Noel Ignatiev (1940-2019)
We were fly fishing, Noel and I, on that lake beside his house in the woods where he kept his worn-out Jaguar. It was maybe 2008 or 2009, a lifetime ago. We were fishing for those silver lake fish the name of which I cannot recall on that floating thing Noel kept to row on the lake, casting and recasting those arcs you make when you fly fish. We were using the Sears Roebuck fly rods Noel kept in that room between his kitchen and his living room. It was getting late, maybe five PM. The water had the viscous glow it takes on when night is approaching and the lake had the feel of cup of water already full into which more water was spilling.
The fish were not biting—not in the middle of the lake and not in the shallows near the far shore where generally, Noel said, they abounded. The air was still. Late spring, early summer. It was good there. It was peaceful. It was quiet. Beside our own, no boat floated on the water. Eventually, we caught one fish—or rather, Noel did. He unhooked it. It was the size of Noel’s hand from pinky to thumb and when it was free of the hook he tossed the fish between our bare feet. The fish flip flopped in the inch or two of water that floated at our feet like a miniature of the greater lake around us. We caught nothing more. We made our way back to the dock and beached the raft and when we returned to Noel’s house across the road, he whacked the fish with a cleaving knife and scaled it and fried it in a large iron skillet. Cooking like that in oil, it crackled and filled the air with the scent of fried fish. Noel cooked it. I ate it.
Thinking about all this now, I suddenly sense—I had never thought of this before— why this moment on the water is coming back to me and why of all my years of friendship with Noel it is this instant that most returns to me. Floating there together on that lake, we had become in our own way characters in Noel’s favorite book, Huckleberry Finn. We were Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. We were companions. We were floating together on the river of life where it turns to darkness at the end of things.
I was a friend of Noel, and he, a friend to me, not because we shared this idea or that idea about any one of the transient matters that preoccupy us humans. In fact, we disagreed about countless matters that should have made us, according to the strictures of politics, irreconcilable enemies. But what I saw in Noel—and what perhaps he saw in me—was an abiding love of truth and a reverence for what people at their best could be. I valued Noel’s capacity to see through cant and his reverence for what we humans have achieved. We taught together at a college. We were workplace friends. Actually, I hired him. For eighteen years, he taught history and I taught film. He had friends, wives, colleagues, children: I played no larger role in his life than a single tree plays in a forest. But he was for years my good and beloved companion. He was my spiritual brother. He was my Huckleberry Finn. He enriched my life. I see us forever floating in that boat we shared that, seen rightly and with reverence, floats on the world entire.
Bless you, Noel. Thank you.
