Old Man and the Sea (6 page)

  
If the boy were here he could rub it for me
and loosen it down from the forearm, he thought. But it will loosen up.

  
Then, with his right hand he felt the
difference in the pull of the line before he saw the slant change in the water.
Then, as he leaned against the line and slapped his left hand hard and fast
against his thigh he saw the line slanting slowly upward.

  
“He’s coming up,” he said. “Come on hand.
Please come on.”

  
The line rose slowly and steadily and then
the surface of the ocean bulged ahead of the boat and the fish came out. He
came out unendingly and water poured from his sides. He was bright in the sun
and his head and back
were
dark purple and in the sun
the stripes on his sides showed wide and a light lavender. His sword was as
long as
a baseball bat
and tapered like a rapier and
he rose his full length from the water and then re-entered it, smoothly, like a
diver and the old man saw the great scythe-blade of his tail go under and the
line commenced to race out.

  
“He is two feet longer than the skiff,” the
old man said. The line was going out fast but steadily and the fish was not
panicked. The old man was trying with both hands to keep the line just inside
of breaking strength. He knew that if he could not slow the fish with a steady
pressure the fish could take out all the line and break it.

  
He is a great fish and I must convince him,
he thought. I must never let him learn his strength nor what he could do if he
made his run. If I were him I would put in everything now and go until
something broke. But, thank God, they are not as intelligent as we who kill
them; although they are
more noble
and more able.

  
The old man had seen many great fish. He had
seen many that weighed more than a thousand pounds and he had caught two of
that size in his life, but never alone. Now alone, and out of sight of land, he
was fast to the biggest fish that he had ever seen and bigger than he had ever
heard of, and his left hand was still as tight as the gripped claws of an
eagle.

  
It will uncramp though, he thought. Surely
it will uncramp to help my right hand. There are three things that are
brothers: the fish and my two hands. It must uncramp. It is unworthy of it to
be cramped. The fish had slowed again and was going at his usual pace.

  
I wonder why he jumped, the old man thought.
He jumped almost as though to show me how big he was. I know now, anyway, he
thought. I wish I could show him what sort of man I am. But then he would see
the cramped hand. Let him think I am more man than I am and I will be so. I
wish I was the fish, he thought, with everything he has against only my will
and my intelligence.

  
He settled comfortably against the wood and
took his suffering as it came and the fish swam steadily and the boat moved
slowly through the dark water. There was a small sea rising with the wind
coming up from the east and at noon the old man’s left hand was uncramped.

  
“Bad news for you, fish,” he said and
shifted the line over the sacks that covered his shoulders.

  
He was comfortable but suffering, although
he did not admit the suffering at all.

  
“I am not religious,” he said. “But I will
say ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys that I should catch this fish, and I
promise to make a pilgrimage to the Virgin of Cobre if I catch him. That is a
promise.”

  
He commenced to say his prayers
mechanically. Sometimes he would be so tired that he could not remember the
prayer and then he would say them fast so that they would come automatically.
Hail Marys are easier to say than Our Fathers, he thought.

  
“Hail Mary full of Grace the Lord is with
thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.” Then he added, “Blessed Virgin, pray for the death of this fish.
Wonderful though he is.”

  
With his prayers said, and feeling much
better, but suffering exactly as much, and perhaps a little more, he leaned
against the wood of the bow and began, mechanically, to work the fingers of his
left hand.

  
The sun was hot now although the breeze was
rising gently.

  
“I had better re-bait that little line out
over the stern,” he said. “If the fish decides to stay another night I will
need to eat again and the water is low in the bottle. I don’t think I can get
anything but a dolphin here. But if I eat him fresh enough he won’t be bad. I
wish a flying fish would come on board tonight. But I have no light to attract
them. A flying fish is excellent to eat raw and I would not have to cut him up.
I must save all my strength now. Christ, I did not know he was so big.”

  
“I’ll kill him though,” he said.
“In all his greatness and his glory.”

  
Although it is unjust, he thought. But I
will show him what a man can do and what a man endures.

  
“I told the boy I was a strange old man,” he
said.

  
“Now is when I must prove it.”

  
The thousand times that he had proved it
meant nothing. Now he was proving it again. Each time was a new time and he
never thought about the past when he was doing it.

  
I wish he’d sleep and I could sleep and
dream about the lions, he thought. Why are the lions the main thing that is
left? Don’t think, old man, he said to himself, Rest gently now against the
wood and think of nothing. He is working. Work as little as you can.

  
It was getting into the afternoon and the
boat still moved slowly and steadily. But there was an added drag now from the
easterly breeze and the old man rode gently with the small sea and the hurt of
the cord across his back came to him easily and smoothly.

  
Once in the afternoon the line started to
rise again. But the fish only continued to swim at a slightly higher level. The
sun was on the old man’s left arm and shoulder and on his back. So he knew the
fish had turned east of north.

  
Now that he had seen him once, he could
picture the fish swimming in the water with his purple pectoral fins set wide
as wings and the great erect tail slicing through the dark. I wonder how much
he sees at that depth, the old man thought. His eye is huge and a horse, with
much less eye, can see in the dark. Once I could see quite well in the dark.
Not in the absolute dark.
But almost as a cat sees.

  
The sun and his steady movement of his
fingers had uncramped his left hand now completely and he began to shift more
of the strain to it and he shrugged the muscles of his back to shift the hurt
of the cord a little.

