The Boy Who Swallowed A Whale

by Nikos Roussos

Episode 38

  That night Eric discovered that he had a remarkable ability not only to invent lies, but also to tell them. His wife and son had no reason to doubt that evening’s video conference with the company’s executives from the notorious Head Office. After all, there was the time difference to consider. With enough confidence that he was about to solve the mystery that was Elena Daphnopoulou, he arrived at her door and rang the bell. No answer. He looked at the time. It was a quarter past nine. He rang again. Nothing. He went for a walk and returned after a little while. No answer. It was already ten o’clock. He called her cell and it was switched off. He got in his car. He turned the engine on. A laugh was heard from the bottom of his gut. He drove in endless, pointless circles around town. He couldn’t go home. What would he say? That the meeting didn’t happen after all? How could he put such an important company on the spot?

  Episode 39

  He was walking around the square near his neighborhood with his son. The boy wanted candy floss**. They both had some. Eric noticed that they make it look quite realistic. They make it pink, just like the dyes in TV commercials. He felt he was becoming melodramatic, when he thought that his son and all young kids won’t get to have grandmothers with white hair. They talked about how pigeons fly and people don’t, how fish breathe in the sea and about other very important philosophical questions of the sort. When the boy got close to a seesaw, he asked to play. Eric justified his refusal with some explanation about weight difference. His son spoke wisely: “But for me to go up, you’ll have to come down.” How many dads are allergic to seesaws...

  Episode 40

  It was Monday when Eric made a very serious mistake at work. Although his boss tried to stay calm, he couldn’t help being critical, like a knife cutting through butter without needing to be sharpened. Elena Daphnopoulou’s vindictive smile was the straw that broke the camel’s back. He left work half hour early. He walked as if lost, trying to remember where he’d parked his car. He went around the block three times only to discover that it had been parked in its usual spot the whole time. He finally left, like the rest of his colleagues, on time.

  Episode 41

  Elena Daphnopoulou’s double betrayal had cost him a lot. Although at times he had had his doubts, he now knew for certain that she was a creature that kept reappearing in his life so often for some important reason. He just didn’t know if it was to make up for the times she had abandoned him or to bring on disaster. During his long debates with it, the whale struggled to understand why the first possibility ruled out the second. Eric was yearning to comprehend this young witch’s erratic behavior, so that day he asked her to stay a while longer at the office to ­­­­clear the air. Elena Daphnopoulou didn’t have a lot to say at that particular meeting. To the first question of why she had not been home for their date, she simply replied she hadn’t expected that Eric would go, and as for the second one, she vehemently denied having gotten satisfaction out of his mistake. The third question was: why was she flirting with him so persistently, even though she knew he was married. She smiled and told him to stop acting like a child, and that it was he who was flirting with her. The whale was enjoying this foolish dialogue. When they were left alone, she was still in a playful mood and so decided to slide up and down his esophagus, giving him a first-class nausea.

  Episode 42

  That day he didn’t have a lot of work to do at the office, so he spoke to the whale first, with no sign from it to provoke him. “What’s it like in there?” “Dark”, it replied, but it sensed Eric was disappointed by the answer. It thought it would save him the trouble, and spoke frankly: “I am one of those whales whose hearing is better than their eyesight. After all, what do I need eyesight for in here? I find my way by following two basic sounds. A long wet one that you humans call crying and a loud and relatively sharp one that you call anger. With the first I travel upwards and with the second down. All in all, apart from my size and the dry spells, I’m quite pleased with the hospitality.” It was the first time Eric suspected that, although he has twenty-twenty vision, he has serious problems with his hearing. It was the first night that, when he lay down, he didn’t get stressed or change sides while listening to his pulses.

  Episode 43

  One morning while he was shaving, Eric looked at himself in the mirror. One could say that this happened every time he shaved. But that morning was different. Everyone used to talk about the striking resemblance between him and his son. Anyone could see it with just a quick look. But if one was to compare his gaze with the boy’s, it became apparent that this was only half true. The boy without a doubt had his mother’s eyes. Those moments are awkward, when one gives the gravity of words to ideas which for too long have had the lightness of the wind. And the idea that was blowing in the sails of his soul, choosing the course of his family life, was that his son was only his. As if it was he who had given birth to him. As if his wife’s contribution was coincidental – sort of like a nanny’s. Eric became aware of the absurdity of his thought and of the severity of the realization that he didn’t know how to share. He, who had shared his body with a whale for most of his life.

  Episode 44

  As he reached the company’s entrance, he saw Elena Daphnopoulou beckoning him to hurry while she held the elevator door open. He went in and she immediately put her arms around him. He told her that she had pressed the button for the wrong floor, but, with her body surrendered to his, she paid little attention to his murmur. They reached the last floor, which was the owners’ office. She took him by the hand and headed for the fire exit. They entered a room Eric had never been in before. There were wooden carved pieces of furniture, frames with medieval maps and a lot of candles lit, with the curtains drawn. In the center of the room there was a lectern holding a big book. He read the cover: ‘The Book Of The Dead – Revised Edition’. The pages were yellowed and demanded great care when turned so as not to tear. On the first page there was a drawing of a howling wolf. A word written below: Loneliness. On the next page the wolf, head bowed as if in reverence, was moving towards the open mouth of a great monster. A word written below: Arc. On the third page two penguins were walking across a vast white landscape. On the bottom there was an illegible phrase. With a little effort he managed it: “When the floods turn to ice, and with your wings you no longer fly, at least take care with them to hug”. What difference does it make if episode 44 is real, a dream or just another one of the whale’s bizarre stories?