How I Came to Know Fish

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This translation first published in the United States of America by Story Line Press 1990

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

Ota Pavel was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1930, the son of a Jewish travelling salesman. Much of his family was arrested and imprisoned during the Second World War while he remained with his mother (who was not Jewish) in the Bohemian town of Buštěhrad. It is this terrible period in Central Europe’s history that this is the focus of his most memorable work. Pavel worked as a sports journalist, both on radio and in newspapers and magazines and was himself an enthusiast for all kinds of sport, including ice hockey and fishing. While covering the Winter Olympics in Innsbruck in 1964 he became severely ill and spent much of the rest of his life in various mental hospitals, during which time he wrote the marvellous How I Came to know Fish. He died of a heart attack in Prague in 1973.

Concert

For every fisherman, it is best to be initiated into the lore of fishing as a child by a father, an uncle, or a ferryman. In our case, it was the ferryman Karel Prosek from Luh-under-Branov, whom we grew to love as an uncle.

He not only taught me and my brothers Hugo and Jirka how to catch fish, but he taught my cunning Papa, too. Uncle Prosek knew so much about fish that he was probably born in the Berounka River like a water sprite and tumbled into Luh on the waters of a flood. He had a sonorous voice, a fine figure, and a beautiful moustache like a dragon. He could do anything in the world! He could plow and sow, milk cows, cook potato pancakes, find wild boletus mushrooms even out of season, ferry people in his boat during high waters, weave baskets, hunt deer, rescue travelers and half-frozen animals, silence the stupid, and he knew how to laugh. Many times, during high waters, he would ferry the mid-wife Flybertova and her indispensable suitcase. And he knew how to catch fish. Many ways! He’d impale them from his boat on moonlit nights with a fork called a ‘grondle,’ he would sink down weirs in their path, or he would cast out a line in broad daylight and catch them on a rod like a gentleman.

This was during the time of the old Austrian monarchy, when Count Max Egon Furstenberg lived in Krivoklat castle eating hot goulash and drinking Rakovnik beer. Because Prosek was the best fisherman in the region, the Count allowed him to fish in any manner he chose and in any part of the river. But if he caught eels, with their meat like lotus blossoms, he must bring them to the castle! He carried the eels in a sack, which his wife Karolina sewed from canvas. He carried them, still living, along the Berounka to the castle. The gates would swing open majestically, as if for a conquering knight. Inside, he poured them into a pitched cask filled with water, and sometimes received a gold coin. The coin had the emperor on it and resembled the sun.

But after the Count climbed into his carriage and disappeared behind four foreign rivers, Prosek was forbidden variety in his manner of fishing. The rod, he was told, would be sufficient for all.

Prosek had a long, yellow bamboo rod, a whip without a spool. He would walk against the rushing water so that the fish could not see him and crack the whip as he styled his dragoon’s moustache. That is how his method got the name ‘crack-casting.’

One day we drove up in our car, my Papa Leo, my Mama Herma, my brothers Hugo and Jirka, and myself, our whole family. From under the alder trees all of us were watching Prosek on the far side of the river. He moved across the slippery stones like an otter. His floater flew to the exact spot he aimed at. And the fish? They seemed to jump out of the water – silver chubs with red rudder fins, elegant whiskered barbels, big-bellied roaches from the tide pools, and daces from the swift currents. All of them slipped into his net, their freedom over, their master come, the King of Poachers.

My Papa, ever enthusiastic, cried out, ‘Herma! What a concert! Just like Kubelik.’

Suddenly, I imagined rows of theatre seats along the shore in which gentlemen in English checked plus fours and ladies in pink crinolines sat sighing and applauding as each fish was caught.

Messieurs, mesdames, this is true art. In his overflowing net Prosek caught up the last fish, then lit a cigarette and bowed.

The vision faded and Prosek was wading the shallow river towards us. Papa had immediately taken a liking to Prosek, because he too was a smart fellow. He could silence the stupid as well as Prosek could, and what he could not do Prosek would teach him. Ruffian Prosek suited my father well because his whole life he maintained that fine people are not worth shit. Papa and Prosek agreed that we would come to his ferry house for our summer vacations and his house alone.

My First Fish

Prosek returned from the Anamo pub in high spirits, singing old army songs. He knew a lot of them, having fought during the war in Serbia and carrying still a fragment of shrapnel in his hip. This souvenir often pained him, but he claimed that it stopped hurting once he had several hard shots inside him. In this condition he arrived at the boat, kissed the Alsatian, Holan, on the snout and sat down under the sweet-smelling acacia.

