Read Online A Cure for Suicide by Jesse Ball - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jesse Ball
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brought with them for cutting fish. It was very thin and the claimant found it a bit terrifying.
—This is a filet knife. I have used it to cut many fish. If you were to pile all the fish that I have used this knife on, they would fill this room and more. You literally could not fit them in this room, not even considering their slipperiness. Even imagining that they could be easily stacked, they still would not fit. If I were to begin cutting them into tidy portions for meals today, I would almost never be done. A week from now—after a week of cutting, I would have cut just the smallest portion.
—You see, he continued, I used to work in a fish market. My father was a fisherman, and all my uncles. But, they wanted something else for me.
The claimant went back into the dining room.
—I can’t bear to eat fish, Hilda was saying. I just, I think of them swimming around and looking forward to seeing the sunlight on the surface of the water, and then my heart goes out to them.
—Oh, that’s rubbish, said Martin, coming up behind the claimant.
The two men sat down.
—For one, said Martin, the fish don’t really care very much about the sunlight. I mean, you would, if we stuck you in the water, but they don’t. And the other thing is—you love fish! You eat it all the time—and you even ask for us to have it when we haven’t had it for a week or so.
—He’s completely right, said Hilda. I was just talking about not liking fish. A person can do that, right? Talk about something, about not liking something. That’s okay, isn’t it?
—A person can talk about anything, as far as I’m concerned, said the examiner. That’s the world we live in.
—Did you like the fish, Martin Rueger? Hilda asked the claimant.
—I liked it very much. This liquid that you poured…
—The lemon-butter sauce, yes, yes, it is my father’s recipe, said Hilda. Of course, he didn’t have to be a genius to think of it. It is just butter with lemon.
And in this way the conversation continued, both trivially and gravely, on into the night. When they retired, the claimant had so much to say about it all to the examiner that he couldn’t decide what to say, and they walked all the way home in silence and in silence went to bed.
THE NEXT DAY they were occupied in collecting, pressing, and drawing specimens of plants, and there was no opportunity to talk more. Soon, it was the nighttime. Soon, the bell had struck midnight, and soon the bell had struck one.
The claimant got quietly out of bed. He had not taken off his trousers or shirt, and so it was but a simple matter for him to slip out of the room and down the stairs. Through the half-open door, he could see the examiner in her study. She sat at a desk with her back to him, writing long into the night as she always did. The light from the fixture in that room was shabby. It fell very bitterly over the room, and some of the light from a lamp in the street contested with it. The effect was: as she sat at her desk she looked like a figure in a woodcut. And she was as still. If she noticed his going, she made no motion to mark it.
Down the stairs and out the door he went, and then he was standing in the street.
—MARTIN !
Hilda was there. She was standing at the gate of a house, three doors down. He almost wouldn’t have recognized her.
—I look very different, don’t I? she asked. I can see it in your eyes. You thought that the person you were going to meet was just like Hilda, the Hilda you knew. And then here there is this other person standing on the street looking at you. She snuck out of her house at night to come and see you and you don’t know why. Now you don’t even know who this person is, but you can’t stop looking at her.
She stepped closer, right up to him.
—Come along, there is a good spot for us this way.
As they made their way down the street, the claimant had a terrible feeling—that at every window there was a face, and that every face was
—This is a filet knife. I have used it to cut many fish. If you were to pile all the fish that I have used this knife on, they would fill this room and more. You literally could not fit them in this room, not even considering their slipperiness. Even imagining that they could be easily stacked, they still would not fit. If I were to begin cutting them into tidy portions for meals today, I would almost never be done. A week from now—after a week of cutting, I would have cut just the smallest portion.
—You see, he continued, I used to work in a fish market. My father was a fisherman, and all my uncles. But, they wanted something else for me.
The claimant went back into the dining room.
—I can’t bear to eat fish, Hilda was saying. I just, I think of them swimming around and looking forward to seeing the sunlight on the surface of the water, and then my heart goes out to them.
—Oh, that’s rubbish, said Martin, coming up behind the claimant.
The two men sat down.
—For one, said Martin, the fish don’t really care very much about the sunlight. I mean, you would, if we stuck you in the water, but they don’t. And the other thing is—you love fish! You eat it all the time—and you even ask for us to have it when we haven’t had it for a week or so.
—He’s completely right, said Hilda. I was just talking about not liking fish. A person can do that, right? Talk about something, about not liking something. That’s okay, isn’t it?
—A person can talk about anything, as far as I’m concerned, said the examiner. That’s the world we live in.
—Did you like the fish, Martin Rueger? Hilda asked the claimant.
—I liked it very much. This liquid that you poured…
—The lemon-butter sauce, yes, yes, it is my father’s recipe, said Hilda. Of course, he didn’t have to be a genius to think of it. It is just butter with lemon.
And in this way the conversation continued, both trivially and gravely, on into the night. When they retired, the claimant had so much to say about it all to the examiner that he couldn’t decide what to say, and they walked all the way home in silence and in silence went to bed.
THE NEXT DAY they were occupied in collecting, pressing, and drawing specimens of plants, and there was no opportunity to talk more. Soon, it was the nighttime. Soon, the bell had struck midnight, and soon the bell had struck one.
The claimant got quietly out of bed. He had not taken off his trousers or shirt, and so it was but a simple matter for him to slip out of the room and down the stairs. Through the half-open door, he could see the examiner in her study. She sat at a desk with her back to him, writing long into the night as she always did. The light from the fixture in that room was shabby. It fell very bitterly over the room, and some of the light from a lamp in the street contested with it. The effect was: as she sat at her desk she looked like a figure in a woodcut. And she was as still. If she noticed his going, she made no motion to mark it.
Down the stairs and out the door he went, and then he was standing in the street.
—MARTIN !
Hilda was there. She was standing at the gate of a house, three doors down. He almost wouldn’t have recognized her.
—I look very different, don’t I? she asked. I can see it in your eyes. You thought that the person you were going to meet was just like Hilda, the Hilda you knew. And then here there is this other person standing on the street looking at you. She snuck out of her house at night to come and see you and you don’t know why. Now you don’t even know who this person is, but you can’t stop looking at her.
She stepped closer, right up to him.
—Come along, there is a good spot for us this way.
As they made their way down the street, the claimant had a terrible feeling—that at every window there was a face, and that every face was
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