Pescador's Wake (3 page)

Julia Pereira de Sánchez stirs a large pot of
ensopado,
leaning over to breathe in the stew's meaty warmth. She looks out through the kitchen window at the solid wall of apartments on the other side of the street. Their square hulls swim in a sea of people and traffic, blocking her view completely. There's no horizon—barely a sky—here on the outskirts of Montevideo's crumbling old town, the Ciudad Vieja. She thinks of Carlos and doubts if their worlds, at this instant, could be further apart. How she would love to trade her claustrophobia for the emptiness of the ocean. In a second she would swap the solidity of concrete, of buildings planted in the ground, for a sea of space.

She watches the cars and buses haul people along her street, taking them either north in the direction of the harbour and the Puerto de Montevideo, only a few minutes' walk from her ground-floor apartment, or east towards the Plaza Independencia, the hub of the city, which separates the old from the brand-spanking new. As she stirs the stew, Julia thinks how much Carlos would enjoy the meal. She hasn't heard from her husband since he made a satellite call from international waters south of Australia over a week ago, and
suspects his lack of contact means that he is now fishing illegally off one of the subantarctic islands. She hopes that's all it is.

Julia stretches back, placing her hands in the small of her back and arching against them. With her growing abdomen, standing up for any length of time is a physical challenge. The baby and the fluid around it have tipped her centre of gravity so far forward that she is certain it's only a matter of time before she performs a spectacular belly flop. She can still see her toes, just, but is alarmed at the transformation of her feet. It's as though the extra weight has forced them outward, splayed them wide like a frog's. She thinks of her mother's feet, spread sideways like this, and how the small leather boots she left behind last time she visited still carry the bulging shape of her bunions in loyal memory of their owner. When she tried the boots on last week, Julia was comforted to think that she was, in a sense, slipping inside her mother's skin. She has worn the shoes, which are a perfect fit, every long day since.

With the back of her hand, Julia brushes damp strands of fine, dark hair from her forehead. The steam from the cooking adds to the cramped confines of the apartment, and she lifts her long-sleeved shirt away from where it is sticking to her stretched skin. She goes to change into something cooler and catches sight of herself—ballooning, half naked – in the mirror behind the bedroom door. She stands side-on
and is relieved to see that, apart from her enlarged abdomen, she is still slim. She sweeps a hand over her belly and a tiny elbow, or a fist or foot, beats against her drum-like middle, before rolling across her like an internal wave. It makes her laugh, and she gives the baby inside a little nudge with her own hand to say hello.

She puts on a white T-shirt of Carlos's and returns to the kitchen, where the pot is spitting with all the fury of an abandoned wife. The meal is starting to burn, and she quickly gives it another stir with the wooden spoon. With her finger, she collects a sample and decides that she has caught it just in time. The stew will serve María and her well for the next couple of days. How much easier it is to be able to cook again, she thinks, without the sickly cloud of nausea that plagued the early months of the pregnancy. She couldn't have even considered making
ensopado
then without ending up face-down over the toilet. On the calendar she has recorded each day of this pregnancy. Today marks twenty-five-and-a-half weeks, well past the risk of early miscarriage; still not quite out of the woods.

María skips out of her bedroom and into the small kitchen. ‘I'm hungry,' she whines, reaching up onto the counter for a carrot stick.

‘Well, this will be ready soon, sweetheart. What have you been up to in there?'

‘Just drawing,' María says, opening the fridge.

‘Can I see?' Julia asks, trying to distract her daughter from snacking before her meal.

‘Not yet, I haven't finished.' María shuts the fridge and absconds to her bedroom with an apple.

At least it's healthy, Julia concedes, deciding that she hasn't got the energy to make a fuss. She tosses the last few ingredients into the stew and reaches for her phone book. She finds
Señor
Migiliaro's mobile number, which Carlos wrote inside the front cover for her, and dials it. It's typical, she thinks, that there are no other contact details for the Spanish owner. If one of his boats gets caught fishing illegally, the coward can disappear in a flash like a rat up a drain pipe. No address, no contact number, no accountability. All of the benefits, none of the risk.

