I’ve really got to go now, I said. I’m sorry for the trouble.

So go, Henry. I’m going to watch a movie. I’m going to watch Steve rock it on his bike. You should see the look on your face. You should go show it to your “friend.” Go show it to Mr. Aris Kindt and see what he says. See what he says and leave this old clown with his hat and his sister in fucking peace.

TWENTY-SIX

A herring swims. A herring swims in a bucket. A herring swims in a blue bucket. A bright herring swims in a huge blue bucket. A herring moves forward. Why a herring and not some other fish? Because it’s exquisite. Because the adult common herring, more properly known as Clupea harengus, is found in temperate cold waters of the North Atlantic and is about one foot or thirty centimeters long with silvery sides and a blue back.

Blue.

Yes, can you picture it? The female of the species lays up to fifty thousand tiny eggs, which sink to the sea bottom and develop there, the young maturing in about three years.

And then?

And then they rise.

Elevate.

Propagate forward and vertically through the deep and the dark by the millions.

So many.

Yes. And other fish come to feed upon them.

Eat them all?

Not all.

Most?

Yes, most, and in dying, it’s quite lovely, they luminesce.

I’m not sure what you mean.

I mean they give off light as they die. As they drift off through the dark waters.

Do the immature fish luminesce?

I’m not sure. Probably.

And they’re blue?

With silvery sides.

Most of them, as you say, are killed by other fish.

By other fish, yes, Henry, which is an utterly acceptable form …

Form of what?

Of undoing. Of annihilation.

Having said this, Mr. Kindt leaned far back into his chair, lifted his cigar, and took a long, ruminative puff.

Think of the beauty of it, Henry, he said. It happens over and over, and will continue to happen long after we are gone, long after we have laid aside our skin and bones or whatever it is we have here and have shued off.

Or stepped forward.

Out of our skin and into our shadow.

What about the fishing industry?

Of course, the fishing industry. Yes, that’s true, the fishing industry complicates things, and has most certainly taken a hideous toll.

A hideous toll that puts that pickled herring into your mouth every day.

Mr. Kindt smiled. Oh, I’m simply full of contradictions, Henry, he said. Aren’t you?

I shrugged. I wasn’t sure what I was full of. A neat scalpel trench, some metal sutures, and a lot less morphine than usual, for starters. Besides Mr. Kindt, who had given me a little hit of Dilaudid so that I wouldn’t, he said, go completely to pieces, I had seen no one apart from Aunt Lulu since my assignation with Dr. Tulp. Since the surgery, the slight correction, the scraping-out of some renegade flecks of lead, the “lightly invasive procedure, Henry” she had performed. After they had held me down and ripped my suit off me. After they strapped me to a gurney and rolled me down the hall.

Thanks for asking, I feel wonderful, I said.

I’m so very glad to hear it, Henry, Mr. Kindt said.

How was your tour of the ward with my aunt?

I’m sure she’ll tell you all about it when she comes to see you, Henry.

I can’t wait.

Oh, I suspect you can.

Mr. Kindt smiled.

I shuddered.

Cold? Mr. Kindt said. Funny, I am too. Or not funny. No, I don’t think so. You see, not long after Lulu left, I had a visitor of my own. Someone I hadn’t seen in many years. Most curious. He came and sat at the foot of my bed, much the way I often sit at the foot of yours. He was dressed in a pair of bathing trunks and dripped much more than seemed reasonable onto my sheets.

Who was it?

A young man. He reminded me much of myself in my own distant youth, except of course for the bathing trunks. And in fact he told me we shared a name.

So there is more than one of you here now.

Yes, but I don’t get the feeling he will be visiting you.

Well that’s a relief.

Yes, I suppose it must be. I wonder if he will drop in again? I suspect I should set out a towel.

Did you unload the merchandise?

I wouldn’t be sitting here smiling so much and discussing the beauty and sadness of aquatic wonders if I hadn’t. Or perhaps I should say I probably wouldn’t. After all, it is my favorite subject.

Along with history.

Yes, along with history. The accumulation of remembered circumstance.

You mean the pile.

Do I?

Yes, the pile of dead fish. I don’t feel very well, Mr. Kindt.

I know you don’t, Henry.

Very early that morning, I had put on the robe with the fake card, limped through the halls of the ward, which, incidentally, had gone dim, not to say dark, again, and picked up the speed.

Mr. Kindt had come into my room four times before I had relented. Each time he had gotten angrier, less eloquent, more insistent. Each time he had brought up Aunt Lulu.

She’s not at all like you described her to me, he said.

No comment, I said.

You need a little less juice in your system, Henry, it’s clouding your judgment, he said.

So no one came around with my meds. Not even after I had pressed the button that was supposed to bring them, not after I had called out, not after I had walked down the hallways of the ward and out into the little garden and yelled. Deserted. All the terminal, critical, serious, and mild cases were gone, the machines in their rooms strangely mute, no longer pumping and blinking. Even Mr. Kindt’s room was empty. I found a couple of loose cigars and a box of crackers. I lit one of the cigars and pressed the glowing end against the cracker box and burned a hole. Then I took a few crackers out and ate them. Or tried to eat them. It didn’t work — I couldn’t swallow, not even close. I spit what I had chewed into Mr. Kindt’s toilet, flushed, and, still holding the cigar, walked out.

I went to Dr. Tulp’s office and banged on the door for a while. Then sat on the floor, slumping considerably, my wound hurting hideously, expecting Aunt Lulu or who knows what to show up at any minute, and smoked.

Then I put on the robe and went to get the speed.

So maybe now …I said.

Oh, not quite yet, Henry, Mr. Kindt said. You made things quite difficult for me, you see. You made my position less certain, and even if it was only briefly, dear Henry, you will have to continue to pay for a time.

For how long?

Mr. Kindt shrugged. For a time. But you must think of it as an exchange — a simple transaction. Difficulty for difficulty. I would call it quite fair.

Like wampum and some hatchet heads for an island.

It’s much less problematic a transaction than that one was, Mr. Kindt said.

I’ll leave, I said. I’ll get the fuck out of here.

Leave? Mr. Kindt said. Leave here? None of us get to leave. Don’t be outrageous. That’s just silly, Henry.

It was. I didn’t completely know that yet, but that is certainly how it has turned out.

O.K., fine, I’ll talk to Dr. Tulp.

Do so. Yes, please do.

Dr. Tulp, who was back in her office, barely looked up at me over her papers.

I’m very busy, Henry, she said.

Like last night.

Yes, she said, like last night, like today, like tomorrow. This is a hospital in a city where hospitals are much needed, perhaps now more than ever. A hospital is a center of learning and healing. Here we are in the business of casting light into the shadows, of banishing trauma, of soothing hurts. How is the incision?

It’s great. I’m just fantastic. I really appreciate your concern.

It was necessary, Henry. It will help. You were drifting. I suspect it will lead you back on track.

Dr. Tulp’s eyes, which had flipped up for a moment, went back to her papers. I stood up. Dr. Tulp’s hand moved toward the buzzer that would bring the attendants. I sat back down.