Old Man and the Sea (10 page)

  
I have no understanding of it and I am not
sure that I believe in it. Perhaps it was a sin to kill the fish. I suppose it
was even though I did it to keep me alive and feed many people. But then everything
is a sin. Do not think about sin. It is much too late for that and there are
people who are paid to do it. Let them think about it. You were born to be a
fisherman as the fish was born to be a fish. San Pedro was a fisherman as was
the father of the great DiMaggio.

  
But he liked to think about all things that
he was involved in and since there was nothing to read and he did not have a
radio, he thought much and he kept on thinking about sin. You did not kill the
fish only to keep alive and to sell for food, he thought. You killed him for
pride and because you are a fisherman. You loved him when he was alive and you
loved him after. If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more?

  
“You think too much, old man,” he said
aloud.

  
But you enjoyed killing the dentuso, he
thought. He lives on the live fish as you do. He is
not a
scavenger nor
just a moving appetite as some sharks are. He is beautiful
and noble and knows no fear of anything.

  
“I killed him in self-defense,” the old man said
aloud. “And I killed him well.”

  
Besides, he thought, everything kills
everything else in some way. Fishing kills me exactly as it keeps me alive. The
boy keeps me alive, he thought. I must not deceive myself too much.

  
He leaned over the side and pulled loose a
piece of the meat of the fish where the shark had cut him. He chewed it and
noted its quality and its good taste. It was firm and juicy, like meat, but it
was not red. There was no stringiness in it and he knew that it would bring the
highest price
In
the market. But there was no way to
keep its scent out of the water and the old man knew that a very had time was
coming.

  
The breeze was steady. It had backed a
little further into the north-east and he knew that meant that it would not
fall off. The old man looked ahead of him but he could see no sails nor could
he see
the hull nor
the smoke of any ship. There were
only the flying fish that went up from his bow sailing away to
either side and
the yellow patches of Gulf weed. He could
not even see a bird.

  
He had sailed for two hours, resting in the
stern and sometimes chewing a bit of the meat from the marlin, trying to rest
and to be strong, when he saw the first of the two sharks.

  
“Ay,” he said aloud. There is no translation
for this word and perhaps it is just a noise such as a man might make,
involuntarily, feeling the nail go through his hands and into the wood.

  
“Galanos,” he said aloud. He had seen the
second fin now coming up behind the first and had identified them as shovel-nosed
sharks by the brown, triangular fin and the sweeping movements of the tail.
They had the scent and were excited and in the stupidity of their great hunger
they were losing and finding the scent in their excitement. But they were
closing all the time.

 
 
The
old man made the sheet fast and jammed the tiller. Then he took up the oar with
the knife lashed to it. He lifted it as lightly as he could because his hands
rebelled at the pain. Then he opened and closed them on it lightly to loosen
them. He closed them firmly so they would take the pain now and would not
flinch and watched the sharks come. He could see their wide, flattened,
shovel-pointed heads now and their white tipped wide pectoral fins. They were
hateful sharks, bad smelling, scavengers as well as killers, and when they were
hungry they would bite at an oar or the rudder of a boat. It was these sharks
that would cut the turtles’ legs and flippers off when the turtles were asleep
on the surface, and they would hit a man in the water, if they were hungry,
even if the man had no smell of fish blood
nor
of fish
slime on him.

  
“Ay,” the old man said.
“Galanos.
Come on galanos.”

  
They came. But they did not come as the Mako
had come. One turned and went out of sight under the skiff and the old man
could feel the skiff shake as he jerked and pulled on the fish. The other
watched the old man with his slitted yellow eyes and then came in fast with his
half circle of jaws wide to hit the fish where he had already been bitten. The
line showed clearly on the top of his brown head and back where the brain
joined the spinal cord and the old man drove the knife on the oar into the
juncture, withdrew it, and drove it in again into the shark’s yellow cat-like
eyes. The shark let go of the fish and slid down, swallowing what he had taken
as he died.

  
The skiff was still shaking with the
destruction the other shark was doing to the fish and the old man let go the
sheet so that the skiff would swing broadside and bring the shark out from
under. When he saw the shark he leaned over the side and punched at him. He hit
only meat and the hide was set hard and he barely got the knife in. The blow
hurt not only his hands but his shoulder too. But the shark came up fast with
his head out and the old man hit him squarely in the center of his flat-topped
head as his nose came out of water and lay against the fish. The old man
withdrew the blade and punched the shark exactly in the same spot again. He
still hung to the fish with his jaws hooked and the old man stabbed him in his
left eye. The shark still hung there.

  
“No?” the old man said and he drove the
blade between the vertebrae and the brain. It was an easy shot now and he felt
the cartilage sever. The old man reversed the oar and put the blade between the
shark’s jaws to open them. He twisted the blade and as the shark slid loose he
said, “Go on, galano. Slide down a mile deep. Go see your friend, or maybe it’s
your mother.”

  
The old man wiped the blade of his knife and
laid down the oar. Then he found the sheet and the sail filled and he brought
the skiff onto her course.

  
“They must have taken a quarter of him and
of the best meat,” he said aloud. “I wish it were a dream and that I had never
hooked him. I’m sorry about it, fish. It makes everything wrong.” He stopped
and he did not want to look at the fish now. Drained of blood and awash he
looked the colour of the silver backing of a minor and his stripes still
showed.

