It was a weaver fish. We had been primed to identify it as a weaver, having an hour earlier read the poster at Sheringham lifeboat station warning of its prevalence. The RNLI's mugshot of the fish that now lay before us did not do it any favours. From its crude realism, we might have been tempted to identify any small suspicious piscine as a weaver following our contemplation of the rules for the treating of its venom.
The idea for such a fish was already in our thoughts. Somewhat inevitably, after reading the poster, our discussion had earlier turned to other vicious fish (vicious or malicious? cf. Beasley Street) that might be stepped upon (e.g. an acquaintance's stonefish story, and a childhood friend's jellyfish sting).
And even more inevitably, we speculated upon the protocols for treating sea-stings with whatever urine might be to hand (for example, would it not be traumatising to a child, already in a state of anguish, for it be incomprehensibly subjected to the direct stream of another's urine? Perhaps, it would be better to fill a bottle first). In any case, according to the RNLI's poster, weaver fish toxins are not treated with urine but break down in hot water... the hotter the better.
Upon closer inspection we found we were not mistaken, it really was a weaver fish. It had just then been thrown out of the receding sea, and lay fresh and evil at our feet. We were fully prepared to accept it as a sign of the dusk unfurling itself like a stain in water. It seemed like a telegraphed intention, a message landed up just there on the desolate pebbles between Sheringham and Weybourne.
The weaver was beautiful, pale like a barbed treasure... seeming not so much dead as having been dug up, the artifactual evidence of an earlier world. Picture it being squeezed from out of the body of the sea and landing before us. I had not the time to give voice to my lofty association that 'it had become a glimmering girl,' before it suddenly began to convulse. Quick, how should we return it to the sea? How should we save it?
Not by hand and risk its violence. Not one of us was tempted to touch it. In my knapsack ("'you have no provisions with you.'/'I need none [...] No provisions can save me [Kein Eßvorrat kann mich retten].'"), I was carrying a GPS tracking device, a cap, an Opinel folding knife, a neckerchief, several tampons, safety pins, three small bars of nougat, a waterproof bag in a pouch, aspirin for heart attacks, a small bottle of tea tree oil and one of lavender oil (for insect bites), a box of matches, three pens (several notes on the political references in the mythic figure of the 'broken sandal' and possible associations with the legend of Jason).
There was also a pair of compact binoculars, sticking plasters, a torch, a 1.5L water bottle, money, a pack of paper tissues, a spare pair of socks, a comb that is also a ruler (from a Christmas cracker), several elastic bands, some hair bands, a credit card shaped swiss army multitool (comprising a paper-opening knife, a nail file/screwdriver, a pen, a tweezers, a scissors, a pin, a toothpick), a block of post-it notes, a compass and a pack of playing cards.
I was also carrying two books (not ordinarily associated with night walking): a recent translation of Clarice Lispector's Agua Viva and a separately published extract of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Grand Inquisitor (from The Brothers Karamazov). The first of these had been recommended by the editor of Letters Journal as part of my set winter reading assignment whilst the same source had kindly sent me the Dostoyevsky some years earlier.
To effect our rescue, we decided to use the The Grand Inquisitor as a lever to manoeuvre the uncooperative creature into my cap and thereby transport it back to the edge of its world. Although it was difficult to tell for sure, the fish seemed to revive amongst the churning waves... or at least, the sea reclaimed it, animating it, sucking it back into the ebbing tide.
And who is to say whether that same fish might not live to skulk beneath the sand of North Norfolk's tidal shallows, and one day painfully stick the foot of some unwary, shoeless, child, spoiling its holiday frolics, and inducing a lifelong fear of the sea... that was the ethical conundrum which entertained us as we walked on beneath the last flittings of some late to the nest martins.
