Old Man and the Sea (2 page)

  
The old man opened his eyes and for a moment
he was coming back from a long way away. Then he smiled.

  
“What have you got?” he asked.

  
“Supper,” said the boy. “We’re going to have
supper.”

  
“I’m not very hungry.”

  
“Come on and eat. You can’t fish and not
eat.”

  
“I have,” the old man said getting up and
taking the newspaper and folding it. Then he started to fold the blanket.

  
“Keep the blanket around you,” the boy said.
“You’ll not fish without eating while I’m alive.”

  
“Then live a long time and take care of
yourself,” the old man said. “What are we eating?”

  
“Black beans and rice, fried bananas, and
some stew.”

  
The boy had brought them in a two-decker
metal container from the Terrace. The two sets of knives and forks and spoons
were in his pocket with a paper napkin wrapped around each set.

  
“Who gave this to you?”

  
“Martin.
The owner.”

  
“I must thank him.”

  
“I thanked him already,” the boy said. “You
don’t need to thank him.”

  
“I’ll give him the belly meat of a big
fish,” the old man said. “Has he done this for us more than once?”

  
“I think so.”

  
“I must give him something more than the
belly meat then. He is very thoughtful for us.”

  
“He sent two beers.”

  
“I like the beer in cans best.”

  
“I know. But this is in bottles, Hatuey
beer, and I take back the bottles.”

  
“That’s very kind of you,” the old man said.
“Should we eat?”

  
“I’ve been asking you to,” the boy told him
gently. “I have not wished to open the container until you were ready.”

  
“I’m ready now,” the old man said. “I only
needed time to wash.”

  
Where did you wash?
the
boy thought. The village water supply was two streets down the road. I must
have water here for him, the boy thought, and soap and a good towel. Why am I
so thoughtless? I must get him another shirt and a jacket for the winter and
some sort of shoes and another blanket.

  
“Your stew is excellent,” the old man said.

  
“Tell me about the baseball,” the boy asked
him.

  
“In the American League it is the Yankees as
I said,” the old man said happily.”

  
“They lost today,” the boy told him.

  
“That means nothing. The great DiMaggio is
himself again.”

  
“They have other men on the team.”

  
“Naturally.
But he
makes the difference. In the other league, between Brooklyn and Philadelphia I
must take Brooklyn. But then I think of Dick Sisler and those great drives
In
the old park.”

  
“There was nothing ever like them. He hits
the longest ball I have ever seen.”

  
“Do you remember when he used to come to the
Terrace?”

  
“I wanted to take him fishing but I was too
timid to ask him. Then I asked you to ask him and you were too timid.”

  
“I know. It was a great mistake. He might
have gone with us. Then we would have that for all of our lives.”

  
“I would like to take the great DiMaggio
fishing,” the old man said. “They say his father was a fisherman. Maybe he was
as poor as we are and would understand.”

  
“The great Sisler’s father was never poor
and he, the father, was playing in the Big Leagues when he was my age.”

  
“When I was your age I was before the mast
on a square rigged ship that ran to Africa and I have seen lions on the beaches
in the evening.”

  
“I know. You told me.”

  
“Should we talk about Africa or about
baseball?”

  
“Baseball I think,” the boy said. “Tell me
about the great John J. McGraw.” He said Jota for J.

  
“He used to come to the Terrace sometimes
too in the older days. But he was rough and harsh-spoken and difficult when he
was drinking. His mind was on horses as well as baseball. At least he carried
lists of horses at all times in his pocket and frequently spoke the names of
horses on the telephone.”

  
“He was a great manager,” the boy said. “My
father thinks he was the greatest.”

  
“Because he came here the most times,” the
old man said. “If Durocher had continued to come here each year your father
would think him the greatest manager.”

  
“Who is the greatest manager, really, Luque
or Mike Gonzalez?”

  
“I think they are equal.”

  
“And the best fisherman is you.”

  
“No. I know others better.”

  
“Que
Va
,” the boy
said. “There are many good fishermen and some great ones. But there is only you.”

  
“Thank you. You make me happy. I hope no
fish will come along so great that he will prove us wrong.”

  
“There is no such fish if you are still
strong as you say.”

  
“I may not be as strong as I think,” the old
man said. “But I know many tricks and I have resolution.”

  
“You ought to go to bed now so that you will
be fresh in the morning. I will take the things back to the Terrace.”

  
“Good night then. I will wake you in the
morning.”

  
“You’re my alarm clock,” the boy said.

  
“Age is my alarm clock,” the old man said.
“Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?”

  
“I don’t know,” the boy said. “All I know is
that young boys sleep late and hard.”

  
“I can remember it,” the old man said. “I’ll
waken you in time.”

  
“I do not like for him to waken me. It is as
though I were inferior.”

  
“I know.”

  
“Sleep well old man.”

