Free Fish Change Direction in Cold Weather by Pierre Szalowski Page A

she leaned forward to peer into the
water, her breasts nearly burst out of the thin material of the nightie – but Boris did not notice a thing, preoccupied as he was with his makeshift aquarium. At the bottom of the bath where
the plug should have been there was a face flannel. One hundred and nineteen centilitres drained through the cloth per minute. By maintaining a fine trickle of water from the tap at forty-two
degrees, at a steady volume, Boris had succeeded in the incredible challenge of keeping the temperature of the water at a constant thirty-two degrees.
    ‘It’s all written on here!’
    Julie took the sheet the Russian genius handed to her, but she hardly looked at it. Thermal equations, with face flannels thrown in, weren’t really her thing. But she did marvel at the
sight of the fish swimming in her bath. It was one of the most beautiful things she’d seen in a long time. Even Brutus thought it was a pretty sight. He’d managed to jump up on the sink
to watch the aquatic performance. Julie pointed to one of the fish.
    ‘What’s his name, the green one with orange stripes?’
    ‘Number One.’
    Boris paid no attention to her bare leg as he reached under her knee for a little pad of paper. He turned back to the bath, flipped over a few pages and stopped at a drawing where the basic
trajectories of each of the fish were pencilled in different colours. He pointed to the path drawn in green and dotted with orange.
    ‘That’s him!’
    Leaning into the bath, his face practically in the water, Boris followed Number One’s progression for a long time. Then he turned to the trajectories of Number Two and Number Three. He
finished with a meticulous observation of Number Four. He placed his hands against the edge of the bath to push himself up. Julie turned to him. He did the same, his eyes popping out, and
instinctively she covered her breasts. He quickly turned back to the water.
    ‘Look! Look! They’re all on track again!’
    Boris grabbed Julie’s bare shoulders with his manly hands. He shook them unrestrainedly, causing his charming hostess’s breasts to bounce so vigorously that a wardrobe malfunction
nearly ensued. But she let him shake her – he wasn’t even looking that way. His big blue eyes were staring intensely at her face.
    ‘It’s a miracle!’

Tuesday, 6 January 1998
    ‘At noon several pylons in the region of Drummondville collapsed beneath the weight of the ice. Now in Montreal up to seven hundred thousand households are without
power. The Red Cross has set up its first emergency shelters. The forecast is for continued bouts of freezing rain. This weather has already broken a number of records.’

CAN THINGS LIKE THIS REALLY HAPPEN?
     
     
     
    ‘Don’t tell them you did it, otherwise they’ll strangle you!’
    A Hydro-Québec truck had just stopped in front of us. The two men in the cab, their eyes red, their faces drawn, were eating a sandwich while they looked at the long list of places they
still had to go to. It started me thinking. Not Alex, though.
    ‘You see that? With their messy hair they look like Gremlins!’
    Maybe they had kids who were sad they couldn’t be with them. Maybe their wives had made dinner but they didn’t have time to go home. I remembered the images I’d seen on the
news at noon. They showed these enormous electricity pylons collapsing under the weight of the ice. ‘
It is unlikely that the situation will improve, since freezing rain has been forecast
for the entire day tomorrow. Nearly seven hundred thousand households are now without power . . .
’
    Including my dad. He had called that morning to tell us about his day, but mainly to inform us that the generator was holding up.
    ‘But you should see the way it guzzles gas. I had to go to the gas station twice!’
    He was not the only one going to fill up his jerry can for his generator. The gas station manager had had to step in. People were shoving, squabbling.
    ‘No more than