Tales of Accidental Genius Read online

  But somehow he knew it wouldn’t go to waste, and as it bubbled in the bright, unbroken gaze of the oven, and the sky split in a fury of silent falling, Mr. Baxter opened every window in the house, for the great hunger that filled London was no longer his own.

  The Goldfish

  For Tinkerbell

  2009–2013

  AFTER LINING UP with a busload of schoolchildren, the old man bought a ticket and entered the aquarium through a pair of tinted glass doors.

  For the first hour he drifted from room to room as if he were a fish himself, marveling at the different colors and shapes, and how some came right up to the glass.

  Then a woman in overalls and white rubber boots emerged from a door marked STAFF ONLY. She was holding a bucket and there was tinsel tied around the handle because it was almost Christmas. The old man saw his chance.

  “Excuse me, but is there someone I can talk to about fish?”

  The woman stopped walking. “You can talk to me if you want.”

  “Oh good,” said the old man, “Because I desperately need some help with Piper, my goldfish.”

  “I’m afraid we’re not allowed to give advice to people who keep fish as pets.”

  “But it’s only that Piper—”

  “I’m sorry,” the woman said. “I could lose my job.”

  A FEW DAYS later, the old man was scraping unsalted butter across a slice of toast when he overheard something on television about a new program called Animal Hospital.

  Eureka! he thought, and went off in search of the Yellow Pages.

  The next morning, he found himself sitting patiently in a crowded waiting room, flicking through a tattered magazine about hamsters.

  When the old man signed in upon arrival, writing GOLDFISH on the form, the receptionist said she’d talk to the doctor, but it was unlikely they’d be able to help.

  After waiting almost an hour, a young man burst through double doors, his unfastened lab coat billowing like a cape. A few of the cats hissed.

  The vet chatted with the receptionist for a few minutes, then looked into the sea of faces and signaled for the old man to come forward.

  The bus ride home was miserable. The old man had felt certain that a trained animal doctor would have been able to help with Piper’s condition. But then as the bus neared his stop and people stood to alight, the old man was struck dumb by the enlarged words of an advertisement on the back of someone’s newspaper.

  YOUR BEST FRIEND IS WAITING TO MEET YOU

  AT GERALD’S PET PARADISE . . .

  Below the slogan were cartoon pictures of dogs, cats, ferrets, and a smiling goldfish with bright teeth and long eyelashes. The old man strained to see, but without his glasses it was difficult to read. People pushed past, trying to get off the bus before the doors closed. When the driver told the old man he was blocking the exit, the woman lowered and folded her newspaper in one motion, then held it out.

  “Take it,” she said. “They’re free.”

  The old man sat grinning in the bus shelter as he read the page over and over again. Soon, the failure of his afternoon had quite dissolved.

  The shop was only a few streets away, and with Piper at home in extremis, the old man forced himself to stand and start walking briskly in the direction of Gerald’s Pet Paradise.

  When the last customer of the night burst in, Akin Okunadi, the young assistant, was playing a game on his phone, waiting for the owner to get back and close up for the night.

  The old man looked around at all the colorful things for sale and, after regaining his composure, shuffled toward the counter past a stack of empty cages hung with miniature Christmas stockings.

  When Akin saw the customer approach, he slipped the device into his pocket and asked if he could help.

  “I would like to talk with somebody who knows about goldfish,” the old man said.

  “If it’s food or filters, then I can help.”

  The old man looked Akin up and down. “I’m afraid it’s more serious than that.”

  “You’d best wait for the manager then. He should be back in a minute. He deals with what’s in the tanks.”

  “No, no, I’m not here to buy a goldfish,” insisted the old man, “but to get some advice on one.”

  “Well, you’d better wait, because my only experience is when my brother got one at the fair.”

  “Oh, it’s nice they still do that,” the old man said buoyantly. “What did your brother name him?”

  “He never got a chance. It died in the bag on the way home.”

  The old man looked at his shoes and said how very sorry he was.

  “He only had it an hour,” Akin laughed.

  “An hour, a week, a decade,” said the old man. “A fish is a fish.”

  Along the street, lights were going out one by one as shopkeepers closed up and went home for the night.

  “I ain’t seen you come in before, mister.”

  “That’s because I get Piper’s food and filters by mail order. I haven’t needed a pet shop—until now, that is. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before.”

  Then he asked if Akin had heard anything about the snowstorm they were supposed to be having. The young assistant wondered if it would affect the bus service.

  A few minutes later, the shop door swung open wildly.

  “It’s bloody raining!” Gerald shouted, not realizing they had a customer. “They always get it wrong, don’t they?”

  When he appeared from behind a rack of fake mice and rubber bones, he saw the old man standing at the counter.

  “You must be the manager,” the old man said.

  “That’s right, but I’m afraid we’re closing in a few minutes.”

  “He’s been waiting for you,” Akin said. “Wants to ask your advice about his goldfish.”

  Gerald shot Akin a look of annoyance, then turned to the old man. “What is it, then? Food? Gravel? Tank toys?”

