Language Laughs no. 1: Pig/Porco

Transportation in Portugal: A Survival Guide

Rosa Robalo's Tail

This New Years Eve my family walked to a kind of smelly and sickening peixaria in Carnide and bought a fish to bake in salt (peixe ao sal) for dinner. So, I’m including her tail (I mean tale).

Rose Robalo
A Fish Tail

The tail of Rose ended up on my dad’s plate, but the tale of Rose is going to end up on my blog.

Rose and Grumblebee (or Grumy for short) were friends. Grumy was a tiny fish, the kind any fisherman would throw back. Rose was a Robalo. One night they went out to find food together. Rose had a bad tapeworm, so her senses were a little off. And she was ravenous. Suddenly, she spotted some food floating in front of her. “Ooooooooh... foooood... foooood...” she wailed. “Er, Rose, that’s bait. Don’t...” started Grumy. Rose was slowly gliding towards the bait. “Rose,” said Grumy. “Rose. Rose. ROSE! NO!” Rose reached for the bait and drawled, “Muuuuuust haaaaaaave foooooooooooooood!” Now Grumy was frantic. “NO! NO! AAAAAAAAAH! NOROSEWAITDON’TTOUCH...” But Rose snapped up the bait and was instantly yanked out of the water. “That!” Grumy’s lip began to quiver. Soon he was sobbing into a kelp. “I-I-I t-told her n-not to t-t-t-touch thaaaaat,” he wailed. “N-now I’m all a-alone w-w-without any frieeeeeeeeeeeeeeends. I-I-I told her... I-I w-warned her... OHHHHH!”

Meanwhile, Rose recovered her senses and thought, “I am so stupid! I ate the bait and now I’m going to pay.” And she did. The fisherman slit her stomach open before he took her to the peixaria. There she sat in ice all night. “Ugh! Ow! They can’t do anything worse than this to me!” she told a fish lying next to her. That fish’s name was Tiago, and he was uglier than anything.

Tiago was a Tamboril, and he had lived in a large green kelp at the end of Morningfish Lane with his wife Siena and their four guppies, Squiddley and Diddley, who were twin twelve-year-olds (in fish years, of course), Missy, who was a ten-year-old at the time and is now a famous author, and little Kelpy, who had a tragic death similar to that of his father when he was only seven. Tiago and Rose talked and talked. They soon became good friends. They shared secrets and jokes and stories, to keep their minds off of the pain from what the fisherman had done, and the pain from missing friends and family. “Kelpy is the cutest little guppy!” Tiago told Rose. “And Missy makes up the nicest stories. Yesterday she told me one about a super fish that saves all the fish that are going to be cooked.” “She knows about fish-cooking?” asked Rose. “I thought very few fish knew that.” “Well,” said Tiago. “I am one of those few fish. It makes for terrifying bedtime stories.”

Then there are terrifying awakenings. The next day, “they” did something even worse to Rose and Tiago. Tiago was the first to go. A lady wearing very high heels and a fancy dress entered the fish shop (the pixaria). “Eu queria este peixe,” she said. Her Portuguese was correct, but judging from her accent, she was from France. The fishmonger picked up Tiago. She ripped off his scales and pulled out his guts. Rose wanted to look away, but she was too weak from loss of blood, the tapeworm, and there not being much water to breathe. Instead, she watched her friend die.

Okay, if this is getting too gruesome or tragic for you stop reading. But, most of my stories are gruesome and tragic.

Grumy sat alone in the deep blue sea. He, like all fish, knew to avoid bait. But he, too, was one of the very few fish who knew what happens to a fish when he is pulled onto the shore by a hook. He knew what was happening to Rose.

A family then entered the shop. The mom and dad ordered a whole fish and some fillets. The two small children went wild, and the oldest girl tried to keep them under control. Rose was so wooziated that she couldn’t understand what the parents were saying until the fishmonger picked her up. “Oh, no,” thought Rose. “Oh, no! I was soooooo stupid. I didn’t listen to Grumy. And now that whole fish they ordered is me!” Poor Rose barely had time to say her prayers before she felt a cold blade on her back. She struggled not to faint as her innards were yanked out. They left her scales on for roasting her, buried in salt. She listened to the fishmonger explain about how her skin would come off in strips after being roasted in salt and that you could eat her head, too. “My head! Goodbye, Grumy,” she thought. “I’ll see you someday. See you soon, Tiago.”

Now, you might be thinking that she’s going to be saved. Well...

With a last horrible burst of pain, Rose’s soul soared past Lisbon’s water-logged clouds. She floated to fish heaven, where she and Tiago watched her salty, roasted tail land on my father’s plate.

THE END

Something to end up with: A fish poem (my first poem in Portuguese)

O peixinho pequenino
Mordeu o peixe grande
No nariz.

O peixe grande
Quer um penso
Mas o peixinho está feliz.

For those of you who don’t understand Portuguese, the gist of the poem is that a self-satisfied little fishy chomps a disgruntled larger fish on the nose.