The Swallowed Man

by Edward Carey

Genres: Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology; Historical Fiction; Magical Realism

Synopsis

I am writing this account, in another man's book, by candlelight, inside the belly of a fish. I have been eaten. I have been eaten, yet I am living still.
From the acclaimed author of Little comes this beautiful and haunting imagining of the years Geppetto spends within the belly of a sea beast.
Drawing upon the Pinocchio story while creating something entirely his own, Carey tells an unforgettable tale of fatherly love and loss, pride and regret, and of the sustaining power of art and imagination.
FRONT - Author of Little, a Times and Sunday Times Book of the Year

Release date: January 26, 2021

Publisher: Riverhead Books

Print pages: 192

Sample

1.
 
I am writing this account, in another man’s book, by candlelight, inside the belly of a fish. I have been eaten. I have been eaten, yet I am living still.
           
I have tried to get out. I have made many attempts. But I must conclude that it is not possible. I am trapped within an enormous creature and am slowly being digested. I have found a strange place to exist, a cave between life and death. It is an unhappy miracle.
           
I am afraid of the dark.

The dark is coming for me.
           
I have candles; they are my small protection. And I have this purloined book, that I shall slowly fill.
           
Before the last candle dies, I’ll tell my tale. I give you fair warning: I can boast you no battlefields; this is no murderer’s story; there is no great romance. But before all this, back on land, I did an extraordinary thing. An impossible thing. And for that thing—in order that the world may be put back in balance—I am now paying a severe cost.  I shall tell my terrible shame, my tale of the supernatural though so devastatingly real.
           
           
Am I to account myself very fortunate, or entirely devoid of luck? I considered myself, before this last tumble, a very fortunate individual, blessed of more good luck, surely, than was my fair portion. Back on land, after all, I had made a miracle, I had fashioned an impossible thing. But this piece of good luck is overshadowed by a rather enormous piece of bad luck that I am not quite able to forget, for I live with the fact every day.

A monster fish has swallowed me—a shark or relative of that species, I am no expert. It is no small basking shark that has thus contained me, I say that straight, no catfish with grand opinions of himself. I have been taken by a colossus, perhaps the largest of its kind that ever was. Perhaps the last surviving megalodon, of prehistoric vintage. Deep in such a thing do I dwell.

I had heard of this monster-beast, this hunger-creature, ere I braved the waters. Did I head out in a large military vessel equipped with cannon and musket, with harpoon and barbed hook? No, I must own I did not. I set out into the watery world on a dinghy, a rather ancient craft. It floated, it was seaworthy, so long as the sea was in good humor. I went out because someone had told me—was it a cruel joke, I wonder now?—that my own son was on the water in distress, and I wanted him back. I wanted, to be clear, to save him. But I did not save him. Of that, I am most keenly aware. I bought a small boat. It seemed a solid boat to me, but I am ignorant of such matters, and the further out I rowed, the less certain I was.

Some miles out, the water began to move strangely. Waves, when before it had been calm. My little boat rocking, soon some water spilling in. An increasing storm upon me. My little boat trembling more and more, and then waves breaking and the sea opening—as if it were boiling—and then the great mouth itself was upon me. The hole, rushing forward. The living tunnel hurtling unto me. Such a size, no hope against such a thing, like the world had erupted. The sea creature, colossus, flesh-mountain. I saw it only fleetingly, for a handful of seconds. Like Moses it split the water, and suddenly before me was a great black depth.

I fell, for there was no alternative, toward it and within it.

           
Into the very mouth.
           
I saw its teeth. Arranged in rows two or three deep. A graveyard.
           
On I fell, out and away from everything I knew.

Confined, constricted. Stolen!
           
How shall I ever find him now?
           
I shall never see him again.
 
 
I smashed down the dark tunnel, my body thrown and thumped, dashed and dragged, desperate for breath. Down and down, darker and damper, until at last the falling ceased. I had landed and now could breathe again. But what land was this, what peculiar geography? I was up to my knees in liquid. I puffed, I panted—I, somehow, lived! Scraped here and there, disheveled certainly, bruised and bloody, but still, no matter the unlikeliness, still alive. And yet what living could this be?

Rickety and miserable, harrowed by the dank rocking darkness, at last I started feeling about. The floor was moist yet solid enough, but even as I fumbled I could find no end to it. Timidly I rose, fully expecting my head to strike a surface, but soon I was standing at full height and still I found no roof. I lifted my shaking hands above me with caution, fully prepared for them to strike something solid. But the strike did not come. I proceeded to extend my height as well as I could and yet I touched only more unoccupied space. Only after a moment did rumors of the high ceiling begin to reach me, in the form of liquid dripping from above. I have suffered this small rain ever since.

           
Here, then, was space.

I set out east five paces, no limit; west ten paces, no end yet. The ground, I report, was not even.
I tried to walk forward and stumbled upon objects, pieces of half-eaten sea life, yet still the place went on.
           
I called out, and the altered sound of my voice was a terror to me.
           
“Hallooo!”

The noise was unpleasant, and there came the response: Hallo! Hallo! Hallo! All the time quieter, the decreasing ghosts of my original sound.
           
I felt about further, in total darkness, no hint of anything but black and black and ever more of black, until I bumped into something solid. A wall, cast out at an angle, but not of flesh—it seemed to me, somehow, to be of wood. Planks of wood. Curving upward. Wood? Impossible!
           
I followed this wall with shaking hands and, finding its end, pulled myself up onto it.  This took some doing, and I failed many times. But then—at the peak of its curve—a flat surface! Flat, here? Flat, true? Flat!
           
It could not be. And yet it was.
           
I crawled upon this flat and had not been long about it when suddenly there was an opening in the flat ground and I tumbled downward, into something else. I had fallen again. Not so very far this time; about the height, I surmised, of a full grown man. There was blood in my mouth. I felt about: more flat . . . and yet not only. I could not trust myself to believe it.
           
Stairs!
           
My hands discovered actual solid stairs.
           
No! Impossible! But there was no mistake. I had fallen down stairs. Did this peculiar creature have perhaps a spiral stairway within its intestines? Was there a smart rotunda to its heart? Twin outhouses of kidneys? Its oesophagus a redbrick chimney flue? How strange, that a great fish should master the concept of right angles.

On the floor—solid floor, now,  this was—I felt boxes, wooden crates spilled about. These were surely not a natural part of my enormous host, I sensed, but rather something consumable, like me. The lid of one I proceeded to break loose, then felt about its insides. Stacked in neat rows, I felt a particular column I was only too familiar with, made, I supposed—O, irony!—of whale fat. Candles! Spermaceti pillars, so many night-killers, so many suns. And dry, by my word.

Hallo, tallow!

To light one and see again: how lovely that would be. I fumbled about, hoping to find a tinderbox to rescue me, but no such miracle was about. I was so thirsty to see again that I panicked myself utterly. Until in my weeping misery it at last occurred to me that I may have the solution with me all along.

           
Joseph, Joseph, I said to myself, have you ever been the smoker of a pipe?
           
Aye, I answered myself, I am part of that fraternity. If there were light, I should show you my right finger and thumb, be-yellowed by my habit. You would spy the evidence of a staining to the hairs of my upper lip. You would meet my teeth, also witnesses of this behavior.
           
So then.
           
Ah! Left trouser cupboard? Empty but for the leg. Right side: something else there?
           
Careful now, careful, withdraw with steadiness. Is it there, I ask you?
           
Oh! It is, it is. Beautiful lady, Lucy, my Lucifer. So then, to strike the box of her, open her eyes.
           
I sent up a flare to heaven.
           
I lit my vesta.
           
I had light.
           
Light, ho!