  For a few moments the old man didn’t move. Then, with a great show of emotion, heaved the words from his throat.

  “My goldfish, Piper, has stopped moving.”

  Gerald nodded. “I see.”

  “He was first on his side—but now he’s completely upside down.”

  “Is he dead?” Gerald asked.

  The old man thought for a moment. “He’s certainly very ill, gravely perhaps—but dead?”

  “Well is he moving?”

  “When I put my hand in the tank he moves. He bobs when I put my hand in and go like this.” Gerald and Akin watched as the old man motioned in the air with his hand.

  It was soon past closing and Akin would miss the 5:41 bus.

  He lived with his mother and brother, Sam, who was ten years younger. Their house was half an hour across the city by bus. It had a small garden in the front that the wind filled with leaves and fast-food wrappers. The back garden—an uneven slab of concrete when they moved in—now had potted plants and a freestanding pond, where Akin and Sam sometimes arranged plastic soldiers on lily pads.

  If it wasn’t raining, Akin rode his old BMX to the pet shop. Their mother left early for work during the week, and so Akin made his brother’s school lunches and saw him off. Their father had died while Akin’s mother was in the hospital giving birth to Sam.

  Sometimes Akin slipped notes into his brother’s lunch box, lines from hip-hop tracks that were rude or funny. Sometimes his brother crept into his bed at night, then lay there in the darkness, his eyes completely open, thinking of questions and then forgetting them.

  On the last Saturday of every month, Akin would take his brother into the city center to choose a new Xbox game. Their mother gave them money to have lunch and see a film. They pooled any change for comics, or a box of doughnuts, which they gobbled on the bus home.

  GERALD EXPLAINED TO the old man that if his fish wasn’t dead, it was probably constipated, and asked how often he cleaned the tank.

  “Every Sunday,” the old man said. “Like clockwork.”
/>   “In that case,” Gerald instructed, “try feeding him frozen peas for a week.”

  The man fumbled in his coat pocket for a pencil and something to write on.

  “How many peas exactly?”

  “Two,” Gerald said. “Take the skins off, then drop the bits in.”

  The old man jotted it down, then slipped the frayed envelope back into his coat pocket. “This is a great help, how much do I owe you?”

  “Just five pounds.”

  The old man removed a large zip wallet, and from a mass of yellowing receipts located a five-pound note.

  “Two peas a day, doctor’s orders,” said the old man, handing over the money.

  “If it doesn’t work, I’ve got freeze-dried fish laxative—but pea fragments are better if you can get them to eat it.”

  “Oh, I’ll get him to eat it,” the old man said firmly. “Before all this happened, he used to come right up to the glass whenever he saw me, just like those colorful fish at the aquarium.”

  Before leaving, the old man lingered in the shop doorway. Akin wondered if he wasn’t going to say something about the unfair charge levied for advice.

  “I know you want to close,” the old man said, “but I have to ask—could it be anything worse than a digestive complaint?”

  Gerald was straightening up a display of rubber Christmas trees. “Oh, absolutely—floating upside down could also be a bacterial infection or swim bladder disorder—in which case it’s only a matter of time.”

  The old man didn’t speak or move.

  “You have to face facts,” Gerald said. “Some fish just aren’t going to make it.”

  It was twenty minutes before the next bus, so Akin decided to pick up a snack from the supermarket for his ride home. Browsing a selection of recently reduced items, he noticed a gray figure bending over a freezer.

  “Hello,” Akin said.

  The old man looked up. “You’re the lad from the pet shop.”

  “Buying peas for Piper?”

  “That’s right,” said the old man. “But there’s too much of a selection, I don’t know which kind to get.”

  “Get organic ones.”

  “Are they better?”

  “That’s what my mum gives us.”

  Akin and the old man left the shop together and found themselves walking in the same direction. It was raining and neither had an umbrella.

  When it began to pour, the old man asked Akin if he would like to come and meet Piper. His small pensioner’s flat was only one street away, and there was an umbrella he’d be willing to lend the young assistant.

  On the way there, Akin asked how long Piper had been upside down.

  “About three weeks,” the old man said. “He just hasn’t been himself.”

  As they approached the concrete tower where the old man lived, Akin suddenly stopped.

  “Oh no,” he said, feeling his pockets. “I’ve forgotten my bus pass.”

  He knelt down and rummaged through his backpack.

  “But we’re here,” the old man said, pointing to a sign that read GODWIN COURT. “This is where I live.”

  “Yeah, I know, but if I left my bus pass in the shop, I have to get it before Gerald closes up.”

  “Well, if you must go, I’m number three. I’ll leave the door unlocked. You will come, won’t you?”

  THE RAIN TURNED to snow on Akin’s journey back to the old man’s apartment. Cars crawled along with their headlights burning.

  There was a particular odor to 3 Godwin Court that Akin would forever associate with old age. Piles of newspapers rose up like small islands from a sea of carpet. Dirty clothes had been dumped in one corner, and in another, empty cereal boxes, egg cartons, and plastic ice cream containers with mold furring over the remains. The sink had not been touched for some time, and the standing water was coated by a dark skin. On the stove, unwashed pots and pans were piled up, most stained with corrosion or decaying food. A Victorian cabinet tucked into a corner of the sitting room was crowded with ceramic statues that looked out with delicate, painted eyes.

