Mare Nostrum (Our Sea): A Novel

by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

The Dotor was rich—the richest man in the countryside; a man who really did not know what to do with his money. His maid-servant—an old woman who had known his father and served his mother—used daily to receive from his hands the fish provided for the two with a regal generosity. The Triton, who had hoisted sail at daybreak, used to disembark before eleven, and soon the purpling lobster was crackling on the red coals, sending forth delicious odors; the stew pot was bubbling away, thickening its broth with the succulent fat of the sea-scorpion; the oil in the frying pan was singing, browning the flame-colored skin of the salmonettes; and the sea urchins and the mussels opened hissing under his knife, were emptying their still living pulp into the boiling stew pan. Furthermore, a cow with full udders was mooing in the yard, and dozens of chickens with innumerable broods were cackling incessantly.

The flour kneaded and baked by his servant, and the coffee thick as mud, was all that the Triton purchased with his money. If he hunted for a bottle of brandy on his return from a swim, it was only to use it in rubbing himself down.

Money entered through his doors once a year, when the girls of the vintage lined up among the trellises of his vineyards, cutting the bunches of little, close fruit and spreading them out to dry in some small sheds called riurraus. Thus was produced the small raisin preferred by the English for the making of their puddings. The sale was a sure thing, the boats always coming from the north to get the fruit. And the Triton, upon finding five or six thousand pesetas in his hand, would be greatly perplexed, inwardly asking himself what a man was ever going to do with so much money.

"All this is yours," he said, showing the house to his nephew.

His also the boat, the books and the antique furniture in whose drawers the money was so openly hid that it invited attention.

In spite of seeing himself lord of all that surrounded him, a rough and affectionate despotism, kept nevertheless, weighing the child down. He was very far from his mother, that good lady who was always closing the windows near him and never letting him go out without tying his neckscarf around him with an accompaniment of kisses.

Just when he was sleeping soundest, believing that the night would still be many hours longer, he would feel himself awakened by a violent tugging at his leg. His uncle could not touch him in any other way. "Get up, cabin boy!" In vain he would protest with the profound sleepiness of youth…. Was he, or was he not the "ship's cat" of the bark of which his uncle was the captain and only crew?…

His uncle's paws bared him to the blasts of salt air that were entering through the windows. The sea was dark and veiled by a light fog. The last stars were sparkling with twinkles of surprise, ready to flee. A crack began to appear on the leaden horizon, growing redder and redder every minute, like a wound through which the blood is flowing. The ship's cat was loaded up with various empty baskets, the skipper marching before him like a warrior of the waves, carrying the oars on his shoulders, his feet rapidly making hollows on the sand. Behind him the village was beginning to awaken and, over the dark waters, the sails of the fishermen, fleeing the inner sea, were slipping past like ghostly shrouds.

Two vigorous strokes of the oar sent their boat out from the little wharf of stones, and soon he was untying the sails from the gunwales and preparing the ropes. The unfurled canvas whistled and swelled in bellying whiteness. "There we are! Now for a run!"

The water was beginning to sing, slipping past both sides of the prow. Between it and the edge of the sail could be seen a bit of black sea, and coming little by little over its line, a great red streak. The streak soon became a helmet, then a hemisphere, then an Arabian arch confined at the bottom, until finally it shot up out of the liquid mass as though it were a bomb sending forth flashes of flame. The ash-colored clouds became stained with blood and the large rocks of the coast began to sparkle like copper mirrors. As the last stars were extinguished, a swarm of fire-colored fishes came trailing along before the prow, forming a triangle with its point in the horizon. The mist on the mountain tops was taking on a rose color as though its whiteness were reflecting a submarine eruption. "Bon dia!" called the doctor to Ulysses, who was occupied in warming his hands stiffened by the wind.