Like shootin' fish.... Part I

The proverbial barrel is a pond about the size of a goalie box. The fish are fish, albeit with names that I forget as soon as I hear them, being the usual vowels evenly spaced between the usual consonants, the m, the n, the l, t, and c. The ammunition in our cooler sounds more like the fodder for a picnic- hotdogs, cheese, corn in a glass jar, and of course a plastic bag of raw liver. No worms.

Today I woke up at 4:45 in the morning and waited for my friend and student, O Japonesão, (big jap) Silvio, on the balcony watching the cars speed and people walk by, all deep inside their long nights of drinking. He called 15 minutes later and intoned in his Ed McMahon voice, “Hey teacher, you ready for the fish?” Beautiful this phrase, because I think fish was meant as a verb.

When he arrived in his ecco sport, I noticed his hair was freshly gelled, and I felt guilty about not having bathed. He even cracked the window in the first moments we were inside the car together, though I think it was more to let sound into the silent car than air. He shared with me some cookies as we found the highway, a new one for me, the Fernão Dias.

“This is a public highway, it’s not so good.”
“The Dutra (highway that leads to Her parents) is private?”
“Yes, teacher” Of all my students, Silvio is one of the most basic, but he’s a joy to talk to because he turns his grammatical weakness into a lumbering cordial dominance, a grownup fratboy kingliness through which he administrates his monosyllables benevolently. Now, returning to the highway,

“Before, when I worked in Paulinha… everyday. Ishi Maria”.

We left the city by Guarulhos, huge industrial suburb of Sao Paulo. We passed through in the half-dawn, the orange light of the city still dominant, gray pollution-filled mist low over everything and at the far back of the sky a white gold at the horizon, color of a flashbulb. ‘What world is this?’ was a pertinent question, the streets below lined as they were with streetlights and the blotches of trees as they cut through the three-story buildings uphill until leaving a hole in the horizon, seemed like tunnels that we were also somehow inside.

Silvio and I had had dinner the night before, beer and meat brought out on a grill beside the table, and we talked easily about things that never came up in class, mainly about the ragers he used to throw out in the country cities around São Paulo. I could imagine the equivalent of the golf course invasions of my own youth, though with significant adjustments made for the fact that this was a metropolis not a college town hamlet, thus additions had to be made of cocaine and I guess, prostitutes. I think of Paris, I think of the New York of the twenties, times when prostitutes were invited to parties.

I asked Silvio if he brought his parties to Guarulhos, and said “No, no. Because Guarulhos hasn’t women. Women from Guarulhos- Ichi Maria.” And it was understandable, that the women from this place wouldn’t be the best. Soon the highway climbed up into the mountains and the orange was left behind. Now the white dawn was stripped with heavy gray mists on the tops of the tree filled peaks. The pavement wasn’t bad at all, five lanes and winding, and we stopped at a highway restaurant called Rota Norte. There in the parking lot I remembered that rota is also the word for burp, and the joke I made, in English, was hampered by the fact that Silvio didn’t know the word burp, and therefore I resorted to pantomime, after which he laughed so hard that his head rested on the steering wheel.

Bowing to my philosophy of leaving nothing out, I must admit that on getting out of the car I realized I had a problem common to all trips I make when mostly asleep- an erection. Walking into the restaurant I employed hands- in- pockets and stoop- to- bring- the t-shirt- over techniques honed in high school and blessed the emptiness of the place. My good luck was that in this country you often eat breakfast standing against a counter, a posture that seems somehow Italian. Coffee with milk, butter on roll-sized baguette here called french bread. The restaurant was staffed by 5 girls in yellow uniforms. All the customers were men, some seemed like other sao paolinos heading out to fish, others had some business to attend to. When we got outside the day was begun in full, no longer any trace of its beginning. Just a little later we were off of the highway and driving through a two block town, up and out of it, up a swath of pavement and to the fishery. One car was there before us, some nondescript guys, and the manger.

“Pedrão, Pedrão (big Pedro) what´s up man” said Silvio, and we shook hands. Pedro had wide eyes and overlapping teeth, a little like a fish himself, and he helped us bring our stuff to one of the ponds. The sun wasn´t yet above the mountaintop hills rising directly behind us but the air had cleared. As soon as we dumped the stuff Silvio went back to park the car and left me alone with Pedro. He was testing a rod that Silvio had asked him to look at, finding it a ‘little beauty’ without the slightest of problems. I was holding a rod but realized I didn´t remember how to cast it. Pedro started rummaging around our equipment and making some comments, none of which I understood. I liked the note of calm remark in his voice, picture some guy who’s voice cracks on the word ACTually as he starts a sentence, but in the pleasant way of a country fishery caretaker whose small laugh of remark a short woo-hoo also hits that note, and I was frightened and sad not to talk with him. I tried to make the right type of grunt in response what seemed to be comments, but then suddenly he asked me for something called rações. I racked the conversations I had had about fishing with Silvio, in which he often lapsed into Portuguese, and I finally remembered that raçoes is like rations, and means fish food. I opened the cooler and went through the catalogue of baits, but couldn´t find it.

Pedro looked to shout out to distant Silvio, and asked me “What´s his name ?” I was pleased to be able to answer a question and suprised that he didn´t know the answer- Silvio had showed so much intimacy when we were unloading. But now it was obvious, everybody knew Pedro.

He called out and got a thumbs up from Silvio. Pedro then called him a word that I will translate as “screwy.”