目录 Contents

1. 导读

2. 老人与海

1. 正文

2. 版本和注释说明

3. The Old Man and the Sea

老人与海

The Old Man and the Sea

[美]海明威 著

李继宏 译

天津人民出版社

图书在版编目（CIP）数据

老人与海/（美）海明威（Hemingway,E.）著；李继宏译.--天津:天津人民出版社，2013.1（2018.11重印）

ISBN 978-7-201-07772-7

Ⅰ.①老…Ⅱ.①海…②李…Ⅲ.①长篇小说－美国－现代Ⅳ.①I712.45

中国版本图书馆CIP数据核字(2018)第263904号

老人与海

LAOREN YU HAI

出版 天津人民出版社

出版人 黄沛

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责任编辑 玮丽斯

产品经理 周颖

版式设计 刘泊延

封面设计 李子琪

制版印刷 北京盛通印刷股份有限公司

经销 新华书店

发行 果麦文化传媒股份有限公司

开本 880×1230毫米 1/32

印张 4.75

印数 710,000－730,000

插页 4

字数 90千字

版次印次 2013年1月第1版 2018年11月第47次印刷

定价 49.80元

版权所有 侵权必究

INTRODUCTION

导读

1950年9月10日，约翰·奥哈拉在《纽约时报·书评周刊》上撰文评论厄尼斯特·海明威的新作，该文开篇是这么写的：“当代最重要的作家，莎士比亚去世以来最杰出的作家，带来了新的小说。小说的名字是《穿过河流，进入树林》（Across the River and Into the Trees）。这位作家当然就是厄尼斯特·海明威啦，他是1616年之后数以百万计的作家中最重要、最优秀的。”

约翰·奥哈拉并非默默无闻之辈，他是声誉卓著的小说家，美国文学评论界向来将他与爵士时代的文学大师司各特·菲兹杰拉德和俄罗斯文学巨匠安东·契诃夫相提并论；在这篇评论发表的六年之后，也就是1956年，他的小说《弗街北段十号》（Ten North Frederick）获得了美国国家图书奖。奥哈拉也不是国内常见那种随意吹捧圈内人的高帽批发商，他很少对同时代的作家表示称许，得到他公开赞颂的只有海明威和《愤怒的葡萄》作者约翰·斯坦贝克等寥寥数位。纵观国内外文学史，顶尖作家对同时代其他作家给出这么高的评语，这种事情虽然不能说绝无仅有，但也是非常罕见的。究竟是什么让奥哈拉如此推崇海明威呢？这要从海明威对现代英语文学的贡献说起。

在海明威出道的20世纪20年代，美国小说虽然已经几乎彻底地实现了从现实主义到现代主义的转变，但在文体上，那种追求繁复的维多利亚遗风依旧有着巨大的影响。以曾于1921年获得普利策奖的《纯真年代》（The Age of Innocence）为例，该书前五个自然段共有559个单词，但却只分为12个句子，平均每个句子将近47个单词，其中最长一句有90个单词之多。随后几年获得普利策奖的小说，无论是布斯·塔尔金顿的《爱丽丝·亚当斯》（Alice Adams）、薇拉·凯瑟的《吾侪中人》（One of Ours）、辛克莱·刘易斯的《阿罗史密斯》（Arrowsmith），还是路易·布罗费尔德的《早秋》（Early Autumn），情况也莫不如此。

早期英语小说偏爱这种迤逦文体背后的原因非常复杂，很难简单扼要地讲述清楚，但能够观察到的事实是，如果把对白排除在外，在1926年之前出版的英文小说中，平均每个句子长度是40个单词左右；而且几乎所有作家和文学评论家都认为，能否写出复杂的长句，是衡量写作水平高低的重要标准。所以读者可以在《白鲸记》（Moby Dick）第四十二章中看到，赫尔曼·梅尔维尔为了描写白色，不无炫耀地使用了一个令人目眩神迷、长达469个单词的句子。甚至连海明威这代作家也没有摆脱对长句的热衷。海明威的挚友菲兹杰拉德在1925年出版了《了不起的盖茨比》，这部当年默默无闻而后成为经典的小说开头前五段平均每个句子也有37个单词。正是在这样的语言背景中，海明威的小说处女作《太阳照常升起》（The Sun Also Rises）显示出了它的独特性和原创性。

这部小说从情节上来看是乏善可陈的，它讲述的是几个侨居巴黎的美国人和英国人前往西班牙潘普洛纳参加圣费尔明节、观看斗牛的故事。小说的主角贾克·巴恩斯具有和作者相同的身份和相似的经历，他是侨寓巴黎的美国记者，曾在战争中受伤——并因此而变得阳痿，这点书中没有正面提及，当然也跟作者本人的情况不同。贾克在某次买春的过程中巧遇布丽特·阿什利，后者是个风流成性的英国妇女，离过两次婚，有着丰富的恋爱经验。两人一见钟情，但由于巴恩斯的生理缺陷，始终没有走到一起。随后巴恩斯和他的朋友比尔·哥顿、布丽特和她的未婚夫迈克·坎贝尔分头前往西班牙，前两者在潘普洛纳附近结识了罗伯特·柯恩，并和后两者在潘普洛纳相聚。这三男一女趁着圣费尔明节（也就是奔牛节）尽情地饮酒作乐，期间贾克将斗牛士罗米洛介绍给布丽特认识，而布丽特设法勾引了这个只有十九岁的少年。小说接下来讲述的是这四个爱着布丽特的男人之间争风吃醋的行为，曾拿过普林斯顿大学拳击赛冠军的罗伯特和其他三个人打架，并把罗米洛打伤了。这伙人在奔牛节落幕后分道扬镳，布丽特决定和罗米洛私奔到马德里，贾克则准备前往圣塞瓦斯蒂安。贾克在途中接到布丽特的求助电报，于是匆忙赶到她所住的蒙大拿旅社。原来布丽特认为她已经三十四岁，年纪比罗米洛大太多，两人不适合长相厮守，于是将他赶走了，想要跟坎贝尔重归于好。贾克为了安慰布丽特，带她乘坐出租车游览马德里城区，整部小说就在他们上车之后突兀地戛然而止。

尽管故事平平无奇，但《太阳照常升起》在1926年10月22日出版后取得了销售和评论的成功。该书以两美元的定价在两个月内卖出七千册，等到1928年海明威的短篇小说集《没有女人的男人》（Men without Woman）出版时，已经先后重印了七次。与此同时，美国文学评论界也慷慨地将大量的赞美给予这个初出茅庐的年轻人，曾在1930年获得普利策奖的诗人康拉德·艾肯在《纽约先驱导报》上撰文称：“如果说当今世上有人能比海明威写出更好的对白，我可不知道这个人是谁。”布鲁斯·巴顿发表在《大西洋月刊》上的书评则指出海明威的写作方式是独特的，“仿佛他从未读过别人的作品，仿佛他亲手发明了写作的艺术”。

只要翻开《太阳照常升起》，我们便能知道布鲁斯·巴顿这番话并非无的放矢。小说开头五段共有792个单词，分38句，每句仅有20.8个单词。也就是说，和其他小说相比，海明威这部小说的句子长度足足缩短了一半。对没有英文小说阅读经验的读者而言，这个定量文学分析的数据也许没有太大的意义，但不妨这么说，当年的美国读者看到《太阳照常升起》时的感受，跟1918年那些看惯《老残游记》《孽海花》的中国读者读到鲁迅的《狂人日记》时的感受是相同的，都是充满了新鲜和惊奇——原来小说还可以这样写！

海明威是怎样让句子变短的呢？他的方法是尽量删减不必要的句子成分，包括定语、状语、补语和同位语，以及各种充当相同语法功能的从句。例如，《太阳照常升起》正文总共出现了50次smile（笑）这个词，在42次被海明威用于做动词的情况——诸如“布丽特对着他笑”“柯恩又笑了”“她挥挥手，并笑起来”“他笑了”等等——中，没有一次是跟着副词的。可以作为对比的是，伊迪丝·华顿在《纯真年代》中使用了“同情地”“勉强地”“欢乐地”等副词来修饰“笑”。这种只保留句子骨干成分的文体显得特别硬朗和简洁，它是对先前那种崇尚用虚词来表达情感的写作方式的背叛和创新。

这种独特的写作风格和海明威的记者生涯有着密切的关系。1917年，海明威高中毕业后直接进入《堪萨斯市星报》，担任见习记者的职位，不过他在这个岗位上只做了六个月。翌年开春，应红十字会的征召，年仅十八岁的他中断工作，奔赴战火正酣的意大利，充当盟军的救护车司机。抵达前线没多久，海明威就在某次行动中受了重伤；他强忍伤痛，救出了一个意大利士兵，后来因此获得了该国政府颁发的银质勇士勋章。1919年初，海明威离开炮声轰隆的欧洲，返美进行疗养。

回到美国后，由于无所事事，他在某位世交介绍之下，开始替加拿大的《多伦多星周刊》撰稿。等到伤病养好，一战已经彻底结束，他没有重返欧洲的必要，转而在芝加哥的一份新闻月刊当起了编辑，并在那里认识了现代主义小说的先驱舍伍德·安德森。到1921年底，《多伦多星周刊》委任海明威为该刊驻巴黎的通讯员，于是海明威带着新婚的妻子哈德丽·理查德森再次奔赴欧洲。

第一次世界大战之后，由于国内经济遭受重创，法国的法定货币在外汇市场上表现十分疲软，很长的时间内每十五法郎才能兑换一美元。这种汇率吸引了大量美国人和英国人移居巴黎，其中包括许多后来名垂文学史的大人物，比如葛茱德·斯坦、艾兹拉·庞德和詹姆士·乔伊斯。由于有舍伍德·安德森的介绍，海明威很快融入了塞纳河左岸的生活。按照第一本海明威传记的作者、普林斯顿大学教授卡洛斯·贝克尔的说法，海明威的文学才华很快得到认可，葛茱德·斯坦甚至建议海明威辞去《多伦多星周刊》的工作，像她那样过着俭朴的生活，将所有精力集中在文学创作上。但海明威并没有听取她的劝告，因为他需要《星周刊》支付的薪水来维持生活。在巴黎的前二十个月，他总共为《星周刊》撰写了八十八篇备受欢迎的文章，尤其是他对希土战争的报道，以凝练而生动的文笔得到了广泛的赞誉。

在此期间，他已经初步确立了短篇小说家的地位，处女作《三个故事和十首诗》（Three Stories and Ten Poems）在1923年出版；几个月后，他的短篇小说集《我们这时代》（In Our Time）由巴黎的三山出版公司印行，并于1925年在美国出版。这两本书都卖得不好，《我们这时代》的三山版只印了170册，而美国版也只有1335册，在市场上的影响几乎等于零。但它们在文学评论界为海明威赢得了潜力新星的声望。所以当菲兹杰拉德在1925年5月抵达巴黎时，他最先做的几件事中就包括了拜访海明威。

两位未来的美国文学巨子一见如故，建立起持续终身的友谊。菲兹杰拉德只比海明威大三岁，但已经是著名的畅销作家，他的前两部小说《天堂的这边》和《漂亮冤家》由斯克里伯纳出版社付梓后取得巨大的成功，第三部作品《了不起的盖茨比》则刚刚面世。菲兹杰拉德特别欣赏海明威的作品，他敦促自己在斯克里伯纳的编辑麦克斯韦·佩金斯赶紧和海明威联系。有着史上最著名文学编辑美誉的佩金斯很快发现了海明威的价值所在，而海明威随后的所有作品也都交由斯克里伯纳出版。在《老人与海》的扉页题词中，海明威甚至将这部作品献给了该出版社的老板查理·斯克里伯纳和佩金斯两个人。

菲兹杰拉德的出现，以及对《了不起的盖茨比》的喜爱，让海明威兴起了创作长篇小说的想法。于是在他二十六岁生日那天，也就是1925年7月21日，海明威动笔写起了《太阳照常升起》，八个星期就完成了初稿。经过几番修改，这部长篇小说在翌年10月由斯克里伯纳出版。

正如前面指出的，《太阳照常升起》的最大创新在于它的文体，海明威则承认这种独特的写作风格源自他在《堪萨斯市星报》工作的经历。该报有份指导记者写作的指南，总共七条，包括“使用短句；使用精悍的开篇；使用有活力的英文；要积极，不要消极”“不用陈旧的说法”“消灭每个浮夸的字眼”“引语要尽量保留原有的语气”等。《堪萨斯市星报》这些要求跟报纸的属性有关——由于出版周期、信息容量和篇幅限制，新闻报道必须以尽可能简洁的文字阐述尽可能多的事实，记者必须只关注事实，删除细枝末节和个人的感情色彩。海明威革命性地将新闻报道的写法引入《太阳照常升起》，创造了全新的极简主义文体。

这种文体的重要意义不在于它降低了阅读难度（下文将会说明海明威的小说并没有表面上看那么容易读懂），而在于它彻底地转变了作者的角色：从操控者变成建设者。

在海明威之前，小说家是其文本的操控者，他不仅要创造虚拟的环境和人物，还情不自禁地设定情感和反应。而海明威则不然，他只描述，不解释，把所有的判断留给读者去做。不妨以前面举过的例子来说明。

在现实生活中，如果有个人笑了，我们看到的只是他或她的笑脸，至于这个笑脸意味着什么，每个人会依据当时的情景做出各自的判断。然而在古典小说里，作者剥夺了读者去做这种判断的权利。伊迪丝·华顿会专制地告诉读者，这个笑是“同情地”，那个笑是“勉强地”，还有个笑是“欢乐地”。也就是说，在阅读过程中，读者对小说的接受是被动的。而海明威则不，他专注于构建事实，并隐藏这些事实蕴含的意义，将其交由读者去发现。正如他本人曾经指出的，他的作品是建筑，至于如何装饰，那是读者的事。所以在《太阳照常升起》中，所有作为动词的“笑”都没有状语，但是读者可以根据上下文猜测出贾克的笑是自嘲还是无奈，布丽特的笑是真心还是假意。

这种写法也跟海明威的创作理念有关。1942年，他在为其主编的《战斗中的男人：最佳战争故事汇编》（Men at War: The Best War Stories of All Time）的导读中写道：“作家的职责是说出真相。”诚如卡洛斯·贝克尔所说，这个信念贯穿了他终生，从来没有哪个作家像他那样，“如此强烈地主张、如此勇猛地捍卫、如此持之以恒地践行作家言说真相的义务。……其写作的首要目标，自始至终是替读者抓住和展现他通常所说的‘事物的本相’。”

但有必要指出的是，海明威对“真相”的理解和在他之前的现实主义派作家不同。在海明威之前，马克·吐温、斯蒂芬·克莱恩、西奥多·德莱塞和辛克莱·刘易斯等著名美国作家也曾经当过新闻记者，可是他们的行文并没有体现出《太阳照常升起》的极简主义风格，关键就在这里。在海明威看来，真相如同冰山，浮现在水面的只是八分之一，而作家的任务，就是在通过小说的文字呈现这八分之一的同时，还要让读者感受到另外八分之七的存在。这就是他独创的“冰山理论”。

冰山理论有时也被称为“忽略理论”，它跟中国古代水墨画的留白法有异曲同工之妙。在他的作品中，海明威会选择忽略或者隐藏他真正想要表达的意思，让读者在字里行间亲自去领会。卡洛斯·贝克尔认为这种极其高明的技巧得益于海明威在创作短篇小说上的丰富经验，他在写短篇小说时“学会了如何以最少的字词来获得最多的意蕴，如何删节语言和避免无用的动作，如何只说出真相，但又总是隐藏着弦外之音”。这种特殊的写作理念和技巧使得他的作品很容易遭到误读，最明显的例子莫过于《太阳照常升起》。这本小说出版之后，无论是普通读者还是文学评论家，无不认为作者的主旨是阐明第一次世界大战使当年那批二十来岁的年轻人成为“迷途的一代”，乃至海明威后来不得不亲自写信给佩金斯，指出他的本意并非如此，他真正要表达的意思是“地却永远长存”（“太阳照常升起”来自《圣经·旧约·传道书》，之前的句子，正是“一代过去，一代又来，地却永远长存”），贾克、布丽特等人虽然身心破碎，但并没有迷途——在基督教的语境中，迷途意味着丧失对上帝和生活的信仰。

海明威的文学之路可谓极其顺利，1926年的《太阳照常升起》令他声名鹊起，而他的第二部长篇小说，也就是在1929年出版的《永别了，武器》（A Farewell to Arms），则直接让他跻身当年美国最顶尖的作家之列。美国国会图书馆第九任馆长、先后三次获得普利策奖的大诗人阿基巴尔德·麦克拉什曾这样概括海明威的文学生涯：“二十五岁成名，三十岁已经是大师。”随后他又陆续写出了《午后之死》（Death in the Afternoon）、《非洲的青山》（Green Hills of Africa）、《有者与无者》（To Have and Have Not），并在1940年完成了反映西班牙内战的杰作《丧钟为谁而鸣》（For Whom the Bell Tolls），几个月内卖出了五十万册，让他的文学声望达到了新的高度。

但到1950年前后，海明威的日常生活和文学生涯双双陷入了低谷。长年酗酒的陋习和喜欢冒险的个性让他的身体有了很多伤病，他的膝盖和额头都受过重创，而且患上了偏头痛、高血压、糖尿病等顽疾。而且随着年纪的增长，他的知交好友逐渐零落，叶芝、菲兹杰拉德、舍伍德·安德森、詹姆士·乔伊斯、葛茱德·斯坦、麦克斯韦·佩金斯等人先后谢世，这让他的心情变得十分抑郁。他的文学创作则陷入了凝滞期，1946年动笔写《伊甸园》（The Garden of Eden），虽然五个月内就写完了八百页，却始终未能定稿，整整修改了十五年，直到死后才得以出版。《穿过河流，进入树林》尽管获得约翰·奥哈拉极高的赞誉，但大部分评论却是负面的，不少人断言海明威已经丧失了写作的能力，甚至连他的妻子（第四任）玛丽也不喜欢这部小说。正是在这种内外交困的时刻，海明威写出了他毕生的巅峰巨著——《老人与海》。

《老人与海》的故事很简单：有个老人独自在海上捕鱼，接连几个月没有收获，后来他钓到一条很大的旗鱼，跟它缠斗了两天两夜，用鱼枪把它刺死；但在返回的途中遇到鲨鱼的袭击，缺乏帮手和工具的老人虽然杀了几条鲨鱼，但旗鱼被其他鲨鱼吃光了，等他进港时，旗鱼只剩下一副骨头。这部小说的文字也很简单，全部加起来仅有两万七千个单词，印制成书不足一百二十页。但就是这部简单的小说，出版之后却引起了极大的轰动。

初版的《老人与海》在1952年9月1日发行，首印虽然只有五万册，但它同时刊登在当天的《生活杂志》，众多读者为了尽早看到这部小说，竟然在两天之内将五百多万份杂志抢购殆尽。不但普通读者喜欢，评论界也异口同声地赞赏《老人与海》，认为海明威的创作达到了新的高峰。八个月后，这个故事让海明威获得了1953年的普利策奖。其实早在1941年，《丧钟为谁而鸣》就获得了普利策奖的提名，却因为在最后时刻遭到哥伦比亚大学校长尼古拉斯·穆雷·巴特勒的激烈反对而和这个著名文学奖失之交臂。十二年过去，海明威终于用《老人与海》无可争议地奠定了文学大师的地位，并在第二年10月戴上了诺贝尔文学奖的桂冠。

瑞典学院的授奖辞是：“奖励其大师级的叙事艺术，新近体现在《老人与海》中，以及其对当代文体的影响。”作为世界最顶级的文学奖项，诺贝尔文学奖并不是对单部作品的奖励，而更像是终身成就奖。截止到2011年，诺贝尔文学奖总共颁发给108个人，授奖辞中提到作品名称的仅有八次，包括特奥多尔·蒙森的《罗马史》（A History of Rome）、卡尔·斯皮特勒的《奥林匹亚之春》（Olympian Spring）、托马斯·曼的《布登勃洛克家族》（Buddenbrooks）、约翰·高尔斯华绥的《福尔赛世家》（The Forsyte Saga）等。这些作品无不是长篇累牍的皇皇巨著，像海明威这样，主要凭借连三万个单词都不到的作品获奖的，在110年的诺贝尔文学奖历史上，当真是仅此一人而已。究竟是什么让《老人与海》如此特殊呢？

这当然跟小说所展现的惊人叙事技巧有关。经过三十年的笔耕不辍，海明威的叙事艺术在1951年已经达到炉火纯青的地步，《老人与海》中的文字呈现出返璞归真、大繁若简的至高境界。和《太阳照常升起》《永别了，武器》《丧钟为谁而鸣》等相比，《老人与海》在极简主义的道路上走得更远，平均每个句子的长度不足15个单词，而且除了少数几个表示古巴口音的西班牙语词汇，所用字眼也都极其常见。

也许有好奇的读者会问，难道作家用简单的句子和词汇也算是高明的文才吗？许多对海明威的作品没有深入研究的人也会有这样的疑问。以文笔艰涩繁复著称的威廉·福克纳曾经不无调侃地说，海明威从来不用那些要让读者去查词典的单词。但只要翻开《非洲的青山》，我们就能看到海明威并不缺乏写长句的能力——书中最长的句子超过四百个单词。《老人与海》之所以这么写，是作者刻意的选择。这部小说淋漓尽致地展现了海明威的“冰山理论”，其行文的简单与朴素非常有欺骗性，而且隐藏着非常丰富的信息，真可谓是深奥的简洁，下面不妨通过几个详细的例子来予以说明。

例如小说的开篇提到老人的眼睛“有着海水的颜色”，这个貌似寻常的描写很容易遭到读者甚至评论家的忽略，但正如海明威研究专家杰弗雷·赫利希-梅拉（Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera）指出的，它其实隐含着非常重要的线索。由于蓝色眼睛的人主要分布在欧洲地区，古巴当地人的眼睛是褐色的，而老人又说西班牙语，所以他是来自西班牙的侨民。下文提到老人经常跟男孩讲述他年轻时去非洲的经历，而且会在夜里梦到加那利群岛的白色山峰，也从侧面证实了这一点。海明威曾写信给《纽约客》的记者丽莲·罗斯，指出“老人是个天主教徒，出生于加那利群岛的兰萨罗特岛”，但他把老人这个身份当成水面下的冰山，并不予以直接揭露，而是通过表面的文字去暗示。

又如书中多次提到老人对棒球运动的痴迷，粗心的读者很容易认为那仅仅是老人的嗜好。海明威的真实意图是借助这项运动来给小说提供一个大概的时间框架。在小说的第013页，老人和男孩聊起了美国的棒球联赛，这时男孩说：“伟大的西斯勒的父亲从来没穷过，像我这么大时，他已经在大联盟打球。”男孩口中的“伟大的西斯勒”即是狄克·西斯勒，其父亲乔治·哈罗德·西斯勒是著名的棒球明星，他初次参加比赛是在1915年，那时是二十二岁。也就是说，《老人与海》中的男孩其实年纪并不小，已经有二十二岁。这也解释了男孩何以有力气“提着木箱，箱里有一卷结实的褐色钓索，此外还拿着鱼钩和带长柄的鱼枪”（第007—008页），还能抓到两条很好的鱼。

再比如处于故事核心的那条大鱼，海明威自始至终没有具体地点明它的种类，只是笼统地称之为旗鱼。但通过小说的描写，“估计有一千五百磅重”、“从头到尾有十八英尺长”，读者很容易认出这是身长可达四米以上、最终超过一千八百磅的旗鱼科枪鱼属的大西洋蓝枪鱼。

从前面的分析可以看出，这种深奥的简洁必须有真实性作为支撑。其实海明威曾在《午后之死》中详细地解释过冰山理论的奥妙：“如果作家对他要写的故事有足够的了解，他就可以忽略掉一些他知道的事情，然后只要他写得足够真实，读者将会强烈地感受到那些事情的存在，仿佛作家已经把它们写出来。”而真实性正是《老人与海》的另一个艺术成就。

《老人与海》中对海上生活的描写都有事实的依据。海明威在小说中描写了许多鱼类，有飞鱼、鲯鳅、旗鱼、鼠海豚、灰鲭鲨、柠檬鲨等，他对这些鱼类的形状和习性的描写有着海洋百科全书般的精确。至于墨西哥湾暖流的路径、当地信风的风向等，也和实际情况完全相同。但更了不起的是虚构的真实，老人和大鱼死磕了两天两夜，又跟鲨鱼缠斗了一天一夜，海明威将这漫长过程的每个关键动作都交代得宛如电影的慢镜头般清楚，用瑞典学院的安德斯·奥斯特灵的话来说，“就在我们眼前上演”。实际上，海明威的文字看似简单，但却有着惊人的表现力，而且又极其准确，几乎每个单词都有着不可替代的作用，甚至连词与词之间的次序也绝不容许有分毫的更改，否则就会破坏小说的真实性。

这部小说能获得斯德哥尔摩的青睐，除了大师级的叙事艺术之外，老人身上体现出来的那种顽强拼搏的精神也起到关键的作用。文如其人这句话，至少对海明威而言是适用的。他参加过两次世界大战和西班牙内战，又喜欢拳击、斗牛和狩猎，是个不折不扣的硬汉。他这种酷爱冒险和暴力的性格在早期的作品中展现得淋漓尽致，无论是《太阳照常升起》中的贾克·巴恩斯，《永别了，武器》中的弗里德里克·亨利，还是《丧钟为谁而鸣》中的罗伯特·乔丹，无不是极富男子气概的英雄式人物。甚至连安德斯·奥斯特灵也在当年的颁奖典礼上说：“诚然，海明威早期的作品有其残暴、愤世和冷酷的缺陷，这有悖于诺贝尔奖对理想文学作品的要求。”但《老人与海》却有着明显的衰年变法的痕迹：海明威这次要探讨的是人和自然的关系，并试图传达一种永不言败的乐观主义精神。

他以往的作品，尤其是《永别了，武器》和《丧钟为谁而鸣》，本质上是对暴力和残酷的揭露，弗里德里克·亨利惶恐地在卡波雷托的泥泞中浴血战斗的场景，以及罗伯特·乔丹奋不顾身地在西班牙的群山中炸毁大桥的画面，无不令读者深深地体会到人与人之间那种互为地狱的恐怖。而且这两部小说均以悲剧收场：凯瑟琳因难产而在血泊中去世，留下亨利独自在雨中凄然地返回旅馆；而乔丹虽然成功地完成了任务，却逃不过沦为俘虏和被处死的命运。

但在《老人与海》中，读者看到的只有温情。老人和男孩的深厚感情就不说了，连露台酒吧的老板马丁也经常给老人免费的饭吃，而老人则对他的邻居满怀感激，认为“我生活的这个乡镇很友好”。人在这里变成了大写的人，对应着的是自然。

在海明威之前，有不少美国作家已经探讨了人与自然的关系，比如亨利·梭罗和约翰·缪尔，但很少有文学作品会把环境保护视为严肃的话题——毕竟现代环保运动是在20世纪60年代以后才兴起的。许多海明威研究专家并没有意识到，《老人与海》可能是最早倡导人类有节制地开发自然的文学作品。小说中，老人对自然的态度是友好的，他多次称旗鱼、飞鱼甚至黄林莺是他的朋友。他对自然的掠夺仅限于满足维持生存的需求，那条上钩的大旗鱼已经足以让他“整个冬天衣食无忧”，对自然贪得无厌的索求是老人所反感的：

“那鱼也是我的朋友，”他说，“我从来没看见过或者听说过这么大的鱼。但我必须杀了他。幸好我们不用去杀死星星。”

想想看啊，要是人每天必须努力去杀死月亮，那会怎么样呢，他想。月亮会逃走的。但想想看人每天必须努力去杀死太阳，那又会怎么样呢？我们真是天生幸运啊，他想。

星星、月亮和太阳当然是相对地球而言的，老人这段心理活动乍看之下似乎荒诞不经，但海明威其实想表达的是对地球资源枯竭的担心，这在20世纪50年代，不得不说是极具先见之明的。

然而《老人与海》之所以成为经典，最关键的因素还是在于贯穿全书那种永不认输的乐观主义精神。老人已经八十四天没有打到鱼，但“他的希望和自信从未消失”。等终于钓到了旗鱼，却发现那条鱼太大了，他既没有帮手，也不在健康状态，很难收服他：

老人见过许多大鱼。他见过许多上千磅重的鱼，有生以来也抓到过两条，但都不是一个人抓到的。现在他孤身一人，在这望不到陆地的远海，而他要对付的这条鱼，却是他见过最大的，比他听说过的还要大，糟糕的是他的左手依然僵硬得像抓住东西的鹰爪。

他没有就此放弃，而是竭尽所能，苦苦和大鱼缠斗了两天两夜，终于将其刺死。不幸的是，老人在返航途中遭遇鲨鱼的袭击，他尽力抗争，累到吐血，最终只收获了一副旗鱼的骨架。但即使如此，他也没有失去希望和信心，在小说的末尾，他仍然准备和男孩再次出海。这正是《老人与海》最激动人心之处。奥斯特灵曾经很好地总结了小说的主旨：“这个故事是一曲颂歌，它提倡哪怕结果一无所得也永不屈服的奋斗精神，赞扬失败之中的道德凯旋。”

当然，作为现代主义小说的巅峰之作，《老人与海》的丰富性并非这篇导读所能穷尽，它还有着更为广阔的诠释空间，比如整个故事和《圣经》的关联。但这座冰山隐藏在海面之下的庞大部分，就留给读者通过阅读去亲自感受了——我相信这将会是一个很愉快和充满惊喜的过程。

《老人与海》出版将近六十年，海明威与世长辞也已超过半个世纪，如今回头望去，我们恐怕无法赞同约翰·奥哈拉当年的评价，毕竟文学创作是一个非常多元的领域，很难有令人信服的论证可以说明托马斯·斯特恩斯·艾略特比罗伯特·彭斯更出色，或者威廉·福克纳比查尔斯·狄更斯更优秀。但如果从开风气之先和对后世作家文体影响的角度来看，说厄尼斯特·海明威是20世纪以来英语世界最伟大的作家，应该是个经得起推敲的论断：因为无论是约翰·麦克斯韦·库切这样获得诺贝尔文学奖的当代文豪，还是尼古拉斯·斯帕克斯这样以言情小说著称的畅销天王，有难以枚举的作家明显受到海明威的影响，自觉或不自觉地采用他那种简洁的文体和生动的对白。

坦白说，国内对海明威的认识，以及对其作品的接受，在我看来是远远不够的，和这位伟大作家的重要性不相匹配。我翻译《老人与海》，初衷在于帮助读者更加真切地领略海明威高超的叙事艺术；假如这个小小的愿望能够实现，则幸甚，幸甚。

李继宏

2011年12月22日

lijihong@hotmail.com

老人与海

正文

他是个老人，独自划着小船，在湾流[1]中捕鱼；八十四天来，他没打到鱼。起初四十天，有个男孩跟着他。但四十天没捕到鱼，男孩的父母对他说，这老人现在绝对是个衰神，倒霉到了极点；受他们吩咐，男孩去了别的船，那船第一个星期就抓到三条好鱼。每天看到老人划着空船进港，男孩感到很难过；他总会跑下去，帮他搬走捆好的绳索，或是鱼钩、鱼枪，还有裹着船帆的桅杆。船帆用面粉袋打了补丁，卷起来宛如象征永久失败的旗帜。

老人瘦骨嶙峋，后颈上是深深的皱纹。他上半边脸有些褐色的斑块，那是热带海洋上的日光带来的良性皮肤病。斑块蔓延到两颊下部，双手有深深的伤疤，那是长年用绳索对付沉重的海鱼留下的。不过这些伤疤没有新的。它们古老得像久经侵蚀的无鱼沙漠。

他浑身显得很老，但双眼除外；它们有着海水的颜色，透露出乐观和永不言败的神色。

“圣迭戈，”他们把小船系好，往岸上走时，男孩对他说，“我又可以陪你去了。我们赚了些钱。”

老人曾教男孩捕鱼，这孩子敬爱他。

“不要，”老人说，“你那条船运气好。就留在那里吧。”

“但你记得吗，上次你八十七天没打到鱼，然后接连三个星期，我们每天都抓到大鱼。”

“我记得，”老人说，“我知道你离开我，不是因为你怀疑。”

“是爸爸逼我离开的。我是个孩子，必须听他的话。”

“我知道，”老人说，“这很正常。”

“他没什么信心。”

“是啊，”老人说，“但我们有。对吧？”

“对的，”男孩说，“我请你去露台酒吧喝啤酒，然后再把东西搬回家，你说呢？”

“好啊，”老人说，“大家都是打鱼的，就不客气啦。”

他们坐在露台酒吧，许多渔夫拿老人开玩笑，他倒不生气。也有些年纪较大的渔夫看着他，感到很难过。但他们没有表现出来，而是礼貌地聊起海水的流向，他们的钓索放了多深，持续的好天气，以及他们见到的景象。当天成功的渔夫已经满载而归，剖开捕获的旗鱼[2]，把它们横着摆在两片木板上；每片木板的两端各有两个人，抬着那些鱼，脚步踉跄地向鱼市走去，在那里等冷藏车把它们运到哈瓦那的市场。那些抓到鲨鱼的则去往鲨鱼厂，在海湾对面。那里的工人用滑轮和铁钩把鲨鱼吊起来，去除内脏，切下鱼鳍，剥掉鱼皮，把鱼肉切成长条，再用盐腌好。

每当东风吹起，鲨鱼厂的气味会从海湾那边飘过来，但今天几乎闻不到那股味道，因为风变得朝北刮，然后又消歇了，露台酒吧气氛宜人，阳光明媚。

“圣迭戈。”男孩说。

“嗯。”老人说。他拿着玻璃杯，想起了多年以前的往事。

“明天我去给你弄点沙丁鱼[3]吧？”

