Fly-Fishing the 41st

by James Prosek

  The passengers, Norwegians and Scots, a Finn, and one Japanese man from Grenoble named Yoichi Machino, looked beyond the gunwale and saw nothing, except a deep blue sky that was growing black. We were drifting down the river toward its mouth and the Bering Sea.

  Meanwhile the fog grew thicker. Markuu, the Finn, grabbed a bottle of vodka. We passed it around and he started to sing. Soon we were all singing, easy sing-alongs, What shall we do with the drunken sailor, melancholy songs that sounded sublime in our desperate state in the dark and fog.

  Before long we saw a floodlight emerging from grayness, and a small boat moored alongside of us. They had found us with no radio or radar navigation. The driver of the small boat grabbed the gunwale and, as he did, accidentally dropped the handheld floodlight into the river. We started to sing again, adrift in the darkness.

  We were found by two other boats, much later, and towed safely to the research station up the Raduga River, arriving after midnight.

  In one of the dark log cabins of the station a meal had been prepared, borscht and a sliced meat with a spicy tomato relish. An open fire burned in a brick hearth.

  The meal was cooked and served by a brown-haired woman who looked a bit like Ida. She smiled, showing two gold and three silver teeth.

  Sasha came into the dining room and she showed us to our rooms.

  It was Glubakovsky, white haired and distinguished, who led us in toasts, announced the day’s activities, and circulated among us with a warm smile and kind words. He had brought several stern-looking friends who wore Adidas exercise suits and looked like part of the Russian mob. One of these fellows said to Markuu, “Good to meet you. I now have three friends from Norway, your king, your queen, and you.” Did it matter that Markuu was from Finland?

  At the first breakfast we were handed a booklet of printed abstracts of scientific papers, which the members of the International Society of Arctic Char Fanatics were scheduled to deliver during the course of our eight-day stay. In lieu of a paper, I would present a slide show of my 41st parallel travels. I knew the scientists would be interested in seeing photos of fish that they likely had only read of, the softmouth trout of Bosnia, Salmothymus obtusirostris, and the Mongolian grayling, Thymallus breverostris.

  For the first several days, the talks, given two at breakfast and two after dinner, maintained a certain gravity. With vodka and late-night dancing, the seriousness deteriorated. Every morning fewer people showed up for the breakfast presentations. Then the speakers themselves failed to show. Markuu delivered his paper drunk. The scientists were taken by the clear cool air, the strength of the tall volcanoes, and the hearty meals of freshly caught fish. In the night they grabbed their towels, drank a few shots of vodka or whiskey, and walked in the dark under the stars to the banya, or Russian sauna.

  Yoichi, Markuu, and I fed the fire with dry willow sticks and birch logs, which heated the stones on the opposite side of the wall. We undressed and stepped into the room of sour wood smells, dry and hot, and threw ladlefuls of water from a basin onto the hot stones to make steam. Sitting on the wood benches I could see the sweat beading up on my dry skin and rolling in droplets off my shoulder and chest. I rubbed the sweat on my skin and kneaded my face with my hands, taking deep breaths of the warm humid air.

  Markuu spoke about the tradition of banyas in his country. “Many people have saunas in their homes in Finland,” he said. “I take a sauna three times a week, if not more. The planks should have no knots in them because knots in wood get hotter and are unpleasant to sit on.”

  When we were at the point that we could no longer endure the heat, we stepped out of the sauna, ran down a path to the river, and jumped off the iron dock into the cold water.

  During the day we made excursions to nearby lakes and tributaries of the Kamchatka River. I watched the Norwegians rig up their lines to fish in Lake Azerbache. A few tied on silvery spoons for char, others treble hooks, to snag the spawning sockeye salmon.

  Yoichi and I walked up the small river over tracks of large bear. We caught many Dolly Varden char. The males, now in their spawning colors, were red like the south side of a ripe apple. I got to know Yoichi as we fished and hiked farther from the rest of the group.

