The Fisherman

“With each year that passed, I came to ask myself if Marie might not have gone out of this world so much as gone more deeply into it. From being wrapped up in earth, maybe she’d made her way out into it, into the soil, the water, until she was part of things. Maybe she’d found a way to lead me back to her.”

Abe, who lost his young wife to cancer, wonders if his growing fascination with fishing could be a sign of Marie reaching out to him from beyond the grave. If so, Marie mirrors the angel who saved the biblical Ishmael (son of Abraham) by leading him to water: another Melvillian allusion. The passage also anticipates the book’s last scene, which suggests that Marie has again helped to rescue Abe—this time, from Dan’s demonic doppelgänger.

“Dan said he saw the truck approaching from his right as he turned left onto 299, but it didn’t look to be moving as fast as it was. He pulled out, and that great white beast slammed into his Subaru like a thunderbolt.”

Dan, who lost his wife and children in a car accident, is one of several characters whose attributes echo those of Melville’s Captain Ahab, the scarred, obsessed antihero of Moby-Dick. Just as Ahab harbors a superstitious obsession with the white whale that claimed his leg, Dan comes to see the “great white beast” (i.e., the truck that robbed him of his family) as a “mask” for something much more sinister. Significantly, Dan saw the truck approaching but miscalculated its speed and turned onto the road anyway, and this decision becomes a source of crippling guilt that eventually leads to his downfall at the Fisherman’s hands.

“‘All a mask, Abe, and the million-dollar question is, What’s underneath the mask? If I could break through the mask, if I could make a fist and punch a hole in it,’ his hand slammed the table, rattling the dishes, ‘what would I find? Just flesh? Or would there be something more?’”

Dan’s mystical sense that the seemingly random surface of life is a bland façade for malevolent forces refers explicitly to Captain Ahab’s assertion that “all visible objects […] are but pasteboard masks. […] If man will strike, strike through the mask!” (Moby-Dick, p. 160) Several characters in The Fisherman, starting with “Der Fischer” himself, seek to use the dark arts to break through this façade, hoping to harness the cosmic horror behind it and usher their lost loved ones back from the grave. However, their attempts end no better than Ahab’s did.

“Then something happened. Lottie wasn’t too clear on exactly what it was, but it concerned a book Rainer was studying. Whatever he did got him drummed out of his school and made it impossible for him to find work at any other.”

Rainer Schmidt, a stone mason working on the Ashokan Reservoir in upstate New York, was once a professor of languages at Germany’s University of Heidelberg until a strange scandal forced him to leave his profession. His daughter Lottie knows only that a “book” caused his downfall, and this detail ties into the novel’s occult themes with the implication that the book in question may have been a grimoire, a book of black magic. The facts of Rainer’s disgrace in Europe will come only later, through the account of Lottie’s husband, Jacob. For now, Rainer is ideally placed to unravel the dark threads of the ancient evil afflicting the Esopus Valley.

“To the other side of them stands their father, bent over slightly, his hands out to either side of him, as if he’s apologizing for something. He’s doing all he can to maintain that grin, though his face shakes with the effort. To his right, sitting on a chair, is his late wife.”

The novel’s first overtly supernatural event emerges from a mundane tragedy at the reservoir camp: the death of Helen, one of the Schmidts’ neighbors, who is trampled by mule-driven wagons in an implied suicide over her husband’s infidelities. After her husband George takes mysterious actions, Helen seemingly returns to life but now bears shattered limbs, eerily gold eyes, and a corpselike pallor. Her husband’s shifty, apologetic manner and unnatural smile foreshadow that he has committed an unspeakable occult act to achieve this macabre resurrection, committing a crime against nature itself.

“While the echoes of her scream are echoing in everyone’s ears, she leans close to the door and whispers to Regina through it. Whatever she says is more than two words, yet the children either can’t hear or can’t understand her. They see the blood drain from Regina’s face.”

