EPTSee the man. He is hunched at the upper back and gray, he wears a thick and used camouflage apparel and fishermen's trousers. His glasses reflect the light of the moon and stars and here this light disturbs, making night visible, setting twisted shadows upon the bushes and the river and the wood that harbors no dangers anymore. He holds the fishing rod while staying in the cold water. His folk are dead and only the mother cared for him as best as she was able but in truth his father was a drunkard and they said his mother was a whore. He crouches now, resting his legs and nobody watches him.
He is born on the run. Although the war had six years stopped already his mother never unlearned its times of running and hiding, staying in house forever. He is an easy birth and easy to give away for in him broods not only the illness that will bind him for years to the bed but a taste for not loving. At nine he returns from the hospital. He sees its long dark halls again to revoke the restrained past, short visits with wife or one of the boys and tales of mischief. The windows, the rice pudding pots.
In its sixteenth year his deft hands and quick mind lead him to time. He becomes a master of broken watches and hopes, sitting and holding the devices, looking into them, the cone of the lamp on the crane banishes the dark and the outside and even time itself as he becomes one with the delicate machines, his figure a half moon, a tipped letter C, the outer points of it bending, scrying and reaching into one point but only sometimes closing.
His eyes fix the other side of the river, the undergrowth and the trees that hang their branches. At night they all seem to be sound knots. Sometimes they reach the water and then all becomes a weaving, a tapestry of images, there a rock, there the entrance of a cave, its inside always darker than its outside and therefore luring. On the day this cave would not exist and with it the temptation lost. But he stands still and the cold already past the feet he knows that on this night he will not get one catch. He circles the handle of the spinning reel, slow, steady and fetching and giving. From time to time the bail unlocks, the spring making a clicking noise that halls in the dark and it is an unwelcome sound here but small and short and forgotten in this damped vastness. The wind catches his lapel and he does not think of himself as an intruder here, in fact he never thought that he ever was an intruder, belonging necessarily to this world not only as every being is, but, having fought the nine years fight of its prolonged birth and for its life and won, he is not only sure of his being here, he never even is able to question it. He is moving now, the river and the boots and the pebbles and the muddy ground all mixed and low noise.
They are on their way back. The son and the wife sitting on the opposite side of him, looking out of the window into the dark. The light inside the train is making outside near invisible, so the boy leans against the window, holding his hands against it and his face, shielding away the inner light to make room for the outer sources of light, little dots of yellow and blue and white, giving away the presence of men, the city. The train skirts along the outer limits of the city, on the left fields, houses, bushes and trees, a canal, the river and all the lights of the city, on the right the darkness, nothing and nature. The boy likes to sit on the side to civilization, not only by night. His wife is not looking out of the window, she is staring at the window, not noticing the reflections on it, just gazing in the direction. This time it is late. It is summer after all. Every weekend that same trip and now he is to sleepy for a game of chess and that was what had kept him going the whole day and now he hopes that the boy is not too tired to walk. Someone is moving three seats away, his head moving to center its eyes on the motion. A hat and then a voice. Rumbling and throaty. Drunk. Suddenly he is alerted. No one else is, though. The three Russian soldiers on the next row half asleep, their odor a mix of garlic, alcohol and diesel. What is wrong? His hair is moving, straitening against his shirt.
Papi? the boy says. His breath clouding the window and as the cloud vanishes, so does the question.
Papi?
He hears it but his mind and his eyes are too focused on that hat and on that voice.
Papi!
Yes? he answers.
Why don't we have a King Kong?
What?
Why don't we have a King Kong?
What? Oh, not that again? Can you.
Than the hat moves and he finds himself moving and that he is standing.
His wife looks up. What are you doing? she says.
Oh Papi, but I have told you about the fight with Marco and the others and, the boy says.
I think that's him, he says.
Who? she says.
There, with the hat.
What? Who? What do you mean? she turns her head.
There, he says and he looks to her, waiting for her to turn back.
Him?
And that the small huts are not belonging to BUNA, the voice of his son comes through.
Yeah, thats him, he says, now her eyes meet his. I am going to him.
Are you sure? I mean you have to, I mean.
