The truth was that this man, if there’d been some way to do it, would have wished to catch this fish in the fullness of its element, in the deep heart of the water, not the fish diminished, the dorado at the moment when it is no more than a yellow glint, a folded line of gold in the darkness of the water, that mere furtive brightness. It couldn’t be, of course. Perhaps, somewhere deep in things, the longing of this man was to merge with the fish, in some way be himself the fish.
He’d fought this battle several times, in several different places, and it had only stirred his longing. What wouldn’t he have given to hold on to that moment that could never be described, when with a spring it left the water, and he knew that he’d defeated the dorado! But then, once in the boat, he felt himself frustrated, as if he’d done things wrong and this wasn’t the dorado, just a clump of time-worn gold.
He’d noticed subtle differences existed in the fish. Some possessed a longer snout and some a rising lower jaw, quite like tarariras. The former is Salminus maxillosus, the latter Salminus brevidens. He hadn’t learnt these names, of course, but knew the variations, had a preference for the latter for its more aggressive look, that majestic head of gold that called to mind a sort of helmet. But finally, no matter, it might be the magnificent Salminus brevidens after all, but when everything was over and the fish began to die, in the bottom of the boat, he didn’t feel the joy that he’d imagined, but rather, sadness.
It was partly due to this that he fished on just as intensively, but not as keenly now. And then, as time went by, this intensiveness diminished too. It wasn’t that his feeling changed from one day to another, but that his irritation grew. And by the time he was almost north, he only fished to eat.
He went up with the river and, of course, with the dorado. And as he went upriver, his interest in anything but wandering from place to place, and always further north, dried up. The days were getting hotter, and not simply for the season, the summer now maturing, but because of his direction, towards the season’s provenance. Between the middle of the morning and the middle of the afternoon, everything was sleepy. The squealing of the rowlocks and the slapping of the oar blades stretched out longer in this torpor, acquiring a strange nature. The sounds didn’t come from near or far, but seemed to come from everywhere, the very air itself, and he was sure if he stopped rowing that the oars would sound all the same, as if they were an aspect of the summer.
He often disembarked in the middle of the morning, and lay there on the shore until the height of afternoon, in the shadows to begin with, and later, as they moved along, he lay out in the sun. He felt a curious pleasure when he stretched out in this manner, abandoning himself, oblivious to everything, even to the heat and to the presence of mosquitoes. At times he felt surprised at his capacity to bear it. At other times he thought this was the way to live these hours, there wasn’t a better way but in a kind of partial stupor. But for the most part at these times he thought of absolutely nothing.
The heat and the mosquitoes were always there on top of him and got mixed up together, until they were the same.
It’s true you can be driven round the bend by the mosquitoes. The only way to stop this is to clear them from your mind. Some folk say they bite those who get flustered or take notice of them. Just as with the skittish horse that knows which rider fears it and decides to throw him off. Others say they leave alone the folk who live around them. The best thing you can do with them is not to think at all, whether or not there’s truth in this, and even as they stuff themselves in handfuls up your nose. And this is what he did.
On more than one occasion, if anyone had seen him there abandoned on the shore, they’d have taken him for dead. He looked as if he were dead. But he kept a hazy notion of this sleepy, silent world that encircled where he lay, mostly an awareness of sensations that defined it: the heat or, rather, something of a sticky warmish liquid, and this humming of the heat that was the product of ten thousand buzzings mingled into one, the rubbings and the dronings and the acid smell that rose up from his body and his clothes.
His beard had grown and often itched, as if his face were dirty. In truth, it was a little, even though he took his daily dive into the river. His clothing was disgusting, as was his whole appearance. Over time, his clothes had come to have the smell of canvas, in which he’d slept at first, and now, and still quite frequently, on top of which he lay.
On two or three occasions, lying on the ground like this, the rising water wet him and he didn’t move away until the clothes stuck to his stomach.
But in the early morning and the late afternoon, when the heat was not as fierce, he seemed to come alive, and was pleased that it was summer. And then he had the night to come, in spite of the mosquitoes and the heat from the ground. Especially the moonlit nights, the splendour of the islands. It was enough to have a little moon to go out for a swim, unless it came up late and when the air had grown too chilly.
Living in this way a while, he got used to the notion that he travelled and was living with the summer and the river, completely in accord with them, that he was himself the summer and the river.
When his fishing interest waned and other things could interest him, other than this languid life of wandering the river, he dedicated time to the sail he’d planned to make. He made a good beginning, but he didn’t get to finish it until much later on, before he made his way back, in the clearings of Ñancay, when he roused himself abruptly from the lassitude of summer with a will to make his way back for midsummer at Morán. Here, at any time of year, the winds in from the sea are strong and throw up stormy waters. These winds have curious powers and tend to feel quite personal.
Thinking of this wind brought back his memories of the open sea, and with them his nostalgia. There isn’t a man among them can resist this smell of the sea.
It wasn’t long before this that the nauseous event took place, which maybe was related to his longing.
He was tired of eating fish. If you don’t prepare them well, all the fish out of the river taste the same. And even well-prepared, it’s the sauce that whets your appetite. Doing what you can to hide the constant taste of mud is what it comes to.
In Boga’s case, it wasn’t this taste of mud that put him off, in time he came to like the greasy taste of certain fish, like the flesh of yellow catfish, and the patí. If this is how you are when you live in such a region, you can count yourself a lucky man. But nevertheless, he grew a little weary of it all, and as fish goes down quite quickly, he was always hungry.
A little way beyond where the Paciencia Chico meets the Paciencia Grande, he saw a band of Pekin ducks, and thought that somewhere nearby there must also be a house. He stood up on the mast-hole seat and looked in all directions, all along the riverbanks, trying to locate it. He couldn’t see it anywhere, but knew there had to be one, and not so far away, somewhere hidden in the trees. The ducks went paddling on ahead, about five metres from the boat. Four Pekin ducks, smug and very white, and two of them at least were clearly still very young. The duck is not good for eating if it isn’t three months old, nor after it’s a year.
He’d put down both the oars and the ducks moved away. He bent down for the sea bread and he threw them little pieces. The ducks left off their paddling and gave him sideways looks, with their long necks stretching upwards. They began to come towards him, and at length they ate some bread. He went up to the stern, then, and laced a length of line around the gudgeon of the rudder. The movements that he made were all deliberate and careful, and every now and then he threw the ducks a bit more bread. He took the length of the line that was sitting on the water and fixed a fine hook onto it, an Alma Captiva. He baited it with sea bread, a decent looking lump that also had a bit of crust, and threw it on the water. He went back to the centre seat and tied the other loose end of the line around his leg. The point of this device was for the duck to take the sea bread and the hook to catch the duck. Then he’d pull the line, and the duck, which couldn’t quack, would be pulled down under water as the line ran round the gudgeon. With the duck below the boat, he would then unlace the line and retie it round a rowlock, to keep the duck from coming up, and set off with the oars again until he felt completely sure that no one would observe him. Rowing was a pleasure with the thought you had a decent meal assured.