He said: Either change the water every three days, and stick to that. Or change it once a week, but only on a weekly basis. If you change the timing randomly, the fish won't live past a month.
I was surprised and stared with wide eyes: Do fish really have such an accurate sense of time?
I'm usually able to liven up the atmosphere, but my dramatic reaction didn't seem to affect him this time. He said plainly: "Before we started using watches and alarm clocks, we also had a good sense of time. The light and darkness of natural sunlight, the body's alertness and fatigue...It's to eliminate curiosity that people wanted to obtain accurate time through external devices."
"Even if that fish...senses time," I borrowed the word "sense" that he just used, it sounded very awkward to me. "Why can't it accept irregular water changes?"
"Taking a fish out of its familiar fish tank is quite distressing for it. Changing water every three days, it gets used to that rhythm as a natural law. If that ritual is gone one day, it starts to feel unsettled. If feeding and water changes become random, do you know what a fish experiences before its death?" Even when speaking of such distress, his words carried no emotion.
For someone who usually doesn't even have time to feel the taste of food, this was the first time I was led to think about the natural rhythms and psychological pressures of a fish's life. I was shocked by his sensitivity and attentiveness. But from his caring for these tropical fish, I sensed a bleakness that comes after penetrating life's mysteries.
Then he said he'd go to the kitchen to get some food. I had been bouncing around since morning, and was hit by a wave of fatigue at this moment. I curled my legs up on the sofa, closed my eyes to reflect on the fish's existence, and my mind drifted away.
Magically, my long unresolved insomnia disappeared without warning that night.
Yes, the moment he turned to walk into the kitchen, I fell asleep on the sofa. I slept until the next day's sunlight streamed from the curtain cracks onto the blanket by my shoulder.
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