Fly-Fishing the 41st (2 page)

T
en hours after the ship docked at Valencia, I was watching the sun set over the Moorish quarter of Granada. I had driven there in a rental car and settled in a hotel on avenida Fuentenueva.

“¿Es pescador usted?”
I heard the waiter say when I had seated myself at a restaurant in town.

“Yes, I like to fish,” I uttered. I assumed he was talking to
me
because there were no other patrons. “How do you know?”

“I know a fisherman when I spot him,” he said. A Spanish fishing magazine was showing from my shoulder bag.

“Is the fishing good in Andalusia?”

“The best way to find out is to ask a local fisherman, but not just any, you have to find the right one.”

After dinner, I walked a steep and winding street through town. Small white lights glittered from the tall windows of apartments, and although the shops buzzed with people buying presents, I felt a quiet silence in the cool night. I imagined myself leaving the city the next day, taking to the road as the sun was rising and hiking high mountain tributaries of the Guadalquivir in search of trout.

The next morning I visited the
agencia de medio ambiente
in town to get a fishing license. I had been told by a man who ran a fishing store in town to go to the second floor of the building and meet with a uniformed official named Jorge.

“It takes two weeks to process a fishing license,” Jorge said. “How long is your stay in Granada?”

“I'm leaving in a week,” I said, “does that mean I can't fish?”

He put his elbows on his desk and scratched his head. “
Pues, vale,
maybe I can make you a temporary one for your time here. But I'm afraid you'll have to pay the price for a full year.”

“That's no problem,” I said. “I just want to fish for trout.”

“Oh,” he said. “I'm afraid that trout fishing is closed in December. The season reopens in March. This license is good only in the region of Andalusia. It is no good, therefore, in Asturias, Guadalajara, País Vasco, or Galicia, understand? There is only one stream open for trout fishing this season. It is called Rio Frio and it flows through the town of Rio Frio. It is a
coto intensivo de pesca,
which means there is a warden and special regulations.” Jorge took a breath and scratched his head through thick black hair. “Do you still want the license?”

“Yes,” I said, “
claro.
”

The official stamped my license
caja rural de Granada,
and handed it to me. I paid him the necessary pesetas.

Two hours later I was in the small town of Rio Frio through which the Rio Frio flowed. I touched the water. It was indeed a cold river.

Old men and women, bent over a railing by a bridge, threw balls of bread to the trout. I talked with some fly fishermen who were having a bite to eat on a bench, their rods leaning up against a nearby tree. A young boy displayed his father's catch to me, carried in a reed basket.

“
Truchas arco-iris,
” the boy declared proudly, pointing to the fish. They were beautiful trout, but not what I was expecting. The rainbow trout was introduced from America.

“I hope to catch the native trout,” I said.

“Oh,
trucha común,
” said the father. “I don't know if there are any left.”

“What do I need to do to get a permit to fish here?” I asked the fisherman.

“Talk to the warden,” he said. “He's the man in the green uniform. His name is Pépé.”

Pépé was in the warden's shack, his belly spilling over his belt. He wiped the underside of his big round nose with his hand, disturbing a neatly combed Dalí-style mustache.

“What can I do for you?” he said.

“I'd like to fish Rio Frio.”

The little wooden shack had corkboards full of photos of fishermen holding big rainbow trout. “You need to make a reservation,” he said, licking his finger with his tongue and flipping some papers. “Only fifteen people can fish the stream per day. As you can see, Friday is a popular day,” he added, looking at me as if I didn't understand. “Everyone is fishing for Friday dinner.”

He looked into a little book of appointments. “Tomorrow we have only six anglers. Would you like to fish tomorrow?”

“I want to fish Sunday.”

“Sunday is just four days from Christmas, everyone is shopping, no one else is scheduled for that day.”

“I'd like to fish Sunday,” I repeated.

“Very well,” Pépé said. “I'll meet you here in the guardhouse Sunday morning at nine. You won't want to fish much earlier than that; it's too cold before the sun comes up and the trout won't be biting.”