Yes, he says and then he is past the Russians and past other passengers and he hears his wife saying something to the boy and on the left side there he sits, talking to himself, filthy brown clothes, the dark gray hat, reeking of alcohol, face in the dark.
Rolf? he says.
Hä? the old man says, looking up and his bushy yellow eyebrows rising high, clearing his face, all the darkness vanishes. What, damn it? the man says and then he realizes.
The watery eyes, yellow too, one blink and then the man stares at him and he will not see his father ever blink again.
Father!
Huh? A laugh, raspy and unsure.
A long silence. The train is moving slow, comes near to a halt, a bridge, and the train gathers speed again and then slow again. He sits down and watches his shoes. Still silence.
Are you alright? he says.
His father is staring, no void gaze, just a hard stare, the wide eyes and all that yellow and the broken nose and scars and the broken lips. What do you mean? he says and he clears his throat and his right hand high, fingers pointing to his son, poking in an eerie rhythm and his head is bobbing to it. What are you doing here? he says. It is late and the night, he says. You should not be here.
No, how are you?
You are lucky that it is summer and warm, although the nights are sometimes cold but than you have a good look at the stars. In my times, he coughs, there were a lot of them, not just scattered. The whole night sky was full of them, the whole sky. Not as today, he says and pauses and he looks out of the window and the train is moving fast.
I am.
And that moon too, his father interrupts, now he is just a gray moon. His light is darker too. You know that they say that the moon is wandering off? He just wanders off. And then the night gets darker. I wonder if the stars will wander off too. Wander away. And then we do all the lighting, he says and nods to the window and to the outer lights. You see? They, no, he coughs again, I think they will do it. The stars. Just get away. Get away. You know that than night looses all its importance? All its importance, yes? And all important things happen at night. They do. Yes they do. And these lights, he nods again to the window, are not the right lights to uncover, to uncover them.
The train slows and now there are lights on the right window too.
I think maybe fire will do it, he says. The light of fire. But than they would have to burn a lot. Can you imagine? Fires everywhere. Bonfires and torches. No, not torches. And no candles. They remind me of light bulbs and streetlights. He makes a throwing gesture and a hissing sound. And the light of lamps and glowing wire is not the right light. Glowing wire, he says and all the while his eyes wide and his lips tight and knitted and broken. And the smoke too, he says, imagine the smoke. It will burn to the day and the smoke will be everywhere. And the smell.
A movement and he notices his wife standing and looking to him, a hand on the boy and the other hand pointing to a window.
I have to go, he says. Take care. Maybe I.
It is night and you shouldn't be here, his father says, fixing him.
He nods, turns and walks to wife and son, who are already out of sight.
With a shudder he wakes from a dream, his head in a twisted position and for a long moment he is utterly lost, not knowing where he is, seeing the fishing rod a few feet away, not recognizing it, loosing balance on the camp chair and regaining it and then the cold makes him freeze and then he knows. The stream before him is slow, the surface like freshly splintered obsidian, black and shining and with a steady rhythmic sound. Suddenly he is aware that he must have slept more than a few minutes and he thinks about that and sits a long time and he is cold to the bone and every movement makes it colder and he is afraid of doing so and he thinks that he should tend to the fishing rod. At his rise some bird makes a noise, a stale and hollow warning and in the night this seems appropriate, because in the day the same warning would be a futile thing for in that time and place mankind's superficial rule over nature isn't just that and night reminds men of older times and more dangerous things than himself. Damn it, he says as he sees the wide and intermingling loops of the fishing line, a chaotic spiral, dragged along from the stream and after a while the fishing spiral spins and the line straightens out and then he notices it. The fishing rod bends hard and the line, half visible under the moon, runs down the water to an even darker point in the middle of the creek. He squints and then he is on the move and he has to crouch under the overarching trees, the rod in his hands weighing nothing, is part of his body and after awhile he sees that the dark point in the water is an old fallen tree or a branch, an archaic and crooked finger and that the line seems entangled with it. He looks up, trying to find a safe way to get to the tree, his steps careful and he looks again, wondering if he just should cut the line and get on with it and he gives the fishing rod some quick and not to forceful flicks but the line doesn't give and he stares and then something catches his eye. Waves break the surface directly under the tree and the water splashes two times and there is something like a rolling movement. He startles and reaches for his pocket lamp and squints and then the light flashes and now the tree is green, wet and dripping and mossy and he half sees and half imagines the line wrapped around the wood and its end sinking, swinging tight into the water. A shadow beneath the water and then a snorting sound, something like a nose, quickly gone.
