babbling bundle of nerves—and for several months there was little to show for it. Then suddenly the apartment started to fill with furniture, and meat appeared on the table with increasing regularity.
The source of their new-found wealth was one of the many harebrained schemes Eusebio was always hatching. Most of them foundered, the triumph of wild optimism over common sense. This one was no different, except that it worked. They bought show programs from theater doormen, selling them on at a profit to errant husbands or wives in need of an alibi for their whereabouts that evening, something to drop in front of their unsuspecting spouses. As the business grew, they extended the service to include used ticket-stubs from senior ushers. Clients were sourced through a spreading network of saloon barmen, and runners were employed to handle the distribution.
Reduced, as they became, to the position of overseers, Eusebio and their father spent more time around the apartment. Dinner was always a riotous affair—laughter in the home was more precious than gold plate, Eusebio used to say—and it was generally followed by several hands of
The business continued to prosper, the money kept rolling in, and before long they moved to a much larger three-room apartment on the second floor. This was a matter of grave concern for Irena, who believed that to relocate downwards in the same building brought bad luck.
She was wrong.
At midnight on 16 January 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution came into effect.
Prohibition, thought Conrad, without Prohibition I wouldn’t be standing here on the ocean beach, casting into the surf. Not with much success, as it happened. The prospect of landing a fish for his supper was fading fast.
He reeled in, cut a fresh length of squid and fastened it to the hook. Five more casts, he told himself, then he’d throw in the towel.
On the fourth cast he felt a bite and struck. The line thumped taut; the rod craned its slender neck. Big enough for supper, and then some. But what was it? Was he right? Could they be here already, so early in the season?
‘Damn. Hell. Damn. Damn…’
He glanced left. Twenty yards down the beach a woman was hopping around at the water’s edge, straining to examine the sole of her bare foot. She lost her balance and tumbled backwards on to the sand. She looked over at him helplessly, and as she did so, the tension went out of the rod.
The fish was making a play for freedom, running at the shore. She hadn’t slipped the hook, there was still life in the line, he could feel the tremor in it. He reeled in as fast as he could, just fast enough as the fish broke to the westward. Any more slack and the ploy would have worked. But he had her now, she was tiring, resigned to the inevitable. No. She broke again, running eastward this time, stripping twenty yards of line from the reel. A fighter.
Experienced.
‘Excuse me.’
Not the first time she’s felt the sharp taste of steel in her mouth. He felt bad that it wasn’t going to work this time, that her bag of tricks wouldn’t save her.
‘Excuse me.’
Did the fish have as strong a sense of who he was, connected as they were by the line?
‘Excuse me.’ The indignation of the delivery struck home this time. He couldn’t afford to turn away, but answered nevertheless.
‘Yes?’
‘I’ve cut myself. I’m bleeding.’
He was drawing the fish into the surf now. It leaped briefly and he smiled. ‘Ha!’
‘Is that all you can say? Ha!?’
‘Give me a minute.’
‘A minute?’
‘Less.’
He hauled the fish up on to the sand beyond the wash, pinned it there then struck it behind the head with the handle of his knife. Hard. Only then did he turn.
‘Let’s take a look,’ he said.
Beneath the blood he could see that the cut was long but not deep, running from the ball to the heel of her foot. It would mend itself without assistance, no need for stitches.
The offending spear of metal was poking from the packed sand just nearby.
‘Flotsam,’ said Conrad.
‘Oh really? Not jetsam?’
‘Wreckage from a boat, probably a merchant ship. We still get a lot of stuff cast up. From the war, you know, the U-boats.’
‘That’s very interesting. And what about my foot?’
Conrad prized the object from the sand. It was a small lump of wood pierced by a jagged shard of metal— shrapnel embedded there by some mighty explosion, a fossilized moment of devastation.
‘You’ll live,’ he said.
She used him as support until they reached the steepest part of the frontal dune, where she grew too weak to hop further. Conrad abandoned the rod by a clump of beach grass and took her up in his arms.