‘
Hola
,' Migiliaro answers. Julia has only spoken with him once before but recognises his voice: cold and dismissive, as though he is in a hurry to get somewhere and doesn't want to be bothered.

‘
Buenos tardes, Señor Migiliaro.
This is Julia Pereira de Sánchez, Carlos's wife…Carlos Sánchez from the
Pescador
.'

‘Si
.'

‘I haven't heard from Carlos for a while, and just wanted to know if everything is all right.' Julia resents the way this man makes her feel nervous, and small. The way he risks men's lives for profit, without a second thought.

‘As far as I know.
Si
.'

‘Well, when did you last hear from him?'

‘About a week ago.'

‘Me too,' Julia says, her anxiety building. ‘Is that unusual?'

‘Not necessarily.'

María bursts back into the kitchen, grinning and waving her completed drawing in the air, her half-eaten apple clamped between her teeth. Julia holds her hand up, motioning her to wait.

‘Well…can't you reach him somehow? I can't get through.'

‘I'll get one of the other boats to make contact. Call me in a day or two and I'll let you know.'

María takes the apple from her mouth and flaps the picture noisily in front of her mother's face.
‘Mamá,
look it's
Papá
fishing!' she whoops, jumping up and down and ignoring Julia's finger forming a ‘shhhh' across her lips.

Julia hears the clunk of Migiliaro ending the phone call. She returns the handset to the wall and shouts: ‘That was important! I said to wait. It was about
Papá!'

‘What about
Papá?
Is he all right? Can I talk to him?' María appears instantly worried and Julia is overcome by guilt and a desire to protect her daughter from the panic that is invading her own body.

‘I'm sure he's fine. But we can't talk to him right now. His phone isn't working. Julia reaches out to hug María but her daughter pulls away, all apple-breathed and huffy tears,
withholding her affection with the power of a five-year-old who knows when their mother needs their love. ‘Can you show me that picture now?'

María casts her drawing aside in a storm of anger and Julia watches it land face-up at her feet. The drawing is of a large red ship, not a bad representation of the
Pescador,
which is riding high on waves three times its height. There is a person with a sad face in the wheelhouse. It makes Julia shiver. Beneath the boat, María has drawn a school of fish and a broken line. There is no one on deck.

‘It's very clever,
mi quierida,'
Julia says.

‘The line broke. The fish got away.
Papá
has to stay away longer.

‘Papá will be home soon.'

‘No he won't!' María stamps her foot and runs back to her room, leaving Julia, Carlos and the boat at sea together in the kitchen.

Julia slides the drawing face-down into a kitchen drawer and wipes tears from her face. She hopes this trip is worth it. She stirs the stew for another few minutes before testing that the carrot is cooked through, and then spoons out two modest helpings. With Uruguay's skyrocketing inflation, grocery bills are getting harder to meet. If Carlos does well this time, it will make all the difference.

‘Dinner's ready,' she calls out. ‘If you come right away, there should be time for a walk down to the harbour afterwards.'

María is smiling when she reappears, seemingly having already forgotten about their altercation, and eats hungrily. Julia wishes she had the same appetite. After the call to Migiliaro, she feels sick to her stomach.

It's a five-minute walk to the Puerto de Montevideo, which is stacked high with large, foreign-owned factory ships that form a floating extension to the city. The piers are awash with poorly dressed, desperate-looking crews from China and Russia. All the local fishermen, and there aren't many left, have been pushed up-river. They nestle together alongside refugees who have fled rural poverty only to co-habit in
conventillos,
the crumbling houses of the old city. Julia watches as another factory ship heavy with its cargo of stolen fish steams along the Río de la Plata. Beyond it, on the opposite shores of the harbour, is Argentina.

Julia recognises a former neighbour, a fisherman from the days when locals caught
Brótola
and
Pescadilla
inshore off Montevideo in boats they owned themselves. He was a friend of Carlos's father, and one of generations of coastal families who earned their living this way until the factory boats flooded the market with their mega catches and forced them out of the industry.

