the strongest man on the docks

The strongest man on the docks was a great negro from Cienfuegos, a figure who represented the ultimate test of physical strength in Santiago's younger days. The two men met in a tavern in Casablanca, where they engaged in a hand game that would become a legendary contest of endurance and will. The match began on a Sunday morning and did not end until the following Monday morning, lasting a full day and night with their elbows fixed on a chalk line drawn on the table and their forearms held straight up, hands gripped tight. Each man was trying to force the other's hand down onto the table. There was much betting, and people went in and out of the room under the kerosene lights. The bettors sat on high chairs against the walls, which were painted bright blue and made of wood, and the lamps threw their shadows against them. The negro's shadow was huge and moved on the wall as the breeze moved the lamps. The odds changed back and forth all night. The referees were changed every four hours after the first eight so that they could sleep. Blood came out from under the fingernails of both men's hands, and they looked each other in the eye and at their hands and forearms throughout the ordeal. The negro was fed rum and had cigarettes lighted for him, and after the rum he would try for a tremendous effort. Once he had Santiago, who was not an old man then but was known as Santiago El Campeon, nearly three inches off balance. But Santiago raised his hand back to dead even again. He was sure then that he had the negro, who was a fine man and a great athlete, beaten. At daylight, when the bettors were asking that it be called a draw and the referee was shaking his head, Santiago unleashed his effort and forced the hand of the negro down and down until it rested on the wood. Many of the bettors had asked for a draw because they had to go to work on the docks loading sacks of sugar or at the Havana Coal Company, but Santiago finished it anyway before anyone had to go to work. For a long time after that, everyone called him The Champion. There was a return match in the spring, but not much money was bet, and Santiago won it quite easily since he had broken the confidence of the negro from Cienfuegos in the first match. After that, Santiago had a few more matches and then no more. He decided that he could beat anyone if he wanted to badly enough, and he decided that it was bad for his right hand for fishing. He had tried a few practice matches with his left hand, but his left hand had always been a traitor and would not do what he called on it to do, and he did not trust it. The memory of this contest surfaces in Santiago's mind as he struggles with the great marlin, a moment when he needs to give himself more confidence. He thinks of the great DiMaggio, who does all things perfectly even with the pain of the bone spur in his heel, and wonders if DiMaggio would stay with a fish as long as he will. He is sure DiMaggio would, since he is young and strong and his father was a fisherman, but he wonders if the bone spur would hurt him too much. Santiago then remembers the hand game, a time when he proved his strength against the strongest man on the docks, and the memory serves as a touchstone of his own capacity for endurance and victory. The contest also reveals Santiago's deep understanding of his own body and its limitations. He knows that his left hand has always been a traitor, and this knowledge becomes crucial during his battle with the marlin when his left hand cramps. He thinks of how the boy could rub it for him and loosen it down from the forearm, but he is alone. The memory of the hand game, where his left hand failed him, underscores the physical vulnerability that accompanies his age and the solitary nature of his struggle. The strongest man on the docks is thus not merely a past opponent but a symbol of the physical peak Santiago once achieved and the will that still drives him, even as an old man with scarred hands and a cramped left hand, to prove himself against the greatest fish he has ever seen.