He saw a flock of black widows out between the islands. The sky continued overcast, and now the light was sinking. It was also getting cold. This is winter: this sky and this silence, and the islands wrapped in mist. This vast, flattened solitude.
He rubbed his hands together and then he lit a cigarette. The boat and yellow tin were swept downriver by the current, which moved the silence to and fro, from one end of the channel to the other. He was going to let the net run on as far as possible this time, beyond Punta Temor. He’d set off once he’d pulled it in. And better to bring it in right now, going on like this would mean the night would catch him out, still sailing on the Bajo. Besides, he’d had enough. Yes, he’d pull the net in now.
He’d made a start already when he heard an engine coming, from the Honda Canal. The wind is turning round, he thought. The engine noise grew louder as he gathered in the net, and it went on getting louder still. It’s coming over here, he thought. His mind was on the noise more than on anything he did.
‘It’s a four-cylinder Gardner,’ he said then, out loud. ‘Blow me if it isn’t the Juanita Florida!’
He wasn’t sure why, but the thought it was the Juanita Florida made him glad. She was and she wasn’t a barge. And if she was a barge she had a very different air. He’d always seen the hull as belonging to a schooner.
He was on the last few metres when it came into the Sueco. He saw Long Fourcade standing up there at the stern, with his hands deep in his pockets and the tiller between his legs. Long had seen him, too, and he throttled down his engine once he’d passed the channel mouth and was in between the islands. He hugged the eastern shoreline, which is how you run the Sueco, but then he throttled down and turned the prow towards the boat. As he sailed in close he put the engine into neutral, and let his momentum bring him in.
‘Hey!’
‘Hey!’
‘How’s it going?’
‘Well, you know…’
Boga caught the final length of net and pulled the float aboard. Long used his gears to bring his vessel right alongside. Boga took the boathook and used it as a clasp around the gunwale of the barge. The rowing boat and barge began to drift along together.
Long started speaking as he came up from the stern.
‘I saw the Flecha de Plata, up by Isla Nueva.’
Then he leaned across the boat.
‘Bugger me, you’ve caught a boatful!’
Boga didn’t answer. He simply gave a shrug. He was taking out a cigarette. He looked at Long, through the smoke, standing there above him. It made him longer still. He was a fellow out of the ordinary, just as you imagined.
‘What’re you going to do with it?’
‘I’m not really sure yet.’
‘How’s that?’
‘I don’t know… I thought that I could sell it.’
‘Who are you going to sell it to?’
‘That’s what I’m not sure of.’
‘That’s really good! Didn’t you make a deal with someone?’
‘With old man Polestrina… but, you know, not a deal as such.’
Fourcade crouched right down, with his backside on his heels.
‘And the old man said exactly what?’
‘Nothing much at all, really.’
‘So throw it back, for what it’s worth. Has no one ever told you what an awkward sod he is?’
‘Maybe I heard something…’
‘There isn’t a word that covers it.’
‘Trying costs you nothing.’
‘Even that will cost you if you’re dealing with that piece of shit. Why didn’t you fix a deal with someone else?’
‘I let the time go by.’
‘So I see…’
Long lit a cigarette and spent a while in silence, eyes towards the Bajo. The Juanita Florida and the little boat ran on slowly together.
‘What price would you want for it?’ he said.
‘Well, it depends.’
‘I’m not up with these things, you know.’
‘It’s all pretty simple.’
‘How much are you asking?’
‘Just a price that’s fair.’
‘That’s clear enough…’
Long got to his feet.
‘The water’s about to turn,’ he said.
‘We’ve got a little while as yet.’
Long went back down to the stern and banged the tiller several times. He was a frank and steady fellow, and Boga liked him as a man. He’d seen him round the ports, where he would chat with all and sundry. A chap who never bothered you. Perhaps a little loud at times. He talked and joked in shouts, like a man who’s just arrived back after many months away. He lived on the Ignacio, or else the Caguané, he wasn’t sure. He’d seen him many times on the Juanita Florida, quite like him in its way, and exactly as he was now, with the tiller arm between his legs, his hands deep in his pockets, and with that worn-out leather jacket and a little bit of beard, and a black-and-white striped woollen hat.
‘They’re selling to the mongers now at thirty-five pesos… for a kilo, at the port. At least, that’s what I hear.’ He was coming from the stern. ‘Isn’t that the price?’
‘I can’t say that I know for sure.’
‘Yeah, I think that’s what it is.’
‘Maybe so, it could be.’
‘This isn’t the port up here, of course. It’s different up here.’
‘I can’t get it to the port.’
‘No, I can imagine…’
Long crouched down and, once again, he looked him in the eye.
‘I’ve had a thought,’ he said.
He looked at him in silence for a while.
‘I’ll take it in there for you, if that’s what you want… I won’t buy the fish, because I don’t want to mix in things I haven’t got the hang of, but I’ll take it into port for you and see what happens there.’
He was silent for a while. Finally he spoke.
‘Seems ok to me.’
‘I go right into San Fernando almost every day… I can pick the fish up here, when I’m on the way back anyway, and take it in the next day.’
‘All right.’
‘And on the way, I’ll bring you back.’
‘Yes, that sounds good. What I don’t have is some crates.’
‘That won’t be any problem.’
Long stood up tall again, and rubbed his hands together.
‘I think it might work out all right,’ he said, back at his shouting.
‘Why not?’ he said, at heart not very sure.
‘Let’s get going now!’
They tied the rowing boat to the Juanita Florida, hooked onto its stern, and sailed out from the Sueco with the daylight almost gone.
In the middle of the Bajo, and as if he didn’t care, he said:
‘What’s that over there?’
Long Fourcade looked at him, it seemed to be by habit that he looked you in the eye.
‘You’ve haven’t noticed it before?’
He was a forthright man at that.
‘Only now, this morning,’ he said, a touch annoyed.
The other showed amazement by a tilting of his head.
‘It’s been there for a while now. It turned up there one morning, after a southeaster.’
He thought about it for a while, remembering the storm that had ripped apart his sail.
‘Since March, then,’ he said.
‘Yeah, I think it was…’
They were silent for a while.
‘It’s a shame.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘It’s a real damned shame!’
‘Yes, it is…’
They were silent once again. Now the night had fallen.
‘What boat is it anyway?’ he said, a little hurriedly.