María races ahead to the old man and he greets her warmly. ‘Look at the size of you,
mi chica
! You're a little Sánchez, there's no doubt about it.'

‘
Hola,
Rubén,' Julia says as she takes his proffered hand and joins him on the bench. The old man frowns at the big ships with a mixture of fascination and distaste. María takes a piece of bread from a plastic bag that he has been dipping into, and skips off to feed some gulls clustered around a stinking slurry of discarded bait.

‘How is young Carlos?' he asks. ‘Master of one of these monsters now, I hear.'

‘I'm afraid so. A Spanish-owned boat: the
Pescador
.'

Rubén raises an eyebrow.

‘I haven't heard from him for a few days, but I'm sure everything is fine. They're a long way south.' Julia looks closely for his reaction, hoping for reassurance.

‘
Si.
It's not easy these days, either.' The old man gazes out towards the mouth of the harbour where the Río de la Plata yawns brown water, heavy with fields washed away by the ploughing of soil and felling of forests, into the Atlantic Ocean. ‘I couldn't tell you the number of times I passed through that river mouth. But then, we would set off in the morning and be home in time for dinner.' He takes a pipe from his coat and lights it. ‘Your Carlos is away for much longer.'

Julia agrees with a resigned dip of her head, and Rubén blows a thin stream of smoke into the coming night before
speaking again. ‘He was always determined to make a success of himself. I warned him to take another trade, but fishing was in his blood. You can't help that. He teamed up with another young fellow, didn't he?'

‘
Si.
Eduardo Rodríguez.'

‘Rodriguez. Of course. His father is still fishing at La Paloma

Julia nods again.
‘Si.'
She thinks of the beach town, just a couple of hours' drive north of Montevideo, where she first met Eduardo and Carlos, and laments to herself its countless changes. With the exception of Eduardo's father's boatshed, which is still cradled steadfastly in the lap of the dunes, there are few reminders of its fishing hey-day.

‘Well, good luck to him.' Rubén removes his hat and scratches his wiry, white hair. He draws another breath through his pipe and exhales, mixing tobacco smoke with the smell of fish and fuel in the evening air.

‘He's away a bit then, your Carlos?' Rubén asks, his eyes on the fullness under Julia's coat.

‘Si,'
Julia says, stifling tears. Old people always make her feel emotional. Perhaps it's because they are not afraid to say what they're thinking. When time is running out in life, it makes sense to cut the small talk.

‘He's obviously in port long enough to keep the family line going though.' Rubén slaps himself on the knee, and Julia is grateful for his attempt at humour.

‘Si,
I'm due in a few months.'

‘It will all be fine,' Rubén says gently, his face more thoughtful now.

Julia meets his eyes, letting a few tears come. She thinks of the miscarriages she has had at home on her own, between María's birth and now, and the courage it has taken to fall pregnant again. No sooner had she told Carlos the news of this pregnancy than he accepted his current job on the
Pescador.
It makes her furious, to be abandoned again, but with toothfish selling for upwards of thirty American dollars a kilogram in fancy foreign restaurants it had been difficult to say no. A full hold, Carlos had said, would be worth two-and-a-half million dollars. She knows that if they get away with just some of that, a tenth even, he and Eduardo could pay for a deposit on their own boat. They'd never look back.

She studies Rubén as he watches a boat unload countless tonnes of fish into refrigerated trucks.

‘It's a wonder there's anything left in the sea,' he says. ‘The boats are hitting the stocks so hard nowadays. No sooner do you hear about a new fishing ground opening up—Crozet, Kerguélen, Prince Edward—than they are having to start on another. That's why your Carlos has gone so far south, you realise.'

‘Si,
but these foreign boats took our fish. What are we supposed to do?'

‘Hmm,' Rubén muses. ‘I don't have an answer for that. But I suspect even if all the fish were gone, some of us would still find an excuse to go to sea.' He smiles. ‘I was like your Carlos. An explorer. A hunter.' He focuses on something a long way out to sea. ‘And what of your parents, Julia? They moved to Tarariras to retire, didn't they?'