From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjon Read Free Book Online

bird, do not let Man’s innumerable acts of wickedness weary you into fluttering too close to their bonfires, lest your flight feathers be singed … Indeed, we must look to our wits, brother Jeremiah …
     

     
BLUEBOTTLE:
lays oblong eggs from which maggots hatch; if they are kept in a bull’s horn, come the spring they will turn into flies which the trout enjoys. The bluebottle is fat and as thick as a man’s thumb.
     

II
     

(Summer Solstice, 1636)
     

 
    Last winter I was as solitary as Adam in his first year in Paradise, though the island in winter is nothing like that delightful place. It is cold and bleak and one does not venture out of doors except to empty one’s chamber pot, and not properly even then; one merely opens the door a crack, just wide enough for the pot. I was more like a wretched mouse in its hole than a man created in God’s image. As little and hunched as the rat’s cousin, not ramrod straight, proudly surveying my domain like Adam. Ah, yes, Adam was tall and held his head high. That way he could see over the whole world, for he was bigger and heavier than his living descendants, just under thirty yards in height, and with such a head of hair that his locks cascaded like a waterfall over his loins. He was the largest living creature that God had created from earthly clay. And all through that year as he walked the earth alone, his massive body was being fired and glazed by the sun like clay in an oven. All growth was new: the trees put down roots, sprouted, then dropped their leaves and stood naked for the first time. The swans rose honking from the moorland tarns and heard their own voices for the first time. The lily opened her flowers and her perfume filled the air for the first time. The bee alighted on the dwarf fireweed and quenched her thirst with fresh honey before buzzing in flight to the next flower cup. It had never happened before. Everything was new to the eyes of the man and he was entirely new to himself. Moulded by the Master from the four elements, as they combine in the earth, he was closer to his origins now than he ever would be again. His blood was still diluted with seawater, there was gravel in his flesh, roots crept along his sinews and muscles, the seed that quickened to life in his testicles was thick as spider silk and foamy as sea spume. Thus he strode across the world and wherever he looked he saw to the ends of the Earth. At night the starry sky turned over his head, an ever-moving, twinkling, living picture show, and his childish eyes began at once to draw lines between the points of light as he sought there for parallels to the things that he perceived on his journeys by day: a swan, a ram, a snake. By day the blazing orb of the sun floated over his head and its heat drew the sweat from his skin. On the longest day of the world’s first year Adam grew so hot that the sweat broke out all over him and ran in torrents down his colossal trunk. Most of the liquid was absorbed by the golden mane that cloaked his body, and to wring the wetness from his hair Adam shook himself as he had seen the dog do – alone of all beasts this creature had taken to following him wherever he went – but in spite of such tricks the sweat continued to spring from its human source. Adam bent his head and cupped his hands to catch the liquid that poured down his forehead and fell like rain from his brow. He watched the bowl fill and the level of the salty water rising fast, before long reaching his thumb and forefinger, but for a moment before it flowed over the sides, its surface grew still and Adam saw a wondrous sight in the mirror of his hands: he saw himself. Thirst had not yet driven him to the waters, he did not yet know hunger, for a year was no more than an hour to the immortal man. And so he did not know himself in the eyes that gazed at him from the pool of sweat, did not recognise the smooth, glowing face that framed them, nor the nose that separated them. Shrieking