shuhaige
Chapter 21
Chapter 21
Seven Years Ago
“Jenny? Are you alright?”
Mr Kalkowski, leaning on his stick, looks down from the bank which swoops down to the lake’s edge. A
figure lies prone across a grassy mound by the pebbled shore.
She twists, squinting upwards, a hand against her eyes, against brilliant sunshine. “Hello, Mr
Kalkowski. Yes, I’m fine. I was just watching this.” She waves a hand across a patch of reeds which
edges the shore where a stream meets the lake.
Her teacher descends the slope carefully, using his stick as support while he guides himself along a
six-inch wide, sheep-trotted path between slippery grassy hummocks. Drawing closer, he can see the
elaborate zig-zag manoeuvres of dragonflies over the water. In brilliant shades of electric blue and
iridescent green, their scintillating wings compete with the sparkle of the water for beauty and attention.
As he peers to see what holds her so spellbound, she points in close to where a brown-shelled monster
is rising out of the water, climbing up a reed. Only a couple of inches long, it is a monster nonetheless.
Then she points again to another, and another. Some are only just escaping their watery haven. Others
have settled higher up the stems. Yet others have split open at the back of their ugly casing and
something is squeezing its way out. And in one or two places, can be seen the escaped occupants
sitting drying in the sunshine, their sheath an abandoned husk. Wings pump up and out and open with
the coming promise of the shimmering beauty of their flying companions.
“Ah, yes,” comments the old man. “The emerging nymphs of Anisoptera.”
She glances at him, puzzled.
Dark eyes twinkle over the top of his spectacles. “Dragonflies to you and me,” he explains. “Anisoptera
is the Latin designation for that order of insects.” He looks in more closely. “It is certainly an…. arresting
sight. I do see why you would be taking the time to watch. Have you been here long?”
“About an hour, I think,” she replies. “Have you seen this before?”
“At times,” he nods. “But never such a mass… um…. emergence…. as this. “Would you mind if I join
you to watch the spectacle?”
She smiles widely, displaying teeth which glint pearl, then shuffles up to make room.
Mr Kalkowski seats himself beside the teenage beauty, settling to watch the display. One after another
of the larvae climbs slowly to winged freedom, shedding the water which clings upwardly to the reed
stems in a smooth curve. Each one splits along a line down the back of its shell, partially escaping
before pausing…. This is property © NôvelDrama.Org.
“What are they waiting for?”
“The exoskeleton is soft as it emerges,” replies the old man. “The legs have to harden in the air before
they are strong enough to entirely pull the creature free from its prison.”
Above the water, the adult insects quarter the area in squadrons.
“Do you think those, are some of these?” she asks, pointing between adults and larvae.
“It takes a day or so for the adult to fully gain its strength and true colours, but yes, these will join them
as they come into their strength.”
“What do they do then?”
“Dragonflies are voracious predators. As are the nymphs…” He gestures at the emerging larvae….
“They will consume mosquito larvae and similar creatures. Even tadpoles and small fish. As adults,
they will eat gnats, flies, mosquitoes, even butterflies and bees. Woe betide any small helpless creature
that falls in their path.”
Jenny screws up her face. “I think I like being a person better.”
“Indeed. The world is a dangerous place if you are small and helpless.” He gestures towards speckled
shapes in the stream, waving as they hold their position against the current. “Between trout below and
dragonflies above, it is not a safe place to be.” He sniffs. “Of course, for us, they make good eating.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever had trout.”
“Mrs Collier makes a very good garlic-and-butter-stuffed trout. You might want to ask her to prepare it
for you.”
“With those?”
“Yes, with those. Would you like to catch one? Take it home for supper?”
“I don’t have a fishing rod… Actually, I don’t know how to fish.”
“There’s more than one way to skin a cat, Jenny. And more than one way to land a trout.”
Mr Kalkowski smiles sidelong at her, then holds up a forefinger. He stands carefully, then hunkers down
again, balancing on two flattish stones as he reaches into the water. Jenny leans across to see what he
is doing.
“Do not allow your shadow to fall across him,” he says, dipping fingers below the surface to either side
of the gently undulating trout. The fingers wriggle as he draws nearer. The fish doesn't move.
Agog with concentration, Jenny watches as the fingers move closer, brush against silvery scales then,
reaching underneath, gently lift the fish from the water, where it lies calmly in his hands, speckled
scales gleaming opal and pearl in the light.
