38-60

Chapter 60: Fishing 

I looked at Ho-cheol. 

“I also woke up in a random house. I came straight here as soon as I woke up.” 

I didn’t ask any more. Maybe because of the air currents, the smoke last night didn’t spread, and it seemed everyone who inhaled it fell into a deeper hallucination than usual. Only I managed to avoid that storm. I thought, with a heavy heart, that if I had just let myself get lost in the hallucination, I wouldn’t have seen my wife like that and wouldn’t feel so dark inside now. 

After that, for almost two or three weeks, the tribe didn’t hold any mating or unity days. I thought that was a relief, and I felt I really needed to understand their language. So every night, I focused on learning the language with Soo-hyuk. As they say, you really do learn a language fastest on-site. After special lessons at night and listening to their language all day, haltingly speaking myself, I started to feel my ears opening up. Of course, I couldn’t match Soo-hyuk, Ho-cheol, or even my wife’s level yet, but I could understand and say very simple things. 

Just as my wife said, when the tribe started opening up, the people began treating us with more familiarity, and sometimes someone would come into our house and sleep. It seemed our house hadn’t been a place people felt comfortable entering before, but now that wall was slowly coming down. 

In response to the villagers’ friendliness, we all worked hard at village tasks-cutting trees, fishing, hunting, and gathering plants. We actively helped and gradually started earning our keep. Working together, I was able to have many conversations, and my language skills improved. 

My wife seemed to have put her research on hold for a while; she hardly talked to people or the shaman, instead throwing herself into village work all day. By evening, she would collapse from exhaustion. It wasn’t just my wife-Soo-hyuk, Ho-cheol, and I were the same. 

As my wife expanded her range of work, she started joining in on hunting and fishing trips. Here, there was no special consideration for women doing these things. So my wife worked hard not to be a burden, and after a few days, she started bringing back results. With all the physical activity, she began to develop some muscle. I hadn’t described it before, but the women of this tribe all had strong muscles on their arms and thighs. Their physiques were so impressive, I felt embarrassed about my own thighs. Of course, these are people who survive with nothing but their bodies in the wild. If they had weak bodies like us city dwellers, they’d be naturally weeded out. 

One night, I saw the muscles on my wife’s sweat-soaked arms and thighs shining in the torchlight, and felt a surge of sexual desire. But here, people never had sex except on mating days, so I could only look at her longingly and fall asleep. I found myself quietly looking forward to the next mating day. 

One morning, people were gathering in the square to go fishing, and they invited us to join. Soo-hyuk and Ho-cheol had already gone hunting with others. My wife and I went fishing with three tribal men. For catching fish for soup, they used banana leaf baskets in the lower creek, but for bigger fish, they took boats to where the river met the sea. On the boat, they fished with long, sharpened wooden spears, stabbing fish that came near the surface. 

The water wasn’t very deep, so the fish came close to the surface, and the current wasn’t strong, so you could spot the fish moving, if not perfectly clearly. The fish here were much bigger than in the creek-usually about a meter long, with some twice that size. 

Both my wife and I had experience with this kind of fishing, so we boarded the boat without much worry. The boat moved slowly down the river to avoid splashing. When we reached a certain spot, one person stopped the boat and gestured for us to start fishing. 

I’m no wilderness expert, but I knew that rivers like this often have crocodiles. But there were none here, which meant there were plenty of large fish. If we didn’t catch them, the river would overflow with them. 

Everyone kept as quiet as possible, standing around the boat and watching the water. Reading the small currents, we gripped our spears and held our breath. The first to strike was a tribesman, spearing a fish the size of a forearm. That was the signal-everyone began catching fish, each at least 50 centimeters long. My wife and I each caught one as well. 

I glanced at the tribesman next to me-his whole body was powerfully muscled, and his wet, black skin gleamed in the sunlight. The other men were just as strong. Maybe it was the tension of fishing, but their arms looked even more muscular as they gripped their spears. Two of the men seemed to be in their early twenties, and one was about my age. He was big, with curly beard, looking like a Greek statue. 

As I was looking at him, my wife let out a short cry, and the man’s head turned at almost the same instant. I turned to the sound just as the man moved with lightning speed. 

My wife had thrown her spear at a fish in the water, but the fish was much bigger than she’d expected-at least a meter long, and with a powerful pull. Not wanting to let go, she held onto the spear and nearly fell out of the boat, crying out. The man quickly moved, grabbed her waist, and with his other hand grabbed the spear. Even while holding my wife with one arm, he lifted the heavy fish out of the water with the other. Water splashed, and the muscles on his chest and biceps bulged, gleaming in the sunlight. 

It was just a split second, but I saw every detail of the man’s body, and my wife seemed to as well. He tossed the fish onto the boat with one hand and let go of my wife. She thanked him over and over, and he gave her a shy smile before returning to his spot and fishing as if nothing had happened. 

With the boat full of fish, we headed back to shore. The fish my wife caught was the biggest and incredibly heavy. I tried to carry her catch for her, but I could barely lift it. 

“This won’t do. I’ll take the smaller ones to the village first, so wait here a moment…” 

My wife nodded. I hurried off with my fish, dropped them off in the village, and rushed back to the boat. Before I got there, I stopped-my wife and the man who’d helped her were walking toward me. He was carrying the fish, strung together, over both shoulders, walking beside my wife. On one shoulder was the huge fish my wife had caught; on the other, his own catch. I could barely lift my fish, but he carried them all easily. 

As they approached, my wife waved to me. 

“This guy is so strong. He carried all of this himself.” 

Her face was full of smiles. We returned to the village together. My pride was bruised, but there was nothing I could do. I’d always been told I was weaker than my classmates, so this wasn’t new. I always comforted myself that I had other strengths instead.