Habitual fisherman

One afternoon on Sunday, Jose was working overtime and wouldn’t be home all day.

I wanted to kill time until he was back, so I made a calculation of what Jose have earned for the last six months and wrote it down on a clean sheet of paper. When the evening came and Jose arrived backed home; I spread the paper in front of him and said: “Look, this is the total income we have earned for the half year.”

He glanced at my paper of accounts and full of joy said: “It’s surprising we have earned that much money, it’s worth it to live such a hard life here in desert!”

“Let go out to have dinner as we have that much of money.” Jose suggested in with high spirits.

I went change my clothes quickly as I know he would take me to The Parador Hotel for dinner. This sort of thing rarely happened indeed.

“We would like a bottle of the best fine red wine, sea food soup and I want a steak for myself, do order four portions of king pawn for my wife, ice cream cake for our dessert, also for four portions please, thank you!” Jose ordered all these from a waiter.

“Luckily, I hadn’t eaten anything for a whole day; I can now eat like having a feast.” I said lightly to Jose.

The Parador hotel was run by the Spanish government and the inside of the restaurant looked like an Arab palace, very appropriate for the region. The lighting was restful to the eyes, fresh clean air without dust, the cutlery polished shiny as new, all the tablecloths well pressed sharp and straight like a suit, delightful soft music like a steam of water flowing into the room.

When I sat down there and I often forgot that I was in the desert, instead it conveyed me back to the comfortable life I use to have in the past.

We didn’t have to wait long, there was a large row of king pawns accompanied by emerald green lettuce on a large stunning silver plate. Glasses filled with sweet deep red wine.

“Oh! The happiness blue bird is coming!” I gazed at the dishes and sighed.

“If you like it here that much, we can come here often!” That night, Jose was very generous and acted like a millionaire.

I had been living in the desert long enough to learn one good lesson. 

Enjoy fully any part in life that would fulfil the soul with an infinite feeling of satisfied sublimation. In other words, we pay attention to our stomach more than the brain. 

After dinner, we paid the bill with two big flat notes and slowly walked home with joy. I felt I was a deeply happy person that evening.

The next day, of course we had supper at home. There was a round potato cake on the table, also a roll of white bread and a bottle of water.

“Let me cut it, you have two thirds of this cake and I will have a one-third of it.” As I was serving the dish and put the bread roll over on Jose’s plate at the same time so it looked like a full plate.

“It tastes good, I even put some onion in it, do eat!” I started eating myself.

Jose quickly finished his plate like a hungry wolf then stood up and headed to the kitchen.

“There is nothing more in there, we just have that for dinner today.” I quickly stopped him.

“What’s wrong with it today?” He looked at me in stonily in reply.

“You take a look at this!” I handed a statement to him.

“This is the spending for the last six months, the calculation yesterday was what we earned, as of today this calculation is what we have spent.” I was leaning on his shoulder while explaining. 

“That’s a lot of money, have we spent that much? We spent it all!?” He shouted to me.

“Yes.” I nodded my head.

“You see, it has all been written clearly on here.”

Jose scratched his head and began reading my current account list —- “tomatoes cost 60 for a kilogram, watermelon costs 210, 300 for half kilogram of pork——-”

“How come you spent so much on expensive food, we could have saved it ——.” He was reading and mumbling.

When he read it on—— “Car repaired cost 1500, petrol for half year was 24000—.” He stood up and started raising his voice as he was reading.

“You don’t have to be alarmed like that! In half of the year we drove 16000 miles, you do the math, we needed to spend that much money on petrol.”

“Whatever money we earned we have spent it all, all our suffering here has been in vain.” Jose was distressed and expressive just like an opera performer.

“The fact is we have not wasted any of it, we haven’t spent a penny on clothes, the money has all gone on several things such as dinning with friends, taking photographs and long distance travelling.”

“Okay! We start from today, single friends aren’t allowed to come for dinner anymore, photos only taken in black and white and we don’t do any travelling, as we have already travelled through the desert so many times.” Jose made his great manifesto decision. 

This is such a pretty tiny little town, only one shabby cinema here, as for the streets, not even a lively one has ever existed; when magazines and newspapers arrived most of them were out of date. Television apparently worked two or three times at a month, when it did, the picture showing was like a shadow of a ghost, not brave enough to watch it on your own at home. The power failure and shortage of water supply were daily routines. If you wanted to go out for a walk, the sky was so often full of a violent storm and blowing sand.