She stares at it. “Why doesn't it try to get away?”
He shakes his head. “No one really knows. One can speculate about perhaps a kind of hypnosis,
but….” He shrugs…. “…. who can say what passes through the mind of a fish?” He looks down at the
trout, still passive in his hands. “Do you still wish to take it home to Mrs Collier?
She screws up her face, feeling a little queasy. “Noooo... Let it go. Please.”
The old man nods. “I agree. When one has captured the beast with line and fly, it seems fairer, does it
not? The battle between man and beast. Yes, no? But this feels like a kind of betrayal. An abuse of
trust.”
He stoops, releasing the fish back into the water, where with a casual flick of the tail, it resumes its vigil
in the current. “Think of the story it could tell, Jenny, to its fellows, of its strange trip above the world of
water, only to return.”
She laughs. “Fish don’t tell stories.”
“Everything tells a story, Jennifer.” He stands again, slowly, placing his feet carefully as he returns to
his seat on the grassy hummock. “You should not dismiss something because it appears ordinary.
Instead, ask yourself what it can say to you….”
Her brows pucker...
“…. I see you do not believe me.” He casts around at the pebbled shoreline, then stooping, picks up a
stone. “This, for example.” He offers it to her.
She takes it, turning it over to sit smoothly in her palm. “It's a pebble. It's pretty, with all those stripes,
but it's still just a pebble.”
He raises a finger, tapping at the air. “But those stripes tell you a story….” She scrunches her face and
he taps the end of her nose with the finger. “That pebble was once part of a much larger layer of rock,
laid down millions of years ago as fine silt, perhaps at the bottom of a lake. The red stripes tell you that
when the silt settled, the water was calm and clear. It was exposed to the air above. The green
colouration tells you that something had changed. Something happened to cut off the air.”
She stares. “But how can you know something like that?”
He traces the lines with a finger. “The red you see there is the colour of compounds of iron in its
oxygenated condition. The green is that of iron compounds when they form without air, the water
stagnant for some reason. If we knew where this pebble came from, the bedrock from which it formed,
we could read the history of its landscape in the far past, in Deep Time….”
She gazes, awestruck, at the stone in her hand.
He continues, “So, from what you see in your palm there, we can begin to construct an image of the
past; perhaps a long-ago lake, or maybe a river delta, where the water level rose and fell. Perhaps
floods washed deep mud over the bottom, cutting off the air. Or possibly the land sank. This happens
with deltas. Whatever the detail, there is a story here, and it is not just a pebble.”
He taps it with a fingernail. “It is easy to read the words from a book, but much harder to read the world
around us. That is a learned skill.”
Her lips move as she turns it over in her hand, tracing the line of the stripes with a fingernail. “How
would I learn about things like that?”
“You should learn the rules of evidence, and for this, study the principles of geology. At home, I have a
book....”
She interrupts. “Why don't you teach things like this at school?”
He sniffs. “Most people are not interested, Jennifer. For most of them, to be able to read and write and
to know enough arithmetic to get through daily life is enough. I do not often meet the kind of enquiring
mind you have. It is my pleasure to be your teacher.
“Maybe if you did teach it, they would be interested?”
He sighs, leaning heavily on his stick. “I have tried. It was not well received. You will find as you grow
older, Jenny, that most people spend their whole lives living inside their own head.” His tone turns pithy.
“It is a pity that is such a small space for many.”
“I want to learn it all.”
He smiles. “A worthy, if lofty, ambition.”
Her words are confident and bright. “You can teach me.”
Her teacher raises his palms. “There are limits on what I can teach you, Jenny.”
“So, how do I learn it all?” She frowns. “From books?”
“I think Jenny, you should attend university. I believe you will prosper there. I can guide you through the
necessary examinations to qualify. I have no doubt you will absorb it easily.” He takes out his pipe from
a jacket pocket, tapping the bowl free of ashes. “Yes, for advanced learning, university is where you
should be.”
She twiddles with a grass-stalk, dismantling it slowly, unravelling long speared leaves from the stem,
examining the structure as she does so. “What happens after that?”
“After that, Jenny, you will have an education, and the tools of the mind to take on the world in your
own way. You will make your own life.”
“Can I borrow your geology book?”
“Of course you can. Walk with me back to my house. If you don’t mind, I may lean on your arm a little.”
*****