Dreams of a Catfish

The boy was born halfway up a hill in a small house, with a roof and a floor and beds for half the occupants. He was happy to flow across the earth like the river, to accept the boulders in his path and flow around them as best he could. The girl was born in the swamp. She laid eyes on the mountains with hunger, as if she wanted to tear great pieces off them. 

He spied her for the first time in the markets. The other vendors yelled and screamed, arms flapping like yellow-billed storks, as if their lives depended on selling the misshapen clay pots and knockoff Rolexes. Desperation poured from their skin, and the tourists jumped back to avoid the foul puddles at their feet. 

The girl perched on her mat, legs crossed and arms folded, her voice as quiet as her body. Only her eyes hinted at the intensity of her spirit within. The tourists flocked to her, a squall of seagulls forgoing soggy potato chips for a chance at silvery mackerel. The girl refused to sell to those she deemed undeserving, saying the piece didn’t suit them. The other seagulls waited their turn, eager to be thought worthy. 

The boy noticed the girl’s eyes as she pocketed the gold coins. They gleamed like those of the businessmen when they shook hands with the mayor in front of a development plan to bring great prosperity to the town. The businessmen terrified the boy, but not like the girl did. He spied her from a distance and averted his eyes when his mother dragged him past her stall. 

The boy’s schoolteacher had described him as an empty vessel. His parents had interpreted this to mean he had gained none of the knowledge the school meant to fill him with. They put him to work on the land, where an empty head would not be a problem. 

He overheard his father talking to his uncle one night, as he lay under the half moon outside the hut reserved for men and the bottles of clear spirits that put hair on their chests. The boy is a barnacle, his father said. Throw him on a wall and he will stick, but he has no legs or fins to propel himself. 

Perhaps you should throw him further, said his uncle. His father laughed and then became quiet for a long time. 

*          *          *

The girl never drifted far from the boy’s mind, but he had no time for visiting markets. The plants which strive for the sun have no days off, no opportunities for wasteful frivolity. Why should you? his father told him. 

His mother and father continued to create for him more brothers and sisters, more hungry mouths to feed. The gods took no notice of this, or perhaps no care, and failed to gift the land with the rains his parents dutifully prayed for each night. The boy sensed a tension between them. Angry whispers bounced off the mud walls and sliced into his dreams. 

One morning the boy woke to a curious sound and opened his eyes to find his father hunched over his feet. His chest heaved and hawed, like the donkey in their neighbour’s yard when it spied a hyena in the distance. Warm water fell onto the boy’s legs, and he wondered if the gods had answered their prayers. But the clouds were stuck inside his father’s head. 

His father placed a hand on his shoulder, the hand with the little stump where his ring finger should have been. Son, it is time for you to continue on your journey, he said. You must fill your head with new ideas and your body with opportunities. Come back when you have discovered what is it you need to discover. 

The boy was used to his father’s parables. They sat easier than the tears. His mother cast her eyes down on the empty bowls on the table, which could now be filled a little higher. 

*          *          *

The boy left the house on the hill, the place where he once believed he would die, with one handful of fish and two handfuls of rice and instructions to find his uncle in the next town to the south. 

Instead, he headed north, walking through the night to arrive at the markets before dawn. He spotted the girl setting up, no longer on a piece of filthy carpet, but now with her own wooden stand. She even had an umbrella to shield her from the heat of the morning sun, blue and red and yellow and other colours of which he did not know the names. 

He approached her with a tremble in his legs and a stickiness in his throat. 

I would like to be your apprentice, the boy said, as she laid out the beaded necklaces upon the wooden table. 

No, you wouldn’t, replied the girl, without looking up. 

Yes, I would, said the boy. 

Why? 

The boy could not answer. 

You want something else, the girl continued, which you cannot or will not tell me. 

The boy thought on this for a while. What he wanted most was to know what he most wanted. He remained silent. 

If you sell one item today, you can stay, the girl said. 

Stay for how long? 

Until you can answer the question. 