“不要。去玩棒球吧。我还能划船，罗吉略会撒网的。”

“我想去。既然不能陪你打鱼，我想多少帮点忙。”

“你请我喝啤酒，”老人说，“你已经是男子汉啦。”

“你第一次带我上船那年我几岁？”

“五岁，当时你几乎被害死，因为我抓到的那鱼太生猛，他差点把船扯碎。你记得吗？”

“我记得鱼尾的噼啪声，横坐板的断裂声，和木棒的击打声。我记得你把我扔到船头，那里有一卷湿漉漉的钓索，当时整艘船都在摇晃，你用木棒敲打他，发出很响的声音，像砍树似的，周围全是甜腻的血味。”

“你是真的记得，还是后来听我跟你说的？”

“我记得我们第一次出海到现在的每件事。”

老人看着他，那双因经常遭日晒而半眯着的自信眼睛充满了怜爱。

“如果你是我的孩子，我会带你出去赌一把，”他说，“但你是你父母的孩子，你在的那条船又很走运。”

“我去弄沙丁鱼吧？我还知道哪里可以搞到四个鱼饵。”

“我今天还有用剩的。我把它们放到盒子里用盐腌起来。”

“让我去弄四个新鲜的吧。”

“一个。”老人说。他的希望和自信从未消失。现在它们就像海风初起般渐渐强劲起来。

“两个。”男孩说。

“就两个，”老人同意了，“你不是偷来的吧？”

“我倒是想啊，”男孩说，“但这些是我买的。”

“谢谢你。”老人说。他的头脑很单纯，不会去想自己什么时候变得如此心虚。但他知道他变心虚了，也知道这并不可耻，无损于真正的骄傲。

“看海水的流向，明天会是个好日子，”他说。

“你准备到哪去？”男孩问。

“到远海去，等风向转了再回来。我打算天没亮就出发。”

“我尽量劝他也到远海去捕鱼吧，”男孩说，“到时你要抓到真正的大鱼，我们就可以过来帮忙。”

“他不喜欢出远海捕鱼的。”

“是啊，”男孩说，“但我能看见他看不到的东西，比如说天空中的飞鸟，我可以劝他出海追鲯鳅[4]。”

“他的眼睛有这么差？”

“差不多全瞎啦。”

“奇怪，”老人说，“他又没有捕过龟。那才叫伤眼睛呢。”

“可是你在蚊子海岸[5]捕过很多年龟，你的眼睛不也好好的。”

“我是个怪老头。”

“但你现在有足够的力气对付真正的大鱼吗？”

“应该有吧。我有许多绝招。”

“我们把东西搬回家吧，”男孩说，“然后我拿拖网去弄沙丁鱼。”

他们拿走小船上的渔具。老人扛着桅杆，男孩提着木箱，箱里有一卷结实的褐色钓索，此外还拿着鱼钩和带长柄的鱼枪。装鱼饵的箱子藏在小船的船尾，木棒也放在那里，木棒是用来收服被拖到船边的大鱼的。没人会偷老人的东西，但最好还是把船帆和沉重的钓索搬回家，因为露水会腐蚀它们。老人非常确定本地人不会偷他的东西，但觉得没必要把鱼钩和鱼枪留在船里引诱人。

他们一起沿着马路走到老人的茅屋，从敞开的门走进去。老人把裹着船帆的桅杆靠着墙摆好，男孩把木箱和其他渔具放在它旁边。桅杆几乎有茅屋唯一的房间那么长。茅屋是用坚硬的大王棕[6]叶子搭成的，里面有一张床、一张桌子、一把椅子，泥地上有个用木炭烧饭的地方。褐色的墙壁也是结实牢固的大王棕叶子拍扁了交叠贴起来的，墙上挂着彩色的耶稣圣心像和戈布勒圣母像[7]。这两幅画是他妻子的遗物。墙上原本还有他妻子的染色照片，但被取下了，因为看到那张照片让他倍感寂寞。他把照片放到墙角的架子上，就在那件干净的衬衣下面。

“你有什么吃的吗？”男孩问。

“有锅鱼肉黄米饭。你想吃吗？”

“不。我回家吃。你想我替你生火吗？”

“不。等会我自己来。或者我就吃冷饭也可以。”

“我能把拖网拿走吗？”

“当然。”

屋里并没有拖网，男孩记得他们是哪天把它卖掉的。但他们每天都假装它还在。老人没有鱼肉黄米饭，这男孩也知道。

“八十五是个幸运的数字，”老人说，“明天我要是抓到一条宰杀后还有上千磅重的鱼回来，你会很高兴吧？”

“我拿拖网去捕沙丁鱼啦。你就坐在门口晒太阳吧？”

“好啊。我有昨天的报纸，我来看棒球新闻。”

男孩不知道昨天的报纸是否也是杜撰出来的。但老人从床底把它拿出来。

“是佩雷柯在酒吧给我的。”他解释说。

“我弄到沙丁鱼就回来。我会把你的和我的放在冰块上，这样明天早晨我们就可以分着用。等我回来了，你跟我说说棒球新闻。”

“扬基队[8]不可能输。”

“但我担心克里夫兰印第安人队[9]。”

“要相信扬基队，我的孩子。他们有伟大的狄马乔[10]。”

“底特律老虎队[11]和克里夫兰印第安人队都让我担心。”

“你可别连辛辛那提红人队和芝加哥白袜队[12]都担心。”

“你研究吧，等我回来跟我说说。”

“你觉得我们应该买张尾数是八十五的彩票吗？明天是第八十五天。”

“可以啊，”男孩说，“但八十七怎么样？那是你的伟大记录。”

“那不可能发生两次。你能找到尾数是八十五的彩票吗？”

“我可以去订一张。”

“一张就好。那要两块半。我们找谁借呢？”

“那很简单。两块半我还是能借到的。”

“我觉得我或许也可以。但我尽量不借钱。今天借钱，明天就要讨饭咯。”

“别着凉了，老人家，”男孩说，“要记得现在是九月。”

“这是大鱼出现的月份，”老人说，“要是在五月，谁都可以当渔夫。”

“我现在去弄沙丁鱼。”男孩说。

男孩回来时，老人在椅子上睡着了，太阳已经下山。男孩从床上拿起破旧的军用毛毯，把它披在椅背上，盖住老人的肩膀。这双肩膀很奇怪，虽然非常苍老，但依旧刚健有力，脖子也依旧强壮，皱纹看上去不是太多，因为老人睡着了，头垂在胸前。他的衬衣缝补了很多次，像那片船帆，那些补丁被太阳晒得褪色，颜色深浅不等。但老人的头显得非常苍老，因为他的眼睛紧闭着，脸上没有生气。报纸摆在他的膝盖上，他的小臂压着它，所以没被傍晚的海风吹走。他的脚是赤着的。

男孩又走开了，等他回来时，老人还是在睡觉。

“醒醒，老人家。”男孩说，他把手放到老人的膝盖上。

老人睁开眼，过了片刻才回过神，仿佛刚从很远的地方回来。然后他露出微笑。

“你拿的是什么？”他问。

“晚饭，”男孩说，“我们来吃晚饭吧。”

“我不是很饿。”

“来吃吧。你不吃饭怎么捕鱼呢。”

“我有饭吃。”老人说着站起来，拿过报纸折好。然后他开始折毛毯。

“继续披着毛毯吧，”男孩说，“你不吃饭别想去捕鱼，除非我死了。”

“那你要长命百岁，好好照顾自己，”老人说，“我们吃什么？”

“黑豆、米饭、炸香蕉，还有牛肉汤。”

饭菜是男孩用双层金属饭盒从露台酒吧带过来的。两套刀、叉和勺子在他的口袋里，每套都用纸巾包着。

“这是谁给你的？”

“马丁。那老板。”

“我得谢谢他。”

“我已经谢过了，”男孩说，“你不用谢他。”

“我要把大鱼腹部的肉给他，”老人说，“他这样帮我们不止一次了吧？”

“是的。”

“那我必须用更好的部位来感谢他。他太照顾我们了。”

“他给了两瓶啤酒。”

“我最喜欢罐装的啤酒。”

“我知道。但这是瓶装的，阿特威啤酒[13]，我会把瓶子拿回去。”

“你真好，”老人说，“我们可以吃了吗？”

“我刚才就叫你吃了啊，”男孩轻声地告诉他，“我要等你准备好才会打开饭盒。”

“现在我准备好啦，”老人说，“我只要洗洗手就好了。”

你去哪里洗呢？男孩想。村里供水的地方在路那边，离这里两条街那么远。我得给他弄点水来，男孩想，还有香皂和一条好毛巾。我怎能这样粗心呢？我必须给他再弄件衬衣和过冬的外套，还有鞋子和另外一条毛毯。

“牛肉汤真好喝。”老人说。

“跟我说说棒球的新闻吧。”男孩恳切地说。

“就像我刚才说的，美国联盟[14]的新闻果然是跟扬基队有关的。”老人高兴地说。

“他们今天输掉了。”男孩告诉他。

“没关系。伟大的狄马乔又找回状态啦。”

“他们队里还有别的人呢。”

“那当然。但他是最关键的。另外那个联盟[15]的比赛是布鲁克林[16]对费城[17]，我觉得布鲁克林会赢。但我又想到了狄克·西斯勒[18]，他在旧公园球场[19]打出过很多好球。”

“那些球别人可打不出来。我见过打得最远的球就是他打出来的。”

“他以前经常到露台酒吧来，你记得吗？我想带他去捕鱼，但不敢去请他。然后我让你去请他，你也不敢去。”

“我知道。那是个大错。他会跟我们去的。然后我们就能一辈子为这个感到骄傲。”

“我倒是想带伟大的狄马乔去捕鱼，”老人说，“大家说他父亲是个渔夫。也许他以前也像我们这么穷，能理解我们的想法。”

“伟大的西斯勒的父亲[20]从来没穷过，像我这么大时，他已经在大联盟打球。”

“像你这么大的时候，我在前往非洲的远洋帆船上，我曾在夜里看见海滩上有狮子。”

“我知道。你跟我说过。”

“我们聊非洲还是棒球？”

“棒球吧，”男孩说，“跟我说说约翰·何塞·麦格劳[21]吧。”他把约瑟念成何塞了。

“从前他偶尔也会去露台酒吧。但他喝酒的时候特别粗鲁，说话刻薄，很难对付。除了棒球，他还喜欢赛马。反正他口袋里总是有几张马匹的名单，而且经常在电话里提到那些马的名字。”

“他是个伟大的经理，”男孩说，“我父亲认为他是最伟大的。”

“那是因为他来这里的次数最多，”老人说，“要是杜洛切[22]每年都来这里，你父亲会认为他是最伟大的经理。”

“其实谁是最伟大的经理呢？是卢克[23]还是迈克·冈萨雷兹[24]？”

“我觉得他们同样伟大。”

“最好的渔夫是你。”

“不。我认识比我更好的。”

“哪里啊，”男孩说，“好渔夫有很多，出色的也不少。但你是独一无二的。”

“谢谢你。你让我很高兴。但愿明天遇到的鱼不要大得足以证明我们是错的。”

“只要你还是你说的那么强壮，就不会有这样的鱼。”

“我可能没我自己想的那么强壮，”老人说，“但我知道很多绝招，也有决心。”

“你现在应该去睡了，这样明天才有力气。我来把东西带回露台酒吧。”

“那就晚安吧。明天早上我去叫醒你。”

“你是我的闹钟。”男孩说。

“年龄是我的闹钟，”老人说，“为什么老年人醒得早呢？是为了拥有更长的一天吗？”

“我不知道，”男孩说，“我只知道年轻的男孩睡得晚，也睡得沉。”

“这我记得，”老人说，“我会按时叫醒你的。”

“我不喜欢他来叫醒我。那样显得我很差劲。”

“我知道。”

“好好睡，老人家。”

男孩走了出去。他们刚才摸黑在桌子上吃饭，老人在黑暗中脱掉裤子，走到床边。他把裤子卷起来当枕头，又把报纸塞在里面。他用毛毯把自己裹起来，睡在铺着其他报纸的弹簧床上。

他很快就睡着了，他梦见年轻时的非洲，漫长的金色沙滩和白色沙滩，那些白得晃眼的沙滩，还有高耸的海岬和褐色的大山。现在他每夜独自在那海岸生活，在梦里他听见海浪轰鸣，看见土著的船只破浪而来。睡着时他闻到甲板上沥青和麻丝的味道，他嗅到非洲清晨的陆风的气息。

通常嗅到陆风他就会醒来，穿上衣服去叫醒男孩。但今晚陆风的气息来得非常早，他在梦里知道时间还太早，于是继续做梦，看见耸立于海面的加那利群岛[25]的白色山峰，然后他又梦见群岛的其他港口和停泊处。

他再也梦不见风暴，梦不见女人，梦不见重大的事件，梦不见大鱼，梦不见打架，梦不见比拼力气，梦不见他的妻子。现在他只梦见各个地方，和沙滩上的狮子。它们像小猫般在暮色中玩耍，他热爱它们，如同他热爱那男孩。他从来没有梦见男孩。他只是醒过来，望向门外的月亮，抖开他的裤子，把它穿上。他在茅屋外小便，然后沿着马路走去叫醒男孩。他因清晨的寒气而浑身哆嗦。但他知道哆嗦能让自己暖和，而且很快他就要划船了。

男孩住的房子没有锁门，他把门打开，赤脚悄悄走进去。男孩睡在第一间房的帆布床上，老人能清楚地看见他，因为房间里有黯淡的月光。他轻轻地握住男孩的一只脚，就这样握着，直到男孩醒过来，翻身看着他。老人点点头，男孩拿过放在床边椅子上的裤子，坐在床上，把裤子穿好。

老人走出门外，男孩跟着他。他睡眼惺忪，老人伸手搂住他的肩膀说：“对不起。”

“哪里啊，”男孩说，“这是男子汉必须做的。”

他们沿路向老人的茅屋走去，一路上，在黑暗中，许多赤脚的汉子在走动，扛着他们的渔船的桅杆。

走到老人的茅屋之后，男孩拿起篮子里成卷的钓索、鱼钩和鱼枪，老人用肩膀扛起裹着船帆的桅杆。

“你想喝咖啡吗？”男孩问。

“我们把东西放到船上，然后去喝。”

他们在一个专在清晨做渔夫生意的摊点喝了装在炼乳罐里的咖啡。

“老人家，你睡得怎么样？”男孩问。他慢慢清醒了，但还没有完全摆脱睡意。

“非常好，马诺林，”老人说，“今天我很有信心。”

“我也是，”男孩说，“现在我得去拿你和我的沙丁鱼，和你的新鲜鱼饵。他自己把我们的东西搬出来了。他从来不让别人搬他的东西。”

“我们就不同啦，”老人说，“我最早让你搬东西的时候，你才五岁呢。”

“我知道，”男孩说，“我很快就回来。你再喝一杯咖啡吧。我们可以赊账的。”

他走开了，赤脚走在珊瑚石上，去存放鱼饵的冷藏室。

老人慢慢喝着他的咖啡。这是他全天仅有的饮食，他知道他应该喝的。他从很久之前就厌倦了吃东西，从来不带午餐。他在小船的船头有瓶水，那足以满足他全天所需。

这时男孩拿着沙丁鱼回来了，两个鱼饵被包在报纸里，他们沿着小径向渔船走去，感受着脚下的粗沙，抬起小船，把她推到水上。

“祝你好运，老人家。”

“祝你好运。”老人说。他用绳子把船桨固定在桨座的钉子上，身体前倾推动插进水里的桨片，开始在黑暗中把小船划出港湾。其他沙滩也有正在出海的渔船，老人听得见那些船桨入水和划动的声音，但是看不到它们，因为这时月亮已经落到山的背面。

偶尔有人在船上说话。但大多数渔船沉默着，只有船桨入水的声音。划出港口之后，这些船四散分开，每个人都朝着他希望能找到鱼的地方而去。老人知道他要去远海，他把陆地的味道抛在身后，划进早晨清新的海洋气息之中。他看见磷光闪闪，那是水中的马尾藻，这时他划过的这片海面，被渔夫称为“大井”，因为这里突然变得很深，有七百英寻[26]，各种各样的鱼儿因为水流冲击海底陡峭的岩壁形成的漩涡而聚集在这里。这里集中着许多虾和饵鱼[27]，有时海底深处的洞穴会有成群的乌贼，每逢夜里它们会浮上水面，被各种漫游的海鱼当食物。

黑暗中，老人能感受到黎明的来临，划着船的他听见飞鱼[28]跃出水面的抖动声，以及他们僵硬的翅膀在黑暗里腾空而起的嘶嘶声。他非常喜欢飞鱼，因为他们是他在海洋上主要的朋友。他为鸟儿感到难过，尤其是那些小巧玲珑的乌燕鸥[29]，他们总是飞啊飞，寻找着食物却毫无所获，他觉得飞鸟的日子比我们艰难多了，当然那些猛禽和粗壮的大鸟除外。他们为什么要把飞鸟造得像燕鸥这么精致漂亮，又让海洋变得如此残酷呢？她很温柔，也非常美丽。但她会变得非常残酷，她突然间就变得这样了，这些鸟儿在空中飞翔，不时冲下来猎食，轻轻地悲啼着，他们太纤弱了，不适合在海上生存。

他总是觉得大海是女性，说西班牙语的人会用女性的她来指他们热爱的大海。那些热爱她的人有时也会说她的坏话，但他们总是把她当作女性。有些年轻的渔夫，那些把救生圈绑在钓索上当浮子、因卖鲨鱼肝而发财买了汽船的年轻渔夫，则把大海当作男性。他们把她视为竞争对手或某个地方，甚至是敌人。但老人总是把她当作女性，某个有时肯帮大忙有时不肯的女人，就算她做了某些粗暴或者邪恶的事，那也是因为她身不由己。她就像女人那样受月亮的影响，他想。

他稳稳地划着船，这对他来说并不费力，因为他划得不算太快，而且海面很平静，偶尔才会遇到海流激起的漩涡。他借着海流的力道前进，等到天蒙蒙亮时，他发现他已经划出很远，比他原来预计的还要远。

我在这些深井忙了整个星期，但毫无所获，他想。今天我要到有许多鲣鱼[30]和长鳍金枪鱼[31]的地方去，也许那里会有大鱼。

天还没全亮，他已经把鱼饵放出去，然后顺着海流漂动。有个鱼饵在水下四十英寻。第二个是七十五英寻，第三个和第四个则在蓝色的海水深处，大概在一百和一百二十英寻之间。每个鱼饵都是头朝下的，钩柄藏在饵鱼之内，再把饵鱼的切口绑紧缝牢，钓钩所有突出的部位，包括钩弯和钩尖，都被新鲜的沙丁鱼包住了。每条沙丁鱼都被钓钩从眼睛穿过，所以它们在钢钩上变成半个圆环。这些钓钩没有哪个部位不会让大鱼觉得既喷香又美味。

男孩给了他两条新鲜的小金枪鱼，也就是长鳍金枪鱼，它们挂在两根垂得最深的钓索上，就像是铅锤；除此之外，他还有一条很大的蓝鲹[32]和一条金鲹[33]，是以前用过的，但它们还是很完好，再说那些很棒的沙丁鱼，也给它们平添了几分香味和吸引力。每条钓索都有大铅笔那么粗，各自缠绕在黄绿色的钓竿上，假如有鱼拉动或者触碰鱼饵，钓竿就会下沉，而且每根各有两个四十英寻长的线圈，还能跟其他备用的线圈相接，所以如果有必要的话，尽可以用超过三百英寻的钓索来对付一条鱼。

这时老人观察着小船一边的三根钓竿，缓缓地划着桨，让钓索保持笔直地垂下去，并处于原本的深度。天很亮了，太阳随时都会升起。

太阳黯淡地从海面升起，老人看见其他的渔船，低低地贴着水面，远远地落在他后面离岸不远的地方，三三两两地散布在海流两边。然后太阳变得明亮起来，日光照射在水上；由于太阳越升越高，平静的海面反射出的光芒尖锐地刺痛了老人的眼睛，于是他避开日光，继续划着船。他俯视着海水，但见钓索笔直地下沉到黑暗的海底。他保持钓索垂直的功夫比任何人都强，所以他能够恰到好处地把鱼饵放在这幽黑海流的不同层次，等待游过的鱼儿来吃。其他渔夫任由鱼饵顺着海流沉浮，有时候它们的深度明明是六十英寻，那些渔夫却以为它们是在一百英寻。

可是，他想，我会让它们准确地停留在那里。可惜我再也没有运气。但谁知道呢？也许就在今天。每天都是新的日子。运气好当然不错。但我宁可准确。那么等运气来的时候，你就有所准备了。

这时太阳又爬了两个小时的高度，朝东看去不像刚才那么刺眼。放眼望去只有三艘渔船，它们显得非常低，远远地在靠近海岸的后方。

我的眼睛这辈子总是被早晨的太阳刺痛，他想。可是它们还是很好。傍晚我直盯着它也不会感到两眼发黑。它的光线在傍晚也很强。但早晨的日光最刺眼。

就在此时，他看见一只军舰鸟[34]，展开黑色的长翼在天空中盘旋，就在他前方。军舰鸟猛地俯冲下来，把双翼收在背后，然后再次盘旋而起。

“看来他有目标了，”老人说，“他不是在瞎找。”

他慢慢地、稳稳地朝那只鸟盘旋的地方划去。他并不匆忙，使钓索保持笔直垂下的状态。但他让渔船稍微靠近海流，这样他就依旧能够正确地钓鱼，虽然小船的速度变快了。本来他是不会划得这么快的，但这时他想利用那军舰鸟。

那只鸟在天空中飞得更高了，再次盘旋着，他的双翼纹丝不动。然后他突然俯冲而下，老人看见飞鱼从水里跃起，拼命滑过海面。

“鲯鳅，”老人说，“大鲯鳅。”

他放下船桨，从船头下方拿出一根细索。它是钢丝的，有个中型的钓钩，他用一条沙丁鱼套上去做成饵。他将鱼饵从船侧放下去，再把钓索在船尾的铁环上系紧。然后他又给另外一条钓索套上鱼饵，又把它卷起来，扔在船头的阴暗处。他回去继续划船，并观察着那长翼的黑鸟，那鸟正贴在海面上忙活着。

他看见那只鸟又收起双翼俯冲而下，然后疯狂扑打着翅膀，徒劳地追逐着飞鱼。老人能看见水面稍微有点隆起，那是大鲯鳅拱起的，他们也在追捕那些正在逃命的鱼。鲯鳅破浪前进，紧紧追逐着上空的飞鱼，等到飞鱼掉下来，他们就会全速冲进水里。这群鲯鳅真多啊，他想。他们分布的范围很广，飞鱼几无逃生的机会。军舰鸟也没什么机会。对他来说，那些飞鱼太大了，而且速度也太快。

他看着飞鱼反复地猛跳出来，那只鸟徒劳地冲下飞起。那群鱼离我越来越远了，他想。他们游得太快太远了。但也许我能捞起一条落单的，也许我的大鱼就在他们附近。我肯定能抓到大鱼的。

这时陆地上空的云层像山脉般高高耸起，海岸线只是一条漫长的绿线，后面是灰蓝色的山丘。而海水是深蓝色的，颜色深得发紫。他低头俯视海面，看见深蓝色的海水里有星星点点的红色浮游生物，还有日照造成的奇光异彩。他望向那些钓索，发现它们笔直地插入看不见的海水深处；看到这么多浮游生物他很高兴，因为这意味着有鱼。而此刻已升得更高的太阳在海水里照出的奇异光线则意味着好天气，这也可以从陆地上空云朵的形状看出来。但那只鸟几乎看不见了，水面没有任何动静，只有几撮被日光晒得发白的黄色马尾藻，还有一个紫色的东西，晶莹剔透的，那是漂浮在小船旁边的一只僧帽水母[35]的气鳔。它翻了个身，然后又竖起来。它欢快地浮动着，像个大气泡，那些致命的紫色触须很长，在它身后拖着，足足有一英码[36]。

“僧帽水母，”老人说，“你这婊子。”

他继续轻轻地划着船桨，低头朝水面望去，但见水里有许多小鱼，颜色很像那些舒展的触须，游动在众多触须和漂移的气泡投下的暗影之间。他们不怕水母的毒。但人就不同了，有时候那些修长的紫色触须会碰到钓索，并将其缠住，这时老人要是正在把上钩的鱼拉起来，他的双臂和双手就会出现伤痕和溃肿，就像被毒漆藤或毒漆树擦伤似的。但僧帽水母的毒性发作起来更快，而且好像被皮鞭抽中那么疼。

那些晶莹剔透的气泡很美丽。但它们是海里最具欺骗性的东西，老人喜欢看到大海龟吃掉它们。大海龟看见它们就会从正面进攻，然后闭上眼睛，全身缩到龟壳里，从触须吃起，把它们整个吃掉。老人喜欢看着海龟吃掉它们，也喜欢在风暴后的沙滩从它们身上踏过，他那粗糙的脚后跟会把它们踏破，他很喜欢听它们爆开的声音。

他喜欢绿海龟[37]和鹰嘴海龟[38]，因为他们很好看，动作敏捷，又有很高的价值；他对赤蠵龟[39]既蔑视又有好感，因为他们很愚蠢，体型庞大，龟甲是黄色的，交配的方式很奇怪，但会闭着眼睛高兴地把僧帽水母吃掉。

他认为海龟并不神秘，尽管他曾在捕龟船上待过许多年。他觉得海龟都很可怜，哪怕是很大的棱皮龟[40]，他们有小船那么长，一吨那么重。大多数人对海龟很残忍，因为海龟被劈开砍成几块之后，他的心脏还会跳几个小时。但老人想，我也有这样的心脏，我的脚和手也像他们。他会吃白龟蛋来给自己长力气。每年五月他会吃很多龟蛋，这样到了九月和十月，他就有力气对付真正的大鱼。

他也喝鱼肝油，每天一杯，装鱼肝油的大圆桶就在那座许多渔夫存放渔具的茅屋里。所有渔夫只要想喝都能去喝。大多数渔夫讨厌那味道。但它并不比摸黑早起更糟糕，再说它对各种伤风感冒有非常好的疗效，对眼睛也有好处。

这时老人抬起头来，看见那只鸟又在盘旋。

“他找到鱼啦。”他说。海面没有飞鱼跃出，也没有饵鱼四散逃窜。可是正当老人观察时，有条小金枪鱼升入空中，翻了个身，头朝下掉进水里。那条金枪鱼在太阳底下发出银光，他掉回水里之后，一条又一条的金枪鱼纷纷跃起，他们四下乱跳，搅动着海水，跃出很长的距离，追捕着饵鱼。他们包围着饵鱼群，驱赶着它。

可惜他们游得太快，不然我可以混水摸鱼，老人想。他看着鱼群翻出白浪，那只鸟冲下来啄食那些被逼到海面的慌乱饵鱼。

“这只鸟真是好帮手。”老人说。就在这时，船尾的钓索在他脚下绷紧了，刚才他把钓索打了个圈踩在脚下，于是他放下双桨，牢牢抓住钓索拉动起来。他感到上钩的小金枪鱼很沉，把钓索拽得发抖。他用力往里拉，钓索抖得更厉害了，他能看见水里那鱼的背部是蓝色的，两侧是金色的，随后他把鱼甩起来，甩到小船里。那鱼躺在船尾的日光中，看上去很结实，身体像颗子弹，那双呆滞的大眼直勾勾的，匀称的鱼尾迅速地拍打着船板，进行垂死的挣扎。老人好心地敲了他的头，把他那仍在抖动的身体踢到船尾的阴凉处。

“长鳍金枪鱼，”他说，“他可以当漂亮的鱼饵。他有十磅那么重。”

他记不清从什么时候起开始在独处时自言自语。从前独处时他会唱歌，有时候在夜里，当他独自在捕鱼船或者捕龟船上轮班掌舵时，他也会唱歌。他在孤单时自言自语，也许是从男孩离开他之后开始的。但他不记得了。过去他和男孩一起捕鱼，他们通常在有必要时才开口。他们在夜里或者受困于坏天气带来的风暴时会讲话。大家认为出海时不说废话是美德，老人也是这么看的，所以总是身体力行。但现在他多次将心里的想法说出来，因为没有人会因此而恼火。

“如果有人听见我自言自语，他们会认为我是在发神经，”他说，“但我没有发神经，所以我不在乎。有钱人就好啦，他们船上有收音机和他们说话，给他们带来棒球新闻。”

现在可不是惦记棒球的时间，他想。现在要考虑的只有一件事。那件我为之而生的事。那群鱼附近可能有条大鱼，他想。捕食的长鳍金枪鱼那么多，我只抓到一条离群的。但他们都朝深海游，而且游得很快。今天在海面上出现的鱼都游得非常快，都朝东北方向而去。这不是这个时刻该有的现象吧？或者这是某种我不知道的天气迹象？

这时他放眼望去，已经见不到绿色的海岸线，但见几座青山的峰顶，是白色的，仿佛覆盖着雪花，再往上是朵朵白云，如同巍峨的雪山。海的颜色非常深，日光在水中照出许多光柱。那些星罗棋布的浮游生物被高升的太阳逼沉了，蓝色的海水里只有道道又深又大的光柱，老人看见他的几根钓索笔直地插进水中，而那水深足足有一英里。

那些金枪鱼又沉下去了。周边的渔夫管所有鲔属的鱼都叫金枪鱼，只有拿他们去卖或者交换其他饵鱼的时候，才会用准确的名字将他们区分开来。日光很热了，老人觉得后颈被晒得发烫，也能感觉到划船时背上在流汗。

我可以让船随波逐流，他想，只管睡觉，把钓索圈在脚趾上，等有鱼上钩再醒来。但今天是第八十五天，我应该整天好好捕鱼。

就在这时，正当他观察着钓索，他看见有根翘起的钓竿猛地往下沉。

“有了，”他说，“有了。”然后缓缓把船桨放下。他朝钓索伸过手去，用右手的拇指和食指轻轻地捏住它。他感觉不到张力或重量，就这样轻轻地捏着它。然后钓索又动了。这次它只是微微一动，不是猛然的拉拽，他清楚地知道这意味着什么。在一百英寻的水下，有条旗鱼正在吃那几条裹住钩尖和钩柄的沙丁鱼，而那手工打造的钓钩穿着的，是一条小金枪鱼的头。

老人仔细地握住钓索，用左手轻轻地将它从钓竿上解开。现在他可以让钓索在他两指间滑出去，以免那鱼察觉到有所不妥。

出海这么远，又到了这个月，他肯定很大，老人想。吃掉他们吧，鱼啊。吃吧。请吃掉他们。他们是多么新鲜呀，你可在六百英尺深的海里呢，又冷又黑的。请在黑暗中转过身来，回来把他们吃掉吧。

他感到钓索轻轻地往前拉动，然后是更有力的一拽，这时肯定是又有条扎得更牢的沙丁鱼的鱼头被从钓钩上扯掉了。接着没有任何动静。

“来啊，”老人说，“再转过身来啊。闻闻他们的味道。很美味的对吧？好好享受吧，后面还有条金枪鱼。结实、冰凉又好看。鱼啊，别害羞。吃掉他们吧。”

他等待着，拇指和食指捏着钓索，观察着它，同时也盯着其他钓索，因为那鱼可能会往上或者往下游。然后钓索又轻轻地向前拉动了。

“他会吃掉的，”老人大声地说，“上帝保佑，让他把鱼饵吞下去吧。”

可惜他没有把鱼饵吞下去。他走掉了，老人没有察觉到任何动静。

“他不可能走掉，”他说，“基督知道他不可能走掉。他是在转身。也许他以前上过钩，记得那是怎么回事。”

然后他感到钓索轻轻地抖动，于是高兴起来。

“他只是转了个身，”他说，“他会把鱼饵吃掉的。”

他很高兴地察觉到钓索微微地往前拉，然后他感到传来的力量很大，令人难以置信地沉。这说明那鱼很重，他让钓索滑下去，不停地滑下去，将那两卷备用钓索的第一卷都放出去。钓索在老人两指间轻轻地滑走，老人依然能感到那鱼非常重，不过他的拇指和食指几乎完全没有用力去捏住钓索。

“好大的鱼啊，”老人说，“现在他把鱼饵咬进嘴里了，正拖着它到处游动。”

然后他将会转个身，把它吞下去，他想。他没有把这个想法说出来，因为他知道好事不能说，说了就不会发生。老人知道这么大的鱼是什么样子，能想象出来他在黑暗中游走，而金枪鱼就被他横着含在嘴里。这时老人感到他不再游动，但钓索还是很沉。然后手上感受到的重量增加了，于是他又放出一段钓索。他把拇指和食指捏紧了片刻，钓索上的力道越来越沉，直往下坠。

“他把鱼饵吃下去了，”他说，“现在我要让他好好吃。”

他让钓索从他两指间滑出去，同时伸下左手，把那两卷备用索的末端和旁边钓索的两卷备用索接起来。现在他准备好了。现在他有三卷四十英寻的备用索，再加上正在使用的这卷。

“多吃点，”他说，“好好吃呀。”

把它吞下去，让钓钩刺破你的心脏，把你杀死，他想。乖乖上来吧，我要用鱼枪来插你。好啦。你准备好了吗？你还没吃够吗？

“时间到啦！”他说，双手用力猛拉，把钓索拉上来一码，然后扎好马步，使尽全身力气，两只手交替着拉起那绳索。

什么也没发生。那鱼只顾慢慢地游走，老人无法将他拉动分毫。他的钓索很结实，是用来钓大鱼的，他转过身弯腰向前猛拽，把钓索绷得紧紧的，许多水珠从上面弹出来。然后钓索开始在水里发出嘶嘶的声音，他仍然抓着它，扳着横坐板借劲，身体前倾抵抗着那鱼的拉力。小船开始慢慢地朝西北方向移动。

