The Boy Who Swam With Piranhas Read online

  “He’s dancing!” whispers Nitasha.

  And it’s true. He dances and the fish start to dance in formation around him, turning and curving through the water that just a few moments ago was the scene of such savagery.

  Then somebody yells out, “Breathe, Pirelli! Breathe!”

  And everyone, entranced until now, realizes that Pirelli hasn’t taken a single breath since he entered the water. How can he do such a thing? How can he have such control? Surely he must drown. But Pancho’s face is calm and his movements are fluid. The crowd pushes closer. They look upwards to the man and the fish dancing before and above them. How does he still live? How do his fish not strip him to the bone? As if to reassure them, Pirelli rises for a moment to the surface, tilts his face into the air, breathes in and then dives down again to be with his piranhas. And they dance again, spiralling and turning, performing loops and whirls and somersaults, as if to some beautiful watery music that no one outside the tank can hear.

  Then Pancho Pirelli rises. He lifts himself from the water. He climbs out onto the ladder. He raises an arm to acknowledge the wild cheering of the crowd. And then down he comes and takes his cloak from Stan.

  “Did you think I would die?” he asks.

  “No,” whispers Stan.

  Pancho smiles, and draws the cloak around himself. He lifts the goggles from his eyes. “Do you think you will die?”

  “Me?” says Stan.

  “Yes, you,” says Pancho. “Do you think you will die when your turn comes to dive into the tank with my piranhas?”

  He reaches out and rests a hand on Stan’s shoulder. “I will train you well, Stan. I will give you all the help you need. But in the end it will not be about training or help. It’s your destiny, Stan. I knew it as soon as I looked at you. You have come to this place to take on the burden of Pancho Pirelli. You will be like me, Stan. You will be a performer of myth and legend. Your name will be written in gold on a blue tarpaulin. Imagine it, Stan.”

  Stan imagines it:

  Then he runs in fear from his fate.

  That night, as the moon shines through the caravan window, Stan sleeps with his hand dangling into the goldfish tank. He feels little fins and little tails rippling against his skin. He dreams of jaws and vicious teeth. He dreams of dancing to weird watery music. Behind her screen, Nitasha can’t sleep. She feels like she’ll never sleep again. She stares into the moon and listens to the music from a waltzer and feels like she’s waking from a sleep that’s lasted for ever and a day. Dostoyevsky snores, turning and turning in his own narrow bed. His dreams are of Siberia, of blizzards that howl and ice that turns the earth as hard as steel. He dreams of a slender woman dancing on a frozen lake of ice with tiny fragments of frost sparkling in the air around her. And he dreams of his Nitasha. In his dream she, too, is in a world of ice and frost, a world so cold that the girl has turned to ice herself. But there is a glimmer on the horizon, a hint of dawn. Maybe it means that the sun will return and his Nitasha will start to thaw, will start to live again.

  But, reader, let’s leave this trio for a moment in their caravan. Let’s have something like our own dream. Let’s rise through the caravan roof and over this strange field filled with sideshows and rides and peculiar practices and magical moments and fires and chops and spuds and scorpions and fish and tents. Let’s rise into the moonlight so that the fires shrink to the size of fireflies; the spinning waltzer becomes like a distant comet. Let’s rise so that the town that contains the fairground is shrinking too, so that we can see the glistening vastness of the dark sea near by, and the huge bulges and jagged tops of the mountains. Let’s rise towards the moon and the stars and the wonderful and terrifying hugeness of the universe. And let’s look down, almost as if we were the moon itself, and see if we can see what has happened to the other fragments of our story.

  Look. There’s the road between the mountains and the sea that Stan and Dostoyevsky and Nitasha followed in their journey from Fish Quay Lane. Let’s follow it back the other way. Look, there’s Fish Quay Lane itself, so far off, near the abandoned shipyard. Let’s travel through the night and move closer to that place. How can we do this? You may well ask. But it’s easy, isn’t it? All it takes is a few words put into a few sentences, and a bit of imagination. We could go anywhere with words and our imaginations. We could leave this story altogether, in fact, and find some other story in some other part of the world, and start telling that one. But no. Maybe later. It’s best not to leave our story scattered into fragments, so let’s find them, and start to gather them up.