A
LHAMBRA

I
had come in part to Granada to see the Moorish palace of the Alhambra. Its many fountains, bubbling springs, and reflection pools amid the orange trees and myrtle hedges harnessed and expressed without words the beauty and language of water.

Toward the middle of the thirteenth century, and just after his return from the siege of Seville, the Moorish sultan of Granada, known as Alhamar, commenced building the splendid palace of the Alhambra. By the early nineteenth century it was in ruins, until Washington Irving arrived in Granada and unveiled its secrets and histories with his prose. I read Irving's tales of love between princes and princesses and anecdotes of daily life in the palace while I was sitting in the palace itself.

“I had repeatedly observed,” Irving wrote, “a long lean fellow perched on the top of one of the towers, maneuvering two or three fishing-rods…. It seems that the pure and airy situation of this fortress has rendered it…a prolific breeding-place for swallows and martels, who sport about its towers in myriads…. To entrap these birds with hooks baited with flies is one of the favorite amuse
ments of the ragged ‘sons of the Alhambra,' who…have thus invented the art of angling in the sky.”

I had walked there from my hotel and entered the palace through airy arches and between tall slender cypress. It was a labyrinth of passageways and courtyards that confused its visitor into a fiction. All about, too, was the sound of water as it flowed through chutes between trimmed hedges and fragrant orange groves. I understood that as a people of arid climates the Moors coveted water as others did jewels, and that, as Muslims, water was the synthesis of all things pure. The Koran reserved the parable of water for describing paradise—a place with gardens of flowers and fruits where it flowed without end. Throughout the palace, water was enshrined by the architecture, which forced it to make all manner of bubbling and gurgling music as it slid through long pools and small channels cut in stone.

I stopped to rest on a bench and watched the goldfish in the pools. They gathered and glinted near the surface in the low rays of sun. I walked deeper into the maze of fruits, flowers, fragrances of citrus, green arbors, myrtle hedges, delicate air, and rushing waters. I explored the half-lit tunnels and passageways, the courts and terraces, and towers high over Granada. Water ran in cascades down the steps of a stairway and funneled through the handrails. Everywhere water was spurting and gushing, pleading from dark cavernous corners; sun-bedecked, algae-strewn, reflecting the blue sky, the orange trees, and the white palace walls. The cry of water was heard throughout, and all of Andalusia. It was heard beneath the wheat, between orange and olive trees, in the lachrymose song of the Gypsy, the strings of their guitars, and the words of their native poet Federico García Lorca in his poem “
La Guitarra
”:

Sunday morning, I was on the bank of Rio Frio again, blowing on my hands to warm them so I could string the line through the guides of my fly rod. Above the river were orchard hills covered with olives and small stone houses with red-tile roofs. The olive foliage was a soft muted green as if the leaves had been lightly dusted with flour and the rows of them appeared soft like strings of clouds.

“It's too cold,” Pépé said, “for me, anyway.” He started to walk away. “I'll leave you to your fishing,
buena suerte.
”

The sun had just risen a finger's width above the orchard hill and was not yet strong. As it rose higher it would warm the air and the water; insects would hatch from the stream and trout and swallows would eat them. I headed upstream on foot to wait for that synthesis of events.

The river split into two smaller streams. I chose to take the right fork because it looked neglected. Bushes had grown over it and grasses grew wild on the banks. I pushed through the forest of dense scrub until it cleared, as the stream meandered through an olive grove. I stopped there and stared into a large dark pool for some time until I saw another man's reflection in it.

It was an old man on the opposite bank walking his goats to the river. After they had drunk their fill, he led them up a hill through the olives.

I walked upstream, beyond the goatherd, under an oak forest, my feet crunching dried leaves as I went. The pools in the stream became even deeper and darker and the trees grew thicker and closer to the bank. In one pool I saw several trout making neat swirls as they rose to take emerging mayflies.

