Old Man and the Sea

Ernest Hemingway

To Charlie Shribner

And

To Max Perkins

  
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.

  
“Santiago,” the boy said.

  
“Yes,” the old man said. He was holding his
glass and thinking of many years ago.

  
“Can I go out to get sardines for you for
tomorrow?”

  
“No. Go and play baseball. I can still row
and Rogelio will throw the net.”

  
“I would like to go.
If I
cannot fish with you.
I would like to serve in some way.”

  
“You bought me a beer,” the old man said.
“You are already a man.”

  
“How old was I when you first took me in a
boat?”

  
“Five and you nearly were killed when I
brought the fish in too green and he nearly tore the boat to pieces. Can you
remember?”

  
“I can remember the tail slapping and
banging and the thwart breaking and the noise of the clubbing. I can remember
you throwing me into the bow where the wet coiled lines were and feeling the
whole boat shiver and the noise of you clubbing him like chopping a tree down
and the sweet blood smell all over me.”

  
“Can you really remember that or did I just
tell it to you?”

  
“I remember everything from when we first
went together.”

  
The old man looked at him with his
sun-burned, confident loving eyes.

  
“If you were my boy I’d take you out and
gamble,” he said. “But you are your father’s and your mother’s and you are in a
lucky boat.”

  
“May I get the sardines? I know where I can
get four baits too.”

  
“I have
mine
left
from today. I put them in salt in the box.”

  
“Let me get four fresh ones.”

  
“One,” the old man said. His hope and his
confidence had never gone. But now they were freshening as when the breeze
rises.

  
“Two,” the boy said.

  
“Two,” the old man agreed. “You didn’t steal
them?”

  
“I would,” the boy said. “But I bought
these.”

  
“Thank you,” the old man said. He was too
simple to wonder when he had attained humility. But he knew he had attained it
and he knew it was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true pride.

  
“Tomorrow is going to be a good day with
this current,” he said.

  
“Where are you going?” the boy asked.

  
“Far out to come in when
the wind shifts.
I want to be out before it is light.”

 
 
“I’ll
try to get him to work far out,” the boy said. “Then if you hook something
truly big we can come to your aid.”

  
“He does not like to work too far out.”

  
“No,” the boy said. “But I will see
something that he cannot see such as a bird working and get him to come out
after dolphin.”

  
“Are his eyes that bad?”

  
“He is almost blind.”

  
“It is strange,” the old man said. “He never
went turtle-ing. That is what kills the eyes.”

  
“But you went turtle-ing for years off the
Mosquito Coast and your eyes are good.”

  
“I am a strange old man”

  
“But are you strong enough now for a truly
big fish?”

  
“I think so. And there are many tricks.”

  
“Let us take the stuff home,” the boy said.
“So I can get the cast net and go after the sardines.”

  
They picked up the gear from the boat. The
old man carried the mast on his shoulder and the boy carried the wooden boat
with the coiled, hard-braided brown lines, the gaff and the harpoon with its
shaft. The box with the baits was under the stern of the skiff along with the
club that was used to subdue the big fish when they were brought alongside. No
one would steal from the old man but it was better to take the sail and the
heavy lines home as the dew was bad for them and, though he was quite sure no
local people would steal from him, the old man thought that a gaff and a
harpoon were needless temptations to leave in a boat.

  
They walked up the road together to the old
man’s shack and went in through its open door. The old man leaned the mast with
its wrapped sail against the wall and the boy put the box and the other gear
beside it. The mast was nearly as long as the one room of the shack. The shack
was made of the tough budshields of the royal palm which are called guano and
in it there was a bed, a table, one chair, and a place on the dirt floor to
cook with charcoal. On the brown walls of the flattened, overlapping leaves of
the sturdy fibered guano there was a picture in color of the Sacred Heart of
Jesus and another of the Virgin of Cobre. These were relics of his wife. Once
there had been a tinted photograph of his wife on the wall but he had taken it
down because it made him too lonely to see it and it was on the shelf in the
corner under his clean shirt.

  
“What do you have to eat?” the boy asked.

  
“A pot of yellow rice with
fish.
Do you want some?”

  
“No. I will eat at home. Do you want me to
make the fire?”

  
“No. I will make it later on. Or I may eat
the rice cold.”

  
“May I take the cast net?”

  
“Of course.”

  
There was no cast net and the boy remembered
when they had sold it. But they went through this fiction every day. There was
no pot of yellow rice and fish and the boy knew this too.

  
“Eighty-five is a lucky number,” the old man
said. “How would you like to see me bring one in that dressed out over a
thousand pounds?”

  
“I’ll get the cast net and go for sardines.
Will you sit in the sun in the doorway?”

  
“Yes. I have yesterday’s paper and I will
read the baseball.”

  
The boy did not know whether yesterday’s
paper was a fiction too. But the old man brought it out from under the bed.

  
“Perico gave it to me at the bodega,” he
explained. “I’ll be back when I have the sardines. I’ll keep yours and mine
together on ice and we can share them in the morning. When I come back you can
tell me about the baseball.”

  
“The Yankees cannot lose.”

  
“But I fear the Indians of Cleveland.”

  
“Have faith in the Yankees my son. Think of
the great DiMaggio.”

  
“I fear both the Tigers of Detroit and the
Indians of Cleveland.”

  
“Be careful or you will fear even the Reds
of Cincinnati and the White Sax of Chicago.”

  
“You study it and tell me when I come back.”

  
“Do you think we should buy a terminal of
the lottery with an eighty-five? Tomorrow is the eighty-fifth day.”

  
“We can do that,” the boy said.
“But what about the eighty-seven of your great record?”

  
“It could not happen twice. Do you think you
can find an eighty-five?”

  
“I can order one.

  
“One sheet.
That’s
two dollars and a half. Who can we borrow that from?”

  
“That’s easy. I can always borrow two
dollars and a half.”

  
“I think perhaps I can too. But I try not to
borrow. First you borrow. Then you beg.”

  
“Keep warm old man,” the boy said. “Remember
we are in September.”

  
“The month when the great fish come,” the
old man said. “Anyone can be a fisherman in May.”

  
“I go now for the sardines,” the boy said.

  
When the boy came back the old man was
asleep in the chair and the sun was down. The boy took the old army blanket off
the bed and spread it over the back of the chair and over the old man’s
shoulders. They were strange shoulders, still powerful although very old, and
the neck was still strong too and the creases did not show so much when the old
man was asleep and his head fallen forward. His shirt had been patched so many
times that it was like the sail and the patches were faded to many different
shades by the sun. The old man’s head was very old though and with his eyes
closed there was no life in his face. The newspaper lay across his knees and
the weight of his arm held it there in the evening breeze. He was barefooted.

  
The boy left him there and when he came back
the old man was still asleep.

  
“Wake up old man,” the boy said and put his
hand on one of the old man’s knees.