The Fish Shop Owner's Wife

Abstract

There was something about the shop owner's wife that made me think she herself was turning into a fish. Even though the trans formation occurred slowly and painfully and over a period of years, it was on a cold day in December, early in the process, that I first came to realize what was happening. This gave me the opportunity to study the inexplicable and?for the normal consciousness?unac ceptable phenomenon as it unfolded in the prism of the present, rather than having to look back at the whole event through the impressionable fog of memory. The shop stood?and still stands?on the broad and busy shopping street that twists from the northern end of town toward the southeast. The street itself undergoes a transformation from its origin in the traditional neighborhoods with their tiny, dingy kiosks and sellers of lottery tickets and tobacco, into the vibrant Arab quar ter with its Turkish delights, hairdressers, and shops full of silk and taffeta. In the middle of this street the shop stood as if it consti tuted a threshold between two worlds. Its presence was so quiet and discreet that people who had been living in its close vicinity for years, and who passed it many times during the day, never even noticed it and bought their instead at the supermarket or over the Internet. The fa?ade was covered with tiny black and gray tiles; above the entrance a sign announced fish & game in red capitals. The first time I became aware of the wife's transformation was just before New Year's Day 2005. I went to the shop to buy some fillets of cod, as is our custom for New Year's, and I couldn't help noticing how the shop owner's wife moved as if the air consisted of water. She seemed to pull herself past the counter, negotiated the edge of the table, and propelled herself across the room, toward the window where the cod was displayed. The actual selection of the cod, which involved delicately placing the pieces in a small, transparent bag, and her subsequent retreat to the scales behind the counter, consumed so much time that her husband, the shop owner, was able to serve two customers, one