Friday fiction: The old man and the stream

Aging in South Korea ain't easy - nor is fishing.

He was an old man who fished beside 30 others dangling a single line over a heavily trafficked bridge and had gone around 45 minutes without a drink of soju.

There were two empty soju bottles and a prawn cracker wrapper that reflected and glistened in the sun. Green genies danced swirls and turns each time a passing truck threw dust over their reflections.

The leathered features of his face and the buildup of dust from the trucks made him look older than he was. To the others who fished the same bridge, and to passersby who followed the cycle path on the port road, he was the old man, the grandfather, the harabeoji.

“Hey, harabeoji! Caught anything today?”

The same solid youngster had asked the question each time he saw him. He’d asked the same question the day before as the old man was leaving.

“No.” The old man said. “What about you? Any luck?”

“Not yet. I just got here. But yesterday, when I took your spot I caught three in a row.”

The old man nodded slowly. For the first time, he looked directly at the younger man and noticed his eagerness. To fish on the bridge, you had to be passionate.

Not many people knew about the port road bridge. It was long and straight. It connected the factories of the Namdong Industry Park to the world, and captured trucks from the highway that stretched from Incheon to Ansan, and from there across South Korea. The port road and everything around it was built on reclaimed land taken from the mudflats General Douglas MacArthur crossed to stop the North’s invasion of the South.

The bridge started shaking. They both instinctively shut their eyes and reopened them after the truck passed.

The road was used predominantly by trucks – long container trucks with their pulleys and ties flailing in a wake of dust and fumes. Sometimes, on the weekend, a car or even a team of cyclists would seek to share the port road, and face anger and scorn and perhaps a near miss in return.

Another truck, this time faster, rumbled past. They again shut their eyes.

The bridge from which they fished was the first after the highway for trucks going to the port, and the last for those returning from the port. It was an all metal construction with a hastily tarred and now deformed sidewalk shared by cyclists and pedestrians. Here and there stubs of desert grass sprouted from the cracks. The fishermen who sat on the bridge faced a constant barrage of dust that penetrated and stained clothes. The empty trucks were faster and threw the dust at pace, but the full trucks were heavier and shook up greater volumes. A water bottle helped to clean the eyes and keep them from drying out. Nothing could stop the blinding impact of dust as they passed. Closing your eyes in silent prayer was the only hope.

“Do you have enough bait grandpa? I’m walking down to the bait Bongo.”

Every weekend a Kia Bongo truck in the stock-standard blue parked on the curb just after the bridge. It arrived before the earliest fishermen. Around lunchtime, it sold ramyun noodles, fish cake, and soju. It would stay until the last fisherman left. The owner merged profit and passion by occasionally taking a slow walk to the bridge and casting a hand-line with leftover rotting bait.

“Enough bait, yes. But not enough soju.”

“Okay grandpa. Why don’t we put a box in your place and get some soju together?”

With no nibbles on his line, and no soju in his pack, the old man holstered his line, and pulled his legs up from where they hung over the bridge. He sat in a deep squat, and then lifted himself up.

“Aaaaagh… Let’s go”. The old man replied.

The old man waddled towards the bait Bongo. It was not because he was sore from squatting nor because he was in any way deformed. According to local legend, the diamond shaped gap between the legs of the older generation was the result of being carried for too long on their mothers’ backs as they worked the fields.

As they got closer they could hear the baseball call from the bait Bongo.

“Say, you hear that the NC Dinos signed Matt Davidson?”

“No. Really? That means their three slots are full. They already have Castano and Hart.”

The old man stilled himself for a moment. He looked at the younger man and was about to say something, then turned away. He spoke quietly.

“What’s he getting? Around half a million?”

“More. Plus signing bonus and incentives.”

“The Dinos. Hmmm. I still say the Giants will take it. I’ll sit there.”

The old man pointed to an empty patch of pavement grown over with desert grass.

The youngster leaned into the Bongo to look at the game. He grabbed two pieces of cardboard and handed one to the old man to sit on. The old man waddled across, kicked away some trash and put down his cardboard. He squatted down and then crossed his legs.

When the youngster returned he carried two bottles of soju with paper cups on their lids, and two large cups with fishcake soup.

“Ahhh… here we go! Let’s eat!”

“Eat well!”