  
“I shouldn’t have gone out so far, fish,” he
said.
“Neither for you nor for me.
I’m sorry, fish.”

  
Now, he said to himself. Look to the lashing
on the knife and see if it has been cut. Then get your hand in order because
there still is more to come.

  
“I wish I had a stone for the knife,” the
old man said after he had checked the lashing on the oar butt. “I should have
brought a stone.” You should have brought many things, he thought. But you did
not bring them, old man. Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think
of what you can do with what there is.

  
“You give me much good counsel,” he said
aloud. “I’m tired of it.”

  
He held the tiller under his arm and soaked
both his hands in the water as the skiff drove forward.

  
“God knows how much that last one took,” he
said.

  
“But she’s much lighter now.” He did not
want to think of the mutilated under-side of the fish. He knew that each of the
jerking bumps of the shark had been meat torn away and that the fish now made a
trail for all sharks as wide as a highway through the sea.

  
He was a fish to keep a man all winter, he
thought
Don’t
think of that. Just rest and try to get
your hands in shape to defend what is left of him. The blood smell from my
hands means nothing now with all that scent in the water. Besides they do not
bleed much. There is nothing cut that means anything. The bleeding may keep the
left from cramping.

  
What can I think of now?
he
thought.
Nothing.
I must think of nothing and wait for
the next ones. I wish it had really been a dream, he thought. But who knows? It
might have turned out well.

  
The next shark that came was a single
shovelnose. He came like a pig to the trough if a pig had a mouth so wide that
you could put your head in it. The old man let him hit the fish and then drove
the knife on the oar don into his brain. But the shark jerked backwards as he
rolled and the knife blade snapped.

  
The old man settled himself to steer. He did
not even watch the big shark sinking slowly in the water, showing first
life-size, then small, then tiny. That always fascinated the old man. But he did
not even watch it now.

  
“I have the gaff now,” he said. “But it will
do no good. I have the two oars and the tiller and the short club.”

  
Now they have beaten me, he thought. I am
too old to club sharks to death. But I will try it as long as I have the oars
and the short club and the tiller.

  
He put his hands in the water again to soak
them. It was getting late in the afternoon and he saw nothing but the sea and
the sky. There was more wind in the sky than there had been, and soon he hoped
that he would see land.

  
“You’re tired, old man,” he said. “You’re
tired inside.”

  
The sharks did not hit him again until just
before sunset.

  
The old man saw the brown fins coming along
the wide trail the fish must make in the water. They were not even quartering
on the scent. They were headed straight for the skiff swimming side by side.

  
He jammed the tiller, made the sheet fast
and reached under the stem for the club. It was an oar handle from a broken oar
sawed off to about two and a half feet in length. He could only use it
effectively with one hand because of the grip of the handle and he took good
hold of it with his right hand, flexing his hand on it, as he watched the
sharks come. They were both galanos.

  
I must let the first one get a good hold and
hit him on the point of the nose or straight across the top of the head, he
thought.

  
The two sharks closed together and as he saw
the one nearest him open his jaws and sink them into the silver side of the
fish, he raised the club high and brought it down heavy and slamming onto the
top of the shark’s broad head. He felt the rubbery solidity as the club came
down. But he felt the rigidity of bone too and he struck the shark once more
hard across the point of the nose as he slid down from the fish.

  
The other shark had been in and out and now
came in again with his jaws wide. The old man could see pieces of the meat of
the fish spilling white from the corner of his jaws as he bumped the fish and
closed his jaws. He swung at him and hit only the head and the shark looked at
him and wrenched the meat loose. The old man swung the club down on him again
as he slipped away to swallow and hit only the heavy solid rubberiness.

  
“Come on, galano,” the old man said. “Come
in again.”

  
The shark came in a rush and the old man hit
him as he shut his jaws. He hit him solidly and from as high up as he could
raise the club. This time he felt the bone at the base of the brain and he hit
him again in the same place while the shark tore the meat loose sluggishly and slid
down from the fish.

  
The old man watched for him to come again
but neither shark showed. Then he saw one on the surface swimming in circles.
He did not see the fin of the other.

  
I could not expect to kill them, he thought.
I could have in my time. But I have hurt them both badly and neither one can
feel very good. If I could have used a bat with two hands I could have killed
the first one surely. Even now, he thought.

  
He did not want to look at the fish. He knew
that half of him had been destroyed. The sun had gone down while he had been in
the fight with the sharks.

  
“It will be dark soon,” he said. “Then I
should see the glow of Havana… If I am too far to the eastward I will see the
lights of one of the new beaches.”

  
I cannot be too far out now, he thought. I
hope no one has been too worried. There is only the boy to worry, of course.
But I am sure he would have confidence. Many of the older fishermen will worry.
Many others too, he thought. I live in a good town.

  
He could not talk to the fish anymore
because the fish had been ruined too badly. Then something came into his head.

  
“Half fish,” he said.
“Fish
that you were.
I am sorry that I went too far out. I ruined us both. But
we have killed many sharks, you and I, and ruined many others. How many did you
ever
kill,
old fish? You do not have that spear on
your head for nothing.”