These sort of days, no one apart from the Sahara locals could feel comfortable, there were drunk alcoholic Europeans around, husbands and wives often quarrelling and fights, single people frequently commit suicide, all the tragedies were destined to be happening here. It’s was only us who seemed to know how to live here with such a hard life in harmony, over all it wasn’t too bad for us.

I was quietly listening Jose’s manifesto along with his savings plan, then alarm bells started to ring in me. 

“To save that much, aren’t you afraid that after three months we would go crazy or end up killing ourselves?” 

Jose made a bitter smile and responded: “It’s true, we would bored to death if we did not go away on holiday.”

“You think about it, how about if we don’t go to the interior of Algeria, instead we go to the seaside; why don’t we take advantage on this thousand mile coastline?” I suggested. 

“The cost of petrol to go to the seaside and return through the desert is an outrage; if we go fishing at the coastline, catch the fish and dry them in order to make salty fish, that way; we can save money for food and against the cost of petroleum.” My strongest strength is always great, when talking about fun I would never discourage it.

The following weekend, we took a tent with us and drove almost 100 miles to a seaside of exposed rocky cliffs. We camped on the cliff that night.

There was some advantage of cliffs without beaches under them, it made it  convenient to throw a rope down and descending down from the cliff get directly onto the rocks below.

When the tide receded lots of abalone shells were exposed on the rocks, there were crabs hiding between the cracks, octopus in the rock pools, there was eel like a snake and also cramp fish just like a round plate.

Needless to say there was hundred of thousands of black snails and shellfish of different varieties on the rock, I recognised some of them as mussels; there was flat seaweed around that could be dried to make some soup, the drift wood looked as beautiful as modern sculpture, even the small colourful stones could be a painting if brought  home and stuck them on a hard cardboard. This piece of seashore with rarely anybody around was primeval and full of rich resource.

“We are rich! It’s full of Solomon’s treasure here!” I screamed peak high and jumped around on the smooth stone, full of excitement myself.

“I give you this pile of stone, pick them up quickly whilst the tide is out.”

Jose threw me a bucket, a pair of gloves and a knife, he was already wearing his diving suit and he went down into the sea to shoot some fish.

Not even an hour had passed, my bucket was full of mussels and abalone. I also caught a total sixteen big red crabs, about the size of a small basin. The bucket was full, I had to use some rock to build a prison and put the crabs inside temporarily. I also had some seaweed that I had already tied up into a big bundle.

When Jose got back to the shore, there were approximately ten fish tied up on his waist, they were a light red colour.

“Look, it’s too much and we can’t take it all and keep it fresh.” At the time I understood what is the feeling of being greedy.

Jose saw me with my big crabs and he went back to catch some dark grey little ones, almost twenty of them. He explained: “Little ones named Nicholas, taste better than the big ones.”

The tide was slowly coming in, we were back down under the cliff; we scratched away the fish scales, gutted and washed the fish, then put them into a big bag. I took my long trousers off, made knot to each end of the legs and threw all the crabs in. We climbed up to the top of the cliff with the bucket tied on the rope. That first weekend adventure, we came back fully loaded.

I hurried up Jose on the way home.

“Drive faster, drive faster ; we ought to ask the single colleagues to have dinner with us.”

“Don’t you want to dry the fish and made them salty fish?” Jose asked me.

“It’s alright for the first time, it’s our treat, they don’t normally eat well.”

Jose was delighted after heard what I said; we even bought a box of beer and half dozen bottles of wine on our way home for our guests.

A few weekends afterwards, Jose’s colleagues wanted to go fishing. We had on a sudden whim, gone and bought ten pounds of beef, five cabbages and made more than ten egg cakes, on top of that we bought a small refrigerator plus a charcoal stove, additionally five big buckets, six pairs of gloves and a box of cola and milk all for the weekend.

We set out full of great strength and vigour in our convoy of cars driving extensively along the coastline. We camped at night, had a barbecue, chatted around the fire, having great fun and pleasure; Unconsciously we forgot all about saving as time passed by.

At home, we didn’t bother who’s in charge of money and when money came, we put it inside the pocket of a Chinese cotton padded jacket; whoever wanted to spend money would go and pull out a note from the pocket. The record of spending, if you remembered to write it down, would causally be noted on any scrap of paper and thrown in a big candle jug. 

After we had been to the seaside a few times, our pocket emptied and the candle jug became full of pieces of papers.

“It’s all gone again, so quick!” I squeezed the cotton-padded jacket while mumbling to myself.

“Wasn’t the idea of going to the seaside to do the salted fish, for saving money? How come we have spent so in the end.” Jose scratched his head in puzzlement.

