木人形の英語版
Story of Prophet Jonah
(or A Wooden Puppet)
by Nagamitz Kazuhiro
Chapter I
Voice of God came to Jonah, son of Amittai, ordering that he should hurry to the exceeding city of Nineveh and be an alarm to her people against a destruction purposed by Him, at whom her evil eyes were glaring. However, Jonah went away for Tarshish, thus disobeying the Almighty. [Verses 1 - 3, Chapter 1, Book of Jonah, Old Testament]
Some 750 years before Christ's first advent, there was a city called Nineveh, which is modern-day Mosul of Iraq, where remain its ruins. It was one of the central cities of an ancient empire Assyria, and later it would be the final capital of the same. Having a king of its own, Nineveh was a city-state as well. According to the author of Book of Jonah, it was so exceeding that it took three days for a traveler to traverse it.
As is often the case with exceeding cities in all ages and lands, Nineveh was not an honorable one. Corruption, iniquity and deception were practiced at all levels of the society, ever aggravating imbalance of wealth, which invited violence. Striving to remedy the imbalance in vain, violence only added to insecurity of the city until terrorism was no longer big news. Growing stronger through competitions and merges, armed bands came to have such might that even the king had to compromise with them. Uncontrolled and gaining momentum, some bandit groups got so powerful as to advance outwards as well: they went to sack foreign communities and took home captives and spoils, bringing about wars between the nations. The history of the vicious cycle of attacking and being overly retaliated increased the mutual hatred and fear of enemies in the neighborhood regions so much that nations became excessively cruel to each other, and Ninevites, for example, were notorious for flaying war prisoners alive. They scarcely feared gods.
Then, gods for Ninevites were usually idols of various myths and traditions, made by human hands in the shape of a human being or an animal or a combination of them. The idols were enshrined at various places in the city, and a wealthy family would boast of having two or more idols in their house. No small number of these gods, however, were vague about their origins of divinity, and a human-shaped idol in a shrine of a handsome temple could originally have been a wooden puppet used in a puppet show, nobody knowing how it had ever found its way up into the shrine. Such a thing was not uncommon with regard to human beings either, in that a genuine human being would be raised to rank as a divinity and treated as a living idol for a reason that he or she did or was said to have done something that seemed unexplainable unless they were a god or a goddess. (This book provides incidentally an example which might have led to such an idolization for both categories – a puppet and a man.)
Now, the gods, “living or not,” worshipped by Ninevites were far cry from the concept of a righteous and almighty being, the creator of the universe, and were more like Greek gods and goddesses, who fall short of almightiness and, like human beings, can be unrighteous, sometimes setting examples of immoral nature.
Thus, for many Ninevites the gods they daily saw were not such terrible beings to fear. However, authorities exalted the gods for the purpose of extracting wealth from the citizens to stabilize their supremacy, especially through strengthening of military and police power. Hence there was a strong cooperation between regality and priesthood, which constituted the authorities.
Many stories were concocted to incite fear of the gods. The story writers described natural phenomena and disasters as gods’ signs and punishment, thus exalting gods above the nature. The authors created histories of immortals and mortals, in which immortalization of the latter was among the powers of the former, thus exalting gods above time. The histories were entwined with well-known myths and legends full of supernatural phenomena and mystification wrought by gods, thus thwarting scientific approach. The editors supplemented the manuscript with many laws allegedly given by gods, and quoted divine testimony to sanctify the entire script. Thus the stories and laws were compiled to form holy textbooks and preached, and people believed – for who, atheist or theist, or educated or uneducated, is not superstitious?
The story makers and the cohorts availed themselves of the wealth gained. So, for example, in temples, where gods were usually wooden idols overlaid with gold or silver plates, which were cast from articles offered by worshippers, the priests would steal pieces from the gods for their private use. To them they were virtually money trees. Consequently, the general tendency became such that the higher in the hierarchy did a Ninevite rank, the less pious he or she turned. Gods were used by them to justify the hierarchy by which they could maintain their privileges, while they scarcely did justice to gods.
Naturally, the authorities would punish people who were found tending to be blasphemous, while they themselves were more so in fact. The laws bound people in strict obedience to gods, and any departure from the laws was severely punished. Thus, pious or not, a citizen of Nineveh would fear the authorities far more than gods.
Then, the authorities on their part feared the revolt of dissident citizens more than anything else, especially the kind tied to an enemy nation. And to prevent this, they regularly conducted public events such as cruel execution of enemy soldiers, which was designed to intimidate and discourage the citizens from revolting, as well as to satisfy certain barbaric desires. And for the purpose of the latter, the most atrocious event was this:
Despite the general belittling of gods, the Ninevites had indulged themselves in an evil practice on the pretext of being loyal to gods - they sacrificed to them their own children. And this manslaughter, borrowing the authority therefor from gods, was the greatest of all sins committed by Ninevites.
So, according to the Book of Jonah, God, unable to live with Ninevites any further, decided to inflict a capital punishment. However, he deigned to give a final chance to the Ninevites, and rang an oracle in the ears of Amittai's son Jonah, a Hebrew prophet. And he did not hear.
Incidentally, an oracle is a message given by a god to human beings, and it can easily be suspected that there were no small number of pseudo-oracles that were concocted by priests or prophets coerced by a pressure from an authority such as a king or a governor, who plotted to urge the people into a certain movement in his favor. If so, it should not have been unusual for prophets or diviners, like Jonah, to escape from "god". The present author was at a loss whether to adopt an interpretation that Jonah did hear a voice of God and escaped, or that he merely escaped from the king of Nineveh, who tried to make him propagate a fake prophecy to remedy the insecurity of his city with a possible promise such as the king would give the Hebrew a high-ranking priesthood in Nineveh (which seemed to have happened in any event, for the ruins of the city seem to include the prophet’s spacious tomb). The author eventually decided to swallow Jonah's miracle, and hence his fish.