那鱼稳稳地游着，他们在平静的海面缓缓前行。其他鱼饵还在水里，但没有需要处理的状况。

“要是那孩子在就好了，”老人说，“我正在被一条鱼拖着走，我可成缆桩啦。我可以把钓索绑在船上。但那样他会挣脱的。我必须尽量拖住他，有必要的话就把钓索放给他。谢谢上帝，他是在向前游，而不是往下沉。”

如果他决定往下游，我怎么办呢？我不知道。如果他沉到海底死掉，我该怎么办呢？我不知道。但我会有办法的。我有很多办法。

他抓住勒在后背的钓索，看着它斜斜地插进水里，而小船稳稳地朝西北方向前进。

这会让他丧命的，老人想。他不可能永远这样下去。但四个小时过去了，那鱼仍然稳稳地拖着小船向外海游去，老人仍然牢牢地抓着从他后背绕过的钓索。

“我钓到他的时候是中午，”他说，“可是到现在还没见着他。”

钓到这条鱼之前他把戴在头上的草帽压得很低，这时额头被勒得发疼。他还很口渴，于是跪下去，小心翼翼地，生怕牵动了钓索，尽量挪到船头，用一只手拿起了水瓶。他打开瓶子，喝了点水。然后他靠着船头休息。他坐在横放着的桅杆和船帆上休息，尽量不去思考，只是忍耐着。

然后他朝身后望去，陆地已经看不见。没关系的，他想。反正我可以借着哈瓦那的灯光回去。再过两个小时太阳才下山，也许日落之前他会上来。就算不会，也许月出他会上来。就算不会，也许日出他会上来。我没有抽筋，体力也还充沛。嘴巴里面有个钓钩的可是他。但拖着船游了这么久，那鱼该有多厉害啊。他的嘴巴肯定紧紧咬住了钓索。要是能看见他就好啦。我希望能够见他一面，看看我的对手是什么样。

当晚老人观察天上的星星，能看出来那鱼始终没有改变路线和方向。日落之后天气转凉了，老人流的汗干了，脊背、手臂和那双老腿都发冷。白天时他取下遮盖鱼饵箱的麻袋，在日光下摊开了晒干。日落后他把麻袋绑在脖子上，让它披下来遮住他的背部，并且仔细地把它塞到钓索之下。钓索如今挂在他的肩后，有麻袋垫着，他又找了个姿势趴在船头，自己觉得挺舒服的。这个姿势其实只是没那么难受而已，但他觉得挺舒服的。

我拿他没办法，他也拿我没办法，他想。只要他打起精神，那鱼就无可奈何。

有一次他站起来，站在船侧撒尿，抬头看看星星，测定他的路线。那条钓索宛如一道磷光，从他肩膀直伸入水里。这时他们前进的速度变慢了，哈瓦那的灯光变得模糊起来，所以他知道海流肯定推着他们向东而去。如果我看不见哈瓦那的灯火，那我们肯定是在朝东边走，他想。因为按照那鱼原来的路线，再过几个小时我也肯定能看到它。不知道今天大联盟的棒球比赛怎么样，他想。干这行要是能带着收音机就好啦。然后他想，老惦记着这个。还是想想你现在的处境吧。你可千万不能做傻事。

接着他说：“我很希望那孩子在我身边。要是他来帮我忙，看到这种情况就好啦。”

人老了不该孤身一人的，他想。但这是不可避免的。我必须记得在那条金枪鱼腐化之前把他吃掉，这样才能保持体力充沛。记住，不管你多么不想吃，天亮了你就必须把他吃掉。别忘了，他对自己说。

夜里有两条鼠海豚[41]来到小船附近，他能听见他们在翻滚和喷气。他能听得出不同，雄的喷气声很吵杂，雌的喷气声像叹息。

“他们很好，”他说，“他们会玩耍，开玩笑，彼此相爱。他们是我们的兄弟，就像飞鱼那样。”

然后他开始可怜那条被他钓到的大鱼。他很棒，也很怪，不知道他有多老了，老人想。我遇到过的鱼没有这么厉害的，也没有表现得这么奇怪的。也许他很聪明，所以不跳起来。他跳起来或者猛冲过来就能毁了我。但也许他曾上钩过许多次，知道该如何抗争。他不可能知道他的对手只有一个人，而且还是个老人。但他是条很大的鱼，如果把他带到市场，趁新鲜卖掉，能带来很多钱。他吞鱼饵的样子像是雄的，他拉钓索的样子像是雄的，而且他抗争时也毫不慌乱。不知道他有什么计划？或者只是像我这样无计可施？

他记得那次他钓到一对旗鱼中的一条。雄鱼总是让雌鱼先吃，那条雌鱼疯狂地、慌乱地、绝望地挣扎着，很快就耗尽了气力，而雄鱼从头到尾陪着她，绕着钓索游来游去，陪着她在海面上转圈。他离得很近，老人担心他会用尾巴切断钓索，他的尾巴锋利得像大镰刀，大小和形状也很像。后来老人用鱼钩把她拖近，拿木棒敲打她，抓住她那尖锐锋利的长嘴，不停地猛击她的头顶，打到她的颜色变得几乎像镜子背面那么灰白，然后在男孩的协助下，把她拖到船上，那条雄鱼始终在船边不肯离去。然后当老人清理钓索、准备鱼枪时，那雄鱼在船边高高地跃起，想要看清雌鱼到底怎么样，接着重重地掉下去，他那对紫色的翅膀，也就是他的胸鳍，张得很开，那些很宽的紫色横纹全都露出来了。老人记得他很漂亮，而且徘徊不去。

那是我捕鱼时遇到最难过的事，老人想。那孩子也很难过，我们心怀不忍，赶紧把她切开。

“要是那孩子在这里就好了。”他说，靠着船头被磨滑的木板，感受着大鱼通过勒在他肩后的钓索传来的力量，而大鱼稳稳地前进，不知道要去哪个地方。

上了我的当之后，他有必要做出选择，老人想。

他做出的选择是留在黑暗的深海，远远地逃离一切罗网、陷阱和诡计。我的选择是到远离所有人——远离全世界的人——的地方去找他。现在我们彼此拴住了，从中午到现在都拴在一起。没有人会来帮他或帮我。

也许我不应该当渔夫，他想。但我是为做这个而生的。我千万要记得在天亮后把金枪鱼吃掉。

天还没亮，有条鱼吃了他身后的一个鱼饵。他听见钓竿的断裂声，钓索开始快速地从船舷溜下去。黑暗中他拔刀出鞘，把那鱼的拉力扛到左肩上，身体往后一仰，挥刀砍在木舷上，将钓索砍断。然后他砍断了最靠近身边的另一根钓索，在黑暗中将几圈备用索的末端接起来。他纯熟地用单手做了这些事，又用脚踩住索圈，把他打的结拉紧。现在他有六卷备用索。他刚斩断的两根钓索各有两卷备用索，有鱼上钩的那根钓索也有两卷，它们全连结起来了。

等天亮了，他想，我要想办法回到那根四十英寻深的钓索旁边，把它也砍断了，将另外两卷备用索接起来。我会损失两百英寻上好的加泰罗尼亚[42]主线，还有几个钓钩和几段前导线。这些是可以替换的。但如果我钓到别的鱼，却被这条鱼跑了，谁来替换他呢？我不知道刚才上钩的是什么鱼。可能是枪鱼、剑鱼或鲨鱼。我没来得及弄清楚。我必须尽快摆脱他。

他说：“要是那孩子在这里就好啦。”

但那孩子没有来，他想。你只能靠自己，你最好现在就去最后那根钓索那边，管它天亮没亮，赶紧把它砍断，将那两卷备用索接起来。

于是他做了这件事。这在黑暗中很费劲，期间那鱼猛往前一冲，把他拉得扑倒了，眼睛下面被弄得裂开。鲜血流下他的脸颊。但它很快止住凝固，都没来得及流到下巴，他吃力地回到船头，靠着木板休息。他调整麻袋，小心地挪动钓索在肩上的位置，把它挂在肩上紧紧抓住，仔细地察觉那鱼的拉力，接着把手放进水里，感受小船前进的速度。

不知道他为什么要猛朝前冲，他想。钓索肯定已经勒进了他那大山般的脊背。他的脊背当然没我的疼。但他不可能永远拖着这条小船，哪怕他再大也好。现在一切能带来麻烦的东西我都处理好了，还有大量备用的钓索，好汉只要这些就够了。

“鱼啊，”他温柔地说，“我到死也要陪着你。”

我觉得他也会陪着我，老人想。他静静地等待天亮。黎明前的空气很凉，他紧贴着木板，让自己暖一些。他能坚持多久，我就能坚持多久，他想。到了破晓时分，他看见钓索从船上延伸出去，插入水里。小船稳稳地前进，初升的太阳冒出头来，就在老人的右边。

“他朝北边去。”老人说。海流会把我们远远地送到东边，他想。我希望他会转弯顺着海流游动。那就意味着他感到累了。

等太阳升得更高时，老人意识到那鱼并不累。只有一个好的迹象。倾斜的钓索表明，他游动的地方并不深。这并不意味着他肯定会跃出海面。但他也许会。

“上帝啊，让他跳出来吧，”老人说，“我有足够的钓索来对付他。”

或许我再用力拉，他就会吃痛，然后跳出来，他想。现在是白天啦，让他跳出来吧，这样他后背上的气囊就会充满气，死了也不会沉到海底。

他试图增加拉索的力道，但自从他钓到那鱼之后，钓索已经绷得很紧，紧到就要断开，他使劲往后拉时觉得很吃力，知道没法拉得更紧了。我千万不能再猛拽它，他想。每次猛拽都会加大钓钩刺破的创口，那样等他跳起来时，他可能会把钓钩甩掉。反正现在出太阳了，我感觉比昨晚好，而且现在我也不需要看着它来估算时间。

有些黄色的海藻附在钓索上，老人知道这只会加重那鱼的负担，他感到很高兴。在夜里发出闪闪磷光的正是这些黄色的马尾藻。

“鱼啊，”他说，“我爱你，也非常尊敬你。但我要在今天结束之前把你杀死。”

但愿如此，他想。

有只小鸟自北方朝小船飞过来。他是只黄林莺[43]，低低地贴着海面飞。老人看得出来他很累了。

小鸟降落在船尾，栖息在那里。然后他从老人头上飞过，停在钓索上，那里让他觉得更舒服。

“你多大呀？”老人问小鸟，“这是你第一次出门吗？”

小鸟看着他说话。他太累了，累得都没仔细看钓索，在上面摇摇晃晃的，那双小小的爪子牢牢地抓住它。

“它很稳，”老人告诉他，“它太稳了。你不应该这么累啊，昨晚又没有风。你们这些小鸟来干什么呢？”

老鹰会到海上来抓他们的，他想。但老人没有对小鸟说这句话，反正小鸟又听不懂，而且他很快就会见识到老鹰的厉害。

“好好休息吧，小鸟，”他说，“然后飞回去拼搏吧，人要靠自己奋斗，鸟和鱼也这样。”

说话让他振作，因为他的脊背在昨晚变得僵硬，现在真的很痛。

“鸟啊，你要想留在我这里，就留下吧，”他说，“很抱歉，我也想把船帆升起来，借正在吹起的海风带你入港。但我要陪我的朋友。”

就在这时，那鱼突然往前冲，把老人拽倒在船头，差点把他拉到海里去，幸好他撑住了身体，又放出一些钓索。

小鸟在钓索猛抖时飞起来，老人都没看到他飞走。他仔细地用右手拉着钓索，发现他的手正在流血。

“看来他觉得痛了。”他说着拉动钓索，想看看能否把那鱼拉得转过来。但他拉得钓索快断了也没成功，于是只好抓牢钓索，身体使劲后倾抵消大鱼的拉力。

“鱼啊，你觉得疼了吧，”他说，“上帝知道，我也疼的。”

这时他扭头去看小鸟，因为他喜欢有他做伴。小鸟不见了。

你这么快就走了啊，老人想。但你要去的地方很艰险，还是回岸上吧。我怎么会让那鱼猛一拉就把手划破呢？我肯定变得非常愚蠢了。或者是因为我正在看着那只小鸟，正在想着他。现在我要专心干好我的工作，还得把金枪鱼吃掉，这样才能保证力气不减退。

“那孩子在这里就好了，要是有些盐就好了。”他说。

他把钓索的重量交由左肩承担，小心翼翼地跪下去，把手放到海里去洗，让它插在水里，浸泡了超过一分钟，看着鲜血缓缓地流走，看着海水由于小船的前进而稳稳地从他手边流过。

“他慢下来很多了。”他说。

老人本想让他的手在咸水里泡得更久，但他担心那鱼又会猛然前冲，于是他站起身，强打精神，把手放到日光下察看。钓索造成的伤并不重，只是割破了皮肉。但受伤的正好是手上关键的活动部位。他需要双手才能完成这件事，但它还没开始手就被割破了，他很不高兴。

等到手干了，他说：“现在我必须把那条小金枪鱼吃掉。我可以用鱼钩把他弄过来，就在这里舒舒服服地吃掉他。”

老人跪下去，用鱼钩去钩船尾的金枪鱼，把他拉过来，中间不让他碰到那几卷备用索。他又用左肩扛着钓索，伸长了左手将金枪鱼从鱼钩的钩尖取下，再把鱼钩放回原处。他用一只膝盖压着那鱼，从鱼头的背面到鱼尾，竖着切下许多条暗红色的鱼肉。这些鱼肉是长条形的，他从鱼的脊骨开始，切到鱼肚的边缘。切下六条之后，他将它们摊开摆在船头的木板上，把刀在裤子上抹干净，拎起鱼尾，将残余的鱼身扔到海里。

“我想我吃不完一整条。”他说着用刀将一条鱼肉切成两段。他感到钓索的力道很沉，而他的左手抽筋了。它紧紧地抓住那根沉重的绳索，他厌恶地看着它。

“这只手怎么这样没用，”他说，“你就抽筋吧。让你自己变成鸟爪。这对你可没有好处。”

他低头望着斜斜地插入深蓝色海水的钓索，心里想，快点啊。现在就吃吧，让你的手恢复力气。这不是手的错，你和那鱼缠斗了很多个小时。但你可以跟他奉陪到底。现在把鱼肉吃掉吧。

他抓起一块鱼肉往嘴里塞，慢慢地咀嚼着。它并不难吃。

好好嚼，他想，全都吃下去。要是加点酸橙汁或者柠檬汁或者盐，那味道不差的。

“手啊，你感觉怎么样？”他问那只抽筋的手，它僵硬得像是死人的手，“为了你，我要多吃点。”

他吃下刚才切成两块那鱼肉的另外一块。他仔细地咀嚼着，然后吐出鱼皮。

“手啊，现在好点了吗？或者要等会才知道？”

他拿起另外一整条鱼肉，把它吃掉了。

“真是丰腴肥美的鱼啊，”他想，“幸好我抓到的是他，而不是鲯鳅。鲯鳅太甜了。这条鱼一点都不甜，但也是很有营养。”

凡事都要讲求实际，他想。我希望有些盐就好了。我不知道太阳是否会把剩下的鱼肉晒坏或者晒干，所以最好把它全吃掉，虽然我并不饿。那鱼很冷静，也很沉稳。我要把鱼肉都吃掉，然后才有力气对付他。

“手啊，你耐心点，”他说，“我是为你而吃的。”

要是能喂那鱼就好啦，他想。他是我的兄弟。但我必须杀了他，而且要很强壮才能做到。他慢慢地、仔细地把所有长条状的鱼肉都吃下去。

他挺起身子，在裤子上擦了擦手。

“手啊，”他说，“你现在最好松开钓索，我会只用右手来对付他，直到你不再这样胡闹。”他用左脚踏住左手抓住的沉重钓索，后背扛着它使劲往后靠。

“上帝啊，让我别抽筋吧，”他说，“因为我不知道那鱼接下来要干什么。”

但他似乎很镇定，正在实施他的计划，老人想。但他的计划是什么呢，他想。我的呢？我的计划要根据他的来定，因为他个头很大。如果他跳出来，我可以杀了他。但他总是沉在水下。那我只好这样奉陪到底了。

他在裤子上摩擦那只抽筋的手，想让手指变软。但它不肯张开。也许它晒晒阳光就会张开，他想。也许等我消化了那些生金枪鱼肉，它就会张开。如果到了万不得已，我会不惜代价把它掰开的。但现在我不想强行把它掰开。让它自己慢慢张开、慢慢恢复吧。毕竟昨天晚上我为了把那些钓索接起来，过度地使用了它。

他朝海那边望去，这才发现他现在有多孤独。但他能看见深蓝色的海水中有几道光柱，钓索在前方伸延而去，平静的海面上波澜微微起伏。这时天上的云朵被信风[44]吹得堆积起来，他朝前方望去，看见有群野鸭在水上四散飞着，忽而聚在一起，忽而又散开，他知道在海上人并不孤单。

他想起有些人害怕划着小船到看不见陆地的远海去，他知道在天气多变的季节这无可厚非。现在虽然是台风的季节，但在不刮台风的时候，台风季的天气是一年中最好的。

如果要刮台风，而你又在海上的话，你总是提前好几天就能看到迹象。岸上的人是看不到的，因为他们不知道该看什么，他想。陆地上肯定也有变化，比如说云的形状。但现在并没有台风要来。

他看着天空，发现雪白的积云宛如美味的雪糕，再上面是薄如羽毛般的卷云，飘荡在高旷的九月天空中。

“轻轻的东北风，”他说，“鱼啊，这对我来说是好天气，对你却不是。”

他的左手仍然僵住，但他正在慢慢地让其恢复。

我讨厌抽筋，他想。这是遭自己的身体背叛。由于食物中毒而拉肚子或者呕吐是一回事，那要在别人面前才是丢脸的。可是抽筋，或者说抽搐，是丢自己的脸，尤其是在独处的时候。

要是那孩子在这里，他可以替我揉一揉，从前臂让手指放松下来，他想。但它终究会松开的。

接着他通过右手感到钓索上的拉力有所不同，随即看到钓索插入水里的角度发生了变化。他身体后仰拉紧钓索，沉重而迅速地将左手拍在大腿上，这时他看见倾斜的钓索正在慢慢地升起。

“他要上来了，”他说，“手啊，你快点好。快点啊。”

钓索缓缓地、稳稳地升起，然后小船前方的水面开始隆起，那鱼出来了。他不停地冒出来，海水从他两边倾泻而下。他在阳光下闪闪发亮，他的头和背是深紫色的，两侧的横纹在阳光下显得很宽，是淡淡的薰衣草色。他的嘴部足足有棒球棍那么长，而且逐渐变细，像一把刺剑；他整个身体从水里升起，然后又沉下去，动作平顺得像潜水员，老人看见他那大镰刀似的尾巴没进水里，钓索开始迅速地朝外滑出去。

“他比这条小船还长两英尺。”老人说。钓索滑出去的速度很快，但稳稳地，这说明那鱼并不惊慌。老人用双手把钓索拉住，但没敢太用力，以免将它拉断。他知道如果不用稳定的力道让那鱼慢下来，那鱼会拉走所有的钓索并将它扯断。

他是条大鱼，我必须降伏他，老人想。我千万不能让他知道他的力气有多大，他想逃跑的时候能做些什么。如果我是他，我会使出浑身力气，拼命往前游，直到把钓索弄断。但感谢上帝，他们并没有我们这些猎杀者聪明，不过他们比人类高尚得多，也有本领得多。

老人见过许多大鱼。他见过许多上千磅重的鱼，有生以来也抓到过两条，但都不是一个人抓到的。现在他孤身一人，在这望不到陆地的远海，而他要对付的这条鱼，却是他见过最大的，比他听说过的还要大，糟糕的是他的左手依然僵硬得像抓住东西的鹰爪。

不过它会恢复的，他想。它肯定会恢复过来帮助我的右手。有三样东西是我的朋友：那鱼和我的两只手。它必须恢复正常。它真没用，居然抽筋了。那鱼又慢下来，以往常的速度前进。

不知道他为什么要跳起来，老人想。他跳起来好像是为了让我知道他有多大。反正现在我知道了，他想。要是我能让他看到我是什么样的人就好啦。但那样他会看到这只抽筋的手。让他以为我比实际上更像条汉子好了，我会像条汉子的。我希望我是那鱼，他想。他那么厉害，而我只能靠意志和才智。

他找个舒服的姿势靠着木板，强忍着痛楚，那鱼稳稳地游着，小船慢慢地划过深蓝色的海水。风从东方来，吹起阵阵微小的海浪，到了中午时分，老人的左手恢复正常了。

“鱼啊，这是你的坏消息。”他说，又挪动了勒在覆盖着肩膀的麻袋上的钓索。

他感到舒服多了，但还是很痛，不过他认为这点痛不算什么。

“我不信教，”他说，“但只要让我抓到这条鱼，我愿意念十遍天主经[45]和十遍圣母经[46]；如果抓到他，我保证去朝拜戈布勒圣母。我保证说到做到。”

他开始机械地念起经文来。有时候他会因为太累而记不起经文，然后他就会念得很快，让经文自动跑出来。圣母经比天主经容易念，他想。

“万福玛利亚，你充满圣宠，主与你同在，你在妇女中受赞颂，你的亲子耶稣同受赞颂。天主圣母玛利亚，求你现在和我们临终时，为我们罪人祈求天主。阿门。”然后他又补充道：“光荣的圣母啊，我愿那鱼死去。虽然他很了不起。”

念完经文后他感觉好多了，但还是很痛，也许变得更痛了，他斜倚着船头的木板，机械地揉捏着左手的手指。

这时日光很热，不过海风渐渐地吹起。

“我最好重新给船尾那根小钓索套上鱼饵，”他说，“如果那鱼决定再拖延一个夜晚，我就又得吃东西了，而且瓶子里的水不多。我想这里除了鲯鳅，别的也钓不到了。但只要趁新鲜吃掉，鲯鳅的味道也不差。要是今晚有飞鱼跳上我的船就好啦。可惜我没有灯光来吸引他们。飞鱼生吃很棒的，而且我还不用把他切开。现在我必须节省所有的力气啦。基督啊，我可没想到他有这么大。”

“我要杀了他，”他说，“尽管他是这么伟大，这么光荣。”

不过这是不公平的，他想。但我要让他见识一个好汉有多大的本领和忍耐力。

“我跟那孩子说过我是个怪老头，”他说，“现在我必须证明这句话。”

他已经证明过上千次，但这毫无意义。现在他要重新证明它。每次都是从头来过，他重新证明时从不想着过去。

他要是睡着就好了，那我就可以睡觉和梦见狮子，他想。为什么梦里只剩下狮子？别想啦，老头子，他对自己说。靠着木板好好休息吧，什么都别想。他正在劳碌着。你就尽量省点精力吧。

这时已是午后，小船仍是慢慢地、稳稳地前进。但迎面吹来的东风增添了阻力，老人随着细微的波浪起伏，钓索勒在后背上也不那么疼痛了。

到了下午某个时刻，钓索又开始升起。但那鱼只是在较浅的水里继续游着。阳光照在老人的左臂、左肩和后背上。所以他知道那鱼已经由东转北。

由于老人已经见过那鱼，他能想象那鱼在水底游动的模样：紫色的胸鳍伸展得很开，宛如飞鸟的翅膀，竖起的大尾巴切割着深蓝色的海水。不知道他在那么深的海里能看见多少东西，老人想。他的眼睛很大，马的眼睛没那么大，夜里也能看清东西。以前我在黑暗中的视力很好。在绝对的黑暗中不行。但几乎跟猫差不多了。

太阳和他手指的不停活动让他的左手完全恢复了正常，他开始让它多承受一些拉力，又耸了耸肩膀，把钓索稍微从后背上被勒得发痛的地方挪开。

“鱼啊，如果你还不累的话，”他说，“那你真是非常奇怪啊。”

这时他觉得非常累，他知道夜幕很快降临，于是努力去想些别的东西。他想起了大联盟，这在西班牙语里叫Gran Ligas，他知道纽约扬基队上次对阵的是底特律老虎队。

比赛已经过去两天啦，我还不知道结果，他想。但我必须有信心，我必须相信伟大的狄马乔，他能打出完美的比赛，哪怕他脚后跟的骨刺很痛[47]。骨刺是什么呢？他问自己。这在西班牙语里叫Un espuela de hueso。我们不长这东西。它有脚后跟被斗鸡[48]的铁爪刺中那么痛吗？我可不认为我能忍受那种痛苦，或者能像斗鸡那样，一只眼睛或者两只眼睛瞎掉了还继续打架。和伟大的鸟兽比起来，人真的算不了什么。不过我宁愿做那条大鱼，就待在黑暗的海底。

“除非有鲨鱼来，”他说，“要是鲨鱼来了，他和我就糟糕啦。”

你觉得伟大的狄马乔会像我这样，和一条鱼缠斗这么久吗？他想。我肯定他会的，而且会更久，因为他年轻又强壮。他父亲也是个渔夫。但他的骨刺真的有那么痛吗？

“我不知道，”他说，“我从来没长过骨刺。”

就在太阳落下时，为了增添些许自信，他想起了从前在白楼镇[49]酒馆的事，当时他和人比赛扳手腕，对手是个高大的黑人，来自百火城[50]，他是码头上最强壮的好汉。他们比了整整一天一夜，各自的手肘放在桌子上粉笔线的两边，前臂竖起来，紧紧地抓住对方的手。他们都努力想把对方的手压倒在桌面。下赌注的人很多，那间屋子点了煤油灯，人们不停地走进走出，他紧紧地盯着那黑人的手臂和手腕，还有那黑人的脸。最初八个小时过去之后，他们每隔四小时就换裁判，以便那几个裁判能去睡觉。鲜血从他和那黑人的指甲下面流出来，他们看看对方的眼睛、手腕和前臂，打赌的人在房间里走进走出，坐在墙边的高背椅上观看着。那屋子的墙壁是木板做的，刷着浅蓝色的油漆，油灯将他们的影子投在墙上。那黑人的影子很大，每当微风吹拂油灯，它就在墙上晃动。

赔率整夜都在变来变去，大家喂那黑人喝朗姆酒，还给他点香烟。黑人喝过朗姆酒后，会拼命地使劲，有一次他把老人——那时并不是老人，而是冠军圣迭戈——的手压低了三英寸。但老人把手扳起来，又回到了相持的状态。当时他确信能打败那黑人，那可是个好汉，也是个运动健将。天亮时，打赌的人纷纷要求他们以平局收场，而裁判则摇摇头表示不同意，他加大了手上的劲道，将那黑人的手压得越来越低，直到把它压倒在桌面。比赛是从星期天早晨开始的，到星期一早晨才结束。许多打赌的人要求算平局，是因为他们必须去工作了，到码头去扛用麻袋装的白糖，或者去哈瓦那煤矿公司干活。否则每个人都愿意看他们比赛到底。但无论如何，他结束了这场比赛，还让大家都来得及去干活。

自那以后很长的时间里，每个人都叫他冠军，春天时他们又进行了比赛。但这次人们赌的钱不多，他很轻松就赢了，因为他已经在第一次比赛时摧毁了百火城那黑人的信心。后来他又参加了几次比赛，接着就金盆洗手了。他认为只要他特别想取胜，他能打败任何人，他也认为这对他的右手不好，会影响捕鱼。他有几次比赛尝试过用左手。但他的左手总是个叛徒，不肯依照他的吩咐去做，他并不信任它。

这时太阳已经把它晒得很干了，他想。它应该不会再抽筋了，除非今晚变得太冷。不知道今晚会遇到什么情况。

有架飞机从头顶朝迈阿密[51]方向飞去，他看见飞机的影子惊起几群飞鱼。

“飞鱼这么多，这里应该有鲯鳅。”他说着身体朝后靠，看能不能带动钓索，把那鱼拉过来。但他做不到，钓索还是绷得紧紧的，不停地将水珠抖落，眼看就要断了。小船慢慢地前进，他望着那架飞机，直到再也看不见它。

坐在飞机上肯定很怪，他想。不知道从那么高看下来大海是什么样子？如果不是飞得太高的话，他们应该能看见那鱼。我倒是想非常慢地在两百英寻高的空中飞行，从上面看看那鱼。从前在捕龟船上，我曾坐在桅杆上端的横档上，虽然只有那么高，我也看到很多东西。从那里看鲯鳅的颜色显得更青，你能看见他们身上的横纹和紫色的圆点，也能看见整群鲯鳅在游动。为什么深海中所有那些游得飞快的鱼儿都有紫色的背部，而且往往还有紫色的横纹和圆点呢？鲯鳅看上去是青色的，当然是因为他其实是金色的。可是当他猎食时，当他感到真的很饿时，他的两侧会出现紫色的横纹，就像旗鱼那样。那是因为他生气了吗？还是因为他游得太快，所以出现了这些横纹？

就在天快黑的时候，他们经过一大片岛屿似的马尾藻，它随着微澜起伏摇摆着，仿佛海洋正在黄色的毛毯下和某样东西做爱，这时他的小钓索钓到了一条鲯鳅。他最早看见它的时候，它正从海里跳出来，在落日的余辉中显得金光灿灿，在空中疯狂地扭动着。它一次又一次地跳起来，像做杂技表演似的，看来是惊慌失措了，老人慢慢走到船尾，用右手抓住那条大钓索，同时弯下身去，用左手将鲯鳅拉上来，每拉起一段钓索就用没穿鞋的左脚将其踩住。这鱼终于被拉到船边，绝望地左右翻转着，老人将身子探出船尾，把这条浑身金得发亮、有许多紫色斑点的鱼提到船尾上。它的嘴巴像抽筋似的，反复快速地咬着钓钩，它那修长而丰腴的身体，还有头部和尾部，不停地扑打着小船的船底，随后老人用木棒猛敲了它那金光闪闪的鱼头，于是它抽搐了几下，终于安静了。

老人取下钓钩，重新装上鱼饵，将钓索抛进海里。然后他慢慢地挪到船头。他洗净左手，在裤子上擦干。接着他将那沉重的钓索从右手交给左手，在海里洗着右手，同时看着太阳渐渐落入这片海洋，看着那倾斜的大钓索。

“他完全没有变化。”他说。但看到从他手边流过的海水，他发现前进的速度已经慢下来不少。

“今晚我要把两根船桨横过来绑在船尾，这样会降低他的速度，”他说，“他到了夜里就精神了，我也是。”

最好等会再把鲯鳅杀了，可以保存鱼肉里的血，他想。我可以等会再做这件事，同时把船桨绑起来增加阻力。现在是傍晚，最好让那鱼保持安静，别太过打扰他。日落时分对所有的鱼来说都是很难熬的。

他把右手提起来晾干，然后用它抓住钓索，尽可能地放松自己，让自己的身体随着钓索向前倾，趴在木板上，这样小船就和他平分了那鱼的拉力，也许还承受了更多。

我学会如何处理这种情况了，他想。反正这方面我是能处理了。还有，要记住他自从吞下鱼饵以来还没吃过东西，他很大，需要很多食物。我已经吃了整条金枪鱼。明天我会吃掉那条鲯鳅。他管它叫鬼头刀。也许我应该把它处理干净，就吃一部分。它比金枪鱼难吃。但话又说回来，哪有容易的事情呢。

“鱼啊，你觉得怎么样？”他问，“我觉得很好，我的左手好起来了，我有一天一夜的食物。鱼啊，你尽管拉着船吧。”

其实他的感觉并不好，因为他的后背已经被钓索勒得麻木了，连痛都不痛了，这让他隐隐感到担心。但我遇到过更糟糕的情况，他想。我的右手只有很小的伤口，左手的抽筋已经好了。我的双腿很好。我在食物供给方面也占了上风。

这时天已黑了，因为在九月，日落后天很快就黑。他躺在船头破旧的木板上，尽量好好休息。第一颗星星出现了。他并不知道这颗星叫做参宿七[52]，但他看到这颗星就知道很快就会有繁星满天，他将会拥有这些远方的朋友。

“那鱼也是我的朋友，”他说，“我从来没看见过或者听说过这么大的鱼。但我必须杀了他。幸好我们不用去杀死星星。”

想想看啊，要是人每天必须努力去杀死月亮，那会怎么样呢，他想。月亮会逃走的。但想想看人每天必须努力去杀死太阳，那又会怎么样呢？我们真是天生幸运啊，他想。

然后他可怜起那条大鱼来，因为他没有东西可以吃，可是他想杀他的决心却没有因这份怜悯而动摇。他可以供很多人食用，老人想。但那些人配吃他吗？不配，当然不配。谁也不配吃他，他是那么的优雅，那么的出色。

我不明白这些事，他想。但幸好我们不必去尝试杀死太阳、月亮或星星。我们只要依靠大海和杀死我们真正的兄弟就足以谋生了。

喏，他想，我得考虑增加阻力的事情了。这件事有优点也有缺点。如果我把船桨绑起来，他又使劲往前猛拉的话，由于船已经变重了，而我又没有那么长的钓索可以放出去，因为已经用了很多来绑船桨，那么可能会被他逃掉。轻盈的船身会延长我们双方的痛苦，但这让我更为安全，因为他能游得飞快，虽然他之前游得并不快。不管怎么样，我必须把鲯鳅剖开，以免他坏掉，再吃些鱼肉补充力气。