Helen has returned from the grave a changed woman, and her haunted form now bears secret, inexplicable knowledge about her neighbors. Regina, Italo’s wife, angers Helen by keeping her children from her, and Helen retaliates by whispering dark truths about Regina or her family through the door. What she says is never revealed, but Regina’s shocked reaction signals that the information is a terrible secret that the living Helen could not possibly have known.

“With a shock, Lottie realizes that the girl she’s been listening to is herself. That’s her mouth saying those horrible things. That’s Gretchen and Christina whose lives are being threatened. That’s Italo playing lead in that x-rated fantasy.”

Rainer’s daughter Lottie has had a dangerous encounter with the cadaverous Helen, who forces her to experience a ghoulish vision of a watery hellscape full of sea monsters and human bodies, one of which is herself. Clustered about her double in this apocalyptic vision are her relatives, friends, and neighbors, all spewing secret lusts and hatreds. Whatever curse has reanimated Helen has also torn through the “mask” of the visible, rational world, revealing the festering passions that each human hides.

“Lottie swore the room darkened, as if the air in her father’s study had filled with particles of minute blackness, making it difficult for her to distinguish Rainer. Because of this, she couldn’t say for sure if what she saw next was accurate, but the pages of the book appeared to be giving off a black light, dimming her father’s face.”

Spying on her father through a keyhole, Lottie sees him poring over a book that is hinted to be the grimoire that forced him to flee Germany. The tome radiates a “black light,” and the narrative suggests that its very essence goes against the natural order of the world. Rainer hopes its hermetic knowledge will help him stem the tide of darkness that threatens his family and neighbors, but the story makes it clear that there is always a price to be paid for staring into the abyss. For Rainer, the “dimming” of his face foreshadows the dimming of his acute mind later in life.

“‘Power,’ Rainer says, nodding to Andrea. ‘If he could set his hook in Leviathan’s jaw, he could bend its strength to his purpose. He could have his wife and children back.’”

Rainer is speaking to his friend Italo, saying that 300 years earlier, a young man from Hungary who had lost his wife and children then “won” a book of dark knowledge from a German scholar. This book told of the Leviathan, a primordial beast mentioned in the Bible, whose brutal malice thrums through the black ocean of life and death that undergirds the daylit façade of the human world. The young Hungarian (i.e., “the Fisherman”) became convinced that he could harpoon this beast in order to harness and reverse the power of death itself. This blasphemous obsession aligns him with Melville’s Captain Ahab, who “pitted himself” against the “intangible malignity” of the universe. Abe’s friend Dan will also be drawn into this quest.

“He has brought this monster, this god-beast, to the brink of complete capture, and while doing so must be a trespass of a fundamental order, Jacob cannot help himself from admiring the man.”

Lottie’s husband, Jacob, who with Rainer and others has penetrated the underworld of the Fisherman’s domain, succumbs to helpless awe upon beholding the figure’s actions, which defy the weight of the universe itself. The idea that one man could bring this “god-beast” to the brink of capture with nothing but ropes and hooks astounds Jacob, and his almost holy dread of this dark miracle slows his attack against Angelo, who has become a gold-eyed minion of the Fisherman.

“In the quarter-second it takes for the blade to traverse the arc up, down, and into the base of Angelo’s neck, where it joins the shoulder, Jacob watches Angelo’s eyes darken from gold to brown, the water slide off his face. STOP! His brain screams, but it’s too late.”

An instant before Jacob’s axe slices into Angelo, the latter’s eyes return to their normal color, suggesting that the Fisherman’s malign influence has abated. The possibility that Jacob needlessly slaughtered his friend will haunt him for the rest of his life—which may have been the Fisherman’s intention. In The Fisherman, a sense of guilt makes one vulnerable to dark forces, and long after Jacob’s death from cancer, the symbol of his guilt—the fishhook that embedded itself in his cheek—remains as sharp as ever.

“When the water has subsided from the Fisherman, he raises his head to look at Rainer. ‘From hell’s heart,’ he shouts, ‘I stab at thee! For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee!’”

