第1章 The Old Mans Hard Life[第1頁/共10頁]

“I think so.And there are many tricks.”

“Where are you going?”the boy asked.

“Thank you,”the old man said.He was too simple to wonder when he had attained humility.But he knew he had attained it and he knew it was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true pride.

“But you went turtle-ing for years off the Mosquito Coast and your eyes are good.

“Yes,”the old man said.He was holding his glass and thinking of many years ago.

“No,”the boy said.“But I will see something that he cannot see such as a bird working and get him to come out after dolphin.”

“No.I will make it later on.Or I may eat the rice cold.”

“Are his eyes that bad?”

“But are you strong enough now for a truly big fish?”

“I go now for the sardines,”the boy said.

“Santiago,”the boy said.

The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck.The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks.The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords.But none of these scars were fresh.They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert.