Croats are yet to collectively give themselves up to suicide, although they’ve got all the reasons in the world why they should. The state is in complete collapse, people are hungry and depressed, and the government’s been making asses of them for years. Croats, however, aren’t united as a result of these major injustices suffered upon them, but because of the “injustice” suffered upon on a pair of Croatian generals at the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague. A former Croatian president currently sitting in jail facing corruption charges, he’s unusually sensitive too. He’s constantly whining that his human rights and dignity have been violated. The government is also very sensitive at the minute. Over the past couple decades the ruling party has spent billions, not only on itself, but also on the defense of its criminals, and now it’s steadfastly refusing to produce the receipts. That would be the fatal blow to its oh-so-sensitive dignity.
So, what to do, the circus has encircled us. Our lives are also a circus. What’s more, it often seems that there’s no exit to the tent. But whatever the case, sometimes one needs to pull one’s socks up, head out to the park, sit on a lonely bench somewhere, open one’s ears to the sweet song of the birds, and get down to reading a literary classic. A good book, they say, can save lives. I mean, Quirk Books, for example, offers an enviable range of classics, from Android Karenina to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. They recently published Kafka’s The Meowmorphosis, in which Gregor Samsa is transformed not into a giant bug, but into a cuddly little kitten. I’m sure the little kitten will warm your heart. With a sly grin on your face, just remember the millionaire P. T. Barnum, father of the circus, and his other reassuring declaration: There’s a sucker born every minute.
FATAL ATRACTION
1.
An acquaintance of mine was into fly-fishing. I wouldn’t have had a clue what it was all about had he not showed me his resplendent collection of flies, their miniature beauty enchanting. I could easily imagine a dazzled salmon in a shady Scottish stream, an alluring fly and jazzy feathers dancing before its eyes. Fly-fishing is a particularly expensive hobby. You can’t just wade out into a Scottish stream willy-nilly wearing any old thing. Flies don’t come cheap, either. But a gentleman is always willing to put his hand in his pocket for a spot of fishing. God knows how many times the money invested in the ritual exceeds the value of the fish caught. The satisfaction, quite obviously, isn’t in the catching. Getting back to my acquaintance though, at some point his life changed and the accumulated years dulled his fly-fishing fervor. He packed on the pounds, his heart grew weak, and his spirit dissipated. All until recently. Out of the blue he got in touch while on a trip through Asia. He was with a guide fishing a pristine river in some kind of island jungle. Fly-fishing had literally brought him back to life. The passions of others are the most mysterious things in the world.
2.
My acquaintance sent out his sudden electronic life beacon around the same time an online article caught my eye. A new consumer obsession has caught on among moneyed young men between the ages twenty-five and thirty-five. The majority of wealthy men in this age bracket are either soccer players or oligarchs. They’re not spending their money on yachts, women, or art (bye-bye artists!) anymore, but on their sublimate — on aquariums. From Singapore to London a whole network of professionals has popped up to service this well-heeled clientele: aquarium designers and architects, underwater lighting experts, underwater gardeners for the aquarium ecosystem, suppliers of rare aquarium fish, ichthyologists, even fish therapists. Aquarium maintenance alone costs around a hundred and sixty thousand dollars annually. And aquarium fish are another matter entirely. At between eighty and two hundred thousand dollars a specimen, the platinum arowana is the most-highly priced, and prized. Its lack of pigment gives it a platinum-like color, making it a kind of albino among fishes, an apparent bearer of wealth and good fortune.1 The platinum arowana is unusually sensitive, its optimal life expectancy around ten years. In order to test water quality, temperature, and a bunch of other water-related things, people put tester fish — known as “clown fish”—in first, the majority of whom die so that other fish may lead happy aquarium lives. “Clown fish” perform the role of slaves throughout history, offering the same suicidal service, one akin to tasting whether the czar’s, the emperor’s, the king’s, or the master’s food has been poisoned.
The possible explanations for this trendy new obsession among flush young men are almost endless, and all are as right as they are wrong. The most straightforward can be found in language. In a number of languages, including a few Slavic languages, the equivalent of the word chick (i.e., an attractive young woman) is, believe it or not—fish. Is the aquarium a realization of the infantile dream of underwater worlds (and absolute control over them)? Or is it a symbolic substitute for a harem, one with “little sirens,” with whom every touch is impossible and therefore all the more desirable? Or is it about a space of contemplation, a home temple in which the divine world swims around indifferent to the lives of mortals? Whatever the case, the fatal attraction between men and fish is fertile ground for psychoanalytical and other interpretive acrobatics.
3.
On the island of Kiribati the relationship between young girls, fish, and men is as clear as day. The Pacific Ocean feeds the world with fish, more than half the global tuna catch (two million tons a year) hauled up there. And it’s not just European fishing fleets; Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Russian, American, Thai, Indonesian, and Filipino boats are all there too. Kiribati waters swarm with fishermen and fish. From the age of twelve upward the little Kiribati girls slink around the fishing boats like cats. Prostitution isn’t illegal on Kiribati. It’s how the local girls earn a bit of pocket money to buy a few drinks, or get a few pounds of fish to feed their hungry families. The young prostitutes are called korakorea girls, korakorea meaning “cheap fish.” The girls fall ill to venereal diseases, just like “clown fish” do from fishy ones. Here the reciprocal relationship between men and fish really is fatal.
4.
At the end of June this year I traveled via Vienna to Graz in Austria. The flight from Vienna to Graz was canceled so I had to take the bus. The young guy sitting next to me was a Russian from Ukraine, a soccer player, traveling to Graz for a two-day training camp.
“But why Graz? Aren’t there any spare fields in Ukraine?”
The young guy shrugged his shoulders. Although he seemed to me barely seventeen, it turned out that Pavel was twenty-six, his club owned by a rich Ukrainian. A mafioso? A Ukrainian oligarch? No, no, a businessman, Pavel defended his boss.
“And how much do you earn?”
“Not much. Twenty thousand dollars a month.”
In the world of major league soccer players, twenty thousand dollars a month is like beer money, Pavel explained. Pavel obviously wasn’t interested in talking about soccer, or about oligarchs, or about his “wages,” or about anything else for that matter.
“Tell me, is Vienna at the seaside?” he livened up.
“It’s not.”
“And Graz?”
“Graz isn’t either.”
Pavel quickly sunk into sleep. And while I looked at the sleeping boy on the seat next to me, a general sense of resignation came over me. He was on his way to Graz to train for a couple of days, and I was off to a literary evening. A barely literate Ukrainian was using his enviably nimble pair of legs to bring in twenty thousand dollars a month, while I, highly literate, for my “intellectual services” was bringing in incomparably less. With his monthly salary a soccer player like Pavel could buy four Hawaiian yellow tang, a popular aquarium fish, at five thousand dollars a pop. Pavel might be barely literate, but as opposed to me, he was born with an innate knowledge. He knows all too well that he’s only a little fish in the aquarium. He knows he’s replaceable, and that he only costs his boss one, two, or three platinum arowanas (the price of which has apparently fallen lately) a year. I on the other hand, who drank “arrogant” ideas about the rights of all to equality with my socialist milk, haven’t been able to shake the thought that I’m irreplaceable, although the wages that await me in Graz for the provision of intellectual services equal a portion of fried sardines. In a better restaurant, of course. Yes, I am a korakorea-girl, a cheap fish. And with that thought for comfort, and my young fellow passenger having mistaken my shoulder for a pillow, I too sink into sleep.