The old man ate with gusto. It had been a long day. He’d had no luck and there was only one more day before he’d be back at work – just over a kilometer away at the Hung How Paper Plant in the Namdong Industry Park. They talked further but the old man’s mind was elsewhere.

He looked down at the yellowed water of the stream. A brownish frothy detergent-like mass was bubbling from a drain that ran down from the road to the stream. Two cranes stood in the froth and swished their beaks through the lighter brown surface foam. A third stood on one leg. The old man anticipated the crane gracefully putting its raised leg down only to be disappointed when it stumbled and lowered a mangled leg half its natural length.

There was no luck that day. Tomorrow was Sunday and he was sure there’d be luck.

He said good-bye to the young man, collected his pack, and started the walk back to the Paper Plant where he’d sleep in the night watchman’s room – an arrangement made after a long night of drinking between two old fishermen.

That night he fell asleep to a replay of the day’s baseball game. He dreamt that he was a sardine in a tin, and woke up in a sweat. He had an urgent need to piss, but found that only a dribble left his body once he made it to the toilet. It was still early. He decided to walk back to the bridge to get the best fishing spot.

The sun was not yet invited to address those that walked the night’s last hours. It didn’t make a material difference. The lights of the city reflected in the clouded night sky and provided a steady glow even without streetlights. It was never dark in the city. The streetlights became more regular and intense as he approached the highway. Crossing at this hour was dangerous. The truck drivers were alert but under pressure. On time deliveries and contract rates pushed them to ignore the first and last three seconds of red signals.

“Never cross when the little man is green. Wait until you check the road first.” There was no grandchild around him, but the words still came. The little man turned green.

“One, two, three. Okay, you can walk.”

A truck flew past and leaned heavily to one side as it turned towards the port road. At this size and weight it could not turn on rails as the advertisements promised.

“Dog bastard.” He whispered.

He crossed the four lanes north, reached the traffic island, and repeated the same across the four lanes south. As his foot touched the sidewalk the smell of the distant dried pollution of the mudflats entered his nostrils. He sensed the proximity of the turbid stream. There was the subtle drop in temperature that nature accords bodies of water to draw in visitors. There was also a less subtle putrid stank of 60 years of industrial development. Refuse pumped through the sewers of Incheon and expunged to an unnatural unmoving waterway with its origins not in a mountain stream but in a water treatment plant to cleanse the refuse of the three million people that surrounded it. After weeks with no rain, the stream was little more than a concentrated morass with the only movement being the occasional wash through from the streets or the out flow of the distant treatment plant.

She, or is it he, is unwashed today? the old man thought to himself.

The old man had read a translation of The Old Man and the Sea. He knew the book well – it was after all about fishing. It was difficult for him to understand, and he read the translator’s notes carefully. He still did not fully comprehend why the protagonist in the book referred to the sea as she and yet the younger fisherman referred to it as he. In Korean, nouns do not have gender, the subject is often omitted, and pronouns are rarely used. Was his turbid stream masculine or feminine? He thought about this for a moment as the full stench hit him. He passed the last cement barricade before the bridge and looked at the stream’s unnaturally brown shit-like stillness. He realized then that the stream was neither masculine nor feminine but a sordid mess of sexless unwashed humanity.

A single crane spread its massive wings overhead. It flew northwards. No human borders molested its search for food.

The sun was now making it known that it would soon arrive. A faint glow showed that the streetlights would soon have competition. The clouds and the pollution though promised that even when it rose above the horizon, it would take only the appearance of a pale moon.

The old man took a piece of cardboard out of his pack and slotted it down in the best position next to the bridge post. He looked further down the bridge and saw that he was the first fisherman. He’d even beat the bait Bongo.

The old man unscrewed his rod, stretched it out, and tightened its joints. He connected his reel and ran the line through the rungs. He was old, and felt old, but he had dexterity in these small steps. Younger fishermen were stronger and had newer methods and tools. The old man had muscle memory, the very fibers of his muscles were programmed through repetition to perform these tasks. With no one around, he talked to himself.

“Not so shabby. This is my day.”

He looked around again and saw that he was still alone.

“What’s so special about today that no one arrives?”

He baited his hooks. Ever since he’d watched Season 2 of Let’s Fish Korea, he’d started using more than one hook. Six smaller hooks are more effective than one larger hook in a turbid stream, they’d said.