I rigged up my fly rod, tying a small dry fly to the line. Then, taking care not to hook the branch of one of the scrubby oaks, I cast my fly into the pool. It landed softly and floated over where the trout were feeding. One took it, gently and swiftly. When it had tired, I steered it to my hand, and held it. It was not the native trout, but a rainbow. I knocked it on the head with a stone and put it in a pocket
of my vest. Then I walked farther upstream, through fields of overturned sandy soil.

The pools became clearer and shallower upstream and the olive trees on the banks grew in girth, twisted and pitted with ghoulish craters. The message in Spanish that fishing was prohibited was printed on signs nailed to several trees. Perhaps up here, I thought, far above the village, there were native trout. But as I continued upstream, the signs became more numerous and there was a small house up ahead. I began to feel uncomfortable and after walking several more yards decided to return to the guardhouse.

“How did you fare?” Pépé said when I returned.

“I got one.”

“Oh, a good rainbow trout,” he said, peering in my vest pocket. “Your first trout in Spain?”

“Yes,” I affirmed, though I was thinking that I wished I'd caught a native.

I brought my American trout to the restaurant where I had gone two nights before and they agreed to cook it for me. I asked for the waiter-fisherman but he was not there. The trout was prepared
con vino y romero,
with wine and rosemary, and I devoured it. Then I returned to my room to read.

 

Don't sound desperate when you call the French girl,
my inner voice said,
though you are in need of some company.

I got out of bed, walked to the telephone, and dialed her number.

“
Allo,
” darted a crackly voice at the other end of the line. “
Allo,
” she said again, but she sounded cool and foreign like the drafty hallway. I feared she had returned to her life as a medical student and forgotten the young man on the airport bus.

“This is James,” I finally replied. “I met you a couple of weeks ago on the bus. We sat together.”

“Of course,” she said. It was Yannid again, the blue overcoat, the persimmon-colored cheeks. “I assume you arrived in Spain?”

“Yes, I'm calling you from Granada.”

“I wish I were in Spain. It's cold here. I have long shifts in the hospital and exams coming up, but that's more than you want to know. How are you? Honestly?”

“I was thinking about you while fishing today,” I told her. “That I'd like to come visit you after Christmas. I'd like to see you when I come to Paris.”

“I'm not sure if I'll be here when you arrive. Mom likes to spend the holidays in Belgium with my sister and me. I don't like to go but I probably will. We return shortly after the New Year. And you, where are you spending Christmas?”

“I'm going to Italy; my friend has a house in Tuscany.”

“Oh, yes, you told me.” Yannid paused for some moments. I sensed that she was thinking. “I told you, you know”—she paused again—“you don't have to stay in a dingy hotel when you come to Paris. I have room in my apartment in Rouen, you just have to wait until I get back.” She paused again, this time for longer. “And I hope you don't expect anything.”

“Expect anything.” I gulped, my heart racing. “No.”

“Because it's kind of radical to come all the way from Italy and not expect anything.”

“I'm not sure what you mean,” I said, and laughed. “But if I do, then I can say that I don't expect anything, but that I do like you. I should tell you that.”

“Good,” she said with a more official voice. “Even if I go to Belgium with Mom, I will be back in Rouen by the third of January. Call me when you get to Paris and we'll arrange to meet up on the first weekend. I'll take you for a drive in Normandy and then you can settle in. Okay? Good-bye for now. Oh, and merry Christmas.”

T
USCANY

B
efore I'd left on my trip, my friend Larry Ashmead asked if I'd like to spend Christmas with him and his friend Walter at their home in Tuscany. He could take me eel fishing. I flew to Rome on Christmas Eve and drove north in a rental car, along seemingly endless hedges of oleander, to a wide-open rural countryside.

Larry's home was an old farmhouse in the village of Cosona. It was like others on the nearby Tuscan hills, a stone building on a terraced hill ringed by cypress and olive trees.