God said to Jonah, "Let me give Nineveh one last chance for survival. You, my prophet, are to hurry to Nineveh and instruct the people to repent and abstain from evildoings. If they listen to you and repent, well and good, I shall stay my hands from Nineveh. If they do not, I shall put out Nineveh from the face of the earth."
"My God!” retorted Jonah, “what are you saying? You want me to go to Nineveh to help the wicked Ninevites escape your punishment? Why? Have you forgotten? They are my number-one enemy! I’d rather die than help them!”
Now, when a man or a woman is visited by God’s spirit, as Jonah was on this occasion, they become ecstatic and unusually talkative and would say many things that they would not say out loud otherwise. Oftentimes, they would fall into what is called glossolalia, in which they would start saying things in words they themselves do not understand, sometimes in a genuine language unknown to themselves, although they would know what they are meaning. Such was the state in which Jonah was on this occasion, and therefore he talked very much and rather eloquently in response to God’s oracle, although he was normally a reticent and non-eloquent person, and he spoke in a language quite foreign to himself – who knows it was in fact modern English and he went on exactly as follows:
“You well know that, when I was merely an infant boy, bandits from Nineveh attacked our town. They broke through the town wall and attacked houses. My father and mother were murdered before my own eyes by them. I was so shocked I swooned, and when I came to myself I had lost all my memories - I even could not tell which was my right hand and which left. Every item of value was taken away from our house, and the roof was burnt down. Then, I saw many young men and women captured and taken to Nineveh in chains and fetters like animals. They were crying crazily being forcibly removed from their dear families. A huge number of cattle were stolen too, including what little we had. Left an orphan, I would have starved to death if it weren’t for the fig tree that grew and spread over my roofless house. I declare the scoundrels of Nineveh are not fit to live a moment longer on this earth of your creation, my Lord! Their destruction has long been my wish, as you well know. Please let that wish of mine at last come true!
“And, oh my Lord, why is this softening? What’s the matter with you? They don’t deserve your love a bit! And, why me? Why pick me to do this? Go and alarm the wicked Ninevites? I know it’ll be a false alarm, and I a false prophet! For I know you are merciful and forgiving; you always give a second chance to the bad ones and pardon them. I know you are going to do the same kindness to the wicked Ninevites, for you want to be loved even by those pagans! …Oh, what am I saying?! A slip of tongue! Oh my Lord, it’s a slip of tongue! Pardon me, and do please erase it from your memory! And who am I to argue with you? It’s your holy business. Only, please do not make me the one to carry out your business. It crashes me!"
"Jonah, Ninevites are waiting for you. Hasten to them."
"Pardon me, my Lord! Not Nineveh, please! Not Jonah!” The prophet whined in tears, fell on his knees, and started hitting his breast with fists. Then he had an idea. “Oh, yes, my Lord, there are more suitable servants of yours for this mission.” Jonah recovered from tears and took courage again. “I hear some of us, your prophets, have been taken there among others as captives too. If you speak to anyone of them and free him from captivity, he will certainly be glad to rise and prophesy. He should be able to do a far better job than I can, for he is already in Nineveh and may have learned to speak their language! So, choose one of them, my Lord, and please do spare me from this journey to Nineveh."
"I decided on you because you are the best for this. I never use a second best."
But Jonah did not obey. He rushed in a direction opposite to Nineveh, and arriving at a seafront city of Joppa (a part of modern-day Tel Aviv), he bought a ticket and jumped on a foreign ship returning to Tarshish, which is thought to be modern-day Spain. He thought if he could reach a distant place way beyond the horizon of the vast ocean, he would eventually be unreachable by God, for in those days people did not yet realize that the earth was round - still less spinning.
Jonah climbed down into the bottom of the ship and, exhausted from the hasty long journey, immediately fell into a deep sleep.
As the ship sailed outside the harbor, the wind rose and got stronger and pushed her off the course. A gray giant-like cloud far away began to collapse and surge to roof the vast ocean, and soon the sea line was darkened by black rain. Upon a flash of lightening and cracking of thunder, cold rain started to pour on the ship. The waves, pushed high by the strong winds, tackled the ship with such force that she squeaked and rolled dangerously and would topple any moment. Then, a whirl wind rose from nowhere and started twirling her.
"This is a double catastrophe! A storm and tornado at once!" shouted the helmsman, who could no longer hold the spinning helm.
"Oh, my good god, help, help me this once!" cried a sailor holding to a rope lest he be blown away.
"Boatswain, furl the sail, hurry!” the captain shouted to the sailor. “And you there, drop the anchor immediately!" (The latter was to prevent the ship from dashing against rocks or going aground on shallows, for in those days ships sailed alongside the coasts.)
All the cabin lamps having gone out owing to the rough motion, passengers stirred and groped their way from their darkened creaking corners up the hatchway to the deck with troubled hearts. They were rapidly outpaced by many rats running toward as high a place as possible. A few ferrets, which fed on them, appeared on the deck too and hissed and danced crazily, causing the ship dog to chase after them barking.
"My men, beseech your gods for mercy! Ask your respective gods to kindly calm the sea and lull the wind," the captain was ordering. "You, good passengers, too! You surely worship a god or two; so do pray to your dear gods and vow that when you can ever walk on the firm land again you will do a handsome offering for them!"
The terror-stricken individuals on the deck sought mercy of their gods for their dear lives. But, the stormy winds were not endeared. Nor did the ship stop making shrieks as if she were having labor pains and wanting to be delivered as soon as possible – or, perchance, was she too praying for mercy to some secret goddess?
