YES; ONE WOULD THINK the carp had died. The gardener was certain of it: he brought with him a net to drag the fish out from the water. As he neared the pond, he spied a pale shape slipping beneath the surface—not a shape but a shade, belonging perhaps to a ghostly carp. Upon closer inspection, however, the gardener found the fish very much alive; the accident had simply drained him of color.
After his encounter with the lightning bolt, the carp resumed his lazy circles about the pond. Instead of resembling a great golden shield, flashing in the green depths of the water, the fish was now mistaken, by turns, for a sunken chamberpot, an abandoned bedsheet, for the swollen arm of a drowned woman.