The Man With No Borders

by Richard C. Morais

  Eventually we were all yelling at each other and Lisa was crying. When I was midsentence and smacking the table to make a point, the boys walked out on me—united as one.

  The pain of this memory, it’s unbearable—

  How did you go from that young father standing joyously with his boys at the edge of this pool—to an old man nearing his end and alone at the same pool, with nothing to show for his life but an indifferent relationship with his sons?

  I am a failure. A failure.

  Alfredo whines, cocks his ears, and his quizzical look says it all—Who are you? When I see this, I am ashamed of my weakness, and pull myself together. I hold out a hand for the dog to sniff.

  “It’s all right, Alfredo. Qué sé yo. It’s me. Just me.”

  He comes forward, licks my hand—and I find myself standing at the edge of the Atlantic as the tide comes in, my face wet with salt air.

  PART II

  1959

  RIBADESELLA, NORTHERN SPAIN

  THREE

  The brown-sugar sand below Miramar, our summerhouse in Ribadesella, was getting a good pounding from the Atlantic Ocean that day, and the stiff breeze carried just enough spray back in our direction to moisten our skin and make our faces tingle with sea salt. I was sixteen, Papá had a hangover, and the two of us were out on our gravel drive, studying the men in threadbare black suits that were lined up along the coastal lane running between our house and the beach.

  Little did I know then that I would never be happier than that summer of my youth—or that everything I experienced later in life flowed directly from that fishing trip. All I knew then was that it was spring and the fishing season had started. Some of the rough-looking men before us had shotguns hanging from leather straps off their shoulders, while others had pointers at their heels and were smoking yellow-skinned cigarettes—but they were all, every one of them, farmers who doubled as fishing guides and river managers.

  Papá hacked up phlegm. His head hurt and he was shielding himself from the morning light with dark sunglasses. Papá was always meticulous about the way he looked, no matter what had transpired the night before, and he was dressed in a green tweed country suit, his usual monogrammed handkerchief poking out of his breast pocket. The light was, for some reason, making his Roman nose and formidable jaw look like it had been carved out of soft and salty butter, and his love of red wine and pig roasts was manifesting itself in a growing double chin bulging slightly above his wire-haired chest.

  “Bueno,” Papá said gruffly. “Let’s start the show. Are you ready, José?”

  I held a wicker basket filled with white envelopes, and his essence of stale whisky and Suavecito hair pomade and cigarette smoke was coming to me in gusts on the wind. I looked up at him and nodded. “Sí, Papá. I am ready.”

  We stepped forward. Papá began the annual ritual with Señor Guiterez, the head ghillie of the mightiest of Spanish salmon rivers. He was, according to custom, first in line, his panting and saliva-flecked collie seated obediently at his feet.

  Papá held his cigarette like he was socializing at a tapas bar, its smoke curling up and above his rose-gold pinky ring stamped with our family crest, and after the usual exchange of pleasantries, he said, “So tell me, old friend, how are things on the Narcea?”

  “This run could be the best we’ve ever seen, Don Jesús. Last year we had a record number of first-year fish returning to the river to spawn, but now we are seeing the second-year fish—monsters all above ten kilos—coming in large waves.”

  “Joder. Muy bien.”

  Señor Guiterez was beaming at Papá with such self-satisfaction we could see every one of his silver teeth, plus the tobacco-stained ivory stubs left over from what God had given him. Papá turned to the basket I was holding, retrieved an envelope, and handed it solemnly over to the ghillie.

  “Thank you for your friendship, Señor Guiterez. It is good of you to come this long distance to visit us.”

  “We hope to see the Álvarez family fishing the Narcea soon,” Guiterez said, pocketing his envelope. “It’s been too long.”

  “Hombre! We would like that very much. We love the Narcea, particularly the upper beat. But, as you know, God chooses where we fish.”