现在我要休息个把钟头，等感觉到他稳定下来，再回到船尾去做这件事，并做出决定。在这期间我可以观察他的表现，看他是否有变化。把双桨绑到船尾是个妙招，但现在一切要以安全为重。他还是很生猛，我看到钓钩就在他的嘴角，他的嘴巴始终是紧闭的。钓钩造成的创痛倒不算什么。饥饿才会要他的命，何况他还要对付某个他毫不了解的对手。休息吧，老头子，让他忙碌去吧，你等休息好再行动。

他休息了大概有两个小时。月亮要很晚才升起，他没有办法判断时间。其实他休息得也不好。他的肩膀仍然扛着沉重的钓索，但他把左手放在船头的舷上，利用小船本身来抵消那鱼的拉力。

要是可以把钓索绑起来，那多简单啊，他想。但那鱼只要猛朝前一冲就能绷断钓索。我必须用我的身体来缓冲钓索的拉力，随时做好用双手放出钓索的准备。

“但你还没有睡啊，老头子，”他说，“半天一夜又一天过去了，你还没有睡过。你必须在他安稳的时候想个办法睡一会。如果不睡，你的头脑会变糊涂的。”

现在我的头脑足够清醒，他想。太清醒了。我清醒得如同我那些星星兄弟。但我还是得睡觉。他们会睡觉，月亮和太阳会睡觉，甚至连海洋有时候也会睡觉，那是在没有海流、波平如镜的日子里。

可要记得睡觉啊，他想。要强迫你自己入睡，要想出简单而稳妥的办法来处理这根钓索。现在回到船尾去宰鲯鳅吧。如果你非睡不可，把双桨绑到船尾太危险了。

我可以不睡觉坚持下去，他告诉自己。但这太危险了。

他开始慢慢向船尾爬去，小心翼翼地，生怕惊动那鱼。他也许正在打盹，老人想。但我可不希望他休息。我希望他这样拉着船，到死为止。

回到船尾后，他转了个身，用左手拉着挂在肩膀上的钓索，右手把他的刀从鞘里拔出。星星闪闪发亮，老人清楚地看到了鲯鳅，于是把刀插入他的头，将他从船尾下拖出来。他用一只脚踏住那鱼，迅速地将他从排泄孔到下巴切开。然后他把刀放下，右手掏出鱼的内脏，用手舀水将其洗净，又把鱼鳃统统扯掉。他发现鱼胃很沉，捏在手里滑溜溜的，于是把它切开。里面有两条飞鱼。它们既新鲜又结实，他把它们并排摆好，将内脏和鱼鳃扔到海里。它们沉下去，在水里留下一道磷光闪闪的痕迹。这时那鲯鳅冰凉，在星光下是灰白色的，像得了麻风病。老人用右脚踩住鱼头，剥下他半边的皮。然后他把鱼翻过来，剥下另一边的皮，又将两边的鱼肉从头到尾切下来。

他将残骸推到船外，探头去看它有没有在水里转圈，但只见到它慢慢下沉的磷光。他转过身，用两片鱼肉把两条飞鱼夹住，又把刀插入鞘中，慢慢地向船头挪动。他弯着腰，用后背扛住钓索，右手抓着鱼肉。

回到船头后，他把两片鱼肉摆在木板上，飞鱼则放在旁边。随后他将钓索在肩上换个新位置扛住，再次用左手扶着船舷。接着他的身体探出船外，在水里洗净飞鱼，观察着海水从他手边流过的速度。他的手因为刚才剥掉鲯鳅的皮而发出磷光，他看着水从它旁边流过。水流没原来那么快，他把手放到船板上摩擦，许多发出磷光的鳞片掉下来，慢慢地漂向船尾。

“他要么是累了，要么是在休息，”老人说，“我先来吃掉这条鲯鳅，然后好好休息，小睡片刻。”

天上繁星闪闪，夜凉如水，他吃下半片鲯鳅鱼肉和一条取去内脏和切掉头部的飞鱼。

“鲯鳅加了调料吃真美味，”他说，“可是生吃太难吃了。以后我再也不上没有盐和酸橙的渔船了。”

可惜一早没想到，否则就应该不断泼些海水到船头，等干了就有盐啦，他想。但我临近日落才钓到那条鲯鳅。然而还是怪我没做好准备。但我已经把它吃掉了，也没有恶心呕吐。

东边的天空积起了云层，他熟悉的那些星星渐渐消失了。现在他好像正要进入云朵构成的大峡谷，风也停止了。

“三四天后会有坏天气，”他说，“但今晚和明天还没事。找个姿势睡一会吧，老头子，趁那鱼现在很安稳。”

他右手拉紧钓索，然后大腿紧贴着右手，后背靠着船头的木板，把全身重量都压在上面。接着他把肩上的钓索稍稍往下移动，缠在左手上。

只要把它缠起来，我的右手就能抓住它，他想。如果我睡着时右手松开了，那么左手会在钓索溜出去时把我叫醒。这对右手很残忍。但他习惯了吃苦。哪怕我只睡二十分钟或半个小时，那也是好的。他向前趴下，用身体压住了钓索，把全身重量都压在右手上，就这样睡着了。

他没有梦见狮子，却梦见大群鼠海豚，首尾相连有八到十英里那么长，这正是交配的季节，他们高高地跃起在空中，然后落入他们跃起时在水面上留下的窟窿。

然后他梦见他在渔村里，躺在床上，北风呼呼响，他觉得很冷，右臂发麻，因为他的头枕在手臂而不是枕头上。

后来他开始梦见那漫长的黄色沙滩，他看见有只狮子在薄暮时分走到沙滩上，随后另外几只狮子也来了，他的下巴抵着船头的木板，而船停泊在傍晚从岸上吹来的和风里，他期待看到更多的狮子，感到很高兴。

月亮已经升上来很久，但他继续睡着，那鱼稳稳地拉着小船，小船向着云层垒起的峡谷前进。

他被猛地竖起来打在脸上的右拳打醒了，钓索火辣辣地从他的右掌穿过。他的左手不听使唤，但右手用尽全力想抓住钓索，可是它依然不停地溜走。他的左手终于摸到了钓索，随即用后背使劲把钓索顶住，他的左手和后背被弄得刺痛，而他的左手因为受力过大而被划伤得很厉害。他回头看看备用的索圈，它们平滑地飞起。就在这时，那鱼跳了起来，激起大片海水，又重重地摔进海里。然后他一次又一次地跳起，小船前进的速度越来越快，可是钓索依然不断地溜走，老人把钓索拉到快要绷断，接着又松开，就这样反复地拉紧松开。刚才他被拉得趴在船头，他的脸正好摔在切好的鲯鳅肉上，丝毫不能动弹。

这正是我们等待已久的，他想。就让我们来做个了断吧。

不能让钓索白白被他拖走，他想。必须让他付出代价。

老人看不见那鱼的跳跃，只能听到他破水而出的声音和落水时沉重的泼溅声。快速溜走的钓索把他的手割得很痛，但他早就料到会有这种情况发生，所以让钓索从手上长满老茧的部位滑出去，不让它划开掌心或者割破手指。

要是那孩子在这里，他会把索圈弄湿，他想。是啊。要是那孩子在这里就好啦。要是那孩子在这里就好啦。

钓索还是不断地溜出去，但溜走的速度渐渐慢下来，他让那鱼每拉走一英寸都付出沉重的代价。这时他把头从木板上抬起，离开那块被他的脸颊压得稀巴烂的鱼肉。然后跪着挺起身子，再慢慢站起来。他仍在把钓索放出去，但放得越来越慢。他设法走到能用脚碰到那些用眼睛看不见的备用钓索的地方。钓索还剩下很多，那鱼又拖了那么多钓索下水，他的负担变得更重了。

对啊，老人想。他跳上来十几次了吧，把后背的气囊充满了气，死了也不会沉到海底，要沉下去我可没法把他捞上来。他很快就会开始转圈，到时我必须制服他。不知道他为什么突然变得这样？或许是饿得发疯了，或者夜里被什么东西给吓坏了？也许他突然感到害怕。但他是条非常镇定、强壮的鱼啊，他看上去非常勇敢，非常自信。真是奇怪。

“你自己最好勇敢一点，自信一点，老头子，”他说，“你又把他控制住了，但你没法把钓索收回来。但他很快就会转圈。”

这时老人用肩膀和左手拉着那鱼，弯下腰去用右手舀些海水，把脸上稀烂的鲯鳅肉洗掉。他怕那些鱼肉会让他感到恶心呕吐，从而变得虚弱无力。洗好脸之后，他把右手从船侧伸到水里去洗，然后让它浸泡在咸水里，同时观察着日出前的第一抹晨光。他几乎是朝正东前进了，老人想。这意味着他累了，所以顺着海流走。他很快就会转圈。我们真正的决战要开始了。

等到他觉得右手浸在水里已经足够久之后，他把手提起来，并看着它。

“情况并不糟糕，”他说，“这点痛对好汉来说不算什么。”

他小心地抓住钓索，不让它碰到新的伤口，又侧了侧身，以便能将左手从小船的另一边放到海里去。

“你的表现倒也不像是废物，”他对他的左手说，“但刚才有一阵我找不到你。”

为什么我天生没有两只好手呢？他想。也许这是我的错，没有正确地锻炼那只手。但凭良心说，它有很多学习的机会。不过它昨晚的表现并不坏，而且只抽筋过一次。如果它再抽筋，那就让钓索把它割掉好了。

这时他觉得自己的头脑不是很清楚，于是认为应该再吃点鲯鳅肉。但我不能吃，他告诉自己。我宁可头脑糊涂，也不愿因呕吐而失去力气。我知道我要吃了它肯定会吐的，因为我的脸在上面压过。我会留着它备用，等它坏了再扔掉。但现在才想通过补充营养来增长力气，未免也太迟了。你真笨啊，他告诉自己。还有条飞鱼可以吃。

它就在那里，很干净，老人用左手把它拿起来，连骨头也仔细地咀嚼着，把它从头到尾全吃掉。

它几乎是最有营养的鱼了，他想。至少能给我必要的力气。现在能做的我都做了，他想。他要是开始转圈，就来决一死战吧。

太阳渐渐升起，已经是他出海以来的第三次，这时那鱼开始转圈。

他从倾斜的钓索看不出来那鱼正在转圈。没那么快能看出来。他只是感到钓索上力道稍微变弱了，于是他开始缓缓地用右手把它拉过来。它绷紧了，如同往常，可是就在快绷断时，钓索又开始松弛。他沉下肩膀，把头低到钓索下面，开始平缓地拉回钓索。他扎稳了马步，使尽全身力气，双手交替地将钓索拉回来。他的两条老腿和肩膀随着双手的拉动而左右扭动。

“这个圈子可真大，”他说，“但他确实是在转圈。”

后来钓索再也拉不动了，老人紧紧地抓住它，看见许多水珠在阳光下从它上面跳起来。接着它开始往外扯，老人跪在船板上，让它吃力地回到深蓝色的海水中。

“他现在转到远处了。”他说。我必须尽量拉紧钓索，他想。只要用力拉，他每次转的圈就会越来越小。也许再过一个小时，我就能看见他。我必须收服他，然后我还要杀了他。

但两个小时过去了，那鱼不停地慢慢转圈，老人浑身被汗水浸透，累得连骨头都酸了。但这时那鱼转的圈比原来小得多，从钓索倾斜的角度判断，他能看出来那鱼正在慢慢地向上游。

过去一个小时以来，老人总是看到眼前有黑点，汗水弄得他的眼睛发干，也把他眼睛上面和额头上的伤口弄得很疼。他倒不怕那些黑点。他拼命拉着钓索，看到黑点是正常的。不过他有两次差点昏过去，这让他很着急。

“我可不能自乱阵脚，死在这条鱼手上，”他说，“现在我已经把他拉得很近了，上帝啊，帮我撑过去吧。我愿意念一百遍天主经和一百遍圣母经。但我现在不能念。”

就当我已经念了吧，他想。以后我会念的。

就在这时，他觉得两只手握紧的钓索突然抖动起来，向前猛扯。扯动的力道又大又沉。

他正在用他的尖嘴攻击前导线，老人想。这是迟早的事情。他不得不这么做。不过这可能会促使他跳起来，我现在宁可他在水底转圈。他必须跳出来才能呼吸空气。但他每跳一次，钓钩造成的创口就会多裂开一点，那他就能把钓钩甩掉了。

“鱼啊，别跳，”他说，“别跳啊。”

那鱼又攻击了几次前导线，每次他摆动脑袋老人就放出一点钓索。

我必须让他痛下去，他想。我的痛倒不要紧。我能控制它。但他的痛会让他发疯。

不久之后，那鱼不再攻击导线，又开始慢慢地转圈。老人缓缓地把钓索收回来。但他又感到头晕。他用左手捞起些许海水浇到头上。然后他又捞了一些，擦了擦后颈。

“我没有抽筋，”他说，“他很快就要上来，我能撑住。你必须撑住。抽筋这两个字提都不要再提。”

他在船头跪了片刻，又用后背扛着钓索。现在趁他转出去我要休息了，等他转回来我再站起来对付他，老人拿定了这个主意。

他真想在船头好好休息，让那鱼去转一个圈，而不把钓索收回来。但等到钓索变得松弛，表明那鱼已转身向小船游过来时，老人站起来，开始左右扭动身体，双手交替，尽量把钓索往回拉。

我从来没有这么累过，他想，现在信风也吹起来了。但信风有助于我带着他入港。这是我特别需要的。

“等他再转出去我要休息，”他说，“我觉得好多了。再过两三个回合我就能逮住他。”

他的草帽戴在后脑勺上，等感到那鱼转过身去时，他顺着钓索的拉力在船头坐下。

鱼啊，你先忙吧，他想。等你转回来我再对付你。

海浪已经变得很大。但这是晴天的风，他需要借助风力回家。

“我只要朝西南方向航行就好，”他说，“好汉在海上是不会迷失方向的，再说那是个很长的海岛[53]。”

那鱼转到第三圈时，老人才初次看到他。

他看见有个暗影费了很长时间才从船底穿过去，他不敢相信那鱼居然有那么长。

“不可能啊，”他说，“他不可能有那么大。”

但他就是那么大，转完这个圈时，他在三十码外的海面浮起，老人看见他的尾巴露了出来。那比大镰刀的刀刃还要高，是淡淡的薰衣草颜色，而它下方是深蓝色的海水。它斜斜地竖起，由于那鱼就在水面下方游动，老人能看见他那庞大的身躯和其上的紫色横纹。他的背鳍耷拉着，胸鳍则张得很开。

这回老人能看见那鱼的眼睛，还看到有两条灰色的吸盘鱼[54]在他身边游动。它们有时候会吸附在他身上，有时候则突然离开，有时候会在他的阴影下自在地畅泳着。它们都有超过三英尺长，在快速游动的时候，它们的全身激烈地扭动着，像鳗鱼那样。

老人这时浑身冒汗，但却不只是因为太阳。每当那鱼掉头游过来，他就会收回钓索，他清楚地知道，这鱼再转两个圈，他便有机会用鱼枪插进去。

但我必须让他靠近点，要靠得很近才行，他想。我千万不能插他的头。我必须插中他的心脏。

“你要镇定点，勇猛点，老头子，”他说。

那鱼又转了个圈，这时鱼背露出水面了，但他离小船有点远。再转一圈后他还是有点远，但露出水面的鱼背更高了，老人知道多拉回一些钓索，他下次就会在船边出现。

他早就操起鱼枪，连着鱼枪的那卷细绳放在一个圆篮里，细绳的末端系紧在船头的缆桩上。

这时那鱼转回来了，显得很冷静，看上去也很漂亮，只有他的尾巴在动。老人竭尽全力把他拉得更近。片刻之后，鱼朝老人这边转过来一点。然后他挺直身子，又转起圈来。

“我拉动他了，”老人说，“我果然拉动他了。”

他又觉得头晕，但用全身力气拉着大鱼。刚才我拉动他了，他想。也许这次我能把他拉过来。手啊，你快拉啊，他想。腿啊，要撑住。头啊，为我顶住吧。你要顶住啊。你以前可没晕过。这次我要把他拉过来。

可是当他竭尽全力，鱼还没游回来就开始拉动钓索时，那鱼只被拉得歪了一下，然后摆正姿势，自顾游走了。

“鱼啊鱼，”老人说，“反正你肯定要死的。你非得把我也弄死吗？”

这样可不行，他想。他的嘴巴干渴得说不出话来，但他现在不能去拿水喝。这次我必须把他拉到船边来，他想。再让他转几圈我就不行了。你行的，他告诉自己。你永远行的。

那鱼再游回来时，老人差点就成功了。但鱼还是摆正了姿势，慢慢地游开。

鱼啊，你这是在要我的命，老人想。但你有这个权利。老兄啊，我从未见过你这么大、这么漂亮、这么镇定、这么高贵的鱼。来吧，把我干掉吧。不管谁干掉谁都可以。

现在你的头脑逐渐变糊涂了，他想。你必须保持头脑清楚。要保持头脑清楚，要像好汉那样忍受痛苦。或者像鱼那样，他想。

“头啊，你清醒点，”他用低沉得连自己也几乎听不见的声音说，“清醒点啊。”

那鱼又转了两圈，情况依然没变。

我不知道，老人想。他每次都觉得自己快晕过去了。我不知道。但我会再试一次。

他又试了一次，当使劲去拉那鱼时，他觉得自己快晕了。那鱼调整好姿势，又慢慢地游走，大尾巴在空中摇摆着。

我再试试看，老人发狠说，不过这时他双手已经发软，眼睛一阵阵地发黑。

他再试一次，还是相同的结果。于是他想，我再试试看，但还没开始，他就觉得自己快晕了。

他强忍所有的痛苦，重拾早已放下的骄傲，用全身的力量来对付那鱼的垂死挣扎，那鱼来到老人旁边，在船边温柔地游动着，他的长嘴几乎就要碰到小船的侧板，开始从船边游过，又长、又高、又宽的银色鱼身点缀着紫色的斑纹，在水里显得有无穷长。

老人抛下钓索，用脚踩住它，把鱼枪举得尽可能高，浑身不知道哪来的力气，猛地扎进鱼身，就扎在那竖在空中、和老人的胸膛齐高的大胸鳍后面。他感到铁枪头刺进去了，于是身体前倾，把它扎得更深，再用全身的力量拼命往下压。

那鱼立即扑腾起来，死到临头的他高高地跃出水面，全身都露出来了，显得非常雄壮和美丽。他似乎悬浮在老人和小船的上空，随即掉进水里，溅起的海水泼了老人满身，把整条小船都泼湿了。

老人感到头晕又想吐，眼睛也看不清楚。但他理顺了连着鱼枪的细绳，让它从血肉模糊的双手间溜出去，等到能看清东西时，他发现那鱼仰卧着，银色的肚皮浮在水面。鱼枪的柄从那鱼的肩部斜斜地伸出，海水被从他心脏流出的鲜血染红了。起初那血迹是黑色的，像暗礁般悬浮在深度超过一英里的蓝色海水中。然后它扩散了，变得像云那样。那鱼银光闪闪，静静地随着波浪起伏。

老人用模糊不清的视线仔细地观察着。然后他将连着鱼枪的钓索在船头的缆桩系了两圈，用双手捧住脑袋。

“让我的头脑保持清醒吧，”他靠着船头的木板说，“我是个疲惫的老人。但我已经杀了这条鱼，杀了我的兄弟，现在我必须把粗活给干了。”

现在我必须备好套索和绳子，把他绑在船边，老人想。哪怕我这里有两个人，往船里灌水，把他弄上来，再把水舀掉，这船也装不下他。我必须做好一切准备，然后把他拉过来，好好绑住，就可以竖起桅杆扬帆回家。

老人开始把那鱼拉到船边，以便能用钓索穿过鱼鳃，从鱼嘴穿出，把他的头绑紧在船头旁边。我要看看他，摸摸他，感受他，老人想。但我把他拉过来，不是为了感受他。我想我已经感受过他的心，老人想。就在我第二次用力抓住鱼枪的柄往下插的时候。现在要把他拉过来绑紧，用绳索套住他的尾巴，再套住他的腰部，这样就能把他绑在小船上。

“起来干活吧，老头子。”他说。他喝了一小口水。“这场打斗虽然结束了，但还有很多粗活要干。”

他抬头望望天空，又看看他的鱼。他仔细地观察着太阳。中午才过了不久，他想。信风渐渐变大。那些钓索倒先不忙收拾。等回家后，那孩子和我会把它们接起来。

“鱼啊，过来吧。”他说。但那鱼不肯过来。他就躺在海里起伏着，老人把小船拉到他身边。

到了那鱼身边，老人让鱼头贴着船头，简直不敢相信他有那么大。他从缆桩解下连着鱼枪的细绳，将它从鱼鳃穿过，从嘴里穿出，在他的剑嘴上绕了个圈，再穿过另一边的鱼鳃，又在鱼嘴上绕了个圈，接着将两股绳子拧合了，在船头的缆桩上绑紧。然后他切断那绳子，走到船尾去套鱼尾。原本银紫相间的鱼身现在已变成银色，上面的横纹和鱼尾一样，是淡淡的紫罗兰颜色。它们比人五指张开的手还要宽，而那鱼的眼睛则很木然，像潜望镜的玻璃片，或者游神队伍中的圣徒雕像。

“只有这个办法能杀死他。”老人说。他喝了水后感觉好多了，他知道自己不会昏倒，头脑也很清醒。他这么大，估计有一千五百磅重，老人想。也许还要重得多。宰杀后有三分之二的净重，每磅三角钱，算下来值多少呢？

“我得有铅笔才能算出来，”他说，“我的头脑没有那么清楚。但我认为伟大的狄马乔会赞许我今天的表现。我没有长骨刺。但双手和后背真痛啊。”不知道骨刺是什么，他想。也许我们是长了，只是不知道而已。

他把鱼紧绑在船头、船尾和中间的坐板上。他很大，看上去像是在船边绑了另一条大得多的渔船。他切了一段钓索，把那鱼的下巴和长嘴系好，这样他的嘴巴就不会张开，尽量减少小船航行的阻力。接着他竖起桅杆，用鱼钩和下桁[55]把那块打着补丁的布帆撑开，小船随即开始移动，他半躺在船尾，向着西南方前进。

他不需要罗盘也知道西南方在哪里。他只凭信风吹在身上的感觉和船帆的飘动就能知道。我最好弄根小钓索，装上假饵，想办法弄条鱼来填肚子和解口渴。但他找不到假饵，他的沙丁鱼又都坏了。所以有黄色的马尾藻从他们旁边经过时，他用鱼钩捞起一些，提着抖了几下，里面的小虾纷纷掉到船板上。它们有十来只，活蹦乱跳的，很像沙蚤[56]。老人用拇指和食指捏断虾头，连壳带尾地吃掉。这些虾非常小，但他知道它们很有营养，味道也很好。

老人瓶子里的水仍够喝两口，吃完虾后，他喝了半口。考虑到有那么多累赘，小船前进的速度算是很快了，他用手臂夹着舵柄，就这样航行着。他能看见那鱼，只有看着双手，感觉到后背正倚着船尾，他才敢相信这是真的事，不是在做梦。刚才有一阵，在快结束的时候，他感到非常难受，觉得这也许是一场梦。后来他看到鱼从水里跳出，在空中停留了片刻才落下，那时他觉得这件事太奇怪了，他无法相信。跟着他的眼睛就看不清楚了，不过现在他看得像以前那样清楚。

现在他知道鱼就在船边，他的双手和后背不是梦。手会很快好的，他想。我让它们流了很多血，咸水会治好它们。这海湾的深蓝色海水是最有效的灵药。我只要保持头脑清醒就好了。双手已经完成它们的任务，我们又航行得很顺利。他紧闭着嘴，尾巴翘起来，我们一起航行，就像是兄弟。然后他的头脑变得有点糊涂了，他想，是他带我回去，还是我带他回去？如果我在前面拖着他，那就毫无疑问。如果鱼在船里，丧失所有的尊严，那也不会有问题。但他们正并排前进，老人想，要是他高兴，就让他带我回去吧。我只不过比他多了些诡计，他对我并没有恶意。

他们航行得很顺利，老人把双手泡在咸水里，努力让头脑保持清醒。天上的积云堆得很高，积云之上又有许多卷云，所以老人知道风会彻夜不停地吹。老人不断地看着鱼，以确定这是真的。就这样过了一个小时，第一条鲨鱼才来攻击他。

鲨鱼的出现并非偶然。他是从海底深处上来的，因为暗红色的血云沉到一英里深的海底，随后又扩散了。他冲上来的速度很快，肆无忌惮地冲破了蓝色的水面，出现在阳光中。然后他掉进海里，找到血腥味的来源，开始顺着小船和大鱼的航线游去。

有时候他失去血腥味的踪迹。但他会再次找到，或者只是嗅到一点，于是飞快地沿着路线向前游。他是条灰鲭鲨[57]，能追上海里游得最快的鱼，而且除了嘴巴，浑身上下都很漂亮。他的后背是蓝色的，像剑鱼那样，而肚子是银色的，他的皮又光滑又好看。他长得很像剑鱼，就那张大嘴不像，这时他紧闭着嘴巴，快速地向前游动，就在海面下方，高耸的背鳍刀子般划破水面，一点也不晃动。在他紧闭的双唇内部，是八排向内倾斜的牙齿。它们不是大多数鲨鱼那种常见的金字塔形牙齿。它们的形状像人用手模仿鹰爪时的手指。它们几乎有老人的手指那么长，两边都锋利得像剃刀。这种鱼天生就是海里的霸王，他们游得很快，体格强壮，武器精良，完全没有天敌。这时他游得更快了，因为他嗅到更新鲜的血腥味，蓝色的背鳍划水而来。

看到他冲过来的样子，老人知道这是条无所畏惧的鲨鱼，他想怎样就怎样。他准备好鱼枪，用绳子绑好，同时观察着鲨鱼的来势。绳子不够长，因为有些被他割下来绑住那鱼了。

这时老人的头脑清醒又好用，他充满了决心，但希望很渺茫。好事总是不长久，他想。观察着鲨鱼靠近时，他看了大鱼一眼。或者这终归是一场梦，他想。我无法阻止他攻击我，但也许能制服他。利齿鲨，他想。遇到你真他妈的倒霉。

鲨鱼迅速接近船尾，当他攻击大鱼时，老人看到他把嘴张开了，眼睛很怪异，咬住尾巴上面的肉，咬进去时牙齿嘎吱嘎吱地响。鲨鱼的头露出水面，他的后背也在往上升，老人能听见大鱼的皮肉被撕裂的声音，这时他用鱼枪猛地刺进鲨鱼的头，就刺在他的双眼连成的线和鼻梁线的交接处。其实老人没有看到这些线。他只看到那厚实的、尖尖的蓝色鱼头，那双大眼睛，还有嘎吱作响的、吞噬一切的鱼嘴。但那个部位是鱼脑所在，所以老人攻击它。他用血肉模糊的双手握紧鱼枪，竭尽全力从那里插进去。他并没指望能插中，但他充满了决心和愤恨。

鲨鱼翻了个身，老人看到他的眼睛全无生气，随后他又翻身了，给自己绕上两圈绳索。老人知道他已经死了，但鲨鱼不肯承认。他肚皮朝天，尾巴扑腾着，嘴巴咔嗒咔嗒地张开又合上，像快艇般破浪而行。海面被他的尾巴翻出白浪，他有四分之三的身体露出水上，这时连着鱼枪的细绳变得很紧，抖了几下，随即被绷断了。鲨鱼静静地在水面浮了片刻，老人看着他。然后他慢慢地沉下去。

“他拿走了大概四十磅鱼肉。”老人说。他还拿走了我的鱼枪和绳索，他想，现在我的鱼又流血了，会引来别的鲨鱼。

自从那鱼遭到撕咬之后，老人再也不忍心去看他。那鱼遇袭时他很心痛，好像受攻击的是他自己。

但我杀了那条袭击我的鱼的鲨鱼，老人想。上帝作证，我见过很多巨大的利齿鲨，但他是我见过最大的。

好事总是不长久，他想。现在我宁愿这是一场梦，我宁愿从来没有钓到这条鱼，孤独地躺在床上看报纸。

“但好汉不是为失败而生的，”他说，“好汉可以被毁灭，但绝不能被打败。”不过我很遗憾杀了那条鱼，他想。现在倒霉的时候就要来了，可是我连鱼枪都没有。利齿鲨很残忍，而且能干、强壮又聪明。但我比他更加聪明。也许并不，他想。也许我只是拥有更好的武器。

“别想啦，老头子，”他说，“照着这条线路前进吧，顺其自然就好了。”

但我必须要想，他想。因为这是我仅剩的牵挂了。还有棒球。不知道伟大的狄马乔会不会欣赏我那样刺中鲨鱼的脑袋？那不是什么了不起的事，他想。任何人都能做到的。但你不觉得我的双手就像骨刺那样拖累了我吗？我不知道。我的脚后跟从来没有毛病，除了那次游泳时踩到魟鱼[58]，被他刺中脚后跟，整条小腿都麻痹了，疼得难以忍受。

“想些开心的事情吧，老头子，”他说，“你离家越来越近了。去掉四十磅鱼肉，这船航行起来更轻快啦。”

他非常清楚小船驶入海流中央后会发生什么事情。但现在他完全没有办法。

“对了，”他说，“我可以把小刀绑在船桨的把手上。”

他用手臂夹住舵柄，又用脚踩住帆索，将小刀绑好。

“好啦，”他说，“我还是个老头子。但我并不是没有武器。”

海风很强劲，他航行得很好。他只看着那鱼的前半身，心里又燃起了希望。

傻子才没有希望呢，他想。只是我相信这是罪过。别想什么罪过了，他想。麻烦已经够多了，你还想什么罪过。再说我也不懂这些。

我不懂这些，也未必相信。或许杀死那鱼算是罪过吧。哪怕我是为了谋生和养活许多人而杀了他。但这么说来一切都是罪过。别想什么罪过。现在想已经太迟了，有些人还靠这个赚钱呢。让他们去想吧。你生来就是渔夫，就好比鱼生来就是鱼。圣佩德罗[59]是渔夫，伟大的狄马乔的父亲也是。

但他喜欢思考所有跟他有关的事情，由于船上没有书报可以读，他也买不起收音机，所以他想了很多，总是思考着罪过。你杀那条鱼，不光是为了谋生和卖给别人当食物，他想。你也出于骄傲而杀他，因为你是个渔夫。他活着时你爱他，他死了你也爱他。如果你爱他，那么杀害他就不是罪过。或者是更严重的罪过？

“你想得太多啦，老头子。”他说。

但你高兴杀掉那条利齿鲨，他想。他和你相同，也是靠活鱼生存。他不吃腐肉，也不像有些鲨鱼那样，什么都吃。他既漂亮又高贵，而且不知畏惧为何物。

“我是为了自卫才杀他的，”老人说，“而且杀得干净利落。”

再说，他想，从某种意义上来说，每样东西都杀死别的东西。捕鱼虽然养活了我，但也把我害惨了。其实是那孩子养活了我，他想。我千万不能太过自欺。

他把身子探出船外，从鲨鱼咬开的伤口撕下一块鱼肉。他仔细品尝着，发现那鱼肉既优质又美味。他很结实，汁水也多，像牛肉，但它不是红色的。吃起来完全不苦涩，他知道这放到市场上能卖最好的价钱。可惜没有办法阻止他的气味在海里扩散，老人知道接下来的时光会很难熬。

海风很稳定。它的方向有点变化，现在是朝东北吹，他知道这意味着风不会停。老人向前方望去，但既看不见船帆，也看不见任何船只的船身或冒出的烟雾。只有飞鱼跃过他的船头，朝两边游开，还有几片黄色的马尾藻。他甚至连鸟都看不到。

小船航行了两个小时，他一直靠在船尾休息着，有时就吃几口那蓝枪鱼的肉，想要好好休息，恢复体力，就在这时他看见两条鲨鱼中的第一条。

“哎。”他惊叫起来。这声惊呼的含意是无法言传的，如果有人感到铁钉将他的双手钉在木头上，也许会发出这个声音。

“柠檬鲨[60]。”他说。这时他已经看见第二条鲨鱼正紧随着前面那条游过来，也已经从那三角形的棕色鱼鳍和鱼尾摆动的样子认出他们就是那种鼻子扁平的鲨鱼。他们嗅到了血腥味，显得很兴奋，他们饿晕了头，在兴奋中忽而找不到血腥味，忽而又找到了。但他们追得越来越近。

老人把帆索系牢，又将舵柄固定住。然后他拿起绑着小刀的船桨。他尽量轻轻地提着它，因为他的双手痛得不听话。他让抓住船桨的双手依次张开又合上，让它们放松一些。他牢牢地握紧船桨，这样它们就能忍住痛，不会临阵退缩，同时观察着两条鲨鱼的来势。现在他能看见他们宛如铁铲的扁平脑袋，和末端呈白色的胸鳍。这种鲨鱼是很讨厌的，他们的味道很难闻，既吃活鱼，也吃腐肉，饿急了还会咬船桨或者船舵。正是这些鲨鱼，会趁海龟浮在海面睡着时咬掉海龟的手和脚，饥饿时还会袭击水里的人，哪怕那人身上并没有鱼的鲜血或黏液的气味。

“哎，”老人说，“柠檬鲨啊柠檬鲨，来吧。”

他们来了。但他们并不像先前的灰鲭鲨那样直奔而来。其中一条翻身钻入船底，当他猛扯那鱼时，老人能感到小船的晃动。另外那条用眯斜的黄眼睛看着老人，然后迅速地游过来，张开半圆形的大嘴巴，攻击那鱼已经被咬过的地方。他褐色的头顶有道清楚的纹路，那纹路后面就是大脑和脊髓相连的地方，老人将船桨上的刀插进去，抽出来，再反复地去戳进那鲨鱼猫眼似的黄眼睛。鲨鱼松口沉到水底，死前还不忘将他咬到的肉吞下去。