  Aha! Look there, down on the road leading from Fish Quay Lane. See them? Two tattered figures stumbling through the moonlight with sacks on their backs. Let’s go closer. It’s a woman and a man. Are we surprised to see that this is Annie and Ernie, the evicted relatives of Stanley Potts? They seem to have hardly anything with them, just a few belongings tied up into bundles.

  Let’s go closer still. What’s that in their eyes? Sadness, yes, but determination too – surely it’s the determination to find their lost boy and bring him back into their fold. Perhaps they have heard a story of such a boy working on a hook-a-duck stall on a piece of waste ground in a not-too-faraway town. Perhaps they… But how can we know what they know and what they think? Can we enter their minds with words and our imaginations? Perhaps we can. But listen, we don’t need to. They’re speaking.

  “We’ll find our Stan,” says Annie to Ernie.

  “Aye, we will!” says Ernie to his wife.

  And the two of them step onwards through the night that is already turning into dawn.

  There we are, then. They’re heading in the right direction. Maybe it won’t be long before they’re right back where they should be: at the heart of the story.

  Keep going, Annie. Keep going, Ernie. The story’s waiting for you. Your boy’s waiting for you!

  Ha! See how they lift their thumbs when the early traffic passes. They’re hitchhiking, reader. Let’s hope a friendly driver takes them in and carries them fast towards the fair.

  But what’s this now, clattering along the road in the predawn dark? Oh, heck, it’s the DAFT van. And is that Clarence P. Clapp inside it, his hands on the wheel? Is that Doug and Alf and Fred and Ted squashed in beside him? Yes, it is. Their expressions are urgent and determined too. The engine of the DAFT van roars. Its wheels rattle and rumble. Does Clarence P. recognize the two hitchhikers at the side of the road? Perhaps he does. He slows the van to a walking pace as he passes Annie and Ernie, as if he’s about to offer them a lift, but of course he’s only teasing. Their faces brighten, then darken as they recognize the van. They lower their thumbs; they look away. Clarence P. Clapp winds down the window, and along with Doug and Alf and Fred and Ted, he hurls a volley of abuse into their ears. Then there’s a din of laughter, and the DAFT van’s gone, hurtling towards Stan, hurtling back into the tale.

  Stan wakes from his watery dreams. Sunlight’s streaming through the caravan window. There are angry voices outside – Dostoyevsky’s and Pirelli’s. Stan slips out of bed and listens at the door.

  “Ye can’t jus’ come and take him away like that,” says Dostoyevsky.

  “It is his destiny, sir!” answers Pirelli.

  “Destiny! He’s got a good life here, and a good home, and a good job!”

  “A good job? Looking after a hook-a-duck stall, washing ducks, playing with tiddlers—”

  “Tiddlers? I’ll have ye know that some of these is Golden Greats!”

  “Golden Greats! Piranhas are the fish that truly matter. Piranhas and nothing else!”

  “Piranhas! Do you think I’m givin’ him to you to get gobbled up by them monsters?”

  “Have I been gobbled up, in all my years of performing?”

  “But you are Pancho Pirelli!”

  “And he is Stanley Potts! He has the touch; he has the magic. I am certain of it. He will be my apprentice; I will train him and advise him. I will take him to the ancestral home of all pira
nhas – to the Amazon, the Orinoco, the great rivers of South America. In those far-off and wonderful places he will learn to swim with piranhas, to think like piranhas, to feel like piranhas. And then…”

  “And then what?”

  “And then, Mr Dostoyevsky, he will return in glory. He will perform for us all. He will become as great and as famous as the great Pancho Pirelli himself! As with all of the great fairground performers through history – as with the legendary Houdini himself! – he will become a boy of myth.” Pirelli speaks more softly. “Surely you yourself have seen, sir, that there is something special about this boy.”

  “Of course I have,” says Dostoyevsky.

  “And surely,” continues Pirelli, “you do not think that he arrived in this place by chance.”

  “Of course I don’t,” says Dostoyevsky. “Right from the start I knew there was somethin’ special about the lad.”

  “Well, then!”

