Antoinette’s Fish, by Gudrun Cram-Drach
Chapter 4
Even though she was still very tired, Annie couldn’t fall asleep until after midnight (according to Gam’s old fashioned alarm clock with two bells on the top), and when she did drop off, the sounds of people talking outside, and noisy trash trucks on the narrow Parisian streets kept waking her up.
But for some strange reason, once she saw it was getting light outside, Annie started to sleep soundly, and didn’t wake up again until 10 am.
The little white fish was back in the aquarium, and floating beside a similar fish that was larger, but still a lot smaller than all the other fish in the tank. Annie remembered something she’d read, these were neolamprologus brevis. They mated for life, and liked to live in shells. She’d seen several cute pictures of neolamprologus brevis cuddled in shells, just the tips of their tails sticking out the opening.
That’s why the little white fish disappeared into the shell.
It was hard to get out of bed, but Annie wanted to know if William had called.
In the living room, there was a note on the table.
Gone to bakery, back in a minute.
Annie unfolded Gam’s armoire and fired up the hidden computer. Then she googled “Gustave.”
There were three hits for a legendary, man-eating crocodile who lived in Lake Tanganyika. William had scoffed, said it was a myth. But it didn’t seem like a myth, Annie clicked through multiple pages, photos, and reviews of movies made about Gustave. There was even a story in the National Geographic Adventure magazine.
Annie read the article. The creature was twenty feet long, weighed a ton, and was sixty-six years old. Way older than a crocodile should be.
She found a paragraph suggesting the legends about him attacking people deliberately were probably just rumors, and he hadn’t been violent in a long time. One scientist theorized that he was getting old.
So even if the monster did exist, most likely Gam could have fought him off.
Annie jumped when the key turned in the apartment door and Fatima burst in.
“Ah, bonjour!” Fatima said, her arms full of baguette and pastry boxes.
“Bonjour,” Annie said, her hand on her heart.
Fatima went into the kitchen and Annie followed.
“Can I help?” Annie asked, closing picture on the monitor of a giant, ugly crocodile.
“Don’t be silly. Come, take breakfast,” Fatima said.
Annie sat down and leaned on her elbow.
“I was gone to the bakery. I bought pastries, we can try them at lunch, and the bread is for breakfast. And I crossed my sister Alima,” Fatima said. “She said you are very nice.”
“Aww,” Annie said. “What the word for nice?”
Fatima said something Annie didn’t understand at all.
“No, in French,” Annie said.
“Oh, pardon. It is gentille,” Fatima said, with a chuckle. “Sometimes I forget the language I speak.”
“I never have that problem, I only know one,” Annie said. “Did William call?”
“No,” Fatima said, carrying two cups of coffee to the table. “It is possible he has not arrived.”
“Really? But he left last night.”
“This is true, but it is very far,” Fatima said. “More far than the United States.”
Annie had forgotten about that. Africa was such a big continent, and though parts of it were very close to Europe, Tanzania was not. William would have to fly over Europe, the Mediterranean Sea, then North Africa, where Fatima was from, then the desert, then more countries until he finally got to Dar es Salaam.
“And once he arrives at Dar es Salaam, he must then take an airplane to Kigoma, then a car to the village,” Fatima said.
“Have you been there before?”
“Yes, some times,” Fatima said. “Since your Grandmother had a house there, I went with her and cooked, but after she installed into the research station, I come back here.”
“And now you live here in Gam’s apartment?” Annie said.
“Often. On weekends, I visit with the family of my sister, but during when I am in school it is more easy to study here. And if your grandmother or William come, I watch after them.”
“You’re in school?”
“This is my third year of university,” Fatima said. “I study sociology.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s the study of groups of people, and how they act with each other.”
“You didn’t want to study fish like Gam?” Annie asked.
Fatima laughed.
“I thought about it,” she said. “But I prefer to study the people.”
Annie laughed too, then sipped at her creamy coffee. There was a French newspaper on the table. On the cover of it there was a color picture of the U.S. president shaking hands with a man in a turban, a ring of people in business suits smiling behind them.
Fatima brushed her hands together as if she’d just finished a big project. “I think I will take my shower now.”
“Okay.” Annie tried to read the caption of the picture. She figured out they were in Mumbai, and the president was shaking hands with a prime minister.
Fatima walked down the hallway toward the bedrooms. Annie heard the squeak of a faucet and realized she hadn’t taken a shower since she left Maine.