小船仍在摇晃，因为另外那条鲨鱼正在水里吃着大鱼，老人松开帆索，以便小船可以打横，让鲨鱼从船底露出来。看到鲨鱼时，他把身体探出船外，猛力朝他戳下去。他只戳在肉上，鱼皮很结实，他的刀几乎刺不进去。反弹的力量弄疼的不仅是他的手，还有他的肩膀。但那鲨鱼很快冒出头来，老人看到他紧贴着大鱼，鼻子露出水面，赶紧把刀刺进那扁平的脑袋中央。老人抽出刀刃，对准伤口又捅下去。他仍然咬着大鱼不放，老人刺瞎他的左眼。鲨鱼还是不肯松口。

“不松口啊？”老人说，他把刀扎进脊骨和大脑的交接处。这次很容易就扎进去，他感到里面的软骨被刺裂了。老人抽回船桨，用刀刃去把鲨鱼的嘴撬开。他扭转了刀刃，看到鲨鱼松口沉下去时，他说：“去吧，柠檬鲨。沉到一英里深的海底去吧。去看看你的朋友，或者那也许是你的妈妈。”

老人擦净刀刃，放下船桨。然后他系好帆索，船帆涨满了风，他让小船重新照原来的线路前进。

“他们咬掉的鱼肉肯定有四分之一，而且都是最好的，”他说，“我真希望这是一场梦，我从来没有钓到他。鱼啊，对不起。这全都要怪我。”他沉默了，这时也没心情去看那鱼。那鱼流了很多血，又被海水浸湿，看上去是银灰色的，像镜子的背面，而那些横纹依然清晰。

“鱼啊，我不该出海这么远，”他说，“这对你对我都不好。对不起，鱼。”

好啦，他对自己说。去看看那把小刀绑得怎么样，有没有松开。然后让你的手做好准备，因为更多的鲨鱼就要来了。

老人检查了绑在船桨把手上的小刀，然后说：“要是有块磨石就好啦。我应该带块磨石的。”你应该带的东西多着呢，他想。但你又没有带，老头子。现在没空去想那些你没有的工具。好好想想怎么利用手头的东西。

“你给了我很多忠告，”他说，“我听得烦死了。”

他用手臂夹住舵柄，双手浸泡在水里，小船继续前进。

“最后那鲨鱼咬掉多少鱼肉，只有上帝知道了，”他说，“但这船现在轻了很多。”他不愿去想那惨遭撕咬的鱼腹。他知道那鲨鱼刚才每朝上一冲，就有块鱼肉被咬下，现在那鱼流出的血痕又宽又长，就像大海里的高速公路，所有鲨鱼都会紧跟而来。

他是条足够让人整个冬天衣食无忧的鱼，老人想。别想啦。还是赶紧休息，处理双手，好好保护剩下的鱼肉吧。我的手有血腥味倒不要紧，因为水里的血腥味已经很浓。再说它们也没流很多血。手上的伤口都不严重。流血也许还能让左手别再抽筋。

现在我该想些什么呢？他想。什么也别想。我必须什么都别想，耐心等待更多的鲨鱼。我真希望这是一场梦，他想。但谁知道呢？也许最终会有个好结果。

随后来的鲨鱼是一条牛鲨[61]。他的架势很像到槽边觅食的猪，只是他的嘴巴比猪大多了，足以让你把脑袋放进去。老人让他袭击那鱼，然后把船桨上的刀插进他的大脑。可是那鲨鱼打滚时猛然后退，把刀刃弄断了。

老人坐下来掌舵。他都不看那大鲨鱼，任由他慢慢沉入海底，从大变小，最后变得极小。老人本来很喜欢欣赏这个过程。但他现在连看都不看。

“我只有鱼钩了，”他说，“但它没有用。我还有两把船桨，船舵和短木棒。”

他们把我打垮了，他想。我太老了，没法敲死他们。但只要船桨、船舵和短木棒还在，我就会试试看。

他又把双手放到海水里去浸。这时已近黄昏，他放眼望去，只见到大海和天空。天空中的风比原来更大了，他希望很快就能看见陆地。

“你累啦，老头子，”他说，“你累透了。”

没有鲨鱼来袭击他，直到日落时分。

老人看见几个褐色的鱼鳍破浪而来，大鱼在海里留下的血痕肯定扩散得又长又广。他们甚至都不用确定血腥味的来源。他们直接朝着小船并排游过来。

他固定好舵柄，系紧帆索，伸手到船尾的木板下方去摸那根短木棒。它其实是船桨的柄，从一根断桨上锯下来的，有两三英尺长。老人只能单手挥舞它，因为它有个把手，于是他用右手抓紧它，活动了几下，观察着鲨鱼的来势。他们都是柠檬鲨。

我必须让第一条咬住大鱼，再打他的鼻尖或者脑袋的正上方，他想。

两条鲨鱼并排靠近，当看到离他最近那条张开嘴巴，咬住大鱼银色的鱼身，老人高高举起木棒，重重地敲在那条鲨鱼宽阔的天灵盖上。木棒落下时，他感觉像是击中了弹性十足的橡胶。但他也感觉到坚硬的骨头，那鲨鱼松开大鱼往下沉，老人又用力猛敲他的鼻尖。

另外那条鲨鱼已经来了又走，这时他又张开嘴巴冲过来。他猛撞大鱼又合上两排利牙时，老人能看见白花花的鱼肉从他嘴角溅出来。他挥起木棒，只打中了头部，鲨鱼朝他看看，将那块肉扯下。看到他准备溜开把鱼肉吞下，老人的木棒又往下朝他打去，可惜只打在他橡胶般皮实的身上。

“来啊，柠檬鲨，”老人说，“有种你再来啊。”

那鲨鱼冲了过来，老人趁他合上嘴巴时打了他。老人拼命将木棒举得很高，狠狠地打了他。这次他感觉到鲨鱼脑后的骨头，看到那鲨鱼呆滞地把鱼肉咬掉，准备从大鱼身边潜入水底，老人又打了他那个部位。

老人观察着，等待他再来，但鲨鱼再也没有出现。然后他看见有条鲨鱼在海面上绕着圈子游动。他没有看到另外那条的鱼鳍。

我应该杀不死他们，他想。我在年轻力壮时是可以的。但我让他们都受了重伤，他们肯定是很难受的。我要是能用双手握紧棒球棍，肯定能把第一条给杀了。哪怕是现在，他想。

他没心情去看大鱼。他知道鱼身已被毁掉一半。太阳早在他跟两条鲨鱼搏斗时下山。

“天很快就要黑了，”他说，“到时我可以看见灯火通明的哈瓦那。如果看到滨海新区的零散灯光，那就意味着我的方向太偏东了。”

现在我离海岸不会太远，他想。我希望大家不要太担心。当然，只有那孩子会担心。但我肯定他对我有信心。许多年纪大的渔夫会担心。其他人也会的，他想。我生活的这个乡镇很友好。

他再也不能跟大鱼说话，因为那鱼被毁坏得很厉害。随后他想到了几句话。

“半鱼啊，”他说，“你原本是完整的鱼。对不起啦，我出海那么远。我毁了我们两个。但我们杀了许多鲨鱼，你和我，也重创了其他几条。老鱼啊，你杀死过多少呢？你头上那根长矛可不是白长的。”

老人忍不住想，要是大鱼能够自由地游动，他会用什么方法来对付鲨鱼。我应该把他的长嘴砍下来和鲨鱼打架，他想。但小船上没有斧头，连把刀都没有。

如果能砍下，我就把它绑在船桨的柄上，那是多好的武器啊。那我们就可以联手对付他们啦。要是今晚他们来了，你会怎么做呢？你能怎么做呢？

“跟他们打啊，”他说，“我要跟他们打到我死为止。”

但这时天已全黑，他却看不到通明的灯火，也见不着零散的灯光，只有风持续地吹着船帆，他觉得也许他已经死了。他并拢两手，感受着手掌。手掌并没有死，只要张开合上，他就能感到活生生的痛。他让后背倚着船尾，知道他没有死。他的肩膀告诉了他。

我先前许愿说，要是抓住大鱼，我会念很多遍经文，他想。但我现在太累了，没力气念。我最好拿起麻袋，把它披在肩上。

他在船尾躺下，掌控着船舵，眼望天边，希望能看到哈瓦那的灯火。我有半条鱼，他想。也许我会有把半条鱼带回家的运气。我应该有点运气的。不，他说。你出海太远，运气都被冲掉了。

“别傻了，”他说，“保持清醒，好好掌舵。也许你还有很多运气呢。”

“要是有人卖运气，我倒是愿意买一些。”他说。

买运气需要付出什么代价呢？他想。弄丢了鱼枪，弄断了刀，弄破了两只手，这能换来运气吗？

“也许可以吧，”他说，“你试过用海上的八十四天来买。他们差点也卖给你了。”

我千万别胡思乱想，他想。运气这种东西有很多面目，谁能认出她呢？我愿意付出任何代价来换取她。我希望我能看见电灯发出的光芒，他想。我希望的事情太多了。但目前我只有这个愿望。他扭动身体，试图找个舒服的姿势来掌舵，而引发的疼痛让他知道他没有死。

等到他终于看见远方的城里灯光在海面上闪烁，时间肯定已经是夜里十点左右了。它们起初只是依稀可辨，如同月出之前微茫的天光，然后渐渐变得明亮，在风浪越来越大的海那边。他掌舵让小船朝着灯光航行，想到很快就要进入海流的边缘[62]。

这下全完了，他想。他们可能会再袭击我。但一个人在黑暗中，又没有武器，能怎么办呢？

他浑身僵硬发疼，而夜里的寒气又加剧了他身上的伤口和所有劳损部位的痛楚。我希望不用再打了，他想。我真的希望我不用再打了。

但到了半夜，他又打起来了，这次他知道打了也没用。他们是成群结队来的，纷纷向那鱼扑去，他只能看清他们的背鳍在水面上划出的波纹和他们身上的磷光。他用木棒去打那些鲨鱼的头，他听得见他们上下排牙齿相撞的咔嗒声，也听到小船由于他们在水底撕咬那鱼而晃动的声音。他气急败坏地凭着感觉和听觉挥棒乱打，然后感到有什么东西抓住了木棒，木棒随即不见了。

他猛地将舵柄从船舵上扭下来，用它乱打乱砍，双手紧紧地把它抓住，反复地朝水里戳去。但这时他们已经到了船头，前赴后继地往上冲，扯下许多在海底闪闪发亮的鱼肉，然后转个身又来撕咬。

最后有条鲨鱼直奔鱼头而来，他知道这下彻底完了。鲨鱼咬住大鱼厚实的鱼头，却咬不动，老人抡起舵柄，打在鲨鱼的头上。他打了两下，三下。他听见舵柄断了，于是用断开的末端朝鲨鱼刺去。他感觉到刺进去了，知道它很锋利，于是又用力往里扎。鲨鱼松了口，翻身游走。那是这回来的鲨鱼群中的最后一条。再也没有什么可以让他们吃了。

老人几乎无法呼吸，他感到喉头有股奇怪的味道。有点铜腥味，有点甜腻，他顿时害怕起来。但那东西不是很多。

他把那口东西吐到海里，然后说：“吃掉吧，柠檬鲨。去做梦吧，梦到你们杀了人。”

他知道他终于被打败了，被彻底地打败了，万念俱灰地回到船尾，发现那半截舵柄还能插进船舵的孔，让他可以掌控方向。他把麻袋披在肩上，让小船驶上回家的航线。小船轻快地前进，他没有任何念头和感觉。他对周遭的一切已经木然，只是全神贯注地让小船尽快回到家乡的港口。夜里有些鲨鱼袭击了大鱼的残骸，就像有人从餐桌上捡剩饭吃那样。老人丝毫不去注意他们，也不去注意任何事情，只顾专心掌舵。他只注意到舷边没有沉重的东西，小船的航行变得很轻快。

这船很好，他想。船身还好好的，只是舵柄坏了。那是很容易更换的。

他能感觉到他已经驶入海流，也能看见海滨住宅区的灯光。他知道他所在的方位，回家是轻而易举的事了。

反正风是我们的朋友，他想。有时候是，他又想。大海里有我们的朋友和敌人。至于床，他想，床是我的朋友。就是床，他想。床是好东西，他想。你很容易就被打败了，他想。我以前倒是不知道你这么容易被打败。也不知道什么能打败你，他想。

“没事啦，”他说，“我出海太远了。”

他驶入小港时，露台酒吧的灯光已经熄灭，他知道大家都睡了。此前风渐吹渐大，这时已经刮得很猛。然而港湾里静悄悄的，他把船驶上那片在岩石下方的碎石滩。没有人来帮他，所以他只能走下船，尽量把小船往上拉，再将她系牢在岩石上。

他拔下桅杆，卷起船帆，又将其扎紧。然后他扛着桅杆，开始朝上爬。这时他才发现他有多累。他歇了片刻，回头望去，看见在街灯的照射中，那鱼的大尾巴高高地竖起在船尾之后。他看见那鱼光秃秃的白色脊骨，黑乎乎的巨大头部和突出的长嘴，以及完全没有皮肉的鱼身。

他又开始往上爬，爬到顶上跌倒了，在地上躺了很久，而桅杆依然挂在他的肩上。他挣扎着想要站起来。但那太难了，他扛着桅杆坐在那里，望着小路。有只猫在路那边走过，忙着它自己的事情，老人看着它。然后他只是望着那条路。

最后他把桅杆放下，站起身来。他捡起桅杆，把它放到肩上，开始沿着小路走回家。他在路上累得坐下来歇了五次才回到他的茅屋。

进了茅屋，他把桅杆靠着墙放好。黑暗中他摸到水瓶，喝了几口。然后他在床上趴下。他拉过毛毯盖住肩膀，接着盖住后背和双腿，脸趴在报纸上，双臂伸开，掌心朝上，就这样睡着了。

男孩清晨从门口朝里看时，他仍在睡觉。风刮得很大，那些小渔船没法出海，所以男孩睡了个懒觉，醒后便到老人的茅屋来——他每天早上都来的。男孩看到老人在呼吸，又看见老人的手，随即哭了起来。他非常安静地走出去给老人弄些咖啡来，一路上哭个不停。

许多渔夫围着小船，观看绑在船边的东西，有一个卷起裤管站在水里，用钓索去量那鱼的残骸。

男孩没有走下去。他已经到船边看过了，还请了个渔夫替他看管小船。

“他怎么样啦？”有个渔夫喊道。

“在睡觉。”男孩大声说。他不在意被人看见他在哭。“别让人去打扰他。”

“他从头到尾有十八英尺长。”那个在测量的渔夫喊道。

“我相信有这么长。”男孩说。

他走进露台酒吧，要了一罐咖啡。

“要热的，要加很多牛奶和白糖。”

“别的不要了吗？”

“不要了。回头我看他能吃些什么。”

“那条鱼真大啊，”老板说，“从来没见过这么大的鱼。你昨天抓到的那两条也很好。”

“我那鱼算个屁。”男孩说着又哭了起来。

“你想喝点什么吗？”老板问。

“不想，”男孩说，“告诉大家别去打扰圣迭戈。我很快就回来。”

“告诉他我觉得很可惜。”

“多谢。”男孩说。

男孩带着那罐热咖啡回到老人的茅屋，在他身边坐下，等他醒过来。起初他好像就要醒了。但他又沉沉地睡去，男孩到马路对面去借些木柴来加热咖啡。

老人终于醒了。

“别坐起来，”男孩说，“把这个喝了。”他在玻璃杯里倒了些咖啡。

老人拿过杯子把它喝掉。

“他们把我打败了，马诺林，”他说，“他们真的把我打败了。”

“他没有打败你。那条鱼没有。”

“是的。确实没有。我是后来才被打败的。”

“佩德里科在看管小船和渔具。你想要怎么处理那鱼头呢？”

“让佩德里科把它切碎，放到鱼笼里用。”

“那长嘴呢？”

“你想要就给你。”

“我想要的，”男孩说，“现在我们必须来商量别的事情。”

“他们去找我了吧？”

“当然啦。还出动了海岸卫队和飞机。”

“海非常大，渔船又很小，很难看到的。”老人说。他发现有人可以聊天真好，他再也不用自言自语或者对着大海说话了。“我很想念你，”他说，“你的收获怎么样？”

“第一天抓到一条。第二天一条，第三天两条。”

“非常好。”

“我们又可以一起捕鱼了。”

“不要。我不走运。我再也没有好运啦。”

“去他妈的好运，”男孩说，“我会带来好运的。”

“你家里人会有意见吧？”

“我不管。我昨天抓到了两条。但我们要一起捕鱼，因为我还有很多要学。”

“我们必须弄根锋利的长枪，随时把它放在船上。你可以找辆废旧的福特汽车，拿它的钢板弹簧来做枪头。我们可以到水城[63]去打磨它。要把它磨得很利，但别用火烧，那样容易断。我的刀就断了。”

“我会再去弄把刀，也会去搞钢板弹簧。这阵大风还要吹多久呢？”

“三天吧。也许更久。”

“我会把一切都准备好，”男孩说，“你照顾好你的手吧，老人家。”

“我知道怎样照顾他们。昨晚我吐了一些奇怪的东西，感觉胸膛里有什么东西碎了。”

“那你要把那个也养好，”男孩说，“躺下吧，老人家，我去给你带干净的衬衣来。再带些东西来吃。”

“我不在这几天的报纸，你也带几张来啊。”老人说。

“你要赶快好起来啊，因为我还有很多东西要学，你什么都能教我。你受过多少苦？”

“很多啊。”老人说。

“我去把食物和报纸带来，”男孩说，“好好休息，老人家。我会去药店弄些东西来治你的手。”

“别忘了跟佩德里科说鱼头是他的。”

“好的。我会记得的。”

男孩出门沿着珊瑚石铺成的崎岖小路走，路上又哭起来了。

那天下午露台酒吧来了许多游客，有个女游客俯视着水面，在许多空的啤酒罐和死的梭子鱼之间，她看见一根又大又长的白脊骨，末端连着大尾巴，随着海潮起伏摇摆——东风在港口外面吹起了很大的海浪。

“那是什么？”她指着大鱼长长的脊骨问服务员。那残骸现在只是垃圾了，等着潮水把它卷走。

“Tiburon[64]，”服务员说，“鲨鱼。”他准备解释事情的经过。

“我以前还不知道鲨鱼的尾巴有这么漂亮好看呢。”

“我也是。”她的男性同伴说。

路那头，老人在他的茅屋里又睡着了。他仍然是趴着睡的，男孩坐在旁边看着他。老人正在梦见狮子。

版本和注释说明

本书根据纽约Charles Scribner’s Sons出版公司1952年版的The Old Man and the Sea译出。原书无注，所有注释均为译者添加。

[1]湾流：即墨西哥湾暖流，是大西洋上重要的洋流。起源于墨西哥湾，经过佛罗里达海峡沿着美国的东部海域与加拿大纽芬兰省向北，最后跨越北大西洋通往北极海。

[2]旗鱼：也称马林鱼，是多种大型掠食性海鱼的总称，共有两科四属十二种，其中旗鱼科枪鱼属的大西洋蓝枪鱼体型最为庞大，长可达四米以上，重可达一千八百磅。下文提及圣迭戈捕获的大鱼即是大西洋蓝枪鱼。

[3]沙丁鱼：许多小型海鱼的总称，主要指鲱鱼，它们以小型甲壳类动物、磷虾和小鱼为食，也是海豹、鲸、鳕鱼和其他大型肉食鱼类等天然掠食者的食物，常被用于做深海垂钓的鱼饵。

[4]鲯鳅：中型海鱼，俗称鬼头刀，属肉食性鱼类，以飞鱼、沙丁鱼或其他小型鱼类为食。

[5]蚊子海岸：指洪都拉斯、尼加拉瓜一带濒临加勒比海的沿岸地区。

[6]大王棕：又称大王椰子，棕榈科大王棕属，常绿乔木，原产古巴、牙买加、巴拿马，是古巴的国树。

[7]戈布勒圣母像：戈布勒是古巴第二大城市圣迭戈市附近的小镇，传说在17世纪初，圣母曾在戈布勒显灵，后来当地人建造神庙供奉圣母，称为戈布勒圣母，是古巴的主保圣人。

[8]扬基队：即美国职业棒球大联盟的纽约扬基队，隶属于美国联盟。

[9]克里夫兰印第安人队：主场位于俄亥俄州克里夫兰市的职业棒球队，和扬基队相同，也隶属于美国联盟。

[10]狄马乔：即约瑟夫·保罗·狄马乔（Joseph Paul DiMaggio,1914－1999），是纽约扬基队的明星球员，曾三次获选为年度最有价值球员，十三度入选全明星赛。

[11]底特律老虎队：主场位于密西根州底特律市的职业棒球队，隶属于美国联盟。

[12]辛辛那提红人队和芝加哥白袜队：辛辛那提红人队是主场位于俄亥俄州辛辛那提市的职业棒球队，隶属于国家联盟；芝加哥白袜队的主场则位于伊利诺伊州的芝加哥市，隶属于美国联盟。1919年，这两支球队会师世界棒球大赛。当年赌风极盛，由于白袜队实力明显高出红人队，大量关注押注买白袜队获胜。但白袜队有几名主力球员收取黑金，最终输掉了比赛，史称“黑袜丑闻”。老人向男孩提及这两支球队有调侃的意思。

[13]阿特威啤酒：阿特威（Hatuey）是16世纪初印第安泰诺族的酋长，是伊斯帕尼奥拉岛的原住民。在西班牙殖民者入侵古巴东部时，阿特威率领游击队抵抗，终因叛徒告密，被西班牙人捉住，活活烧死，后来被追认为古巴的国家英雄。1927年，古巴圣迭戈市的阿特威啤酒厂推出以这位民族英雄命名的啤酒，在市场上大受欢迎，一度是古巴最畅销的啤酒。

[14]美国联盟：成立于1899年，最早有八支球队，包括纽约扬基队、芝加哥白袜队、底特律老虎队、克里夫兰印第安人队等，现有三个分区十四支球队。

[15]另外那个联盟：即成立于1876年的国家联盟，现有三个分区十六支球队。该联盟在1903年和美国联盟合并成美国职业棒球大联盟。

[16]布鲁克林：即布鲁克林灰袜队，1890年加入国家联盟，后来改称布鲁克林躲闪者队，1958年迁往洛杉矶，现称洛杉矶躲闪者队。

[17]费城：即费城费城人队，1883年加入国家联盟。

[18]狄克·西斯勒：即理查德·艾伦·西斯勒（Richard Alan Sisler,1920－1998），1948年至1951年效力于费城人队，并在1950年入选国家联盟全明星队。

[19]旧公园球场：即席比公园球场，是费城人队的主场，1909年启用，是美国首座钢筋混凝土结构的球场，1970年停用。

[20]西斯勒的父亲：即乔治·哈罗德·西斯勒（George Harold Sisler,1893－1973），曾在国家联盟的圣路易斯棕袜队效力十五个赛季。

[21]约翰·何塞·麦格劳：即约翰·约瑟·麦格劳（John Joseph McGraw,1873－1934），是美国著名的棒球运动员和球队经理，曾先后担任巴尔的摩金莺队和纽约巨人队的经理，是国家联盟历史上获胜场数最多的经理。“何塞”（José）是英文的“约瑟”（Joseph）在西班牙语中的发音。

[22]杜洛切：即列奥·杜洛切（Leo Durocher, 1905－1991），美国著名的棒球运动员和球队经理，曾先后担任布鲁克林躲闪者队、纽约巨人队的经理，在国家联盟的历史上，他担任球队经理期间的获胜场数仅次于约翰·约瑟·麦格劳。

[23]卢克：即阿多尔夫·卢克（Adolfo Luque, 1890－1957），著名的古巴棒球运动员，曾先后效力于波士顿勇者队、辛辛那提红人队等。1935年从美国退役后，阿多尔夫·卢克曾在古巴几支棒球队担任经理。

[24]迈克·冈萨雷兹：即米古埃尔·安赫尔·冈萨雷兹·戈德罗（Miguel Angel González Cordero,1890－1977），著名的古巴棒球运动员和球队经理，曾先后效力于波士顿勇者队、辛辛那提红人队、纽约巨人队等美国职业棒球大联盟球队，自1915年起，他曾长期担任古巴哈瓦那球队的经理。

[25]加那利群岛：加那利群岛（Canary Islands）是大西洋中由七大火山岛屿组成的群岛，位于非洲西北海岸（摩洛哥和西撒哈拉）之外。该地区属于西班牙管辖，是西班牙的自治区。

[26]英寻：计量单位，每英寻大约等于1.82米。

[27]饵鱼：各类小鱼的总称，因可以被渔夫拿来当鱼饵而得名。

[28]飞鱼：飞鱼属硬骨鱼纲颌针鱼目，在动物分类学上称为飞鱼科。为了躲避金枪鱼、海豚和鲯鳅等掠食性鱼类的捕食，飞鱼会跃出水面，胸鳍张开在空中滑翔，其飞行距离可达百米以上。

[29]乌燕鸥：乌燕鸥是一种热带海鸟，属鸥科燕鸥属，成年乌燕鸥体长约36厘米，翼展可达94厘米。

[30]鲣鱼：也称柴鱼，是一种小型的海鱼，以小鱼、虾、乌贼等为食，是鲯鳅、旗鱼等大型鱼类的捕食对象。

[31]长鳍金枪鱼：长鳍金枪鱼是鲔鱼的一种，可以食用，因胸鳍约为体长的30%而得名，生活在热带和温带海洋及地中海，成年鱼体长约为1.5米，体重60公斤左右。

[32]蓝鲹：蓝鲹是一种中型海鱼，主要分布在大西洋，成年蓝鲹虽然最大可长到70厘米，但通常只有35厘米长。

[33]金鲹：最大的金鲹长可达一米，但常见的在40厘米以下，主要分布在大西洋西部的热带和亚热带地区。

[34]军舰鸟：军舰鸟是一种大型海鸟，成年鸟体长一米左右，翼展可达两米以上。

[35]僧帽水母：僧帽水母是一种生活在大西洋热带海域的管水母，由水母体和水螅体组成，触须有剧毒。

[36]英码：计量单位，每英码大约等于91厘米。

[37]绿海龟：绿海龟是一种大型的海洋爬行动物，生活在热带和亚热带海域。

[38]鹰嘴海龟：鹰嘴海龟是一种大型海龟，其龟壳色彩斑斓，即是珍贵的玳瑁。

[39]赤蠵龟：也称红海龟，广泛分布于世界各个温带和热带海域。

[40]棱皮龟：又称革龟，是当今世界最大的龟鳖类爬行动物。

[41]鼠海豚：鼠海豚其实并不是海豚，它是一种齿鲸。它背部黑色，腹部白色，以鱼、甲壳动物和乌贼为食。

[42]加泰罗尼亚：加泰罗尼亚位于西班牙东北部，是该国的自治区，因为临近地中海，该地区的渔业特别发达，出产质量上佳的钓索。

[43]黄林莺：也称森莺，属雀形目森莺科，主要分布在北美、南美和西印度群岛。

[44]信风：又称贸易风，指的是在低空从副热带高压带吹向赤道低气压带的风，北半球吹的是东北信风，南半球吹的是东南信风。信风经常会增加热带风暴的威力，影响大西洋、太平洋和印度洋沿海地区。信风每年反复稳定地出现，犹如潮汐有信，因此称为信风。古代商人们也利用信风的规律性做航海贸易，因此信风也被称为贸易风。

[45]天主经：也称主祷文，载于《新约·马太福音》第6章第9－13节。

[46]圣母经：圣母经是天主教徒向耶稣的母亲圣母玛利亚祷告时所念的经文，源自《新约·路加福音》第1章第28节。

[47]1947年，医生从狄马乔的左脚后跟取出了三英寸长的骨刺。1949年，狄马乔的右脚后跟又长了骨刺，导致他无法参加比赛。当年6月中旬，他克服了骨刺的痛苦重返赛场。

[48]斗鸡：斗鸡是一项在古巴很流行的娱乐活动，很多人同时利用斗鸡来赌钱。

[49]白楼镇：也译为卡萨布兰卡（Casablanca），古巴首都哈瓦那附近的一个地区。

[50]百火城：也译为西恩富戈斯（Cienfuegos），百火省的省会，在哈瓦那以南250公里，它是古巴主要的港口城市，也是蔗糖、咖啡和烟草的贸易中心。

[51]迈阿密：美国弗罗里达州港口城市，在古巴北方，和哈瓦那隔海相望。

[52]参宿七：位于猎户座，是夜空中第七亮的恒星。

[53]很长的海岛：指古巴主岛，该岛长1199公里，但平均宽不到100公里，显得特别狭长。

[54]吸盘鱼：也称鮣鱼，头上有吸盘，会吸附在大型鱼类、海龟或轮船之上。

[55]下桁：用于撑开船帆下部的横档。

[56]沙蚤：也称沙跳虾或滩虱，是一种陆生甲壳动物，属端足目跳虾科。

[57]灰鲭鲨：一种凶猛的鲨鱼，主要分布在温带和热带海域，游泳速度可达每小时74公里。灰鲭鲨以硬骨鱼为主食，包括鲭鱼、鲔鱼、鲣鱼及剑鱼，但也会吃其他鲨鱼、鼠海豚及海龟。

[58]魟鱼：也称草帽鱼、黄貂鱼，身体扁平，略呈圆形或菱形，软骨无鳞，胸鳍发达，如蝶展翅，尾呈鞭状，有毒刺。

[59]圣佩德罗：即耶稣的十二使徒之一圣彼得，根据《新约》的记载，他原本是个渔人。

[60]柠檬鲨：柠檬鲨是一种性情凶残的中型鲨鱼，主要分布于南北美洲的大西洋和太平洋热带、亚热带海域，成年柠檬鲨体长可达4米。

[61]牛鲨：也称真白鲨，能在淡水中生活，是一种凶猛的中型鲨鱼，成年牛鲨通常有两到三米长。

[62]墨西哥湾暖流因为温度比其他海水要高，是大量热带、亚热带鱼类的聚集地，许多大型的掠食性鱼类，比如鲨鱼，会顺着海流觅食。所以下文老人会担心鲨鱼。

[63]水城：也译为瓜纳瓦科阿（Guanabacoa），哈瓦那附近的小城。

[64]Tiburon：这是鲨鱼在西班牙文中对应的单词。

The Old Man and the Sea

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 color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.

“Santiago,” the boy said 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 because 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 you a beer on the Terrace and then we’ll take the stuff home.”

“Why not?” the old man said. “Between fishermen.”

They sat on the Terrace and many of the fishermen made fun of the old man and he was not angry. Others, of the older fishermen, looked at him and were sad. But they did not show it and they spoke politely about the current and the depths they had drifted their lines at and the steady good weather and of what they had seen. The successful fishermen of that day were already in and had butchered their marlin out and carried them laid full length across two planks, with two men staggering at the end of each plank, to the fish house where they waited for the ice truck to carry them to the market in Havana. Those who had caught sharks had taken them to the shark factory on the other side of the cove where they were hoisted on a block and tackle, their livers removed, their fins cut off and their hides skinned out and their flesh cut into strips for salting.

When the wind was in the east a smell came across the harbour from the shark factory; but today there was only the faint edge of the odour because the wind had backed into the north and then dropped off and it was pleasant and sunny on the Terrace.

“Santiago,” the boy said.

“Yes,” the old man said. He was holding his glass and thinking of many years ago.

“Can I go out to get sardines for you for tomorrow?”

“No. Go and play baseball. I can still row and Rogelio will throw the net.”

“I would like to go. If I cannot fish with you. I would like to serve in some way.”

“You bought me a beer,” the old man said. “You are already a man.”

“How old was I when you first took me in a boat?”

“Five and you nearly were killed when I brought the fish in too green and he nearly tore the boat to pieces. Can you remember?”

“I can remember the tail slapping and banging and the thwart breaking and the noise of the clubbing. I can remember you throwing me into the bow where the wet coiled lines were and feeling the whole boat shiver and the noise of you clubbing him like chopping a tree down and the sweet blood smell all over me.”

“Can you really remember that or did I just tell it to you?”

“I remember everything from when we first went together.”

The old man looked at him with his sun-burned, confident loving eyes.

“If you were my boy I’d take you out and gamble,” he said. “But you are your father’s and your mother’s and you are in a lucky boat.”

“May I get the sardines? I know where I can get four baits too.”

“I have mine left from today. I put them in salt in the box.”

“Let me get four fresh ones.”

“One,” the old man said. His hope and his confidence had never gone. But now they were freshening as when the breeze rises.

“Two,” the boy said.

“Two,” the old man agreed. “You didn’t steal them?”

“I would,” the boy said. “But I bought these.”

“Thank you,” the old man said. He was too simple to wonder when he had attained humility. But he knew he had attained it and he knew it was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true pride.

“Tomorrow is going to be a good day with this current,” he said.

“Where are you going?” the boy asked.

“Far out to come in when the wind shifts. I want to be out before it is light.”

“I’ll try to get him to work far out,” the boy said. “Then if you hook something truly big we can come to your aid.”

“He does not like to work too far out.”

“No,” the boy said. “But I will see something that he cannot see such as a bird working and get him to come out after dolphin.”

“Are his eyes that bad?”

“He is almost blind.”

“It is strange,” the old man said. “He never went turtle-ing. That is what kills the eyes.”

“But you went turtle-ing for years off the Mosquito Coast and your eyes are good.”

“I am a strange old man”

“But are you strong enough now for a truly big fish?”

“I think so. And there are many tricks.”

“Let us take the stuff home,” the boy said. “So I can get the cast net and go after the sardines.”

