How did I come to this conclusion? Even I didn’t know. I thought a bit about our pair of fish. I wondered by what criteria had they been selected at the pet shop to share the container given to Pauline. It had probably been nothing but chance and their being opposite sexes. Perhaps they had been born in the same aquarium and therefore knew each other from before. Or maybe they had never seen the other before being placed in that round fishbowl they had so intimately shared. Could one speak of destiny in the fish world?

I know it sounds foolish when put like this, but my fish suffered by being separated, of that I am absolutely sure. I could sense it as distinctly as I had earlier sensed her fear and her companion’s arrogance. I told myself that most likely in living together, even with the female’s refusal to reproduce, they had developed a kind of affection or emotional dependency. Hence the gloominess that had been manifest in them ever since the day of the fight.

For several days our male was confined to less than five liters of water and without a single rock to hide behind. We had decided to keep him there while we figured out what to do with them. But my husband continued to stay late at the office and so in the entire week we didn’t find a single moment in which to discuss the fate of our fish. On Thursday I brought it up at dinner. Vincent threw me with his response:

“Actually, I think it’s an aberration for us to decide for them. It’s like being sent to family court.”

Rather than a joke, I realized the comment was an evasion. Deep down I wasn’t surprised. He’d been slipping away for months.

By Friday I couldn’t take it anymore and acted recklessly. I grabbed Pauline’s bowl in both hands and with a big splash returned the fish to the matrimonial tank. I then brought my face close to the glass to watch what would happen. After the whirlpool, the male swam downward, to just a few centimeters from the bookshelf. Once there, he stopped moving. The female acted as if nothing had happened. Little by little his mobility returned to him, as did his old habits. He spent a lot of time among the algae plants on the bottom, until the food appeared at the surface of the water. Then he rose like a torpedo, faster than his mate, and devoured as much food as his stomach would allow.