from which the forest looked darker and steeper. He ambled through the long grass, careful not to trip, until he reached the bushes which lined the edge of the chalk stream. He ducked through branches until he could see the water running clear and fast over stones. He sat and watched the water, his eyes instinctively locking onto pools where fish might lie. He wondered how many fish he’d had from this river in his life. Three thousand? There would be one or two in the pool over there beneath that log; another to the right tight under the bank where you wouldn’t think there was room. After a few years you developed second sight. George wandered along the path, his eyes on alternating between the river and the bottom of the wooded slope beyond. He thought about finding a place to cross – it was easy in places, the river was only 10 yards wide. Presently he came to where a giant boulder sat in the corner of a bend and the trees grew thicker overhead so that there was little light even at this bright hour of the morning, He sat on a tree stump, as he had a thousand times and looked for the giant fish. Twice hooked, never landed. One day you’ll be mine, he thought.

Felix sat high up the slope, his heart beating a little fast, and watched fat George stare into the pool.
"What's it to be, copper, me or the big fish?"
"There is no big fish, eejit."
"So what's he looking for?"
"Just fish. Any fish."
"That wasn't just any fish."
"We didn't see anything."
"We've got to catch it."
"We'll get caught."
"Imagine the feast we'll have. Imagine his face when he sees the skeleton."

In the afternoon George returned with his rod and sat on a rock beside the pool. He watched damson flies bob like puppets in the edges of the stream as he threaded a nymph onto his line, his fingers working without eyes. The beast would be on the bottom of the pool and maybe a glittering nymph would lure him up to wrap his lips around the invisible line Ponder, ponder, mighty fish – thought George – your time must come one day, no beast on earth can live forever. As George flicked his line across the pool and watched the nymph sink and beckon to the silvery beast, Felix watched him from between the leaves of a silent bush barely twenty feet away.
“It’s cheating to use a nymph,” he said to himself, beneath his breath.
“We’ll show him how it’s done,” he nodded in reply.
George’s line floated and rested, floated and rested for all the afternoon, as Feilx watched with barely a wink and the lines on the old man’s brow sank deeper as the shadows grew. Midges and gnats and dragonflies whirled in the soft warm air of dusk, and Felix smiled and rubbed his hands and risked a little jig behind his bush, as fish rose and once or twice were hooked – but not the one George craved. Finally, when light had nearly gone and all you could see of the fishing George was the rise and fall of his casting arm against the last of the silhouetted light, Felix decided that night would be the night.
"We'll bring it all to a head," he said.
"We'll be undone!"
"We can run again..."
"Why did we have to run, again?"
"It was the maths, my friend, the fucking numbers..."
"...always running through our fingers..."
"...out of our heads..."
"... and into other people's pockets."
"They always wanted to keep score..."
"...how many we had, how many we owed..."
"...too many things were always gone..."
"...so we borrowed a few and swallowed a few and we never gave them back."
"There aren't any numbers in the forest."

Long after dark, Felix daubed himself in mud, grey from the river bank, taken a little way along from the pool, lest he disturb his darling fish. He walked naked through the field, moonlight flowing on his skin. As the mud dried, here and there, the patches seemed like camouflage on his flesh, though soon he was smoothed pure grey by the night. He reached the road and felt each crack and stone on the soles of his feet, so different from the florestal carpet which nowadays kissed his toes. He walked into the village, feeling the stone of walls against his skin as he swam through the darkest parts, avoiding the patches of light dried out by streetlights and open shutters. As a man passed whistling his way home, Felix paused against the wall of George's house, his skin hidden against the stone, eyes closed to hide the whites.

George lay on his back, a white sheet drawn across the hillock of his tum, and tried to make animals out of the patterns of light on the wall, trying not to think of the fish or Felix, but all he could think of as his eyes closed and he slipped under the skin of the night was Felix lying at the bottom of a pool, blowing bubbles from the smiling corners of his mouth as he flicked his silver tail and slid away. On the edge of a dream George heard a man whistling in the street and he felt as if Felix was sitting on the end of the bed, but he couldn't open his eyes.

Felix found a piece of wire in a dustbin behind the general store, and half a sandwich, which he ate, then used the wire to pick the lock of the shop, and it felt like the good old days of breaking in and breaking out and roaming the village by night with a beating heart. That thrill of being in the homes of others without consent, of looking out of their windows unbeknownst, of running your fingers over their things, wearing their clothes, imagining conversations in a stolen world in things which just for an hour or two belonged to you, instead of them. At first he hadn't taken anything, but it seemed a shame to leave them all behind, when seemed much happier in his world, so he borrowed an item or two he thought they wouldn't miss, and put them back the next time he broke in. But sometimes he couldn't remember them back in their former lives, and when he came to take them home he could see they didn't want to go, so he let them stay for another night or two, just this once. Once became twice, as once will do, and twice became thrice, as it will as well. And soon the people missed their clothes and clocks, and money and books, and jewels and hats, and dogs and cats and they wanted to know why they had eloped to live in Felix's house. That was when he ran.

The fish moved through the dark water of the pool and looked up at the stars which shimmed through the water's skins and he wondered what it would be like to live on the other side of the divide, with the fat man and the mad man and the kids that threw pebbles into his smashing the light into fluid splinters. It did not seem fair that he could not roam like them in the other world. All he could do was swim and eat and hide and hope he was never lifted into their world the only way a fish could go.

