I am not sure how long we sit like this, but eventually a Fiat Spider with racing stripes roars down the Seestrasse, its radio blaring Swiss hip-hop. This silly noise rolls across the water, makes me turn my head in irritation, and the swiveling upper torso must rattle the chain on my ankle, sending movement reverberating through the water, because the trout darts forward, like a powerful submarine, and forever disappears into the deep.
I swing my legs back over the edge, resting the anchors on the bottom of the boat. I am panting from the exertion, and it takes me several minutes to untie the rope and unlock the chain from my ankles. I am shaking and a little feverish.
But I know it’s the right thing to do.
Lisa comes home, shortly after noon. I am quietly waiting for her in the light of the chalet’s living-room window, sitting in the red Chinoise armchair, staring out the window. I am listening to El Caracol, the great flamenco cantaor, his cry of the soul coming from the speakers of the iPhone docking station behind me.
Lisa is wearing a tan raincoat, belted, her hair glittering after a visit to her Zürich hairdresser. I lean over and turn down the music’s volume. Lisa bends down to kiss the top of my baldpate. I am overwhelmed by her familiar smell, but I hide my emotion, just pat her hand and look up.
“Hola, mujer. Was the opera any good?”
“Avant-garde. You would have hated it. Haven’t decided yet what I think.”
She takes off her coat and talks about the world premiere she has just seen at the Zürich Opera House. The work is called Déracinée—a French word meaning “uprooted”—and the performance involved lots of cymbal-crashing atonal music and a rather large Welsh tenor, and an even larger Bulgarian soprano, both in great anguish. The opera is about Russian exiles living in London, she tells me, residents who are never really citizens of their adopted country, but isolated and lonely foreigners floating rootless through their British life, pining for their Russian homeland that no longer exists.
My wife leaves the room briefly to hang up her coat in the hall closet. I took a painkiller, as instructed by Dr. Sutter, and am floating on its effects.
“How was your night? Did you eat the kale I left you?”
“No. I made my own dinner.”
Lisa stiffens with irritation, is about to say something, but then lets it pass. She goes to the kitchen table and flips through the mail. “Did you see this? There’s a postcard here from Sam. What a strange-looking card. Who are these people holding up knives? Where is this?”
“Greenland. They’re Inughuits.”
“That boy can’t sit still. He is so like you.”
“God, I hope not.”
“What should we do for lunch? I’m not really hungry.”
She stops in her tracks and looks intently at me. She has a sixth sense.
“What is it?”
I look back at her, blink. The doorbell rings. There is so much I intend to say, but when the moment comes, the words fail me, and a few moments later Kamila, the Czech maid, comes to tell me my guests are waiting in the office.
François Kreuz, the chairman of Médecins Sans Frontières, and his German assistant are up from Geneva. They are sitting on the couch facing the French doors. The rose garden outside is bathed in morning light. Kamila has brought them a tray—a white porcelain pot of coffee, matching cream-and-sugar holders—and the young German assistant is leaning forward, handing his superior a saucer and cup, just as I enter the room.
“Good afternoon, Monsieur Kreuz,” I say. “Please don’t get up.” We shake hands all around. I can’t remember the aide’s name. “Hello, young man. Good to see you again. Your team, FC Bayern, is doing well.”
He laughs, delighted I should remember our last conversation. “They are top of the league!”
I take my seat opposite. Kreuz stirs his coffee with a silver spoon, and a delicate tinkle fills the room as his spoon grates against the porcelain walls of the cup. “Thank you for seeing us, Herr Álvarez,” he says. “Let me say, on behalf of the entire board at Médecins Sans Frontières, we wish you all the best in your battle with the cancer. We were all very upset to hear the news.”
“News travels fast.”
“Switzerland, you know, it is really just a small village. Your neighbors know your business—before you do.”
His assistant and I laugh. “How true,” I say.
“Dr. Sutter is excellent,” he continues. “The best in Switzerland. But if you want a second opinion, in New York or London, the doctors in our organization are entirely at your disposal. Just give us the word and we will make calls and find you the best specialists in the world and get you in for an appointment.”