“Friendship is priceless.” I could only comfort him in this way.

“We simply catch fish for sale next week.” Jose made a decision again.

“That’s right, fish we can eat and we can sell! That’s clever, I never thought of it before!” I jumped up and patted Jose on his head.

“It will be alright as long as we can get the overhead back.” Jose was not a greedy person.

“Great, sell the fish, we sell fish next week.” I had great ambition and hoped to cash a good of money in.

At four thirty on Saturday morning, we got into the car in darkness, with our teeth frozen and feeling grim, we both held the good spirit in boldly whilst driving the car in the dark along the familiar route through the desert.

After about eight in the morning with the sun just coming up we had already parked on the cliff. Out of the car, our back was to the endless mysterious and quiet desert.

In front of us was the stormy rough sea and rocky shore, the sky was clear blue without any cloud, a flock of seagulls flying around and occasionally making noise made the surroundings feel extremely empty.

“What are you thinking about?” Jose asked me.

“And you?” I asked him back.

“I am thinking some scene from the book ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull’”

Jose was a bright and enlightened person, facing scenery like that, he should indeed have been reminded of such a book as that.

“How about you?” He asked me again.

“I was thinking, I was just crazy in love with a handsome lame soldier, I was walking with him on the prairies, there was beautiful heather around us, my hair blew out of place in the wind, he passionately gazed into my eyes——the days filled with romance and pain!” I sighed sadly.

I closed my eyes when finished talking; I crossed with my both arms across my body and slowly breathed out in satisfaction.

“Today, you are acting as ‘Ryan’s Daughter’?” Jose said.

“You guessed it right; good, we shall start working.” 

I clapped my hands and pulled the rope, getting ready for hanging myself down the cliff. I felt much lively and ready to work after fantasising about the crazy world: This was the way to give myself a tune to escape the tedious life.

“Echo, be serious today, I need your good help.”  Jose said it seriously.

We stood at the side of a rock, Jose went diving, each time he shot a fish and threw a fish into the shallow water I would rush myself to pick it up, kneel down on the rock, scrap and clear the intestines of the fish, then put them into the plastic bag.

After scraping few big fish’s scales, my hand got slightly wounded and bled. It stung when I bathed my hand in the sea water.

Jose floating and sinking into the water, constantly threw fish at me; I was working hard and put the washed fish neatly inside the bag.

“It’s not easy to earn money!” I shook my head and mumbling, with kneeling down too long, my knees started swelling.

A long time passed, Jose finally got back onshore, I rushed and took some milk for him to drink. He closed his eyes and lay on the rock with a pale face.

“How many fish? He asked.”

“More than thirty, they are big, totally about sixty or seventy kilograms.

“Not catch any more, I am dead tired.” Jose closed eyes again.

I fed him with milk and said: “Someone like us, should be called habitual fisherman.”

“Fish are omnivore, Echo.”

“I am not talking about being omnivore, in the past in Paris, some artists went daily to do ordinary work and only did painting at the weekend, they called themselves habitual painters. Meanwhile we catch fish at the weekend, therefore we are habitual fisherman, sounds not bad!”

“You have so many such ideas, you can even name a new title for catching fish.” Jose didn’t feel it that interesting as I did.

After enough resting, it took three trips to carry up the small mountain of fish to the top of the cliff; we spread some crushed ice on top of them from the small refrigerator and put them in the car. 

Under the extremely desert hot sun, it was such hard work to drive he over two hundreds mile journey home. The strange thing was, it wasn’t that much fun compared with the last few outings. We were so worn out.

When the car finally reached to the town, I was lightly begging Jose: “Please, let me have some sleep before going out again to sell the fish, I am so tired, do that please!”

“No, the fish will smell rotten, you go back home to sleep, I will sell the fish.” Jose said.

“We sell them together if we have to sell, I will be fine after I hang in there.” I could only say that.

When the car was passing the wall of the Parador Hotel, I suddenly had a brave idea and shouted—STOP——.

Jose braked the car hard and I got out with my bear feet, stretched my head and looked around.

“Hey, Hey, Shhh——.” I whispered to Anthony at the reception desk.

“Oh Echo!” He said Hello back loudly.

“Shh, don’t shout, where is the back door?’ I asked him with a whispering voice.

“Back door? Why would you go back door?”

I hadn’t explained it in time and the manager was just passing by, I quickly hid behind the pillar in panic; he stretched his head and had a look’ I quickly made myself disappear as quickly as I could and fled like a breath of vapour back to the car.