Then the telephone rang. It was a deep, low ring that said there really was a hammer hitting bells inside it, and not just a recording. Like in an old movie.
Annie went into the living room and found the phone on a round painted table. She put the white receiver to her face and spoke in her best French accent.
“Allo?”
There was a lot of static on the line, then kind sounding man spoke.
“Hello, is this indeed the Beauregard residence?”
“Yes it is,” Annie said. It wasn’t William, but maybe it was someone calling with information. “Are you calling about Doctor Beauregard?”
“Well, yes, in a way,” the man on the phone said. He had a delicate British accent, and spoke rather slowly. “Is she available to speak with?”
Annie’s heart sank.
“No, she isn’t here right now,” Annie said. “She’s working.”
Whoever this was didn’t need to know they’d lost her.
“Ah yes, the good scientist is always at work isn’t she?” the man said, and Annie imagined him leaning back in a chair and crossing his feet on the corner of his desk. “Well let me ask you this, uh, who is this, by the way?”
Annie knew never to tell a stranger your name, at least if you were talking to them on the street.
“I’m, uh, a friend of Doctor Beauregard.”
“Excellent, I am a friend of hers too,” the man said, but Annie didn’t believe it. “I have been trying to reach Dr. Beauregard for quite some time. Perhaps you can help me. My associates sent the doctor a proposal several weeks ago. We are sure she must have received it and we would like to know whether she will accept or not.”
“I don’t know. You should talk to her about it.”
“Well my dear, that is exactly what I am trying to do,” the man said.
“Who is this, so I can tell her you called?” Annie asked.
“This is Mr. Prince,” the man said. “You do expect her, don’t you? I have tried her research station but gotten no answer. When will you see her next?”
“Any moment now,” Annie said.
“Lovely,” Mr. Prince said, then he hung up the phone.
Fatima appeared in the doorway, wrapped in a robe and twisting a cotton swab in her ear.
“You talk with who?”
“Some guy called, Mr. Prince,” Annie said.
“Oh that horrible man,” Fatima said then walked down the hallway again.
Annie followed Fatima to the bathroom and stood in the hallway as she dried off.
“Who is he?”
“A seller of jewels. He is English, I think. He wants to mine diamonds beside the lake. Build a factory, I am not sure.” Fatima said. “He bothers the doctor for years.”
“What does Gam have to do with it?”
“She tries to stop him,” Fatima said. “She says it will hurt her fish, the mining, and she works with the other scientists and people to fight against him.”
“He said he had a proposal,” Annie said.
“Yes, it is, what did the Doctor call it? A bribe,” Fatima said. Annie heard her open a bottle of something and squirt cream out.
“A bribe? To get Gam to help him?”
“Or to stop fighting him,” Fatima said. “She said it was quite a lot of money. With it she could build the laboratory of her dreams anywhere on the world, but she does not take it.”
“Do you think Mr. Prince kidnapped her?” Annie asked.
“No, I don’t think so, he is very far away, in Mumbai I think,” Fatima said.
And besides, Annie thought, if he had kidnapped her, he wouldn’t have called asking to talk to her, would he?
But still, it was weird that Gam had gone missing and this weird English guy was still harassing her about his project.
Fatima came out of the bathroom all dressed, her braids pulled back in a ponytail.
“So do you want to visit Paris today?” she asked. “I must to help at the restaurant this afternoon. Alima has an emergency dental visit, she asked me to help with her work. I can only be with you until sixteen.”
“Sixteen?” Annie asked.
“I’m sorry, euh, four o’clock,” Fatima said. “We use the twenty-four hour clock here, I forget you do not use it.”
“Oh, right like the military,” Annie said.
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Annie said. “I am really worried about Gam. Maybe it’s better to wait in case someone calls. In case there is a ransom to pay or something.”
“The Doctor has not been kidnapped,” Fatima said. “I assure you.”
“Why?”
“All the people love her there, at the lake. The village chiefs and the other scientists,” Fatima said. “You understand it, she is a very nice lady.”
“That’s true,” Annie said. “But I would still feel better if we stay home until at least we hear from William. And, I am tired, even more tired than yesterday.”
“I understand,” Fatima said. “We will wait for him to call.”
So Fatima read her magazine, and Annie studied her Tanzania Travelers’ Guide. She didn’t care so much about ruining the surprise anymore. She needed to know about the country. She found out which airline would take her from Dar es Salaam to Kigoma, and she read about hotels in the region.
Then Annie dozed off on the squishy couch, and the phone never rang to wake her up.
