Trout, Belly Up. Rodrigo Fuentes

      TROUT, BELLY UP

      That family stuff’s complicated, I told Don Henrik. He’d just asked about Ermiña, who’d been my cousin, then my girlfriend, and is now my wife. The thing is, I told him, it’s hard to find a woman like Ermiña up here in the mountains. She keeps the kids in line and makes a finger-licking-good chicken soup, but she also knows when to pick a fight and when not to. When’s that then? asked Don Henrik. Well, if I don’t get my coffee in the morning, she knows it’s not worth it. Any other time, sure. But no coffee, then a whole day out on the trout farm – how can she possibly pick a fight with me after that? What I didn’t tell him is the way Ermiña curls up to me on cold nights, or how she looked all those years ago when I glimpsed her bathing in the river, her plump body shiny with soap. She wasn’t surprised to see me coming out of the bushes, clumsily taking off my clothes, and she just stood there, a look of amusement on her face as I stumbled over the rocks on the riverbank.

      We only had girls, Ermiña and me, I told Don Henrik, not a single boy. I tried to focus on my feet, squeezed into the rubber boots Don Henrik himself had given me. First came Tatinca, I said, then Ileana. The third was Ilopanga, and the last one we called José, for Maria José. We tried to get José into football. The other three would stay at home with their mum while José and I took the ball up the mountain. I’d pass it and

      José would knock it back to me, and so we went through the back of beyond, tiki-taka to and fro, until one of my passes went too high and José bravely went in for a header but instead stopped the ball dead with her nose. So that was our last training session. Since then the kid’s barely left Ermiña’s side, I told Don Henrik. A proper limpet, poor love.

      Don Henrik took a drag on his little cigarette – all

      cigarettes look little in his enormous hands – and, looking out at the grove of trees in front of his farm, said that there were worse things in life. And with that we settled the matter, or at least that’s what I understood Don Henrik to have decided. He poured more rum into my plastic cup (the glass tumbler was for his use only) and there we sat, on the wooden terrace Juancho and I had built for him.

      The syrupy spirit took me back to when I first met Don Henrik, and those long hours I spent in the hammock at my aunt’s – Ermiña’s mum – wondering what to do about the family expenses, where I was going to find work, or, frankly, how to get the hell out of there. The sheet metal roof reflected different colours depending on what angle you looked at it, and I used to spend whole afternoons craning my neck, trying to find just the shade I was looking for. One day Bartolo came down the lane shouting, in that grating, twangy voice of his, that there was to be a meeting. Hoping to get rid

      of him, I yelled that I’d be up in a minute, before settling back into the hammock. That was my first mistake: Ermiña, who’d been cooking in the other room, came out to see what was going on. The two of them spoke quietly outside, and before long I felt her approach (it freaks me out how silent she can be sometimes), stick her face over the side of the hammock, and ask me to please go with Bartolo. She stood there unmoving until I got up.

      In the community centre, which still doesn’t have a roof, Don Henrik had stacked two plastic chairs one on top of the other (the only way they’d hold his weight). Sitting facing him were Tito Colmenares, Bartolo, and Juancho. Juancho scowled at me as soon as I came in. We’re cousins too and I think that’s why he resents me. Ermiña once hinted that Juancho thought I was a good-for-nothing, and we’ve been sizing each other up from a distance, silently cursing each other ever since. Ermiña seems less bothered about it now, as though Juancho confirmed her suspicions about him with

      his spitefulness.

      That afternoon Don Henrik talked about his life out east, about the melon plantations he’d set up, about other ‘interesting’ projects, and my mind had just started to wander when he opened the icebox between his feet and pulled a huge fish out by its tail.

      Do you know what this is? he asked, holding it up.

      We shifted in our seats, glancing at each other.

      It’s a trout, said Don Henrik, ignoring someone’s raised hand. A rainbow trout.

      He turned the creature over, as though wanting the sun to catch all its hidden colours, but in truth it just looked like any old fish.

      This right here is going to bring progress to the mountain, he said, and lifted the trout even higher.

      That’s when I realised Don Henrik was a bit barmy, and I started to warm to him.

      Don Henrik had travelled all over the world, and in Norway, he told us that afternoon, he’d learned all there was to know about breeding trout. Gesturing towards the top of the mountain and his plot of land, he described where the first cement tanks would go – three metres in diameter, eight hundred trout in each one – and detailed how he’d filter the water, connect pipes up to the spring, feed and fillet the fish.

      When he finished he got to his feet, still holding the fish by the tail, and asked us to line up in front of him. We all looked at each other, a bit confused. Fine, said Don Henrik, resigned to the fact that nobody was moving. He stared at me a long while, but I think it was just because I’ve got a big nose – it always gets people’s attention. Then he looked round at the rest of them, one by one, and in the end gestured, trout in hand, to Juancho and Bartolo. Those two were chosen to start work on the trout farm.

      If Bartolo hadn’t broken his leg the next day when a pregnant cow attacked him in the middle of a field, I’d still be lying in that same hammock at my aunt’s place. But fortunes can change, even if no one ever gets any richer.

      Work on the trout farm’s been hard. The nights are cold up here, and after levelling the ground and building the first two tanks Don Henrik ran out of money. He had to go back to the capital to find more, leaving Juancho and me in charge. At least I’ve got my family to keep me company. Don Henrik just about manages to scrape together our wages, and visits every couple of weeks to see how the project’s progressing, which it never is, though I suppose things aren’t getting any worse either.

      Ermiña and I have had some problems. I have to admit: it’s not all happy families on the trout farm.

      *

      The first problem is Juancho. Let’s just say he’s got the same nose as me (although not quite so prominent), drags his feet when he walks – sign of a bad conscience – and sometimes when I talk to him he just stares at me, unblinking, with those cow eyes of his, like he’s got no idea what I’m saying. This annoys me, because I know he might be slow but he’s not a total imbecile. I could be telling him that one of the fish tanks has got a crack in it or describing the latest Parcelas match, his