Pasha Malla

The Left Husbands Fish

Sundays, the left husbands fish. Their ex-wives are never mentioned. The left husbands wear moustaches and brown socks and Reeboks. They meet at the lake at dawn: mist frosts the water. There is a boat. One at a time they launch themselves off the dock and into the boat and steady it for whoever is next. The last one in will row them out into the middle of the lake where the water is black spangled silver in the slow morning sunlight and slops up against the side of the boat with a sound that – yes, yes – reminds the left husbands vaguely of intercourse. The only other sound might come from a loon calling for its mate across the water. Oars dip and swing out and hover, drip and speckle the surface before slicing back into the lake again. Whirlpools churn and disappear behind the boat. When the left husbands arrive at an agreeable location the anchor is hurled overboard. The left husbands watch the lake swallow the anchor and its length of yellow rope uncoiling from the floor of the boat, trailing down into the depths of the lake, a snake chasing its prey. Then, sighing, hunched over in the belly of the boat, the left husbands fish.

The Left, Husbands, Fish

The woman who is a socialist and a feminist and an atheist has written a pamphlet entitled: “The Left, Husbands, Fish”. She makes photocopies at the post office and takes them to the rally in a shopping bag. The pamphlet addresses Marxist theory, patriarchal society and Catholicism. It is contradictory in places, but well written, employing several rhetorical devices the woman has learned in university. She is proud of herself; she feels clever, and walks to the rally with a bounce in her step, the shopping bag full of pamphlets swinging in her hand. The woman imagines herself at the rally handing out her pamphlets, the look of enlightenment dawning on the faces of the protestors as they read her words, and understand. “Fish”, she hopes people will realize, are a common symbol for the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, amen.

The Left Husband’s Fish

The Right Husband feels emasculated. The Left Husband’s fish is mighty. The moonlight plays in a glittering rainbow off its scales. The Left Husband stands there with his fingers hooked under the gills, beaming, the fish hanging off his hand like a slab of granite. The Right Husband’s fish, meanwhile, is pitiable: a wretched, scrawny thing no bigger than a fistful of pencils. Its eyes are dull and glazed and stupid. The Left Husband and the Right Husband stand below the Wife’s window at their respective sides (left, right) and each hoists his fish and calls the Wife’s name that together would perhaps suggest, in a fashion: an echo. The window is shuttered; the blinds, Venetian. Between the slats gleams the golden light of the Wife’s bedroom, leaking out, an ocean through a keyhole.