Fly-Fishing the 41st (24 page)

“
Ishkhan?
” Pepan said, smiling, “we have no
ishkhan
now, ha ha ha, there are not many left in the lake. It is not the season.” He threw the beer bottle on the ground and it rolled into a shaded corner beside his house.

“We were told you caught
ishkhan
in your nets last night,” said Nuné boldly. “My friends have come from abroad to Armenia to see the trout of Lake Sevan.”

Pepan turned reluctantly toward his home and told us to follow.

He bid us sit at a small card table on a set of plastic chairs and served us each a cup of coffee with sugar. Then he pulled tray after tray of trout from a big refrigerator, his initial reluctance turning to enthusiasm about the beautiful fish. He had specimens of two of the four races of trout from the lake,
gegarkuni
and
summer bahtak,
and explained to us the differences between them.

“The
gegarkuni
has these large spots, always black, like a leopard—the
summer bahtak
has smaller and fewer spots and usually a row of red spots down the sides.” Johannes and I gawked at the fish in the dim light. Before us were the drawings of trout we had studied in the old Russian paper come to life.

Pepan pulled out one specimen of
gegarkuni
that was more than two feet long. He confessed to Nuné that he had caught it in his nets early that morning. Though it had been dead for several hours, it was still a beautiful silver fish, with the big black spots like a leopard's, as Pepan had described.

Johannes and I asked if we could photograph the fish in the light, but Pepan refused. We finished our coffee and bought the best specimens to take with us, though we could not afford to pay what he was asking for the big prize fish.

“Who can afford to buy that fish for two hundred dollars?” I asked Nuné.

“Mafia,” she said.

 

After visiting the village of Tsovagyugh our plan was to head west and south, counterclockwise, around the lake. We had marked the tributary streams we wanted to try angling in and on the way we would stop in the villages to see what the fishermen had caught in their nets.

On the lake shore near the village of Noratoos was a large group of fishmongers selling fish out of the trunks of their old sedans. Marat stopped the car and we walked along piles of smoked whitefish, dried whitefish, carp, and live crayfish. The crayfish were the same pale green color as the lake water with tinges of orange on their claws and big as a man's hand. The crayfish vendor's son heard Johannes and me speaking English and thought he'd try his out on us.

“Come to the blackboard,” the boy said. “Hands behind your back. Sit down in your seat.”

“This is all the English you remember from school?” Nuné asked the boy, taking his ear and twisting it. She laughed. We bought some crayfish for dinner and asked the vendor if he knew where we could find
ishkhan.

“
Ish-khan?
” he questioned, thoroughly articulating both syllables. He waved his hand for us to follow. The boy closed the trunk of the car where the crayfish were and got into the passenger seat. His father drove away from the shore and we followed him to his house.

The man stopped the car and went inside. His wife greeted us at the door with hot coffee.

“This is pure
ishkhan,
” the man said, returning with a large object wrapped in brown paper. It was even bigger than Pepan's fish, maybe thirty inches, a kaleidoscope of blues and purples. The man stood with his hands on his waist and made an offer to Nuné in Armenian.

“He wants to sell it to you for a hundred and fifty dollars,” she said.

“No, no,” Johannes said, “we have enough trout to study and eat. And we have crayfish too.”

 

As the day wore on it grew very hot and I knew the trout we had bought would spoil in the trunk of the car. The live crayfish were in a bin of water and seemed not to mind the heat.

Farther along the lake we crossed a beautiful spring-fed stream called the Tsakkar, not unlike some streams I had fished in Normandy. We turned off the road and followed it upstream to where some of its fingers percolated up from the ground. At one of the springs I saw a small bird with an amazing array of colors. It looked to be a finch of some kind, though it reminded me of a painted bunting or a warbler in a strange state of molt. Below the bird, in the water, I saw a trout holding in the current, a sight that never ceases to surprise and awaken me. I felt as if I had been in a deep slumber since the last time I had seen one.

I turned to get my fly rod, but when I returned to the pool the fish was gone, and so was the bird.

