The God of Fish and Men

In a quiet town there lived a certain fisherman. He was a pious man, and faithful, and he lived alone in a small house, his wife having died some years before.

Each morning as he cast his nets the man would say his prayers, prayers as humble as his heart: seeking but rarely asking, expecting nothing. He prayed though he had never heard the voice of God reply. 

One bright morning the man readied his boat, loaded his nets, and shoved off into the lake. When he reached the deep cove where he often fished, he sat contemplating his sense of oneness with the air and the water and the fish. Then as he gathered the net to cast it over the side, the man began silently to pray: Great God, your will is mighty—

“Indeed.”

The voice so shocked the man that he dropped the net, and as he stumbled to retrieve it, he saw, there on the surface, the image of a fish rendered in sunlight. The image rippled over the last gulps of the lake around the net, then stabilized, blinking at him with its improbable eyelids. Its tail waved slowly back and forth; its oddly heavy lips opened and shut in the same slow rhythm.

“What are you?” asked the man.  

The image said nothing.

“You are a trick of the light. An illusion.”

The man waved his hand above the glittering fish to break the plane of light, but as his shadow fell on it the reflection reared from the surface of the water, striking up at him in a sudden flare of blue and yellow flames. He fell backward into the boat, his hand burning.

“All this talk, yet you do not recognize your Great God,” came the voice again from the water. It was a voice like the popping of a line of gunpowder, or the crust of old snow cracking.

“Great God – ” the man stammered, but the fish flicked its tail dismissively.

“It is forgiven, of course. Your kind are often blind to things of this sort.” It turned in profile and began to swim two-dimensional circles across the ripples of the wind. When it approached the boat, the light multiplied behind it in smooth geometric patterns until it resembled a great hunting shark; then by the time it reached the reeds it had shrunk to a guppy that meandered with an apparent absence of purpose, undulled by the shade. A stupid and unfortunate turtle extended its neck to snatch the loitering God from the surface and was immediately struck dead.

As God made its way back to the boat, the man mustered up the courage again to speak. “Great God, what do you wish of me?”

God came to a halt in the spot where it had first appeared. It resumed its attitude of silent consideration for a few moments, during which the man forgot to breathe. Then its heavy lips opened, and it said:

“Leave me alone.”

The man did not reply.

“Man? Do you understand?”

The man shook his head slowly. “Does this have to do with the fish somehow?” he managed to mutter.

God chuckled. “Of course not. I choose what form I wish, for my own reasons. Would you prefer I spoke to you as a lion, or a snake, or a man, perhaps? Or would you rather a still, small voice?” The man shrieked at these last words, spoken, it seemed, from inside both his ears at once.

“I ask again,” came the voice, returned now to its place upon the water. “Do you understand what I require?”

The man was so relieved to have God outside his mind again that he barely heard the question; he reflexively exhaled a silent prayer of thanksgiving.

God sighed. “Clearly you do not.”

The air in front of the man began to undulate like a sheet caught in a wind, and there appeared the fish again, still bright as sun on the water, but with edges that smoldered and burned the air around them until it flaked and blew like ash. “Leave me alone. It is a simple command, man. Do you understand it?”

The man turned his eyes from God’s image hovering before him in the boat. “Great God, I do not understand. Have I sinned against you? I have tried in all things to be humble, to be just and kind to my neighbors—”

“This is humility, man? To demand of God an explanation?”

The man bowed his head to the floor. “No, Great God. Forgive me.”

“Why must you always wonder at your own goodness, you men? Always requiring validation, always uncertain of the state of your hearts. Do you not know your own hearts? Can you not look within them just as well as I?

“I am weary of your need. I have set you in motion, I have given you your lives and a world to challenge you or delight you, I have given you one another, I have freed you to be as you wish, and still you require … Why do you require me to rate your goodness? Why must I always answer your call to judge?”

The man understood little of God’s exasperated oratory. Was it rhetorical? he wondered. Am I meant to answer these impossible questions?

God sighed again. “Cease your prayers, man. Live your life and let me be.” Then God turned and swam slowly away through the air until the man could no longer recognize its form against the morning sunlight.

He returned home hours later, empty handed, and did not close his eyes that night.

