part two, shoot, fish

The first thing one does when fishing, logically, is to throw fish food into the water. This is especially the case when fishing, as I mentioned in part 1, here, for fish of the size caught by that mermaid. My initial hopes were high, because I could actually see fish in the water.

“No teacher, those are carps, they don’t eat raçoes. If you want to catch carp you need to bring somethings like banana, mel... mel?”

“Honey.”

“Yes, things like Honey with aveia, (oats) banana, and I didn’t bring that stuff.”

It was too bad that we didn’t have that stuff because I was annoying to watch them swim by so close, opening their mouths methodically and swallowing nothing visible. I had fun by hitting them on the head with my bobber as I reeled it past them.

You might ask, ‘if you are throwing fish food into the water, what are you going to use for bait?
A brown bead on a hook, obviously.

Then Silvio grabbed the metal stakes that we’d hauled from the car. I didn’t really know what they were, but as soon as I saw Silvio driving them into the ground a few inches from the water I knew. They were holders for our rods.

It then became immediately apparent why fishing is about drinking.

We had been there a fishless half hour when a Japanese-brazilian son and father came, and started hauling them in immediately. The most interesting thing that had happened to us was that I had spotted a monsterous catfish lolling about on the surface of the water, seemingly dying. And one time when I went to the bathroom I came back walking past a pond nobody was fishing and its pan-flat waters reflected the clouds in the sky that themselves were spread thin yet separated like overly floured dough, and it reminded me of all the drugs I have taken to stare at things.

Also, some monkeys had a fit in the trees behind us, though not visibly. I looked back at the trees and mentioned that I really wanted to see some monkeys in Brazil.

“Go to the zoo if you want to see monkeys” said Silvio, surprisingly serious.

What?

“I don’t know about these monkeys. They might be nice, maybe no.”

Ok..... Later…

"I think I know vovozinho’s secret, teacher."

"Vovozinho?"

"You know vovovzinho?"

"Um.."

"Vovozinho is little grandpa over there, the Japanese guy. " To his face he calls him 'San.'

"What's his secret?"

"Yeeeesssss, teacher, vovozinho uses cheese."

So we abandoned the brown beads and went for the mozzarella. A little while later, Silvio got that one in the picture.

Then I got a catfish.

A little while later I had just lost my bait and was reeling in when I saw the monster half dead catfish at the edge of the water right before me. I dangled my empty hook in front of him, thinking of the carp, but he bit. The hook went through his upper lip quite visibly. I started laughing with some horrid teenage laughter and Silvio came over to put the clamp on his mouth. The old fish was real ugly, grey and full of growths.

Silvo said, "we won´t take a picture of this" and I was afraid he despised me.

But it is also possible that catching him was like asking an aged dame now using a walker to dance one last dance of the waltz she always loved.

But, our karma used up, we didn’t catch anything the rest of the day. Some guys came with a mix of shrimp and flour and a bunch of stuff and heaved lumps of it on hooks and caught nothing. Pedro came out with some live bait and caught four of the Dourado, fish that silvio had previously described as every fisherman's dream. He did get pretty excited though.

We stopped at a corn house on the way home, drank corn juice, ate sweet corn jelly wrapped in a corn leaf. While we were there huge thunder started sounding, and as we came back over the mountain the rain started pouring. Then I saw why the Fernão Dias is a dangerous road. The trucks in the inside lane of the opposite direction threw huge waves of water over the concrete barrier and on to our windshield, staggering the eco sport. Mud came coursing down off the mountains and rivers ran salmon beside us.

When we made it back down to Guarulhos the rain stopped, revealing several accidents, many involving trucks. Death is everywhere in Brazil. Then there started appearing shacks every 20 feet advertising a ‘chapa’ and I asked what that was. After a while I understood that the guys in those shacks are offering themselves to help unload the trucks passing on their way into the city. Then Silvio dropped me off at the bus stop, and I took a bus to inlaw’s house!