The Spinner and the Fly

Перевод рассказа "Блесна и муха"               

From the high bank where our camp was, beyond the powerful flow of water, you could see a low floodplain overgrown with thickets. Behind it, on a gently rising valley with low hills on the horizon, there was a road running parallel to the river. From time to time, vehicles crawled along it.

"Hey, the highway isn't far from here. We could flag down a bus — and be home in a couple of hours. How about that idea?" Genie asked me.

"But you were going to float with us to Bakanas."

"I was? Maybe you've had enough of this too?"

After a while, he told me:

"Marik, Kostya and I decided to head home today. We'll catch some fish to take with us, then hike to the highway. Are you coming?"

"No," I said. "We're going to keep going."

When Genie heard I was planning another rafting trip with my son, he and his son Kostya joined us. We set off from the Kapchagay Dam in inflatable boats, intending to finish the journey in Bakanas in about six days.

The Ili River flowed with a mighty and fast current through semi-desert — at times through stone gorges, at times among sands. All the greenery was confined to the floodplain. Back then, there was no sign of humans on the banks, not a single boat — nobody had them. Only pheasants in the bushes, kites in the sky, turtles in the sand.

Our boats floated side by side for a while, then Genie and I got into one boat, giving the other to our sons. My son was ten, Kostya a year younger — but he seemed quicker, more experienced, more savvy. My son was raised by his grandparents. He went to school with English-language instruction. During school breaks, he lived with his mother and her new husband. He spent holidays and weekends with me. So his upbringing was a bit scattered, and as for being a good role model — well, I don’t know which of us he should look up to. Maybe only as examples of what not to be.

My son had learned to swim pretty well on previous trips, and Kostya was actually on a swim team. They dove off the boat, splashed around like ducklings, and sunbathed stretched out on the rounded sides of the raft. Of course, we kept an eye on them discreetly. Neither I nor Genie showed concern. Then Genie said:

"Most people start drinking after camp is set up, over dinner. So you drink — and pass out drunk right after. What's the point? Let's start now. We'll drink slowly, admire the surroundings — like samurai with blooming Sakura. That way, we won't drink in the evening and can go to bed sober."

At first, I was put off by the idea. But then, it started to sound interesting. Why not try it? So I took out a bottle. And we floated along all day, pleasantly buzzed.

You can’t bring a lot of food on trips like this. And it wasn’t easy to buy food back then in Soviet stores anyway. Canned meat and condensed milk were only available through connections, which neither of us had. We brought a few loaves of bread, a piece of sausage that had to be eaten on the first day. Sometimes, I brought a slab of fatty pork — basically all lard — the kind the stores couldn't sell. I’d cover it in salt to make it last a couple of days. I’d fry it with onions and mix it with boiled rice. We brought packet soups, sprats in tomato sauce, potatoes, onions. I also brought flour and oil in a bottle to fry fish and pancakes. Everything was limited by weight — we had to carry it all to the river in backpacks. Fish — and sometimes mushrooms — were essential. On one trip, I even considered cooking a turtle, but when I learned it had to be boiled alive, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

So, once we set up camp, we fished for dinner. Big fish like Grass Carp were out of our league — no proper gear or bait. We caught asp, crucian carp, sometimes bream or pike-perch. We didn’t need much.

Wandering around near the camp, my son and I found a shallow channel in the reeds. There, we caught tiny fish with a rod and tossed them over our shoulders onto a sandy bar. We planned to use them as bait on set lines. Glancing back at one point, I saw a snake trying to swallow one of the fish — like a foot going into a sock. My son was outraged by the blatant theft. We were standing just steps away, even if facing the other way. The nerve!

"Give us back our fish!" he yelled, poking at the viper's head with his rod.

The snake reluctantly spat out the fish and lazily slithered into the reeds, probably still hoping for an easy meal.