The water was warm enough that Johannes did not need to wear a wet suit to dive. He put on his mask and snorkel and slipped into the river. Both Marat and Nuné were amazed when he came up with a small fish in his net, even though it was not a trout.

“Now I see why he is so good at languages,” said Nuné, “because when he dives he must ask the trout to go in his net.”

We stayed the evening in a villager's home on the western shore of the lake. For dinner we boiled the crayfish we had bought and sucked their sweet meat from the vermilion shells. As I had expected, the trout had spoiled in the heat, and we fed them to a stray dog and her puppy. From our rooms we could hear the lapping of the waves, and though we were thousands of miles away, I felt as though I were on the edge of the sea.

 

After a breakfast of hard-boiled eggs the next morning, the four of us continued south along the coast of the lake until we reached a tributary stream called the Argichy. Where we first glimpsed it at its confluence with the lake, the Argichy looked slow and murky, but as we drove upstream on narrow secondary and tertiary roads it began to clear, like a beautiful trout stream.

The valley of the Argichy was more green and lush than other areas surrounding the lake that we had seen. Grasses and wildflowers grew along the road, and in the villages every stone home had a beautiful garden plot with potatoes, sunflowers, and hemp. Men and women were active in the fields hilling up the earth around potato plants or already harvesting the grasses from open meadows with scythes. Young girls, their hands inverted and resting on their lower backs, arched their torsos and stared at us, not seeming to be working, but keeping their watch on the solitude. The farther up the river we drove the more men we saw cutting the grasses on the open hillsides. They were sunburned and their dark naked backs were peeling.

We stopped to take a photo of the river and I watched them work. Even at a distance, I could hear the sound of their sharp scythe blades cutting the grass, like plaintive birdsongs. Occasionally, a man would stop work, pull a whetstone out from his pocket, spit on it, and make his blade keen again. The women and older men raked what grass was cut into tall stacks with wooden rakes and pitchforks.

We came to a fork in the road and stopped to ask some workers which path led to the headwaters of the stream. They were taking a break from their work, standing beside the tents where they had spent the night. One man stepped forward and offered us bread and cheese and boiled potatoes. We ate a bit and then they gave us each a shot of vodka with a tablespoon of salt in it.

“Are there trout in the river?” Nuné asked them.

“Yes,” one said, “
kharmrakhait,
” which, Nuné explained, meant red-spotted; a union of
kharmish,
red, and
khait,
spots.

“That is the trout we want,” Johannes said, and reminded me that in Turkey and also in nearby Azerbaijan, trout was
alabalik,
or fish with red sides.

Marat drove in the direction that the men advised for another twenty kilometers into the hills. The road became more and more treacherous and the car vibrated violently. We stopped where we could see the river off in the distance. It wound like a snake through a seemingly endless green meadow, starting somewhere in a hidden part of the mountains.

When we got down toward the stream on foot we found that the meadow was wet and soft like a cushion. The stream was forming here and all the seeps and springs we walked over were contributing to its flow. Tall grasses and wildflowers grew in the wet meadow, and though we were far above any village, men were there, harvesting and stacking it, in tall gumdrop-shaped mounds. I found it tiring to walk over the soggy ground more, I thought, than I normally should. As we approached the stream I felt a tightening in my knee. The beautiful gurgling sound of the stream through the meadow
did not soothe. I was fearful something had set off the swelling again in my left knee.

I obsessively reached down to feel the knee and every time I touched it, it seemed more fluid had come into the joint. I was determined to ignore it and enjoy the beautiful place we had come into.

We came to a spot where we thought the stream looked good for fishing.

“I'll go upstream with my fly rod,” I said to Johannes. “These pools look good, why don't you stay behind and dive here.” He agreed to this plan and so I headed upstream, above Nuné, and Marat as well, eager to be on my own for a time.