The Fisherman’s fate after his confrontation with Rainer alludes directly to the climax of Moby-Dick, wherein Captain Ahab is snarled in a harpoon line and pulled from the whaleboat to his death. The Fisherman’s last words (“From hell’s heart”) are taken, almost word for word, from Ahab, who cursed the white whale with his last breath. The difference here is that Langan’s Fisherman spews these words not at the Leviathan but at Rainer, who has become his principal nemesis by denying him his victory over the “god-beast.”

“He says, ‘Make no mistake: we have won a great victory, here. We have removed the threat to our families. We have disrupted the Fisherman’s plans. And we have caught the Fisherman, himself, trapped him using his own tools.’”

Acknowledging that the full damage wrought by the Fisherman cannot be undone by men such as themselves, Rainer asks them to take solace in having “disrupted” his plans by ensnaring him. As family men and members of a community, they lack the single-minded zeal of the Fisherman, who labored for centuries on his lattice of ropes and hooks. They have families to raise and to love, and so they cannot cross the dark river to chop away at his forest of ropes.

“‘This was no language such as we had known, in which a word points in the direction of its object. Instead, this was a tongue which was woven—into everything,’ Rainer sweeps his hands around him, ‘so that to name something was to call it forth.’”

To Jacob, Rainer describes the hermetic text that he and Wilhelm Vanderwort attempted to translate while researching prehistoric languages at the University of Heidelberg. Passages in the book are purportedly the most ancient of speech and are dangerous to speak aloud, but the young Rainer and his colleague blithely ignored the author’s “cryptic warnings.” However, the two colleagues discovered that the words within (e.g., for “dark” or “light”) are not symbolic representations but are in fact the things themselves. This language therefore bears the power of creation itself, and as such, it gives Rainer power over the world’s elemental forces.

“He hears Rainer murmuring a word that he does not recognize; it sounds like ‘Thalassa, thalassa.’”

Years after their expedition to Dort House, Rainer and Jacob trace a “new creek” (Dutchman’s Creek) to its source and find themselves treading familiar ground: A tributary of the primordial “black sea” that teems with the white remnants of the dead, some of whom (Angelo and Wilhelm) reproach them. Rainer utters the Greek words “Thalassa, thalassa,”—“the sea, the sea”—which is a famous phrase from the Anabasis, a first-person account by the ancient Greek soldier Xenophon of a failed military expedition. Trapped for two years in a strange, hostile land, Xenophon and his men shouted the joyful phrase upon sighting the Black Sea, which would lead them back to their homeland.) Rainer’s recollection of this story by the shore of another “black sea,” is ironic because his words are mournful, not celebratory. Dutchman’s Creek reminds Rainer of how his expedition against the Fisherman, like Xenophon’s, is mostly a failure, since the poisonous black sea continues to spread.

“‘“Saw Eva,”’ Dan said. ‘That’s why we’re here. Underneath all the usual information, he’d written those two words. Eva was his wife—my grandmother. She died in 1945, on New Year’s Day.’”

Dan finally reveals the true reason behind his interest in Dutchman’s Creek, which he first encountered not in Alf Evers’s history of the Catskills but in his late grandfather’s fishing journal. In a brief entry from 1953, Dan’s grandfather claims, with the words “Saw Eva”, to have glimpsed his long-dead wife. However, Dan’s grandfather writes nothing more about it and gives no indication that he ever returned to the creek. The very terseness of this revelation casts an ominous tone over the passage, but Dan grasps at those words and desperately convinces himself that he has a chance to resurrect his deceased wife and children.

“Naked, her hair and skin soaking, a young woman regarded me from eyes as golden as any fish’s. […] Immediately, I knew her, as if I’d only just now watched her chest rise and fall for the last time. It was Marie.”

As with Dan’s grandfather, who sees his dead wife Eva, Abe encounters a hideous version of his own late wife, Marie, on the wooded bank of Dutchman’s Creek. However, her eyes are gold and fishlike, just like those of the revenants in Howard’s story and like the nightmare vision of Marie that troubled Abe’s sleep months earlier. In that dream, which he took as an “omen,” Marie told him, “What’s lost is lost” (33), implying that his and Dan’s attempts to recapture the past will bring them no solace.

