The Man With No Borders

by Richard C. Morais

  Felipe then grasped the fish by its tail, just above the caudal fin, and, for a moment, the silvery salmon caught glorious the sunlight. He took it to a side stream and lovingly washed it of blood, like it was a baby in the bath, before carrying it back toward the horses and gently laying it to rest in the canvas body bag spread out in the cool shadow of a tree.

  “Bueno,” he said. He stood and finally came over to formally shake my hand. “This calls for a toast.”

  Under that spring Asturian sun, we held the bota up high, like a biblical horn, the blood-red wine pouring in an arc across the sky and splashing deliciously into our mouths. Just then, a fish took Juan’s fly, only a meter below where I had caught mine, and he roared for help. Felipe and I flicked away our cigarettes and went to stand by my brother, as he played the fish.

  “Cabrón. Cabrón,” he kept saying in a high-pitched voice. The four-kilo fish came into the shallows, again expertly gaffed and lifted ashore by Felipe, and my younger brother burst out in an exultant whoop, for he had finally caught his first salmon on the fly.

  In our family’s books, Juan had just become a man.

  “Congratulations, Juanito,” I said. “It’s official. You’re no longer a virgin.”

  Juan grinned, crouched by his fish, and stroked it with his palm. He looked up. “If I had been fishing with Papá, this would never have happened. I only caught this salmon because you found the fish and then let me fish the pool.”

  “Claro! What is mine is yours, Juan. We share everything.”

  Juan jumped up, threw his arms around me, and kissed my neck. I laughed, patted his back. “I’m proud of you. But now, Juanito, the Sella must claim its ritual.”

  Felipe smiled, took out his knife, and cut the small and rubbery dorsal fin off the fish. He handed it to Juan. “Everyone who catches their first salmón on the Sella must eat the fin. Raw. If you don’t, you will have bad luck fishing for the rest of your life.” I went to the rucksack, pulled out a small flask of apple brandy, and handed it to Juan. He made a face, as he ground the fin between his teeth, swallowed, and then quickly washed it down with an eye-watering swig of the liqueur.

  “That is just disgusting! Who thought up this bullshit?”

  Felipe and I laughed, ruffled his hair.

  Juan was emanating a force of pure adrenaline and joy. “Go on, José, it’s your turn to catch one. But hurry up. I want to catch another. The fly finally clicked. I am getting a feel for it. So much more fun than catching fish with the worm.”

  Soon thereafter I felt that solid tug—a slow, deep glide into the center of the river that told me, here was the greatest fish of the day. The eighteen-kilo salmon took over an hour to bring ashore, after it took off downstream and sent Felipe and me yelling and stumbling after it, down a kilometer of rapids, the monster fish taking out almost all the white backing of the reel’s line. But still, miraculously, the fly stayed grappled to the fish’s jaw, and eventually the beast went belly-up and we could gaff it in its massive steel head and drag it ashore. Juan, left alone at the upper pool, wasted no time, and by the time Felipe and I got back up to the Mill Pool, he had two more salmon on the riverbed.

  When we stopped for lunch we had thirteen salmon on the banks, the smallest of which was four kilos. Drained by the morning’s events, we sat down on the swayback of the riverbank, near the grazing horses, and raided our canvas rucksacks for food. While we were chewing greasy slices of jamón de pata negra, Felipe looked out across the valley, blinked, and said to me, “You fish better than your father and uncle. You feel the fish.”

  This compliment, from this terse farmer’s son, welled up inside of me, grew into a glowing ball of preening pride, so full and swelling and all-consuming that only a Spaniard can fully understand it.

  “And you, Juan. Not bad to beach two fish by yourself on the first day you ever caught a salmon on the fly. There’s a master fisherman there, like your brother, waiting to emerge.” And the look on Juan’s face—I will never forget it—the way it perfectly reflected the finest day of our lives.

  The sun was dropping and the sky was the color of a shrimp fly, when we arrived back at Sheep’s Corral in the early evening. There were four silvery salmon already hanging from the lodge’s gabled support. Swallows darted low, this way and that, as they swept through the mosquito thrum, scooping up their dinner.

  Papá and Uncle Augustin heard the approach of the clopping horse hooves and came out of the front door carrying tumblers full of scotch.

  “Papá! I caught my first salmon! Nine of them!”