  
“If you’re not tired, fish,” he said aloud,
“you must be very strange.”

  
He felt very tired now and he knew the night
would come soon and he tried to think of other things. He thought of the Big
Leagues, to him they were the Gran Ligas, and he knew that the Yankees of New
York were playing the Tigres of Detroit.

  
This is the second day now that I do not
know the result of the juegos, he thought. But I must have confidence and I
must be worthy of the great DiMaggio who does all things perfectly even with
the pain of the bone spur in his heel. What is a bone spur?
he
asked himself.
Un
espuela de hueso. We do not have
them. Can it be as painful as the spur of a fighting cock in one’s heel? I do
not think I could endure that or the loss of the eye and of both eyes and
continue to fight as the fighting cocks do. Man is not much beside the great
birds and beasts. Still I would rather be that beast down there in the darkness
of the sea.

  
“Unless sharks come,” he said aloud. “If
sharks come, God pity him and me.”

  
Do you believe the great DiMaggio would stay
with a fish as long as I will stay with this one?
he
thought. I am sure he would and more since he is young and strong. Also his
father was a fisherman. But would the bone spur hurt him too much?

  
“I do not know,” he said aloud. “I never had
a bone spur.”

  
As the sun set he remembered, to give
himself more confidence, the time in the tavern at Casablanca when he had
played the hand game with the great negro from Cienfuegos who was the strongest
man on the docks. They had gone one day and one night with their elbows on a
chalk line on the table and their forearms straight up and their hands gripped
tight. Each one was trying to force the other’s hand down onto the table. There
was much betting and people went in and out of the room under the kerosene
lights and he had looked at the arm and hand of the
negro
and at the negro’s face. They changed the referees every four hours after the
first eight so that the referees could sleep. Blood came out from under the
fingernails of both his and the
negro’s
hands and they
looked each other in the eye and at their hands and forearms and the bettors
went in and out of the room and sat on high chairs against the wall and
watched. The walls were painted bright blue and were of wood and the lamps
threw their shadows against them. The
negro’s
shadow
was huge and it moved on the wall as the breeze moved the lamps.

  
The odds would change back and forth all
night and they fed the
negro
rum and lighted
cigarettes for him.

  
Then the
negro
,
after the rum, would try for a tremendous effort and once he had the old man,
who was not an old man then but was Santiago El Campeon, nearly three inches
off balance. But the old man had raised his hand up to dead even again. He was
sure then that he had the
negro
, who was a fine man
and a great athlete, beaten. And at daylight when the bettors were asking that
it be called a draw and the referee was shaking his head, he had unleashed his
effort and forced the hand of the
negro
down and down
until it rested on the wood. The match had started on a Sunday morning and
ended on a Monday morning. Many of the bettors had asked for a draw because
they had to go to work on the docks loading sacks of sugar or at the Havana
Coal Company. Otherwise everyone would have wanted it to go to a finish. But he
had finished it anyway and before anyone had to go to work.

  
For a long time after that everyone had
called him The Champion and there had been a return match in the spring. But
not much money was bet and he had won it quite easily since he had broken the
confidence of the
negro
from Cienfuegos in the first
match. After that he had a few matches and then no more. He decided that he
could beat anyone if he wanted to badly enough and he decided that it was bad
for his right hand for fishing. He had tried a few practice matches with his
left hand. But his left hand had always been a traitor and would not do what he
called on it to do and he did not trust it.

  
The sun will bake it out well now, he
thought. It should not cramp on me again unless it gets too cold in the night.
I wonder what this night will bring.

  
An airplane passed overhead on its course to
Miami and he watched its shadow scaring up the schools of flying fish.

  
“With so much flying fish there should be
dolphin,” he said, and leaned back on the line to see if it was possible to
gain any on his fish. But he could not and it stayed at the hardness and
water-drop shivering that preceded breaking. The boat moved ahead slowly and he
watched the airplane until he could no longer see it.

  
It must be very strange in an airplane, he
thought. I wonder what the sea looks like from that
height?
They should be able to see the fish well if they do not fly too high. I would
like to fly very slowly at two hundred fathoms high and see the fish from
above. In the turtle boats I was in the cross-trees of the mast-head and even
at that height I saw much. The dolphin look greener from there and you can see
their stripes and their purple spots and you can see all of the school as they
swim. Why is it that all the fast-moving fish of the dark current have purple
backs and usually purple stripes or spots? The dolphin looks green of course
because he is really golden. But when he comes to feed, truly hungry, purple
stripes show on his sides as on a marlin. Can it be anger, or the greater speed
he makes that brings them out?

  
Just before it was dark, as they passed a
great island of Sargasso weed that heaved and swung in the light sea as though
the ocean were making love with something under a yellow blanket, his small
line was taken by a dolphin. He saw it first when it jumped in the air, true
gold in the last of the sun and bending and flapping wildly in the air. It
jumped again and again in the acrobatics of its fear and he worked his way back
to the stern and crouching and holding the big line with his right hand and
arm, he pulled the dolphin in with his left hand, stepping on the gained line
each time with his bare left foot. When the fish was at the stem, plunging and
cutting from side to side in desperation, the old man leaned over the stern and
lifted the burnished gold fish with its purple spots over the stem. Its jaws
were working convulsively in quick bites against the hook and it pounded the
bottom of the skiff with its long flat body, its tail and its head until he
clubbed it across the shining golden head until it shivered and was still.