They picked up the gear from the boat. The old man carried the mast on his shoulder and the boy carried the wooden boat with the coiled, hard-braided brown lines, the gaff and the harpoon with its shaft. The box with the baits was under the stern of the skiff along with the club that was used to subdue the big fish when they were brought alongside. No one would steal from the old man but it was better to take the sail and the heavy lines home as the dew was bad for them and, though he was quite sure no local people would steal from him, the old man thought that a gaff and a harpoon were needless temptations to leave in a boat.

They walked up the road together to the old man’s shack and went in through its open door. The old man leaned the mast with its wrapped sail against the wall and the boy put the box and the other gear beside it. The mast was nearly as long as the one room of the shack. The shack was made of the tough budshields of the royal palm which are called guano and in it there was a bed, a table, one chair, and a place on the dirt floor to cook with charcoal. On the brown walls of the flattened, overlapping leaves of the sturdy fibered guano there was a picture in color of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and another of the Virgin of Cobre. These were relics of his wife. Once there had been a tinted photograph of his wife on the wall but he had taken it down because it made him too lonely to see it and it was on the shelf in the corner under his clean shirt.

“What do you have to eat?” the boy asked.

“A pot of yellow rice with fish. Do you want some?”

“No. I will eat at home. Do you want me to make the fire?”

“No. I will make it later on. Or I may eat the rice cold.”

“May I take the cast net?”

“Of course.”

There was no cast net and the boy remembered when they had sold it. But they went through this fiction every day. There was no pot of yellow rice and fish and the boy knew this too.

“Eighty-five is a lucky number,” the old man said. “How would you like to see me bring one in that dressed out over a thousand pounds?”

“I’ll get the cast net and go for sardines. Will you sit in the sun in the doorway?”

“Yes. I have yesterday’s paper and I will read the baseball.”

The boy did not know whether yesterday’s paper was a fiction too. But the old man brought it out from under the bed.

“Perico gave it to me at the bodega,” he explained.

“I’ll be back when I have the sardines. I’ll keep yours and mine together on ice and we can share them in the morning. When I come back you can tell me about the baseball.”

“The Yankees cannot lose.”

“But I fear the Indians of Cleveland.”

“Have faith in the Yankees my son. Think of the great DiMaggio.”

“I fear both the Tigers of Detroit and the Indians of Cleveland.”

“Be careful or you will fear even the Reds of Cincinnati and the White Sax of Chicago.”

“You study it and tell me when I come back.”

“Do you think we should buy a terminal of the lottery with an eighty-five? Tomorrow is the eighty-fifth day.”

“We can do that,” the boy said. “But what about the eighty-seven of your great record?”

“It could not happen twice. Do you think you can find an eighty-five?”

“I can order one.

“One sheet. That’s two dollars and a half. Who can we borrow that from?”

“That’s easy. I can always borrow two dollars and a half.”

“I think perhaps I can too. But I try not to borrow. First you borrow. Then you beg.”

“Keep warm old man,” the boy said. “Remember we are in September.”

“The month when the great fish come,” the old man said. “Anyone can be a fisherman in May.”

“I go now for the sardines,” the boy said.

When the boy came back the old man was asleep in the chair and the sun was down. The boy took the old army blanket off the bed and spread it over the back of the chair and over the old man’s shoulders. They were strange shoulders, still powerful although very old, and the neck was still strong too and the creases did not show so much when the old man was asleep and his head fallen forward. His shirt had been patched so many times that it was like the sail and the patches were faded to many different shades by the sun. The old man’s head was very old though and with his eyes closed there was no life in his face. The newspaper lay across his knees and the weight of his arm held it there in the evening breeze. He was barefooted.

The boy left him there and when he came back the old man was still asleep.

“Wake up old man,” the boy said and put his hand on one of the old man’s knees.

The old man opened his eyes and for a moment he was coming back from a long way away.Then he smiled.

“What have you got?” he asked.

“Supper,” said the boy. “We’re going to have supper.”

“I’m not very hungry.”

“Come on and eat. You can’t fish and not eat.”

“I have,” the old man said getting up and taking the newspaper and folding it. Then he started to fold the blanket.

“Keep the blanket around you,” the boy said. “You’ll not fish without eating while I’m alive.”

“Then live a long time and take care of yourself,” the old man said. “What are we eating?”

“Black beans and rice, fried bananas, and some stew.”

The boy had brought them in a two-decker metal container from the Terrace. The two sets of knives and forks and spoons were in his pocket with a paper napkin wrapped around each set.

“Who gave this to you?”

“Martin. The owner.”

“I must thank him.”

“I thanked him already,” the boy said. “You don’t need to thank him.”

“I’ll give him the belly meat of a big fish,” the old man said. “Has he done this for us more than once?”

“I think so.”

“I must give him something more than the belly meat then. He is very thoughtful for us.”

“He sent two beers.”

“I like the beer in cans best.”

“I know. But this is in bottles, Hatuey beer, and I take back the bottles.”

“That’s very kind of you,” the old man said. “Should we eat?”

“I’ve been asking you to,” the boy told him gently. “I have not wished to open the container until you were ready.”

“I’m ready now,” the old man said. “I only needed time to wash.”

Where did you wash? the boy thought. The village water supply was two streets down the road. I must have water here for him, the boy thought, and soap and a good towel. Why am I so thoughtless? I must get him another shirt and a jacket for the winter and some sort of shoes and another blanket.

“Your stew is excellent,” the old man said.

“Tell me about the baseball,” the boy asked him.

“In the American League it is the Yankees as I said,” the old man said happily.

“They lost today,” the boy told him.

“That means nothing. The great DiMaggio is himself again.”

“They have other men on the team.”

“Naturally. But he makes the difference. In the other league, between Brooklyn and Philadelphia I must take Brooklyn. But then I think of Dick Sisler and those great drives In the old park.”

“There was nothing ever like them. He hits the longest ball I have ever seen.”

“Do you remember when he used to come to the Terrace?I wanted to take him fishing but I was too timid to ask him. Then I asked you to ask him and you were too timid.”

“I know. It was a great mistake. He might have gone with us. Then we would have that for all of our lives.”

“I would like to take the great DiMaggio fishing,” the old man said. “They say his father was a fisherman. Maybe he was as poor as we are and would understand.”

“The great Sisler’s father was never poor and he, the father, was playing in the Big Leagues when he was my age.”

“When I was your age I was before the mast on a square rigged ship that ran to Africa and I have seen lions on the beaches in the evening.”

“I know. You told me.”

“Should we talk about Africa or about baseball?”

“Baseball I think,” the boy said. “Tell me about the great John J. McGraw.” He said Jota for J.

“He used to come to the Terrace sometimes too in the older days. But he was rough and harsh-spoken and difficult when he was drinking. His mind was on horses as well as baseball. At least he carried lists of horses at all times in his pocket and frequently spoke the names of horses on the telephone.”

“He was a great manager,” the boy said. “My father thinks he was the greatest.”

“Because he came here the most times,” the old man said. “If Durocher had continued to come here each year your father would think him the greatest manager.”

“Who is the greatest manager, really, Luque or Mike Gonzalez?”

“I think they are equal.”

“And the best fisherman is you.”

“No. I know others better.”

“Qué Va,” the boy said. “There are many good fishermen and some great ones. But there is only you.”

“Thank you. You make me happy. I hope no fish will come along so great that he will prove us wrong.”

“There is no such fish if you are still strong as you say.”

“I may not be as strong as I think,” the old man said. “But I know many tricks and I have resolution.”

“You ought to go to bed now so that you will be fresh in the morning. I will take the things back to the Terrace.”

“Good night then. I will wake you in the morning.”

“You’re my alarm clock,” the boy said.

“Age is my alarm clock,” the old man said. “Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?”

“I don’t know,” the boy said. “All I know is that young boys sleep late and hard.”

“I can remember it,” the old man said. “I’ll waken you in time.”

“I do not like for him to waken me. It is as though I were inferior.”

“I know.”

“Sleep well old man.”

The boy went out. They had eaten with no light on the table and the old man took off his trousers and went to bed in the dark. He rolled his trousers up to make a pillow, putting the newspaper inside them. He rolled himself in the blanket and slept on the other old newspapers that covered the springs of the bed.

He was asleep in a short time and he dreamed of Africa when he was a boy and the long golden beaches and the white beaches, so white they hurt your eyes, and the high capes and the great brown mountains. He lived along that coast now every night and in his dreams he heard the surf roar and saw the native boats come riding through it. He smelled the tar and oakum of the deck as he slept and he smelled the smell of Africa that the land breeze brought at morning.

Usually when he smelled the land breeze he woke up and dressed to go and wake the boy. But tonight the smell of the land breeze came very early and he knew it was too early in his dream and went on dreaming to see the white peaks of the Islands rising from the sea and then he dreamed of the different harbours and roadsteads of the Canary Islands.

He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and of the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy. He never dreamed about the boy. He simply woke, looked out the open door at the moon and unrolled his trousers and put them on. He urinated outside the shack and then went up the road to wake the boy. He was shivering with the morning cold. But he knew he would shiver himself warm and that soon he would be rowing.

The door of the house where the boy lived was unlocked and he opened it and walked in quietly with his bare feet. The boy was asleep on a cot in the first room and the old man could see him clearly with the light that came in from the dying moon. He took hold of one foot gently and held it until the boy woke and turned and looked at him. The old man nodded and the boy took his trousers from the chair by the bed and, sitting on the bed, pulled them on.

The old man went out the door and the boy came after him. He was sleepy and the old man put his arm across his shoulders and said, “I am sorry.”

“Qué Va,” the boy said. “It is what a man must do.”

They walked down the road to the old man’s shack and all along the road, in the dark, barefoot men were moving, carrying the masts of their boats.

When they reached the old man’s shack the boy took the rolls of line in the basket and the harpoon and gaff and the old man carried the mast with the furled sail on his shoulder.

“Do you want coffee?” the boy asked.

“We’ll put the gear in the boat and then get some.”

They had coffee from condensed milk cans at an early morning place that served fishermen.

“How did you sleep old man?” the boy asked. He was waking up now although it was still hard for him to leave his sleep.

“Very well, Manolin,” the old man said. “I feel confident today.”

“So do I,” the boy said. “Now I must get your sardines and mine and your fresh baits. He brings our gear himself. He never wants anyone to carry anything.”

“We’re different,” the old man said. “I let you carry things when you were five years old.”

“I know it,” the boy said. “I’ll be right back. Have another coffee. We have credit here.”

He walked off, bare-footed on the coral rocks, to the ice house where the baits were stored.

The old man drank his coffee slowly. It was all he would have all day and he knew that he should take it. For a long time now eating had bored him and he never carried a lunch. He had a bottle of water in the bow of the skiff and that was all he needed for the day.

The boy was back now with the sardines and the two baits wrapped in a newspaper and they went down the trail to the skiff, feeling the pebbled sand under their feet, and lifted the skiff and slid her into the water.

“Good luck old man.”

“Good luck,” the old man said. He fitted the rope lashings of the oars onto the thole pins and, leaning forward against the thrust of the blades in the water, he began to row out of the harbour in the dark. There were other boats from the other beaches going out to sea and the old man heard the dip and push of their oars even though he could not see them now the moon was below the hills.

Sometimes someone would speak in a boat. But most of the boats were silent except for the dip of the oars. They spread apart after they were out of the mouth of the harbour and each one headed for the part of the ocean where he hoped to find fish. The old man knew he was going far out and he left the smell of the land behind and rowed out into the clean early morning smell of the ocean. He saw the phosphorescence of the Gulf weed in the water as he rowed over the part of the ocean that the fishermen called the great well because there was a sudden deep of seven hundred fathoms where all sorts of fish congregated because of the swirl the current made against the steep walls of the floor of the ocean. Here there were concentrations of shrimp and bait fish and sometimes schools of squid in the deepest holes and these rose close to the surface at night where all the wandering fish fed on them.

In the dark the old man could feel the morning coming and as he rowed he heard the trembling sound as flying fish left the water and the hissing that their stiff set wings made as they soared away in the darkness. He was very fond of flying fish as they were his principal friends on the ocean. He was sorry for the birds, especially the small delicate dark terns that were always flying and looking and almost never finding, and he thought, the birds have a harder life than we do except for the robber birds and the heavy strong ones. Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel? She is kind and very beautiful. But she can be so cruel and it comes so suddenly and such birds that fly, dipping and hunting, with their small sad voices are made too delicately for the sea.

He always thought of the sea as la mar which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her. Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her but they are always said as though she were a woman. Some of the younger fishermen, those who used buoys as floats for their lines and had motorboats, bought when the shark livers had brought much money, spoke of her as el mar which is masculine. They spoke of her as a contestant or a place or even an enemy. But the old man always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favours, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a woman, he thought.

He was rowing steadily and it was no effort for him since he kept well within his speed and the surface of the ocean was flat except for the occasional swirls of the current. He was letting the current do a third of the work and as it started to be light he saw he was already further out than he had hoped to be at this hour.

I worked the deep wells for a week and did nothing, he thought. Today I’ll work out where the schools of bonito and albacore are and maybe there will be a big one with them.

Before it was really light he had his baits out and was drifting with the current. One bait was down forty fathoms. The second was at seventy-five and the third and fourth were down in the blue water at one hundred and one hundred and twenty-five fathoms. Each bait hung head down with the shank of the hook inside the bait fish, tied and sewed solid and all the projecting part of the hook, the curve and the point, was covered with fresh sardines. Each sardine was hooked through both eyes so that they made a half-garland on the projecting steel. There was no part of the hook that a great fish could feel which was not sweet smelling and good tasting.

The boy had given him two fresh small tunas, or albacores, which hung on the two deepest lines like plummets and, on the others, he had a big blue runner and a yellow jack that had been used before; but they were in good condition still and had the excellent sardines to give them scent and attractiveness. Each line, as thick around as a big pencil, was looped onto a green-sapped stick so that any pull or touch on the bait would make the stick dip and each line had two forty-fathom coils which could be made fast to the other spare coils so that, if it were necessary, a fish could take out over three hundred fathoms of line.

Now the man watched the dip of the three sticks over the side of the skiff and rowed gently to keep the lines straight up and down and at their proper depths. It was quite light and any moment now the sun would rise.

The sun rose thinly from the sea and the old man could see the other boats, low on the water and well in toward the shore, spread out across the current. Then the sun was brighter and the glare came on the water and then, as it rose clear, the flat sea sent it back at his eyes so that it hurt sharply and he rowed without looking into it. He looked down into the water and watched the lines that went straight down into the dark of the water. He kept them straighter than anyone did, so that at each level in the darkness of the stream there would be a bait waiting exactly where he wished it to be for any fish that swam there. Others let them drift with the current and sometimes they were at sixty fathoms when the fishermen thought they were at a hundred.

But, he thought, I keep them with precision. Only I have no luck any more. But who knows? Maybe today. Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.

The sun was two hours higher now and it did not hurt his eyes so much to look into the east. There were only three boats in sight now and they showed very low and far inshore.

All my life the early sun has hurt my eyes, he thought. Yet they are still good. In the evening I can look straight into it without getting the blackness. It has more force in the evening too. But in the morning it is painful.

Just then he saw a man-of-war bird with his long black wings circling in the sky ahead of him.He made a quick drop, slanting down on his back-swept wings, and then circled again.

“He’s got something,” the old man said aloud. “He’s not just looking.”

He rowed slowly and steadily toward where the bird was circling. He did not hurry and he kept his lines straight up and down. But he crowded the current a little so that he was still fishing correctly though faster than he would have fished if he was not trying to use the bird.

The bird went higher in the air and circled again, his wings motionless. Then he dove suddenly and the old man saw flying fish spurt out of the water and sail desperately over the surface.

“Dolphin,” the old man said aloud. “Big dolphin.”

He shipped his oars and brought a small line from under the bow. It had a wire leader and a medium-sized hook and he baited it with one of the sardines. He let it go over the side and then made it fast to a ring bolt in the stern. Then he baited another line and left it coiled in the shade of the bow. He went back to rowing and to watching the long-winged black bird who was working, now, low over the water.

As he watched the bird dipped again slanting his wings for the dive and then swinging them wildly and ineffectually as he followed the flying fish. The old man could see the slight bulge in the water that the big dolphin raised as they followed the escaping fish. The dolphin were cutting through the water below the flight of the fish and would be in the water, driving at speed, when the fish dropped. It is a big school of dolphin, he thought. They are widespread and the flying fish have little chance. The bird has no chance. The flying fish are too big for him and they go too fast.

He watched the flying fish burst out again and again and the ineffectual movements of the bird. That school has gotten away from me, he thought. They are moving out too fast and too far. But perhaps I will pick up a stray and perhaps my big fish is around them. My big fish must be somewhere.

The clouds over the land now rose like mountains and the coast was only a long green line with the gray blue hills behind it. The water was a dark blue now, so dark that it was almost purple. As he looked down into it he saw the red sifting of the plankton in the dark water and the strange light the sun made now. He watched his lines to see them go straight down out of sight into the water and he was happy to see so much plankton because it meant fish. The strange light the sun made in the water, now that the sun was higher, meant good weather and so did the shape of the clouds over the land. But the bird was almost out of sight now and nothing showed on the surface of the water but some patches of yellow, sun-bleached Sargasso weed and the purple, formalized, iridescent, gelatinous bladder of a Portuguese man-of-war floating dose beside the boat. It turned on its side and then righted itself. It floated cheerfully as a bubble with its long deadly purple filaments trailing a yard behind it in the water.

“Agua mala,” the man said. “You whore.”

From where he swung lightly against his oars he looked down into the water and saw the tiny fish that were coloured like the trailing filaments and swam between them and under the small shade the bubble made as it drifted. They were immune to its poison. But men were not and when same of the filaments would catch on a line and rest there slimy and purple while the old man was working a fish, he would have welts and sores on his arms and hands of the sort that poison ivy or poison oak can give. But these poisonings from the agua mala came quickly and struck like a whiplash.

The iridescent bubbles were beautiful. But they were the falsest thing in the sea and the old man loved to see the big sea turtles eating them. The turtles saw them, approached them from the front, then shut their eyes so they were completely carapaced and ate them filaments and all. The old man loved to see the turtles eat them and he loved to walk on them on the beach after a storm and hear them pop when he stepped on them with the horny soles of his feet.

He loved green turtles and hawk-bills with their elegance and speed and their great value and he had a friendly contempt for the huge, stupid loggerheads, yellow in their armour-plating, strange in their love-making, and happily eating the Portuguese men-of-war with their eyes shut.

He had no mysticism about turtles although he had gone in turtle boats for many years. He was sorry for them all, even the great trunk backs that were as long as the skiff and weighed a ton. Most people are heartless about turtles because a turtle’s heart will beat for hours after he has been cut up and butchered. But the old man thought, I have such a heart too and my feet and hands are like theirs. He ate the white eggs to give himself strength. He ate them all through May to be strong in September and October for the truly big fish.

He also drank a cup of shark liver oil each day from the big drum in the shack where many of the fishermen kept their gear. It was there for all fishermen who wanted it. Most fishermen hated the taste. But it was no worse than getting up at the hours that they rose and it was very good against all colds and grippes and it was good for the eyes.

Now the old man looked up and saw that the bird was circling again.

“He’s found fish,” he said aloud. No flying fish broke the surface and there was no scattering of bait fish. But as the old man watched, a small tuna rose in the air, turned and dropped head first into the water. The tuna shone silver in the sun and after he had dropped back into the water another and another rose and they were jumping in all directions, churning the water and leaping in long jumps after the bait. They were circling it and driving it.

If they don’t travel too fast I will get into them, the old man thought, and he watched the school working the water white and the bird now dropping and dipping into the bait fish that were forced to the surface in their panic.

“The bird is a great help,” the old man said. Just then the stern line came taut under his foot, where he had kept a loop of the line, and he dropped his oars and felt tile weight of the small tuna’s shivering pull as he held the line firm and commenced to haul it in. The shivering increased as he pulled in and he could see the blue back of the fish in the water and the gold of his sides before he swung him over the side and into the boat. He lay in the stern in the sun, compact and bullet shaped, his big, unintelligent eyes staring as he thumped his life out against the planking of the boat with the quick shivering strokes of his neat, fast-moving tail. The old man hit him on the head for kindness and kicked him, his body still shuddering, under the shade of the stern.

“Albacore,” he said aloud. “He’ll make a beautiful bait. He’ll weigh ten pounds.”

He did not remember when he had first started to talk aloud when he was by himself. He had sung when he was by himself in the old days and he had sung at night sometimes when he was alone steering on his watch in the smacks or in the turtle boats. He had probably started to talk aloud, when alone, when the boy had left. But he did not remember. When he and the boy fished together they usually spoke only when it was necessary. They talked at night or when they were storm-bound by bad weather. It was considered a virtue not to talk unnecessarily at sea and the old man had always considered it so and respected it. But now he said his thoughts aloud many times since there was no one that they could annoy.

“If the others heard me talking out loud they would think that I am crazy,” he said aloud. “But since I am not crazy, I do not care. And the rich have radios to talk to them in their boats and to bring them the baseball.”

Now is no time to think of baseball, he thought. Now is the time to think of only one thing. That which I was born for. There might be a big one around that school, he thought. I picked up only a straggler from the albacore that were feeding. But they are working far out and fast. Everything that shows on the surface today travels very fast and to the north-east. Can that be the time of day? Or is it some sign of weather that I do not know?

He could not see the green of the shore now but only the tops of the blue hills that showed white as though they were snow-capped and the clouds that looked like high snow mountains above them. The sea was very dark and the light made prisms in the water. The myriad flecks of the plankton were annulled now by the high sun and it was only the great deep prisms in the blue water that the old man saw now with his lines going straight down into the water that was a mile deep.

The tuna, the fishermen called all the fish of that species tuna and only distinguished among them by their proper names when they came to sell them or to trade them for baits, were down again. The sun was hot now and the old man felt it on the back of his neck and felt the sweat trickle down his back as he rowed.

I could just drift, he thought, and sleep and put a bight of line around my toe to wake me. But today is eighty-five days and I should fish the day well.

Just then, watching his lines, he saw one of the projecting green sticks dip sharply.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes,” and shipped his oars without bumping the boat. He reached out for the line and held it softly between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. He felt no strain nor weight and he held the line lightly. Then it came again. This time it was a tentative pull, not solid nor heavy, and he knew exactly what it was. One hundred fathoms down a marlin was eating the sardines that covered the point and the shank of the hook where the hand-forged hook projected from the head of the small tuna.

The old man held the line delicately, and softly, with his left hand, unleashed it from the stick.Now he could let it run through his fingers without the fish feeling any tension.

This far out, he must be huge in this month, he thought. Eat them, fish. Eat them. Please eat them.How fresh they are and you down there six hundred feet in that cold water in the dark. Make another turn in the dark and come back and eat them.

He felt the light delicate pulling and then a harder pull when a sardine’s head must have been more difficult to break from the hook. Then there was nothing.

“Come on,” the old man said aloud. “Make another turn. Just smell them. Aren’t they lovely? Eat them good now and then there is the tuna. Hard and cold and lovely. Don’t be shy, fish. Eat them.”

He waited with the line between his thumb and his finger, watching it and the other lines at the same time for the fish might have swum up or down. Then came the same delicate pulling touch again.

“He’ll take it,” the old man said aloud. “God help him to take it.”

He did not take it though. He was gone and the old man felt nothing.

“He can’t have gone,” he said. “Christ knows he can’t have gone. He’s making a turn. Maybe he has been hooked before and he remembers something of it.”

Then he felt the gentle touch on the line and he was happy.

“It was only his turn,” he said. “He’ll take it.”

He was happy feeling the gentle pulling and then he felt something hard and unbelievably heavy. It was the weight of the fish and he let the line slip down, down, down, unrolling off the first of the two reserve coils. As it went down, slipping lightly through the old man’s fingers, he still could feel the great weight, though the pressure of his thumb and finger were almost imperceptible.

“What a fish,” he said. “He has it sideways in his mouth now and he is moving off with it.”

Then he will turn and swallow it, he thought. He did not say that because he knew that if you said a good thing it might not happen. He knew what a huge fish this was and he thought of him moving away in the darkness with the tuna held crosswise in his mouth. At that moment he felt him stop moving but the weight was still there. Then the weight increased and he gave more line. He tightened the pressure of his thumb and finger for a moment and the weight increased and was going straight down.

“He’s taken it,” he said. “Now I’ll let him eat it well.”

He let the line slip through his fingers while he reached down with his left hand and made fast the free end of the two reserve coils to the loop of the two reserve coils of the next line. Now he was ready. He had three forty-fathom coils of line in reserve now, as well as the coil he was using.

“Eat it a little more,” he said. “Eat it well.”

Eat it so that the point of the hook goes into your heart and kills you, he thought. Come up easy and let me put the harpoon into you. All right. Are you ready? Have you been long enough at table?

“Now!” he said aloud and struck hard with both hands, gained a yard of line and then struck again and again, swinging with each arm alternately on the cord with all the strength of his arms and the pivoted weight of his body.

Nothing happened. The fish just moved away slowly and the old man could not raise him an inch. His line was strong and made for heavy fish and he held it against his back until it was so taut that beads of water were jumping from it. Then it began to make a slow hissing sound in the water and he still held it, bracing himself against the thwart and leaning back against the pull. The boat began to move slowly off toward the north-west.

The fish moved steadily and they travelled slowly on the calm water. The other baits were still in the water but there was nothing to be done.

“I wish I had the boy” the old man said aloud. “I’m being towed by a fish and I’m the towing bitt. I could make the line fast. But then he could break it. I must hold him all I can and give him line when he must have it. Thank God he is travelling and not going down.”

What I will do if he decides to go down, I don’t know. What I’ll do if he sounds and dies I don’t know. But I’ll do something. There are plenty of things I can do.

He held the line against his back and watched its slant in the water and the skiff moving steadily to the north-west.

This will kill him, the old man thought. He can’t do this forever. But four hours later the fish was still swimming steadily out to sea, towing the skiff, and the old man was still braced solidly with the line across his back.

“It was noon when I hooked him,” he said. “And I have never seen him.”

He had pushed his straw hat hard down on his head before he hooked the fish and it was cutting his forehead. He was thirsty too and he got down on his knees and, being careful not to jerk on the line, moved as far into the bow as he could get and reached the water bottle with one hand. He opened it and drank a little. Then he rested against the bow. He rested sitting on the un-stepped mast and sail and tried not to think but only to endure.

Then he looked behind him and saw that no land was visible. That makes no difference, he thought. I can always come in on the glow from Havana. There are two more hours before the sun sets and maybe he will come up before that. If he doesn’t maybe he will come up with the moon. If he does not do that maybe he will come up with the sunrise. I have no cramps and I feel strong. It is he that has the hook in his mouth. But what a fish to pull like that. He must have his mouth shut tight on the wire. I wish I could see him. I wish I could see him only once to know what I have against me.

The fish never changed his course nor his direction all that night as far as the man could tell from watching the stars. It was cold after the sun went down and the old man’s sweat dried cold on his back and his arms and his old legs. During the day he had taken the sack that covered the bait box and spread it in the sun to dry. After the sun went down he tied it around his neck so that it hung down over his back and he cautiously worked it down under the line that was across his shoulders now. The sack cushioned the line and he had found a way of leaning forward against the bow so that he was almost comfortable. The position actually was only somewhat less intolerable; but he thought of it as almost comfortable.

I can do nothing with him and he can do nothing with me, he thought. Not as long as he keeps this up.

Once he stood up and urinated over the side of the skiff and looked at the stars and checked his course. The line showed like a phosphorescent streak in the water straight out from his shoulders. They were moving more slowly now and the glow of Havana was not so strong, so that he knew the current must be carrying them to the eastward. If I lose the glare of Havana we must be going more to the eastward, he thought. For if the fish’s course held true I must see it for many more hours. I wonder how the baseball came out in the grand leagues today, he thought. It would be wonderful to do this with a radio. Then he thought, think of it always. Think of what you are doing. You must do nothing stupid.

Then he said aloud, “I wish I had the boy. To help me and to see this.”

No one should be alone in their old age, he thought. But it is unavoidable. I must remember to eat the tuna before he spoils in order to keep strong. Remember, no matter how little you want to, that you must eat him in the morning. Remember, he said to himself.

During the night two porpoises came around the boat and he could hear them rolling and blowing. He could tell the difference between the blowing noise the male made and the sighing blow of the female.

“They are good,” he said. “They play and make jokes and love one another. They are our brothers like the flying fish.”

Then he began to pity the great fish that he had hooked. He is wonderful and strange and who knows how old he is, he thought. Never have I had such a strong fish nor one who acted so strangely. Perhaps he is too wise to jump. He could ruin me by jumping or by a wild rush. But perhaps he has been hooked many times before and he knows that this is how he should make his fight. He cannot know that it is only one man against him, nor that it is an old man. But what a great fish he is and what will he bring in the market if the flesh is good. He took the bait like a male and he pulls like a male and his fight has no panic in it. I wonder if he has any plans or if he is just as desperate as I am?

He remembered the time he had hooked one of a pair of marlin. The male fish always let the female fish feed first and the hooked fish, the female, made a wild, panic-stricken, despairing fight that soon exhausted her, and all the time the male had stayed with her, crossing the line and circling with her on the surface. He had stayed so close that the old man was afraid he would cut the line with his tail which was sharp as a scythe and almost of that size and shape. When the old man had gaffed her and clubbed her, holding the rapier bill with its sandpaper edge and clubbing her across the top of her head until her colour turned to a colour almost like the backing of mirrors, and then, with the boy’s aid, hoisted her aboard, the male fish had stayed by the side of the boat. Then, while the old man was clearing the lines and preparing the harpoon, the male fish jumped high into the air beside the boat to see where the female was and then went down deep, his lavender wings, that were his pectoral fins, spread wide and all his wide lavender stripes showing. He was beautiful, the old man remembered, and he had stayed.

That was the saddest thing I ever saw with them, the old man thought. The boy was sad too and we begged her pardon and butchered her promptly.

“I wish the boy was here,” he said aloud and settled himself against the rounded planks of the bow and felt the strength of the great fish through the line he held across his shoulders moving steadily toward whatever he had chosen.

When once, through my treachery, it had been necessary to him to make a choice, the old man thought.

His choice had been to stay in the deep dark water far out beyond all snares and traps and treacheries. My choice was to go there to find him beyond all people. Beyond all people in the world. Now we are joined together and have been since noon. And no one to help either one of us.

Perhaps I should not have been a fisherman, he thought. But that was the thing that I was born for. I must surely remember to eat the tuna after it gets light.

Some time before daylight something took one of the baits that were behind him. He heard the stick break and the line begin to rush out over the gunwale of the skiff. In the darkness he loosened his sheath knife and taking all the strain of the fish on his left shoulder he leaned back and cut the line against the wood of the gunwale. Then he cut the other line closest to him and in the dark made the loose ends of the reserve coils fast. He worked skillfully with the one hand and put his foot on the coils to hold them as he drew his knots tight. Now he had six reserve coils of line. There were two from each bait he had severed and the two from the bait the fish had taken and they were all connected.

After it is light, he thought, I will work back to the forty-fathom bait and cut it away too and link up the reserve coils. I will have lost two hundred fathoms of good Catalan cardel and the hooks and leaders. That can be replaced. But who replaces this fish if I hook some fish and it cuts him off?I don’t know what that fish was that took the bait just now. It could have been a marlin or a broadbill or a shark. I never felt him. I had to get rid of him too fast.

Aloud he said, “I wish I had the boy.”

But you haven’t got the boy, he thought. You have only yourself and you had better work back to the last line now, in the dark or not in the dark, and cut it away and hook up the two reserve coils.

So he did it. It was difficult in the dark and once the fish made a surge that pulled him down on his face and made a cut below his eye. The blood ran down his cheek a little way. But it coagulated and dried before it reached his chin and he worked his way back to the bow and rested against the wood. He adjusted the sack and carefully worked the line so that it came across a new part of his shoulders and, holding it anchored with his shoulders, he carefully felt the pull of the fish and then felt with his hand the progress of the skiff through the water.

I wonder what he made that lurch for, he thought. The wire must have slipped on the great hill of his back. Certainly his back cannot feel as badly as mine does. But he cannot pull this skiff forever, no matter how great he is. Now everything is cleared away that might make trouble and I have a big reserve of line; all that a man can ask.

“Fish,” he said softly, aloud, “I’ll stay with you until I am dead.”

He’ll stay with me too, I suppose, the old man thought and he waited for it to be light. It was cold now in the time before daylight and he pushed against the wood to be warm. I can do it as long as he can, he thought. And in the first light the line extended out and down into the water. The boat moved steadily and when the first edge of the sun rose it was on the old man’s right shoulder.

“He’s headed north,” the old man said. The current will have set us far to the eastward, he thought. I wish he would turn with the current. That would show that he was tiring.

When the sun had risen further the old man realized that the fish was not tiring. There was only one favorable sign. The slant of the line showed he was swimming at a lesser depth. That did not necessarily mean that he would jump. But he might.

“God let him jump,” the old man said. “I have enough line to handle him.”

Maybe if I can increase the tension just a little it will hurt him and he will jump, he thought. Now that it is daylight let him jump so that he’ll fill the sacs along his backbone with air and then he cannot go deep to die.

He tried to increase the tension, but the line had been taut up to the very edge of the breaking point since he had hooked the fish and he felt the harshness as he leaned back to pull and knew he could put no more strain on it. I must not jerk it ever, he thought. Each jerk widens the cut the hook makes and then when he does jump he might throw it. Anyway I feel better with the sun and for once I do not have to look into it.

There was yellow weed on the line but the old man knew that only made an added drag and he was pleased. It was the yellow Gulf weed that had made so much phosphorescence in the night.

