When I was young, I begged and begged my parents for a pet.
In the end, I got given a gerbil and, because they are better backed up by a
mate (aren’t we all?) I got two. Both were females as having any more pattering
of tiny feet was verboten.
I truly loved my gerbils. And they were the first creatures
ever to give me unconditional love in return. At least, it was a lot closer to
love than anything else that was on offer. My gerbils didn’t mind how odd I behaved,
provided I let them out for a run now and again and kept their cage clean. Wish
humans were as easy as that.
When they died, I buried them. A few years later, I
accidentally dug them up again and marvelled at the delicacy of their remains.
This was met by horror by my parents and, on the basis it could be flushed down
the toilet when it was dead, the next pet I got given was a fish. It wasn’t
quite so cuddly as a gerbil, and a run out of his tank meant the bath, but I
got to love it nonetheless.
I called my fish Sylvester as he was not a goldfish but a
silverfish. Tongue-twisting alliteration was something I enjoyed but nobody
else seemed to. For the rest of my family, he was simply “the fish”. Now
Sylvester was an incredibly long-lived fish and, when I went away to
university, he was still going strong. In fact, it was a delight having him as
it meant someone in the house was genuinely pleased to see me when I returned.
He didn’t exactly show it but I’m not really into all that hugging business
anyway so that was fine.
One of those weekends, I came down to breakfast to find my
mother enjoying a slice of toast and a coffee. I nodded an acknowledgement and
got on with finding myself something to eat. It was only then did my mother speak
to inform me that the fish was dead.
He was too. Lying just in front of where my mother was
eating. He’d obviously jumped out of his tank in the night. Maybe he thought he
would go find the bath on his own, although I’m not sure he’d have managed the
taps.
I asked my mother if she had tried to revive him but she
gave a snort as if to say I should count my blessings she wasn’t eating him on
her toast. It was then that I performed my miracle.
Peeling Sylvester up from the Formica worktop, and costing him
several rows of scales in the process, I held my poor little fish in my hands.
Then I took him over to the sink. I filled the basin, and put him in. I wasn’t
too sure what you did regarding these resurrection matters so I merely span him
around in the water and called on the Almighty to give him his life back. I
must have been heard as, a few moments later, Sylvester started swimming
around. I lifted him up, dusted him off, and popped him back into his tank. My
mother screamed. The old bringing-the-fish-back-from-the-dead thing had clearly
got her spooked.
Unfortunately, thereafter my resurrected fish went up in
everyone’s estimation and, by the time I next came home, he had been
requisitioned by the rest of the household. He now had a different name, a
different history, and, most assuredly, had very little to do with me.
Sometimes, when everyone else was out of the room, I’d lean over his tank and
call “Sylvester”. He used to see me and flip over onto his back. It was our
little joke.
Reincarnated or not, Sylvester (under his new nom-de-plume)
was not immortal. One weekend I was informed that my beloved fish had definitely
and finally gone. Did he have a burial worthy of his miraculous self? Or a
cremation to match those of Greek myth? Nope. Flushed down the toilet was his
end. But at least I wouldn’t be exhuming the remains.