“That’s very kind. Thank you. But I am quite happy with Dr. Sutter and my treatment. It is what it is. In the end, we must all die of something.”
“True.”
“Now, Monsieur Kreuz. Thank you for your concern but you requested this meeting for a reason. How can I help?”
Kreuz pauses for a moment, looks out the French doors, and then turns his head back in my direction. “You have, over the years, been a wonderful patron and advocate of our work. We are extremely grateful for your support.”
I brush some fluff off my knee. “Doctors Without Borders is a wonderful organization. I like to think that is also how I have lived my own life—without borders. I am proud to support and be associated with your fine organization. There’s no need for us to say more.”
“Thank you. We are equally proud to be associated with you and the Álvarez bank.”
We stare at each other, Monsieur Kreuz and I, and then he says, “It’s very difficult for me to bring this up. But it’s my job.”
“You are among friends. You can speak plainly.”
“Every year it seems the wars are growing in number and ferocity, all across the globe. We can’t keep up. Médecins Sans Frontières is stretched dangerously thin. We need more capital, to increase our capacity and respond to the urgent needs around the world.”
“Yes, I just saw your letter. I see you will report a deficit this year. The first in the organization’s history.”
“Which is why I am here. Not to put too fine a point on it, we would be very grateful if you would remember Médecins Sans Frontières in your estate. Is this too bold of me to ask?”
“Not at all. I am a realist and value straight talk. We have discussed this possibility in the past, but now the issue is real and urgent—not just for me, apparently, but for the organization as well. Your request is well timed and duly noted. I need to reflect on these matters. I cannot put these decisions about my estate and legacy off much longer.”
Kreuz is visibly relieved that I have not taken offense. “Thank you so much, Herr Álvarez. For your understanding. We are grateful—even just for the consideration.”
“That you have. Now, I am a little tired. I should probably lie down before dinner. Is there anything else?”
The assistant rummages in his bag and retrieves a gift beautifully wrapped in silver-blue paper. He hands it to Kreuz, who in turn holds it delicately in his meaty hands, before saying, “Do you recall meeting an Icelandic doctor when you were touring our field operations in Sarajevo? This was many years ago.”
“I do. The eye specialist. Dr. Einarsson. We discovered on that trip—as mortars were flying all around us—we both fished the same salmon river in the northwestern corner of Iceland. It was quite an extraordinary afternoon we had together.”
“Yes. Exactly. Dr. Einarsson has since become an international star and a great ambassador of our work. He famously perfected a low-cost cataract operation, with a portable laser he invented and patented. His discovery has been licensed to Alcon, and he is donating half of all his royalties to our organization.”
“A fine man. I knew that already back then.”
“Well, I am glad you remember him, because he certainly remembers you. In fact, when Dr. Einarsson heard that you were fighting late-stage cancer, he asked me to give you
this small gift.”
Monsieur Kreuz solemnly hands me the package, the Japanese way, with both hands.
“Thank you very much. I’ll open it upstairs. It was very good of you to come to remote Ägeri to see me. Now, let me show you out.”
I get rid of them and wearily climb the stairs. I hear Lisa in the kitchen, and, wanting privacy, go all the way up, to our bedroom upstairs. I unwrap the gift on the bed. It is a series of three unusual salmon flies, framed under glass, which Dr. Einarsson has created. The flies are, his attached note says, particularly productive at catching fish on the Kjara, our favorite river. He draws my attention to the middle fly, which has a sleek black body, silver tinsel, and a touch of jungle-cock and partridge feather near the hook’s eye. It looks lethal.
Dr. Einarsson has named the fly “The Professor.”
The Professor is my nickname in Iceland, bestowed on me one summer by a ghillie after I broke the record of fish caught in one day on the Kjara River—three years in a row.
I am moved beyond words. I don’t know how to respond to this thoughtful gift, this homage, from a virtual stranger.
It’s almost more than my own sons would do for me.
