Excerpted from the novella SALMON by Sebastian Castillo.
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The shape of salmon
I had never before ridden on a train. Of course, I had read about them in books, and even seen pictures and videos of trains on my computer. I have no mechanical interest, and they therefore meant little to me. Besides: I am but a nature poet, and a student of the natural world. If trains were to offer me anything, it would be through their windows, where I could configure the shape of naturalness in a new and speedier light. I was excited to witness trees and shrubbery rushing past me as I had not seen before.
The voyage to the coast would take approximately five hours. From there, I would board the late-afternoon schooner and be on my watery way. This was all arranged by the grant committee at SALMON, though the literature they sent to me was rather vague in its finer details. I expected the voyage on boat to last a few days, though I was unsure, once I had landed on those fine shores, where I was to go, or with whom I was to meet. I expected a gentleman waiting for me on the docks, holding a placard bearing my name, though as far as I knew, no such arrangements existed.
The passenger cart where I settled was surprisingly empty, and perhaps due to my anxiousness—feeling the morning bile rising up my throat—I found it difficult to pass the time satisfactorily. Much of the train voyage progressed through urban districts in various degrees of dereliction, and as such offered very little of the natural world to enjoy. Once in a while the train would emerge upon a heath, and I could spot some plane trees in the distance, or some unpleasant species of hare running away from its persecutors. But as soon as I was able to get my bearings of that scene, the tracks would re-acquaint themselves with another portrait of vast, concrete emptiness. The world was mostly parking lot, I feared.
I fiddled with my phone, acquainting myself with some of the common foods and customs found in and throughout SALMON. I tried reading an old novel I had snuck from my mother’s shelves (I never read fiction—disgusting). I tried, for the first time in my life, meditating. None of it was any use to me! The sole other passenger in my cart was a man wrapped in a tan, gabardine coat, who was apparently reading the paper, but who had fallen asleep while doing so, as it covered half his face, the drool from his mouth soaking the newsprint into a black, syrupy mass. I approached him with the hope of mutually enjoying some traveler’s chat, as I imagined that custom was likely typical in voyages such as these.
“One could say this train is not a train,” I said, “but a fish.”
I raised my hands before me and rotated them back and forth, pantomiming fins. “Yes, a salmon, in fact. And these tracks are but a stream—the shape of this train is the shape of that fish, pursuing its goal. We shall fornicate greatly in distant waters. I hope we shall not encounter any roving bears along our comely flow!”
I smiled at him and clasped my fin-palms together. The paper fell from his face to his chest and his eyes opened like that of an emaciated grizzly awakening from his long slumber. He appeared first bemused and then irritated. My attempt at traveler’s merrymaking had failed. I explained, hastily, my face growing purple, the purpose of my voyage. How I was beginning my new life in SALMON, and how the shape of that fish had merged with my consciousness—how the world itself appeared to me as a fish, as it were.
“I’ve barely heard of such a place,” he said, “those new, small countries all look the same, and they’re all the same. I’m not even sure I’m remembering the right one. Either way, there’s nothing to do there. Most people choose not to live in those places for a reason. And those who do grow bored and die.”
“The novelty of change is enough to assuage even the greatest boredom,” I protested, feeling as if he were, in the early stages of committing myself to an important cause, mocking my resolution. He didn’t seem convinced, no, and I attributed that to his own moral failures in life—failures obscure to me, though which I was sure were multiple and depressing.
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A swimmer perishes
It seemed others on board had the same idea as me, for the lunch cart was bustling. There in the middle was stationed a bar of sorts, with a service man dressed in a suit, crimson cummerbund, and bowtie. I took a seat next to a grandfatherly figure. The items offered on menu were pricier than my purse could accommodate, so I settled for some black tea and oyster crackers, as the latter was free of charge.
The old man sat silently beside me, concentrated as he was on his victuals. Some seconds later I noticed a solitary beetle on the face of our dining counter—it must have found its way on board, and was trundling along with a determined, robust gait. It inched towards his soup, and without the grandfather noticing, I watched as the beetle climbed up the side of the bowl and perched itself on the rim. It perhaps fancied itself a bit of a swimmer, gazing down at the soupstuff. I wouldn’t mind a bit of that!, the beetle had thought. And then by dint of its own foolish pursuit of pleasure, had actually dove into the puree, and killed itself, boiled to disintegration by liquid allium.
“A beetle has ruined my soup…” the grandfather said to himself, his voice cracking.
The beetle floated on the skim of the soup surface, where bits of the milk fat congealed. I inched closer to him, and offered to finish his soup if he did not wish to continue as it was.
“I am already in possession of soup crackers, you see, and I’ve but eaten an orphan’s share this morning,” I said, “with which, strictly, I could say I have been acquainted, though in the fog of my memory I see only meals both plentiful and appetizing.”
The old man morosely slid the soup across the counter and let me have at it. I figured a bug that had made its way onto this esteemed craft would have to be one of a more noble class, a trusted scout sent here on behalf of his kin, and in that way, I felt it right to sanctify his sacrifice with consumption. The beetle’s life would not be given in vain, and with a quiet prayer, I handled the bowl on both sides, and tipped its contents back down my throat, protein and vegetable blessing my empty stomach.
Back at my seat, freshly satisfied, I endeavored to write the first poem of my voyage, and felt that this beetle, now safely ensconced within me, was a fitting subject: a hero who, while explicitly experiencing a real defeat—death by liquefied vegetable—was now to be transformed and immortalized via the sorcery of line and verse into a personage of great importance. I imagined the small fellow nested in pieces throughout the coil of my digestive tract, and eventually deposited en route to that stalwart country, where I would finally be able to complete my first manuscript: written at night, by candlelight, after a toilsome day of teaching school children. Perhaps I would dedicate the poem to him, his sacrifice having not only giving me the necessary material sustenance to continue, but also granting a certain spiritual kindness which would encourage the words from my cranium to the pen.