I walked up along the banks and then through the currents of the stream itself, feeling the push of the cold water against my legs. I wanted to see if I could spook a trout and see it swim across the colored gravel of the clear pools. We had no guarantee that there were trout here at all, and I wanted to see one to build my confidence before I started fishing. I had no such luck, though, so I tied on a small caddis dry fly and began to cast it into small eddies behind boulders and beside the grassy banks.

In the shade of a large boulder where several large purple flowers were bent over and touching the water, my fly disappeared in a small swirl. I lifted up the rod and hooked the fish that had taken it. It jumped once and bent my limber rod in a pleasing arc. It sped around the pool from bank to bank, trying to find cover under the boulders until I was able to land it in the palm of my hand.

I had not noticed until then that Nuné had been following me and was watching from the tall grass on the bank. She had seen me catch and land the fish and came closer to see it.

“It is exquisite,” she said. “Gosh, it is beautiful.”

“Have you ever seen a live trout?” I asked.

“No.”

The trout was about fourteen inches, a velvety red on the sides with a marigold yellow belly and large black spots. I asked Nuné to hold the fish while I photographed it. She tied back her long black hair and held the fish for me. Then I told her she could let it go.

“Are you sure Johannes won't want to see it,” she said, lowering her hands to the water. The fish flipped out of her fingers as she was thinking about it. “Oh well,” she said, “there he goes.”

“I'm sure Johannes will catch some of his own,” I said. “I think we'll catch some more anyhow.”

For the next quarter mile or so of stream, Nuné walked alongside me as I fished. I was able to experiment with different flies and enjoy the day, sit down on the bank with Nuné and describe the joy I felt while fly-fishing. She had beautiful long black hair.

“It is an art,” Nuné said, watching. “It really is beautiful how the line loops around and lands on the water. And to see a trout take that fly is magical, you would never expect it.” I showed her other small flies in my boxes.

“They are so delicate,” she said, picking one up. “They are an expression of the predatory instinct through art. You are acting out the ritual of being a predator, but without killing the fish. That I have never heard of.”

“The English perfected that,” I said. “They made predation a high art.”

“I guess I knew that,” Nuné said. “In a fox hunt they don't even kill the fox themselves, do they? They have dogs do it.”

“Sure,” I said, “they just dress up in costumes and ride on beautiful horses.”

“I guess a bullfight is a similar thing,” she said, “but fly-fishing is more peaceful, I think.”

 

When Nuné and I returned to Johannes and Marat we found them with a local farmer by his tent, drinking vodka. We had both been successful and shared our fishing stories. After a bit of discussion we
concluded that these trout were either the progeny of a migrating population from the lake or were permanent residents.

“Maybe there are some of each,” Johannes said. “Anyway, our work is done for today. We should head back to the lake so we arrive before dark.”

 

On the treacherous ride down the road to the lake my knee continued to swell. I was seated in the back of the Niva and eventually was forced to put my leg between the two front seats because it got so bad I could not bend the joint.

“What's wrong?” Nuné asked.

“I'm not sure,” I said, “but I've got this problem with my knee. I hope it goes away.”

“I will pray for you,” Nuné said.

In my own prayers I rarely ask for anything, but that night at a small rustic inn by the lake I did. It was a hot, uncomfortable, and still evening and I tossed and turned on the uneven mattress. I felt feverish from the anxiety that I would not get better and that I would be a burden on the trip. I lay awake and was spooked by strange sounds that seemed to echo through the town of Martuni.

In the morning the knee was worse. It throbbed like a second heart, and when I got out of bed it was excruciating to walk on. Nuné came to my room early with a cup of chamomile tea. Minutes later she returned with a bottle of fluid.

“Lay down on the bed and let me see it,” she said. It appeared as though she wanted to try to treat it. I lifted up my pant leg. She could see that the swelling had increased; this I could read in the expression of concern in her face. She opened the bottle and poured what appeared to be oil on one hand and then spread it on both hands and began to massage my knee, adding more as she went. I just lay back, and after a night of no sleep I began to doze. The air in the room felt cooler and I noticed that the oil had a sweet odor.