“Fish,” he said, “I love you and respect you very much. But I will kill you dead before this day ends.”

Let us hope so, he thought.

A small bird came toward the skiff from the north. He was a warbler and flying very low over the water. The old man could see that he was very tired.

The bird made the stern of the boat and rested there. Then he flew around the old man’s head and rested on the line where he was more comfortable.

“How old are you?” the old man asked the bird. “Is this your first trip?”

The bird looked at him when he spoke. He was too tired even to examine the line and he teetered on it as his delicate feet gripped it fast.

“It’s steady,” the old man told him. “It’s too steady. You shouldn’t be that tired after a windless night. What are birds coming to?”

The hawks, he thought, that come out to sea to meet them. But he said nothing of this to the bird who could not understand him anyway and who would learn about the hawks soon enough.

“Take a good rest, small bird,” he said. “Then go in and take your chance like any man or bird or fish.”

It encouraged him to talk because his back had stiffened in the night and it hurt truly now.

“Stay at my house if you like, bird,” he said. “I am sorry I cannot hoist the sail and take you in with the small breeze that is rising. But I am with a friend.”

Just then the fish gave a sudden lurch that pulled the old man down onto the bow and would have pulled him overboard if he had not braced himself and given some line.

The bird had flown up when the line jerked and the old man had not even seen him go. He felt the line carefully with his right hand and noticed his hand was bleeding.

“Something hurt him then,” he said aloud and pulled back on the line to see if he could turn the fish. But when he was touching the breaking point he held steady and settled back against the strain of the line.

“You’re feeling it now, fish,” he said. “And so, God knows, am I.”

He looked around for the bird now because he would have liked him for company. The bird was gone.

You did not stay long, the man thought. But it is rougher where you are going until you make the shore. How did I let the fish cut me with that one quick pull he made? I must be getting very stupid. Or perhaps I was looking at the small bird and thinking of him. Now I will pay attention to my work and then I must eat the tuna so that I will not have a failure of strength.

“I wish the boy were here and that I had some salt,” he said aloud.

Shifting the weight of the line to his left shoulder and kneeling carefully he washed his hand in the ocean and held it there, submerged, for more than a minute watching the blood trail away and the steady movement of the water against his hand as the boat moved.

“He has slowed much,” he said.

The old man would have liked to keep his hand in the salt water longer but he was afraid of another sudden lurch by the fish and he stood up and braced himself and held his hand up against the sun. It was only a line burn that had cut his flesh. But it was in the working part of his hand. He knew he would need his hands before this was over and he did not like to be cut before it started.

“Now,” he said, when his hand had dried, “I must eat the small tuna. I can reach him with the gaff and eat him here in comfort.”

He knelt down and found the tuna under the stern with the gaff and drew it toward him keeping it clear of the coiled lines. Holding the line with his left shoulder again, and bracing on his left hand and arm, he took the tuna off the gaff hook and put the gaff back in place. He put one knee on the fish and cut strips of dark red meat longitudinally from the back of the head to the tail. They were wedge-shaped strips and he cut them from next to the back bone down to the edge of the belly. When he had cut six strips he spread them out on the wood of the bow, wiped his knife on his trousers, and lifted the carcass of the bonito by the tail and dropped it overboard.

“I don’t think I can eat an entire one,” he said and drew his knife across one of the strips. He could feel the steady hard pull of the line and his left hand was cramped. It drew up tight on the heavy cord and he looked at it in disgust.

“What kind of a hand is that,” he said. “Cramp then if you want. Make yourself into a claw. It will do you no good.”

Come on, he thought and looked down into the dark water at the slant of the line. Eat it now and it will strengthen the hand. It is not the hand’s fault and you have been many hours with the fish. But you can stay with him forever. Eat the bonito now.

He picked up a piece and put it in his mouth and chewed it slowly. It was not unpleasant.

Chew it well, he thought, and get all the juices. It would not be had to eat with a little lime or with lemon or with salt.

“How do you feel, hand?” he asked the cramped hand that was almost as stiff as rigor mortis. “I’ll eat some more for you.”

He ate the other part of the piece that he had cut in two. He chewed it carefully and then spat out the skin.

“How does it go, hand? Or is it too early to know?”

He took another full piece and chewed it.

“It is a strong full-blooded fish,” he thought. “I was lucky to get him instead of dolphin.Dolphin is too sweet. This is hardly sweet at all and all the strength is still in it.”

There is no sense in being anything but practical though, he thought. I wish I had some salt. And I do not know whether the sun will rot or dry what is left, so I had better eat it all although I am not hungry. The fish is calm and steady. I will eat it all and then I will be ready.

“Be patient, hand,” he said. “I do this for you.”

I wish I could feed the fish, he thought. He is my brother. But I must kill him and keep strong to do it. Slowly and conscientiously he ate all of the wedge-shaped strips of fish.

He straightened up, wiping his hand on his trousers.

“Now,” he said. “You can let the cord go, hand, and I will handle him with the right arm alone until you stop that nonsense.” He put his left foot on the heavy line that the left hand had held and lay back against the pull against his back.

“God help me to have the cramp go,” he said. “Because I do not know what the fish is going to do.”

But he seems calm, he thought, and following his plan. But what is his plan, he thought. And what is mine? Mine I must improvise to his because of his great size. If he will jump I can kill him. But he stays down forever. Then I will stay down with him forever.

He rubbed the cramped hand against his trousers and tried to gentle the fingers. But it would not open. Maybe it will open with the sun, he thought. Maybe it will open when the strong raw tuna is digested. If I have to have it, I will open it, cost whatever it costs. But I do not want to open it now by force. Let it open by itself and come back of its own accord. After all I abused it much in the night when it was necessary to free and unite the various lines.

He looked across the sea and knew how alone he was now. But he could see the prisms in the deep dark water and the line stretching ahead and the strange undulation of the calm. The clouds were building up now for the trade wind and he looked ahead and saw a flight of wild ducks etching themselves against the sky over the water, then blurring, then etching again and he knew no man was ever alone on the sea.

He thought of how some men feared being out of sight of land in a small boat and knew they were right in the months of sudden bad weather. But now they were in hurricane months and, when there are no hurricanes, the weather of hurricane months is the best of all the year.

If there is a hurricane you always see the signs of it in the sky for days ahead, if you are at sea. They do not see it ashore because they do not know what to look for, he thought. The land must make a difference too, in the shape of the clouds. But we have no hurricane coming now.

He looked at the sky and saw the white cumulus built like friendly piles of ice cream and high above were the thin feathers of the cirrus against the high September sky.

“Light brisa,” he said. “Better weather for me than for you, fish.”

His left hand was still cramped, but he was unknotting it slowly.

I hate a cramp, he thought. It is a treachery of one’s own body. It is humiliating before others to have a diarrhoea from ptomaine poisoning or to vomit from it. But a cramp, he thought of it as a calambre, humiliates oneself especially when one is alone.

If the boy were here he could rub it for me and loosen it down from the forearm, he thought.But it will loosen up.

Then, with his right hand he felt the difference in the pull of the line before he saw the slant change in the water. Then, as he leaned against the line and slapped his left hand hard and fast against his thigh he saw the line slanting slowly upward.

“He’s coming up,” he said. “Come on hand. Please come on.”

The line rose slowly and steadily and then the surface of the ocean bulged ahead of the boat and the fish came out. He came out unendingly and water poured from his sides. He was bright in the sun and his head and back were dark purple and in the sun the stripes on his sides showed wide and a light lavender. His sword was as long as a baseball bat and tapered like a rapier and he rose his full length from the water and then re-entered it, smoothly, like a diver and the old man saw the great scythe-blade of his tail go under and the line commenced to race out.

“He is two feet longer than the skiff,” the old man said. The line was going out fast but steadily and the fish was not panicked. The old man was trying with both hands to keep the line just inside of breaking strength. He knew that if he could not slow the fish with a steady pressure the fish could take out all the line and break it.

He is a great fish and I must convince him, he thought. I must never let him learn his strength nor what he could do if he made his run. If I were him I would put in everything now and go until something broke. But, thank God, they are not as intelligent as we who kill them; although they are more noble and more able.

The old man had seen many great fish. He had seen many that weighed more than a thousand pounds and he had caught two of that size in his life, but never alone. Now alone, and out of sight of land, he was fast to the biggest fish that he had ever seen and bigger than he had ever heard of, and his left hand was still as tight as the gripped claws of an eagle.

It will uncramp though, he thought. Surely it will uncramp to help my right hand. There are three things that are brothers: the fish and my two hands. It must uncramp. It is unworthy of it to be cramped. The fish had slowed again and was going at his usual pace.

I wonder why he jumped, the old man thought. He jumped almost as though to show me how big he was. I know now, anyway, he thought. I wish I could show him what sort of man I am. But then he would see the cramped hand. Let him think I am more man than I am and I will be so. I wish I was the fish, he thought, with everything he has against only my will and my intelligence.

He settled comfortably against the wood and took his suffering as it came and the fish swam steadily and the boat moved slowly through the dark water. There was a small sea rising with the wind coming up from the east and at noon the old man’s left hand was uncramped.

“Bad news for you, fish,” he said and shifted the line over the sacks that covered his shoulders.

He was comfortable but suffering, although he did not admit the suffering at all.

“I am not religious,” he said. “But I will say ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys that I should catch this fish, and I promise to make a pilgrimage to the Virgin of Cobre if I catch him. That is a promise.”

He commenced to say his prayers mechanically. Sometimes he would be so tired that he could not remember the prayer and then he would say them fast so that they would come automatically. Hail Marys are easier to say than Our Fathers, he thought.

“Hail Mary full of Grace the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.” Then he added, “Blessed Virgin, pray for the death of this fish. Wonderful though he is.”

With his prayers said, and feeling much better, but suffering exactly as much, and perhaps a little more, he leaned against the wood of the bow and began, mechanically, to work the fingers of his left hand.

The sun was hot now although the breeze was rising gently.

“I had better re-bait that little line out over the stern,” he said. “If the fish decides to stay another night I will need to eat again and the water is low in the bottle. I don’t think I can get anything but a dolphin here. But if I eat him fresh enough he won’t be bad. I wish a flying fish would come on board tonight. But I have no light to attract them. A flying fish is excellent to eat raw and I would not have to cut him up. I must save all my strength now. Christ, I did not know he was so big.”

“I’ll kill him though,” he said. “In all his greatness and his glory.”

Although it is unjust, he thought. But I will show him what a man can do and what a man endures.

“I told the boy I was a strange old man,” he said. “Now is when I must prove it.”

The thousand times that he had proved it meant nothing. Now he was proving it again. Each time was a new time and he never thought about the past when he was doing it.

I wish he’d sleep and I could sleep and dream about the lions, he thought. Why are the lions the main thing that is left? Don’t think, old man, he said to himself, Rest gently now against the wood and think of nothing. He is working. Work as little as you can.

It was getting into the afternoon and the boat still moved slowly and steadily. But there was an added drag now from the easterly breeze and the old man rode gently with the small sea and the hurt of the cord across his back came to him easily and smoothly.

Once in the afternoon the line started to rise again. But the fish only continued to swim at a slightly higher level. The sun was on the old man’s left arm and shoulder and on his back. So he knew the fish had turned east of north.

Now that he had seen him once, he could picture the fish swimming in the water with his purple pectoral fins set wide as wings and the great erect tail slicing through the dark. I wonder how much he sees at that depth, the old man thought. His eye is huge and a horse, with much less eye, can see in the dark. Once I could see quite well in the dark. Not in the absolute dark. But almost as a cat sees.

The sun and his steady movement of his fingers had uncramped his left hand now completely and he began to shift more of the strain to it and he shrugged the muscles of his back to shift the hurt of the cord a little.

“If you’re not tired, fish,” he said aloud, “you must be very strange.”

He felt very tired now and he knew the night would come soon and he tried to think of other things. He thought of the Big Leagues, to him they were the Gran Ligas, and he knew that the Yankees of New York were playing the Tigres of Detroit.

This is the second day now that I do not know the result of the juegos, he thought. But I must have confidence and I must be worthy of the great DiMaggio who does all things perfectly even with the pain of the bone spur in his heel. What is a bone spur? he asked himself. Un espuela de hueso. We do not have them. Can it be as painful as the spur of a fighting cock in one’s heel? I do not think I could endure that or the loss of the eye and of both eyes and continue to fight as the fighting cocks do. Man is not much beside the great birds and beasts. Still I would rather be that beast down there in the darkness of the sea.

“Unless sharks come,” he said aloud. “If sharks come, God pity him and me.”

Do you believe the great DiMaggio would stay with a fish as long as I will stay with this one? he thought. I am sure he would and more since he is young and strong. Also his father was a fisherman. But would the bone spur hurt him too much?

“I do not know,” he said aloud. “I never had a bone spur.”

As the sun set he remembered, to give himself more confidence, the time in the tavern at Casablanca when he had played the hand game with the great negro from Cienfuegos who was the strongest man on the docks. They had gone one day and one night with their elbows on a chalk line on the table and their forearms straight up and their hands gripped tight. Each one was trying to force the other’s hand down onto the table. There was much betting and people went in and out of the room under the kerosene lights and he had looked at the arm and hand of the negro and at the negro’s face. They changed the referees every four hours after the first eight so that the referees could sleep. Blood came out from under the fingernails of both his and the negro’s hands and they looked each other in the eye and at their hands and forearms and the bettors went in and out of the room and sat on high chairs against the wall and watched. The walls were painted bright blue and were of wood and the lamps threw their shadows against them. The negro’s shadow was huge and it moved on the wall as the breeze moved the lamps.

The odds would change back and forth all night and they fed the negro rum and lighted cigarettes for him.Then the negro, after the rum, would try for a tremendous effort and once he had the old man, who was not an old man then but was Santiago El Campeón, nearly three inches off balance. But the old man had raised his hand up to dead even again. He was sure then that he had the negro, who was a fine man and a great athlete, beaten. And at daylight when the bettors were asking that it be called a draw and the referee was shaking his head, he had unleashed his effort and forced the hand of the negro down and down until it rested on the wood. The match had started on a Sunday morning and ended on a Monday morning. Many of the bettors had asked for a draw because they had to go to work on the docks loading sacks of sugar or at the Havana Coal Company. Otherwise everyone would have wanted it to go to a finish. But he had finished it anyway and before anyone had to go to work.

For a long time after that everyone had called him The Champion and there had been a return match in the spring. But not much money was bet and he had won it quite easily since he had broken the confidence of the negro from Cienfuegos in the first match. After that he had a few matches and then no more. He decided that he could beat anyone if he wanted to badly enough and he decided that it was bad for his right hand for fishing. He had tried a few practice matches with his left hand. But his left hand had always been a traitor and would not do what he called on it to do and he did not trust it.

The sun will bake it out well now, he thought. It should not cramp on me again unless it gets too cold in the night. I wonder what this night will bring.

An airplane passed overhead on its course to Miami and he watched its shadow scaring up the schools of flying fish.

“With so much flying fish there should be dolphin,” he said, and leaned back on the line to see if it was possible to gain any on his fish. But he could not and it stayed at the hardness and water- drop shivering that preceded breaking. The boat moved ahead slowly and he watched the airplane until he could no longer see it.

It must be very strange in an airplane, he thought. I wonder what the sea looks like from that height? They should be able to see the fish well if they do not fly too high. I would like to fly very slowly at two hundred fathoms high and see the fish from above. In the turtle boats I was in the cross-trees of the mast-head and even at that height I saw much. The dolphin look greener from there and you can see their stripes and their purple spots and you can see all of the school as they swim. Why is it that all the fast-moving fish of the dark current have purple backs and usually purple stripes or spots? The dolphin looks green of course because he is really golden. But when he comes to feed, truly hungry, purple stripes show on his sides as on a marlin. Can it be anger, or the greater speed he makes that brings them out?

Just before it was dark, as they passed a great island of Sargasso weed that heaved and swung in the light sea as though the ocean were making love with something under a yellow blanket, his small line was taken by a dolphin. He saw it first when it jumped in the air, true gold in the last of the sun and bending and flapping wildly in the air. It jumped again and again in the acrobatics of its fear and he worked his way back to the stern and crouching and holding the big line with his right hand and arm, he pulled the dolphin in with his left hand, stepping on the gained line each time with his bare left foot. When the fish was at the stem, plunging and cutting from side to side in desperation, the old man leaned over the stern and lifted the burnished gold fish with its purple spots over the stem. Its jaws were working convulsively in quick bites against the hook and it pounded the bottom of the skiff with its long flat body, its tail and its head until he clubbed it across the shining golden head until it shivered and was still.

The old man unhooked the fish, re-baited the line with another sardine and tossed it over. Then he worked his way slowly back to the bow. He washed his left hand and wiped it on his trousers. Then he shifted the heavy line from his right hand to his left and washed his right hand in the sea while he watched the sun go into the ocean and the slant of the big cord.

“He hasn’t changed at all,” he said. But watching the movement of the water against his hand he noted that it was perceptibly slower.

“I’ll lash the two oars together across the stern and that will slow him in the night,” he said. “He’s good for the night and so am I.”

It would be better to gut the dolphin a little later to save the blood in the meat, he thought. I can do that a little later and lash the oars to make a drag at the same time. I had better keep the fish quiet now and not disturb him too much at sunset. The setting of the sun is a difficult time for all fish.

He let his hand dry in the air then grasped the line with it and eased himself as much as he could and allowed himself to be pulled forward against the wood so that the boat took the strain as much, or more, than he did.

I’m learning how to do it, he thought. This part of it anyway. Then too, remember he hasn’t eaten since he took the bait and he is huge and needs much food. I have eaten the whole bonito. Tomorrow I will eat the dolphin. He called it dorado. Perhaps I should eat some of it when I clean it. It will be harder to eat than the bonito. But, then, nothing is easy.

“How do you feel, fish?” he asked aloud. “I feel good and my left hand is better and I have food for a night and a day. Pull the boat, fish.”

He did not truly feel good because the pain from the cord across his back had almost passed pain and gone into a dullness that he mistrusted. But I have had worse things than that, he thought. My hand is only cut a little and the cramp is gone from the other. My legs are all right. Also now I have gained on him in the question of sustenance.

It was dark now as it becomes dark quickly after the sun sets in September. He lay against the worn wood of the bow and rested all that he could. The first stars were out. He did not know the name of Rigel but he saw it and knew soon they would all be out and he would have all his distant friends.

“The fish is my friend too,” he said aloud. “I have never seen or heard of such a fish. But I must kill him. I am glad we do not have to try to kill the stars.”

Imagine if each day a man must try to kill the moon, he thought. The moon runs away. But imagine if a man each day should have to try to kill the sun? We were born lucky, he thought.

Then he was sorry for the great fish that had nothing to eat and his determination to kill him never relaxed in his sorrow for him. How many people will he feed, he thought. But are they worthy to eat him? No, of course not. There is no one worthy of eating him from the manner of his behaviour and his great dignity.

I do not understand these things, he thought. But it is good that we do not have to try to kill the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers.

Now, he thought, I must think about the drag. It has its perils and its merits. I may lose so much line that I will lose him, if he makes his effort and the drag made by the oars is in place and the boat loses all her lightness. Her lightness prolongs both our suffering but it is my safety since he has great speed that he has never yet employed. No matter what passes I must gut the dolphin so he does not spoil and eat some of him to be strong.

Now I will rest an hour more and feel that he is solid and steady before I move back to the stern to do the work and make the decision. In the meantime I can see how he acts and if he shows any changes. The oars are a good trick; but it has reached the time to play for safety. He is much fish still and I saw that the hook was in the corner of his mouth and he has kept his mouth tight shut. The punishment of the hook is nothing. The punishment of hunger, and that he is against something that he does not comprehend, is everything. Rest now, old man, and let him work until your next duty comes.

He rested for what he believed to be two hours. The moon did not rise now until late and he had no way of judging the time. Nor was he really resting except comparatively. He was still bearing the pull of the fish across his shoulders but he placed his left hand on the gunwale of the bow and confided more and more of the resistance to the fish to the skiff itself.

How simple it would be if I could make the line fast, he thought. But with one small lurch he could break it. I must cushion the pull of the line with my body and at all times be ready to give line with both hands.

“But you have not slept yet, old man,” he said aloud. “It is half a day and a night and now another day and you have not slept. You must devise a way so that you sleep a little if he is quiet and steady. If you do not sleep you might become unclear in the head.”

I’m clear enough in the head, he thought. Too clear. I am as clear as the stars that are my brothers. Still I must sleep. They sleep and the moon and the sun sleep and even the ocean sleeps sometimes on certain days when there is no current and a flat calm.

But remember to sleep, he thought. Make yourself do it and devise some simple and sure way about the lines. Now go back and prepare the dolphin. It is too dangerous to rig the oars as a drag if you must sleep.

I could go without sleeping, he told himself. But it would be too dangerous.

He started to work his way back to the stern on his hands and knees, being careful not to jerk against the fish. He may be half asleep himself, he thought. But I do not want him to rest. He must pull until he dies.

Back in the stern he turned so that his left hand held the strain of the line across his shoulders and drew his knife from its sheath with his right hand. The stars were bright now and he saw the dolphin clearly and he pushed the blade of his knife into his head and drew him out from under the stern. He put one of his feet on the fish and slit him quickly from the vent up to the tip of his lower jaw. Then he put his knife down and gutted him with his right hand, scooping him clean and pulling the gills clear. He felt the maw heavy and slippery in his hands and he slit it open. There were two flying fish inside. They were fresh and hard and he laid them side by side and dropped the guts and the gills over the stern. They sank leaving a trail of phosphorescence in the water. The dolphin was cold and a leprous gray-white now in the starlight and the old man skinned one side of him while he held his right foot on the fish’s head. Then he turned him over and skinned the other side and cut each side off from the head down to the tail.

He slid the carcass overboard and looked to see if there was any swirl in the water. But there was only the light of its slow descent. He turned then and placed the two flying fish inside the two fillets of fish and putting his knife back in its sheath, he worked his way slowly back to the bow. His back was bent with the weight of the line across it and he carried the fish in his right hand.

Back in the bow he laid the two fillets of fish out on the wood with the flying fish beside them. After that he settled the line across his shoulders in a new place and held it again with his left hand resting on the gunwale. Then he leaned over the side and washed the flying fish in the water, noting the speed of the water against his hand. His hand was phosphorescent from skinning the fish and he watched the flow of the water against it. The flow was less strong and as he rubbed the side of his hand against the planking of the skiff, particles of phosphorus floated off and drifted slowly astern.

“He is tiring or he is resting,” the old man said. “Now let me get through the eating of this dolphin and get some rest and a little sleep.”

Under the stars and with the night colder all the time he ate half of one of the dolphin fillets and one of the flying fish, gutted and with its head cut off.

“What an excellent fish dolphin is to eat cooked,” he said. “And what a miserable fish raw. I will never go in a boat again without salt or limes.”

If I had brains I would have splashed water on the bow all day and drying, it would have made salt, he thought. But then I did not hook the dolphin until almost sunset. Still it was a lack of preparation. But I have chewed it all well and I am not nauseated.

The sky was clouding over to the east and one after another the stars he knew were gone. It looked now as though he were moving into a great canyon of clouds and the wind had dropped.

“There will be bad weather in three or four days,” he said. “But not tonight and not tomorrow.Rig now to get some sleep, old man, while the fish is calm and steady.”

He held the line tight in his right hand and then pushed his thigh against his right hand as he leaned all his weight against the wood of the bow. Then he passed the line a little lower on his shoulders and braced his left hand on it.

My right hand can hold it as long as it is braced, he thought If it relaxes in sleep my left hand will wake me as the line goes out. It is hard on the right hand. But he is used to punishment Even if I sleep twenty minutes or a half an hour it is good. He lay forward cramping himself against the line with all of his body, putting all his weight onto his right band, and he was asleep.

He did not dream of the lions but instead of a vast school of porpoise that stretched for eight or ten miles and it was in the time of their mating and they would leap high into the air and return into the same hole they had made in the water when they leaped.

Then he dreamed that he was in the village on his bed and there was a norther and he was very cold and his right arm was asleep because his head had rested on it instead of a pillow.

After that he began to dream of the long yellow beach and he saw the first of the lions come down onto it in the early dark and then the other lions came and he rested his chin on the wood of the bows where the ship lay anchored with the evening off-shore breeze and he waited to see if there would be more lions and he was happy.

The moon had been up for a long time but he slept on and the fish pulled on steadily and the boat moved into the tunnel of clouds.

He woke with the jerk of his right fist coming up against his face and the line burning out through his right hand. He had no feeling of his left hand but he braked all he could with his right and the line rushed out. Finally his left hand found the line and he leaned back against the line and now it burned his back and his left hand, and his left hand was taking all the strain and cutting badly. He looked back at the coils of line and they were feeding smoothly. Just then the fish jumped making a great bursting of the ocean and then a heavy fall. Then he jumped again and again and the boat was going fast although line was still racing out and the old man was raising the strain to breaking point and raising it to breaking point again and again. He had been pulled down tight onto the bow and his face was in the cut slice of dolphin and he could not move.

This is what we waited for, he thought. So now let us take it.

Make him pay for the line, he thought. Make him pay for it.

He could not see the fish’s jumps but only heard the breaking of the ocean and the heavy splash as he fell. The speed of the line was cutting his hands badly but he had always known this would happen and he tried to keep the cutting across the calloused parts and not let the line slip into the palm nor cut the fingers.

If the boy was here he would wet the coils of line, he thought. Yes. If the boy were here. If the boy were here.

The line went out and out and out but it was slowing now and he was making the fish earn each inch of it. Now he got his head up from the wood and out of the slice of fish that his cheek had crushed. Then he was on his knees and then he rose slowly to his feet. He was ceding line but more slowly all the time. He worked back to where he could feel with his foot the coils of line that he could not see. There was plenty of line still and now the fish had to pull the friction of all that new line through the water.

Yes, he thought. And now he has jumped more than a dozen times and filled the sacs along his back with air and he cannot go down deep to die where I cannot bring him up. He will start circling soon and then I must work on him. I wonder what started him so suddenly? Could it have been hunger that made him desperate, or was he frightened by something in the night? Maybe he suddenly felt fear. But he was such a calm, strong fish and he seemed so fearless and so confident. It is strange.

“You better be fearless and confident yourself, old man,” he said. “You’re holding him again but you cannot get line. But soon he has to circle.”

The old man held him with his left hand and his shoulders now and stooped down and scooped up water in his right hand to get the crushed dolphin flesh off of his face. He was afraid that it might nauseate him and he would vomit and lose his strength. When his face was cleaned he washed his right hand in the water over the side and then let it stay in the salt water while he watched the first light come before the sunrise. He’s headed almost east, he thought. That means he is tired and going with the current. Soon he will have to circle. Then our true work begins.

After he judged that his right hand had been in the water long enough he took it out and looked at it.

“It is not bad,” he said. “And pain does not matter to a man.”

He took hold of the line carefully so that it did not fit into any of the fresh line cuts and shifted his weight so that he could put his left hand into the sea on the other side of the skiff.

“You did not do so badly for something worthless,” he said to his left hand. “But there was a moment when I could not find you.”

Why was I not born with two good hands? he thought. Perhaps it was my fault in not training that one properly. But God knows he has had enough chances to learn. He did not do so badly in the night, though, and he has only cramped once. If he cramps again let the line cut him off.

When he thought that he knew that he was not being clear-headed and he thought he should chew some more of the dolphin. But I can’t, he told himself. It is better to be light-headed than to lose your strength from nausea. And I know I cannot keep it if I eat it since my face was in it. I will keep it for an emergency until it goes bad. But it is too late to try for strength now through nourishment. You’re stupid, he told himself. Eat the other flying fish.

It was there, cleaned and ready, and he picked it up with his left hand and ate it chewing the bones carefully and eating all of it down to the tail.

It has more nourishment than almost any fish, he thought. At least the kind of strength that I need. Now I have done what I can, he thought. Let him begin to circle and let the fight come.

The sun was rising for the third time since he had put to sea when the fish started to circle.

He could not see by the slant of the line that the fish was circling. It was too early for that. He just felt a faint slackening of the pressure of the line and he commenced to pull on it gently with his right hand. It tightened, as always, but just when he reached the point where it would break, line began to come in. He slipped his shoulders and head from under the line and began to pull in line steadily and gently. He used both of his hands in a swinging motion and tried to do the pulling as much as he could with his body and his legs. His old legs and shoulders pivoted with the swinging of the pulling.

“It is a very big circle,” he said. “But he is circling.”

Then the line would not come in any more and he held it until he saw the drops jumping from it in the sun. Then it started out and the old man knelt down and let it go grudgingly back into the dark water.

“He is making the far part of his circle now,” he said. I must hold all I can, he thought. The strain will shorten his circle each time. Perhaps in an hour I will see him. Now I must convince him and then I must kill him.

But the fish kept on circling slowly and the old man was wet with sweat and tired deep into his bones two hours later. But the circles were much shorter now and from the way the line slanted he could tell the fish had risen steadily while he swam.

For an hour the old man had been seeing black spots before his eyes and the sweat salted his eyes and salted the cut over his eye and on his forehead. He was not afraid of the black spots. They were normal at the tension that he was pulling on the line. Twice, though, he had felt faint and dizzy and that had worried him.

“I could not fail myself and die on a fish like this,” he said. “Now that I have him coming so beautifully, God help me endure. I’ll say a hundred Our Fathers and a hundred Hail Marys. But I cannot say them now.

Consider them said, he thought. I’ll say them later. Just then he felt a sudden banging and jerking on the line he held with his two hands. It was sharp and hard-feeling and heavy.

He is hitting the wire leader with his spear, he thought. That was bound to come. He had to do that. It may make him jump though and I would rather he stayed circling now. The jumps were necessary for him to take air. But after that each one can widen the opening of the hook wound and he can throw the hook.

“Don’t jump, fish,” he said. “Don’t jump.”

The fish hit the wire several times more and each time he shook his head the old man gave up a little line.

I must hold his pain where it is, he thought. Mine does not matter. I can control mine. But his pain could drive him mad.

After a while the fish stopped beating at the wire and started circling slowly again. The old man was gaining line steadily now. But he felt faint again. He lifted some sea water with his left hand and put it on his head. Then he put more on and rubbed the back of his neck.

“I have no cramps,” he said. “He’ll be up soon and I can last. You have to last. Don’t even speak of it.”

He kneeled against the bow and, for a moment, slipped the line over his back again. I’ll rest now while he goes out on the circle and then stand up and work on him when he comes in, he decided.

It was a great temptation to rest in the bow and let the fish make one circle by himself without recovering any line. But when the strain showed the fish had turned to come toward the boat, the old man rose to his feet and started the pivoting and the weaving pulling that brought in all the line he gained.

I’m tireder than I have ever been, he thought, and now the trade wind is rising. But that will be good to take him in with. I need that badly.

“I’ll rest on the next turn as he goes out,” he said. “I feel much better. Then in two or three turns more I will have him.”

His straw hat was far on the back of his head and he sank down into the bow with the pull of the line as he felt the fish turn.

You work now, fish, he thought. I’ll take you at the turn.

The sea had risen considerably. But it was a fair-weather breeze and he had to have it to get home.

“I’ll just steer south and west,” he said. “A man is never lost at sea and it is a long island.”

It was on the third turn that he saw the fish first.

He saw him first as a dark shadow that took so long to pass under the boat that he could not believe its length.

“No,” he said. “He can’t be that big.”

But he was that big and at the end of this circle he came to the surface only thirty yards away and the man saw his tail out of water. It was higher than a big scythe blade and a very pale lavender above the dark blue water. It raked back and as the fish swam just below the surface the old man could see his huge bulk and the purple stripes that banded him. His dorsal fin was down and his huge pectorals were spread wide.

On this circle the old man could see the fish’s eye and the two gray sucking fish that swam around him. Sometimes they attached themselves to him. Sometimes they darted off. Sometimes they would swim easily in his shadow. They were each over three feet long and when they swam fast they lashed their whole bodies like eels.

The old man was sweating now but from something else besides the sun. On each calm placid turn the fish made he was gaining line and he was sure that in two turns more he would have a chance to get the harpoon in.

But I must get him close, close, close, he thought. I mustn’t try for the head. I must get the heart.

“Be calm and strong, old man,” he said.

On the next circle the fish’s back was out but he was a little too far from the boat. On the next circle he was still too far away but he was higher out of water and the old man was sure that by gaining some more line he could have him alongside.

He had rigged his harpoon long before and its coil of light rope was in a round basket and the end was made fast to the bitt in the bow.

The fish was coming in on his circle now calm and beautiful looking and only his great tail moving. The old man pulled on him all that he could to bring him closer. For just a moment the fish turned a little on his side. Then he straightened himself and began another circle.

“I moved him,” the old man said. “I moved him then.”

He felt faint again now but he held on the great fish all the strain that he could. I moved him, he thought. Maybe this time I can get him over. Pull, hands, he thought. Hold up, legs. Last for me, head. Last for me. You never went. This time I’ll pull him over.

But when he put all of his effort on, starting it well out before the fish came alongside and pulling with all his strength, the fish pulled part way over and then righted himself and swam away.

“Fish,” the old man said. “Fish, you are going to have to die anyway. Do you have to kill me too?”

That way nothing is accomplished, he thought. His mouth was too dry to speak but he could not reach for the water now. I must get him alongside this time, he thought. I am not good for many more turns. Yes you are, he told himself. You’re good for ever.

On the next turn, he nearly had him. But again the fish righted himself and swam slowly away.

You are killing me, fish, the old man thought. But you have a right to. Never have I seen a greater, or more beautiful, or a calmer or more noble thing than you, brother. Come on and kill me. I do not care who kills who.