The rats and ferrets clinging to high places squeaked and squealed for mercy too; then the ship dog whined and joined their lament with pensive howling – keeping its throat stretched as perpendicularly to heaven as possible, despite the motion.
"Oh, my god, my beloved god Bel, please pardon and help us!” a rich lumber merchant cried earnestly. “I swear I will make a shrine of Lebanon cedar for you if you help me out of this peril."
“Ah, great goddess Artemis, daughter of Zeus and the twin sister of Apollo!” pleaded a gambler. “I bet a hecatomb to be sacrificed in your wonderful shrine if I’d be allowed to live to do so! So please help me I don’t have to hand in my cards yet!”
“Alas, my plentiful Dagon, the fish-god and filler of our stomach with corn and wine! Please do not allow our stomach to be filled with salty water and seaweed!” the chef.
“Abba! Jah, Lord of nature, heavenly being! Pardon me for the wrongs I have committed in your divine name!” pleaded a sham prophet in a low voice lest he be overheard. “I shall never prophesy again! No, no more fake prophecies in your name or any other god’s! So, for mercy’s sake, please do not wreck this ship! As you well know, it’s exactly to escape from that king of Nineveh that I got on this very ship! His men came and urged me to go back to Nineveh to prophesy…prophesy another fake prophecy of their destruction by you. But this time I repented and took flight so I do not sin again. So, please pardon me, and I will pay back the money I earned wrongfully!”
"Please turn from your anger, my lord Neptune, God of the Sea!” prayed the captain. “Please spare us our lives! What did we do to deserve this catastrophe? We did nothing wrong to you, did we? Or is there anyone among us who overlooked a duty? If so, please let us know of it and we shall amend the wrong immediately."
"Oh, Baal, my good god Baal, please! Please help Jojo! If you must sink this ship, please turn me a dolphin, for I can’t swim!" shouted an apprentice cook in tears.
"Mother, Mother, help me! I am scared!" wept a cabin boy bitterly, who had come out to sea for the first time in his life.
The sailors, while uttering respective prayers to different gods, began throwing cargos and anything they could reach overboard so as to lower the gravity center of the ship as well as to lighten her.
Now, Jonah was still sleeping in the bottom of the ship, although his body was shook and rolled like a log.
The captain came down there with a lantern. Hearing a groaning in the dark, he soon found the prophet and was awe-struck that a man should be able to stay asleep in such a rough motion and noise.
"Terrible man!” thought the captain with a shudder, “sleeping in this tumult?! …Still you are steadfastly awake to some sin or suffering you seem to have bred. …Certainly some god must be angry at you and working this storm to rouse you up…in vain. …But, how come am I here?! Alas, alas! has the same god possessed me to come down here to kick this man up? For I don’t recollect why and how on earth I have come down in the midst of this dangerous motion!"
"Hey!” he shouted, shaking Jonah up, “How can you sleep in a moment like this? Wake up, you groaner, and pray now to your god and appease his anger, whoever he may be! Maybe your god would turn merciful and help us."
"My God? No! I can't pray..."
"Don't you worship any god?"
"Yes, I do. I worship almighty God, the Most High. But I am now escaping from him. I disowned him!"
"You disowned your god? What do you mean? You must tell me!"
"Well, three days ago, God told me to go to Nineveh and persuade the people there to repent and stop their sins. But it was a burden too heavy for me; so I escaped, disobeying my God."
"(Aside) Why, you are a burden too heavy for my ship!"
"So I am not fit to pray to my God anymore!"
"Not fit to pray? Yes, you must pray. You said you disowned your god. But it was you yourself that you disowned."
"(Aside) Correct! I wanted my God to disown me!"
“You said the burden was too heavy for you; but if it is godsent, isn’t it as light as a feather? God will of course speed you.”
“Light as a feather, yeah, but no speeding me, for this feathery burden petrifies me like a stone idol.”
“(Aside) A stone idol! No wonder my ship is sinking! (Aloud) But, you see, this storm must be nothing but your god's fume at you. …Suppose your god is only trying to bring you back…back to your right course. Oh, yes, you must pray to your god immediately, and say that you’ll go straight to Nineveh! The lives of many innocent men here are endangered due to your misconduct. If you do not repent and pray to your god for mercy, I as the captain of this ship in peril shall become your god's hand to do away with you.”
Meanwhile, on the deck, the captain's first mate was calling to the troubled men: "Hear me now, every one of you! Please, each one, draw one stick from this vase. And anyone whose stick is stained in red is the one who invited this storm by somehow angering some god or goddess."
So, one by one the passengers and sailors came and drew their sticks uneasily, for, like the sham prophet, each one had started thinking, "Oh, it must be that sin of mine that brought this storm!"
"Phew! I knew it was not me! Look at my lot, everyone!" said the lumber merchant with a great relief, since he knew that there was a risk of being thrown into the sea as a human sacrifice if he had drawn the wrong stick.
"Oh, thank god, me neither! I am often lucky at lotteries, so I feared I’d pick the red one. But my good god never makes a mistake, ha-ha" said the apprentice cook with tears in his eyes, and he resumed his prayer to Baal.
"Look! I am not the one to blame either. But poor my child, he is not to blame either, but you ruffians mercilessly threw the innocent boy into the cold water to be bitten by ravenous sharks!" cried a puppeteer, who had just lost one of his dear puppets.
Thus, one after another the sticks were drawn from the vase, but none had a red mark on it. There were only a few remaining in the vase.
"Now, who have not drawn yet?" asked an astrologer.
"I made the lottery, so I draw last according to the usage," said the first mate, shaking the vase to mix the sticks, as he had done each time a person picked his stick.
“I don’t see Captain. Where has he gone?” asked the gambler.
“And that athlete…that narrowly got on board with that hop skip and jump,” said the chef.
