Niall Williams - History of the Rain

It reads:

26lbs (worm)

The Salmon in Ireland

because here the confluence of fact, story and legend make for cloudy waters. Salmon derives from the Latin salire , to leap. It was Cattalus of course who likened the leaping salmon to an erect phallus, a version of which survives in Ireland in a story told to me by an ancient fisherman in the County Westmeath. In this story the mother of Saint Finan Cam is said to have been prompted by a bodiless voice to go swimming in a river after dark. While swimming in mid current, apparently unawares, she became impregnated by a salmon.

One imagines the surprise.

How the salmon achieves the leap has down the centuries been variously explained. By holding his tail in his mouth according to the seventeenth-century poem ‘Poly-Olbion’ by Michael Drayton.

. . his taile takes in his teeth, and bending like a bowe

That’s to the compasse drawn, aloft himself doth throwe.

That the height of the leap may be linked to a female presence is not perhaps as fanciful as might first appear when we consider that in 1922 Georgina Ballintine landed a 64lb salmon out of the River Tay. The local fishermen, who had been labouring without success on the very same run, attributed the catch to the fact that female essence, as it were, had rubbed off on the bait and this had brought the salmon erect and leaping to her.

All of this by way of getting to my point that it is a fact drawn from the author’s experience in Ireland that with temperature rising salmon become distinctly more active,

That worm had a lot to answer for, Nan says.

In our house we have videos and a video player and a collection of fairly ancient big cassettes of old films recorded off the TV in the time when that was the coolest thing ever. So, in the movie version of Grandfather & the Worm, black-and-white, William Wyler directing, Sam Goldwyn producing, Grandfather is played by Laurence Olivier aged thirty-five. It’s September 1st, 1939. There’s a big grey sky with dark clouds moving to the Oscar-winning orchestral arrangements of Alfred Newman. The river is fast and there’s a storm coming. We see other fishermen in the minor cast shake their heads and go home. But Laurence walks past them. He’s drawn to it — the sudden pulsing of Arnold Kisch’s bass lets you know A Big Moment is coming.

Laurence steps off the bank into the river.

Close-up of the water curving up over the top of his boot, a little unsteadiness as the river floor shifts underfoot, but he wades further out and casts.

Boom goes the thunder.

Boom boom goes the score. It’s as if somebody knows that elsewhere Germany’s just starting to invade Poland.

And then the rain comes lashing down.

Close-up of Laurence’s face, rainwashed and fierce, equal parts concentration and looneytunes.

He’s to his waist in the river. We know now he’s probably thinking about Merle Oberon, he wanted Vivien Leigh but she was turned down and is Gone with the Wind, so he’s got Oberon which isn’t a great name for romance seeing as how he’s thinking Oberon was King of the Fairies (Book 349, A Midsummer Night’s Dream , W. Shakespeare, Oxford Classics) and I’m going to have to kiss the King of the Fairies, which is a problem until he remembers fortunately he has played that role and so it’ll sort of be himself he’s loving and, well, he can manage that.

The sky is that big angry grey-black that’s MGM’s speciality and which they can somehow make look blacker and broodier still. And whoa those violins are playing faster now and look! he’s got a salmon on the line. The rod tenses and bows and the rain-machine guy is told give it your almighty best , or whatever that is in MGM-ese, and you can picture Mervin Olbacher, conductor, leaping up and whipping that baton at those violinists. He’s not a big man but boy he’s put elbow into it. He’s put hair-toss and sweat into it. So it’s rain-music-river, all Full On and up to ten, up to eleven as Margaret Crowe says, when Laurence pulls and sways and hauls this great silver salmon up into the air. Bass drum, bass drum, batons, Mervin. More, more.

Sweet Jesus, shouts Marty Finucane. You’ve never seen the like.

Jesus Mary and Joseph, says Jesus Mary and Joseph Carty.

MGM Props have outdone themselves this time.

Boys o boys. That’s a Big Fish.

(‘Big enough, Mr Goldwyn?’ ‘No such thing as too big.’)

And it lands, splash.

Sorry, take that again.

It lands SPLASH back down in the river and the whole of Laurence is tugged forward and he’s in this battle of strength now, both hands on the rod as it gets pulled horizontal, forearms quivering and mouth that twisted grimace Laurence does brilliantly when he’s daring God and man and William Wyler to say he’s not the finest actor that ever was.

There’s more, there’s a whole tugging and groaning, there’s flashes of lightning and Laurence giving it the full welly, but the studio decided that was enough, and cuts to the salmon being reeled in.

It’s hard to tell in the film just how big it is though. The assistant director thought maybe there should be other fish he’d caught earlier and Laurence could lay this alongside for comparison, but nobody listened and it was decided you’d just believe this was the Big One if the score and the lighting and the sound effects and Laurence’s acting told you so.

Anyway, here he is getting to the riverbank. He climbs up, falls down, the rain still beating, and he unhooks the fish, holds it for its weight. Crikey, look at that. It’s Number One Salmon, that’s what Props has been told, and they’ve had three rejected and to make their point that this was ridiculous they’ve brought this outlandish one and that got the Thumbs-Up.

So there it is. Man and Salmon. And whatever knowledge is in the fish somehow transfers to him. Whatever secrets of the world, what mysteries of chance and concurrence, of power and force and ultimate surrender, enter him, and Grandfather lets the salmon back into the river. He lets it back and lies flat and exhausted and he’s sort of crying for all that has failed in his life and for the failure of God to show up, and the rain pours down into his face; the Lighting Gaffer throws a switch and Mervin sweetens the score so even if you’re looking into your popcorn you know that up there on the screen your man’s in the throes of something like revelation.

Next shot he’s walking across the fields.

He’s walking into town. It’s Trim in the County Meath, but this being Hollywood it’s not even going to look like the Ealing Studios version, especially because to spare the make-up the rain has stopped.

Anyway your eyes are on my grandfather played by our man Laurence. He walks into town and up to this big house where Merle is just about done with Make-Up and Costumes. We can’t have her say any of the lines here because of copyright infringement but if imagination fails and you’re not in the Five Per Cent you go ahead and download them.

Fizz. Bang. Sizzle.

That’s not Germany entering Poland. That’s Grandfather & Grandmother in Trim Manor the evening of the Big Catch, September of 1939.

(Unfortunately the Censor cut the love scene. At that time there were no love scenes in Ireland. Most people thought kissing was sex. Tongues were penises. Only allowed out for communion. Which, unsurprisingly, proved very popular.

You don’t believe me look up the Irish Committee on Evil Literature, say hello to those boys. There were no women allowed in Censorship. Some members of the Committee were secretly hoping there’d be No Women Allowed in Ireland, which would be fine, except for the vexed issue of ironing.)