Thwap. Thwap. Thwap. The crane passed over his head and returned to its position in the brown foam at the edge of the bridge.

“This was good luck. No, this is great luck! The birds know the fish are here today.”

He looked at his bucket and touched its rim.

“You will be filled today, my darling.”

It was normal to drop a line rather than cast from the bridge. With no other fishermen yet arrived, he took the opportunity to cast. It dropped to the perfect position. The ripples spread. In one direction, they had already reached the brown foam and the cranes. In another, they acted as tidal waves to a shallowed morass. The rest continued across the muddied water towards the next bridge.

These were the best moments in fishing, the old man thought. The silence, broken only by container trucks, was peaceful. He did not keep his eyes on the line like many fishermen. He preferred instead to keep his finger touching the line. He preferred to feel the rhythm of the water and the nibbles of the fish on his bait before the bite. This was a controversial approach. As discussed in Season 3 of Let’s Fish Korea, some believe keeping a finger on the line can transmit electrical signals or vibrations that will scare a fish from the bait or lure. The old man was set in his ways. As things changed around him, he kept to his ways.

“That was a bite!”

Far below where he sat on the bridge, in a depth of around one meter of muddied water, a fish was biting one of the six hooks he had baited.

“Yes!”

“Yes”

“Eat that hard worm! It’s crunchy for a worm, yes, but it’s tasty, no? Eat it!”

The hard worm was a species of centipede. The old man caught them under rocks in a park near his apartment complex. Dipped in the leftovers of a tuna tin, squeezed and skewered on his hook, it made the perfect meal for a fish.

On the tips of his finger he felt the fish turn. It had taken the bait. One, two, maybe three hooks were now trapping, suffocating and tearing the fish from its insides out. The line taughtened and the tip of his rod bent towards the steam. Ripples screamed across the still water telling the world that the old man and the fish were now in battle.

“Come on, come on, easy!”

He started reeling in. There were no natural hiding spots where a fish could conceal itself. The engineers who designed the stream had two ideas in mind: a border between the first stage and second stage of land reclaimed from the mudflats, and a conduit for outflow or overflow of the distant water treatment plant. The only hiding spots were later additions – perhaps a shopping trolley, a discarded bicycle or the remnants of a truck tire? The fish sought refuge and the old man needed to coax or force it out.

The sun was now up. In the excitement the old man did not notice the passage of time. There were now other fishermen. Some excited to see his battle with the beast below. They had heard him talking to the fish, but the old man cared not. He spoke to no one in particular, perhaps to the fish.

“The first bite was in darkness. Now the sun rises. This cannot last much longer.”

He knew that the fish must tire soon. He held his line in one hand and reached over to his pack. He took out his first bottle of soju.

“I need the strength.” He said to himself as he poured himself a cup carefully avoiding the intermittent tugs of the fish below. He drank the cup in one shot and let out a whoop.

“Aaaaagh… That’s good.”

He then concentrated on his line. He pulled hard, then reeled in as the fish reacted. He repeated this three times. Then on the last, the fish was seen. A brilliant jump above the water to glisten a pallid sick yellow in the gray light of the morning. It was as big as the old man thought it was. He would one day retell this story.

“I wish the youngster were here.” He said to no one in particular but everyone who’d read The Old Man and The Sea.

As he pulled the line tighter and tighter, the fish was ready to give up. One more jump and it will be mine, he thought.

The line lurched abruptly downwards and then to the right. It was as if a much bigger fish had taken his own catch. He saw his rod twist and turn in directions outside of the turbid stream.

“What the devil is this? How…”

The crane from the brown foam had swooped in and stolen his catch.

He now had a crane ingesting an entanglement of six hooks and hard worms, and a fish that in his eyes, was rightfully his own.

He quickly let more line out. He raised his rod over the fisherman beside him. He walked down to the end of the bridge raising his arm and its extension, the fishing rod, over the heads of fishermen as he passed them. His arms strained and he felt a cramp forming in his shoulder. By the time he reached the end of the bridge his hand and arm were in pain.

“You will not take my fish!” He told the bird as it struggled with the line.

The old man’s tired bow legs took him down the incline from the end of the bridge to the edge of the mudflats. There was now an audience watching the commotion. They started yelling from the bridge.

“Hey old man! Cut the line!”

“Grandpa! Leave the bird alone!”