  The fish tank was on a table next to a maroon armchair, and the old man was bending over it, fumbling with scissors and the bag of peas.

  “They defrosted on the walk home,” he said, “so I thought I might get the ball rolling. Piper is in here, if you want to come and meet him.”

  Akin stepped over to the tank and lifted the lid.

  “Please be extra careful,” the old man said. “As I told you, he’s not well at all.”

  A large goldfish on the surface of the water was in the early stages of decomposition. Akin reached in and nudged the body with his finger.

  “He never used to be so white,” the old man said. “But I suspect that’s just old age.”

  When Akin swirled the water, the goldfish bobbed in the sudden current.

  “See how he moves when you put your hand in?” said the old man.

  Akin cupped the fish in his hand and looked closely at its gills. “Hello,” he whispered. “Can you hear me, Piper?”

  After releasing the motionless body, Akin lowered the lid and washed his hands.

  The old man was squeezing peas from their shells and lining them up on the counter.

  “Two a day, I think your boss said. Shall we—”

  “Before you do that, let’s test the dopamine levels of the water.”

  The old man stopped what he was doing. “Dopamine levels?” he said incredulously. “What are they?”

  “They’re an indication of how clean everything is.”

  “Is it important?”

  “Very. High levels of dopamine will lessen the healing qualities of each pea.”

  The old man just stood there. “I’m sorry now that I ever doubted your expertise.”

  “It’s a test I recommend conducting at this stage,” Akin went on. “But without my instruments, I’m going to need a piece of silver.”

  The old man thought for a moment. “Probably in the bedroom.”

  When he was out of sight, Akin took the tank lid completely off, then rummaged through his backpack for the container marked LIVE FISH that he had picked up on returning to the shop.

  When he heard the old man coming back, Akin shouted that it was gold, and not silver he needed. The old man grunted and turned around. Akin poured the contents of the plastic container into the tank, then quietly put the lid back on.

  “Will bronze work?” came a voice from the bedroom. Akin replied that bronze was even better, and the old man returned with the miniature statue of an elephant.

  Akin told the old man to get more peas ready, then raised the tank lid and dipped the elephant’s trunk in, just below the surface of the water.

  The old man watched.

  “Wow,” Akin said. “These readings are hard to believe.” Then he turned to the old man. “This water is so clean, the dopamine level ain’t even registering.”

  “Scrubbed clean every Sunday,” the old man assured him. “Rain or shine.”

  Akin tried to imagine how his mother might break it to the old man, if he were a child, like his younger brother, Sam.

  “Before we go back to the peas,” Akin said. “There’s bad news and there’s good news.”

  The old man’s lower lip began to shake, and Akin could see how he might have looked as a boy.

  “Which would you like first?” Akin asked. “Good news or bad news?”

  The old man glanced at the cabinet of ceramic figures, then at the photographs on his mantelpiece, at faces once capable of moving and making sounds. They were people who had known him the way he remembered himself. The woman in the largest picture had been his wife. Sometimes it felt like she was just out shopping, or on the other side of a door about to come in.

  “The good,” he said finally. “because I’m an optimist at heart.”

  Akin took a deep breath.

  “Well . . . the truth is—it wasn’t constipation or Piper’s bladder.”

  “Not his b
ladder?”

  “Piper was pregnant.”

  For a few moments, the old man’s expression did not change, as though words ceased to have any meaning.

  “With twins,” Akin said, pointing to two tiny new fish darting excitedly around the tank.

  The old man moved his head as close to the glass as possible.

  “Congratulations,” Akin told him. “You’re a grandfather.”

  The old man couldn’t believe it. “All these years I thought Piper was a young chap!”

  The tiny fish were unstoppable, flapping their bodies through the legs of a plastic deep-sea diver.

  “And they’ve been in here all this time?”

  Akin nodded.

  “Tells you how bad my eyes are!”

  When Akin explained that Piper had most likely died in childbirth some time ago, the old man had to sit down. Akin found some instant cocoa in the cupboard, then filled a kettle and bashed the cocoa with a spoon until it broke into chunks.

  The old man went into detail about Piper as a young fish. Then he got up and stood over the tank, where his grandfish were scooting through Piper’s old castle and fake plants.

  “They’re the spitting image of him,” the old man said.

  “And fish live longer when they have company.”

  When the reality of Piper’s loss began to sink in, Akin put his hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Loads of fish die in childbirth,” he said. “It’s a lot of stress for them to push the fish babies out.”

  “But, what I don’t quite understand,” said the old man, turning to Akin, “is how Piper got in the family way to begin with?”

  “Well,” Akin said, trying to think of something, “I suppose it’s like Mary and the baby Jesus.”

  “The Bible story?”

  “Yeah, but underwater.”

  The old man thought about it.

  “My wife, Doris, and I never had any children ourselves. I got Piper after she died just to have a little friend in the house.”