Before I could commit a line to paper, the train cart door opened, and in entered a small boy, dressed in rags. It was as if this boy were the very spirit of wretchedness—a cancerous cell-mass drifting through the aisle of the train. He was accompanied by a necrotic vapor: the odor of shit, piss, and infection.
“Chance you can spare a loose note for an old boy down on his luck, my good bumpkin?” he asked me, holding out a rusted coffee tin filled with dirty coins and costume jewelry. I admit, with some shame, that I felt so put upon, so utterly ruined by the mere sight of this child, that I offered him neither a yes or a no, and instead turned my head, whereupon I fixed my gaze on the train window. Outside, I could see we were passing a city worker urinating in a public rubbish bin.
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The three Junkers of SALMON
Having been so overwhelmed by this peasant child, and with the prospect of my beetle poem, I must have put too much stress on my system, for I fell asleep with pen in hand before writing a single word. Upon waking, I could see my notebook lay half folded on the empty seat next to me, and that my pen was gone, slipping from my fingers in that sleep, having likely rolled down the cart somewhere. However, this was not what concerned me upon waking, but what lay outside the train window: twilight. I had fallen asleep for almost the entire day. More strange, still, was that the train was not moving. I was to board the boat to SALMON in the late-afternoon—and now I had clearly missed that appointment.
We were stopped on a flat, empty plain, though one could spot a small hillock cresting over the horizon in the far distance. Outside, there was a gathering of people about a bonfire, and emitting from that gathering were jeers and paroxysms. My compartment was also empty—the sleeping man from before had perhaps joined the throng outside, or had moved to a different cart with a more comfortable couchette.
Poking my head out the window I could see, at the head of the train, the conductor and engineer apparently arguing over some matter regarding the train’s performance. Those gathered around the fire were themselves passengers of the train, and given the size of the fire, it was fair to assume the train had been stopped for quite some while. There were about nine or ten of them. As I walked closer to that fire, I discerned the cause of all that yelling: the small crowd surrounded two boys, both shirtless, fighting each other. One of them was the peasant child from earlier. I had thought this originated from an organic dispute, but upon closer inspection, I could see both boys were in full pugilist costume: oversized, brown gloves; bulbous plastic headgear; loose-fitting nylon shorts each bearing a flag of sorts. There was even an ersatz referee, a man of about my age whom I recognized from the station. The boys circled each other—both their legs jittery but nimble—and each strike engendered the blow of a whistle by the referee. I stood next to three middle-aged men of a similar comportment. After the whistle sounded, one of them would throw coins into a pile, while another removed some for himself. This process—the blows, the whistle, the jostling for money—repeated six or seven times. I was not, however, able to discern the rules governing the game. I did not understand which kind of blow signified some greater or lesser advantage, or who was betting on what. In fact, it felt completely random. The emaciated blond boy struck the peasant boy’s jaw twice in a row: each blow separated by a whistle and then a pause. After the first hit, one of the three men grab a handful of coins from the ever-growing pile. A moment later, after an identical movement, the same man would curse loudly and spit at the dirt floor, throwing those recently retrieved coins back into that same pile.
I asked one of those men to explain this game to me, but he remained silent, too concentrated on the fighting’s outcome to entertain me.
“I hope this kind of fare is not commonplace in SALMON,” I said, “otherwise I can’t imagine I’d find my bearings too easily.”
Perhaps I had made the appropriate comment, for the man looked over at me and offered a feeble smile.
“Yes, this type of game is common enough at SALMON. It ruins me,” he said.
“Ruining all of us,” the other said, “my wife and children barely let me leave the house. This is the only action I get.”
“Look at us,” the third said, “three Junkers of SALMON, reduced to hiding our little habit from those whom we love, only able to engage our delights in private.”
I was thrilled to encounter representatives of that country. I could tell they were from elsewhere given their accents, though whether “Junker” designated an honorific or a professional title was beyond me. I did learn, through stilted conversation, that they each worked in the same governmental department in the capital, where I, too, was headed. The fattest of the three assured me there was to be a midnight ship departing, and that if we were to make it to the port town before then, we’d be on our way to SALMON just fine.
“We are three Junkers of SALMON,” the first said, “the country where they say they love you, but they fuck you to death.”
“They will fuck you to death there, at that country,” said the second.
The third Junker played with the few remaining coins huddled in his lap. The fight had since finished, and we could hear the conductor hailing us back to the train, having repaired whatever it was that stalled us so.
The third Junker said: “Before, it was a different place. We three are from different countries originally, you see. We belonged to different lands. Then, after the war… We find ourselves working in the same office, it’s true. To your foreign ears, it might sound like we all speak the same language. I’ll assure you we don’t. We have trouble understanding each other. I’ll yell something to him, who will pass the message to the other, and by the time the response to that question gets back to me, it’s as if I had asked something completely different, and am receiving an answer to a question I didn’t ask.
It’s all the same to me. That’s how we pass the time there. You try to do as little as you can with as much effort as you can muster. If you don’t pass the time at SALMON, they will find a way to fuck you to death.”
“Sure enough they will,” said the first or second Junker, though by that point I had stopped listening, so excited was I to return to my carriage, and continue our sally.
Back on the train I got on all fours and crawled up and down the aisle like a new kind of animal, hoping to locate my pen.