Le Conseil du Vieux Pêcheur
The Old Fisherman's Advice
Frustrated by shrinking catches near Saint-Louis, a young fisherman asks an elder for advice and receives a story with no single correct reading.
- tradition vs. modernity
- environment
Tap an underlined word to see its meaning.
What you'll encounter
- Grammar
- plus-que-parfait for the elder's story and backstory
- imparfait for ongoing decline
- reported speech inside a parable
- Vocabulary
- fishing and river vocabulary
- proverb and parable register
- Skills
- interpreting a deliberately ambiguous piece of advice without a single correct reading
- accepting a narrator who refuses to resolve the protagonist's choice
Dans les eaux autour de Saint-Louis, Ousmane remontait depuis trois saisons des filets de plus en plus légers, et chaque sortie en mer semblait confirmer ce que les autres jeunes pêcheurs du quartier répétaient entre eux à voix basse : les poissons se faisaient rares, et personne ne savait vraiment pourquoi, ni pour combien de temps encore.
Show English
For three seasons, Ousmane had been pulling in lighter and lighter nets in the waters around Saint-Louis, and every trip out to sea seemed to confirm what the other young fishermen in the neighborhood kept repeating under their breath: fish were becoming scarce, and no one really knew why, or for how much longer.
Certains accusaient les grands bateaux étrangers qui pêchaient plus loin au large, d’autres parlaient de l’eau qui changeait, plus chaude qu’avant, et d’autres encore se contentaient de hausser les épaules, trop occupés à survivre pour chercher une explication.
Show English
Some blamed the large foreign boats fishing farther out at sea, others talked about the water changing, warmer than before, and still others simply shrugged, too busy surviving to look for an explanation.
Le gouvernement promettait, depuis plusieurs mois déjà, des aides financières pour ceux qui accepteraient de changer de métier, mais les démarches administratives semblaient si compliquées que peu de pêcheurs du quartier avaient osé s’y lancer sérieusement.
Show English
The government had been promising, for several months already, financial help for those willing to change trades, but the paperwork seemed so complicated that few fishermen in the neighborhood had dared to seriously look into it.
Un vendredi soir, après une sortie particulièrement décevante, Ousmane a décidé d’aller voir Modou, le plus vieux pêcheur encore actif du quartier, que tout le monde respectait pour sa connaissance du fleuve et de l’océan, acquise au fil de plus de cinquante années en mer.
Show English
One Friday evening, after a particularly disappointing trip, Ousmane decided to go see Modou, the oldest fisherman still active in the neighborhood, respected by everyone for his knowledge of the river and the ocean, gained over more than fifty years at sea.
Il a trouvé le vieil homme assis devant sa case, réparant tranquillement un filet à la lumière d’une lampe à pétrole, et lui a expliqué, avec une franchise presque désespérée, qu’il ne savait plus s’il devait continuer la pêche ou chercher un autre métier avant qu’il ne soit trop tard pour sa famille.
Show English
He found the old man sitting in front of his house, calmly mending a net by the light of an oil lamp, and explained to him, with an almost desperate honesty, that he no longer knew whether he should keep fishing or look for another trade before it was too late for his family.
Il pensait notamment à sa femme, Aïda, enceinte de leur second enfant, et à son père, disparu en mer trois ans plus tôt, dont le nom restait associé, dans tout le quartier, à l’une des meilleures années de pêche jamais connues à Saint-Louis.
Show English
He was thinking in particular of his wife, Aïda, pregnant with their second child, and of his father, lost at sea three years earlier, whose name was still linked, throughout the neighborhood, to one of the best fishing years Saint-Louis had ever known.
Modou l’a écouté sans l’interrompre, puis a posé son filet pour raconter, plutôt que de répondre directement, une histoire que son propre père lui avait racontée quand il avait l’âge d’Ousmane.
Show English
Modou listened without interrupting, then set down his net to tell, rather than answer directly, a story his own father had told him when he was Ousmane's age.
La case de Modou donnait directement sur la plage, et, derrière lui, le soleil descendait doucement sur l’océan, teignant le ciel d’un orange profond qui rappelait, disait-il souvent, la couleur exacte des filets de son propre père.
