― Ernest Hemingway,
The Old Man and the Sea
The Old Man and I, - sighed. We made such a beautiful pair.
It was so long ago now, back when diarists used to proclaim loudly about the
terrors of the sea, about such high tidal movements, about the dangers of the
deep. But the old man, he understood. He understood more than the other
fishermen, casting their nets out when I was in a temper, taking away fishes
with whom I was having very interesting conversations with, (you will never
fully understand the thrill of seaweed until you talk to a fish, I can assure
you) the crashing around in their big wooden boats, and oh! The shouting! There
was always the shouting! The salty language that made even I wish for a glass
of water! But the Old Man, somehow I think he knew. Mahbulah, the old welsh
Haddock, who was my greatest friend in those days, said that the old man had
sea-water in his veins, and probably was part fish. I trusted Mahbulah more
than anyone else, so naturally, I thought the same.
The Old Man would sail out in his boat, somehow more gentle
than the others, and talk to us. He still took away fish from me, but they
always seemed to be the annoying ones, the ones that were always in a temper,
or else chattered constantly, driving us all insane. The Old Man would tell us
for which person the fish he caught would go to: always the same eleven people.
There was Mr and Ms Frnerngla, the elderly couple who had lost most of their
acquaintances because they had decided not to marry, back in the days when
those sorts of actions were frowned upon severely. Then there was batty Sir P’n
esq., and his regal cat, King Richard the Lionheart, whom both Sir P’n esq. and
the Old Man counted as a person. Mr. and Mrs. Kmin with their quadruplets, who all
seemed to change names weekly, according to the Old Man, each received a fish,
as did the young soldier, Drmna, and the pretty girl who lived next-door to him
whose name, Lleiaj, would cause the young soldier’s face to light up and fill
with colour. Every second day, as his pipe blew smoke that swirled around his
face, the Old Man would talk to me about each of these people, about the little
parts of their lives until I almost felt I knew them as well as he.
The Old Man lived in a shack that stood on magnificent
wooden legs that went down into the shallows, two sea-miles outside of a weary
little fishing village sheltered by a mountain range so high that at times you
couldn’t be sure whether they had an end or if they continued on until at some
unspeakable height they became part of the sky. It was a small, practical
house, with wooden floors and shelves lining the walls, a stone fireplace built
into the wall and a small nest of woven and worn blankets in which he would
rest each night. I know, having accidentally visited in one of my tempers. He
didn’t seem to mind that I had waterlogged his rug and stained the feet of his
table, instead, he offered me a cup of chamomile tea, which I enjoyed
immensely, and spoke about such beautiful things that soon I forgot why I had
even worked myself into such a fury to begin with. Like I said, the Old Man
seemed to understand more than all the others, and I grew to love him because
of it.
When night fell, the Old Man would each day take his seat by
the water on the small balcony that covered three sides of his house, pull out
his pipe, and sit humming throatily to himself. Below, I would gather with the fishes
and listen to the husky melodies that seemed to resonate from his chest rather
than his mouth, from which the only thing to ever come from there was smoke
from his pipe. He would sing the songs of the sea, he called them, the ones all
the sailors and fishermen knew from their childhoods, and the fish and I would
be moved to tears as the smoke drifted around his head and shone bright in the
moonlight.
…
In those days, the Moon was closer to the earth, having not
yet seen enough of it’s inhabitants to make her pull away, and she was
beautiful. At times she would shine, almost full and egg like, filling the sky
with a pregnant expectancy over the coming evenings. Other nights, she would
turn her face, leaving us in darkness, or else she would cut through the night
like a sickle, trying to teach the farmers how to harvest stars. But on the
right evening, she would rise so full and majestically over the horizon that I
couldn’t help but fall madly in love with her, and would want, more than
anything to follow her as she swept over the sky, following her paths around
the globe, singing to her the Old Man’s songs, hoping that she would find them
as enchanting as I.
One evening, after a spectacular moonrise, the Old Man began
to chuckle at the way I would begin to get restless, first as her light would
begin to shine on the horizon just above the mountains and then more so as she
shone brighter and brighter and left the snowy arms of the peaks and made a
careless dash into the deep blue of the night sky. When she would break free, I
would rise, enamoured and crash about the posts holding up the Old Man’s shack
until all the fishes grumbled and complained that I was making a fool of myself
and to stop being so excitable. The Old Man never said such things though.
Instead, he would watch, eyes gleaming, and begin to tell stories about what
life was like, back when the Moon was even closer to the earth, so close you
could climb up onto her surface and walk around, until I was swirling and
dancing about and all the fishes had given up and gone back to their homes in
the depths.