  “Well done, Juan!” said my beaming father, patting his son’s leg jammed into the stirrup. “You salmon killer! Fantastic news. Congratulations. Very proud of you.”

  We dismounted, and Uncle Augustin, wearing a bemused smile just below his groomed mustache, held up his glass in my brother’s honor, and in his courtly way said, “To Juan, a young man of great courage and talent and promise.”

  There was something in that moment—about my brother and me, my father and his brother—like our fraternal fates were at that moment sealed in the shadow of our fish slaughter, a moment that came to us as the setting sun hit the flanks of the salmon hung from the gills in front of the cottage door.

  Papá, perhaps sensing something in this moment as well, turned slightly in my direction and said, “You’re awfully quiet, José María. What’s up with you?”

  “This is Juan’s day.”

  “How’d you do upriver?”

  Felipe was unstrapping our fishing gear from the horses when I said, “Not much. We saw a few, which we stalked. That’s how Juan caught his nine. But the fish really haven’t moved upriver yet.”

  Felipe glanced at me over the backs of the horses.

  “Aaah. That’s too bad,” said Papá, scratching his crotch through his front pocket, his expression unable to conceal how delighted he was he hadn’t been stuck with the upper beat. “Well, down here, it was fantastic. You’ll have your chance tomorrow. I caught eighteen fish. Your uncle, the cabrón, caught twenty-one. This is the best fishing we’ve ever had on the Sella. Am I right, Augustin?”

  “You are right, Jesús. These are the best of days.”

  My father and uncle stood on the gravel, swigging their scotches, and traded stories, each advising the other for their next beat rotation, occasionally putting a patronizing hand on a shoulder or arm to make a point.

  “No. No. In the Finger Pool, the fish are not where they were last year. The spring flood must have changed the river, because the fish do not lie to the right of the boulder anymore, but are lined up in a straight line, to the left . . .”

  I stayed close to my brother. We sat on a stump, poring over my leather pouch of salmon flies. Juan leaned against my flank, watching what I was doing, and I silently handed him the Carmela, my good-luck fly that had caught the eighteen-kilo salmon.

  “Here, Juanito. Try this tomorrow.”

  Ignacio and Felipe came out from around the shed, a birch-tree pole resting on their shoulders. Eight salmon with twine running through their gills and gaping mouths hung from the pole. The fish ranged from 6.5 kilos to 11 kilos and were as long as a man’s leg.

  “That bastard brother of mine caught those beasts,” Papá roared at us. “My biggest was nine kilos.” Uncle Augustin, seeing his fish like that, made the sign of the cross, and, swaying slightly with liquor on an empty stomach, followed the fish a short distance. When a horse whinnied, he swiveled to stroke its neck, and finally spotted the bulging canvas bags of fish hanging from its far flank.

  “José María! What have you done?”

  Papá and Juanito, Ignacio, José, even Conchata from the kitchen, were instantly drawn by my uncle’s cry. They all made their way over to the horses, as a grinning Felipe unpacked the twenty-eight massive salmon I had caught. He laid them out across the grass, the largest in the center, pride of place.

  There were incredulous roars and cusses and backslaps and laughs. It was a river reco
rd and I had finally overtaken my father and uncle as a fisherman, and, for the rest of the night, Papá called me “Prince of Asturias.” The bottle of Johnnie Walker was fetched from inside and more swigs of scotch were taken from glass tumblers, even, my father allowed, by Juanito, “Now that he is a man.”

  My tipsy brother ran giddily back and forth between us, eventually falling to his knees before the big fish nicknamed, by Papá, El Gordo—the Fat One. Papá, meanwhile, emerged drunkenly from the lodge with a brown-leather-encased Polaroid around his neck, a newfangled American invention that looked like a box but spat out photographs on a kind of sticky flypaper. He ordered Ignacio and Felipe to lay out on the grass all the seventy-six salmon we had caught that day—half of a ton of fish, a seemingly endless abundance of nature harvested—for a photographic record.

