Lying in the bath, Petunia suddenly realized she’d been too hasty and hadn’t cleaned the fish before bathing.
She raised herself up, looking for the pot.
It stood by the door, and the fish’s head, its bulging eyes staring at the ceiling, stuck far out of it, while the tail hung over the edge.
Water dripped from the tips of the fins.
If she didn’t deal with it, it would stink by tomorrow.
She sighed and started climbing out of the water.
She dried herself quickly, pulled her dirty clothes back on, and went outside.
Compared to daytime, the rain had intensified.
Heavy streams of rain lashed the ground like water from a shower head, hard and even a little painful.
The wind beat against her face, tore off her hood, leaving her defenseless before the rain.
Setting the pot with the fish on the ground, Petunia laid the fish out on the wet grass and rinsed it with clean water to wash it a bit.
Then she took a knife, cut open the belly, and began scooping out the innards with her hands, regretting she had to do this outside.
But she had no oilcloth to spread on the table.
And absolutely no desire to scrub the fishy smell out of the wooden tabletop.
She tossed the guts right there, piling them into a messy heap.
The heart, the swim bladder, the milt — the carp turned out to be male — the gall bladder, and other unappetizing things.
Scooping out the tangle of intestines, grabbing them whole in her palm, she suddenly felt some kind of lump under her fingers.
Freeing the mass from the innards, Petunia brought it to the lantern and carefully cleaned it with her knife.
In her palm lay a little ring.
The thin band was covered in dirt, and the color of the stone set in its mounting was impossible to determine.
Turning it over in her hands — at first glance the ring would fit her — Petunia put it in her pocket and went back to the fish.
Once the body was freed of everything extraneous, Petunia cut off the fins and, grabbing the tail, methodically scraped off the scales with a tablespoon.
The scales collected neatly in the spoon and didn’t scatter everywhere like they would have if she’d used a knife.
She kept scraping off the scales, not straightening her back, until it was completely dark.
Soon the body lay before her — gutted, clean, and far too big for Petunia to eat in one day by herself.
“I want a refrigerator,” Petunia sighed as she cut the fish into pieces.
She kept the head, the tail, and some small pieces for herself, and carried everything else to the food box.
After washing the fish again, she brought everything inside, once more leaving her cloak and boots by the door.
The fish guts mixed with scales remained where she’d dropped them.
Standing in the doorway, Petunia hesitated, but the last thing she wanted right now was to go back out into the rain, so she left it as it was, promising herself she’d clean it up tomorrow.
Nothing would happen overnight.
After quickly rinsing off once more — the water had cooled and was barely warm — Petunia changed into clean clothes.
She wiped the floor with her dirty pants and threw them into the tub — she’d wash them tomorrow — and set to cooking.
She examined her meager supplies critically.
So, she had fish and some greens.
The salt pack was still more than half full, but she’d soon have to figure out where to get more salt.
All in all, from all this she could cook a fish…
well, let’s say a soup, enough for today and tomorrow.
Petunia put the head and tail in the pot, added water, and hung it over the fire.
Then, after thinking, she added the rest of the pieces too.
Carp, as she remembered, needed to cook for at least forty minutes.
She glanced at the alarm clock, marked the time, and turned to the greens.
She chopped a few of the thickest leek shoots — they’d stand in for potatoes — into pieces.
Then she chopped up some sorrel and, after hesitating, added the leftover fiddlehead ferns from her sale.
If Mr.
Cory had valued them so highly that he gave a whole seven sickles, while charging only three for the leeks, surely that meant something?
The fiddleheads looked…
well, like fiddleheads.
Tightly coiled green spirals with barely sprouted green leaves.
Petunia smelled one.
It didn’t smell like anything.
Meanwhile, the pot began to boil.
Petunia hurried to the hearth and deftly skimmed the unpleasant gray foam from the bubbling water.
Then she added salt and, for luck, asked the fire to lower the heat a little.
“Oh,” escaped her when the flames shrank a bit and the future soup gradually stopped boiling so vigorously.
“You’re just…
I have no words, no words.
Fantastic!” she said, and through the crackle of the flame she thought she heard a pleased chuckle.
After watching the fish cook for a bit, Petunia decided her supervision wasn’t needed and returned to the table.
Putting away everything extraneous and dumping the prepared greens into a bowl, she took out her journal and wrote about how she’d spent the day, as usual.
Then she set aside a separate page at the end, divided it into two columns, one of which she labeled “income” and the other, accordingly, “expenses.” And she recorded the first money she’d earned.
It looked good.
Almost like when her mother sat down at the end of the week with checks and a calculator to balance the household expenses.
Checking the clock, she pulled the head and tail out of the pot — they’d already given all their flavor and nutrients to the broth and were good for nothing else — then salted and added all the greens from the bowl.
The chopped sorrel floated on the surface, creating the impression that there were many ingredients in the pot.
