That night we went out at nearly eleven and the lake was flat and there was no moon, and I did what I always do before we set off, I unrolled the whole cable an arm's length at a time, I looked at the clamps at the two ends and at the splice bound with tape, because the tape on the splice makes a hump, and the hump your foot finds even in the dark, and that is why my cable I could always tell apart from whatever else was lying in the bottom of the boat.

Then I coiled it back into a spiral, which is the way you keep it, and set the empty crate on top of it, and Bekzod pushed with the oar so as not to make noise near the reeds, and we went where the channel runs into the big lake, which is where the water is shallow and the fish are.

I can't swim. I said it once only, to my wife, the first year, and I never said it again to any of the men I go out with at night, because a thing like that you say once and then you don't go back to saying it.

The generator starts up quietly, and when the cable goes into the water it makes a hum that isn't loud but travels far over still water, and under the hum the water barely moves and then they come up belly first, the small ones before the big ones, and then you cut it off and the hum stops and what is left is a silence more silent than before, and in that silence you gather them with your hands, fast, because they don't stay afloat forever.

We took a crate and a half, and I put the big ones underneath and the small ones on top the way I always do, because whoever looks into a boat looks at the top.

The light came in low over the water and before that there was nothing, not an engine, not a voice, only that light widening over the water and reaching us, and Bekzod lifted the oar and I pulled the cable in, and then came the engine and then came the voices, and their boat came at us side on and one of them took our gunwale with both hands and started hauling himself in, and we pushed the gunwale away to break loose, both of us together, and his hands came off, and there was the shove and there was the splash, and the torch went under and for a moment the water lit up from below and then it went out.

Our boat ran on a few metres and stopped. He was calling. I had the cable across my knees and my hands were working on their own, and they tightened the clamp and smoothed the wire where it comes out of the clamp and turned the tape between two fingers and went back to the clamp, and my eyes watched my hands.

And then I took the crate off the spiral and took the cable by the clamp and lowered it over the gunwale towards the place where he was calling, and the cable went down and the part going into the water turned dark and heavy and pulled the dry part after it, and the line above the gunwale got shorter inside my hand, and I held the clamp tight in my palm and let it go little by little, and the clamp knocked once against the wood of the gunwale and after that it touched nothing.

And Bekzod had had his hand on the throttle already, and he raised it, and the engine went up and the boat moved under my feet while the cable was still taut, and the cable drew itself off the water and the line went slantwise, and Bekzod said "If you pull him up he sees your face." And then he said "And with that in your hand it isn't a fine."

The cable had gone down two metres. You could see it from the wet part, which was dark almost to my knee, and the other part was still coiled in the bottom and I hadn't touched it.

And at that moment he stopped calling, and the boat was going on and the cable was still taut over the water, and the line got shorter and then it stopped.

And I pulled it up. I wound it back on my arm from elbow to hand the way you wind it, and I laid it out in its spiral in the bottom again, and put the crate back on top of it, and Bekzod kept the throttle open as far as the reeds and neither of us turned round.

It was still dark on the shore and we unloaded the fish the way we do every night, the crate and a half, and the man who comes to take it counted the money on the bonnet and asked nothing, because he never asks anything, and Bekzod went off on foot towards the road without saying anything else.

Some days later, at the market, a man was telling how the one from the inspectorate had been pulled out the next day, further down, where the water turns, and how they had given him a medal that said Defender of Nature, and that his name was Sanjar Nazarov and he had a small child. I was unloading the crates from the van and I went on unloading the crates from the van.

The next night we went out all the same, because the fish don't wait, and before we set off I unrolled the whole cable and checked the clamps and the splice, and I coiled it back into its spiral in the bottom and put the empty crate on top, and my foot went across and found the hump of the tape and stopped there. The cable was dry everywhere except along one stretch. That stretch dries last.