Fishing anyone?
Dawn in Parlatuvier... Fishing is the chief activity here. Bryner, the man with the bronzed belly, has invited me along on his daily fishing trip. He steps down the soft beach, immerses his body in the water, and swims out to his boat. A moment later I see his silhouette tugging at the outboard. Fuel spits out the back, smoke drifts over the surface of the bay. The smell of two-stroke reaches me.
Bryner swings the boat across the slate gray dawn water. I pass up a bucket of lines, a gas can, a lunch bag - and get knocked over by a wave. I climb aboard drenched, cursing my clumsiness, hoping my seasick pill will work. "We going fishing," Bryner declares, hitting the gunwale and cranking the motor. Although Bryner is a restaurateur and a construction worker and has a house in Scarborough, like many Tobagonians he also owns a boat.
Laid-back fishing village: Parlatuvier.
Tobago boats are a fine sight. A few days earlier I'd seen a fleet of them sweep into the bay at one of the northern fishing villages. Each boat was adorned with a pair of long bamboo outriggers, one on each side like antennae, so they looked like a flotilla of preying insects on the water.
As we sped across the sea, Bryner revealed how a Tobagonian prepares for a day's fishing. First: Tie an old T-shirt round the head for shade. Second: Dab one foot in a puddle in the bottom of the boat and paw clean a patch of deck with the other. (Bryner had an entrancing delicacy of movement about him, despite his bulk, and did everything very carefully.) Third: Onto the clear patch, drop the first spool of line.
He smoothed out the wire leader and plastic lure and gently trailed them in the water, then held up one dainty, pudgy hand and let the line play out through his fingers. He set out four lines in all, one from each bamboo outrigger and two from the stern - a light one and a deep one with weights. ("For strong fish," he explained, clenching a fist.)
He put his foot down on one stern line to sense any bite, and passed the other into the cleft between belly and thigh. Thus prepared, with his eye on the two outriggers and his mouth wide open to the breeze, the man with his four lures plunged and reared across the boisterous morning sea, sitting in the stern like a bronze Buddha.
We trolled up and down beyond The Sisters, three rocks on which blue waves raised themselves and subsided in white. Big seas crowded in around us. On the upwind passes we banged on every wave, the little boat pitching and dropping, giving us glimpses of the horizon; thick showers of spray flew onto us. Downwind, we swirled and twisted on the waves and sank slowly into the troughs, then surfed a little on the face of the next wave. The sun rose from behind Tobago, glistening on Bryner's bare belly, turning t he water a rich strong blue.
Pulling a seine net remains a time-honoured tradition in Tobago.
Back and forth, back and forth. Despite the near-equatorial sun, it was cold, sitting there drenched. An hour went by, two, or more; it was hard to say. The sun lifted well clear of the island. And still no bites.
"Here fish, here fish," Bryner called, hitting the boat. "Come and eat."
How does time pass on a little fishing boat? Bailing. Bryner repeatedly used half an old plastic bottle to clear out the brown water between his feet and passed it up to me so I could bail, too. At some point we ate biscuits and shared a bottle of Coke. Bryner, who often cooked in his restaurant, wasn't big on stories but regaled me with recipes.
"You take the fish. You put lime, you put tomato, you put onion... You gets your chicken cut up nice, you soak it in a little coconut milk... You know how you get the coconut milk? You grate the white, then you squeeze. You mix a little water, and squeeze some more... You soak your chicken, then you put hot pepper, onion, tomato, lime..." They sounded like great recipes, and mercifully my seasick pill was working, but they only made me hungrier for a bite.
"Tuna's the best," Bryner declared. "A lot of folks like kingfish, but I like a nice tuna."
They were magic words. Right then one of the bamboo poles swung in toward the boat, stretching stiffly backward.
"Ah," Bryner nodded. "Now you see how it operate." He cut the engine and began to haul the long line in by hand. "Feel it?" he asked, handing me the line. I could hardly believe the weight on it.
Bryner grabbed it out of my hand. "Heavy, heavy," he boomed. "You haves to pull."
He showed me how.
It wasn't long before a flash of silver showed beneath the wrinkled skin of the sea and Bryner lifted a chubby, three-foot tuna over the side.
"Nice," I said, experiencing the delight of the first catch.
"It ain't nice," he answered. "Sometimes they get real big, real nice."
More tuna struck, then a dolphinfish (mahimahi) and a kingfish. The island became a mosaic of greens: the brilliant yellow-green high up, where the sun brushed the hilltops, the smoky dark green lower down, and a haze of gray-green where a small rain shower was falling, through which black frigate birds passed. Above, yellow-gray clouds towered up, sickly looking in the morning sun.
By lunchtime we had a respectable catch to show the boys on the beach, and Bryner had made his living for the week, quite apart from his restaurant takings.