Show English
Modou's house opened directly onto the beach, and behind him, the sun was slowly setting over the ocean, tinting the sky a deep orange that, he often said, was the exact color of his own father's nets.
« Il y a longtemps, un bras du fleuve passait exactement là où se trouve aujourd’hui le quartier de Guet Ndar », a commencé Modou, « et les pêcheurs de cette époque juraient que ce bras ne disparaîtrait jamais, puisqu’il les avait toujours nourris, eux et leurs parents avant eux. »
Show English
"Long ago, a branch of the river ran exactly where the Guet Ndar neighborhood stands today," Modou began, "and the fishermen of that time swore that branch would never disappear, since it had always fed them, and their parents before them."
« Pourtant, année après année, le fleuve a changé de chemin, lentement, sans prévenir personne, jusqu’à ce que ce bras d’eau ne soit plus qu’un souvenir que seuls les plus vieux racontent encore à leurs petits-enfants. »
Show English
"Yet, year after year, the river slowly changed course, without warning anyone, until that branch of water became nothing more than a memory that only the oldest people still tell their grandchildren about."
Modou racontait cette histoire les yeux à moitié fermés, comme s’il la revoyait lui-même, bien qu’il ne soit, à l’époque, pas encore né, l’histoire lui ayant simplement été transmise, génération après génération, comme un héritage aussi précieux qu’un bon filet.
Show English
Modou told the story with his eyes half closed, as if he were seeing it himself, even though he hadn't yet been born at the time, the story having simply been passed down to him, generation after generation, like an inheritance as precious as a good net.
Ousmane a attendu la suite de l’histoire, une morale, un conseil clair, mais Modou s’est contenté d’ajouter, avec un petit sourire : « Un fleuve qui change de chemin n’est pas un fleuve perdu ; il a simplement trouvé un autre chemin. »
Show English
Ousmane waited for the rest of the story, a moral, a clear piece of advice, but Modou simply added, with a small smile: "A river that changes course isn't a lost river; it has simply found another one."
« Et qu’est-ce que je dois faire, moi, avec ça ? », a demandé Ousmane, un peu frustré par une réponse qui ressemblait davantage à une qu’à un véritable conseil.
Show English
"And what am I supposed to do with that?" Ousmane asked, a little frustrated by an answer that felt more like a riddle than real advice.
Modou a haussé les épaules, reprenant son filet comme si la conversation touchait déjà à sa fin : « Ton père t’a appris à pêcher ici, mais rien ne dit que le fleuve de ton père doit rester le tien pour toujours. »
Show English
Modou shrugged, picking his net back up as if the conversation were already over: "Your father taught you to fish here, but nothing says your father's river has to stay yours forever."
Ousmane est resté assis un long moment, silencieux, essayant de comprendre si Modou lui conseillait de partir pêcher plus loin, dans des eaux encore poissonneuses, ou d’accepter, au contraire, que la pêche elle-même n’était peut-être plus, pour lui, le bon chemin.
Show English
Ousmane sat there for a long moment, silent, trying to understand whether Modou was advising him to go fish farther away, in still-plentiful waters, or, on the contrary, to accept that fishing itself might no longer be the right path for him.
Il repensait aussi, malgré lui, à ce que son père aurait dit face à une telle question, mais son père n’était plus là pour y répondre, et cette absence rendait chaque interprétation possible encore plus difficile à trancher.
Show English
He also found himself, despite himself, wondering what his father would have said faced with such a question, but his father was no longer there to answer, and that absence made every possible interpretation even harder to settle.
En rentrant chez lui cette nuit-là, le long de la plage, il repensait à la phrase du vieil homme sous des angles différents à chaque pas, sans jamais réussir à se décider entre ces deux lectures, pourtant toutes aussi raisonnables l’une que l’autre.
Show English
Walking home that night along the beach, he turned the old man's sentence over in his mind from a different angle with every step, never managing to settle between these two readings, each one just as reasonable as the other.
Le lendemain matin, sans avoir vraiment tranché, Ousmane a préparé sa pirogue comme chaque jour, mais il l’a dirigée, pour la première fois depuis des années, vers une zone plus éloignée que celle où son père pêchait autrefois, sans savoir lui-même s’il suivait le conseil de Modou ou simplement sa propre impatience.
