Short Fiction, Aleksandr Kuprin [the speed reading book txt] 📗

fifty hooks were empty, with their bait untouched.

The men rowed in silence, with their eyes fixed on the two points of the beach indicated by their ataman. His assistant sat at his feet, taking the bait off the hooks and putting the rope into the basket in a neat bale. Suddenly one of the fish on the bottom of the boat began to writhe and shake.

“When a fish kicks, another is coming,” said the young fisher Pavel, repeating an old fishermen’s saying.

That very moment Vanya Andrutzaki felt, deep in the sea, an enormous living weight shaking and resisting and straining on the rope, which became taut like a string. Leaning over the side, he noticed under the water the long, silvery, floating, shimmering body of a monstrous white sturgeon, and, unable to restrain his feelings, he turned to the crew and whispered, his eyes shining with excitement:

“A large one! Like a bull! More than a thousand pounds, I guess.⁠ ⁠…”

That was just what he should not have done! God forbid that you anticipate events or express joy over your success while at sea! And the ancient, mysterious belief immediately proved true in the case of Vanya Andrutzaki. He saw clearly the fish’s long, sharp, bony head half a yard below the surface of the sea, and, stilling his wildly beating heart, he was getting ready to bring it to the board, when suddenly⁠ ⁠… the monster tossed up its tail above the wave and dashed into the depth of the sea, dragging along the rope with the bait-hooks.

Vanya did not lose his head. “Back astern!” he cried to the fishermen, swore savagely and elaborately, and started to pay out the rope after the disappearing fish. The hooks seemed to flash in the air from under his hands and whipped the water. The assistant helped him by throwing the rope out of the basket, and the oarsmen worked furiously, trying to overtake the monster. The work required extraordinary speed and perfect accuracy. A few hooks became entangled in the assistant’s hands. He shouted to Vanya to stop feeding the rope and started to set free the hooks with that speed and care which seamen alone manifest in moments of danger. In those few seconds the rope in Vanya’s hands became as taut as a string, and the boat leaped on the waves in fury, towed by the frantic fish and driven by the efforts of the oarsmen.

“Pay away!” finally cried out the assistant. The rope started again sliding at an incredible speed from the ataman’s dexterous hands, when suddenly the boat jerked and Vanya swore with a repressed groan: a copper hook pierced his palm, just below the little finger and stuck there its full length.⁠ ⁠… It is here that Vanya showed himself a real saltwater fisherman. Having wound the rope around the fingers of the wounded hand, he stopped feeding it for a second, and, producing a knife with his other hand, he cut the cord to which the hook was attached. The hook stuck fast in the palm, but Vanya tore it out with the flesh and threw it into the sea. And although both his hands and the rope were stained with his blood, although the boards of the boat and the water inside grew red, he did his work to the end and was the first to deal the obstinate monster a heavy blow with a mallet.

His was the first sturgeon catch of the season. The crew sold the fish at a very high price so that each member’s share amounted to no less than forty roubles. On this occasion a good bit of wine was drunk, and toward evening the entire crew of St. George the Conqueror⁠—as Vanya’s long boat was called⁠—set out with music for Sebastopol in a two-horse curricle. There the gallant Balaklava fishermen, together with some navy sailors, smashed the piano, the bedsteads, the chairs, and the windows in a house of ill fame; then they thrashed one another thoroughly and came back only at dawn, drunk, bruised, but singing. And as soon as they left the cab, they got into the boat, set sail, and put out to sea again.

From that day Vanya’s reputation as a real saltwater ataman was firmly established.

V The Lord’s Fish (An Apocryphal Tale)

This charming ancient legend was related to me at Balaklava by the ataman, Kolya Konstandi, a real saltwater Greek, an excellent seaman, and a heavy drinker.

At that time he was instructing me in all those wise and strange things which make up the fishermen’s lore. He showed me how to make sea knots and mend torn nets, how to bait hooks for white sturgeon, how to launch and clean seines, how to take out the mullet from the three-walled net, how to fry it, how to separate with a knife the petalide which grow on rocks, how to eat shrimps raw, how to forecast the night’s weather by the day’s surf, how to set sail, weigh anchor, and sound the depths of the sea.

He patiently explained to me the different directions and peculiarities of the winds: the levanter, the sirocco, the tramontane, the terrible bora, the propitious sea-wind, and the capricious land breeze.

To him I also owe my knowledge of fishermen’s customs and superstitions. It is not permissible, during the catch, to whistle aboard the craft or to spit except overboard; one should never mention the devil, though one is permitted to curse by faith, the grave, the coffin, the soul, one’s forefathers, their eyes, livers, spleen, and so on; it is well to leave in the net, as if by chance, a little fish: this brings luck, and God forbid that any article of food be thrown overboard while the boat is at sea. But the most terrible, unpardonable and objectionable breach of fishermen’s etiquette, is to ask a fisherman: “Where are you bound for?” For a question like this one is likely to