"Ah, that monk,” said a fire worshipper, “we left him sleeping below. He’s making such a terrible noise one would suspect he is a…speak of which, here he is.”
"There is no need for further drawing!" exclaimed Jonah, who had just climbed up to the deck, helped by the captain. "This storm has arisen on account of my fault, and is a work of my God in Heaven!"
The captain explained to them how Jonah had disobeyed and escaped from his god, and grabbing the last few lottery sticks from the vase, he thrust the red-marked one toward the stormy heaven and shouted:
"I solemnly ask the god of this man Jonah! On account of this red stick, do you mean to sink these innocent sticks as well into the sea?"
However, the storm only increased its violence.
"Alas, my Jove! the anchor cable is broken!" shouted the boatswain. “We are done unless the storm stops.”
People gathered round Jonah and unanimously showered accusations and complaints upon him.
"Hey! We are in danger of losing our lives owing to your presence here!" the sham prophet.
"Pray tell, what manner of a man are you?" the fire worshipper.
“And on what account did you come to the sea?” the chef.
"Where are you from?" the astrologer.
"I am a Hebrew from Gath," Jonah answered. "I fear the Most High, the God in heaven, who made the sea and the earth."
"And what made you think you had any business running away from such a mighty god of yours?" the astrologer.
"Hey, we are not willing to get involved in a quarrel between you and your god," the gambler.
"What could we possibly do to escape this violent storm?" the first mate.
A wave jumped aboard and flooded almost the entire deck.
"Throw me into the sea. Then, it will be calm,” said Jonah, knowing that the time had come for him to perish. “I know it very well. It is me alone that God wants to feel this storm, and if you get rid of me, the ship and all of you will be safe."
However, the sailors went back to the oars and tried once more to row the ship toward a nearest harbor. Nonetheless, the rough sea and the violent winds pushed her farther away from the coast until the land disappeared from their view.
Now, the people urged the captain to make the decision.
The captain tore his coat and grabbed Jonah from behind by the shoulders and said with his face looking to the rain-pouring heaven: "Oh, god of this man Jonah, who is said to have created the earth and the sea, if you are not a merciless god, please do not take our lives just because this man is with us! But if you cannot pardon him, then we shall but have to put him into the deep sea, for we cannot go against your will. We can act only as you ordain, and our hands shall be clean of the life of this man. So, please show mercy to us and save at least our lives."
So saying, the captain pushed Jonah forward and Jonah jumped overboard.
In a moment, there shone a bright golden light along the far swelling horizon as if it were a golden bow, and the dark clouds gave way to the blue sky, which expanded quickly from the horizon upwards and over. And, as Jonah had prophesied, the sea grew calm and flat, and it was as if someone had laid a vast blue carpet across the ocean.
At this the people were filled with awe and gratitude, and did not forget to pray and give praise to Jonah's god with thanks for saving their lives. The ship dog resumed barking at the noisy rats and the ferrets, which quickly were absorbed in the hull.
Suddenly, a shout was heard over the noise of numerous prayers:
"Ahoy, look! Jonah is there!” It was the helmsman at helm shouting with his right hand pushed to the starboard side, which was opposite the side of the prophet’s jumping. “He is alive! Let us go rescue him while he is afloat!"
The men rushed to the starboard and discerned that Jonah was drifting in the distance, and he was holding to a wooden puppet that had spilled from a wooden box of the puppeteer.
"(Aside) But if we rescue him, will not the storm come back?" everyone.
"Lower away the boat!" the captain.
“Aye, aye, sir,” the first mate.
"Ahoy, Jonah, we will come and rescue you in a moment, so hang in there!" the helmsman.
But no voice returned from Jonah.
As soon as the boat was on the calm water, the captain jumped into it, followed by two sturdy sailors and the dog. The three men rowed the boat toward Jonah as hard as they could. It was when the boat got within a stone's throw from Jonah that a sailor who had just climbed up to the mast-head of the ship shouted with his eyes popped:
"Captain, beware! Something big is coming! It's fast!"
“Where away?” the captain.
“There!” the sailor pointed in a direction beyond Jonah.
Captain and the others in the boat stopped rowing and turned their heads in the pointed direction. A huge role of water was seen to rise and fall repeatedly as it approached.
The dog ran to the bow and began barking furiously at the strange apparition.
“Wha…what is that?!” the lumber merchant.
“Alas, it’s Hydra the sea serpent!” the astrologer.
"I bet it's a kraken! A giant squid! Look, it’s white!" the gambler.
"No, that's a whale!" the pop-eyed sailor on the mast-head, “It has flukes.”
"It’s going to attack Jonah!" the chef.
“It’s opened the mouth! It’s gonna bite him!” the fire worshipper.
"Ah, poor man! He is done at one gulp!" the first mate.
"Look, there goes the jet! So, it's a whale!" the astrologer.
"Ye, bloody monster, get this!" shouted Captain fiercely, as he stood up at the bow of the boat, and lanced a long boat-hook, which had been in the boat.
It flew high and landed on the vast white forehead of the sea monster, scratching and leaving a red thin line across it.
Whether offended by this or not, the monster wriggled its body and with the snow white flukes scooped and flipped the boat high in the air. The three men in the boat (to say nothing of the dog) shrieked as they were thrown into the air and down into the water and they did not come to the surface too soon. When they popped up near the capsized boat and coughed and spat out the bitter brine, the monster jetted again raising an instant rainbow.
"Captain, are you alright?!" asked the sailors and passengers on the starboard of the ship, which rolled gently as the waves caused by the white whale’s exercise reached her.
"Ye, crook-jawed man-eating fish!" shouted Captain as he clutched at the boat, "if you claim to be on a god's errand, show us a sign now!"
The whale gave a glance at the captain with its left eye, and blew again and swam away dividing the peaceful green sea.
"That was the fate of Jonah, the runaway prophet that disobeyed Jah, the Mightiest. How terrible!” the sham prophet. “(Aside) But Jonah, did you really hear the voice of God? and yet run?"
Chapter II
Thus, Jonah was swallowed by the whale. Fortunately, the mammal did not chew as it swallowed him; so he was not injured. However, inside its stomach it was pitch dark and so thick with hot acidic stench that he coughed a lot and vomited. He could not keep his eyes open, for the air was stinging. Only, somehow he did not suffocate.
He felt many living things struggling about him, some sneaking into his clothes, and some fixing themselves on the skin of his legs, arms and then face. When something bit him in his foot, he shrieked and kicked it away and writhed desperately. He hoped he were dead. He swore, wept bitterly and called God for help. His voice, however, pitched high sounding funny on account of the atmosphere weighted with extra rich carbon dioxide molecules.
Eventually he collected himself and started praying. However, the acidic air attacked his vocal cord and thus made his voice hoarser and huskier until it became only hissing. As he was praying earnestly, suddenly his left ear started ringing, and scenes of numerous memories began to run through his mind one after another, and the childhood episodes which had long been lost from his memory returned with such vividness as if they were occurring real-life.
In one scene he was in the holy temple marveling at its grandeur and beauty. His mother handed him a small dove for him to offer. He wanted to keep it, for he did not want it killed. But a priest dexterously snatched the bird off his hands and instantly wrenched its head off, dumfounding the boy; and when the priest began draining the blood out against a side of the altar, young Jonah started screaming in tears causing his parents to laugh, and his father hugged him, kissed him, and gave him a ride on his shoulders – the child’s most favorite position. His father was so tall that he always felt proud there. An older priest, burning the bird on the altar, said to his father, “Mr. Amittai, you have a very clever-looking son!” “Ah, thank you, but whether really clever or not,” said his father happily, “we must wait and see!” In the next scene, he was running in a race and was far ahead of other boys. He could see his parents cheering happily beyond the goal line, and he started wondering whether he should or should not run into his mother’s bosom as he always had done, for she was expecting a baby now. Then flushed a scene of his parents being struck to death by two intruders in their house despite their pleading. Young Jonah cried, “Mother!” “Mother!” hissed the prophet simultaneously in the viscous darkness, and a flying fish jumped into his face, and he swooned, as did the boy then, …and heard a voice in his dream:
“Hey, Jonnie, howdy? Call me Ben. So, I understand you didn’t obey God, did you? Me neither.” The voice was a young jolly sonorous tenor, a kind that would have gladdened Beethoven if he heard it sing in his ninth symphony. “Gosh, I didn’t really want to swallow you, or any other monk for that matter. You monks are no joy for us sperm whales, because, in the first place, we ain’t much fascinated about taking big lumpy food, contrary to our size. As you may have noticed, we do not have upper teeth. So we cannot crush and cut tough things in our mouth. Our teeth are used mainly for capturing and bringing smaller food to our children. So, generally, instead of eating large food, we rather enjoy slurping little ones like shrimps and cuttlefish. Of course we eat giant squid. They are good. They are actually very slim and nicely soft and slippery. There is nothing like the sensation of our throat stroked by one. They digest easily and don’t stay long in the stomach unlike you land species. You are not slippery; on the contrary you are so bony and scratchy that there is a danger of choking our throat. Furthermore, your flesh is hard, lean and stringy, and distasteful anyway, and difficult to digest and, on top of these - or bottom of - causes constipation.
“But, God said to me I should go and swallow you alive. I knew he means it when he says a thing; so I said “No thanks, my Lord, no more monks in my tammy,” and I turned around and escaped from the Mediterranean to go beyond his reach.
“And look at what a misery He inflicted upon me the moment I crossed Gib!…the sea gate, you know. He turned me snow white, and since then I have been in trouble one after another. …How did I know that I turned white? The suckerfish on me were surprised at the sudden change and promptly reported it to me, for they didn’t like it either. They said they now looked too inviting to their enemies. But they are so fond of me they have stuck with me.
“Incidentally, for your information and for the sake of their honor, those suckerfish are by no means on me as mere free-riders, but are quite useful and congenial company. They keep watch for me when I am asleep. When it comes to caring for my skin and trimming my precious little body hair they are unsurpassed specialists. They pick any unwelcome adsorptions off my skin such as parasites but leave useful accessories such as small barnacles so as to make me healthy as well as attractive to lady-whales, who love to scratch their itchy body over my moderately coarsen skin. The suckerfish proudly say that they are called in Japan - if you know where it is - as oval-gold-coin shark after their oval connector - though they are not actually sharks. Aren’t they worth the name?
“And, oh, how they love our stories! You know, we sperm whales have the largest and hence the greatest brain among all the creatures ever created by God. And naturally we are the greatest thinker and think out many great things every day. Then, we need listeners for propagation of our ideas for the enlightenment and welfare of the world. But, why, most of the creatures do not have interest in great things, but are fond of foolish fish stories and tabloid gossips. The suckerfish are different. Oh, they really know what are great and what are not. So they are attached to our talks, especially our non-fiction stories…like this one I am telling you now. Believe it or not, there is even a theory that they came to have their sucking connector through evolution on account of their great love for whale talks; that is, they so disliked to miss any word of our talk that they kept pushing their ears to our body incessantly and God was so touched by their diligence as to allow their ears to develop into the pluggable connecter to help their listening - believe it or not. By the way, God took care of us too in that our nose was allowed to gradually move to the top of our head so we can breathe better.
