The Fisherman’s Licence

A Parable

Some time ago there lived a fisherman. He may have plied his trade on the Madras seacoast. He may have been a Polynesian New Zealander. I forget which. But he was a hardy man and enjoyed his simple life greatly. When the fish were plentiful he would work sometimes for thirty hours at a stretch. When the fish were scarce he would slap his belly, sigh, mend his nets, and sit down to a drink or a game of cards with his cronies. Usually with a child on his knee. As he strolled down the village street, one child would run beside him, and the smallest, a girl, would sit high on her father’s shoulders, enjoying the view and the bumpy ride. She at least regarded her father as the bravest, wisest, tallest and strongest man in the world. His wife had not yet heard of page 682 Family Planning. They had eight children to provide for – the seven of the fairytales, and one more for luck. In spite of this disgusting state of affairs, the fisherman laughed often, the children flourished, and his wife, a gentle small quick-moving woman, could be heard every morning singing as she swept out the house.

It happened one day that this fisherman (his name was either Krishna or Wiremu, I forget which) was hard at work tarring the seams of his boat, which lay upside down above the high tide mark. As he worked he sang a song about the vagaries of a charming girl who could not make up her mind whether to marry a fisherman or a farmer. This song would undoubtedly have sounded coarse to cultivated ears. It described the beauty of the maiden concerned in the closest detail and compared her to a brightly coloured fish, a little bird, and a green swaying sapling. No doubt it will eventually find its way into the appendix, or blind gut, of an anthology of folk poems, having first been snared with a tape-recording machine by an American anthropologist with letters after his name, horn-rimmed spectacles and a long upper lip. But the fisherman was unaware of his cultural heritage. He sang loudly, tarred the seams of his upended boat, and admired the never-dying motion of the sea, that fertile wilderness which had lain spread before his infant eyes, which had provided him with fish, firewood and subtle companionship throughout his adult years, and which he reverenced as a purifying element and a mysterious principle of change and regeneration. As he worked and sang and watched, a man in a drab grey suit approached him, picking his way gingerly over the shells and weed and broken bits of driftwood – a minor official of the State Department of Fisheries.

‘You seem happy in your work,’ said the newcomer. ‘That is right and natural, considering the benefits that shower down upon us all from the Organising Centre of our progressive democracy. Tell me, though, is your boat seaworthy?’

‘Not at the moment, friend,’ replied the fisherman, laying aside his tar-brush and mopping his streaming forehead. ‘The old lady’s a bit tired, you might say. But I’m giving her the new coat she deserves, and in three days’ time she’ll be spruce and young again. Then she’ll be the fastest, finest fishing boat from here to Zanzibar.’

He laid a gentle stress on the word ‘fishing’ – for it sometimes happened that in the fishless season he found it convenient to transfer certain valuable merchandise (tobacco, distilled liquor, jewellery, silk dresses) from one part of the coast to another. His father and grandfather had done the same. Through lack of education he regarded this seasonal diversion as a kind of traditional privilege, and saw the coastguard’s launch as an enemy power intruding in the territory which he ruled by the skill of his hand and the forethought of his mind.

‘You’ll have to get a licence, my man,’ said the person in the grey suit.

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‘What is a licence?’

‘It is a printed paper,’ said the official smiling, for he knew now that he was talking to an illiterate. ‘The Organising Centre has issued one of these for each man in the country who possesses a fishing boat. When you have this paper, no one can stop you from fishing or take your boat from you.’

‘No one has ever tried.’

‘Without this paper you will not be permitted to continue in your trade. It will cost you only two obols.’ (In fact the cost of the licence should have been one obol, but the official of the Fisheries Department had a widowed sister and a son whose college expensesmounted yearly.)

The fisherman felt the beginning of a strange uneasiness, such as a man feels who enters at noonday an old, damp-smelling tomb – a weight in the head and a sudden weakness in the belly. I must drink less wine, he thought. A man grows older without noticing it.

‘Who will give me this licence?’ he asked.

‘It is part of my work as a servant of the State,’ replied the official. ‘I can give you your licence immediately.’

He produced a printed paper. The fisherman paid the two obols and signed the paper with a thumbprint. When he returned to his house that evening, he gave it to his wife, who sewed it carefully inside their common coverlet.

Two months later the fisherman launched his boat at nightfall in a certain hidden cove, across the State border and twenty miles north of the village. In the calm sea the boat rode deep with its load of merchandise. As he drifted beyond the rocky point, and began to hoist the sail, a grey fog floated down. In the fog a light showed, and he heard the drumming of engines. Swiftly the coastguard’s launch came alongside his boat.