“What are you doing old man?”

He kept reeling in the line. The old man drew the crane closer and closer, still uncertain what he would do.

The bird was now in reach. It spread its wings and flapped. It did not try to fly away, but rather flapped and threatened the old man. It squawked hoarsely between each pull on the line.

“I have your fish old man. What are you going to do?” He imagined it saying.

The old man looked around. There was nothing to grab. He turned. Under the bridge an old, broken and discarded oar was wedged in the mud next to a skiff with a hole in it. The old man pulled as hard as he could and dragged the bird under the bridge.

The bird spread its wings again and danced as he pulled it. It raised its legs ready to strike. He reached the oar and then wedged his fishing rod behind a tire half-buried in the mud. The bird fluttered and danced, and the old man’s arms were tired and his dexterity lost. He lacked the muscle memory to swing an oar and knew each effort was tiring him further.

He swung the oar again and made contact. It was not a thud or a whack, but just as if he had again swung air. He thought for an instant of the sounds of a baseball. The different sounds of a maple, ash, and birch, or the higher pitches of metal alloys. It was no time to think of baseball, he reminded himself.

“Kaaaarghhh” The crane screamed. It stopped moving. Its neck was bent.

He approached the crane. It had lost its battle and raised its wings and legs in silent protest. The old man pulled the line until the bird was in reach. The bird opened its mouth to give up the fish. The old man held its beak open, removed one hook lodged in its mouth, and then pulled the line. The bird gave a muffled squawk and the fish was returned.

The other hooks were lodged within the crane and the movement of its head threatened to entangle it further. The old man pulled out his knife and cut the line. He took his rod and the rest of the line, put the fish in his palm, and waddled angrily back up the incline to the bridge. As he passed the fisherman, some of them scowled.

“What did you do?”

“Hey, you should’ve cut the line. Why’d you do that?”

“Was it worth killing a bird old man?”

The old man looked at the sickly pale yellowish fish. It smelt of the turbid stream and the distant mudflats. He knew that he would catch fish today. It was still early. He would have another chance.

The old man returned to his spot. A gruff middle-aged man sat in his spot. The old man’s bucket and pack had been pushed aside to the sidewalk. There were no more spots left on the bridge.

“Hey, that’s my spot.” The old man started.

“Who are you? It was empty. Go take a walk grandpa!”

The old man swore quietly, then raised his voice. “Move! Give me back my spot!”

“Ya! C’mon get up you dog. Who do think you are?” The youngster from the previous day had appeared. His size was formidable and matched the tone of his voice.

“Okay, okay. Here you go.”

The middle-aged man got up and walked off.

“There you go old man.” The youngster said.

The youngster looked at the old man’s fish. It looked half-eaten. It looked fought over.

“I’ll be down the end of the bridge. Come and say hi later.”

The youngster took a few steps and turned back. The old man sat in his spot. He felt tired. He looked down to where the brown-foamed water met the mud.

The bird had somehow crawled out from under the bridge to where the other two cranes stood in the foam. Its head was wrapped in fishing line and hooks. One hook was stuck in its eye. The crane’s head quivered. It turned on its back and was still. It seemed to stare at nothing. One leg moved. Lying on its back, the bird stretched out its leg as if it were reaching for an imaginary ground ready to gracefully land. Once, twice, a third time, and then it stopped moving.

Two young foreigners wheeled their bikes along the pavement. They passed the old man and then paused. The younger of the two spoke first. She looked in the same direction as the old man.

“Oh look at that poor crane. Ohhhh…”

The second looked directly at the old man and his fish. Her face showed disgust.

“Oh my God. Is he going to eat that? A fish from here?”

The old man wiped his fish and put down a piece of newspaper. He took out his knife and skinned the fish over the bridge. He sliced the fish’s center line and removed its putrid guts and tossed them over the edge of the bridge. He fileted the fish and retrieved two thin strips and five or six small pieces of flesh. He poured himself a cup of soju. He ate and drank.

He leaned against the bridge post and rested his head. He shut his eyes.

He lay as still as the turbid stream below. Defeated and destroyed. Exhausted, he let himself sleep. He did not dream.

…

Sometimes fiction can be more speculative, but more often just reflects reality from a different perspective. Either way, sorting fact with fiction can help build the creativity needed in strategic analysis.