“Well, now, as I was saying, in spite of the efforts of the suckerfish to improve my look and feel, my being white has made me unlucky with ladies. I used to be quite popular with them, and they scarcely let me alone. They would say “Hey, Ben, you are my only sweetheart, so don’t you ever flirt with other girls,” while pinching me there. But now they say I am a whale god, and keep aloooof from me. Hum, that’s OK with me though, for I think I have already known enough of them to know them better, if you know what I mean. Besides, even I can use some vacation once in a while, you know. But, you see, unless you are in Arctic or Antarctic - if you know where they are - where white is the color of the background, being white is a great handicap. Yes, like the suckerfish, I too advertise my presence to my enemies, in the air or water.
“First, a couple of nasty seagulls came and pecked and picked on me. They eat things like oyster and small crabs on me but not only that! They have come to enjoy tasting our very skin and the flesh underneath. Oh, it’s very painful and, you know, they kill a child whale sometimes this way. So, I had to dive more often and thus I could not enjoy peaceful sun-tanning.
“Then, ravenous orcas would not fail to find me either, and they come by many. Five is OK but more than that I run away. Unlike sharks they work in a team, a team of well-organized synchronism. They are diligent too. For example, they train themselves to be a good beach hunter. Normally, to go aground on a shoal or shallows means a death to whales – but orcas are rare exception. From youth they practice hard to gain the skill of going over a beach and wriggling back to water unharmed. This way they can chase a walrus or a seal or the like right on to the sea-shore above the waterline, and grab the victim and drag it back to the water like an alligator does. There are some who witnessed them killing a polar bear on iceberg. So they are the strongest gang in the ocean and on the water edges and are nicknamed killer whale.
“Now, the other day I had ten of them on me. At first I noticed only five approaching from behind, so I planned to smack them dead with my flukes; but then I found, with the help of a sucker in charge of patrolling, that five others were lying in ambush beyond the waves ahead - cunning creatures. As you know, we sperm whales cannot see ahead, for our eyes are on the sides of the head, like your ears. So, it’s time to run away, but not through the waves, for they can swim more than three times faster than we can, that is, as fast as 70 kilometers per hour. However, we sperm whales can dive deeper than they. They come only 300 meters deep or so and give up, but I can go as deep as 1100 meters, and one of my cousins has a record of 3002 meters - a desperado! Incidentally, he said that at that depth the sea bed is like a bright starry sky twinkling with many luminescent creatures and organisms, and not without occasional shooting ones.
“Anyway, I took a deep breath and, peaking my flukes high in the air, dived and went down perpendicularly as fast as my flukes could drive me. I heard one orca shouting “Gosh, the whitey has found us! Go catch him!” and they dived after me and in a moment neared me dangerously close. If two or more of them could bite hold of me at my flukes at the same time, my flukes are stayed and the game is over. One caught me hard there; so I quickly bent my body and gave him a full swing – this must have stupefied him and he at once released me. Now, as I go deeper, an advantageous phenomenon takes place in my body. As the water gets colder and the water pressure higher, and as my body, especially the soft large forehead, is squeezed in by the pressure, it begins to shrink and harden on its own, and at the depth of about 200 meters my body becomes quite streamlined and the body weight substantially overbalances the buoyancy so that I can increase my speed.
“This happened as usual, and the orcas gave up. It was a narrow escape though. If I went up too soon, the orcas would be waiting above to attack me again. They would try to prevent me from taking breaths by pushing and pulling me down until I drown. So I had to stay underneath for quite some time. We can stay long in the depth - two hours or even more if we take many s breaths before diving. Anyway I had to recover enough buoyancy to be able to go up without much labor. The recovery, that is re-inflation of my body, occurs naturally by the body heat, which has increased due to the desperate diving; but it occurs faster in a hot spa, and I am a great lover of hot spas! It’s not difficult to find one, for often bubbles are going up from spas, and I can hear the bubbling if it is not too far.
“I found a cozy one in a small ravine and, descending into it, hid my body among craggy rocks and let the hot rushing bubbles and water massage and warm my cold body. How comfortable it was! Then, I carefully applied the wounds I got from the seagulls and the orca to the bubbles for disinfection and prompt healing. A very good medicine. It kills parasites as well. I must warn you however that you must not inhale or swallow the bubbles. They are very poisonous when inside your body. Now, as my body got warmer I dozed and fell asleep as usual; but this time not without a problem.
“Octopuses were no problem to me when I was not white and could sleep hidden among the rocks and corals; but now they find me without difficulty, because what is a big white thing in the dark background if it ain’t a stupid sleeping snow white whale? And scientists say white color incites their appetite. One biggish octopus is enough to paralyze a whale. First it hugs you with the long huge sucking legs or arms, whichever you like to call them, and the hug is a nasty, sticky, spirally wrenching one. A shark would swoon if it is twisted by this hugging. However hard you may dance the many-armed partner will never let you change partners. Meanwhile, the octopus injects paralyzing saliva into your skin. Then, sooner or later, he would start devouring you and, as you know, they have very strong beaks. Only you do not feel the pain thanks to the anesthetic effect of the saliva, which prevents you from going wild, to the benefit of the epicurean devourer.
“So, I was awaken by a huge octopus as it hugged me round and started twisting my body. I shook and swung my body to escape but it seemed too late. Soon I began feeling numb where I was touched by the octopus and thought that my painless end was nearing. However I was lucky then, for I noticed that this particular octopus had not as many legs as the name of his species informs, and when I asked him what had happened to his missing legs, he said with a curse upon himself that he had been so hungry that he ate four of them himself - which made him - ah uno, dos, tres, yeah quatropus, right? Ha-ha-ha. So, I took courage and said to myself, “All right, I’ll do my last dance as wildly as possible no matter what!” And so did I, and scratching his head against a huge rock, I was able to break away from his hugging, and did not look back when he yelled at me to return and return his precious leg that had been torn off anew - leaving him a tripod. That torn leg was stuck and wriggling on my belly as if it were another suckerfish, and I thought it would make a good takeaway for my sucker friends waiting above – and also would be an unmistakable evidence to prove to them that my next adventure story in the octopus’s garden was not a makeup. Incidentally, I hear octopus’s legs are disposable because they grow anew.