The next morning, however, he rose at his accustomed time to load his net and launch his boat. He rowed out to his cove and sat quietly as he always did, but his heart raced beneath his shirt. He waited. A dove cooed in the copse. The frogs sang their last morning songs. After a long while, the familiar sense of peace found him. His movements came of their own accord, in a smooth, comforting dance: gathering the net, turning at the waist, opening his arms to the water, and in his mind, Great God, your will is mighty –

The boat lurched, knocking him off his feet. A fisherman all his life, the man had never fallen from a vessel, yet now his boat bucked him like a horse, rocking dramatically each time he tried to stand. All at once it steadied, its bow nearly dipping below the surface, stern poised high in the air. The man held his breath, his knuckles white upon the prow. Then with a single violent sweep, the boat catapulted him forward into the water.

He flailed to the surface again, grasping blindly for the rowlock, and heaved himself, coughing, back over the side. 

“Now then.”

The voice of God paralyzed the man with a cold certainty of death.

“Don’t be so morbid,” it continued. “What do you take me for?”

“You are a just God,” the man mumbled, his face pressed to the boards. “You commanded me to cease my prayers, and I disobeyed your command. I am prepared to accept whatever punishment –”

He was interrupted by a squawk and a sting on the back of his head. He reached his hands up to protect himself from God, a small white egret with two hunks of his hair twined around its claws. The air snapped across its feathers as it buffeted him with its wings; then its slender orange feet appeared before his eyes, shuffling to find the right perch atop his one remaining net.

“I know habit when I hear it. I am not going to kill you over your addiction.”

The man watched God-as-bird preen under its wings. He wondered why this action was necessary, and what would happen to the flesh-and-blood creature when the Holy Spirit decided to disinhabit it.

“I am sorry, Great God,” the man said, blinking drops of murky water out of his eyes.

“Yes, yes, I know,” God replied. It continued to nip its feathers while tunelessly whistling through its long beak. The man watched, shivering. God seemed disinclined to do anything godlike, its own birdness having apparently captivated it.

After a lengthy silence during which God shook out its tail, picked at the cords of the net, and ate a bug, the man said, “If you don’t wish to punish me further, then why have you come, Great God? Forgive me, but what must I do?”

God turned its head to fix the man with one glassy yellow eye. It opened its beak, then clapped it shut again. The man waited. The calls of birds – birds that were not God – trilled across the water, disconcertingly normal. God stretched its wings with a hop. The man felt the minutes stretching out in front of him, and still God did not speak. What must I do? he wondered. Ought I to move? Should I say something? Is that what God expects?

Finally, he cleared his throat (God turned its eye to him in its briskly mechanical fashion) and said, 

“Great God, help me to understand. You ask me to leave you alone. Do you ask this of all men or only of me?”

“What difference would that make?” God’s beak clicked a rhythmic counterpoint to its response. “Do you feel more or less worthy if I ask it of you alone?”

The man pondered this. “I don’t know,” he responded. “Perhaps I don’t wish to think myself uniquely guilty.” Then he added, “I think it would give me strength to know that all men must meet the same requirements.”

“How should I expect the same of all men, when all men are not quite the same? I ask of each that thing which will achieve my ends of him. You are not alone, but neither are you the universe of men.” God violently scratched the back of its head with one clawed toe.

“It’s interesting to me, you men and your questions,” God continued. “You ask so many, but they’re rarely the ones whose answers you need.” It lifted itself onto the edge of the boat and trailed its bright beak in the water. Soon it froze, its plumage laid flat against its body. The man watched it closely. He had often watched birds with fascination, impressed by their speed, grace, and control. How odd that God as a bird was only equally lovely, and not more so.

Suddenly God’s neck extended with a coordinated jerk. It threw its head back to reveal a fish flapping brightly and desperately in its beak, which it gulped down with a halting, guttural noise resembling laughter.

“I am the god of fish and men, and here, I eat this creature though I require no sustenance,” God announced. “I allow men to live by destroying fish. Why do you not ask me of that?” And without waiting for an answer, it rose into the air and flew off across the water.

When the man returned home, he lay on his cot unmoving, stilling his mind to guard against accidental supplication. But he soon became unable to control his wandering thoughts.

He replayed each of his encounters with God, looking for patterns and clues; he scoured God’s words, collecting every stray shaving of possibility and molding them into one graspable, if haphazard, hope.