  He had left Kyoto, Japan, as a young man, traveled widely, and settled in Grenoble, France, where he worked at the university. He was short and thin and wore a leather pilot’s hat given to him by the locally renowned Russian bush guide, Misha Skopets of Magadan. Igor Cheresnev told me that he had given Yoichi the boots and canvas jacket he wore, seven years before when Yoichi made his first trip to Russia. “He’s spent more on patching them,” Igor said, “than they’re worth.” Yoichi’s first love was char but most of his scientific work was published on crayfish. Of all the people who had seen my slide presentation, he was the most intrigued by Johannes Schöffmann, who played a large part in the story I delivered.

  “I would like to meet your Austrian friend Johannes,” Yoichi said. “He sounds like a very interesting man. I am studying crayfish in the rivers of southern Austria, maybe I can visit him.”

  “You would like Johannes,” I confirmed. “He is a fanatic in his own way.”

  “But more for Salmo trutta, the brown trout,” Yoichi said. “Well, they are similar to char. I like how he catches them, by diving. It’s very alternative. In Japan they have a way of fishing with a hammer. It’s called hammer fishing, and it’s best done at night. The fishermen hammer really hard on a stone in or on the edge of the stream and it stuns the trout lying underneath it. Then they net them. It only works, I think, with certain rocks, basalt maybe.”

  Yoichi kept three fish for a shore lunch, which we brought back to where the others were. The accumulated catch was piled on the sandy beach beside the lake. The women had made driftwood fires on which to cook the fish, burning it down to coals. I took a brief swim in the cold lake and then lay on top of some bear tracks, half sleeping, enjoying the sun and the smell of cooking fish. When I opened my eyes I saw Olga standing over me, her green eyes glaring. She was with her small square terrier that she called Cleopatra. In her hand was a hot cup of tea. I sat up to receive it. A light breeze lifted her wild curly reddish hair.

  “James,” was all she said, and kneeled down next to me. She looked at me with the adoring look a mother gives her son. Then she stood up and walked back to the fires to help cook the lunch.

  That evening at dinner at the research station, in the dim of the wooden cabin, Dr. Glubakovsky suggested we have a banquet. He wished to recognize some individuals, present a special meal, and then get drunk and dance. Our friendly server who looked like Ida brought us a fish soup. Several cheeses were brought out, a berry wine, and salted salmon eggs. After dinner, those remaining moved the tables to clear a space for dancing. Russian dance music, rock and techno, played from a cassette player.

  As the night wore on, Igor turned off the music and fetched a guitar.

  The guitar was in poor condition and irreparably out of tune. He tried to play it but there was too much discord. Then a small middle-aged Russian man named Valérie, whose face reminded me of one of those black-and-white mug shots of an old-time train robber, came in carrying an amber-colored instrument, in tune and pleasant sounding.

  Valérie played melancholy Russian war songs and everyone stayed to listen. My friend Fred told them I played some guitar and Valérie handed the instrument to me. I don’t remember the first song I sang, maybe it was a Woody Guthrie tune. We all were very drunk.

  Valérie, who now looked to me like a fox, was an exceptional folksinger. His songs were about war and love and mother Russia. Sergei Alexeev, another of the Russian biologists, crept up to me several times to tell me what the songs were about. “This song is for World War Two,” he would say. “This is the song of the Russian Civil War.” The drivers, the cooks, the boat mechanics, all the people who worked at Raduga Station, drank and enjoyed the music.

  Olga danced to my songs, and when Valérie played I danced with Olg
a and held her by the waist and shoulders and felt the valley along her spine and put my leg between her legs and she laughed and let me go, spinning. I walked outside at one point into the chilly night to pee. When I returned I could no longer find Olga.

  A small limping man, one of the boat mechanics who lived at camp and always seemed drunk, poured vodka in my mouth and corked it with a pickle. After the playing, around four in the morning, Yoichi and I went to the banya but the fire was out and the stones were not hot. We ran down to the iron dock by our cabin and jumped off into the river anyway. It felt good to be naked. When we came up dripping from the river, Olga was walking by with her dog, Cleopatra.

  The next afternoon, a group of fifteen of us fished in a small tributary of the Kamchatka River, a short boat ride from camp. It was a kind of exploratory fishing trip and I caught a species of char I had previously seen only in Japan. It was Salvelinus leucomanis, the white-spotted char, locally known as the kundja. The first one I caught was small, cerulean blue on the sides with large round white spots. Yoichi caught a larger one, close to two feet long. We also caught Dolly Varden char, Salvelinus malma, and a char that Dr. Glubakovsky had first described, Salvelinus albus. No one else but Glubakovsky considered albus a separate species.