It is late September and the last day of trout season is here. I rise early, pick up my favorite trout rod from my study, and stick a few boxes of flies into my fishing vest. I leave a note for Lisa, sleeping late, as is her habit, letting her know I won’t fish the whole day, but will be back to have lunch with her.
The morning is fresh. I contentedly head, however slow of pace, toward the garage, sticking the magnetized rod holder on the roof of the Volvo. I secure my Hardy trout rod, and then throw waders and a fishing vest in the trunk. I let Alfredo out of his pen and he vigorously wags his stubby tail, repeatedly licks my hand in thanks, before lifting his great leg and peeing on a flowerpot. He then trots over to the Volvo and looks back at me with his bearded face, urging me to open the car door.
We drive to the Lebensbach, my favorite stream on the other side of the Rippenseite mountain. The day is cool but sunny, with a light wind rippling through the birch. Cowbells clank and the air smells rich. The country road turns to dirt and we pass a cluster of old farmhouses and barns, not quite a village, named Brunnenhof, because of the stone fountain gurgling at the crossroads of the dirt lanes. The brown cedar of the central farmhouse is so battered by age and weather the shingles are almost black, and as we drive by, an elderly woman in dreary skirt and blouse comes from around the side, a pitchfork full of hay raised high above her kerchief-covered head.
Alfredo leans against the door, looking out the window and smelling every barnyard animal that sweeps past, his ears pricking up if a dog barks or a cockerel cries. We pull down a dirt track that a logger has made along the river’s edge. Next to a shed—municipal warnings about rabid squirrels and foxes and poisonous mushrooms hammered to its wooden walls—I pull the car hard against a spruce, its low-hanging branches lightly brushing the side of the car.
Alfredo is panting, ready for the hunt.
I pop open his door. “Vámonos, Alfredo. Pescado para Dios.”
Fish for God.
Funny, that. It’s an expression I haven’t thought about in seventy years. My father used to say this prayer, with much feeling, every time we went fishing. He’d ritualistically spit on his fly, piss his horse-stream into the river, and then roar “Pescado para Dios!” as he threw his first cast with the power that came from his huge frame.
Alfredo snuffles through the underbrush as I fuss about in the back of the Volvo. With grunting effort, I pull on my hip waders before shrugging on the vest filled with flies and spools of filament. Around my head I hang the eyeglasses with the magnified bifocals that miraculously allow me to still tie flies at my advanced age, and then clip into place the Polaroid shades that enable me to see fish below the glare of the river’s surface. Finally, I sling around my back an old wicker fishing basket from Galicia, a family heirloom with oft-repaired canvas side bags in which I store a bottle of water and a stick of salami, in case I feel weak.
Alfredo looks pleadingly at me, whines under his breath.
“I’m coming.”
I slam shut the back of the Volvo, lift my rod from the magnetized holders, and together we take the nearly invisible path down through the trees. Alfredo trots ahead but always turns around to see if the old man is still following.
He is—but tediously. Some thirty tottering and stumbling minutes later we circle a large boulder, covered with moss and a few ash and elm seedlings that have taken root in its crevices. I have to stop and catch my breath. I feel a little weak. But I can hear the roar of the waterfall on the other side of the boulder, and as we slowly round its stone edges, its drifting spray comes through the spruce and refreshingly moistens my face, giving me a second wind. More importantly, I smell fish. I click my tongue at Alfredo, warning him not to run ahead, and he instantly falls into position, ears pricked up, one paw gingerly placed before the other, two steps behind and off to the right of my heel.
We come slowly down through the trees. I am at that age where I can no longer jump that last bit of slope, so I slide down on my backside, through the moss and fern, my boots finally landing solid on the rock below. I stand, panting and shaky and undignified. But I’ve done it. The old man has returned to his favorite fishing spot, even if his backside and pride are a little bruised.
The waterfall and pool appear luminescent in the dappled light. I gently slide the wicker fishing basket from around my neck, place it in a bed of pale ferns, and tie a stonefly onto the end of a 2.5-kilo leader. From a vest pocket, I pull out a rattling packet, and after sliding open its plastic door, retrieve a tiny bit of shot that I clamp to the leader.