Leaving the soup to slowly finish cooking, Petunia paced around the room.
The tub took up what little free space remained, and she kept tripping over things.
And the silence, broken only by the sound of the rain and the crackling of the flame, felt especially oppressive.
To break up the feeling a little, Petunia began humming quietly to herself.
And then she understood.
She was lacking leisure!
Whether in her parents’ house or in her rented apartment, she’d always had something to occupy herself with.
Borrowing a book from the library, solving a crossword in the newspaper, or reading celebrity gossip, for example.
During her school years she’d done a bit of embroidery — purely as an amateur — and knitted socks and napkins.
Plus, in her apartment she’d at least had a radio, and at her parents’ house, a television.
And there was always, always someone to talk to.
“Well, it’s not like I have no one to talk to,” Petunia admitted.
She was addressing the fire in the hearth again.
“Yesterday I had a lovely talk with the ghost, and today with you.
I don’t even feel particularly lonely.
When it’s not raining, I have tons to do.
And there’ll be even more later.
But…” she paused, and the flame crackled encouragingly, urging her to continue.
“Look, I have a whole book!” She grabbed her trophy and, squatting in front of the hearth, showed it to the fire.
Was it her imagination, or did the flame look a bit more interested?
Petunia remembered the circumstances under which the book had come into her possession and hurried to explain: “Don’t get the wrong idea, I didn’t steal it.
It was just lying there, all covered in dust, and I felt a little sorry for it…” Even to her, these excuses sounded pretty pathetic, but the magical flame seemed to accept them.
“Anyway.
I took it, but I can’t read it.
Everything here is so incomprehensible…
if only I could read what’s written here…” She opened the book to a random page and ran her finger along the handwritten lines, left to right and top to bottom.
“There are pictures everywhere — plants and animals.
I wonder, are these a naturalist’s notes?
Or some kind of reference book?
Or maybe children’s stories?
Though, probably not.
The design isn’t very child-friendly…” She spent a bit more time examining the book, and soon Petunia caught the smell of the finished soup.
Taking the pot off the fire, she poured herself a portion and glanced at the door.
“He probably won’t come today,” she said to herself when she realized she was waiting for the ghost to knock on her door again.
“Maybe he doesn’t appear in the rain?” Lost in thought about whether weather conditions affected ghosts, she scooped up a spoonful of broth and began blowing on it.
The broth was slightly yellowish and clear, with oily circles and bits of sorrel floating on the surface.
Then she put the spoon in her mouth and swallowed.
The broth was rich and hearty, with distinct sharp notes of leek and the tartness of sorrel.
It gently coated her throat, creating the sensation that she hadn’t swallowed it but that it had just soaked into her blood straight through her skin.
Along with the fish, a few pieces of leek and one fiddlehead had ended up in the bowl.
Leaving the fish for later, Petunia tried the leek — it almost dissolved on her tongue, it had grown so soft — then she fished out the fiddlehead with her spoon.
It still looked dubious, and Petunia, squeezing her eyes shut, put it in her mouth.
Mmm…
it tasted like asparagus, she concluded.
The flavor of the carp itself was also beyond praise.
She’d eaten it before, but this fish seemed special.
Its meat was surprisingly tender, slightly sweet, and even the tiny bones left in the fillet ground easily between her teeth.
A full bowl of hot fish soup left Petunia with a pleasant feeling of fullness, followed soon by drowsiness.
Patting the book’s cover, she wished the fire a good night and crawled under the blanket.
The last thing she clearly thought before sinking into sleep was that the ghost hadn’t come after all.
He really must not appear in the rain.
…spring had arrived, and with it all the trees and shrubs were adorned with flowers.
She was sitting in the garden of their house, in a small, elegant gazebo, with an ivory writing tablet at hand filled with the finest beeswax, and a bone stylus in her hand.
Next to her sat Mother.
Mother’s hand pointed to the strange letters in the book lying on the table and explained.
She listened greedily, trying not to miss a single word.
Mother said these letters were called tengwar.
They came from the Uttermost West.
Once only elves wrote with them, but now every educated person did.
She very much wanted to be an educated young lady.
Because Mother said that books described all the wonders of the world, even those that weren’t here in the capital of their great state.
Although how could that be?
But books also described the history of the elves, from the time when there was neither sun nor moon over the world, only the endless, endless sky strewn with stars!
She very much wanted to be an educated young lady.
And, this was a secret, to meet a real elf someday.
Then she would curtsy and say in pure Elvish: Pleased to meet you, Master Elf!
So she carefully studied the writing in the book and painstakingly copied the tengwar, pressing them into the wax.
Mother watched and corrected her.
Using the back of the stylus, shaped like a beaver’s tail, she erased what was written, smoothing the wax, and repeated.
Until knowledge of the tengwar became fiery imprints in her brain, and all the incomprehensible words in Mother’s books acquired meaning…