I was at the ferry at that time because my brothers did not take me with them again. They preferred the company of Dasa, the daughter of Beda Peroutka, who ignored me.

I dragged myself slowly toward him. He did not love me much. His favorite was Jirka, a scoundrel after his own heart. I was the youngest, only a pet. Prosek stared at me and pulled out a pickle from his dirty pocket.

I took my finger out of my mouth and put the pickle in. Prosek watched me. Then he pulled out his flask.

The bottle was empty, but I made a blissful face. The non-existing alcohol brought us together. When he got up to go to the barn, he motioned for me to follow him. Inside, he drew out a long hazel twig.

‘I’ll make you a rod,’ he said. ‘I’ve been saving this twig for you for a long time.’

Unsheathing his sharp pocketknife, he cut here and cut there. Fascinated, I followed his calloused hands, noting the one finger he was missing, which he had cut off while slicing twigs for baskets. I looked up at his face, the contortion of pain on it, and realized that the shrapnel in his hip must be flaring up again without booze to keep it cool. Despite the pain, Prosek finished my rod. At that moment, I had no idea that it would be the most precious rod that I would ever own, but I know it now. It was my childhood rod, unparalleled even by the advanced American and Japanese models I would covet in later years. Prosek strung a line to it, then added a goose quill and a hook.

‘Near the island,’ he said, ‘you’ll find perch. Go, Jackass, and ruffle their feathers. I’ll wait for you here.’

Before running out of the barn, I turned back to see Prosek curling up to sleep with Holan’s head in his lap.

Following the path to the island, I reached my destination before noon. The sun was already quite warm. I baited the hook with a plump earthworm and cast the line, but nothing happened. The fish would not bite. Only bluish dragonflies sat on marsh marigolds while somewhere in the backwater chubs were snacking contentedly. The white quill lay upon the water like a sailboat on a dead sea. In my mind, I hoisted the sails and ordered the captain to get under way, and we were pulled across the drowsy surface by a colored fish. But the quill, in fact, was still. My eyelids grew heavy, but I managed to blink from time to time with one eye to see if my white ship had set sail.

Suddenly, the quill shook and a circle appeared around it. And again and again, as if signaling or flirting with my ship, as if the engine crank were being turned. So it was not a sailboat, but a white motorboat. Then it hopped, stood on its head, and put up its feet like a half-submerged duck. By then I was wide awake and holding the rod firmly, expecting at any moment the sight of a wild-maned perch. But the quill made a JUMP! and disappeared. I could see it racing under the surface towards the marsh marigolds. The rod bent into an arch, and for the first time in my life I felt the delicious pull of a fish. After a tremendous battle, a bristled mouth appeared. It was a perch all right, as big as a checked red cap, but it was also olive-green with dark stripes across it. The fish carried its red fins like flags of war, and with its hump it resembled a bull. Instead of eyes, I gazed into live gold coins, and spears seemed to protrude from its back. This was no fish! This was a dragon, or an armored knight with a red plume jutting from his helmet.

I hauled the fish onto the grass and lay on it so that it could not escape. We fought like two boys, then I carried it ceremoniously to the ferry. I had pricked myself on its spears, and there was blood on my fingers. I thought that from this day forward Uncle Prosek would care for me as much as he cared for Jirka. He was sitting on a bench drinking milk – goat vermouth – to chase away the alcohol.

Then he skinned the perch and nailed its head and skin to the barn door, announcing to everyone who could see that another fisherman had been born in Luh-under-Branov. I sat on a milking stool for days beneath my trophy. When somebody passed by on their way to the ferry, I would cough and blow my nose if they did not immediately notice the perch. I basked in the praise. Even Dasa, daughter of Beda Peroutka, kissed me on the cheek.

But one night my prize disappeared. Possibly the cat, Andelka, ate it. But it is more likely that my beloved Uncle Prosek removed it from the barn door. He had grown tired of my strutting about and was more than a little annoyed with me.

Battle for Pike

My brothers decided to accept me at last. We would catch small fish for bait, officially called gudgeons, but our name for them was chop, the same as a chop our mother would fry. The chop is a good-looking fish, almost marbled and with two blue fins. God must have had a good time making them, but the chop is a trusting and stupid fish.

To catch chops we would stir up sand and mud with our feet, which the chops explored for food. They found instead our lines and hooked earthworms. They pecked like hens, pulling the floats, then we would yank on the lines and the chops would come into the daylight. Now and then they swam between our feet and pecked at our toes. Peck. Peck. Peck. We splashed our feet in cool water and fished at the same time. We put them into cans and then Papa and Uncle Prosek would use them to catch pike and other water cannibals.