Felix sat in the corner of the shop, with a chocolate bar in his left hand and a chicken leg in his right, turning from one to the other, taking bites.
"We mustn’t eat too much."
"Must save some room for the fish."
When he'd had enough of a nibble, he found the fishing section of the shop and chose some line and box of assorted flies. From a shelf he plucked a couple of rods, took them from their cases and flexed them a little to see which felt best. Then he ran through town, enjoying the feel of the air on his skin and in his matted hair, raising a howl from his lungs as he passed the church and the central square and down the little street where George snored in his bed and dreamed of swimming like a slender fish.

In the morning, Elsa woke first.
"I'm coming, I'm coming," she said, as she scuttled to the door.
Presently, George sat up to hear her say, "It's Jerome. There's been a break-in at the store." Old Jerome waited in the kitchen as George put on his uniform. Elsa would normally have offered him a coffee, but his leg was already shaking and she could tell he was on the point of breaking into a stream of mutters.
George followed him to the store.
"Chicken bones!" said Jerome, "chocolate wrappers and chicken bones and muddy footprints... and pictures of fish on the walls in lipstick, and a cartoon of a fat man with clown's grimace blowing numbers like bubbles from his mouth... you've got to get him this time, George, it's past a joke! My wife is frightened to the end of her wits, and you know far away her wits are... Shoot him, snare him, snag him in a man-trap, burn the forest to its roots - he must be stopped!" When they reached the store, George saw that it was exactly the way Jerome had described it: chocolate wrappers and bones and laughing cartoons of himself. But there was another drawing on the wall which Jerome had not described: a picture, like a cave-painting, of a wild man sitting on a rock by the ribbon of a stream, with a big smile and a knife and fork... and next to him on a rock the skeleton of a mighty fish.
"Did he take anything?" Asked George.
"Just some fishing stuff," said Jerome.

Felix stood in the shallows of the mighty pool and flexed his arm from the joint so that a whip of line flew out and settled the damson fly on the end of his line at the far edge of the pool, not far from where he swore he'd seen a bubble rise, right above the place he'd once seen the mighty shadow lurk, in the very place he'd hide were he the monster fish, just as he knew the monster fish would hide in the forest where Felix hid - were the fish a wild man fugitive.
"You're like me, and I'm like you," he said to the fish, "if anyone should catch you up it should be me."
He cast again, in the same spot, then a little to the left... then a little to the right. Then as he cast a final time and thought he saw a shadow move, he heard a voice.
"Don't move," said the voice of George from a few feet behind, and Felix could hear George wheezing from the run across the field, and wondered if George was pointing a gun at him - or maybe he held a mighty net, or a harpoon for a whale, or was there a noose on the end of a pole being dangled over a bough?

The fish looked up from the bottom of the pool, through the angled light saw the mad man standing rooted, as his scrawny little fly wobbled on the surface fooling no fish. If I ate flies like that I'd have been dead a decade, thought the fish. The fish rose a little, maybe enough to give the mad man a sense of his shadow, and as he did he caught site of the fat man standing on the edge of the bank, and through the rippling light he could see the silhouette of an outstretched hand, in which he held something which at first he thought was a gun, but he couldn't be sure. The fish knew a gun when he saw one, because down the years the old person had tried to shoot him out of his pool, and one of his friends had been winged once, ever since which he swam alone. But it was the wrong shape for a gun, or at least he held it differently, and so he rose a little to see if he could work out what it was.

"I'll make a bet with you, Felix," said George.
"He wants to make a bet with us," said Felix to himself, his back still to George.
"Don't listen to him," said Felix, his eyes still on the river, in which he thought for a moment he could see the outline of the biggest fish a river had ever seen.
George was closer now, near to the bank to, almost at the shoulder of Felix. He looked at the water.
"If I catch the fish - right here, right now," said George, "you come with me."
"You'll never catch it in a million years," said Felix.
"A trillion," he said again.
"Do we have a deal?" asked George.
"And if you don't?" said Felix.
"Name it."
Felix thought for a while, then said: "I'll get your bicycle and I'll ride to your house each night where Elsa will cook me fish - every day - just like she used to before the numbers started ganging up on me, and Jerome will give me free chicken and chocolate and I will paint a mighty mural of fishing scenes across the walls of town."
"Ok," said George.

The fish looked up at the two men, who were standing side by side, and he didn't like the look of this, they'd never stood together before, and he knew he ought to swim away, but he couldn't help but wonder what they thought that they might do - he wasn't going to swallow anything they cast at him and he'd flash his tail and flick away if the fat man raised a gun. The fat man did raise his arm, and held a thing in front of him, and took another thing from his pocket which released a little flame. Fire couldn't hurt him - that he knew - because the children had floated candles down the river one May, many years before, and he'd seen the fire of the candles snuffed out by his river world. The fat man touched the flame to the end of the stick he held, and the fish saw it flare with light, and watched as the fat man threw the sparkling object in the air, where it spun for a while beneath the canopy of boughs, before it sank spinning towards the membrane of his world where it alighted with a mighty splash leaving all quiet for a second or two before the fish's world ended with a monstrous BOOM!