“Now, my brother, ‘Woe to me! That’s enough!’ was what I declared to myself, and I repented and changed my mind. I knew God is merciful and forgiving. He might give back to me the dark skin. So I turned and rushed back through the gate to swallow you, as God had ordered me in the first place - which I have done like a good circumcised whale should, as you have witnessed from outside and then inside.
“…How is it that you have not suffocated in my stomach? Well, I can tell you that, but I’m afraid I must use some technical terms you may not have heard yet. OK? Well, then, I will try to explain it as simply as I can. First you must know that our stomach is made up of four rooms in series. You are in the foremost one, which is called fore-stomach and is by far the largest of the four. There almost no digestive juice is secreted, or tapped. So, so long as you stay where you are, you will not be digested…if pickled. Oh, by the way, Jonnie, please feel free to help yourself to any fish, squid and sea weed round you. They are nicely pickled too.
“So, going back to the subject, the fore-stomach is primarily for crushing and softening big tough food. So it has a powerful muscular system. Of course I’m not working it now, for God’s order is to keep you alive; and as a result I must keep fasting as long as you are in. No appetite anyway with a monk praying in my tummy.
“Now, as you know, we sperm whales have to dive deep for extended periods of time for various reasons, and therefore we need to stockpile as much oxygen as possible in our body. Thus, our lung has come to acquire a capacity of transferring oxygen from the inhaled air into our blood by 80 to 90 %, which is very high compared with your 10 to 15 %. Also, in order to stay long in the depth, our body is made capable of reducing our buoyancy through volume reduction under high water pressure and cold temperature, like our forehead as I already explained. Likewise, our ribcage is made flexible to allow temporary lung collapse. And now, correspondingly as our volume decreases, our heart rate is slowed gradually until it is halved, and our metabolism also slows down significantly to slow the oxygen consumption.
“…Are you following so far? …Oh, you don’t understand metabolism, do you? Well, don’t worry about that, I too learned the real meaning of it only recently. That’s sort of how fast your body consumes your stock of what you have eaten, drunk or inhaled. So, the faster the metabolism, the faster you get hungry, thirsty and in need of breath. In other words, the slower the metabolism, the longer you can stay undersea without taking oxygen. …What!! you don’t understand oxygen either?! Holy cow! Didn’t your rabbis teach you some basic chemistry? …No, it has nothing to do with ox! Oxygen is something in the air that keeps you alive. …No, it’s not God!…but, maybe you are close. Anyway, know that oxygen is the thing in the air that keeps you from suffocating.
“So, turning back to my explanation, in order to keep more oxygen in our body, our myoglobin, which stores oxygen in muscle tissue, is by far more abundant than that of any other creature. Also, our blood has an extra-high density of red blood cells, which contain oxygen-carrying haemoglobin. Thus our blood can even be over-saturated with oxygen temporarily, and this over-oxygenated blood becomes the source of oxygen gas, as I will explain later.
“Now, as we stay undersea, the oxygen level of our body decreases with time and when it becomes lower than certain thresholds, emergency phases occur whereby the oxygenated blood is selectively directed towards essential organs only. Thus, the longer we stay undersea, the more essential or vital an organ must be to continue receiving the oxygenated blood. The top-most priority is given to none other than the fore-stomach - the brain only the next. The reason for this is that when we dive deep, whether to escape from an enemy like orcas or to hunt for food, we swallow a newborn, if any is with us, into the fore-stomach for protection while we fight or hunt. Then we need to prevent the baby from suffocating. Thus the oxygenated blood is kept supplied to the fore-stomach so as to maintain a certain level of oxygen concentration in the atmosphere there. So, even when we are brain-dead, the baby survives in our fore-stomach where oxygen gas is created from the blood, which is supplied to it so long as our heart beats. The baby can sneak out when it is safer.
“Now, we’ve come to the difficult part: how the oxygen is released from the over-oxygenated blood. In our fore-stomach the mucous membrane forming the inner surface of it is said to have a capacity of triggering a reaction between the blood and carbon dioxide and certain enzymes, whereby the extra oxygen is separated from the blood in the form of oxygen gas into the atmosphere. This reaction mechanism however is very complicated and has not been satisfactorily identified yet, although many scholars have postulated various theories. According to a most recent theory, which received a prize, the thin hydrogen peroxide, which is produced by organisms in our stomach, such as facultative aerobes, acts as the priming or catalyst to urge the blood to continuously give away its extra oxygen into the atmosphere.
“I was absorbed in reading a pamphlet containing the summary of this prize-winning theory and, in particular, studying the chemical formulae involved in the proposed reactions when God called me to put me on this errand of delivering you. So, my knowledge stops here and is incomplete; but I suppose what I have told you so far is enough to satisfy you that you will not expire so long as you stay where you are. So don’t you ever start writhing and kicking again in my soft tummy lest you slip into the second-stomach where you’ll be perfect jelly.
“…So, all in all, that’s about how I have been able to give you a safe harbor in my oxygen-flowing fore-stomach, …which…ugh...I already regret I did! I knew this was coming! I’m beginning to feel very sick… Woo, I feel like vomiting, as I had expected, and so did I warn my God from the beginning, didn’t I?! …Ugh, I need some good stomach pill! Brother, do you have one to spare?”
Such and many other things did Jonah hear in his dream, and if the author were to write down all of them, it would take up dozens more pages without adding any substance to the story of the prophet. So, I cut it here. It must be cautioned however that Jonah heard all of this mysterious talk only in his dream, so that the readers should not try to swallow it, for who knows Ben’s was but another fish story.