  The men laughed. It was an open secret in these parts of Spain that my father had an unusual method for picking the rivers our family fished. Every spring and fall, Spain’s head of state, Generalísimo Francisco Franco, returned to Oviedo in Asturias, where he had first met his wife and been stationed as a young battalion commander of the Regimiento de Infantería del Príncipe. From his wife’s country home, La Pinella, Franco staged lightning-like raids on the salmon in the rivers of the surrounding countryside, just like he massacred Berbers in the Rif Mountains of Morocco a few decades earlier.

  He did so, of course, with the odds heavily stacked in his favor. Whenever Franco chose to fish the nearby Narcea, Nalón, or Navia rivers, the authorities in Madrid closed down the entire river three weeks before El Caudillo arrived, so the fish were rested and ready to take the old man’s lure. He fished with spoons or prawns, a common and coarse approach that my fly-fishing father and uncle privately ridiculed, but all Franco cared about was laying a string of dead fish out on the riverbank, and this he did with great efficiency.

  Of course, the first commoner to know that El Caudillo was coming to fish a particular river was the water’s head ghillie, who, a month in advance, would be personally notified by Madrid’s Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries to close down the river. That would then force the ghillies to chase off any fishermen who had licenses to fish the river during those weeks. My father and uncle had been repeatedly bumped off their fishing beats in this manner. They were not pleased.

  So, starting in 1953, Papá quietly put the head ghillies of Northern Spain’s salmon rivers on his payroll. The arrangement was simple: the Álvarez family—originally from these parts, before the family bank was moved to the wealthy Basque city of San Sebastián—would lease the best river beats immediately after El Caudillo concluded his vacation. We would fish “in God’s shadow” was how Papá explained it. My father figured that one old man could not properly fish an entire river, particularly after it was rested for weeks before the old man even arrived, which meant our family would in this way be guaranteed the second-best fishing in all Spain, after Franco himself, of course.

  But the head ghillies had to be financially rewarded for their efforts on our family’s behalf, which was why, on that spring morning, they were lined up to receive our “tokens of appreciation.” Papá loved the annual ritual and he moved to the next man down the line, like a general inspecting his troops, warmly shaking the fellow’s hand and passing him a cash-filled envelope. The white-haired ghillie bowed courteously.

  “Gracias, Don Jesús. May Saint Peter ensure you and your family a great catch this year. I hear you will be fishing the Sella.”

  “Yes. Apparently, God has become rather fond of the Bridge Pool in Omedina.”

  The men up and down the lane laughed. When the last ghillie had received his envelope, our manservant, Jorge, came out with a silver tray filled with blanched almonds and shot glasses of Fanjul, the local apple-cider liquor. I looked down at the basket and the last and fattest envelope left, which would go to Ignacio del Toro, the head ghillie of the Sella. We raised our glasses, drank to each other’s good health, and returned them empty to Jorge’s tray. “Now, please forgive us, gentleman,” Papá said. “My son and I have to run into town for our supplies. May God be with you and your families in the coming year.”

  The men roared their well wishes, and Papá and I returned to the house. We found Uncle Augustin seated in a living-room armchair, reading the local paper through a pair of gold-rimmed bifocals as he waited for our return, while from the back of the house came the industrious clatter of Conchata, our cook. Papá and I needed to freshen up before we headed to town, and so climbed the stairs two by two, heading to our respective rooms.

  As we
turned into the landing on the next floor, there was a movement behind a slightly open door, and we both turned our heads in its direction. My younger brother, Juan, just fourteen, was standing naked before the full-length mirror in Mother’s bedroom. His back was to us and he was staring at his body, flexing the muscles in his right arm, his left hand reaching down to pull at his dick poking from his pubic hair, trying to make it look longer. He had doused himself in Suavecito, and the smell came to us, thick and pungent in the hall. Just then, Juan twisted his upper torso to look admiringly at his butt.

  Papá laughed as we passed and said, “He is going to create trouble, our Juan. The girls better watch out. Mark my words. That’s Don Juan in the making.”