  “But I thought his specialness was to do with goldfish, with hook-a-duck, with—”

  “He has a greater calling, Mr Dostoyevsky. He is called to be no less than the next Pancho Pirelli.”

  There’s silence between the men. Stan gets ready to come out of the caravan.

  “But, Mr Pirelli,” says Dostoyevsky, “we’ve come to love the lad. He’s one of the family!”

  Stan twists the handle, opens the door, steps outside. Both men turn to him.

  “Sir,” says Pancho softly. “There are greater callings, even, than family.”

  “Are there? Are there?”

  These words are spoken by Nitasha. She steps out of the caravan just after Stan, pulling a dressing gown around her. She stamps her feet.

  “Who do ye think ye are, talkin’ about our Stan like that? Oh aye, I know you’re the great and marvellous and famously wonderful and stunningly spectacular Pancho precious Pirelli. But what makes you think you can talk about Stan like he’s a slave or somethin’, like he’s got no choice or somethin’?”

  Dostoyevsky looks at his daughter in amazement. “Well said, Nitasha,” he mutters.

  “Huh!” she answers. “Never mind yer ‘well said Nitashas’. You’re just as bad as him. Clean them ducks, fill that pool, watch that stall, buy them fish! Oh, Stan, you’re so special. Oh, Stan, we love you so much. But what choice does he have in the matter, eh? The poor lad dun’t know if he’s comin’ or goin’. Do you, Stan?”

  “Pardon?” says Stan.

  “You don’t know if you’re comin’ or goin’, do you? No, you don’t. If Stan had his way – and I don’t know why he hasn’t – he’d be back home safe and sound at… What’s it called, Stan?”

  “Fish Quay Lane,” says Stan.

  “Exactly!” says Nitasha. “He’d be back home in Fish Quay Lane. But, oh no. It’s clean them ducks, fill that pool, buy them bloomin’ fish—”

  “Shh,” says Stan.

  “Eh?” says Nitasha.

  “Be quiet.”

  “I’m jus’ tellin’ them they got to ask you what you want, Stan.”

  “I know that,” says Stan.

  “So what do you want?”

  Stan sighs. “I want my breakfast.”

  “Your breakfast?” says Dostoyevsky.

  “Yes. I want hot chocolate and toast and I want to sit at a table and eat it properly like I haven’t done since a long, long time ago.”

  “Right,” says Dostoyevsky.

  “Right,” says Pirelli.

  “And I want you all to be quiet and to stop arguing while I eat it,” adds Stan.

  “OK,” says Dostoyevsky. “Breakfast. There’ll be a supplier for that, I s’pose. Do ye want to help me find it, Mr Pirelli?”

  Pancho looks at Stan. “Would you like me to?” he says.

  “Yes!” says Stan.

  And the two men head off towards the heart of the fair.

  “Men!” says Nitasha. She sits down on the caravan step. “Do you want to be the next Pancho Pirelli?” she asks Stan.

  Stan shrugs. “Dunno. I’ve never really wanted anything very much.”

  “It looks very dangerous.”

  “That’s true. But when I saw Mr Pirelli swimming with the piranhas, I kind of knew I could too.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes. I was scared, but I kind of know what it feels like to be Mr Pirelli. And I kind of know what it feels like to be a fish.”

  “What?” exclaims Nitasha.

  “I know. It sounds mad. But I do.”

  Nitasha laughs. She walks over to Stan and lifts the collar of his shirt and looks down at his back.

  “What you doing?” asks Stan.

  “Lookin’ for your fins,” she says.

  Stan laughs. He pops his mouth open and closed: O O O O.

  “Anyway,” he says, “you were wrong. I don’t really want to go back home to Fish Quay Lane. I think I’d quite like to see the Amazon and the Orinoco. That’d make a change. But there’s other things I need to sort out first.”

  “Like your aunt and uncle,” says Nitasha.

  “Yes,” says Stan.

  Nitasha sighs. “I’m sorry I was so horrible,” she says.

  “That’s OK.”

  “No, it’s not. I’m really sorry. Do you think they’ll look for you?”

  “Eh?” says Stan.

  “Do you think they’ll miss you and come lookin’ for you?”

  Stan shrugs. “Dunno,” he says. He thinks of Ernie, of how weird he became. Maybe he’s become even weirder.