“It won’t work! It’s too embarrassing, I couldn’t do it.” I covered my face in panting.

“I go.” Jose strode out of the car to the hotel. Good Jose, you’ve got guts!

“Hey you, Mr manager.” He waved at the manager and the manager came; I hid behind Jose.

“We have some fresh fish, do you want to buy some?” Jose spoke rather humbly but without shame, not even a red face; but I could see he was pretending to be brave. 

“What, you sell fish?” The manager was staring down at our long shabby trousers and awkwardness showed on his face, it seemed we had insulted him.

“Fish selling go to the side door and deal with the people in charge of the kitchen——.” He pointed to the side door and spoke to us with an imposing manor.

I felt myself shrinking greatly, desperately dragging Jose out and I said: “You see, he looked down on us, let’s go sell the fish somewhere else, we will bump into this manager often at some party afterward—.”

“This manager is an idiot, don’t be afraid of him, let’s go, we are going to the kitchen.” Jose said.

The people in the kitchen all came around us, it was like something exciting to them. “How much for a kilogram? The fish was finally going to be sold.

We looked at each other, could not say a word.

“Hmm, fifty dollars for a kilogram.” Jose finally offered a price.

‘Yes, yep, it’s fifty dollars.” I quickly approved with Jose.

“Good, give me ten, we make a measurement of the weight.” This guy in charge was very gentle.

We were very please, shot back to the car and fetched ten fishes for him. “This bill will be paid after 15th of the month, you go to the kitchen and get paid with this receipt.”

“You don’t pay cash now?” We asked.

“Public sector, please do excuse! The guy who bought the fish shook our hands. We looked at this thousand-dollar bill receipt again and again as it was our first earnings for selling fish; we carefully put it inside my pocket in my trousers.

“Great, let go to the ‘DiDi hotel’ next.” Jose said.

This ‘DiDi hotel’ was very well known in the Sahara, they usually cooked for the workers, selling alcohol at night and renting out rooms upstairs. Outside was painted pink, inside they were playing pop music all day long, all lighting was green and often there was a group of fancy dressed white women doing business there.

When the Spanish road workers got their wages paid, the first thing they did was visiting the hotel, they got drunk and got thrown out the door.

Half a whole months worth of hard earned wages was often ended up in these women’s pocket.

When we arrived at the door of the hotel, I said to Jose: “You go inside and I will wait outside here.” After more than twenty minutes, Jose had not came out again.

I picked up a big fish and went inside, just in time I caught a sexy ‘DiDi’ stroking Jose’s head at the reception’s desk and Jose standing there looking like a silly dumb bird. I stepped forward and gave that woman a hard cold face and roared loudly: “You buy fish or not? 500 dollars for a kilogram.” I threw the fish heavily on the bar table, it made such a lousy ‘pop’ big noise.

“How could you raise price just like that, your husband told me it’s fifty for a kilogram.”

I stared hard at her and a thought went through my head, if you dared touch the face of Jose one more time, I would raise it to five thousand dollars for a kilogram.

Jose pushed me away from the hotel, lowered his voice and hasty said: “You only come here to mess up things, I had almost sold all the fish to her.” 

“You are hopeless, are you selling fish or selling yourself? You let her touch your face?” I raised my hand to hit Jose; he knew he was been caught out and a fool so let himself be beaten while he held his head.

In a rage, I barged back into the hotel and picked up the big fish from the bar table and took it away.

Under the hot sky, we were hot, hungry, thirsty, tired and mad at each other; I really wanted throw all the fish away and it only matter was I couldn’t say from the mouth.

“Do you remember the cook ‘Bago’ from the Desert Corps?” I asked Jose.

“You want to sell them to the Desert Corps?”

“Yes” I answered.

Jose began driving toward the Desert Corps without a word, before we even reached the camp, we saw Bago just walking along the road.

“Bago!” I shouted to him.

“Would you like to buy some fresh fish?” I hopefully asked.

“Fish? Where?” He asked.

“Inside our car, over twenty of them.”

Bago stared at me and shouting his head off fast.

“Echo, we have over three thousand people in the camp, do you think twenty fish is enough to feed us?” He refused me straight away.

“It’s hard to say, why don’t you take them to cook first? Jesus fed over five thousand people with just five biscuits and two fish, what can you say about it?” I asked him beck.

“Let me guide you my friends, you go to sell them at the front door of the post office, there are many people passing by.” Bago pointed out the right direction to us, of course we were only aiming to sell fish to the Europeans as the Sahara inhabitants didn’t each fish at all. 

