Fisherman
Early came the dawn, slowly saturating the last hour of darkness, and the sky was a luminous pale hue with solitary clouds like pink lost roses stationary in the sky. And from out of the evanescent mist appeared a simple chugging fishing boat, splitting the smooth sea, its diesel engine loud and rude in the silence of the morning.
A man sat stone-like in the rear of the fishing boat, with a hand firmly clasped around the long wooden tiller. His face held a fixed expression, as if sculptured in thought, but he was not thinking about anything. All his actions were mechanical and carried out passively with no interest. The man seemed engulfed in the sound of the monotonous diesel engine and the movement of his boat that rose and fell on the swell of the sea, as it turned into the Catalan port of Alghero and passed below the bronze statue of the Virgin Mary, the venerated protector of all fishermen. Whenever you passed beneath Her you made the sign of the cross, and it was not just a pious act of faith but also the acknowledgement of something spiritual; the mother of God blessed the meek and mild, blessed the simplicity of the lives of men who fished the seas.
The boat, heavy with an abundant catch of fish, came into the port, cutting the smooth waters as it chugged past lines of luxury yachts neatly moored up one next to the other. The man reduced speed and pulled hard on the tiller and the boat turned and eased up alongside a jetty. He switched off the ignition key and the engine abruptly stopped. A peaceful silence ensued. After deftly securing the boat, the man stood up straight, stretched his back and with squinted eyes, scanned the deserted port and the distant bastions that surrounded the medieval town with its maze of cobbled alleyways.
He thought about his wife and imagined her sleeping serenely.
Before going home, he had to disentangle the fish from the coiled nets and that would take at least a couple of hours. He looked down at the deck of his boat gently bobbing up and down and the keel sounded like smacking lips, opening and closing on the in coming waves. The silver bodies of live fish twitched and flicked in the speckled sunlight. He had made a good catch and it would sell well in the fish market held in the port every morning. But he was reluctant to get back into the boat and start the long monotonous task of disentangling fish from the nets. He wanted to drop everything and go home to his wife, to lie alongside her, to feel her closeness, to love her and be with her.
Droplets of sweat formed around his forehead beneath his sun cap. The sun was gaining height rapidly in a faint turquoise sky, and he was feeling the fatigue of a long night’s fishing on his own in a boat on the open sea.
Yes, he was feeling oddly lethargic, and he wondered if he wasn’t coming down with something.
With a sigh he climbed back into the boat and sat in front of the mound of fishing nets. He picked up the first fish, a good-sized cod, shaded grey with elongated streaks of silver. The fish was alive and slippery in his grasp; he peeled away the netting, extracted the fish and tossed it nonchalantly into a polystyrene box.
One fish after another and the box filled up until the task was done.
Day after day he did the same thing: with this fishing boat his father had bequeathed him, he led a solitary life on the sea, earning an income based on the amount of fish he caught. Some days were better than others and on the open sea everything was unpredictable. There were days when the sea was rough, the waves whipped up by the north westerly winds and when the weather was bad like this, he would sit at home watching television after a heavy lunch, and then spend the night in one of the dimly lit local bars sipping Cannanau and talking to locals about nothing of any interest.
Just this disinterestedness.
What did really interest him? Not this life that constrained him to live so much alone, hours without speaking to a soul; hours of thoughtless thoughts as his fishing boat clocked the nautical miles, cut the waves, a speck on the shimmering horizon so distant from the coastline.
A speck like a soul without contact.
He wondered what would happen if his boat ever capsized out there in the open sea? If he were swallowed into the deep dark blue depths, would he be missed?
Initially, yes. His wife would initially be concerned. On the realisation he was late returning home, she would alert the Carabinieri and the Coast Guard. A search party would be hastily organised, a police boat would leave the port, speeding past the statue of the Virgin Mary to comb the coastline, but his body would be far out at sea, somewhere below the surface, turning round and round in the formidable expanse of water, drifting a dilatory course along the sea bed.
What was he thinking about? Surely he had so much to be thankful for – a loving wife, a home, a boat, an income, and a healthy out door life. He was young, twenty-six years old, and the future seemed to beckon him, entice him, and cajole him into heeding his intuition to change. To change his destiny.
Men are sometimes masters of their own fate.
He was not sure where he had heard this saying, but it made him think about something. And the feeling of unfulfillment conditioned his mood: a speck, a soul, so insignificant, barely discernible against the immense backdrop of life.