  Those black-finned ingot bars, like silver deposits in the bank, were displayed across the grass, just as the sun was dropping behind the mountains, and the air around the fish was, for a glorious moment, imbued with a pink-and-blue rainbow shimmer. Papá, Uncle Augustin, Juan, and I—the del Toros and Conchata hovering shyly in the background—were caught standing behind the day’s catch, drunk with fish and scotch, swaying contentedly in the setting sun as Jorge took our picture. Juan never looked more radiant and alive and full of hope for the future. One hand was lightly but possessively touching the flank of the first salmon he ever caught on the fly, but his other, it must be said, was wrapped tightly around my shoulder, pulling me close toward him.

  FIVE

  A profound exhaustion hit us on the third day of our fishing trip. At dinnertime, Juan put his head down on the table, before the dessert came, and fell asleep. When Jorge began to pick him up, to carry him to his bed, my brother woke, barked he wasn’t a baby anymore, and furiously stomped off to his cot. Not long afterward, Uncle Augustin fell asleep in front of the fire, snoring loudly, head nodding, his brandy unfinished on the side table beside the couch.

  Papá was distant and dark with thoughts. He never acknowledged the dinner conversation we directed at him, but kept his head down and his thoughts far away, as he shoveled food into his mouth and dragged around bowls of boiled cabbage and fish, heaping his plate with second helpings. After the last plate was removed, he stuck a toothpick in his mouth, stood, and gathered his cigarettes and lighter from the table. He was making his way to the del Toro farmhouse up the road, he announced, to call both our mother and his secretary.

  “Let’s see if things are still holding on the home front,” he said, before heading out the lodge’s front door.

  So, for some time, I sat alone in the gloaming of the lodge living room, the dying fire in the grate occasionally sparking when a log fell apart. A loud crack from the fire finally woke up Uncle Augustin.

  “Where is everyone?”

  “Papá left. He couldn’t sit still.”

  “Aaah. He’s gone hunting.”

  “I will be loyal to my wife,” I hissed. “I will marry for love. Forever.”

  The fierceness with which I said this surprised us both, and Uncle Augustin looked over at me, quickly, and then just as quickly glanced away. He drained his brandy.

  “The hungers of the heart are not polite or predictable,” he said. “They have a force of their own. You’ll understand one day. When you are older.”

  “Why didn’t you marry, Uncle Augustin? Have you never been in love?”

  “My God, where is this coming from?”

  “Well? Have you?”

  “Yes. But the woman I love is taken.”

  Uncle Augustin stood up from the couch. “Now good night, nephew. No more. I’m tired and off to bed. You should do the same. Tomorrow is another day of hard fishing.”

  We both stepped to the back of the shed. Uncle slipped into his chamber, without another word, and I quietly opened the door to my room. The light that came in from the hall fell across Juan’s cot. He was tangled in the sheets, facing the wall, one leg out of the cover, his underwear riding halfway down his backside. Juan’s steady breathing produced a boyish snore, and his curly hair was squashed against the pillow, but the hall light caught his tangled blond highlights, and there seemed to be a kind of luminous ring hovering lightly around my brother’s head.

  I eased shut the door. I was still too restless to sleep and went outside for fresh air and a smoke. The night was river moist and filled with the sharp smell of sap and the smoldering wisps of the dying oak embers rising from the cottage chimney. The air sang with the sounds of chanting crickets, bullfrogs, and strange underbrush snuffles, while the large yellow flowers of the persimmon tree were eerily aglow in the moonlight.

  Muffled voices came from the dirt path that led up from the village.

  “You are delightful, my dear.”

  A young woman giggled.

  I called out. “Papá? Is that you?”

  My father ambled forward, into the light, like a bear coming out of the woods to tear open the garbage bins behind a restaurant. “José, come. Meet my friend Sabrina.”

  Papá waved vaguely toward a willowy figure standing off in the dark woods.

  “Come. Let’s all go for a ride. I have to take Sabrina back.”

  The Hispano-Suiza took off with a drunken lurch, through the woods and along the river. I turned to look at the woman in the back seat. She was sitting in the far corner, staring mesmerized out the window, like driving in a fine car was a rare treat.

  She was in her late twenties, I guessed, her gauntness magnified by a too-large and rather old-fashioned blue evening dress that, even through the dark, revealed the luminous glow of white skin and pert breasts. Her hair was her best feature, long and silky, and I suddenly imagined her wrapping it around my father’s feet—an image, involving my father, that both revolted me and made my pulse race.

  She stared boldly back and said, “Do you like what you see?”