  
The boy went out. They had eaten with no
light on the table and the old man took off his trousers and went to bed in the
dark. He rolled his trousers up to make a pillow, putting the newspaper inside
them. He rolled himself in the blanket and slept on the other old newspapers
that covered the springs of the bed.

  
He was asleep in a short time and he dreamed
of Africa when he was a boy and the long golden beaches and the white beaches,
so white they hurt your eyes, and the high capes and the great brown mountains.
He lived along that coast now every night and in his dreams he heard the surf
roar and saw the native boats come riding through it. He smelled the tar and
oakum of the deck as he slept and he smelled the smell of Africa that the land
breeze brought at morning.

  
Usually when he smelled the land breeze he
woke up and dressed to go and wake the boy. But tonight the smell of the land
breeze came very early and he knew it was too early in his dream and went on
dreaming to see the white peaks of the Islands rising from the sea and then he
dreamed of the different harbours and roadsteads of the Canary Islands.

  
He no longer dreamed of storms,
nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor
of great fish,
nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of
places now and of the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the
dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy. He never dreamed about the boy. He
simply woke, looked out the open door at the moon and unrolled his trousers and
put them on. He urinated outside the shack and then went up the road to wake
the boy. He was shivering with the morning cold. But he knew he would shiver himself
warm and that soon he would be rowing.

  
The door of the house where the boy lived
was unlocked and he opened it and walked in quietly with his bare feet. The boy
was asleep on a cot in the first room and the old man could see him clearly
with the light that came in from the dying moon. He took hold of one foot
gently and held it until the boy woke and turned and looked at him. The old man
nodded and the boy took his trousers from the chair by the bed and, sitting on
the bed, pulled them on.

  
The old man went out the door and the boy
came after him. He was sleepy and the old man put his arm across his shoulders
and said, “I am sorry.”

  
“Qua Va,” the boy said. “It is what a man
must do.”

  
They walked down the road to the old man’s
shack and all along the road, in the dark, barefoot men were moving, carrying
the masts of their boats.

  
When they reached the old man’s shack the
boy took the rolls of line in the basket and the harpoon and gaff and the old
man carried the mast with the furled sail on his shoulder.

  
“Do you want coffee?” the boy asked.

  
“We’ll put the gear in the boat and then get
some.”

  
They had coffee from condensed milk cans at
an early morning place that served fishermen.

  
“How did you sleep old man?” the boy asked.
He was waking up now although it was still hard for him to leave his sleep.

  
“Very well, Manolin,” the old man said. “I
feel confident today.”

  
“So do
I
,” the boy
said. “Now I must get your sardines and mine and your fresh baits. He brings
our gear himself. He never wants anyone to carry anything.”

  
“We’re different,” the old man said. “I let
you carry things when you were five years old.”

  
“I know it,” the boy said. “I’ll be right
back. Have another coffee. We have credit here.”

  
He walked off, bare-footed on the coral
rocks, to the ice house where the baits were stored.

  
The old man drank his coffee slowly. It was
all he would have all day and he knew that he should take it. For a long time
now eating had bored him and he never carried a lunch. He had a bottle of water
in the bow of the skiff and that was all he needed for the day.

  
The boy was back now with the sardines and
the two baits wrapped in a newspaper and they went down the trail to the skiff,
feeling the pebbled sand under their feet, and lifted the skiff and slid her
into the water.

  
“Good luck old man.”

  
“Good luck,” the old man said. He fitted the
rope lashings of the oars onto the thole pins and, leaning forward against the
thrust of the blades in the water, he began to row out of the harbour in the
dark. There were other boats from the other beaches going out to sea and the
old man heard the dip and push of their oars even though he could not see them
now the moon was below the hills.

  
Sometimes someone would speak in a boat. But
most of the boats were silent except for the dip of the oars. They spread apart
after they were out of the mouth of the harbour and each one headed for the
part of the ocean where he hoped to find fish. The old man knew he was going far
out and he left the smell of the land behind and rowed out into the clean early
morning smell of the ocean. He saw the phosphorescence of the Gulf weed in the
water as he rowed over the part of the ocean that the fishermen called the
great well because there was a sudden deep of seven hundred fathoms where all
sorts of fish congregated because of the swirl the current made against the
steep walls of the floor of the ocean. Here there were concentrations of shrimp
and bait fish and sometimes schools of squid in the deepest holes and these
rose close to the surface at night where all the wandering fish fed on them.

  
In the dark the old man could feel the
morning coming and as he rowed he heard the trembling sound as flying fish left
the water and the hissing that their stiff set wings made as they soared away
in the darkness. He was very fond of flying fish as they were his principal
friends on the ocean. He was sorry for the birds, especially the small delicate
dark terns that were always flying and looking and almost never finding, and he
thought, the birds have a harder life than we do except for the robber birds
and the heavy strong ones. Why did they make birds
so
delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel? She is
kind and very beautiful. But she can be so cruel and it comes so suddenly and
such birds that fly, dipping and hunting, with their small sad voices are made
too delicately for the sea.