At the first light of dawn, the man sat up, grabbed paper, and began to write. He scribbled wildly until he’d filled several pages with questions. Then he slid into his boots and coat and hurried out of the house. He broke into a tripping run to the water, where his momentum thrust his boat, rocking wildly, into the lake. Propelled by expectation, he rowed hard and fast.

When he reached the cove he pulled in his oar and set it carefully next to him, suddenly shy of making any noise. He breathed four long, deep breaths while he waited for the boat to settle in the water. He didn’t close his eyes; he didn’t throw his net; he whispered: “Great God, hear my prayer.”  

If the man blinked, he was unaware of it. He did not turn his eyes from the bow. Yet God was there, sitting across from him, a wizened human form – man? woman? -- resting its hands on a sounding pole, its skin dark and leathery with sun, an unreadable expression lurking in its eyes. The man had the sense that God had always sat in that spot, and that it wasn’t time and space that had changed but the perception of his own mind.

“Some might call it unwise to seek out greater beings that have demanded your forbearance.”

The frozen crackle of that voice instantly chilled the man’s confidence. His thoughts flitted to the crumpled pages in his coat pocket and the questions they contained: stupid questions, certainly, wastes of God’s unlimited time, unwelcome, childish questions.

God sat across from him and sniffed.

“I have shown great patience with you, man. I admire your courage, but you cannot hold me hostage. Prayers or none, I will not return to you this way. Ask now, or not at all.” 

The man’s chest tightened. His eyes filled with tears. “How can you be this?” he asked. “Why?”

God cocked its head to the left. A few strands of silver hair dangled loosely about its ear. “I am no different than I have ever been. Do you seek to blame me for it now, because I do not fulfill your expectations? Did you think I would greet you with approval? Did you expect of your Great and Almighty God some gratitude for your obedience? Which of us disappoints you more deeply, man?” God’s tone was not unkind, but its words shook the man with shame of his own vanity.  

“Your ways are higher. You are a mystery, even now. Tell me you have some plan,” the man pleaded. “I don’t need to know what it is; I know I cannot understand it. But please, if you have any mercy at all, tell me there is some deeper reason behind this.”

God’s eyes, which moments ago contained galaxies, now showed only a convex reflection of the man’s grief-stricken face. “Why must you believe I have a secret motive in order to accept my request of you?” it asked. “Where is your faith, man? Must your God meet your conditions for goodness to earn your loyalty?”

“Faith?” The man spit the word with a vehemence even he found surprising. “Am I any less foolish than a child hunting fairies?” Perhaps it was a mercy that His forms till now were beasts, he thought, if He cannot even mimic human compassion. He looked up to see if this thought injured or angered God, but the face showed evidence of neither.

God reached out its hand and touched the man’s knee.

“Leave me alone, man,” it said. “I have told you my wish, and I will not tell it again.”

The man cried, “You say that, yet again you are here! Is that not some sign? If you truly wish to be free of me, why do you return? If you don’t want my prayers, why do you still listen for them? You betray yourself, Great God! Is there hope or is there none?” 

But all that was left of God was the dissipating weight of its hand on his knee.

The man blinked at the vacancy, his eyes refocusing on the far shore.

The crickets chirped, the dove cooed, the water lapped against the cradle of the boat. None bore the marks of God’s voice – not the horrible voice he now knew.  

The man cried out, “Great God! I pray you come!”

Nothing.

He braced his oar across the boat and pushed against it to rise partway, tightening his belly and unleashing a rage like a flare into the sky: “How dare you? How dare you, unjust God? Come! I accuse you! Come and answer me!”

The tendrils of his howls faded into unresponsive stillness.

The man collapsed blankly into his seat, his anger and energy suddenly spent.

He had no strength or will to row to shore again.

He would lean to the side, he thought. That was all.

He would lean until the boat tipped him into the water.

And then something else would happen, or nothing.

Perhaps God would meet him there as a hungry leviathan.

Perhaps God would not notice.

His hand, his wrist, his elbow slid into the water. His ribs pushed hard against the gunwale until he could feel the bruises blooming.

The boat would not tip.

A light rain began to fall percussively upon the lake, and the man watched his face break and reform in ripples on the surface. He remained unmoving so long that a small perch brushed unwittingly through his fingers. His hand clamped shut, trapping its tail in his fist, and he lifted the fish from the water. Its gills gaped while he held it aloft. Then he dipped it back into the lake and released it to dart away, cursing or grateful, to whatever fate it may find.