Fishing with Leon ‘Dog’ Varley.

By Paul Connolly.*

For a long time the two good friends did not speak to each other, but the incident has been forgotten and now they’re in irregular communication. Even if a hurricane were to hit Leon Varley, professional hunter, imperturbable and largely unimaginative, he would still be sitting on the same chair, smoking a cigarette, reading military history, and probably wouldn’t have noticed the hurricane. He’d still be flicking the cigarette ends of his cigarettes onto the pot plant in Jeremy Brookes office. And that pot plant was meeting an untimely death.

Paul ‘Cookie’ Cook, a very thin man with long hair and a beard, looked like Jesus, and his physical size also suggested that he too lived on a diet of locusts and honey. Despite that, his demeanour and conduct could not be described as messianic. And he would be carried away and disappear in a flurry and a whirl of arms and legs by the same hurricane.

But a bit more about Leon. He deserves it. We argue quite a lot, and at times fists have pounded the table, but it’s easy for me because I know I’m always right in those arguments, and he’s always wrong.   He has different views on that. He has been a friend of mine since the age of twelve, and it takes a great deal more than an argument to even slightly diminish that kind and duration of friendship. Leon is hardy and tough. Very tough. He is not charmed by the gentle breezes which flow over the grass or rustle the leaves of the acacia tree. and his preferred habitat is similar to that of a black rhinoceros; hard, harsh and unattractive. There must be very few people who have survived Black Water Fever, which is an advanced stage of malaria, the equivalent of stage-four cancer. These things don’t happen to people these days, but they always seem to happen to Leon.

He was in hospital recovering from Black Water Fever, saturated with intravenous drips, when a series of incidents occurred which made him think he was hallucinating, which in his state would have been a reasonable assumption. Visions and hallucinations are part and parcel of malaria, but when that develops into Black Water Fever, you can multiply them tenfold. Groaning and staggering into the hospital appeared in his vision his friend Adrian Read. Adrian was a bloody mess. He’d been charged by an elephant, couldn’t evade the attack and was severely damaged.

Soon after that the two De Vries brothers appeared in his vision, bleeding, just having been scalped by a wounded leopard. Ten minutes later Mike Bunce is carried into the hospital because he’d just received two barrels of 12 bore birdshot in his bottom because his tracker had fired the shots prematurely and hit Mike instead of the same wounded leopard that all three men were hunting.

But it was all true. He was not hallucinating.

By all accounts, all five of them had a grand time recovering and the hospital staff were very quick and happy to release them, informing them that subsequent checkups were unnecessary

Both Cookie and Leon lived in a remote area on the shores of lake Kariba which forms much of the northern border of Zimbabwe with Zambia, then still the largest man-made lake on earth. Their accommodation was rudimentary, because neither needed nor wanted comfort at any level. Cookie was a mechanic, but his all-consuming love was fishing. Leon was living there as a professional hunter operating in the vast bushveld spreading across the hinterland of the massive lake. His abiding love was reading, predominantly biographies and history. His all-consuming hatred was fishing

Kariba is hot. In summer, blisteringly hot, when shade temperatures can reach 45 degrees day after day.  Tempers flare and idleness is the inevitable result of the enervating, stultifying, relentless heat.

On one Sunday in the middle of summer, when the two were sitting on wooden chairs in the shack in an undeniable state of malaise and looking at each other with some level of contempt, saying nothing, and sweating, Cookie suggested to Leon that they should take the boat out onto the lake and see if they could catch Tiger Fish, known for their fighting ability.  Leon considered the idea for a full minute, and then unenthusiastically agreed.

The boat was small, simply constructed and with two wooden seats spanning the width, fore and aft.  It was powered by an old five horsepower engine which was more frequently seen in the workshop than on the boat. There was no canopy.

As energetically as the heat would allow, Cookie gathered his considerable quantity of fishing equipment, while Leon collected a few books, two bottles of cheap whisky and a 12-bore shotgun with shorn off barrels. Thus armed and equipped, they set off. Neither had neglected their ample supply of cigarettes.

