Peces de colores

Peces de colores, the two fish in the round aquarium in Gershom Wald’s library, are a recurring presence in Shmuel Ash’s daily life at the house. Almost motionless behind the illuminated glass, they become more than a detail of the room: Shmuel watches them during Wald’s long talks, feeds them as part of his routine care, and turns to them when the grief between the two men leaves him unable to speak. Their quiet confinement gives the fish a modest but persistent place in the novel’s portrait of care, loneliness, and the limits of consolation.

The Aquarium in the Library

Each afternoon, shortly after four, Shmuel washed, dusted his thick beard with talcum powder, descended the spiral iron stairs, and lit the kerosene heater in the library. He sat opposite Wald’s black desk in a wicker chair covered with embroidered cushions. From there, he sometimes fixed his eyes on the pair of fish behind the glass of the round, illuminated aquarium. They looked at him open-mouthed, with hardly any movement, while Wald spoke. The fish’s stillness is set against the room’s small, repeated actions: Shmuel serves tea, adjusts the heater’s wick so its flame will burn blue and steadily, or opens a narrow gap in the shutters to admit rain-laden air from the pines.

The aquarium makes the fish visible but keeps them apart from the people watching them. Shmuel’s attention settles on them during Wald’s sermons, not because they answer or interrupt, but because their silent presence offers a point of focus amid the old man’s sustained speech. This recurring image belongs to the texture of their shared evenings: Wald talks, Shmuel listens and attends to household tasks, and the fish remain behind glass, present without entering their conversation.

A Recurring Duty of Care

Feeding the fish becomes one element of Shmuel’s practical care for Wald. In the evening, Shmuel heats the porridge prepared by the neighbor Sara de Toledo and serves a portion to the old man; later, after the news, he brings Wald a tray of medicines with six or seven pills and capsules and a glass of tap water. The aquarium belongs to this same domestic pattern of watching, serving, and attending to needs. Wald explicitly tells Shmuel to feed the fish when he wants him to leave him alone and go upstairs. The instruction gives the task a double place in the household: it is an ordinary duty, but also a way for Wald to end an encounter and withdraw into solitude.

The request is especially striking because it comes after Wald has disclosed the circumstances of his son’s death: the night of April 2, 1948, near Sha'ar HaGai, on the Tel Aviv–Jerusalem road. He falls silent, then trembles and speaks in a near-whisper before directing Shmuel to the aquarium. Shmuel removes the barely touched porridge, apologizes for his question, and goes to the fish. The small, familiar task follows a revelation that neither man can readily absorb; the routine continues where conversation has broken off.

Fish, Silence, and Grief

A later exchange makes the emotional significance of feeding explicit without turning it into a cure. Wald asks whether he lost his only son merely to delay a disaster that, as Shmuel believes, cannot be prevented. Shmuel wants to draw the old man’s rough, unfinished head toward his chest and offer comfort, but recognizes that there is no comfort in the world. He restrains himself and keeps silent rather than add to Wald’s pain. Instead, he approaches the aquarium and feeds the fish.

The gesture does not answer Wald’s question or alter the loss. Its significance lies in what Shmuel can do when words seem inadequate: he tends to the fish, then goes to the kitchen, where Sara de Toledo’s potato salad with mayonnaise and vegetables has replaced the usual porridge. Wald eats in silence. Near eleven, Shmuel pours each of them a small glass of cognac, without waiting for Wald’s approval; after they part, he eats the remaining salad, washes the dishes, and goes upstairs. Feeding the fish is thus one quiet act within a longer evening of shared food, silence, and care, not a resolution of grief.

Movement and Confinement

Wald sometimes speaks about the migration of birds and the movement of shoals of fish in the sea. Both, he says, possess a mysterious power of orientation that scientific logic cannot even begin to guess. The aquarium fish are not themselves described as migrating; they remain in a round tank, barely moving. The contrast places their bounded existence beside Wald’s account of movement across the natural world, whose direction resists easy explanation.

That contrast also complements the fish’s recurring role in the house. In the library, they are watched through glass and drawn into a predictable cycle of feeding, while Wald’s conversation ranges among politics, history, and questions that cannot be settled. At the moments when his speech falters or Shmuel cannot find words, the fish return the scene to a simple, concrete action. They do not speak for either man; their continuing presence gives care a form that can persist even when explanation and consolation fail.