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The Fishmonger Returns

Feb. 12, 2004 | There was no denying that something was very wrong with the catfish. As Rebecca Romaine, vice president of American Global Fisheries, surveyed the endless rows of manmade ponds, uniform and aligned and all reflecting a milky sky, she knew she would have to solve the taste issue.

There was a drizzle coming on, and Rebecca was cold and wanted to be back in Chicago, where it also might be cold and drizzly -- but there, at least, she would not be listening to Zhang Xiaomei's constant humming. Rebecca was touring the grounds of a fish farm outside Qingdao, on the east coast of China, and by now her partners here, the men and women of Great Fish Processing -- formerly Great Wall Fish Processing -- should have known that there was something wrong with these fish. She knew, and they should know, that Americans would not want their fish this way. She'd tasted the catfish from these farms and they tasted muddy, messy, pungent -- like silt and riverbed, like cat and like fish. Everyone knew Americans didn't like their fish to taste like fish; they wanted it to taste like nothing. And these fish did not taste like nothing. These fish tasted like themselves, and this was a problem.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

A more pressing problem was Xiaomei's humming. She hummed when she was nervous and hummed when she was happy and always she hummed American hip-hop, or selections from the Eagles' Greatest Hits. She hummed almost imperceptibly, though always passionately. Rebecca had many times been in meetings, on phone calls, on inspections and during negotiations, when she would begin to hear a faint buzzing sound, arrhythmic, like a fly caught in a jar. Most times she would find Xiaomei sitting next to her, trying to seem quiet and inconspicuous, while almost cross-eyed, humming. Xiaomei was her guide and translator on these trips, an extremely intelligent woman, whom she loved like a niece, who spoke six languages and a dozen dialects, who could keep the contents of every conceivable daily fish-related business report in her head simultaneously and who seemed to be able to read, see through and accommodate every business associate they encountered. But smart as she was, she did the humming, and didn't think anyone could hear her humming, and as often as not, didn't even know she was humming. At the moment, as Rebecca was looking out over the field of ponds, Xiaomei was humming something by Mary J. Blige.

"Xiaomei!" Rebecca said, laughing.

"Yes, Rebecca."

She'd snapped out of the trance and was blinking rapidly.

"The humming."

"Was I?"

"You were."

The world's wild-harvest fisheries were depleted and depleting more every year, couldn't keep up with demand, and thus the world of fish farming, or "aquaculture," was burgeoning, and would only grow larger as the exploitation of the oceans and waterways ran its course. The Chinese had been farming carp in enclosed pens since the 10th century Tang Dynasty, but that had been primarily for the emperor's consumption. Now things were getting serious.

Though decried by some environmentalists, aquaculture was still developing, was yielding promising results all over the globe -- though China was by far the leader in the field -- and for some reason Rebecca was farming catfish in China, when even she admitted that there seemed to already be enough catfish in the world to meet demand. With aquaculture, everywhere there were problems, and chief among them for Rebecca Romaine was just how to make these fish, born and bred in artificial conditions, taste like nothing.

Fish farming had its critics, those who said that you can never create a normal, healthy, edible and safe fish in conditions like this. But Rebecca had faith in the possibility. Exactly how to make a catfish, an ugly fish, a not-always-tasty fish that has the appearance of a bottom feeder, taste good, to taste like it wasn't, indeed, a bottom feeder, was the problem.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Fishing was in Rebecca's family, had been for four generations, though they were originally from Peoria. That story is a long story to tell, and won't be told here, not now.

Rebecca (and her father and grandfather before her) traveled the globe personally and by phone, inspecting and ordering fish from local fishermen and fisheries and governments, arranging for the processing of these fish, and then selling the processed fish all over the world, to nations and restaurants and frozen-fish companies, Gorton's and Mrs. Paul's. Rebecca Romaine was 45. For 12 years now -- though not consecutively -- she'd been doing this, from when she was 24 to 32, and then again from age 41 to now, when she was 45. In between, she'd had two children, Dale and Cletus, and served two terms as an Illinois state senator.

Did she miss politics? Rarely. Sometimes. Often. Never. Always. It depended on what aspect of it you mentioned. She missed the campaigning sometimes, the town-hall meetings, the small groups in libraries and gas station parking lots. For some reason she missed the budget meetings. She missed actually being able to bring some funds back to her district, the 59th, representing Benton, Eldorado, Marion, Cairo, Equality, Mounds, Mound City -- the southernmost part of the state. She missed, as much as anything, not having to shower three and four times a day, to remove the smell fish in her hair, in her clothes, on her skin. Now, at the end of most of her days, she'd take her watch off and the smell of sweat and fish and fish feed and fish guts would suddenly leap out from her wrist like a genie -- people nearby would turn their heads, surprised, aghast.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Rebecca had been to Qingdao before, and every time she tried to see a bit more of the city. This day she drove with Xiaomei past the waterfront, amazed as always at the preponderance of large-scale and completely incongruous German architecture. This had been a haven for German ex-pats around the turn of the century, with dozens of shipping magnates settling here, building grand estates on the hills overlooking the water, employing hundreds of servants, living in absolute splendor.

Now these mansions were dilapidated and occupied by sometimes 20 families each. In the neighborhood of this crumbling glory, in the oldest part of the city, Rebecca and Xiaomei found what seemed to have been a cathedral. They got out of their car to investigate. The grounds were overgrown, ivy and weeds everywhere, the stone cleaving and moss covered. On the gothic façade the brick was darkened in the shape of a large cross, evidence of the shadow of a crucifix that had prevented the bleaching of the bricks but was now gone.

