Pelgram in a small boat brought up a red fish. He removed it from the hook and fed it into a bucket, the scales and fins slipping across his skin like cold coarse rope.
“The test is for the elusive white fish, if you want to be like us,” his friend, the fisherman said. “It’s less about what we do than about how we think.”
Next Pelgram brought up a blue fish. He removed it from the hook and added it into the bucket where it swam with the red fish.
“Red fish, blue fish,” the fisherman said. “Ha.”
A few hours later Pelgram had an orange fish and a yellow fish. The trawlers were coming in. The water at the east edge of the harbor had turned black and the moon threatening.
Other fisherman called to Pelgram as they passed. “Have you caught the white fish?”
“It’ll be dark soon,” Pelgram called.
“The white fish can be difficult,” another man called. “You’re running out time.”
Pelgram and his friend fished by a dim lamp. Midnight comes with a certain, transitional stillness. Pelgram suddenly caught the joke, a wide joke, a thing typically shared among friends. He could feel the fisherman smiling at him through the dark. The lamps on the shore were small like sand grains and the sloshing of the water suggested an impending dawn.
Pelgram shook his head. He was sure the fisherman understood. Pelgram took the bucket and dumped the blue and the red and the yellow and the orange fish back into the water. He filled the bucket and placed it into the bottom of the little boat, the entire country of China at his back, the small skittish moon wobbling in the bucket.
“Let’s go home,” the fisherman said.
“Okay,” Pelgram said. Then Pelgram drew a peach out of his jacket and gave it to the fisherman. He took out another peach. He bit into it and let the juice run between his knuckles.
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