Now, eventually Jonah awoke, and found himself no longer as much terror-stricken as before despite finding himself in the fish’s belly. Thanks to some chemical reactions that had been taking place in the bodies of more sensitive creatures, a pale bluish phosphorescence had dawned in the room, which enabled him to know its landscape. He moved to a place where he would be less interfered by his room-mates, and started praying earnestly with his hissy voice and did not fall asleep again.
Jonah had been in the belly of the whale for three days, when God heard his prayer and caused the whale to feel a great nausea in the stomach. At once the whale vomited everything left inside its stomach.
Thus Jonah and his room-mates together with seaweeds were spewed out into the salty sea. Not knowing how to swim, Jonah thought he would drown, when immediately he felt his body flying in warm air and then land on a soft sandy ground. He did not know what was happening, for having been in the darkness for so long, his eyes were blinded by the dazzling daylight. As his eyes recovered from the blindness, lo and behold, what he saw with his thinly opened eyes was this!
Lying on his back with a seaweed round his head and neck, he saw two parallel transparent walls soaring high like cliffs, one on his right and the other left. Through these walls, he could see many fish and other sea animals swimming. Above, he saw a strip of bright cloudless blue sky cut between the upper edges of the walls. A seagull came flying along this narrow sky and dived between the walls. Jonah raised his head and found he was on a wet sandy passage, which stretched between the walls. Many sea animals were flip-flopping on the passage. And he could have a glimpse of something like a white beach with green plants at the far end of the passage. So he was on the seabed. A second seagull flew down and picked a fish. He thought the sea was divided in two. But he was wrong, for, looking round, he found the passage was terminated in his vicinity in a semicircular shape – where the walls joined together and were the highest, about two-giraffe high. The walls stood vertically but their surface was wobbling like an udder of a cow full of milk as when she walks hastily to escape a team of bees, flourishing her tail.
Suddenly, in the right-hand wall, Jonah saw a huge shoal of fish quickly separate in two in the middle, as if it were stage curtains drawn apart to open a show; and lo! in the opening the white whale was seen approaching at high speed. Jonah froze, for the last thing he wanted was to be swallowed by it a second time; but behold! no sooner had the wall swelled exceedingly than the whale shot out of it, scaring away the birds, and broke into the opposite wall, stunning the prophet with its godlike dizzy white body, the entirety of which was momentarily exposed in the sun between the walls. From the large breakages made by the whale, the water gushed out rapidly, expanding the breakages, and the walls began to collapse, flooding the passage. Jonah jumped up and ran up the passage racing against the tumbling, roaring water surging after him.
He tried not to step on rocks or sea animals as he ran, but soon slipped on a jellyfish and fell. His right foot, with which he stepped on it, cramped, and he could not rise. He looked back and saw a huge wave surging high against him between the closing walls; at the same moment he also saw a big turtle lying upside down on the sand and trying hard to get back on its feet. Jonah crawled back to it as fast as he could, turned it over, and hugged its shell with all his might, when they were dashed and drunk by the huge wave and violently rotated; Jonah did not let the turtle go. Its hard shell helped him avoid being wrenched and bent by the rough motion of the turbulent waves. Then, the turtle swam up and up and surfaced with Jonah on its back (for it thought it had been hugged by a deadly octopus and the best thing it knew to do was to let the enemy dry in the sunlight), and now the surging waves pushed and carried them rapidly until they were thrown on the dry beach.
Jonah looked and saw no sign of the passage nor of the whale in the sea. Then, he heard laughter and shouts of girls, who were merrily playing with a ball on the beach beyond a sparkling rivulet flowing into the sea. Jonah let the turtle go, and walked with unsteady steps into the mouth of the rivulet, for he was terribly thirsty. It was only knee deep; he scooped the water, but it was too salty, for the tide was rising.
Although the cramp in his right foot had left, he could not seem to walk upstream from hunger, thirst, and exhaustion. Moreover, the scorching sunlight was hurting his acidified skin as if by so many needles. He thought he must seek help from the girls whoever they might be, when he saw their ball rolling towards him. He trotted toward the opposite bank of the rivulet and his hands caught the ball just before it dropped into the water. He stepped onto the bank and threw it back, but it did not go even halfway.
Falling on his knees in the sand, he waved for help to the girls. He cupped his hands and pretended he was drinking from a cup to show he needed water. But he was so nearly naked they could not approach.
Then, a slender girl, with her face looking downward, came and picked up the ball with her hands, and then she raised her face and, fixing her eyes on his and pointing at a large rock nearby with her chin, said, “Hey, Mister, if you go behind that rock, we can come by to help you.” Jonah marveled at her dignified manner, and obeyed her instantly.
Then, the girls one after another came with food and drink and also half-dried clothing, for they had come to the beach for laundry in the rivulet. A girl threw the clothing over the rock so it would land on the prophet’s head, and they laughed and danced as it did so. Jonah hastily wore it. The girls marveled at his handsomeness, and, while he ate and drank ravenously, asked questions at once such as where he was from, who he was, what had happened to him, whether he was alone, where he was going, where he would put up for the night, and so on. But he could hardly speak better than hissing. Then the wind turned about, and the girls, except the first one, suddenly pranced away laughing, for he smelt terribly. The girl kept smiling at him. He thanked her...and God.
Thus ends Jonah’s unsuccessful escape from God.
continues to Chapter III https://ncode.syosetu.com/n1021go/
For Japanese version, please view（日本語版は下記にて掲載しています）：
https://ncode.syosetu.com/n0920gj/
For a version based on Qur'an “Adventures of Yunus, a Prophet of Allah,” please go to:
amazon.com/author/nagamitz-kazuhiro