  “Did they love you?” asks Nitasha.

  “Oh yes,” says Stan.

  “So they’ll come lookin’ for you. And mebbe find you.”

  “Maybe. But when they find me, they’ll find a different Stan from the one they think they’re looking for.”

  Nitasha grins. “They’ll find a Stan that’s a bit more like a fish.”

  “Yes,” says Stan, and for a moment he thinks about Annie and Ernie, and he hopes they’re missing him now; he hopes they’re searching for him.

  Then he looks at Nitasha again. She’s so different today. She’s another one who’s changing. “What do you want to be?” he asks.

  She laughs. “The Ugliest Fattest Bearded Lady You Ever Seen!” she says.

  “You don’t mean that, Nitasha.”

  “I did yesterday.”

  “But not today.”

  “No. Something’s changed.”

  “Maybe,” says Stan, “we can all be something special if we put our minds to it.”

  “Mebbe,” says Nitasha. “But like you, I’ve got other things to sort out first. And what I really want is for me mum to come back home from Siberia.”

  “And maybe she will.”

  “Mebbe she will. Oh, look!” Nitasha points to Dostoyevsky and Pirelli, who are coming towards the caravan carrying a table full of breakfast.

  “Toast, hot chocolate, marmalade, butter and fresh orange juice,” says Pirelli.

  They all sit and eat. The sun shines down on them. The food and drink are delicious. After a time, Stan turns to Dostoyevsky.

  “Mr Dostoyevsky,” he says. “I don’t want to stop working at the hook-a-duck stall. But I think I would like to try swimming with piranhas.”

  “Would you, lad?”

  “Yes,” says Stan.

  And Mr Dostoyevsky looks into Stan’s eyes and says, “Mebbe I’m wrong to stand in the way of a boy’s destiny.” He turns to Pancho Pirelli. “Will you train him well?”

  “Of course,” says Pancho.

  “Then OK,” says Dostoyevsky.

  “Your enemy,” says Pirelli, “will not be the piranha. Your enemy will be fear. Do you understand?”

  “I think so, Mr Pirelli,” says Stan.

  It’s later that morning. Pancho Pirelli and Stan have left Dostoyevsky and Nitasha at the hook-a-duck stall. They’re standing beside the piranha tank. It’s the start of Stan’s training.

  “Good!” continues Pirelli. “You must not be scared. You must be brave a
nd bold. And you must become Stanley Potts.”

  “But I am Stanley Potts,” says Stan.

  “You must become the Stanley Potts, Stan. You must become the Stanley Potts of myth and legend. Do you understand?”

  Stan’s not sure if he understands or not. He looks into the tank. The piranhas swim past without glancing at him. He sees their teeth, the way those on the top jaws interlock with those on the bottom, and he can’t help shuddering.

  “I was a boy once,” says Pirelli. “I remember the first time I saw the piranhas. I remember the first time I entered the water.”

  “Where was that, Mr Pirelli?”

  Pancho looks at Stan and his eyes go all dreamy. “In the lands of my childhood, Stan. In the distant rainforests of Venezuela and Brazil. I walked as a boy on the banks of the Amazon and the Orinoco, where there are monkeys and snakes and birds as bright as the sun and frogs the colour of flame. I was trained by the mysterious wise men of the rainforest. I spent years there in meditation and training.” He looks sideways at Stan. “You too must have an exotic infancy, Stan.”

  “But I grew up in Fish Quay Lane,” says Stan, “with Uncle Ernie and Auntie Annie.”

  “That means nothing,” says Pirelli. “You must invent a new infancy, Stan.”

  “Tell lies, you mean?”

  “No. You must … create a myth. Come with me. I have things to show you. They will help.”

  He leads Stan round the tank to a blue camper van. He takes Stan inside. The place is neat and tidy. On the walls are paintings of exotic beasts in exotic jungles, of dazzling fish and dazzling birds. There are photographs of Pirelli standing in front of the piranha tank alongside film stars and princesses and politicians. Stan sits on a wooden chair while Pancho opens a drawer and takes out two photographs. The first shows a skinny and rather sad-looking boy dressed in shorts and a grey school blazer with a white shirt and striped cap.