Fly-Fishing the 41st by James Prosek Read Free Book Online Page B

to help Pierre set up a kind of museum-style exhibit he’d prepared on the history of salmon fishing in France. During the course of the day, we drove several van loads of wares across town from rue Dauphine to the Espace Auteuil, including some sculptures by Pierre’s friend François, which would be for sale in a small art gallery space.
    As a consequence of our work, I met François Calmejane, the tax inspector–artist who had created the big iron sculptures of flies that hung in Pierre’s apartment. He looked a bit like an inspector type with a bowler hat, a thick black mustache, and a Sherlock Holmes–style pipe with a deep curve in it. He was wearing a bright yellow shirt and a tie made of wood, and over that a vest of green ostrich leather. The hair on his head was a kinky dark brown. He held the pipe between his yellowed teeth as he spoke gently and affirmatively. “Just one moment, François,” Pierre called, seeing him try to lift a heavy sculpture by himself, “we’re almost done; we can help move some things.”
    â€œFrançois, you know,” Pierre told me in confidence, “is one ofthe top tax agents in France. He’s busted a lot of big guys doing corrupt things. He takes four weeks of vacation every year; two of them he spends with his wife camping and fishing for trout in Ireland, the other two he spends making his art.”
    I imagined the inspector up in the small attic space above his apartment that was his atelier, creating the visionary sculptures in a two-week orgasmic gesture from ideas and energies stored up for an entire year. At that time I didn’t really have a sense of who François was. Though he seemed a little cold, I could say that I had never seen anything like these sculptures he had made. Clearly he had an obsession with fish, and when I had the opportunity to see his studio, I felt I would be walking into his mind, which would be strange but also familiar because I thought I might see a bit of myself in there.
    The sculptures themselves, besides being sublime and terrifying, were dangerous to carry, for they had all kinds of sharp objects protruding from them—scythe blades, giant hooks, spears, knives, and chains. You had the sense that if you fell on one you’d be impaled and bleed to death.
    All of the sculptures of flies and fish were imaginative and brilliant, but one in particular was, to my mind, a masterpiece. Pierre thought so too, and said so when we had set it up and were standing beside it.
    â€œThis one I think is his best work. It really is remarkable. François calls it le grand bécard vainqueur! The great male salmon that won. The head”—Pierre pointed—“is the actual head of a salmon that I caught in the Baltic and brought back for François, and the fishing reels in its stomach are mine too.”
    The sculpture depicted a large salmon with its tail touching its head as if it were leaping in triumph. Its body was a series of curved wires creating a cavity that could be seen into like a cage. Its tail was a fishing-rod handle, and an explosion of various lures hung on spiraling lathe chips. Its pectoral fins were largegaffing hooks. Its air bladder was a gas tank from an old French motorcycle, its intestine was a scythe blade, and in its stomach were the various items of the fisherman’s kit—reels of different shapes and colors, lures, flies, and a landing net. They symbolized a salmon that had overcome all the obstacles it faced on its journey up the river from the ocean; it had swallowed all the anglers’ tackle, broken their lines, and cursed the industry of man.
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    Pierre and I were on Ile Saint-Louis the next morning with our lines in the water. Pierre fished with a worm and gave me a heavy rod rigged with a big lure for silure.
    â€œI think Jean-Pierre and Guy are fishing at Neuilly,” he said. He picked up his cell phone to call Guy to get a