Unformed Landscape, Peter Stamm

On Sunday the pastor spoke of the water of life that poured out into the sea of eternity. Then, he said, every creature living there will swim freely. there willbe quantities of fish. Because as soon as this water comes, the salt water will heal, and everything the river touches will remain alive forever. -p.3

Thomas knew what he was after. When he started talking about marriage, it hadn't even crossed Kathrine's mind. His life represented a bold stroke through the unformed landscape of her life. Like the pistes for a snowmobile, marked with poles in the snow, his life cut across hers, with an objective and a destination. It was possible that Thomas himself didn't know why he had chosen this particular path, but he had put down the marker poles, and it was a way that could be gone, and that he was going to go with her. p.19-20

All the things he had told her. And what had she ever told him? He had never asked about anything in her life, and if she did happen to talk about it, he hadn't paid any attention. So she had ended up keeping her stories to herself. Her stories. p.45

What was done was done. That was what her father had always said to her mother, what's done is done. When he had to sell his boat, either because the fishing grounds were almost fished out, or the price of fish was going down, or because he was ill or not a good fish man, who could say. When he went to work in the fish factory, not difficult work, but he was already sick. And when Kathrine went to visit him in the factory, she was about fourteen, and asked him, isn't it boring to do the same thign all day long, he would say what's done is done. As if it didn't matter that he had once owned a boat. But it wasn't true. In the village, nothing was ever done. p.47

She thought of the fish moving in the depths, through the calm water, in darkness, suddenly being plucked up to the surface in a net, into the storm. Thousands of fish, squirming fish, pulled up onto the deck of the ship, an enormous body of fish, tipped into the hold, where they continued to wriggle and finally suffocated, or were killed by the fishermen. Katherine thought of the tuna fish in Boulogne, with their old, earnest faces that looked almost human. She thought of how people died. Whether you continued to try and swim. The brief moment when you went down, before you suffocated. When you stopped struggling for breath, stopped thrashing about with your arms. The instant in which he'd given up, and maybe swam a couple more strokes, not to get to the surface, there was no point, and he knew it. A couple of strokes. And the calm, the quiet under the water. The fact that the last moment is supposed to be happy. p.128-129