  “It’s identical to the Dolly Varden,” Yoichi said. “It should be called Glubakovsky’s ego char.” We cooked fish for lunch on the bank of the river. The wind was down and the small biting flies were numerous.

  Remnants of the evening redness could still be seen on the peaks of the volcanoes at the hour we returned to Raduga Station. In the dining cabin after we ate, the tables were cleared and moved for another night of festivities. Soon Valérie was plucking and picking his songs and singing with his throaty Dylanesque voice. I sat down on a bench in the corner and listened to Valérie until he had done playing and he handed me the guitar. The limping boat mechanic tilted a cup of vodka to my mouth and then fed me a pickle. Time passed, and individual members of the caravan slipped off to their cabins. I handed the guitar to Valérie and went outside to relieve myself. On the way back through the dark hallway into the room, someone took my hand. It was Olga. She led me into the kitchen, where we sat among pots and jars and fragrant bunches of dried sage and bay leaves. We lay down, embracing. Through a hole in the wall I could see the warm light of the dining room and hear Valérie’s voice and the soft treble of the guitar strings on his fingers.

  Olga kissed me and muttered several words in Russian.

  “Sh, sh, sh,” she said and kissed me again.

  She led me out of the kitchen but someone was walking by the entrance so we ducked back in. Olga showed me that she would leave first and then I should follow. She made the moment darker than it was.

  I met her in the damp grass under the full moon. We held hands again and she led me to her room.

  “Sh, Cleopa,” Olga whispered to her dog, closing her door. Cleopatra settled in a square bundle beside the bed. I watched Olga’s dress fall as she stripped off her clothes. She helped me undress.

  I touched her.

  “Sh, sh, sh, James,” she said. The cold world of wood walls, full moons, and wet grass was somewhere beyond the warmth I felt. I heard her delightful panting as I pulled her closer. I smelled salmon on her fingers. I asked Olga if I could light a candle and see her. Somehow she understood, for she moved the window curtain and moonlight spilled over her breasts. I saw the animal in her eyes.

  Cleopatra was quiet and sleeping on the floor. Olga held me for a long time, then loosened her embrace and indicated to me that I mustn’t fall asleep.

  I kissed Olga’s soft cheek and dressed and ran down the path through the dark, half elated, half bewildered, to the banya. I took off my clothes, hung them on a peg, and felt pleased to be alone in the dark. I moved a small washbasin below a large spigot and filled it with warm water, which I poured over myself.

  The stones were still warm in the sauna. I put some water on them and light steam filled the room. I closed my eyes but did not sleep.

  Later that morning, on my way to breakfast, I passed Cleopatra licking the dew off the grass. The dog had strayed from Olga’s side but she must not be far. At midday we left Raduga Station and began the two-day trip back to Petropavlovsk.

  Not until we arrived at the gate for our flights out of Kamchatka did I hold Olga again. She put a small figurine carved from mammoth ivory in my hand and said good-bye, smiling.

  The other Americans and I were about to board the weekly flight to Anchorage, Alaska, when a tall man approached me and introduced himself. I recognized him from photos I had seen. It was Dr. Robert Behnke, my wellspring of information, the one who had introduced me to Johannes Schöffmann and shaped my travels along the 41st parallel.

  “It is a pleasure to finally meet you,” he said. “I’m Bob Behnke.”

  “A pleasure for me too,” I said. “It’s so strange you’re on this flight. I didn’t know you’d be in Russia.”

  “I was supposed to join your party, in fact,” he said, “but I decided to go on a separate research trip up the Amur River—some colleagues and I were studying Siberian taimen and lenok.” He combed his lacy reddish hair with his large fingers. “I was determined to return with specimens,” Behnke said, “but the vodka ran out and the bush guides drank all my ethyl alcohol. It was not an entirely successful trip, scientifically speaking. We could not navigate as far as we had hoped up the river because of a large log jam.”

  “You were fishing with nets?”

  “Some, but I did better with my fly rod.”