But then the chops became scarce in the river and Uncle Prosek discovered that pike also found the meat of the prickly perch delicious. Imagine! Perch on the pike’s menu, and nobody had known about it before!

At that time Beda Peroutka, a typographer from Zizkov and a fan of Victoria Zizkov, visited the Krivoklat region in his old wreck of a car with his wife, Vlasta. My Papa quickly made friends with him, and each Christmas they’d exchange potato salad in painted chamber-pots. They were all so young. When we drove from Krivoklat back to Prague, pike hung outside open cabriolets; behind the cars trussed-up pots and buckets jiggled. Speed was not important. During the trip the crews shouted slogans and obscenities at each other, but the women did not blush anymore because they were used to it.

At Krivoklat, Papa was supposed to call, ‘Here lives Holub the confectioner!’

Following in his car, Peroutka would happily respond, ‘So bend and kiss the sweet spot, Bub!’

Once in Luh, Beda decided to teach Prosek and Papa a thing or two about fishing and took off with Frantisek Pavlicek, the local champion, to catch pike at Devil’s Rock. This fishing hole got its name, one story goes, because a gamekeeper once tripped over a rock and spilled his flask full of the Devil over it; another more sober version has the Devil building a bridge one night over the Berounka River, which would enable him to kidnap a daughter from the fishery. But as the rooster began to crow, the bridge was still not finished. The Devil was left empty-handed and had to stay on the rock. The pike, meanwhile, had always lived in the deep hole below the rock.

When Papa found out about them, he and Prosek armed themselves with beautiful perch for bait and steered their boat upstream beyond the island to the pike pools at Brtva. They caught enormous pike. One even had such an appetite that it jumped clear out of the water to get its perch.

They returned shortly before Beda, who when he arrived stood on the far bank chuckling and holding over his head a pike of at least two kilos!

Once Beda had crossed over, Papa took hold of his arm and led him to the creel. They peered into the box at the dark green silhouetted backs of three pike. Beda splashed himself with water so that he would not faint and tumble into the river.

In the evening under the acacia tree, Papa confided the secret of the perch-as-bait and told him where to get pike the next morning. That acacia had such power that anyone sitting under it had to tell the truth. Even fishermen.

Under Sima’s Rock

Time passed, and finally I received my first reel and wore my shirt tucked into my pants. Papa bought us a soccer ball like the one used by London Arsenal, that famous band of sharpshooters. At the playing field, we used it to fight many battles. In one of these wars, the boys dislocated my finger with a blow, and Uncle Prosek put it right again with one pull.

Meanwhile, the river was full of fish. We caught them, and Mama breaded and cooked them like steaks, or else she marinated them in vinegar with layers of onion slices. They were stored in a stone barrel down in our cold cellar. Delicious. When someone got sick in the village, the sufferer would come to our house for pickled fish. Those who were not sick came also. But those who most often came for pickled fish were pickled themselves – with hangovers! Ah, the fish were plentiful from spring until fall. They grew tender in the stone barrel and their bones got soft. They were cold in the summer and warm in the winter.

Life was a carnival. A red clay formation rose high above the dam, and it was called Sima’s Rock. Perhaps because a lot of Simas lived in the villages scattered around its base. Whenever we walked past the rock we sang:

At Sima’s Rock

two tramps sat back

with no tough nuts to crack.

So they played guitars –

mcajcajcajcara,

juchy, juchy, juch.

Uncle Prosek in his straw hat would lead the way, then Papa with his fantastic mane of hair, Hugo, Jirka, and I would tag along. We carried long rods whose tips reached to the stars in the night sky. Our rods were so tall that I imagined us thrusting them skyward to light a star as one might light a gas lamp on the streets of Stare Mesto. As the sky darkened, the water below us tumbled down from the dam, which hummed as white whirlpools frothed and bubbled at its base. On the other side of the river, the mill at Nezabudice ended its daily rattle. From within the mill we saw one large white star, the window of the miller, Cech. And the sky and the vast universe spanned above it. Prosek turned to us.

We had found the spot where the river was fast and the barbel, that acrobatic strongman of fish, feasted. These belligerents live their lives fighting the current, disdaining the eddies and tide pools. They turn up stones with their snouts, hunting for small, delicious crabs and other tiny good things to eat. With their powerful fins and cylindrical bodies, they look like supersonic jets.

OTA PAVEL

How I Came to Know Fish

Contents

Concert

My First Fish

Battle for Pike

Under Sima’s Rock