“Her outburst continued, and as it did, she appeared to gain in height, her hair to rise off her shoulders, her feet to lift from the ground. The man had removed his cap and was twisting it in his hands, tears streaking his face, attempting a reply, but Marie would have none of it.”

Abe sees more evidence that this fish-eyed phantom is not his wife when she shape-shifts into another dead woman: the Fisherman’s Turkish wife, who fiercely denounces her guilt-stricken husband. This transformation suggests that “Marie” is not a sentient entity or even a ghost; instead, she is formed of some mysterious, raw material that Abe’s own memories then animate. When a human with fiercer emotions approaches, this substance gives itself over to that person’s stronger desire, terror, or guilt. Ironically, the Fisherman partially realizes his age-old obsession of recovering his dead wife—only to be fiercely rebuked by her.

“‘He broke through the mask,’ Dan said. ‘It’s like, what surrounds you is only a cover for what really is. This guy went through the cover—he punched a hole in the mask and came out here.’”

Picking up his wishful train of thought about breaking through “the mask,” Dan once again echoes Melville’s Ahab, opining with almost religious fervor that the Fisherman has torn through the “cover” of reality and opened a channel (Dutchman’s Creek) for others to commune with the cosmic truth. He goes on to say that the creek is “like a metaphor that’s real” (234). This idea echoes the prehistoric language that Rainer translated, the words of which are “woven” inseparably into the things they describe. However, there have been abundant signs that the dead people “reclaimed” by the Fisherman are not themselves, and it is clear that much has been lost in translation.

“‘Where my family is—that’s where my home is.’ He uttered the words with such conviction, I could almost take the sight of this tall man with his wild red hair and his wrinkled clothing, embraced by a wife and sons whose eyes shone gold and whose white skin appeared damp, as the portrait of a happy family.”

In a parody of a family hug, Dan fends off Abe’s pleas to come “home” (i.e., back to civilization). Instead of coming to his senses, Dan nestles more deeply into the damp embrace of these maggot-white simulacrums, seemingly content to remain with them forever in this dark slough of Dutchman’s Creek, which is now “home” to him. Presumably, he knows that these putrid copies of his family cannot exist in his own world, but he has not given much thought to whether he can live in theirs.

“There was rage, a short man in a dirty tunic and pants gripping his sword two-handed and swinging it down into the back of a tall woman with long brown hair as she bent over the bodies of her children.”

As Abe watches, the Fisherman’s most terrible memory crystallizes, as if condensing from the swampy air. He learns that the Fisherman’s Turkish wife and children were not slaughtered by soldiers, but by the Fisherman himself. This revelation explains Abe’s earlier vision in the woods, when he saw the mutilated, dark-haired woman screaming in rage at the weeping man who betrayed her.

“[Dan’s] mouth worked to release some sound, a scream or a curse, but Sophie swallowed it in the terrible kiss she lowered on him.”

Once Dan’s “family” smells the blood from his fight with Abe, their mask of humanity breaks down, and their parody of family love twists into something far more monstrous. Just as “Marie” transformed after Abe made love to her, Sophie and the boys grow sharklike teeth and devour Dan’s body, his “wife” delivering the coup de grace with an annihilating “kiss.” Ironically, Dan has become one with his family again, but not in any way that he could possibly have wanted.

“He must have known that he was buying into a scenario that was, on some level, a lie, and he had been willing to sacrifice the reality of friendship, however mundane, in favor of that lie.”

Dan, obsessed with punching through “masks,” ironically succumbs to a beguiling façade in the end, “buying into” the lie of his resurrected wife and children. Though he knows “on some level” that this dark vision is yet another mask, he nevertheless betrays his friend—the best real thing remaining to him—on the dark altar of that deception. As with the Fisherman and the wife and children he slaughtered, his guilt over his family’s violent deaths outweighs Abe’s appeals of logic and humanity.