Ukrainian Laestrygonians

Bloodthirsty Laestrygonians lived there in the times of Odysseus. Then those lands were occupied by adventurous Genoese, and after them – desperate Balaklava Greeks. Many years after them – valiant submariners and sailors of the Black Sea Fleet…

All of them settled there for good. The only long-lasting features of Balaklava are fish and the hard work of fishermen, who have fed locals from time immemorial

Fishermen in Balaklava work for the fish state farm, but sail out to the sea in their own skiffs. They must have three licenses for fishing. The third and most important license is issued only in Kyiv. Because it is very expensive, fishermen have only one such license for every crew. If a licensed boat is broken fishermen stay on the shore without earnings. They will be fined for sailing in the sea in some other boat. Approximately 20 controlling bodies supervise fishermen

Fishermen leave the bay at the break of dawn. Under the cliffs where even the ripple strives to crash the launch into chips, they pull their nets with gray mullets, gallinules, haddock and even flounder, when they are lucky. Around them there is infinite number of seagulls trying to snatch fish from hands. Their hands are all covered in callosities, cut with nets and pricked with the needles of sea ruffs.

Border guards will not let them out of the bay when the weather is bad. In such cases fishermen complain that fish in their nets will become rotten. They stay in their booth (that is how they call their small two-room apartment in an old building), and their foreman Viktor Mykhailovych recollects how he used to come here with his father before the WW II to take a bath, because it was a bath house at that time. Windows are very dirty and it seems like no one washed them after the WW II. It strongly smells of fish and sea. Nets are stored in the other room. Fisherman Dima strings salted gobies and horse mackerels on nails driven-in on the rack. In the corridor fishermen untangle nets for spurdog – the Black Sea shark – and lay them into sacks.

If the weather is good fishermen make their arrangements to ship out. The engine will not start, storage battery is low. The foreman swears and somehow starts the engine. Fishermen jump into the boat, it is slippery and damp. They work up till 11 o’clock in the sea and drag out 3–5 nets.

On the shore the crew is met by a usual company consisting of customers, local cats and fish inspector, which is faultfinding and tries to find any violations in the boxes filled with fish. Fishermen try to be friends with the inspector. He has a plan – three violations for a crew monthly. Fishermen agree to petty and made-up violations and that keeps the inspector down. The customers take their fish, and fishermen go home after they mess around with their fishing stuff.

Only a few years ago they returned from the sea and went right in their rubberized jackets to the nearest cafe on the quay to have a cup of coffee. Then they drank those beverages fishermen ought to drink returning from the sea, but they always started with coffee – it was a sanctum for “laestrygonians” from Balaklava. No one will let them in wearing such clothes to the coffee houses on the quay, and there are no more former cafes celebrated by Kuprin in Balaklava. They were replaced with expensive restaurants serving espresso and cappuccino made by Italian coffee machines and fresh fish just unloaded by fishermen from their boats on the mooring. So fishermen drink to their catch right in their booths and go home without any coffee.

The deja vu from Kuprin’s stories comes over only when the sun goes down beneath the cape, it gets darker, fishermen Balaklava goes to sleep, lanterns are lit on the quay and terraces in yacht clubs, cafes and restaurants are filled with vacationers.

Knots, baskets, trunks, scrofulous children and decadence damsels, stone wells with their constantly running and purling water, big-eyed and long-nosed Greek women, resembling Virgin Mary in Byzantine icons, nets laid all over the quay on which Balaklava fishermen crawl like giant black spiders, red lantern on the customs border, similar to a cunning and malicious eye of a mythical bloodthirsty Laestrygonian…

Nighttime nostalgia for the long-gone times vanishes with the daybreak. Do not flatter yourself, close the volume of Kuprin’s novels and put it back on the shelf, though you can still see scrofulous children from north and smart damsels, and definitely someone crawling on all fours in the morning on the quay.

Passing flat-bottomed fishing boats white yachts ship out for a morning promenade in the sea. Bronze statue of Kuprin follows with his eyes the 80-feet three-decker beauty silently gliding in the bay. She is a side product of IPO in London stock market belonging to a famous Ukrainian agrarian holding. On its stern stewards in white jackets prepare spinning rods for guests: “Would you like to fish, Sir?”

… Fish swims to Balaklava counterclockwise round a circle of the sea from the shores of Caucasus, Trabzon and Sinop along its eternal route. Fishermen start their next working day. The sea, the cliffs and seagulls around them, black spots on horizon – those are the other fishing skiffs…