‘What cargo are you carrying?’ asked the coastguard. He had grown up as a fisherman’s son, but a city education had raised him to a more important and responsible position.

‘Timber.’

‘Let me have a look at it. I know your kind of timber.’ Accompanied by one assistant, he scrambled into the boat. They prised up the floorboards and revealed the cache of whisky and furs.

‘I’m sorry it’s you,’ said the coastguard. ‘I can remember when you used to come to our house to play cards in the evening. But the law is the law, you know – I can’t allow private feelings to influence me in my official work. I’m afraid this load of timber is going to cost you your licence.’

The fisherman sailed home in his empty boat. A week later the man in the grey suit knocked on his door. With a face expressionless as a bread pudding, he entered the grass-roofed house, and sat down at the table where the fisherman’s wife had begun to serve a meal of stewed eels.

‘Your licence has been cancelled,’ he said stiffly. ‘We cannot permit men like you to flout the laws of the State.’

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The fisherman rose up in anger. ‘You said when you gave me the licence that no one would be able to take my boat from me.’

‘That is quite true. No one has taken your boat. But you are not permitted to fish again in these waters. You will have to sell your boat and earn an honest living.’

The fisherman began to swear. He became so violent that the man in the grey suit hurried from the house, fearing that he would be knocked down. That night he added the word ‘dangerous’ to the official file in which the fisherman’s iniquities had been recorded. For a short while the fisherman sailed his boat without a licence. Then the man in the grey suit visited him again. This time two sturdy policemen, with guns in their belts, stood at his shoulder.

You have become a public menace,’ he said shrilly. ‘You have no sense of what it is to be a citizen of a progressive State. The Organising Centre has issued a special directive to cope with convicted smugglers who do not respond to lenient treatment. I have orders to destroy your boat. If you try to hinder me in the execution of my duty you will find yourself behind bars.’

‘God made the sea and I made the boat,’ shouted the fisherman. ‘I will shoot you if you lay a finger on her.’ He reached for the hand-made gun which hung on the wall behind him. But one of the policemen sprang forward. A blow from a revolver butt numbed his arm, and it fell powerless at his side.

After the destruction of his boat the fisherman lapsed into a profound lethargy. He would lie on his bed, muttering to himself and gazing at the grass roof of his house where spiders rustled and spun their webs. His wife could rarely rouse him to work for an hour in the garden. Sometimes, without a word, he would rise suddenly, stride from the house, and walk far along the beaches, staring at the pounding sea that rose and fell with its innumerable foam blossoms and freight of pumice and driftwood. These were the moments in which he found a kind of angry peace. But of his old self only the strong affection which he had harboured for his children remained.

The eldest boy had begun to follow in his father’s footsteps, and owned a part share in a small fishing boat. In the second son, however, the father’s hopes were centred. This lad had shown remarkable aptitude in his studies at the village school. He would read books to his father – astronomy, geography, lives of great men – and the fisherman caught glimpses of a world larger than his own, a world of circling planets and infinite time, where men had the power to change the face of nature, to move mountains and divert the course of rivers. His teacher prophesied that the boy would eventually find a high place in the Government Civil Service.

‘Learn, boy, learn,’ his father exhorted. ‘Learn all you can. Do you remember how you used to stand beside me while I launched our boat? Learn about licences. You will be able to understand the new world we are living in.’

The boy grew taller, a handsome and biddable lad. He passed his Civil Service Examination with flying colours, and became a clerk in the city office page 685 of the Department of Fisheries. There, as his teacher had predicted, his talents soon found recognition. In half the usual span of time he climbed the ladder of promotion and was appointed Head Clerk. Firm with inferiors, obedient to his superiors, he enjoyed the respect of every person in the Department.

One day, several months after his appointment, it happened that a file was brought to him. ‘This is an unfortunate case,’ said his junior. ‘A man with a family. Owner of a small fishing boat. It seems that he’s been foolish enough to do a little smuggling. Tobacco and silk.We’ll haveto warn him against any repetitionof the offence.’

‘The case is quite simple,’ said the Head Clerk. ‘You know Regulation D.65 as well as I do. It’s laid down there, in the section dealing with offences against laws of customs and excises that first offenders may not receive preferential treatment. If smuggling were allowed to continue without check, the law would fall into disrepute and the State would eventually crumble. You are advocating anarchy. The case is quite simple. Cancel his licence.’

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