Show English
The next morning, without really having decided, Ousmane prepared his dugout canoe as he did every day, but for the first time in years, he steered it toward a zone farther out than where his father used to fish, without even knowing himself whether he was following Modou's advice or simply his own impatience.
Personne, pas même Modou, n’a jamais su exactement ce qu’Ousmane avait finalement décidé de faire de cette histoire du fleuve, et Ousmane lui-même, des années plus tard, racontait encore qu’il n’en était pas tout à fait certain.
Show English
No one, not even Modou, ever knew exactly what Ousmane had finally decided to make of the story about the river, and Ousmane himself, years later, still said he wasn't entirely sure.
Show full English translation
For three seasons, Ousmane had been pulling in lighter and lighter nets in the waters around Saint-Louis, and every trip out to sea seemed to confirm what the other young fishermen in the neighborhood kept repeating under their breath: fish were becoming scarce, and no one really knew why, or for how much longer.
Some blamed the large foreign boats fishing farther out at sea, others talked about the water changing, warmer than before, and still others simply shrugged, too busy surviving to look for an explanation.
The government had been promising, for several months already, financial help for those willing to change trades, but the paperwork seemed so complicated that few fishermen in the neighborhood had dared to seriously look into it.
One Friday evening, after a particularly disappointing trip, Ousmane decided to go see Modou, the oldest fisherman still active in the neighborhood, respected by everyone for his knowledge of the river and the ocean, gained over more than fifty years at sea.
He found the old man sitting in front of his house, calmly mending a net by the light of an oil lamp, and explained to him, with an almost desperate honesty, that he no longer knew whether he should keep fishing or look for another trade before it was too late for his family.
He was thinking in particular of his wife, Aïda, pregnant with their second child, and of his father, lost at sea three years earlier, whose name was still linked, throughout the neighborhood, to one of the best fishing years Saint-Louis had ever known.
Modou listened without interrupting, then set down his net to tell, rather than answer directly, a story his own father had told him when he was Ousmane's age.
Modou's house opened directly onto the beach, and behind him, the sun was slowly setting over the ocean, tinting the sky a deep orange that, he often said, was the exact color of his own father's nets.
"Long ago, a branch of the river ran exactly where the Guet Ndar neighborhood stands today," Modou began, "and the fishermen of that time swore that branch would never disappear, since it had always fed them, and their parents before them."
"Yet, year after year, the river slowly changed course, without warning anyone, until that branch of water became nothing more than a memory that only the oldest people still tell their grandchildren about."
Modou told the story with his eyes half closed, as if he were seeing it himself, even though he hadn't yet been born at the time, the story having simply been passed down to him, generation after generation, like an inheritance as precious as a good net.
Ousmane waited for the rest of the story, a moral, a clear piece of advice, but Modou simply added, with a small smile: "A river that changes course isn't a lost river; it has simply found another one."
"And what am I supposed to do with that?" Ousmane asked, a little frustrated by an answer that felt more like a riddle than real advice.
Modou shrugged, picking his net back up as if the conversation were already over: "Your father taught you to fish here, but nothing says your father's river has to stay yours forever."
Ousmane sat there for a long moment, silent, trying to understand whether Modou was advising him to go fish farther away, in still-plentiful waters, or, on the contrary, to accept that fishing itself might no longer be the right path for him.
He also found himself, despite himself, wondering what his father would have said faced with such a question, but his father was no longer there to answer, and that absence made every possible interpretation even harder to settle.
Walking home that night along the beach, he turned the old man's sentence over in his mind from a different angle with every step, never managing to settle between these two readings, each one just as reasonable as the other.
The next morning, without really having decided, Ousmane prepared his dugout canoe as he did every day, but for the first time in years, he steered it toward a zone farther out than where his father used to fish, without even knowing himself whether he was following Modou's advice or simply his own impatience.
No one, not even Modou, ever knew exactly what Ousmane had finally decided to make of the story about the river, and Ousmane himself, years later, still said he wasn't entirely sure.
Words to know
- devinette
- — riddle