He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream
and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the
first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days
without a fish the boy’s parents had told him that the old man was
now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of
unlucky and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which
caught three good fish the first week. It made the boy sad to see
the old man come in each day with his skiff empty and he always
went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or the gaff and
harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast. The sail was
patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of
permanent defeat.
The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of
his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer
the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his
cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his
hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the
cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as
erosions in a fishless desert.
Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the
same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.
“Santiago,” the boy said to him as they climbed the bank from
where the skiff was hauled up. “I could go with you again. We’ve
made some money.”
The old man had taught the boy to fish and the boy loved him.
“No,” the old man said. “You’re with a lucky boat. Stay with
them.”
“But remember how you went eighty-seven days without fish and
then we caught big ones every day for three weeks.”
“I remember,” the old man said. “I know you did not leave me
because you doubted.”
“It was papa made me leave. I am a boy and I must obey
him.”
“I know,” the old man said. “It is quite normal.”
“He hasn’t much faith.” “No,” the old man
said. “But we have. Haven’t we?”
“Yes,” the boy said. “Can I offer you a beer on the Terrace and
then we’ll take the stuff home.”
“Why not?” the old man said. “Between fishermen.”
They sat on the Terrace and many of the fishermen made fun of the
old man and he was not angry. Others, of the older fishermen,
looked at him and were sad. But they did not show it and they
spoke politely about the current and the depths they had drifted
their lines at and the steady good weather and of what they had
seen.
The successful fishermen of that day were already in and had
butchered their marlin out and carried them laid full length across
two planks, with two men staggering at the end of each plank, to
the fish house where they waited for the ice truck to carry them to
the market in Havana. Those who had caught sharks had taken them to
the shark factory on the other side of the cove where they were
hoisted on a block and tackle, their livers removed, their fins cut
off and their hides skinned out and their flesh cut into strips for
salting.
When the wind was in the east a smell came across the harbour
from the shark factory; but today there was only the faint edge of
the odour because the wind had backed into the north and then
dropped off and it was pleasant and sunny on the Terrace.
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