  Juan and I went to the seawall at the end of Ribadesella, and stood on our tiptoes, peering into the sea, as Father and Uncle Augustin foraged in town for supplies. The Atlantic was rough that day, a slip-sliding surface that shifted somewhere between milky blue and icy platinum, until the water thundered foamy white against the blocks of brown rock. Curve-necked cormorants stood on the marlstone and peered intently down into the water with their angry-yellow eyes, fierce hunters standing in between the seaweed toupees that here and there were plopped haphazardly atop the bald and barnacled rocks.

  A bar of silver flew out of the water a hundred meters off, before plunging again. It was a krill-fattened salmon shaking loose the sea lice that were dying in that sweet-salt water where river mouth and ocean met.

  “Look,” I said, pointing out at the water. “They are there, hovering, just below the surface.”

  “Cabrón. I am not stupid. I have eyes in my head, you know.”

  My brother was leaning far over the wall, staring deep and pensively into the water, the zipper end of his blue windbreaker flapping in the stiff breeze. The blue light that day caught his delicate skin, his curly brown hair. He had the family’s black eyebrows, set like a pair of grammatical tildes above burnt-flan eyes, and they were fierce and furrowed with concentration.

  “Hey, stupid,” Juan said. “You’re missing the action.”

  My brother pointed as another salmon jumped—and another. It was like an electrical current under the sea was sending fish flying up into the air, and the seagulls hovering above us cried with excitement at the sight. According to the farmer’s almanac in the pocket of my peacoat, a silver peseta of a full moon would that night draw in the month’s highest tide, and with it would come large numbers of Atlantic salmon making their egg-and-milt dash up the River Sella to spawn in the water that originally gave them life.

  “This year I am going to catch salmones much bigger than yours,” said my brother.

  “And how are you going to do that?”

  “Coño. By fishing better than you, than Papá, than Uncle Augustin. You’ll see. And if I don’t, I’ll just steal one of Papá’s fish, and tell you I caught it. You’re so gullible, you’ll probably believe me.”

  I ruffled his curly hair and he angrily pulled away from me, and carefully combed his locks with his fingers, already, at fourteen, meticulous about his appearance, just like Papá.

  The Roman town of Ribadesella strategically grew up in a protective bend of the Sella River, right before it entered the Atlantic, its port just a few hundred meters to the left and behind us. The salmon river originated in the Picos mountains on the horizon behind us and, after its journey to the coast, unfurled itself into the crashing sea before us like a flamenco dancer might unfurl her curled palm out flat toward a group of unruly and drunken men.

  The warm and salty air of that spring was imbued with that special light of youth, and as I looked across the river, to the bay, I spotted the gray towers of our summerhouse. “Come,” I said. “It’s time for us to get back. Papá said we’d have lunch in town before we went back to the house to finish packing.”

  We turned just as two fishing vessels entered the river mouth and made their way to the port’s fish market. Salmon hooks dressed in a tangle of meaty prawns and worms, a method of fishing unique to the Sella, sailed through the air. Old men and boys had created a gauntlet along the river wall and were casting painted cork bobbers into the string of pools that fed into the sea. Sacks filled with jamón and sheepskins full of wine were at their feet. A large number of growling feral cats were slinking between the fishermen’s legs, while yellow-legged gulls surfed the air, crying in anticipation of the approaching fish slaughter.

  The brass bell hanging at the top of the wall was rung each spring for the campanu, the first salmon caught of the season, and the wind gusts that day occasionally produced from it a dull clang. Juan and I began following the wall back toward the center of town, as a mud-splattered farmer and a bony donkey, pulling a cart of turnips, came up the cobblestone river road, and a half-mad monk in coarse habit crossed to the other side, muttering darkly to himself. A cry went out and Juan and I looked back at the line of fishermen along the wall.

  A man in a black beret was stepping back from the wall, his bamboo rod bent in two, his line screaming from a clunky steel reel. His compañero stepped forward and rang the brass bell announcing the campanu, and the wall revelers roared in celebration. Several tipped back their heads to take the wine from the botas, the sheepskin bladders held aloft that sent a stream of wine-piss soaring through the air and directly into their opened mouths. But we had no time to stop and watch the festivities, and reluctantly turned just as the fisherman’s half-drunk friend plunged a gaff into the salmon’s head and hauled it up the stone wall, the shuddering fish spouting blood like a punctured wine barrel.