The pool is fifty square meters and black-green in color, created by a powerful funnel of gin roaring over the top of a granite ledge. From the short distance away, where I am standing among the ferns, the waterfall could almost appear as wispy as the white-lace train of a wedding gown, but the river’s throaty roar and the spray of mist the falls unleash quickly make it clear this is no dainty amount of water, but a deep pool.
I quietly inch my way forward. Alfredo follows, one paw up, his stubby tail straight. There is a mossy rock to the left of the waterfall, and I cast into the calm pocket of water behind it. Alfredo stands rigid to my right, ears pricked and alert. The current pulls the fly, but the shot and sinking line keep the fly down, keep it from bobbing to the surface, and it is pulled deep through the pool.
Nothing. I try the other side of the rock and the fly instantly hits a snag, probably a broken branch. I curse, pull at it, and as I do so, a silver bar flashes deep down in the black water.
Not a tree limb. A fish.
The reel cries, Alfredo whines. I step back as the fish runs into the hardest part of the falls, trying to shake the hook.
“Ha, Alfredo! The old man still has it!”
Three times I bring the trout to the surface, and three times the cock fish flips its tail, turns, and heads back down into the pool. Then he tries to run around a jagged rock, to break the line, and the ebullience I feel at hooking him gives way to a grudging respect. And so we continue—me pulling one way, he the other—until, weary of fighting for life, he finally rolls onto his side, and slowly comes to my feet.
It is a wonderful rainbow trout, almost three kilos. Its flank is a delicate mesh of silver scales, but with pink-and-blue hues glinting even in the forest’s low light. He’s on his side, his gills working furiously, gasping for breath. His head is lifted slightly by the taut line and rests on a rock, while his flank bobs in the water. But he defiantly flaps his tail, again and again, still trying to dodge his fate.
The one black eye, facing up, stares fiercely at me.
This may be the last fish I will ever catch in this world, and the courage with which the trout has fought for his life, it moves me. I was never one of those maricones who preached catch-and-release; it’s just modern decadence, in my opinion,
to torture fish and return them, rather than eat the fish you catch as God intended. But, before I know what is happening, I have bent down and am releasing the hook. I let the fish recover in the shallows, and eventually he pulls away, slowly swimming back into the deep belly of the pool.
I drop my rod, sit down heavily on a rock, my arms and legs suddenly too weak to hold me up. Alfredo looks at me as if I am insane. He backs away, keeps a wary distance, unsure what it all means.
As I sit slump-shouldered and staring blankly at the pool, I remember the time I came to this exact spot with my sons, when they were mere boys, to teach them how to catch trout with worms. Sam was around ten years old and, as I stood by his side, a nice-sized brook trout took his bait. John and Rob sat hushed on a mossy rock behind their older brother, as I whispered to Sam he should let the trout run with the line and fully take the worm. When enough time went by for the trout to swallow the hook, I told him it was time to pull up hard, and in one arc of bent rod he hauled the trout out of the pool and sent it flying over our heads to the bushes behind us.
Sam was shivering with excitement and chattering nonstop as we pulled the flopping trout from the bushes and I taught the boys how to kill it in a clean and manly way. We then gutted the fish and that night wrapped it in bacon and roasted it in the oven—and how we all agreed, as we sat in the chalet’s dining room, that it was the best meal we ever had in our lives.
And as one memory leads to another, I remember another day, in the same dining room, having dinner with my handsome sons, then in their late teens and early twenties. That night I repeated to them, without really thinking about what I was saying, what my father had told me—that they were expected to take over the Álvarez family bank one day and run it well and pass it on to their children. The boys at first sat stone-faced in the shadows of the dining room, but then the American in them rose up and violently declared their independence from me. Sam talked back and the other two quickly joined forces with their older brother. I am ashamed of my response now, but I couldn’t stop myself at the time, and things ran away from us, undoubtedly because below the surface of our rage there stood a great deal of unspoken shame, disgust, and disappointment—in me.
The Man With No Borders Page 4