By then, we had eaten through most of the food from home and were now fully dependent on nature. The previous evening, my son and I had caught a net full of fat crucian carp. We left the net in the water, planning to tie it to the boat in the morning to keep the fish fresh until dinner. If you’ve never eaten freshly caught fish, you don’t know what real fish tastes like. Fried crucian carp — that was the plan.

But in the morning, while packing up, I forgot the net. I realized it only when we were already on the river. To this day, I regret that mistake. So many innocent creatures wasted for nothing.

So now I was casting a spinner from the high bank. It flew, landed far out, and was pulled down by the current while I quickly turned the reel. Genie and I used those old Soviet "Neva" inertia reels — not worth remembering, honestly. Like those wooden "Lviv" mountain skis with leather straps. New spinning reels were just beginning to appear as expensive novelties among show-offs.

Unlike Genie, I wasn’t a fisherman — and never really became one. Before meeting Genie, all I could manage was to set out some crude set lines at night. A set line is a piece of fishing line with a spinner or baitfish, tied to a branch hanging over the water. If you set ten, maybe one or two would get a bite.

The greenish bulk of the mighty river, seemingly convex, full of shimmering swirls, sometimes rippled suddenly in a breeze. Blue sky, clear distance, and me — naked except for my swim trunks — part of it all. Beautiful! Only the fish weren’t biting. After countless casts, I had caught just one asp. I had wanted to catch enough for Genie and Kostya too. Let them take some home. But nothing was biting!

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Genie was occasionally unhooking fish.

When I met up with him, I asked:

"What are you using?"

"A fly."

"I’m using a spinner. But nothing’s biting."

"Maybe try a different spinner?"

"I’ve tried them all. What kind of fly is that? Got another?"

"Homemade. And no, I don’t have another one."

And we parted ways again. I didn’t catch anything more, even wore the skin off my fingers on the reel. Later, I helped Genie and Kostya pack. At the water’s edge, as Genie was getting into the boat to cross the river, I said:

"Leave me your fly. The spinner’s just not working for me."

"No," he said, surprisingly firmly. "I won’t."

His usually friendly tone had turned distant. I remembered that I had seen a piece of cardboard among his gear with hooks pinned to it. Could those have been flies?

"Why not?" I asked, not quite believing him. "What’s so special about it? Is it gold? Can’t you just make another?"

"Because," said Genie. "Make your own if you want."

"But how? I don’t know how."

Looking away, reluctantly, he said:

"Cut a tuft of hair from here," he pointed to his groin, "tie it to a hook with thread so the ends hang loose. That’s it."

"Oh!" I said, surprised by the simplicity. "The thread — should it be red?"

I had heard asp liked red. My backpack had red lining. I could pull a thread from that.

"Any thread. Red if you like."

It was clear he didn’t want to keep talking.

They rowed off to the other bank. The river here was a couple hundred yards wide with strong current. It wasn’t easy to land everywhere — trees had fallen into the water. So, watch carefully and don’t screw up.

Right then and there, I followed his instructions. I tied a tuft of pubic hair to a hook with a red thread from my backpack lining. The result looked pretty good, even to me. And on the second cast, I hooked an asp. The bite was on. I made a second fly and gave it to my son. He didn’t have a rod, just a line coiled on a reel. For weight, we tied a half-filled plastic ball a meter above the fly. He started catching fish too, though he didn’t cast far or often. Again, I noticed that when I fish next to someone, they always get more bites. Why? Why does this always happen to me?

I eventually stopped him. What would we do with so much fish?

Fried fish with pancakes, cooked in the same oil, and sweet tea for dinner by the fire. My son sat nearby, tossing twigs into the flames, playing with the sparks. I still had one more bottle left. What more could one want?

And yet, something gnawed at me. Why hadn’t Genie given me the fly? Especially since making one was such a trivial matter—three minutes at most, and everything needed was at hand. Honestly, I felt hurt. Suppose—just suppose, even though it seemed absurd—it was some kind of squeamishness about intimacy. But in front of who? Me? If some random guy had asked me for my fly, I might’ve acted reluctant, just for show, but for Genie or Bobby? I would’ve handed it over without hesitation—and made a joke out of it, too.