*          *          *

At first, the boy tried to imitate the girl. He leaned against the table, his elbows finding purchase in the coarse grain of the wood, and inspected the calluses on the palms of his hands. He ignored prospective buyers until they asked a question and then attempted to thrust the item into their hands, hoping to stun them into a purchase. When this failed, he tried to copy the other vendors, raising his voice to be heard above the din and waving his arms over the knickknacks like a magician. 

As the sun neared its apex and the other vendors began to pack away their wares, the boy bowed his body in defeat. He turned to study the girl: the deep charcoal of her skin, the nimbleness of her fingers as she counted change and dispersed it, the hum of energy radiating from her body. 

The girl caught him staring at her. 

I didn’t sell anything, the boy said. 

I know, the girl said. 

The boy sighed. 

Don’t worry, you can come back tomorrow, she said to him. 

Why? 

The girl smiled, and the boy’s legs teetered underneath him. 

Because you are closer to answering the question. 

*          *          *

The boy had been coming back for two weeks when the gunmen arrived. At first, he did not recognise them as gunmen—they carried briefcases like businessmen, and spoke in the polite manner of government officials. But their eyes bored without blinking, and their hands did not move when they talked. The boy saw the girl’s body stiffen, as if she had seen a ghost. 

We have heard about you, one of the men said to the girl. You are the best seller in all of Pwani. 

The girl said nothing, but dipped her head. 

One of the other men picked up a wooden bracelet and gripped it with his long fingers. He squeezed, and the bracelet snapped; the two halves dropped onto the dirt like discarded orange peels. 

If she can sell junk like this, the man said, imagine what she can fetch for our AKs. 

The boy’s legs began to shake. He opened his mouth to speak. The girl silenced him with a hand on his arm. 

The man who had snapped the bracelet wrote an address on a piece of paper and slid it into a roll of 10,000-shilling notes. 

Be here before the sun breaks tomorrow, the man said, placing the money next to a rice bowl carved in the shape of an elephant’s foot. We leave for Dar es Salaam with or without you. Your boyfriend is welcome, too; I’m sure we can find a use for him. 

The man’s smile froze the boy in place. He fought an urge to open his bowels and focused on the cool touch of the girl’s palm on his skin. 

Not until the men had slipped over the horizon did the boy regain his voice. You must not go with them, he said. 

She shook her head as her fingers flicked through the notes. They clicked like a freshly sprung cicada from the earth, calling for a companion. The boy had never seen such money before. 

You do not understand, she said. It is not a choice. 

Of course you have a choice. You could go with the men or not go with the men. 

If I do not go with the men, they will come back and destroy this stall. If I am here at the time, they may take me anyway, or worse. 

But we could run away, the boy said, to a place they could never find us. 

And what would become of my mama and baba and kakas and dadas? the girl asked. They would starve, or worse, cast each other out. The girl looked down as she said this, and the boy felt a pang of shame slice through his stomach. 

Do you suppose the world is filled with good people doing good deeds and everybody smiles at the fullness of their bellies? the girl asked him. 

The boy closed his eyes, hit with flashes of the night the men came to his home and dragged his father out of bed, out next to the goat tied up to a post on the patch of earth where no crops would grow. The boy had been ordered to stay inside, but he had heard the goat cry and the men laugh, and he saw his father stumble back inside with his left hand cradled under his armpit, drops of blood pattering the dirt floor like rainfall. Taxes, his father had said by way of explanation, and never spoke of it again. 

No, the boy said in response. But I would rather have an empty belly than one filled with the blood of other men. 

The girl’s mouth tightened, as if to spit. Then you have never had a stomach so empty it eats the flesh from inside you, so empty you would lick the soil from under the baker’s stand for a few crumbs of bread. You have never had a sister so thin you could circle your finger and thumb around her neck and wonder if it might be better to squeeze her throat shut until her feeble cries disappear. 

The stall is yours, she said, sweeping an arm across the table. I hope it can keep you full when your morals aren’t enough. 

*          *          *

In the weeks following the girl’s departure, the boy attempted to keep the stall running as best he could. He had none of her confidence, and none of her charm with the customers. He gazed over their heads to the horizon, waiting for the silhouette of the girl to reappear. 

One morning, his father came to the market and strode up to the boy’s stall, grinning wide enough to cut his face in two. 

My son the businessman, he said, words spilling out of the gaping mouth. 