Cookie was a consummate fisherman, and took pride in using the lightest tackle possible. But he had an unusual fetish, which was to fish naked. When the two had found a suitable inlet, apparently known to Cookie as being particularly well stocked with Tiger Fish, they stopped the engine and let the boat settle. He duly disrobed, appearing as a skinny spectre, and his defining features were his knobbly knees, scant ribcage and shock of black hair. He rummaged at length in his fishing box to find the appropriate spinner, and the time he took over this task began to annoy Leon. He then stood at the front of the boat, casting his light line into the water. Completely absorbed and altering the speed with which he reeled the line in, as and when he thought necessary.  So absorbed in fact, and standing without shade, exposed to a merciless sun, he was oblivious to the fact that he was being burned to a crisp cinder. By the minute his body was assuming a raging red colour. Leon was lying on the rear wooded planks, head resting on the gunwale, drinking neat and now hot whisky, and reading. He would quote lines from Churchill and interesting facts about the horrors of the First World War, none of which interested Cookie in the slightest.

Cookie frequently hooked a tiger fish. The roof of a Tiger’s mouth is bone and cartilage, so it is necessary to strike hard, but even then the hook does not always get embedded. He would strike, let it run, draw it back and let it run several times so it would not snap the line. Tiger fish take prodigious leaps and shake their heads vigorously in order to dislodge the hook, and on those occasions it requires skill to keep the hook in.        Over the hours, he hooked several, but just before landing them, the fish would shake the hook out of its mouth and disappear.

Meanwhile, during those several hours, Leon continued to consume hot, cheap whisky, and his quotes to his friend were becoming slurred.           

Whatever desultory conversation had occurred between the two, degenerated into criticism of each other’s physical appearance, lack of intelligence, and unrestrained scathing comment on each other’s parentage. It must be said that even in his most amiable frame of mind, Leon never spoke to Cookie in the reverential manner which may be more appropriate to the man from Nazareth.        

Leon observed again the 12 bore shotgun resting on this thighs, and the mere fact of observing it, was in itself dangerous. Finally, Cookie hooked a tiger fish and this time brought it in. He lifted it from the water, held the trace wire and turned to Leon with pride and demanded that Leon admire the fish. It was at that moment when Leon pulled the triggers of both barrels, and the fish was blown into oblivion. It exploded like a Chinese firework, a mass of psychedelic colour and bones flying over the water. Buffalo, warthog and kudu scattered from their hitherto peaceful drinking on the lakes edge. Water birds took to the air in panic.

Cookie looked down at the hook, on which teetered a single piece of the tigers jaw bone.

He looked at Leon, and said

“Varley, I will never speak to you again.”

But it did not end there. They decided to return to their base, Cookie to get over his anger, and Leon to sober up. Unsurprisingly, the engine failed to start. Cookie assumed that it was simply a matter of removing the spark plug, cleaning it and replacing it. While he was doing this, Leon had moved to the controls of the engine, and Cookie removed the spark plug, holding it to start the cleaning process. But it was still connected to the plug lead. That was when Leon turned the key.       Enough volts surged through Cookies body to launch him over the side and into the water. When he emerged, shaken, and not in the least resembling Jesus after he had been dunked into the waters of the Jordon river, he struggled back into the boat to see Leon rolling on the floor in uncontrollable laughter.

This time, he said nothing.

*Zimbabwe-born, Plumtree educated, son of a District Commissioner, a former army officer and lawyer, Paul pioneered rafting and canoeing on the Zimbabwean side of the Zambezi. In 1996 he qualified to compete in the Single Scull event at the Atlanta Olympics but was denied permission to represent his country by the Zimbabwe Olympic Committee. A widower, his wife Marie died in 2018, he has four daughters and lives in Victoria Falls. This story is part of a collection Paul is presently working on for a book to be published later in the year.