In the Beginning Was the Sea

12

ON HIS FIRST TRIP to Medellín, J. had bought a nylon fishing net measuring fifteen metres by three. It was a wide mesh net, ideal for catching tarpon and bluestripe jacks. It took five people to handle it.

The finest fisherman in the area was Salomón, one of Doña Rosa’s sons. Though taciturn and physically unremarkable, he seemed to have an extraordinary talent. During lean times, when other men came back with empty nets, Salomón would still land ten-pound sea bream.

He was always immaculately turned out. No one had ever seen him break a sweat. He wore impeccably ironed white shirts with the Red Indian logo of his Pielroja cigarettes faintly visible through the breast pocket. The pack never got wet, and even empty it was still the perfect rectangle it had been when full.

J. knew from experience that Salomón was an exceptional fisherman, having often accompanied him when he was line fishing on the beach. Every movement of his hands had a rigorous logic; some casts were tentative, allowing him to play to random chance; others were precise, perfect casts which, if executed a second earlier or later, would have failed.

J. asked Salomón to try out the new net. Since this was not high season for fishing, the early catches were modest. The men would go out at night, drop anchor three hundred metres from shore and fish for three or four hours. J. never went with them, but he liked to watch the lights bobbing on the waves; he could just make out the shadows of the boats against the dark water and hear the distant voices of the fishermen.

In Salomón’s care, the fishing net remained as good as new — perhaps better than new, since it seemed to improve with experience. Staked out on the beach, the nylon mesh gleamed in the first rays of sunlight with a delicate, spectral beauty; the sun coursed along threads still glossy with dew while the breeze created ripples of silvery light that looked like tendrils of wind itself.

At noon, Salomón and his eldest son would come to pick up the net. They never came into the house. J. would watch from the veranda as the son unpegged it from the stakes, folding the net into sections which he handed to Salomón, who gathered it into his outstretched arms before slinging it over his shoulder with an effortless gesture, and the two men would walk up to the house.

Having stowed the net in the room where the tools were kept, Salomón would come out onto the veranda, crouch down and chat with J. for a while, almost always about fish. He would smoke a couple of cigarettes and then head on his way. Rarely did he accept a drink. “Come winter, the real fishing season will start,” he always said before he left.