Now you are getting confused in the head, he thought. You must keep your head clear. Keep your head clear and know how to suffer like a man. Or a fish, he thought.

“Clear up, head,” he said in a voice he could hardly hear. “Clear up.”

Twice more it was the same on the turns.

I do not know, the old man thought. He had been on the point of feeling himself go each time. I do not know. But I will try it once more.

He tried it once more and he felt himself going when he turned the fish. The fish righted himself and swam off again slowly with the great tail weaving in the air.

I’ll try it again, the old man promised, although his hands were mushy now and he could only see well in flashes.

He tried it again and it was the same. So he thought, and he felt himself going before he started; I will try it once again.

He took all his pain and what was left of his strength and his long gone pride and he put it against the fish’s agony and the fish came over onto his side and swam gently on his side, his bill almost touching the planking of the skiff and started to pass the boat, long, deep, wide, silver and barred with purple and interminable in the water.

The old man dropped the line and put his foot on it and lifted the harpoon as high as he could and drove it down with all his strength, and more strength he had just summoned, into the fish’s side just behind the great chest fin that rose high in the air to the altitude of the man’s chest. He felt the iron go in and he leaned on it and drove it further and then pushed all his weight after it.

Then the fish came alive, with his death in him, and rose high out of the water showing all his great length and width and all his power and his beauty. He seemed to hang in the air above the old man in the skiff. Then he fell into the water with a crash that sent spray over the old man and over all of the skiff.

The old man felt faint and sick and he could not see well. But he cleared the harpoon line and let it run slowly through his raw hands and, when he could see, he saw the fish was on his back with his silver belly up. The shaft of the harpoon was projecting at an angle from the fish’s shoulder and the sea was discolouring with the red of the blood from his heart. First it was dark as a shoal in the blue water that was more than a mile deep. Then it spread like a cloud. The fish was silvery and still and floated with the waves.

The old man looked carefully in the glimpse of vision that he had. Then he took two turns of the harpoon line around the bitt in the bow and laid his head on his hands.

“Keep my head clear,” he said against the wood of the bow. “I am a tired old man. But I have killed this fish which is my brother and now I must do the slave work.”

Now I must prepare the nooses and the rope to lash him alongside, he thought. Even if we were two and swamped her to load him and bailed her out, this skiff would never hold him. I must prepare everything, then bring him in and lash him well and step the mast and set sail for home.

He started to pull the fish in to have him alongside so that he could pass a line through his gills and out his mouth and make his head fast alongside the bow. I want to see him, he thought, and to touch and to feel him. He is my fortune, he thought. But that is not why I wish to feel him. I think I felt his heart, he thought. When I pushed on the harpoon shaft the second time. Bring him in now and make him fast and get the noose around his tail and another around his middle to bind him to the skiff.

“Get to work, old man,” he said. He took a very small drink of the water. “There is very much slave work to be done now that the fight is over.”

He looked up at the sky and then out to his fish. He looked at the sun carefully. It is not much more than noon, he thought. And the trade wind is rising. The lines all mean nothing now. The boy and I will splice them when we are home.

“Come on, fish,” he said. But the fish did not come. Instead he lay there wallowing now in the seas and the old man pulled the skiff upon to him.

When he was even with him and had the fish’s head against the bow he could not believe his size. But he untied the harpoon rope from the bitt, passed it through the fish’s gills and out his jaws, made a turn around his sword then passed the rope through the other gill, made another turn around the bill and knotted the double rope and made it fast to the bitt in the bow. He cut the rope then and went astern to noose the tail. The fish had turned silver from his original purple and silver, and the stripes showed the same pale violet colour as his tail. They were wider than a man’s hand with his fingers spread and the fish’s eye looked as detached as the mirrors in a periscope or as a saint in a procession.

“It was the only way to kill him,” the old man said. He was feeling better since the water and he knew he would not go away and his head was clear. He’s over fifteen hundred pounds the way he is, he thought. Maybe much more. If he dresses out two-thirds of that at thirty cents a pound?

“I need a pencil for that,” he said. “My head is not that clear. But I think the great DiMaggio would be proud of me today. I had no bone spurs. But the hands and the back hurt truly.” I wonder what a bone spur is, he thought. Maybe we have them without knowing of it.

He made the fish fast to bow and stern and to the middle thwart. He was so big it was like lashing a much bigger skiff alongside. He cut a piece of line and tied the fish’s lower jaw against his bill so his mouth would not open and they would sail as cleanly as possible. Then he stepped the mast and, with the stick that was his gaff and with his boom rigged, the patched sail drew, the boat began to move, and half lying in the stern he sailed south-west.

He did not need a compass to tell him where southwest was. He only needed the feel of the trade wind and the drawing of the sail. I better put a small line out with a spoon on it and try and get something to eat and drink for the moisture. But he could not find a spoon and his sardines were rotten. So he hooked a patch of yellow Gulf weed with the gaff as they passed and shook it so that the small shrimps that were in it fell onto the planking of the skiff. There were more than a dozen of them and they jumped and kicked like sand fleas. The old man pinched their heads off with his thumb and forefinger and ate them chewing up the shells and the tails. They were very tiny but he knew they were nourishing and they tasted good.

The old man still had two drinks of water in the bottle and he used half of one after he had eaten the shrimps. The skiff was sailing well considering the handicaps and he steered with the tiller under his arm. He could see the fish and he had only to look at his hands and feel his back against the stern to know that this had truly happened and was not a dream. At one time when he was feeling so badly toward the end, he had thought perhaps it was a dream. Then when he had seen the fish come out of the water and hang motionless in the sky before he fell, he was sure there was some great strangeness and he could not believe it. Then he could not see well, although now he saw as well as ever.

Now he knew there was the fish and his hands and back were no dream. The hands cure quickly, he thought. I bled them clean and the salt water will heal them. The dark water of the true gulf is the greatest healer that there is. All I must do is keep the head clear. The hands have done their work and we sail well. With his mouth shut and his tail straight up and down we sail like brothers. Then his head started to become a little unclear and he thought, is he bringing me in or am I bringing him in? If I were towing him behind there would be no question. Nor if the fish were in the skiff, with all dignity gone, there would be no question either. But they were sailing together lashed side by side and the old man thought, let him bring me in if it pleases him. I am only better than him through trickery and he meant me no harm.

They sailed well and the old man soaked his hands in the salt water and tried to keep his head clear. There were high cumulus clouds and enough cirrus above them so that the old man knew the breeze would last all night. The old man looked at the fish constantly to make sure it was true. It was an hour before the first shark hit him.

The shark was not an accident. He had come up from deep down in the water as the dark cloud of blood had settled and dispersed in the mile deep sea. He had come up so fast and absolutely without caution that he broke the surface of the blue water and was in the sun. Then he fell back into the sea and picked up the scent and started swimming on the course the skiff and the fish had taken.

Sometimes he lost the scent. But he would pick it up again, or have just a trace of it, and he swam fast and hard on the course. He was a very big Mako shark built to swim as fast as the fastest fish in the sea and everything about him was beautiful except his jaws. His back was as blue as a sword fish’s and his belly was silver and his hide was smooth and handsome. He was built as a sword fish except for his huge jaws which were tight shut now as he swam fast, just under the surface with his high dorsal fin knifing through the water without wavering. Inside the closed double lip of his jaws all of his eight rows of teeth were slanted inwards. They were not the ordinary pyramid-shaped teeth of most sharks. They were shaped like a man’s fingers when they are crisped like claws. They were nearly as long as the fingers of the old man and they had razor-sharp cutting edges on both sides. This was a fish built to feed on all the fishes in the sea, that were so fast and strong and well armed that they had no other enemy. Now he speeded up as he smelled the fresher scent and his blue dorsal fin cut the water.

When the old man saw him coming he knew that this was a shark that had no fear at all and would do exactly what he wished. He prepared the harpoon and made the rope fast while he watched the shark come on. The rope was short as it lacked what he had cut away to lash the fish.

The old man’s head was clear and good now and he was full of resolution but he had little hope. It was too good to last, he thought. He took one look at the great fish as he watched the shark close in. It might as well have been a dream, he thought. I cannot keep him from hitting me but maybe I can get him. Dentuso, he thought. Bad luck to your mother.

The shark closed fast astern and when he hit the fish the old man saw his mouth open and his strange eyes and the clicking chop of the teeth as he drove forward in the meat just above the tail. The shark’s head was out of water and his back was coming out and the old man could hear the noise of skin and flesh ripping on the big fish when he rammed the harpoon down onto the shark’s head at a spot where the line between his eyes intersected with the line that ran straight back from his nose. There were no such lines. There was only the heavy sharp blue head and the big eyes and the clicking, thrusting all-swallowing jaws. But that was the location of the brain and the old man hit it. He hit it with his blood mushed hands driving a good harpoon with all his strength. He hit it without hope but with resolution and complete malignancy.

The shark swung over and the old man saw his eye was not alive and then he swung over once again, wrapping himself in two loops of the rope. The old man knew that he was dead but the shark would not accept it. Then, on his back, with his tail lashing and his jaws clicking, the shark plowed over the water as a speedboat does. The water was white where his tail beat it and three-quarters of his body was clear above the water when the rope came taut, shivered, and then snapped. The shark lay quietly for a little while on the surface and the old man watched him. Then he went down very slowly.

“He took about forty pounds,” the old man said aloud. He took my harpoon too and all the rope, he thought, and now my fish bleeds again and there will be others.

He did not like to look at the fish anymore since he had been mutilated. When the fish had been hit it was as though he himself were hit.

But I killed the shark that hit my fish, he thought. And he was the biggest dentuso that I have ever seen. And God knows that I have seen big ones.

It was too good to last, he thought. I wish it had been a dream now and that I had never hooked the fish and was alone in bed on the newspapers.

“But man is not made for defeat,” he said. “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” I am sorry that I killed the fish though, he thought. Now the bad time is coming and I do not even have the harpoon. The dentuso is cruel and able and strong and intelligent. But I was more intelligent than he was. Perhaps not, he thought. Perhaps I was only better armed.

“Don’t think, old man,” he said aloud. “Sail on this course and take it when it comes.

But I must think, he thought. Because it is all I have left. That and baseball. I wonder how the great DiMaggio would have liked the way I hit him in the brain? It was no great thing, he thought. Any man could do it. But do you think my hands were as great a handicap as the bone spurs? I cannot know. I never had anything wrong with my heel except the time the sting ray stung it when I stepped on him when swimming and paralyzed the lower leg and made the unbearable pain.

“Think about something cheerful, old man,” he said. “Every minute now you are closer to home. You sail lighter for the loss of forty pounds.”

He knew quite well the pattern of what could happen when he reached the inner part of the current. But there was nothing to be done now.

“Yes there is,” he said aloud. “I can lash my knife to the butt of one of the oars.”

So he did that with the tiller under his arm and the sheet of the sail under his foot.

“Now,” he said. “I am still an old man. But I am not unarmed.”

The breeze was fresh now and he sailed on well. He watched only the forward part of the fish and some of his hope returned.

It is silly not to hope, he thought. Besides I believe it is a sin. Do not think about sin, he thought. There are enough problems now without sin. Also I have no understanding of it.

I have no understanding of it and I am not sure that I believe in it. Perhaps it was a sin to kill the fish. I suppose it was even though I did it to keep me alive and feed many people. But then everything is a sin. Do not think about sin. It is much too late for that and there are people who are paid to do it. Let them think about it. You were born to be a fisherman as the fish was born to be a fish. San Pedro was a fisherman as was the father of the great DiMaggio.

But he liked to think about all things that he was involved in and since there was nothing to read and he did not have a radio, he thought much and he kept on thinking about sin. You did not kill the fish only to keep alive and to sell for food, he thought. You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after. If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more?

“You think too much, old man,” he said aloud.

But you enjoyed killing the dentuso, he thought. He lives on the live fish as you do. He is not a scavenger nor just a moving appetite as some sharks are. He is beautiful and noble and knows no fear of anything.

“I killed him in self-defense,” the old man said aloud. “And I killed him well.”

Besides, he thought, everything kills everything else in some way. Fishing kills me exactly as it keeps me alive. The boy keeps me alive, he thought. I must not deceive myself too much.

He leaned over the side and pulled loose a piece of the meat of the fish where the shark had cut him. He chewed it and noted its quality and its good taste. It was firm and juicy, like meat, but it was not red. There was no stringiness in it and he knew that it would bring the highest price In the market. But there was no way to keep its scent out of the water and the old man knew that a very bad time was coming.

The breeze was steady. It had backed a little further into the north-east and he knew that meant that it would not fall off. The old man looked ahead of him but he could see no sails nor could he see the hull nor the smoke of any ship. There were only the flying fish that went up from his bow sailing away to either side and the yellow patches of Gulf weed. He could not even see a bird.

He had sailed for two hours, resting in the stern and sometimes chewing a bit of the meat from the marlin, trying to rest and to be strong, when he saw the first of the two sharks.

“Ay,” he said aloud. There is no translation for this word and perhaps it is just a noise such as a man might make, involuntarily, feeling the nail go through his hands and into the wood.

“Galanos,” he said aloud. He had seen the second fin now coming up behind the first and had identified them as shovel-nosed sharks by the brown, triangular fin and the sweeping movements of the tail. They had the scent and were excited and in the stupidity of their great hunger they were losing and finding the scent in their excitement. But they were closing all the time.

The old man made the sheet fast and jammed the tiller. Then he took up the oar with the knife lashed to it. He lifted it as lightly as he could because his hands rebelled at the pain. Then he opened and closed them on it lightly to loosen them. He closed them firmly so they would take the pain now and would not flinch and watched the sharks come. He could see their wide, flattened, shovel-pointed heads now and their white tipped wide pectoral fins. They were hateful sharks, bad smelling, scavengers as well as killers, and when they were hungry they would bite at an oar or the rudder of a boat. It was these sharks that would cut the turtles’ legs and flippers off when the turtles were asleep on the surface, and they would hit a man in the water, if they were hungry, even if the man had no smell of fish blood nor of fish slime on him.

“Ay,” the old man said. “Galanos. Come on galanos.”

They came. But they did not come as the Mako had come. One turned and went out of sight under the skiff and the old man could feel the skiff shake as he jerked and pulled on the fish. The other watched the old man with his slitted yellow eyes and then came in fast with his half circle of jaws wide to hit the fish where he had already been bitten. The line showed clearly on the top of his brown head and back where the brain joined the spinal cord and the old man drove the knife on the oar into the juncture, withdrew it, and drove it in again into the shark’s yellow cat-like eyes. The shark let go of the fish and slid down, swallowing what he had taken as he died.

The skiff was still shaking with the destruction the other shark was doing to the fish and the old man let go the sheet so that the skiff would swing broadside and bring the shark out from under. When he saw the shark he leaned over the side and punched at him. He hit only meat and the hide was set hard and he barely got the knife in. The blow hurt not only his hands but his shoulder too. But the shark came up fast with his head out and the old man hit him squarely in the centre of his flat-topped head as his nose came out of water and lay against the fish. The old man withdrew the blade and punched the shark exactly in the same spot again. He still hung to the fish with his jaws hooked and the old man stabbed him in his left eye. The shark still hung there.

“No?” the old man said and he drove the blade between the vertebrae and the brain. It was an easy shot now and he felt the cartilage sever. The old man reversed the oar and put the blade between the shark’s jaws to open them. He twisted the blade and as the shark slid loose he said, “Go on, galano. Slide down a mile deep. Go see your friend, or maybe it’s your mother.”

The old man wiped the blade of his knife and laid down the oar. Then he found the sheet and the sail filled and he brought the skiff on to her course.

“They must have taken a quarter of him and of the best meat,” he said aloud. “I wish it were a dream and that I had never hooked him. I’m sorry about it, fish. It makes everything wrong.” He stopped and he did not want to look at the fish now. Drained of blood and awash he looked the colour of the silver backing of a mirror and his stripes still showed.

“I shouldn’t have gone out so far, fish,” he said. “Neither for you nor for me. I’m sorry, fish.”

Now, he said to himself. Look to the lashing on the knife and see if it has been cut. Then get your hand in order because there still is more to come.

“I wish I had a stone for the knife,” the old man said after he had checked the lashing on the oar butt. “I should have brought a stone.” You should have brought many things, he thought. But you did not bring them, old man. Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.

“You give me much good counsel,” he said aloud. “I’m tired of it.”

He held the tiller under his arm and soaked both his hands in the water as the skiff drove forward.

“God knows how much that last one took,” he said. “But she’s much lighter now.” He did not want to think of the mutilated under-side of the fish. He knew that each of the jerking bumps of the shark had been meat torn away and that the fish now made a trail for all sharks as wide as a highway through the sea.

He was a fish to keep a man all winter, he thought. Don’t think of that. Just rest and try to get your hands in shape to defend what is left of him. The blood smell from my hands means nothing now with all that scent in the water. Besides they do not bleed much. There is nothing cut that means anything. The bleeding may keep the left from cramping.

What can I think of now? he thought. Nothing. I must think of nothing and wait for the next ones. I wish it had really been a dream, he thought. But who knows? It might have turned out well.

The next shark that came was a single shovelnose. He came like a pig to the trough if a pig had a mouth so wide that you could put your head in it. The old man let him hit the fish and then drove the knife on the oar down into his brain. But the shark jerked backwards as he rolled and the knife blade snapped.

The old man settled himself to steer. He did not even watch the big shark sinking slowly in the water, showing first life-size, then small, then tiny. That always fascinated the old man. But he did not even watch it now.

“I have the gaff now,” he said. “But it will do no good. I have the two oars and the tiller and the short club.”

Now they have beaten me, he thought. I am too old to club sharks to death. But I will try it as long as I have the oars and the short club and the tiller.

He put his hands in the water again to soak them. It was getting late in the afternoon and he saw nothing but the sea and the sky. There was more wind in the sky than there had been, and soon he hoped that he would see land.

“You’re tired, old man,” he said. “You’re tired inside.”

The sharks did not hit him again until just before sunset.

The old man saw the brown fins coming along the wide trail the fish must make in the water. They were not even quartering on the scent. They were headed straight for the skiff swimming side by side.

He jammed the tiller, made the sheet fast and reached under the stern for the club. It was an oar handle from a broken oar sawed off to about two and a half feet in length. He could only use it effectively with one hand because of the grip of the handle and he took good hold of it with his right hand, flexing his hand on it, as he watched the sharks come. They were both galanos.

I must let the first one get a good hold and hit him on the point of the nose or straight across the top of the head, he thought.

The two sharks closed together and as he saw the one nearest him open his jaws and sink them into the silver side of the fish, he raised the club high and brought it down heavy and slamming onto the top of the shark’s broad head. He felt the rubbery solidity as the club came down. But he felt the rigidity of bone too and he struck the shark once more hard across the point of the nose as he slid down from the fish.

The other shark had been in and out and now came in again with his jaws wide. The old man could see pieces of the meat of the fish spilling white from the corner of his jaws as he bumped the fish and closed his jaws. He swung at him and hit only the head and the shark looked at him and wrenched the meat loose. The old man swung the club down on him again as he slipped away to swallow and hit only the heavy solid rubberiness.

“Come on, galano,” the old man said. “Come in again.”

The shark came in a rush and the old man hit him as he shut his jaws. He hit him solidly and from as high up as he could raise the club. This time he felt the bone at the base of the brain and he hit him again in the same place while the shark tore the meat loose sluggishly and slid down from the fish.

The old man watched for him to come again but neither shark showed. Then he saw one on the surface swimming in circles. He did not see the fin of the other.

I could not expect to kill them, he thought. I could have in my time. But I have hurt them both badly and neither one can feel very good. If I could have used a bat with two hands I could have killed the first one surely. Even now, he thought.

He did not want to look at the fish. He knew that half of him had been destroyed. The sun had gone down while he had been in the fight with the sharks.

“It will be dark soon,” he said. “Then I should see the glow of Havana. If I am too far to the eastward I will see the lights of one of the new beaches.”

I cannot be too far out now, he thought. I hope no one has been too worried. There is only the boy to worry, of course. But I am sure he would have confidence. Many of the older fishermen will worry. Many others too, he thought. I live in a good town.

He could not talk to the fish anymore because the fish had been ruined too badly. Then something came into his head.

“Half fish,” he said. “Fish that you were. I am sorry that I went too far out. I ruined us both. But we have killed many sharks, you and I, and ruined many others. How many did you ever kill, old fish? You do not have that spear on your head for nothing.”

He liked to think of the fish and what he could do to a shark if he were swimming free. I should have chopped the bill off to fight them with, he thought. But there was no hatchet and then there was no knife.

But if I had, and could have lashed it to an oar butt, what a weapon. Then we might have fought them together. What will you do now if they come in the night? What can you do?

“Fight them,” he said. “I’ll fight them until I die.”

But in the dark now and no glow showing and no lights and only the wind and the steady pull of the sail he felt that perhaps he was already dead. He put his two hands together and felt the palms. They were not dead and he could bring the pain of life by simply opening and closing them. He leaned his back against the stern and knew he was not dead. His shoulders told him.

I have all those prayers I promised if I caught the fish, he thought. But I am too tired to say them now. I better get the sack and put it over my shoulders.

He lay in the stern and steered and watched for the glow to come in the sky. I have half of him, he thought. Maybe I’ll have the luck to bring the forward half in. I should have some luck. No, he said. You violated your luck when you went too far outside.

“Don’t be silly,” he said aloud. “And keep awake and steer. You may have much luck yet.”

“I’d like to buy some if there’s any place they sell it,” he said.

What could I buy it with? he asked himself. Could I buy it with a lost harpoon and a broken knife and two bad hands?

“You might,” he said. “You tried to buy it with eighty-four days at sea. They nearly sold it to you too.”

I must not think nonsense, he thought. Luck is a thing that comes in many forms and who can recognize her? I would take some though in any form and pay what they asked. I wish I could see the glow from the lights, he thought. I wish too many things. But that is the thing I wish for now. He tried to settle more comfortably to steer and from his pain he knew he was not dead.

He saw the reflected glare of the lights of the city at what must have been around ten o’clock at night. They were only perceptible at first as the light is in the sky before the moon rises. Then they were steady to see across the ocean which was rough now with the increasing breeze. He steered inside of the glow and he thought that now, soon, he must hit the edge of the stream.

Now it is over, he thought. They will probably hit me again. But what can a man do against them in the dark without a weapon?

He was stiff and sore now and his wounds and all of the strained parts of his body hurt with the cold of the night. I hope I do not have to fight again, he thought. I hope so much I do not have to fight again.

But by midnight he fought and this time he knew the fight was useless. They came in a pack and he could only see the lines in the water that their fins made and their phosphorescence as they threw themselves on the fish. He clubbed at heads and heard the jaws chop and the shaking of the skiff as they took hold below. He clubbed desperately at what he could only feel and hear and he felt something seize the club and it was gone.

He jerked the tiller free from the rudder and beat and chopped with it, holding it in both hands and driving it down again and again. But they were up to the bow now and driving in one after the other and together, tearing off the pieces of meat that showed glowing below the sea as they turned to come once more.

One came, finally, against the head itself and he knew that it was over. He swung the tiller across the shark’s head where the jaws were caught in the heaviness of the fish’s head which would not tear. He swung it once and twice and again. He heard the tiller break and he lunged at the shark with the splintered butt. He felt it go in and knowing it was sharp he drove it in again. The shark let go and rolled away. That was the last shark of the pack that came. There was nothing more for them to eat.

The old man could hardly breathe now and he felt a strange taste in his mouth. It was coppery and sweet and he was afraid of it for a moment. But there was not much of it.

He spat into the ocean and said, “Eat that, galanos. And make a dream you’ve killed a man.”

He knew he was beaten now finally and without remedy and he went back to the stern and found the jagged end of the tiller would fit in the slot of the rudder well enough for him to steer. He settled the sack around his shoulders and put the skiff on her course. He sailed lightly now and he had no thoughts nor any feelings of any kind. He was past everything now and he sailed the skiff to make his home port as well and as intelligently as he could. In the night sharks hit the carcass as someone might pick up crumbs from the table. The old man paid no attention to them and did not pay any attention to anything except steering. He only noticed how lightly and how well the skiff sailed now there was no great weight beside her.

She’s good, he thought. She is sound and not harmed in any way except for the tiller. That is easily replaced.

He could feel he was inside the current now and he could see the lights of the beach colonies along the shore. He knew where he was now and it was nothing to get home.

The wind is our friend, anyway, he thought. Then he added, sometimes. And the great sea with our friends and our enemies. And bed, he thought. Bed is my friend. Just bed, he thought. Bed will be a great thing. It is easy when you are beaten, he thought. I never knew how easy it was. And what beat you, he thought.

“Nothing,” he said aloud. “I went out too far.”

When he sailed into the little harbour the lights of the Terrace were out and he knew everyone was in bed. The breeze had risen steadily and was blowing strongly now. It was quiet in the harbour though and he sailed up onto the little patch of shingle below the rocks. There was no one to help him so he pulled the boat up as far as he could. Then he stepped out and made her fast to a rock.

He unstepped the mast and furled the sail and tied it. Then he shouldered the mast and started to climb. It was then he knew the depth of his tiredness. He stopped for a moment and looked back and saw in the reflection from the street light the great tail of the fish standing up well behind the skiff’s stern. He saw the white naked line of his backbone and the dark mass of the head with the projecting bill and all the nakedness between.

He started to climb again and at the top he fell and lay for some time with the mast across his shoulder. He tried to get up. But it was too difficult and he sat there with the mast on his shoulder and looked at the road. A cat passed on the far side going about its business and the old man watched it. Then he just watched the road.

Finally he put the mast down and stood up. He picked the mast up and put it on his shoulder and started up the road. He had to sit down five times before he reached his shack.

Inside the shack he leaned the mast against the wall. In the dark he found a water bottle and took a drink. Then he lay down on the bed. He pulled the blanket over his shoulders and then over his back and legs and he slept face down on the newspapers with his arms out straight and the palms of his hands up.

He was asleep when the boy looked in the door in the morning. It was blowing so hard that the drifting-boats would not be going out and the boy had slept late and then come to the old man’s shack as he had come each morning. The boy saw that the old man was breathing and then he saw the old man’s hands and he started to cry. He went out very quietly to go to bring some coffee and all the way down the road he was crying.

Many fishermen were around the skiff looking at what was lashed beside it and one was in the water, his trousers rolled up, measuring the skeleton with a length of line.

The boy did not go down. He had been there before and one of the fishermen was looking after the skiff for him.

“How is he?” one of the fishermen shouted.

“Sleeping,” the boy called. He did not care that they saw him crying. “Let no one disturb him.”

“He was eighteen feet from nose to tail,” the fisherman who was measuring him called.

“I believe it,” the boy said.

He went into the Terrace and asked for a can of coffee.

“Hot and with plenty of milk and sugar in it.”

“Anything more?”

“No. Afterwards I will see what he can eat.”

“What a fish it was,” the proprietor said. “There has never been such a fish. Those were two fine fish you took yesterday too.”

“Damn my fish,” the boy said and he started to cry again.

“Do you want a drink of any kind?” the proprietor asked.

“No,” the boy said. “Tell them not to bother Santiago. I’ll be back.”

“Tell him how sorry I am.”

“Thanks,” the boy said.

The boy carried the hot can of coffee up to the old man’s shack and sat by him until he woke. Once it looked as though he were waking. But he had gone back into heavy sleep and the boy had gone across the road to borrow some wood to heat the coffee.

Finally the old man woke.

“Don’t sit up,” the boy said. “Drink this.” He poured some of the coffee in a glass.

The old man took it and drank it.

“They beat me, Manolin,” he said. “They truly beat me.”

“He didn’t beat you. Not the fish.”

“No. Truly. It was afterwards.”

“Pedrico is looking after the skiff and the gear. What do you want done with the head?”

“Let Pedrico chop it up to use in fish traps.”

“And the spear?”

“You keep it if you want it.”

“I want it,” the boy said. “Now we must make our plans about the other things.”

“Did they search for me?”

“Of course. With coast guard and with planes.”

“The ocean is very big and a skiff is small and hard to see,” the old man said. He noticed how pleasant it was to have someone to talk to instead of speaking only to himself and to the sea. “I missed you,” he said. “What did you catch?”

“One the first day. One the second and two the third.”

“Very good.”

“Now we fish together again.”

“No. I am not lucky. I am not lucky anymore.”

“The hell with luck,” the boy said. “I’ll bring the luck with me.”

“What will your family say?”

“I do not care. I caught two yesterday. But we will fish together now for I still have much to learn.”

“We must get a good killing lance and always have it on board. You can make the blade from a spring leaf from an old Ford. We can grind it in Guanabacoa. It should be sharp and not tempered so it will break. My knife broke.”

“I’ll get another knife and have the spring ground.” How many days of heavy brisa have we?”

“Maybe three. Maybe more.”

“I will have everything in order,” the boy said. “You get your hands well old man.”

“I know how to care for them. In the night I spat something strange and felt something in my chest was broken.”

“Get that well too,” the boy said. “Lie down, old man, and I will bring you your clean shirt. And something to eat.”

“Bring any of the papers of the time that I was gone,” the old man said.

“You must get well fast for there is much that I can learn and you can teach me everything. How much did you suffer?”

“Plenty,” the old man said.

“I’ll bring the food and the papers,” the boy said. “Rest well, old man. I will bring stuff from the drugstore for your hands.”

“Don’t forget to tell Pedrico the head is his.”

“No. I will remember.”

As the boy went out the door and down the worn coral rock road he was crying again.

That afternoon there was a party of tourists at the Terrace and looking down in the water among the empty beer cans and dead barracudas a woman saw a great long white spine with a huge tail at the end that lifted and swung with the tide while the east wind blew a heavy steady sea outside the entrance to the harbour.

“What’s that?” she asked a waiter and pointed to the long backbone of the great fish that was now just garbage waiting to go out with the tide.

“Tiburon,” the waiter said. “Shark.” He was meaning to explain what had happened.

“I didn’t know sharks had such handsome, beautifully formed tails.”

“I didn’t either,” her male companion said.

Up the road, in his shack, the old man was sleeping again. He was still sleeping on his face and the boy was sitting by him watching him. The old man was dreaming about the lions.

李继宏

广东揭阳人，毕业于中山大学，现居美国

英国伯明翰大学莎士比亚研究所访问学者

美国加州大学尔湾分校英文系客座研究员

翻译作品

李继宏世界名著新译系列：《小王子》《老人与海》《了不起的盖茨比》《动物农场》《瓦尔登湖》《月亮和六便士》《傲慢与偏见》《喧哗与骚动》

“与神对话”系列：《与神对话·全三卷》《与神为友》《与神合一》

其他：《追风筝的人》《灿烂千阳》《穷查理宝典》等

个人公众号：

李继宏世界名著新译系列

01.《小王子》

02.《老人与海》

03.《动物农场》

04.《了不起的盖茨比》

05.《瓦尔登湖》

06.《月亮和六便士》

07.《傲慢与偏见》

08.《喧哗与骚动》

名人推荐：

译本为什么要读李继宏的？不仅因为译笔，更因为导读和注释。它们带来的意外惊喜和收获，是其他译本无法替代的。

一一学者 易中天

《喧哗与骚动》是20世纪文学的一部经卷。继宏的新译，创造性地给这部经卷带来了完全不一样的新悟和新解。只有真正阅读并弄懂了《喧哗与骚动》等文学经卷的人，才可以说自己是文学的信徒吧。那么，让我们因为共同阅读了此书而聚集在一起，开始为喧嚣乱世中文学的纯粹而祈祷。

——卡夫卡奖得主 阎连科

继宏的研究式翻译，使我终于读懂了福克纳的这部经典巨著。

一一作家 李银河

既有深入导读和详细注释，又成功再造了小说的意识流叙事，李继宏这部经典新译将帮助新一代中国读者理解福克纳为何在英语国家享有如此崇高的地位。

——美国文学翻译家Bruce Humes

继宏是我的旧友，也是目前国内少有的专职文学译者；他的译笔清新优雅，可读性强，我向来很喜欢。

一一财经作家 吴晓波

值得庆幸的是，这些绝对不容易翻译的书遇见了优秀的翻译家李继宏。

——复旦大学教授 钱文忠

我真的觉得李继宏的译本是目前为止比较忠实的版本。

——香港作家 梁文道

李继宏翻译的《傲慢与偏见》以其达美晓畅、贴切洗练的语言风格，翔实准确的文后注释，以及补充作者生平、阐述译者的婚姻观、梳理原作文学评论等文前导读，充分满足了读者对原著的深度理解期待。

——东北大学教授 张威

李继宏先生的敬业精神和高超的文笔给我留下了深刻的印象。

——喜马拉雅资本创办人 李录

媒体推荐：

外国图书在中国是否取得成功，译文质量起到至关重要的作用，所以出版商经常找到李继宏，他翻译的作品包括《追风筝的人》和《与神对话》等。

——New York Times（《纽约时报》），2010年12月21日

李继宏12岁开始学英语，尚未30岁的时候已经翻译了20几种图书，他仅用十天便译完了《追风筝的人》。

——China Daily（《中国日报》），2011年8月19日

李继宏在2004年开始翻译图书以后声名鹊起，如今译有30种涵盖宗教、哲学、社会学、小说、散文、诗歌等领域的作品。

——Beijing Review（《北京周刊》），2013年11月21日

李继宏虽然是一个年轻翻译家，但已经对现代翻译行业产生了巨大的影响。

——Global Times（《环球时报》英文版），2014年4月17日

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老人与海

产品经理 | 周颖

封面设计 | 李子琪

产品监制 | 吴涛

版式设计 | 刘泊延

Kindle电子书制作 | 李元沛

出品人 | 瞿洪斌

Table of Contents

导读

老人与海

正文

版本和注释说明

The Old Man and the Sea