ERNEST HEMINGWAY
THE OLD MAN
AND THE SEA
Cover picture by Vladimír Noskov
3
He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and
he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first
forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish
the boy’s parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and
finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone
at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first
week. It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his
skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry either the coiled
lines or the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the
mast. The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like
the flag of permanent defeat.
The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his
neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings
from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches
ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased
scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars
were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert.
Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same
colour as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.
‘Santiago,’ the boy paid to him as they climbed the bank from where
the skiff was hauled up. ‘I could go with you again. We’ve made some
money.’
The old man had taught the boy to fish and the boy loved him.
‘No,’ the old man said. ‘You’re with a lucky boat. Stay with them.’
‘But remember how you went eighty-seven days without fish and
then we caught big ones every day for three weeks.’
‘I remember,’ the old man said. ‘I know you did not leave me be-
cause you doubted.’
‘It was papa made me leave. I am a boy and I must obey him.’
‘I know,’ the old man said. ‘It is quite normal.’
‘He hasn’t much faith.’
‘No,’ the old man said. ‘But we have. Haven’t we?’
‘Yes,’ the boy said. ‘Can I offer yo