The boy nodded, his hands rearranging the pieces in front of him, wishing he had notes to count instead. 

We are most proud of you, son. 

The boy smiled back, the muscles in his cheeks straining, weak from disuse. 

Tell me, his father continued, do you have enough to eat? 

Oh, plenty, the boy said, willing his shriveled stomach to keep quiet its complaints. 

His father’s smile waned, and his eyes followed it down. Well, he said, the summer harvest has not been as bountiful as we expected, and it may be a few months before— 

The boy dropped his last sack of rice on the table and placed the loaf of bread he had bought on impulse from the baker on top. 

His father’s grin returned with a vengeance. 

My son, he said, and patted the boy on the shoulder. 

His father’s hand felt strange, and as the boy looked down, he saw just two fingers remaining, poking out like goalposts from the barren earth. 

*          *          *

The boy continued to scan the horizon, but no longer looked for the girl. He waited for the men with the briefcases. 

*          *          * 

The café sat in the shadow of Dar es Salaam’s twin towers, giant phallic symbols of progress and corruption and a source of pride for many of the city’s residents. The boy—now almost a man—paid them no mind. His thoughts no longer drifted like flotsam across the ocean: they had sharpened and focused—his survival dictated so. He spied the girl—most definitely now a woman—sitting at an outside table and sipping a miniature coffee. 

Would you like a drink? the woman asked him as he sat, placing his briefcase on the ground. 

I would like to know your prices, the boy said. 

Straight to business, eh? No time for a catch-up with your old friend? 

The boy laughed, but did not smile. Friends? What are they? 

The men he spent his time with were not friends. In some ways, they might be considered family, but the few he had grown close to had died before he could call them brothers. 

Why are you still doing this? he asked the woman. 

Why are you? 

The boy thought of his fingerless father and said nothing. 

Come, let us go for a walk, said the woman. 

She took the boy’s hand and they strolled through the city like young lovers, in no great rush, comfortable with their silence. 

They stopped beside the bank of the Msimbazi River. A slow-moving brown eddy carried rubbish and fertilisers, sewage and the blood of a million slaughtered beasts from the abattoir west of town. 

Do you recognise us? the woman asked. 

The boy watched a plastic bag in the water, ripped and torn as it drifted towards the bank. Before it could reach the safety of the shore, a bubbling backflow sucked it under the surface. It did not re-emerge. 

Yes, we are the trash. 

No, the woman replied, tugging at his arm. Look. 

She pointed to a splash further out in the river, a small disturbance he might have missed had not the woman spotted it. 

A catfish, the woman said excitedly. 

Trash-fish, you mean, said the boy. 

Don’t listen to the others, she replied. Do you know why most catfish are bottom feeders? They have smaller swim bladders than other fish, and their heavy skulls drag them down. 

And they are ugly as sin, the boy piped up, so they live where they can’t be seen. 

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, she countered. These fish are the survivors. They can exist in places where most others perish. Poison and pollution, drought, overfishing—nothing wipes them out. 

The words danced out of the woman’s mouth. The boy thought she would have changed—grown harder, more cynical, more machine-like. Like the guns that carried their fate. Like him. 

We are the catfish, she continued. We live on the bottom of a river not fit to drink from. A river toxic with corruption, darkened by man’s evil, and swarming with predators. But we survive. And every now and then, we pop our heads up for a breath of fresh air. 

She took an exaggerated breath in and closed her eyes. Once again, she took the boy by the hand. 

And Ibada, she said, addressing the boy by name, you are not alone. 

Ibada closed his eyes, too, let the warmth of the morning sun caress his face, the salty breath of the Indian Ocean tickle the hairs on his neck, and opened his ears to the gentle bubble of the tidal eddy at his feet. He heard a splash, and knew without looking that another catfish had made its way to the surface. 

PATRICK EADES

Patrick Eades works in hospitals by day and writes by night. His work has appeared in StylusLit, Allegory, and City.River.Tree. Patrick was short-listed for the Fish Short Story Prize and long-listed for the Bath Flash Fiction Award. He lives sandwiched between the National Parks of southern Sydney and can be found at https://patrickeades.net/.