We went to a stationary shop to buy a blackboard, a few chalks and borrowed a scale from a grocery store we knew.

We drew a jumping fish on the blackboard and wrote—‘Fresh fish selling, 50 per kilogram’.

We drove our car to the front door of the post office just after five o’clock in the afternoon; the airplane carrying all the letters and parcels had just arrived. There were a large number of people opening their post boxes, so it was lively on the street. 

We stopped our car, displayed the blackboard on the window and opened the boot. After that, our faces had gone red and so we ran over to the opposite side of the street and sat down on the pavement, not even daring to look at any people on the street.

There was definitely a large crowd walking by but not one stopped and looked at our fish. Jose said to me after we had sat down for a while: “Echo, didn’t you say we are the habitual people? Habitual people don’t rely on selling stuff for living!”

 ”Let go home then?” I couldn’t raise any good spirit after all.

Just that moment, one of Jose’s colleagues passed by and he saw us, he was about coming to say hello to us: “Oh! Enjoying the wind blowing!”

“No.” Jose awkwardly stood up.

“Selling fish.” I pointed our car out on the opposite side of the street.

This single male colleague of Jose’s was a rough but a good man, he walked across the street to see the blackboard and looked at the open car boot with understanding; he came back to us straight away and pulled us back to the opposite street. 

“Selling fish, you need to be shouting for the selling! You two are so shy that’s no good; come, come, let me help.”

This colleague of Jose pulled out a fish and held it in his hand and started shouting: “Oui—Oh, Selling best fresh fish! Seventy-five per kilogram—Aw Oh——Fish Oh!” He also raised price without telling us.

The crowd started coming around after he shouted loudly, we were overjoyed and surprised, we didn’t have to wait long before all the fish were sold. He sold more than twenty of them in no time.

We sat on the ground to check the money, we were quite surprised totally we had earned almost three thousand, when we looked back for Jose’s colleague, he had already walked far away from us giggling. 

“Jose, we must remember to thank him!” I said to Jose.

Back home, we were exhausted. After showering, I put on a towelling dressing gown and lit a fire for a pot of water and got out a bag of noodles.

“Just eat this?” Jose wasn’t satisfied. 

“Lets causally eat something, I am as tired as death.” The true was I couldn’t even eat at all.

“Worked hard from dawn till dust, you only feed me noodles? I won’t eat it.” He got angry and got dressed and went out.

“Where are you going?” I shouted at him.

“I am eating out.” Said the one speaking who’s mind was full of hard concrete.

I put my clothes on and chased after him, eating out; there was only one place here to eat out——The restaurant at the Parador Hotel.

In the restaurant, I spoke to Jose lightly: “You are the silliest person in the world, you only order cheap dishes here, you hear me or not?”

Just at that moment Jose’s Boss was clapping his hands and coming over shouted: “What a coincidence! What a coincidence! I just can’t find any company for dinner, three of us should have dinner together.” He said talking to himself and sitting down with us.

“I heard the kitchen have fresh fish for today, how about it, we try three dishes of fish, this kind of fish is not so often available in the desert.

It was so easy to forget other people’s concern, once you got used to being a boss yourself; he didn’t ask us first and ordered it from the waiter: “Green salad, three fishes, wine comes first and we order dessert later.

The restaurant chef, the one who bought our fish, casually passed us and noticed Jose and I just spending twelve times the price to eat the fish we sold them; he scarily opened  his mouth wide just like he was seeing the two most mad people on earth.  

We fought to pay the bill with Jose’s boss when dinner was finished; Jose won in the end and so we used the money we got from selling the fish at the post office in the afternoon to settle the bill, merely getting some coins back in change.

At that moment, we felt no matter whether charged fifty or seventy-five per kilogram for the fish, we had sold it too cheap as we were living in the desert indeed.

The next morning, we woke up very late from sleeping, I got up to make coffee and wash some clothes; Jose was lying on the bed and said to me: “Good job we still have the receipt to collect the money from the Parador hotel, if not it would have been a damned miserable day yesterday; we made a loss on the petrol and not to mention about the hard labour work.”

“You said the receipt ——that piece of paper invoice——-”.

I was scramming out loud, shooting back to the bathroom I switched off the washing machine; took the long trousers out of the soapy bubbles and put my hand straight inside the pocket——that invoice had already mashed into some tiny small bits of white stuff, it could not be put back together.

“Jose, the last fish also has slipped away! We have to eat potatoes again.” I sat down on the bathroom step, laughing and crying both at the same time.