Especially since, of all people, Genie was never one for that kind of prudery. Wasn’t it he who suggested that we all go around stark naked while fishing in the uninhabited areas of Lake Balkhash? And we did just that—swam, fished, walked around as we were born. And now, suddenly, there was a distance between us? What did he think of me?

I sipped tea with liqueur, staring into the fire.

“Let me try,” my son asked.

“Nope. You’re too young.”

“Just wait. When I grow up, I’ll sneak one of your bottles on another trip and drink the whole thing.”

“And what makes you think I’ll have a bottle then?”

“Oh, you? You’ve always got something hidden away,” my son said with complete certainty. That’s how he saw me. And to be fair, he wasn’t wrong.

Still—why had Genie refused to give me the fly, even making it clear he didn’t want to discuss it? I hadn’t asked for a bottle of liquor, or money, or a month’s salary. He recoiled as if I’d asked for his wife.

His wife? That was when I felt it—that missing puzzle piece click into place. That was it. It was her. The fly, it seemed, was tied using her hair.

Genie’s wife was a pleasant, sweet woman. She painted in oils quite professionally, even though she wasn’t a painter by trade. Their apartment walls were decorated with landscapes, mostly of our snow-covered mountains, all framed in elegant frames Genie had made himself.

Well, that explained everything. His unwillingness to share the fly—it wasn’t just a fly, it was a symbol of their love. Even the thought of sharing it must have seemed repulsive to him. And it didn’t matter with whom. There are no friends in matters like that. I wouldn’t have given it away either, if I were in his shoes. In his shoes? Try finding yourself in them first, hotshot, I thought to myself.

My respect for Genie was restored. From there, my imagination wandered freely. Genie, as I knew him, was a curious man—always experimenting. On hunting trips, he’d figured out how to animate decoys with fishing line. He’d tug on the string, and the fake ducks would move just like real ones. Everything of his was homemade, with elastic bands and improvised contraptions. So it made sense that he’d apply the same approach here: experimenting with which parts to cut hair from, how to tie it, with what thread. That cardboard I’d glimpsed probably held different samples, and he was testing them during this trip. That’s how fishermen are. One guy I knew even soaked his hooks in strong tea.

By now, Genie and his wife were probably at home, eating the fish they’d brought back, caught with their “family fly.”

In the morning, we set off, with a stringer full of fish tied to the boat. We had food now.

Not far from Bakanas, there’s a small lake connected to the river. No one knows how it formed—maybe the lower end of a wide channel silted up and got overgrown. The water there had settled, and was clear all the way to the bottom. Among the underwater plants, fish drifted and hovered. If you cast a line, you could bring the bait right to the mouth of a crucian carp and watch as it stared at it indifferently with its fishy eyes. Touch its mouth with the bait, and it might lazily move aside. That meant it wasn’t dinner time yet. You had to wait for evening.

We set up camp there. From that point, it was about an hour and a half to Bakanas. We had the bus schedule. I’d done this route more than once before.

In town, I said to my son:

“You’re grown now. Soon you won’t need me anymore. You’ll have your own life. Your mother’s been remarried for a long time. We’re all doing fine. Now I want to build a life for myself too, and start a new family. I couldn’t do that before, not while you were little. But I’ll still see you like before—hunting, hiking, rafting. What do you think?”

“Go for it,” my son said simply.

“I have a woman. Her name’s Lena. You’ll like each other. But only if you agree to me getting married.”

“I agree,” he said.

But that turned out to be our last trip. We never again went rafting or camping back in the homeland. Life got in the way.

About twenty-five years later, in America, we tried to recapture those magical moments—but it was a doomed attempt, with all the wrong tools. A motorboat, shores lined with mansions, park rangers everywhere, constant regulations. It wasn’t the same. It wasn’t interesting. Then our boat engine broke down, and we gave it up.

Or maybe… maybe we had just stopped being children—the way all Soviet people, in a sense, always were.