The boat was called Maddalena, like his mother, and the paint of the name on the stern had been peeling off for three years in white flakes that fell into the sea and nobody repainted it. 'Ndria was sixty-one, hands wide, knuckles deformed by the nylon rope he had been pulling every night since he was seventeen. The lampara was fixed to the bow with an iron bracket welded by his brother-in-law in nineteen eighty-nine, an ugly weld but it held. He went down to the port at eight forty in the evening, like every night. The dock had the cast-iron bollard with the crack, the one his grandfather had already used and nobody had ever replaced because the crack did not go through, it held, and 'Ndria tied the rope to it every night and every morning untied it and the bollard with the crack was the first piece of land he touched when he came back and the last he left when he went out. In the bag he had the thermos of coffee his wife made too sweet, two teaspoons of sugar instead of one, and he never told her, had never told her in thirty-four years of marriage. Under the stern bench he kept a battery radio, a Grundig from ninety-two with a bent antenna, which was no use for fishing and no use for anything but it had been his father's and 'Ndria took it to sea the way you take a wooden saint, because there are things on a boat that serve no purpose and precisely because they serve no purpose you do not touch them. The shortwave radio on the console was tuned to a frequency that only came in offshore: a Tunisian station that broadcast malouf all night, lutes, voices in Arabic, the hiss of shortwave that came and went with the distance. In port the signal was lost. You had to go out, at least half a mile, and the music arrived. He checked the oil in the engine, untied the rope from the bollard, started the engine. The engine coughed twice and then caught. In port there were four boats. In eighty-six there had been forty-two, half had gone with the European subsidies, the other half had rotted on dry land. Three lampare were left: the Maddalena, Ferruccio's Sant'Agata and a nameless one a Tunisian boy had bought for two thousand euros and fished on good nights. 'Ndria left the port and u scuru took him. A lampa was dark. The sea was flat, black, smelled of salt, diesel, nenti. The radio was still silent. The coffee was in the thermos. The night was beginning.

A mile from the coast he lit the lampara and the Tunisian station came into the radio as if someone had opened a door, the lute first and then the voice, and 'Ndria did not understand Arabic but malouf always has the same tone and that tone 'Ndria knew the way he knew the tone of the engine and the tone of the rope when it goes taut. The white light opened on the water and the sea turned green in the circle of light and the rest was black, black around, black below. The surface was the only thing visible. The anchovies came after twenty minutes. They rose from the dark below, first one, then ten, then a hundred, silver bodies entering the circle of light from nothing and circling around the lampara. 'Ndria lowered the net in a circle, slowly, without noise, the cork floats on the surface and the lead weights sinking and closing the bag. Ferruccio was half a mile south, a lampa his was a yellow point in the darkness. They did not talk by radio, never talked at sea, each man to his own business. 'Ndria poured the coffee into the thermos cap. Too sweet. He drank it in two sips. He pulled the first net at eleven twelve. Fourteen kilos of anchovies. In the good season he used to get thirty. The fleet had shrunk by forty per cent since nineteen ninety-six, the industrial trawlers took everything offshore with their drag nets, European quotas, subsidies that paid for diesel, and the lampare were left fishing the remainder. Fourteen kilos at five euros a kilo at the cooperative: seventy euros. Diesel cost twenty-two. Net earnings: forty-eight euros for a night at sea. 'Ndria lowered the second net.

At two in the morning the port radio called. Not the Tunisian station, the other radio, the one on channel sixteen. It was Mauro from the harbour office. "'Ndria, the decommission papers are ready, come by tomorrow and sign." 'Ndria did not answer right away. The decommission was this: twelve thousand euros to demolish the Maddalena, hand in the licence, quit. His son had told him at Sunday dinner, fork in hand and sauce on his shirt: "Dad, take the money, with twelve thousand euros you pay the bills for two years." The son worked as a warehouseman in a depot at the commercial port, eight-hour shifts, fourteen hundred euros a month, and he was right, the numbers were right, twelve thousand euros are twelve thousand euros and a lampara that earns forty-eight a night is not a business, it is a vice. 'Ndria looked at a lampa lit. The anchovies circled in the light. The Tunisian radio played. The sea was still. He picked up the microphone. "Mauro, I'm not signing." "'Ndria, the deadline is the fifteenth." "I know. I'm not signing." He closed channel sixteen and went back to the Tunisian station frequency. It was not romanticism. 'Ndria was not a romantic, he was an old man who smelled of fish and had broken hands. But the night on the water was the only place where the silence was the right silence. Not the silence of the house with the television on, not the silence of the quay with the seagulls. U scuru of the open sea, with a lampa lit, the anchovies circling, the radio playing in Arabic, nobody asking you nenti. That silence was not worth twelve thousand euros. It was worth more. Or it was worth nothing. But it was his.

He lowered the third net at three forty. Pulled it at four ten. Eighteen kilos. Night's total: forty-six kilos, a hundred and eighty-six euros net. He came back to port with the engine at idle and a lampa dark. The Tunisian station faded at half a mile from the coast, the lute became hiss and the hiss became silence. 'Ndria turned off the radio. The port was empty. Ferruccio's boat was already tied to the dock, the deck washed. 'Ndria moored at the bollard with the crack, unloaded the crates, carried them to the cooperative's cold room. The thermos was empty. The coffee had been too sweet, as always. He locked the boat, put the padlock on the locker, the Grundig under the bench where it always sat, climbed to the car park. The car was cold. He sat down and did not start the engine. He stayed still with his hands on the wheel and looked at the port and the sea turning grey with the first light. I know that silence. I have heard it from other boats, in other years, when the lampare were forty and the sea was the same sea and the anchovies were the same anchovies. The silence does not change. The numbers change, the licences, the deadlines, the sons who tell you to stop. The silence stays. And as long as it stays, a man goes out.