The Day of the Fox [antikvár]

In the morning, when the sea was still whiteand calm, as if with the concealed heat of molten metál, when among the fishermen the generál movement was away from the sea to the land, to wife, to bed, or tavern, the fisherman Sebastian Costa untied his boát and pushed ofF from the shore. Costa, a man who contemplated suicide fairly often, fished alone always. For him, since it was already May, the bittér, silent, unruffled months of summer had come. In winter, a man on his own could make somé sort of a living clearing out the rock pools, or spearing the big fish by torchlight when, of a calm night, they came in to sleep in shallow water. But summer was hopeless. Summer emptied the coastal waters. You had to get together and plan something like a military campaign to defeat summer. Twelve men, for example, to handlé a small sardine boát. Three or foür men plus a horse and cart to carry one of the big nets down to the shore. Even the line fishermen who worked in pairs had to keep on the right side of a little clique of specialists who caught the live-bait. It amounted to being clever enough to marry the Plain Jane whose widowed mother owned a big boát. Or failing that, having the luck to be a second cousin of a ehap who had inherited a couple of complete sets of tackle. Or even to have been in the prison camp after the war with the fellow who looked after the boats* engines. Or in the last resort, it was a good thing even to be a friend of a friend of one of these persons. But as it happened, Costa was friendless. He had succeeded in cutting himself off eompletely. Circumstances obliged Costa to fish for merous long after the S