The Golden Fish
by
Sometimes in spring, when the big river flooded its banks and made lakes of the meadows, and the little rivers flowed deep, old Peter spent a few days netting fish. Also in summer he set night-lines in the little river not far from where it left the forest. And so it happened that one day he sat in the warm sunshine outside his hut, mending his nets and making floats for them; not cork floats like ours, but little rolls of the silver bark of the birch tree.
And while he sat there Vanya and Maroosia watched him, and sometimes even helped, holding a piece of the net between them, while old Peter fastened on the little glistening rolls of bark that were to keep it up in the water. And all the time old Peter worked he smoked, and told them stories about fish.
First he told them what happened when the first pike was born, and how it is that all the little fish are not eaten by the great pike with his huge greedy mouth and his sharp teeth.
* * * * *
On the night of Ivanov’s Day (that is the day of Saint John, which is Midsummer) there was born the pike, a huge fish, with such teeth as never were. And when the pike was born the waters of the river foamed and raged, so that the ships in the river were all but swamped, and the pretty young girls who were playing on the banks ran away as fast as they could, frightened, they were, by the roaring of the waves, and the black wind and the white foam on the water. Terrible was the birth of the sharp-toothed pike.
And when the pike was born he did not grow up by months or by days, but by hours. Every day it was two inches longer than the day before. In a month it was two yards long; in two months it was twelve feet long; in three months it was raging up and down the river like a tempest, eating the bream and the perch, and all the small fish that came in its way. There was a bream or a perch swimming lazily in the stream. The pike saw it as it raged by, caught it in its great white mouth, and instantly the bream or the perch was gone, torn to pieces by the pike’s teeth, and swallowed as you would swallow a sunflower seed. And bream and perch are big fish. It was worse for the little ones.
What was to be done? The bream and the perch put their heads together in a quiet pool. It was clear enough that the great pike would eat everyone of them. So they called a meeting of all the little fish, and set to thinking what could be done by way of dealing with the great pike, which had such sharp teeth and was making so free with their lives.
They all came to the meeting–bream, and perch, and roach, and dace, and gudgeon; yes, and the little ersh with his spiny back.
The silly roach said, “Let us kill the pike.”
But the gudgeon looked at him with his great eyes, and asked, “Have you got good teeth?”
“No,” says the roach, “I haven’t any teeth.”
“You’d swallow the pike, I suppose?” says the perch.
“My mouth is too small.”
“Then do not use it to talk foolishness,” said the gudgeon; and the roach’s fins blushed scarlet, and are red to this day.
“I will set my prickles on end,” says the perch, who has a row of sharp prickles in the fin on his back. “The pike won’t find them too comfortable in his throat.”
“Yes,” said the bream; “but you will have to go into his throat to put them there, and he’ll swallow you all the same. Besides, we have not all got prickles.”