A goldfish called Serberton

         

My neighbour Alice has this pet goldfish that is breaking all records for longevity in the fish world - or so she thinks. But there are certain things Alice doesn’t know, and it’s better for both of us she remain ignorant.

It all began last month with Alice and me sitting in her kitchen drinking tea and watching her goldfish swimming in its miniature aquarium on the top of her walnut veneer sideboard. Well, the fish is not exactly swimming; it's more of a kind of languishing. It floats in a patch of lettuce-green waterweed. The only sign that it is alive is the occasional rippling of its diaphanous dorsal fin and a bubble or two that escapes from its mouth.         

 I didn’t know you had a goldfish Alice, I tell her. Ah yes, she says, my little Cerberton. She explains to me that she bought the goldfish to keep her company years ago when her husband was on the road selling vacuum cleaners. She and her husband Herb had lived in a small flat where no pets were permitted. She hadn't been sure whether the landlord's edict had also run to goldfish, so just to be sure she'd sneaked the fish in one day when the landlord wasn't looking.

 I called him Cerberton, Alice tells me. You know, like the suburb in London where I was born. That little fish has been great company to me, especially these last few years since poor Herb passed on. We never had any children you know.

 She sighs a regretful sigh and pours me a second cup of tea as she continues to fill in the picture. Of course Cerberton was only a bit of a tiddler then. Thirty-five years ago last month, it was.

I have no reason to mistrust Alice’s veracity but I am amazed that a goldfish could live so long. I know cockatoos can live to a ripe old age and turtles too, but such longevity in a goldfish stretches my credulity to its limit. Perhaps Alice is mistaken? She is at the age when many begin to become somewhat vague.

We finish our cups of tea and I go back to shoring up the posts and hammering another generation of galvanized nails into the palings of our territorial fence. That fence has blown down in the wind for the third time in as many years. I have suggested to Alice several times that we renew it but she resists and every time we have a really nasty gale I am back to shoring it up again.

But it's not the cost of her half share to build a new fence that worries Alice; it’s the notion of change. I've got so used to that old fence, she tells me, I'd be unhappy if it were gone. It's such a lovely smoky grey, isn’t it? And then there’s the lichen - it’s taken years to grow that. It was like she was pleading for a favored work of art or an artifact of some significant and I, like always, give in.

Later that month Alice is in a bit of a quandary. She tells me over the fence that her sister who lives in Launceston is sick. She laments that she can't go to stay with her for a few days because there's nobody to look after her Cerberton.

I know what she’s getting at, so to save time I tell that it would be an honor for me to look after the little feller. Surely, I tell her, all he needs is a bit of grub each day? I could put his glass tank on my kitchen bench where I could keep a close eye on him.

 Alice is ever so grateful for my offer but not entirely convinced that it is as simple as I make out. But he'll be lonely without me, she says. He’ll miss me. I talk to him all the time. Well, I’ll talk to him, I assure her. I'll go in and talk to him every time I make myself a cup of coffee and I drink lots of coffee. She still looks a little doubtful, but with a few more words of assurance I manage to convince her that I am an experienced goldfish-sitter who will treat her goldfish as though he were my very own.

 Ah, if only life could be so simple! Three days after Alice's departure I come home and find Cerberton acting like a miniature shipwreck. He is floating upside down on the surface of his glass tank and no matter how many times I right him with my finger he rolls right back over. I decide eventually that there is no getting away from it, Cerberton is no more, he has, as the Goon said, shuffled off this mortal coil.

 My God! What have I done wrong?  What am I to do now? Here is a fish that has survived thirty-five years in my neighbour's loving care and I have killed it in the course of three days. In my mind I go over all the things that I have done or not done, to try and find a reason for Cerberton's demise. But there seems to be no reason. Have I been so unlucky to be his keeper on the very day that he has been designated by fate to depart to that big fish-tank in the sky?

 Surely not, I tell myself. The chance of that happening is about the same odds as me winning the lottery. So, perhaps it is something not quite so coincidental? Perhaps I hadn't been talking to the little feller enough? Perhaps my casual good mornings and how are you today chats, weren't enough to sustain his tenuous grip on life?

 Although, I did remember one quite long conversation I'd had with him on the second morning about the consequence of my literary dry up. And I'll swear that morning he'd responded to my words with an extra bubble or two. Was he upset by my confession? Did it affect him? I have no idea. The only thing I do know is something has to be done about it. I don't think I'm up to facing Alice’s tears on her return.

It is the man in the pet shop who eventually solves the dilemma for me. When I show him poor Cerberton's body, he immediately identifies it as a carpis manifico. Quite a common species, he assures me, replacement will not be too difficult. Do I go along with the minor conspiracy? Or do I subject myself to self condemnation and Alice to sorrow and tears? I toss it up in my mind. Conspiracy wins hands down.

 The shop owner and I wander from glass tank to glass tank in his pet shop, peering amongst the weeds and exotic paraphernalia that litter the bottoms of the tanks for a replacement of the extinct and rapidly decomposing Cerberton. And he is right, they are many variations on a theme and it isn't too long before we find the absolute replica of the late Cerberton hiding in the fluorescent hull of a miniature Titanic.  That's him, I tell the pet shop owner. That’s the one I want. This carpis manifico looks as old and languid as Cerberton ever looked.

Back home I very carefully follow the pet shop owner's instructions on feeding little Cerberton 2 a tiny pinch of the flaky fish food, any more and it will be too much. Which, considering the spoonfuls I fed his predecessor, at least solves the mystery of his untimely death. Though, as I watch the little fish rise slowly in a very Cerberton-like manner to take the food, I wonder about the other unsolved mystery of his predecessor’s unlikely age. The pet shop owner has assured me that goldfish rarely live beyond fifteen years - eighteen at the most.

I lean closer to the tank and eyeball the tiny fish through the watery glass and ask the question. What do you think Cerberton 2? Do you reckon there was another goldfish-sitter all those years ago that pulled the same scam on the original model? You might be the third in line? The fishy stare and string of bubbles I get in reply tells me nothing.

 When Alice gets back at the end of the week she is delighted when she sees the goldfish languishing peacefully in his glass tank. She leans forward and warbles her greetings to him. Cerberton 2 rises to the surface like he always does around feeding time. See, Alice cries, he knows my voice. Sure I tell her, why not. There are times when the truth is not the best policy.