The Catch

The fishing boat was called the Agios Nikolaos, which was a popular name for fishing boats in the same way that Maria was a popular name for grandmothers: everyone had one, nobody was confused, and the saint in question was probably tired of the responsibility. Nikos had inherited the boat from his father, who had inherited it from his father, who had bought it from a man in Piraeus who was, according to family legend, either a retired naval officer or a retired con artist, and the family had never settled the question because the answer didn't change the quality of the boat. The boat was wooden, twelve metres, painted blue and white because all fishing boats in the Aegean were painted blue and white, for reasons that predated tourism and had something to do with the evil eye, though Nikos suspected the real reason was that blue and white paint was cheap and that tradition was sometimes just economics with better storytelling. He fished alone. This was unusual. Most boats on Kalymnos went out with two or three, but Nikos had tried crew. He had tried his cousin Stavros, who talked too much. He had tried his nephew Dimitri, who talked too little and also got seasick, which on a fishing boat was like hiring a baker who was allergic to flour. He had tried a friend named Vangelis who was competent and pleasant and who had moved to Athens after three months because he discovered he preferred selling fish to catching them, a career change that Nikos considered a betrayal of exactly the right kind. So he fished alone, which meant early. Three in the morning, engine on, out past the harbour wall while the town slept. The sea at three in the morning was not the sea the tourists saw. It was black and large and did not care about you, and the stars above it were so many and so clear that they looked like something spilled. He set nets. This was the unglamorous part. Nets are heavy and wet and smell like the inside of a thing's stomach. You drop them in a line, marked with buoys, and you wait. The waiting is the job. People think fishing is about catching. Fishing is about waiting and then, briefly, catching, and then waiting again. The ratio is approximately ninety-five percent waiting to five percent everything else. During the waiting, Nikos drank coffee from a thermos his wife Eleni prepared each night. The coffee was Greek coffee, strong and sweet, and it had settled during the trip out so that the grounds were at the bottom and the first sip was clear and the last sip was mud. This was the correct order. Starting with sweetness, ending with reality. A good metaphor for most things, though Nikos did not think in metaphors. He thought in fish. The haul came up at dawn. He winched the nets and sorted the catch on deck. Red mullet, sea bream, a few octopus. The octopus he killed quickly, which was the only mercy available. He had read once that octopus were intelligent. He believed it. He had watched them problem-solve in ways that made him uncomfortable about eating them. He ate them anyway. Intelligence and deliciousness were, regrettably, not mutually exclusive. The market in the harbour opened at seven. He was there at seven-fifteen, which was late by his standards but acceptable because Kyria Dimitra, who bought most of his catch for her restaurant, did not arrive until seven-thirty and was not open to negotiations before coffee, which she drank at a table outside the market while staring at the harbour with the expression of a woman who was not yet fully human and would appreciate being treated accordingly. The transaction was quick. Kyria Dimitra examined the fish, named a price, and Nikos accepted or countered. The countering was a formality. They both knew the price. They had been doing this for twelve years. The negotiation existed because life without negotiation was just commerce, and commerce without negotiation was just handing over fish, which lacked dignity. "Good mullet," Kyria Dimitra said. "Always good mullet." "Last week's was small." "Last week the mullet were small everywhere. Ask anyone." "I'm asking you." "And I'm telling you. This week, better." She paid. He went home. Eleni was awake, the kitchen warm, the smell of bread and coffee and the morning coming in through the open window. She did not ask how the fishing was. She could see the answer in the way he walked — lighter when the catch was good, heavier when it wasn't. Today he walked light. He ate breakfast. He slept until noon. He woke and mended a net in the courtyard, sitting in the shade of the fig tree that his grandfather had planted and that produced figs every August that were, in Nikos's private opinion, the best figs on the island, an opinion he shared with no one because claiming your figs were the best was the kind of boast that attracted the evil eye, and he didn't believe in the evil eye but his grandmother had, and some beliefs survive by being respected even by people who don't hold them. Tomorrow, three in the morning, engine on, out past the harbour wall. Same boat, same sea, same stars. Nikos did not find this repetitive. He found it true.