It was one of those nights, as the Moon seemed to burst into
the sky and I thought I would break wild enough to cover the mountains that the
Old Man told me a tale of when he was a child, about the beautiful woman he had
loved and the beautiful way in which he lost her. After he finished, smoke
billowing silently through his beard, he said two words which caused me to cry
out and leap up to his feet.
“Follow her”.
Oh! How I wanted to! To chase and cry out to her, to leap up
to her surface, to become the night sky that she swam through! But I was shy,
and she was magnificent, so I protested. No! – I couldn’t! How could the ocean
follow the Moon? We have our places, who am I to change that?! “Follow her”,
the Old Man simply said once more, before stretching out his legs and moving
inside to the dim light and simple meal sitting on the table.
“What am I to do?” I asked Mahbulah. He squinted at me
grumpily, as I had woken him from his daily rest, grumbled “Go after her then,
you fool” before swimming deeper into the seaweed and refused to speak of it
again.
And then each time the Old Man brought his boat out into my
depths, he began to tell stories of knights and maidens, the beautiful sorts of
folktales that make your heart burst open at the seams and pour all your
courage into deeds of valour and chivalry, finishing each time with the same
two words, “follow her”, leaving me swirling with excitement and nervousness
and leaving the seaweed fields in tangles and the fishes jumpy with nerves.
…
I wondered where she went each evening, when the sky would
pull her away from me, leaving me in the sort of unbearable light that daylight
becomes when one is torn up inside. I imagined her skimming her teeth over
mountain ranges that were not familiar to me, gazing down on desserts and
cities and lakes full of sweet water and became distraught that another might
be reflecting her gaze as well as I. So distressed I became that I stormed for
three weeks, until the fishermen believed the town to be cursed and the waves
to be haunted by the spirits of ancient heathens. The Old Man’s words still
reverberated within me; the sand banks became engraved with those words; the
stones I crashed on formed reminders and still, the only two words the Old Man
spoke were the same. Until one evening, as the Moon rose waxing crescent, I did
it.
Softly, slowly I followed her, humming the tune the Old Man
had made up about Drmna and Lleiaj, the one he said caused the young soldier to
stare coyly at his shoes and the pretty girl to turn red and laugh. I wanted to
explode, to catch her eye and to make her fall into me, but I restrained.
Instead, I rose and fell softly, keeping to her pace in silence, waiting for
her to speak. Days went past and she grew full, all in silence, until she
reached her fullest and I began to feel like the world had become unreal, or else
I had become so and she and I were no longer part of this realm. It was then
that she spoke, first about the mountains from which I had seen her rise from
so many times before, then about the songs the Old Man had taught me. She told
me that she had loved the Old Man since he was young, and had always wished
that she could talk so freely to him as I did. She spoke without respite, and I
listened, enchanted by all she had to say, until soon, she fell silent. I gazed
up at her, “would you like to meet him? The Old Man?” I offered.
To this day, I have never seen such an overflowing of joy
that I saw that night at Peregrin. Together, we journeyed back over her well
worn paths, me telling her of all the tales that the Old Man had told us, the
stories about the quadruplets that each had four names; about the young soldier
and the time he bought Llleiaj flowers and she kissed him. I told her about
Mahbulah, my grumpy Welsh Haddock; and about the other fishes that had grown up
and lived in the seaweed fields three miles away from the Old Man’s house. We
spoke of the night and the mountains until we reached the wooden posts and
weather-beaten shack where the Old Man sat waiting, smoke billowing about and a
deep song coming from his chest. We rose to greet him, and he began to sing
once more, deep and throaty.
The Old Man sat singing, and we and the fished gathered
around him, the light of the Moon shining so brightly over us all that it
almost felt like we were on her surface, and the deep sky was no more than a
distant shadow.
He sung to us about Sir P’n esq.’s cat, King Richard the
Lionheart, and made the Moon cry tears of joy, sung of old Mr. and Mrs.
Frnerngla and their love that shook the mountains. He mumbled a ditty about the
four lookalike children with their interchangeable names and the mischief they
caused. But as all things must come to an end, this did too, as the Moon sadly
smiled and began to drift along her path. She could not stay, she had to
continue on. I trembled, stirring and drenching the Old Man’s balcony, until
the Old Man began to laugh, and in that laugh, I heard those two words now so
familiar to me as the smoke around the Old Man’s head and the stories he told.
And so I did, finding that part of me had already begun to
chase after her, and that this was now the most natural thing. The Moon looked
down at me, radiant, and I back at her.
…
Mahbulah, the old cynic, would still laugh at my
impetuousness as I chased the Moon and her silent paths through the sky, roll
his glassy eyes at my songs and grumble roughly at my passionate adoration of
her beauty but he knew as well as I that we were locked in this embrace, me
chasing after her, her pulling me along, and there was naught to be done about
it. And so we stayed, locked together by gravity, chasing each other through
oceans and skies, kept soft by the songs of the Old Man.
