There it was …staring up at me blankly from the butcher’s paper. It was whole in every respect …eyeballs …gills …tail …guts …lovely, silvery skin …smooth scales. Now, why had I gone and done such a stupid thing? I could have told the fishmonger to give me a simple filet of ”fletan” …white of flesh, easy …two minutes in the pan on each side …a meal. But here was this little “lubina” …a perky sea bass just waiting for me to hack off the head and throw it in the pan …yick!!! I am no stranger to whole fish …steamed with ginger …eat on one side …flip it over …remove the bone and tear into the rest …China has taught me that. I am no stranger to fish heads …cook them up into stock for the bouillabaisse …but I have not cleaned a fish since childhood …little girl apprentice days cleaning fish with the filet master, my father.

I poked its flesh with my finger …firm. I looked at the eyeball …clear and plumped, not glassy. I smelled it …sweet as if it had just come from its bath in the sea. There was no good reason to discard this fish. To waste this wonderful fish would be a sin …a crime against the little fishes that cannot help being caught, after all …and the brave men who sail forth every morning before light with nets they have carefully mended. So, here I was in my kitchen over the sea …a dull knife. Slowly, I made the first cut along the belly.

Spring Festival had brought me to my encounter with the sea bass. I had gone to Wu Zhou yesterday, the “finest” Chinese restaurant in town …little China …home away from home. The staff remembered me …the woman who lives in China.  “How many years have you lived there now?” they asked. I wished them a happy Spring Festival and asked them if they had “jiao-zi” …dumplings for the first day of the Year of the Dog. There were no dumplings!! They pointed to the menu. I ignored it. I’d have green vegetables and fish …forget the dumplings. I asked them what kind of green vegetables they had. The waiter pointed to the list in the menu again. Everything was brown …bean sprouts …bamboo shoots …mushrooms …soggy brown vegetables in tins that had lost their bite long ago. Things weren’t going well. I asked them if they had “you cai” or “you mai cai.” They said, “No” in a voice that resounded like the chop of a cleaver. I was disgruntled. They are Chinese …of course there were green vegetables in the kitchen. Who were they trying to fool? “These people must be three generations removed from China,” I said to myself …and my prejudice hung like a slip, but I continued to mumble over the entrees.

I thought the food might be okay, though. I ordered hot and sour soup and a dish to please Western tastes, “Ants Climbing Up a Tree” …at least I’d have crispy fried noodles and minced pork “climbing” up the little broccoli trees …a GREEN vegetable. I was all set for the Year of the Dog. What came was an insipid soup that needed “cu” and was hardly “la de.” No vinegar …no hot stuff. And then …the “piece-de-resistance” …the ants. What was this uninspired slumgullion they brought on a sizzling, iron platter? It had exactly two shrimp …fake crab and the almost non-existent noodles? Packaged noodles!! The waiter slopped it around as it sizzled in oil that spilled over the sides …yuck! It was a seafood version of 1950’s chop suey. I asked for rice …it was hard and lumpy. I drank my TEA. I asked for the bill. The waiter asked me, “Would you like COFFEE?” “They have waited on too many British people in this restaurant.” That was the expletive under my breath.

I asked myself a question that I ask a lot these days about separation. How had these Chinese people allowed such a separation between their work and themselves? I thought I knew, perhaps, what they needed …a big tour bus of Chinese people who would make the place noisy and happy. It needed people who would debate for an hour what to eat …ask a million questions and go nose in the kitchen. That would bring out the GREEN vegetables and, perhaps, dimsum and a spicy Szechuan fish as well!! We would all be one happy family at the Wu Zhou Restaurant by the side of the sea.

I was left to wonder about my plan in the car as I drove along the stormy sea …a terrible day …rain, rain, rain …huge puddles on the beach road. A disappointing Spring Festival. I made a left frowning and double-parked outside of the fish monger’s shop …the little sea bass jumped into butcher paper and holding my finger up for people to wait, I dove into the car …and that was that.

The poor little fish. I had gutted it and scraped off the scales, but had I filleted it, there would have been nothing left. I dredged it in flour, salt, pepper and cumin …fried it in a bit of olive oil. I made a small potato with paprika …sautéed a dab of spinach and steamed a bit of broccoli. Finished, I sat down for my Sunday lunch …my petite holiday meal and a half glass of Rioja. There were white caps on the windy sea, fresh and alive. The sun shone through the clouds. A fishing boat sailed by. I ate my fresh little fish in happiness and, as in China, spat out the bones …in China and Spain there is no fear of fish bones. I left the dishes in the sink and cleaned a melon instead, a “piel de sapa”…a reasonable facsimile of a rough green melon called “ha mi gua” in China and ate a piece as I looked far out …dreaming …dreaming. I finished my meal with a tiny cup of bitter coffee as black as midnight and a flat anise biscuit …not too sweet.

I mused along with my coffee. It is true what my favorite of the “Four Old White Guys of Sociology,” Georg Simmel posited. We have gotten so far away from the source of things as they were that we have lost our connection. We pick up our stiff styrofoam package covered with plastic wrap …the disgusting, sodden pad of paper below that soaks up the aging drips of a fish fillet. Our bare fingers crawl with the anticipation at having to pick it up between thumb and forefinger to wash it under the tap and get the dead white flesh into the pan. We know we have some relationship with this fish. Long ago the association was clear, but now the whole matter has become murky. We are spacey and confused. So harried with modern life, do we ask? Where did this fish come from? What did it look like? And, more importantly, when? How much worse is this packaged pestilence than cleaning your own fish, really?

I know that this fish was caught on Saturday morning …in the sea one village over …in a net. It was a little silvery, sleek fish with a rare, greenish-black eye …sharp gills …smooth scales. The men who caught it eat ”jamon and queso” for lunch washed down with Estola that they drink straight from the bottle. They have rough, big hands from hard work …faces that are sunburned. They are men with full heads of hair streaked gray. They smile and flirt with the women …keep their hands to themselves, but tell other stories, perhaps, when they’re standing around with each other and have had a few too many. On Sundays, they go to church, but not before they’ve eaten churros and hot chocolate with their kids at a café on the street. They drink brandy with their morning coffee and smoke cigarettes before they sail off. Sometimes, they drown and don’t come back. Most come back and go home to their wives and children…read the newspapers …eat good food …watch the football match. Their stories are the story of how I came by my little fish.

Some people give far too much thought about the acquisition of fish, perhaps. On the other hand, those guys, Msr. Simmel included, had their armchair points as the servants lit their fires in their libraries in the dimness of late winter afternoons and pondered over books about the world without really having experienced travel to much of it. I’ve left that world behind, too, although I miss the debate of it sometimes.

My day worked out in the end. I’ve had a Happy Spring Festival!!! I’ve cleaned and eaten my holiday “fish” in the Year of the “Dog.” I’m as happy as the “cat” that swallowed the “canary.” Chun Jie Kwai Le!!!!

Now a nap  …a walk by the side of the sea …a lovely, quiet Sunday afternoon in Spain.