  Below the older men, teenage boys and younger were fishing the river with hand lines and sand eels and ribbons of squid. We could just make out shoals of gray mullet moving down the pebbly riverbanks, sucking in plankton, dead plants, and scum. Here and there the tails of brill and bream poked up from their tin buckets.

  “Rich boys,” one local called out. “Buy our fish.”

  “No chance,” Juan retorted. “They smell like your stinky butt.”

  There was a roar and some of the village boys jumped up to fight. I grabbed Juan by the nape of his neck and steered him straight ahead, forcing him to look at the Guardia Civil in his olive-green cape and black tricorne hat, heading in our direction. The policeman glared at us over the hood of a dusty 1930s Packard coming down the street, and the local boys, who also saw him coming, quickly stepped back to their river perches, dropping eels over the side.

  The air that day smelled of the Arabian jasmine curling lasciviously up the town’s Roman wall, just starting to flower in April’s warm breath; and of donkey manure attracting swarms of bluebottles and starting to cook on the cobblestone skillet; and of maturing cod, packed in the diamond-dust of rock salt and stored in oak barrels outside the riverside fish restaurants.

  Up ahead, at Ribadesella’s central port, the two fishing vessels had docked and were unloading trays of red snapper and whiskered San Pedro. Uncle Augustin and Papá were sitting at a sidewalk table next to the port, under the bronze and watchful stare of a Franco statue, and studying the catch coming in at the fish market. They spotted us and impatiently waved at us to hurry up and take our seats at the table. Even from that distance, Juan and I could feel their eagerness to start fishing.

  Our bachelor uncle was slight in comparison to Papá, a good five centimeters shorter than his older brother, but lean and muscular as a matador. He was dressed in a hunting jacket of brown wool and an open white shirt that revealed a gold cross and chain in a tangle of dappled chest hair. Uncle Augustin smiled kindly at me, from below his well-groomed mustache, and patted the chair next to his.

  The pretty daughter of the proprietor brought out a bottle of white wine and a dish of fried baby eels to the table. Papá followed her hungrily with his eyes. We reported what we saw at the seawall, while quickly reducing the eels to an oily paste on our back teeth and washing it down with the wine. When I looked up from my plate, an elderly man in black suit and narrow tie stood silently under
the Franco statue, waiting to be noticed. I nudged Uncle Augustin.

  “Hola, Ignacio!” he said. “Come. Have a glass of wine with us. Are you hungry?”

  My father yelled at the waiters to bring a chair, glass, and plate, and for a moment there was a flurry of white aprons as they fought over who would bring over what. Ignacio del Toro, the head ghillie of the Sella River, carefully slung his shotgun over the back of the wooden chair placed before him, and sat by our table, a respectful distance back, ever mindful of his place. He held up his glass of wine to my father, formally and sonorously intoning, “Salud, Don Jesús. To your health and the health of the entire Álvarez family.”

  Papá handed Ignacio his envelope, piled his plate with eels, and warmly asked about his health and the state of his farm. The aged ghillie returned polite, taciturn responses, in between lowering his head over the fish platter, until Father finally blurted out, “Qué pasa, hombre! Come on. Tell us what’s happening on the river. How did Franco do?”

  The aged ghillie paused, put down his fork, and slowly began telling his tale. “El Caudillo arrived last week, with half his cabinet, his security detail, and a large number of horses. All appeared as normal. But he was on the river less than a day, up near Omedina, when his chief of staff arrived from Madrid. After they talked, Franco came up to our farm to take a phone call. Pfft. It was all over. Franco and his entire cabinet returned immediately to Madrid after the call.”

  My father squinted suspiciously. “Por qué? Franco never gives up his fishing.”

  “One of the officers told me they had finally caught Dr. Azel Echeverría, the Basque separatist. El Caudillo and his cabinet took off back to Madrid, to figure out how to get the most out of the terrorist’s capture.”

  We all looked at each other.