  “Oh,” I said. The wind was blowing hard.

  “Why don’t you visit me at the university in Fort Collins on your way home,” Behnke said, pausing to stuff and light his pipe. The smoke blew across his face as he struggled to keep the match lit in the wind.

  “I retired from teaching this year, my seventieth birthday, but I still have my office in Wagar Hall, the old veterinary building. I’ll take you fishing on the upper Poudre River, it should be very near your parallel, forty-one degrees north. We have a lot of beaver ponds with brook trout; they are an introduced species so we can catch and keep some.”

  “That sounds great.”

  “We’ll have a meal and share stories.” He turned his back to the wind and puffed on his pipe. “Plan on coming about October fourth and staying a few days. I have a doctor’s appointment on the third. You can coax me out of the office for some fishing. Where are you heading now?”

  “I’m going to visit and fish with a friend in Berkeley.”

  “I did my Ph.D. work at UC Berkeley,” he said. “Nice town.”

  When we arrived in Anchorage, making the four-hour flight across the Bering Sea, I said good-bye to Behnke and some of my new Fanatics friends. Then I boarded a plane for San Francisco.

  THE ABRIDGED SCHWARZFISCHER LEXICON

  Invitation to join ISOS,

  the International Society of Schwarzfischer

  President: Johannes Schöffmann

  Vice President: James Prosek

  Dear prospective members—Yoichi Machino, Dr. Robert Behnke, Pierre Affre

  You have been chosen to become members of the ISOS because you exhibit characteristics of the founding members; that is, you foster the urge to fish by any means possible: 1. because you are a predator 2. in order to advance the world’s awareness through art and science concerning the biodiversity of salmonid fishes, especially trout and char.

  The following is a dictionary of terms and sayings of invention and collection in languages from countries where Schwarzfischer (s) have traveled in search of fish. It is a kind of Schwarzfischer code—the Schwarzfischer lexicon.

  Schwarzfischer—German: literally, black fisherman; illegal angler, poacher, pescador furtivo, pêcheur noir (not proper to say Schwarzfischers, but it is said nonetheless).

  Spanish—official language of the Schwarzfischer, as it is the first language in which the Schwarzfischers communicated. “Mal vino es mejor q
ue no vino”—saying in Spanish of Johannes’s invention: “Bad wine is better than no wine.”

  Gambatar—the name of an amicable driver in Mongolia used in place of the Spanish infinitive ir, to go, and conjugated like a Spanish verb.

  gambato

  gambatamos

  gambatas

  gambatais

  gambata

  gambatan

  Schweinehund—German: literally, pig dog; used as a light insult. trout/char—favored fish of the Schwarzfischer, known variously as: truite (France); trota (Italy); trucha (Spain); Forelle (Germany); forel (Russia); pestrofa (Greece); pstrimika (Albania); gouzelleh (Iran); ishkhan, bahtak, kharmrahait (Armenia); alabalik (Turkey, Azerbaijan); iwana, yamame, oshorokomo (Japan); bleikja, sjógengin, urrithi (Iceland); massi alé (Kurdish).

  Johannes-cut—antonym of shortcut, or a means of taking time off your travel by choosing a more direct route. Used ironically because a shortcut is intended to save time by abbreviating the route, but a Johannes-cut ends up making the trip longer.

  cheese—v. smile. ex.: She is cheesing. Derived from American custom of saying “cheese” and smiling when a photo is taken. A Johannes slip.

  bekhwe—Mongolian, roughly means there are none, a common response to questions asked in Central Asia; ex.: “Do you have any toilet paper?” “Toilet paper bekhwe.”

  yow—Icelandic: yes. Repeated slowly in succession—yow, yow, yow— it suggests the American yeah, yeah, yeah. ex.: “Sure you caught a twenty-pound char—yow, yow, yow.”

  chishik unem—Armenian: I have to pee.

  gola hanne—Nepali method of fishing with explosives.

  Einfahrt-Ausfahrt-gutefahrt—An amusing interlanguage wordplay. Einfahrt in German, entrance; Ausfahrt—exit; fart, American slang for flatulence; ein in German, one; gute Fahrt in German, good travel; good fart in English, good flatulence.