6.
But three candle crates left.
I awoke in a rage, angry at my imprisonment, fearful that the beast might one day find my son. And that when it has us both in here, we shall all three drift down and perish at the bottom of the ocean. I must get out, warn him, ward him off. And I must do it this day.
Down I went, to the floor of the beast. From there I started clambering up the throat again, the pitch ever steeper, the road narrower. I fought the post coming in, slipped down, but was up again. I was doing well until a mean throatwave thumped me, smashed me back home again. Did I weep? No, never. I screamed in anger.
“YOU SHALL NOT HAVE HIM! I SHALL KILL YOU FIRST!”
I went at it then. There was a pick-like object in the Maria, and I commenced smashing into the floor of the beast. I’d tunnel my way out, as the best prisoners do. I’d dig my way to freedom.
I struck the surface with the pick. It did little, but a pinprick in its surface. And again. And again. The hole getting larger. More! A hole, finally! One I might sink my arm into. I was sweating then, in my fury; I meant there and then to dig my way out. With a candle alight on a crate beside me, I bailed out the blood that filled the hole, but the blood filled up so quickly that I could catch only the briefest glimpse of my endeavor. Still, there was no doubt, the hole was getting bigger. Joseph the giant killer!
I was in such a passion that at first I did not notice the shaking in the belly, the rumbling of the creature—until it leapt. A great heaving in answer to my tunneling, in pain I do suppose, and I leapt with it. It tossed me up into the air, the candle, too, and before I landed again the candle was out and all was dark and I lay in pain just as it swam in pain. And it was no good, no good at all. I held the Lucifer in my pocket, but it gave me such little relief.
The tunneling would never work.
I am so small.
I cannot kill it; it is not possible. The fish is too large.
My son, stay away.
And yet, despite everything, there is life here! A crab, a tiny life in my beard. I call her Olivia.
Olivia gives me much comfort as she busies about my great landscape of hair, which is her home. I tap her very gently upon her flat head, as if she were my cat. And in return she flees sideways, or lifts up her dear arms and nips me. How it grins me to be so nipped. I am so proud of her. She is so brave, she makes me braver. She is excellent good company.
Such playing!
With the precise aim of being less frightened, I have resolved to stare the beast down. I have tried to ignore its existence altogether, but this—when it takes a deep plunge for example, or when it drips, stinks, creaks, gases, heaves, darkens, pinches, bites, and growls at me—I find impossible to sustain. And so I have wondered if, rather than feigning ignorance of the creature, I should do better to look it right in the face. It never shows itself—it cannot, after all, for I lodge deep within it—and so I must only guess what my prison looks like from the outside. Do prisoners, I wonder, consider the outward appearance of their gaol?
But, clever as I am, I have contrived an exercise.
I have painted its eye: Or, I should say, what I suppose its eye to look like. It is a black eye, with some red and orange about it, and then thick hide all around. A small eye for such a big creature, but so dark that you might fall into it; a stomach of an eye, to be sure; a pit, a well, a cave, a death.
Every day, for ten minutes, I stare at the eye. (I say ten minutes, but it is only a guess. At least ten, I should say. Perhaps as many as thirty, though that is most troubling.) I sit me down in Captain Tugthus’s chair, I place the beast eye before me, and I stare it down.
Sometimes—often, I should admit—the eye has the better of me and I tremble, but not for very long.
I tell it: You will not have my son.
Memento mori. Remember death. Ah, yes, I do not forget! Solemnly, every day, I prepare my rickety carcass. I, so to speak, pack my bags. I stare at my own exit. This way, I can say to myself: Man, you man, you stared at that creature today! I do impress myself. How brave! And so I feel better, and so I grow stronger. A knight fully armored, charging into war. A David staring down his Goliath.
Old age is a single room.
Ink. I am running out of you. And when the heavy bottle is out it will be another kind of death. I could write in my own blood, I suppose, but it wouldn’t suit, and it would so limit my verbiage. I could write in its blood, the beast’s, but how it would heave in protest. I have so little to luxuriate in, I would not run out of words. Oh, please, I beg, do keep me in words. Olivia, I fear very much to go silent.
