第6章 Tired of the Old Man

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It was getting into the afternoon and the boat still moved slowly and steadily.But there was an added drag now from the easterly breeze and the old man rode gently with the small sea and the hurt of the cord across his back came to him easily and smoothly.

Once in the afternoon the line started to rise again.But the fish only continued to swim at a slightly higher level.The sun was on the old man's left arm and shoulder and on his back.So he knew the fish had turned east of north.

Now that he had seen him once,he could picture the fish swimming in the water with his purple pectoral fins set wide as wings and the great erect tail slicing through the dark.I wonder how much he sees at that depth,the old man thought.His eye is huge and a horse,with much less eye,can see in the dark.Once I could see quite well in the dark.Not in the absolute dark.But almost as a cat sees.

The sun and his steady movement of his fingers had uncramped his left hand now completely and he began to shift more of the strain to it and he shrugged the muscles of his back to shift the hurt of the cord a little.

“If you're not tired,fish,”he said aloud,“you must be very strange.”

He felt very tired now and he knew the night would come soon and he tried to think of other things.He thought of the Big Leagues,to him they were the Gran Ligas,and he knew that the Yankees of New York were playing the Tigres of Detroit.

This is the second day now that I do not know the result of the juegos,he thought.But I must have confidence and I must be worthy of the great DiMaggio who does all things perfectly even with the pain of the bone spur in his heel. What is a bone spur?He asked himself.Un espuela de hueso. We do not have them.Can it be as painful as the spur of a fighting cock in one's heel?I do not think I could endure that or the loss of the eye and of both eyes and continue to fight as the fighting cocks do.Man is not much beside the great birds and beasts.Still I would rather be that beast down there in the darkness of the sea.

“Unless sharks come,”he said aloud.“If sharks come, God pity him and me.”

Do you believe the great DiMaggio would stay with a fish as long as I will stay with this one?He thought.I am sure he would and more since he is young and strong.Also his father was a fisherman.But would the bone spur hurt him too much?

“I do not know,”he said aloud.“I never had a bone spur.”

As the sun set he remembered, to give himself more confidence,the time in the tavern at Casablanca when he had played the hand game with the great negro from Cienfuegos who was the strongest man on the docks.They had gone one day and one night with their elbows on a chalk line on the table and their forearms straight up and their hands gripped tight.Each one was trying to force the other's hand down onto the table.There was much betting and people went in and out of the room under the kerosene lights and he had looked at the arm and hand of the negro and at the negro's face.They changed the referees every four hours after the first eight so that the referees could sleep.Blood came out from under the fingernails of both his and the negro's hands and they looked each other in the eye and at their hands and forearms and the bettors went in and out of the room and sat on high chairs against the wall and watched.The walls were painted bright blue and were of wood and the lamps threw their shadows against them.The negro's shadow was huge and it moved on the wall as the breeze moved the lamps.

The odds would change back and forth all night and they fed the negro rum and lighted cigarettes for him.Then the Negro,after the rum,would try for a tremendous effort and once he had the old man, who was not an old man then but was Santiago El Campeon,nearly three inches off balance.But the old man had raised his hand up to dead even again.He was sure then that he had the negro,who was a fine man and a great athlete,beaten.And at daylight when the bettors were asking that it be called a draw and the referee was shaking his head,he had unleashed his effort and forced the hand of the negro down and down until it rested on the wood.The match had started on a Sunday morning and ended on a Monday morning.Many of the bettors had asked for a draw because they had to go to work on the docks loading sacks of sugar or at the Havana Coal Company. Otherwise everyone would have wanted it to go to a finish.But he had finished it anyway and before anyone had to go to work.

For a long time after that everyone had called him The Champion and there had been a return match in the spring. But not much money was bet and he had won it quite easily since he had broken the confidence of the negro from Cienfuegos in the first match.After that he had a few matches and then no more.He decided that he could beat anyone if he wanted to badly enough and he decided that it was bad for his right hand for fishing.He had tried a few practice matches with his left hand.But his left hand had always been a traitor and would not do what he called on it to do and he did not trust it.

The sun will bake it out well now,he thought.It should not cramp on me again unless it gets too cold in the night.I wonder what this night will bring.

An airplane passed overhead on its course to Miami and he watched its shadow scaring up the schools of flying fish.

“With so much flying fish there should be dolphin,”he said,and leaned back on the line to see if it was possible to gain any on his fish.But he could not and it stayed at the hardness and waterdrop shivering that preceded breaking. The boat moved ahead slowly and he watched the airplane until he could no longer see it.

It must be very strange in an airplane, he thought. I wonder what the sea looks like from that height?They should be able to see the fish well if they do not fly too high.I would like to fly very slowly at two hundred fathoms high and see the fish from above.In the turtle boats I was in the cross-trees of the mast-head and even at that height I saw much.The dolphin look greener from there and you can see their stripes and their purple spots and you can see all of the school as they swim.Why is it that all the fast-moving fish of the dark current have purple backs and usually purple stripes or spots? The dolphin looks green of course because he is really golden. But when he comes to feed,truly hungry,purple stripes show on his sides as on a marlin.Can it be anger,or the greater speed he makes that brings them out?

Just before it was dark, as they passed a great island of Sargasso weed that heaved and swung in the light sea as though the ocean were making love with something under a yellow blanket,his small line was taken by a dolphin.He saw it first when it jumped in the air,true gold in the last of the sun and bending and flapping wildly in the air.It jumped again and again in the acrobatics of its fear and he worked his way back to the stern and crouching and holding the big line with his right hand and arm,he pulled the dolphin in with his left hand,stepping on the gained line each time with his bare left foot.When the fish was at the stern,plunging and cutting from side to side in desperation,the old man leaned over the stern and lifted the burnished gold fish with its purple spots over the stern.Its jaws were working convulsively in quick bites against the hook and it pounded the bottom of the skiff with its long flat body,its tail and its head until he clubbed it across the shining golden head until it shivered and was still.

The old man unhooked the fish,rebaited the line with another sardine and tossed it over.Then he worked his way slowly back to the bow.He washed his left hand and wiped it on his trousers.Then he shifted the heavy line from his right hand to his left and washed his right hand in the sea while he watched the sun go into the ocean and the slant of the big cord.

“He hasn't changed at all,”he said.But watching the movement of the water against his hand he noticed that it was perceptibly slower.

“I'll lash the two oars together across the stern and that will slow him in the night,”he said.“ He's good for the night and so am I.”

It would be better to gut the dolph... --

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e dolphin a little later to save the blood in the meat,he thought.I can do that a little later and lash the oars to make a drag at the same time.I had better keep the fish quiet now and not disturb him too much at sunset.The setting of the sun is a difficult time for all fish.

He let his hand dry in the air then grasped the line with it and eased himself as much as he could and allowed himself to be pulled forward against the wood so that the boat took the strain as much,or more,than he did.