Oh no! he says. No, no, no, no, no! a fast and cascading sound, here under the stars and in the wood. The fishing rod falls and he is in the water, not too hurried, but soon the water is on the brink to leak over its fishermen's trousers. He stops and thinks and the tree is three or four meters away and then another splash, he sees the long tail of the otter, water runs in small leaps along his lower back, sweat or the stream and he feels the slow current on his boots and he looks back to the bank. Again snorting and a rough wining sound. No, no, no, no, no, he screams and he is off to the tree and he is wet as he reaches it, not knowing what to do. The otter is long, he tries to touch it, the thing rolls away, hindered by the line, which is too short for the otter to grab the tree but long enough to drown him and he thinks that the otter must had swum here for a very long time.
Think, think, he says and then holds the line in his fingers, ripping at it, away from the tree, the line cutting deep into his hand. Shit, he says. Shit, he screams. He rips again, the otter splashes and they touch for a brief second and then the animal breaks the surface with its mouth and he sees the line vanishing into his throat and the blood and the whiskers and the small eyes. He lets the line slip and stays there. For a long moment nothing moves and then he is off to the bank for the knife and he is fast and he stumbles, water in his hair and he holds his arms away, making ground and erecting himself and then looks to the tree, where all is quiet. He stops. No motion under the tree and then he turns and after some steps and leaps he is on the tree and grabbing the otter and holding him up. No resistance, the nose and the mouth in the air, he holds the otter upon his arms, surprised at his small weight. He holds him, waiting.
Shit, damn it, he screams. Don't do that to me, he says and he balances the animal on one of his arms and with the other hand picks at the line that runs out of the creatures mouth. Blood floats into the bushy coat along its mouth and to the whiskers and out of its nose. Its eyes are shut and the body feels warm upon his arm and one leg dangles along his bicep and the tail floats powerless in the water and the shadows of the branches are moving on the otters body, as the wind moves the trees and the moon shines on them.
He stays there for a long time and then he lets the otter glide from his stiff arm and he moves to the bank and lurches to his packings, finding the knife and returning to the otter, cutting the line and carrying the animal to the bank and he stays there, the otter in his arms, now realizing that he has lost his glasses and he stays and he listens to the night and he weeps.
The car drives slowly for without his glasses he has to be very cautious and the lights of the city are a boon for him and he sits in his undergarment, radio out and drives through the part of the city where he had lived with his formerly wife and one of the sons and then he remembers his father. How he had seen him for the last time, a quarter century ago and he looks to the stars and the dawn and he thinks of the otter and he is cold again. He adjusts the car heater and as the warmth touches him but doesn't do any good he suddenly remembers the tale the son had told him on the day he saw his father for the last time. He remembers that his son and a few of his friends or classmates had an argument whether the huts in front of the firm BUNA belonged to that firm or not. He envisions the boys arguing with each other, the hot summer day and the monkey bar, his boy was so fond of, where they may have sat together, poising and jumping and screaming. The whole backyard always screaming and full of child noises, that whole part of the city always full of children and as he drives along its night deserted streets and by the low rises he knows exactly what his son had tried to tell him that sunny day but what he never was able to say or was even conscious about. One of his classmates had asked what they have, what they own and that New York has King Kong and the Statue of Liberty and that this city has nothing and that the only thing the city is famous for is the huge firm BUNA, in fact known to whole country. His boy had told him that, because he did not understand but sensed in the question of his classmate a deeper understanding of the world. Because what the question meant was that they lived in a time and a part of the world upon which the spotlight of importance would never shine and the history of their place would never have an impact upon the world, never even considered to be told for a great story or just a story, the dullness and lack of heroism and dangers and that they had the great fear of being not important, not heard and not seen. There was no real boundary to cross, because all future was laid out very clearly for them and for the small and many and more important deeds the kids had not yet developed a feeling. That fear, that deep angst, that senselessness was the only real danger in their life, he thinks and he drives and the night is ending.
