Fishing Lesson

I had been working on my short story for weeks. I still wasn't happy
with it, but the competition deadline was coming up and I needed to
post it. Uncle Max was the only person in our family who had done some
writing himself. I had asked him to read it and give me his opinion. It
was a late afternoon in autumn, and I was on my way to see him in his
workshop.

Uncle Max worked with wood. He made and restored instruments; zithers,
balalaikas, mandolins, lutes and the like. To get to the workshop I had
to wheel my bike down a narrow gravel path between two houses. I
chained it to a post and went inside. When I entered, I found him
sifting through the contents of a grey holdall. He was clutching an awl
in his left hand.

"Marcus," he said. He was in his fifties, but unlike my father he had a
full head of thick, shaggy hair. "Take a seat." The air in the room
smelt of solvents and freshly-shorn wood. Instruments in various states
of repair were strewn about us. It was warm compared to outside, almost
stuffy. I took off my coat and sat down.

He brushed a pile of wood-shavings, coiled like clock-springs, from his
bench.

"Sorry," he said, "just a second. I've mislaid my glasses." He was
squinting fiercely. "I wanted to do some detail work&;#8230; in any
case, you're here now." He looked up, smiling.

"So, uh, did you get a chance to read my story?"

"Yes," he said. He was a well-built, hearty man with a low, sonorous
voice that recalled the melancholy lament of a cello. I waited for him
to go on, but he just sat there, stroking his chin.

"What did you think?" I said. I was anxious to hear him praise it. It
was about a boy with a club-foot, who keeps a menagerie at the bottom
of his garden. He has a hard time making friends, and the only thing he
can relate to is his birds. At the end, he opens the cage door and sets
them all free.

"I thought it was good." His response sounded muted, vague, perhaps
even a little placatory.

"I'm planning to enter it in a competition," I said. Uncle Max nodded
quietly and put down his awl. "I think winning something would really
help my confidence."

He got up from his stool and crossed the room, to a small table. On it
was a black violin case. He flipped the latches and lifted the lid.
With big, callused hands, he took out the instrument inside. It was
exquisite. Its lacquered russet surface caught the light like water on
a lake. He returned to his stool and rested the instrument on his
lap.

"Did you&;#8230; did you make that?"

He patted the tailpiece gently. "A long time ago."

"How long did it take you?" I asked.

"About eight months," he said.

"It's amazing."

"I worked on it almost every day. I wanted it to be perfect. See this
piece?" He tilted it towards me, running his fingers across the curved
waist. "Five weeks." I felt light-headed. "It is the finest instrument
I have ever made."

"Patience and perseverance are the cornerstones of every craft," he
said. "Take the master angler&;#8230; He baits his hook, he casts
his rod, then he sits and waits. He sits, and he waits hours,
days&;#8230; maybe even an entire lifetime, for that one tug on the
line, that all-important pull, and he reels in a huge sea bass, the
likes of which you've never seen. He has it stuffed and mounted on his
wall. People come from miles around to wonder at it. He is hailed as
the greatest angler that ever lived."

"You are a good writer, Marcus. If you persevere&;#8230; if you give
your life over to that process, to that sitting and waiting, and have
faith that one day the tug will come, success will be drawn to you. You
will win all the trophies and awards and acclamation you could ever
desire." He let out a sigh. "And for what? What will these prizes give
you? The angler becomes so busy hosting parties, writing articles for
fishing magazines, showing off his giant sea bass, that the hinges on
his tackle-box rust, and his rod gets locked away in some cobweb-filled
cupboard. He becomes so wrapped up in being a Big Success that he
forgets how to be the patient, humble fisherman he once was, before
that tug on the line." Uncle Max gingerly took hold of the violin by
the neck. Even the fingerboard was polished up to a beautiful,
onyx-black shine.

"Anyone can catch a big fish," he said, "but how many people can throw
it back?" With that, he raised the violin above his head and brought it
down hard against the edge of the bench.

The body split with a hollow crack, the strings broke free from the
tuning pegs, and the chin rest clattered onto the floor. The violence
came as such a shock I nearly fell off my stool.

I stared and stared. Uncle Max stood there, surrounded by a swirling
haze of dust motes, calmly regarding the sorry, scattered shards of
kindling that had once constituted his finest work. He looked sanguine
initially, as serene and indifferent as Buddha himself. When it came,
the change began in his eyebrows. I watched as he frowned first with
one, then with the other, then with both at the same time. He still had
the splintered neck of the violin in his hand. With a tragicomic
slowness he lifted it up to the light, brought it close enough to his
face to counteract his myopia. Even at a range of two or three inches,
he was squinting.

The focus of his scrutiny seemed to be the scroll - the part of the
neck after the pegbox that curls round like a treble clef. As he
explored its grooves with the pad of his thumb, his frown deepened. He
glanced across to the table he had retrieved the violin from. Following
his gaze, I noticed that behind the open violin case was a second, very
similar one. He looked back to the scroll, took a very slow breath in,
let a very slow breath out.

"What's wrong?" I said, breaking the silence. My throat was dry. Uncle
Max gazed at the snapped neck.

"It should have my initials engraved on it&;#8230;" He paused, let
the implication hang. One by one, his fingers relaxed, and the last
fragment of broken violin dropped to the floor. "I was restoring this
for a customer..." I watched the realisation gradually sinking in. He
looked down at the mess around his feet. His face fell.

"Oh bugger," he said.