"Old Catholic temple," Xiaomei said.

"Church," Rebecca said.

"Yes, church," Xiaomei said, committing it to memory. She did so by actually placing her forefinger to her temple. It was just one of the hundred things Rebecca loved about her. Another was the fact that they were the same size. Though Rebecca was 10 years her senior, they were both size 2s, and exchanged unwanted clothing every time they met, about twice year.

The windows of the church were broken, the stained glass hanging angrily from the panes. The wrought-iron gates in front were padlocked, so Rebecca and Xiaomei stepped quietly around to the side of the church, looking for an entryway. They were greeted by an elderly man.

He spoke to Xiaomei. Xiaomei turned to Rebecca. "He says to you, 'Welcome, my sister.'" As she repeated the words to Rebecca, the man's eyes welled with tears.

Out of deference to the old man, Rebecca looked at her shoes and realized that she had a small silver crucifix hanging from her neck. She normally kept it out view -- she was not religious, but her father had been, and the necklace was his and it was such a long story -- it had apparently fallen out of her blouse, and now she had no choice but to act as a believer. She didn't want to disappoint the man, and her lapsed faith would be too difficult to explain, anyway.

They stepped inside the church -- still glorious, though it looked like it had taken a direct hit from a B-29 -- and there she saw eight people, all elderly, some even older than the first man, sitting in pews. They seemed to be praying. Only a few took notice of their entry.

"They have been waiting for a priest to return," Xiaomei said.

"What priest?"

"I think a German priest. Made to leave after the war. Nuns were killed here."

"They've been waiting a long time."

"Yes, many years."

"Will they keep waiting, you think?"

"Yes, I think they will wait. They think someone will come, they will wait forever."

- - - - - - - - - - - -

The next day Rebecca visited the processing plant, which she'd helped to overhaul a decade earlier, when the Chinese had loosened the restrictions on foreign involvement in the fish industry. Her first trip to Qingdao had been revelatory. American Global Fisheries had just secured an arrangement to buy freshwater fish from a Russian company, newly privatized, and needed a place to cut and package them for sale on the Pacific Rim. Rebecca had been to processing plants all over the world -- Norway, Scotland, Iceland, and on dozens of factory ships -- and always the noise was almost unbearable. These factories were heavily mechanized and increasingly computerized, and between the machinery, the hydraulics and the cooling systems, the sound was too much to withstand without protective headphones.

But when the door to the Chinese fish-processing plant was opened, she looked out on a room the size of a football field, filled with a thousand workers, and all she heard was the ticking and tacking of knives against metal tables. This was in 1994, and there wasn't one machine in the building. Just people. And the product was better, the cutting more precise, the errors less frequent, the waste less than half of that in a mechanized plant. Why? Because humans have small fingers and sharp eyes.

Since then American Global Fisheries had greatly improved working conditions in the plant, instituting safety requirements, and sanitation, and better refrigeration. The operation had been cement-built, airless, and now there was ventilation. There were standards.

Rebecca watched for a minute, with Xiaomei at her side, watching the processing of salmon but thinking about catfish. "I only wish I could get them to taste better," she said.

"Maybe they only need a bath," Xiaomei said, laughing with her head thrown back. She'd seen someone on TV do this, and now she did it, too. It was wonderfully stupid and was another reason she loved Xiaomei.

Rebecca looked out over the field of workers, and the metric tons of fish being gutted by their small quick knives, and she asked herself, Why not give them a bath? It was perfect. After they had been grown to the proper size, why not take the fish from their dense and muddy ponds, and dump them for a few days in fresh water? Cleanse them in pristine pools, let them swim and eat there until they'd washed away the stench of their element?

It was simple and it would work -- in a few years it would be the industry practice and would allow Xiaomei to retire comfortably -- but Rebecca would not be there to see the innovations enacted, because at that moment, in the tick-tacking processing plant, her phone rang.

It was Charlie Panglosserman, the man who had first encouraged her to run for assembly, and who had consulted on her first campaign. He was calling from Springfield.

"Waterman's not running," he said.

"What?" Rebecca said.

"Waterman's not running."

"What?"

The connection died, and Rebecca went into the conference room nearby, waiting for Charlie to call again. Two minutes later, the phone rang again. But it wasn't Charlie, it was Wade Waterman. He was the presumptive Democratic nominee for the open seat in the U.S. Senate, a extremely popular term-limited ex-governor who seemed unbeatable and was expected to trounce any Republican challenger.

"Rebecca, you have to run."

"What?"

"You have to run."

"What?"

No coherent thoughts seemed possible. She was deeply shaken and then stirred and then bewildered and finally euphoric. It was like opening the door to a boyfriend you haven't seen in 20 years -- so much confusion, so much immediate lust.

My God, she thought. Senate. Would this really be the time? It could be the time. It was already October. The primary was in March. She wasn't ready. This was the time. She would never have a better opportunity. This might be the time. The field was wide open. She would be insane to say yes, absolutely stupid to say no.

Rebecca's thoughts were soundtracked by a quiet droning behind her, like an air conditioner had turned itself on but was not functioning steadily. She turned to find Xiaomei leaning against the conference room table, eyes closed, head nodding, humming what could only be "Desperado."

Episode 5: A distinct, unsettling scent: Politicking among the undertakers.

-- By Dave Eggers