  I blushed and looked away. My father laughed.

  Papá drove us to a dreary two-story house in Ribadesella, its bay window blacked out by brown-velvet curtains; yellow light still shone through the curtain folds not quite pulled tight. “Run along now, Sabrina,” Papá said. “Tell Madame Christine to give you a proper dinner and put it on my bill. We’ll be in shortly.”

  The young woman ran up the stairs and knocked twice on the black door. It opened, Sabrina slipped inside, and it quickly shut again. Papá pulled a Dominican cigar from a leather case tucked in his inside pocket, and lit it with a flurry of puffs and leaping flames. “Madame Christine doesn’t allow cigars to be smoked inside,” he drawled. “She says they make the curtains smell. Such nonsense. You’ll see. The women inside smoke like fiends.”

  “What are we doing here, Papá?”

  “Do you really not know, hijo?”

  I blushed and looked down. “Sí. Lo sé.”

  The end of his cigar glowed orange in the dark. “Josésito, please do not be embarrassed by the sensual pleasures of life. It’s such a waste of time—and so unproductive.”

  “I want to be a good person. A just and righteous person.”

  Father waved his cigar in the air, instantly reducing my remark to nothing.

  “José, listen to me. There will be times in life when, as a man, you will be overwhelmed by your responsibilities. They will weigh on you, crush you if you are not careful, and when such pressures come barreling down, you’ll be fighting just to survive. The real responsibility for a man in such moments is beyond family and what polite society considers right and wrong—it is much more fundamental. At such times, it is simply about finding your inner strength so you can carry on the fight. It’s a question of survival. Do you understand me, José?”

  “I think so, Papá.”

  “Good. Well, sex brings me back to my center, brings out the best in me as a man, and it gives me the inner strength I need to carry on another day. Comprendes, hijo?”

  “Sí, Papá. I think so.”

  “Bueno.”

  Papá threw h
is half-smoked cigar on the ground and draped his arm around my shoulder. “Come then, hijo. All this talk—it has whetted my appetite. Let us be friends and taste what is on offer at Madame Christine’s tonight.”

  The house was, as my father promised, filled with the milky haze of cigarette smoke, but still, underneath it all, I smelled fried onions, wilting gardenias, and a rotting crab-shell musk that I later realized was spent lust.

  Madame Christine emerged through the front corridor’s haze, covered in wrinkles and clouded diamonds and an ancient, chin-to-ankle black-lace dress. The wan maid stood flat against the wall, to let Madame Christine pass, and the ancient Frenchwoman hobbled unsteadily but determinedly toward us, the narrow hallway filling with the clack of her metal-tipped ebony cane smacking on the herringbone floor between us.

  “Señor Álvarez,” she croaked. “Welcome back.”

  “Good to be here, as always, Madame Christine. I brought my oldest son.”

  Madame Christine, suffering from emphysema and gasping for air, stroked my cheek with her arthritic knuckles. Her hands were monstrously swollen and veined, but, despite her immense age, she worked hard at maintaining a feminine aura through a coquettish amount of perfume, lace, and dyed-auburn hair packed into a matted cocoon atop her head.

  “Your son is so handsome, Don Jesús. So handsome. The girls will eat him up.”

  “He is. And a very fine fisherman to boot.”

  “A gentleman—just like his father. Tonight, on his initial voyage into our world, we shall let José María pick first. Don’t you agree, Don Jesús?”

  “I do. Excellent idea.”

  Papá rested his hand above my elbow, almost like he was guiding a first date to a romantic corner table in a restaurant, and led me through the oak hall door to our right. We were in the main room of what was probably the original shop and where the brown curtains against the windows were drawn.

  Half a dozen women of various sizes and ages were sitting in brocade chairs and lion-footed love seats. There was an immensely fleshy woman in the corner, with bulging bags of cottage-cheese skin erupting from her slip. She had a dark mole that sat in bas-relief against the whiteness of her blue-veined breasts. There were three young and pretty women of identical delicate sizes and height sitting on a heavily stained couch, like three muses in matching pink, baby-blue, and lavender panties and slips. They shared a common aura, but for their coloring—one was a fair-skinned blonde, of the dyed sort; the other a brunette with boyish freckles; the third had such dark and shiny skin, she looked like a black olive sitting in oil.