"Tale of Lost Work Ethic"

In a harbor on the western coast of Europe, a shabbily dressed man dozes in his fishing boat. A smartly dressed tourist inserts a new color film into his camera to capture the idyllic scenery: blue sky, green sea with peaceful, snow-white wave crests, black boat, red fisherman’s cap. Click. Once again: click, and since all good things come in threes, for good measure, a third time: click. The sharp, almost hostile noise wakes the dozing fisherman, who sluggishly sits up and sleepily fumbles for his pack of cigarettes. But before he can find what he looks for, the eager tourist has already held up a pack in front of his nose, and without exactly sticking the cigarette in his mouth, he puts it in his hand, and a fourth click, that of the lighter, completes the hasty courtesy. From that hardly measurable, undetectable excess of nimble politeness arose a testy awkwardness, which the tourist — fluent in the local language — attempts to bridge through conversation. 

"I take it that you’ll make a good catch today, sir." 

The fisherman shakes his head. 

“But, I’ve been told that the weather is favorable.” 

The fisherman nods slightly. 

"So, you're not going to put out to sea then?" 

The fishman shakes his head again, and the tourist becomes increasingly nervous. Undoubtedly, the tourist is concerned about the welfare of the poorly dressed fisherman, whose heart must gnaw with grief over the missed opportunity.

"Oh? Are you feeling unwell, sir?" 

At last, the fisherman switches from sign language to spoken word, so that he may make himself abundantly clear. "I feel quite well," he says. "I've never felt better." He stands up and stretches to demonstrate how athletically built he is. "In fact, I feel fantastic." 

The tourist's facial expression becomes increasingly dissatisfied as he can no longer suppress the question that threatens to burst his heart: "But sir, might I ask, why aren’t you sailing then?” 

The answer comes promptly and succinctly. "Because I already took the boat out this morning." 

"Was the catch good?" 

"It was so good that I don't need to go out again. I had four lobsters in my baskets, and caught almost two dozen mackerel…” 

The fisherman, finally awake, warms and pats the tourist on the shoulder. The tourist’s worried face seems to him to be an expression of misplaced but touching concern. "I even have enough for tomorrow and the day after!" he said to ease the stranger's soul. "Here, would you care to smoke one of mine?" 

"Yes, thank you." 

They each put a cigarette in their mouth to smoke, a fifth click, following which, the tourist shakes his head and sits on the edge of the boat, where he also sets down his camera because he will require both hands to emphasize his upcoming speech. 

"I don't wish to interfere in your personal affairs, sir," he says, "but just imagine if you went out a second, third, maybe even a fourth time today and you caught three, four, five, maybe even ten dozen mackerel… just imagine that!"

The fisherman nods indifferently. 

"You would put out to sea again," the tourist continues, "Not just today, but tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, yes, two, three, maybe four times on any favorable day such as this — do you know what would happen then?" 

The fisherman shakes his head. 

"Sir, you best believe, in a year at the latest, you would be able to buy a motorboat, in two years a second boat, in three or four years you might have a small trawler, and with two boats or a trawler, you would, of course, catch a lot more fish — one day you would have two trawlers, you could…" the sheer excitement chokes the tourist’s voice for a second, “Why, you could build a small cold store, maybe a smokehouse, later a marinade factory, and fly around with your own helicopter, so that you could spot schools of fish and give your trawlers orders by radio — after that, you could acquire fishing rights for salmon, open a fish restaurant, and even export lobster directly to Paris without any middlemen — and then…" again, the thrill leaves him speechless. Shaking his head with a heavy heart and almost losing the joy of his vacation, the tourist watches the tide roll in peacefully, in which the uncaught fish are lively jumping. 

"And then," the tourist begins again, but his agitation cuts him off. The fisherman pats him on the back like a child who has choked. "Then what?" he asks quietly. “Then,” the tourist whispers with hushed enthusiasm, “You could sit here in the harbor, doze in the sun, and look out over the beautiful sea." 

"But I'm doing that now already," the fisherman says, "I'm sitting in the harbor comfortably, and I was sleeping, only your clicking disturbed me."

In effect, the tourist learned his lesson and departed thoughtfully, for he had once believed that he was working so that one day he would no longer have to work, but there was no trace of pity left in him for the shabbily dressed fisherman, only a little envy.