Fatima made lunch around fourteen hundred (Annie was starting to get the hang of the twenty four hour time, and found it to be much more useful because you never had to say ‘in the morning’ or ‘in the afternoon’), and after they ate the pastries, it was nearly time for Fatima to leave.
At fifteen-forty-five, Fatima draped a scarf around her neck in a very Parisian way, and hooked her purse over her arm.
The second the door clicked shut behind Fatima, Annie ran into William’s room. The shutters were closed and she had to turn on a light to see. There was a pile of papers on a desk in the corner, and she rifled through it. With a squeak of excitement, Annie found what she was looking for. Her airplane ticket to Tanzania. William, luckily, hadn’t taken it with him.
Then she went to the computer and found time tables for Air Tanzania. She would go to the airport and try to get on an earlier flight — they had to let her, she already had her ticket. She found there were was a flight that evening she could try to take, if she left soon.
Next, she found the website for a hotel in Kigoma that she had circled in her Lonely Planet guide. It was on the edge of Lake Tanganyika and was the most expensive hotel around. She figured she would be safer in a more expensive hotel, she didn’t know how long it would take her to find William once she got there. She made a reservation and punched in the 16 digit number of the ‘emergency only’ credit card her parents had given her the year before, after she had been stuck at school during a blizzard, unable to reach either of them. Honestly it would have made more sense to get her a cellphone, because the problem had been that the power in the school was out and she couldn’t call them. But she didn’t mind at all having the credit card. She had never used it though, not once, and she suspected her parents forgot that she had it.
Then she went to her favorite language translation website and typed in “I need a taxi at 34 rue de Lafayette please.” She pushed ‘translate’ and the website gave her the words in French.
She dialed the number for a taxi service and read the translation into the old phone.
The person on the phone said something, but it sounded upbeat so Annie assumed they understood and would send the car.
Listening to the European dial tone, Annie exhaled slowly, then ran down the hall.
She grabbed her toiletries from the bathroom then went into Gam’s room to collect her night clothes. She glanced out the window once, to see if the taxi had come, but it was too early.
“I have to do this, right?” she said out loud, staring at Gam’s walls of books about Africa.
She heard a car pull up and ran to the window again, but it was just an old French guy parking an old French car, and then Annie imagined Fatima coming home to an empty apartment. No trace of Annie, no explanation.
She shook her head.
“She will understand,” she said. “It’s for Gam.”
Annie heard a plop beside her, in the fish tank.
“Are you guys hungry?”
All of the fish were looking at her, then the little white fish, the lady neolamprologus brevis swam upwards very fast and shot out of the water. She did a little flip like a dolphin, then dove in again.
“Wow!” Annie said. “I didn’t know you could do tricks.”
The fish started opening and closing their mouths now, then the big one who looked like an angry angel fish looked up at the water’s surface. The other fish mimicked him.
“Okay, where is your food?”
Annie looked around until she found a little canister on a book shelf. She opened it and dropped several pinches of tiny wafers into the water. She expected the fish to go into a frenzy, but they didn’t even move. They just let their food sink to the bottom of the tank, and continued to open and close their mouths.
As if they were talking.
That would be crazy.
But, Annie was feeling a bit crazy that day.
So she leaned in close to the tank, and saw the fish get excited and swim to the top.
And she heard a tiny noise.
Annie looked at the fish, then she ran into the kitchen and rifled through the drawers. Amazingly, she found what she wanted and ran back to the tank.
Annie unwrapped the plastic bendy straw, the kind you get in a juice box, and put one end of it in the water. The little white fish went to the straw. Annie put her ear to the other end.
“Hello? Helloooo? Can you hear me?” Annie heard through the straw. It was a faint little voice, and the street noise coming in the window was nearly drowning it out.
She hooked her end of the straw over the side of the fish tank and held up her finger as if to say “wait one second” to the crowd of fish staring at her. Then she went to close the window, and returned.
She put her mouth to the straw and yelled into it.
“Yes, I can hear you, can you hear me?”
In a flash, all of the fish disappeared.
Annie slapped her hand over her mouth. She hadn’t meant to scare them, but she obviously did. Annie searched the decorative stones at the back of the tank for their little faces.
Then she heard a faint honking and realized her taxi was waiting. But the little white fish appeared again and swam to the end of the straw.
Annie put the straw to her ear.
“We can hear you very well,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” Annie whispered.
“It’s okay,” the fish said. “But we don’t have time for pleasantries. I need to talk to you about your Grandmother.”
