Tale of a Fish by Nancy Ludmerer

Parabola, Spring 1996

I swallowed him whole.  Yes, it was me, not Moby Dick, or one of his relatives, not a whale at all.  It was me, Bigi, a Big Eye tuna fish.  

There I was, minding my own business, cruising along, checking out the damsel fish, when I heard God call my name. And He commanded me to swallow Jonah.

And so began the longest three days and nights of my life, spent floating motionless, waiting for God to release me.  God didn’t tell me how long it would be for, only that I had to keep the man alive. 

The glimpse I caught of Jonah before I swallowed him revealed a troubled spirit.  He seemed a good man at heart but, according to God, was trying too hard to keep a low profile.  He refused to do God’s bidding.

I questioned whether such a stubborn, stiff-necked man would be tender or sweet to eat in any event.  But the longer Jonah was inside me, the hungrier and thirstier I became, and the harder it became to avoid consuming him.  I did not want to make the same mistake Jonah had made, and find myself in the belly of some sailor.  

It wasn’t easy.  Each of my jaws contains a single row of sharp pointed teeth.  And my pharynx is lined with pharyngeal teeth for tearing and chewing. Were I to duck my head, or scratch an itch, or yawn, with a single stroke I might injure or decapitate my tenant.

Yes, tenant.  That’s how I came to view him once I realized I couldn’t make a meal of him.  Kind of like a squatter.  He smelled of his days at sea without fresh water for bathing, and he tasted of running away and loneliness and fear.  Still, I craved him. 

During those three endless days and nights that Jonah was in residence I thought a lot about my mother.  I longed for her counsel. It was my mother who nicknamed me Bigi, short for my given name, Big Big, and I always reckoned I was her favorite.  At least she always seemed to have a particular concern for me.  From the time I was hatched she would gaze at me with a worried look and say, “Bigi, keep a low profile.”

Honestly, I had tried.  But when a deep sonorous voice broke through the crashing music of the waves and called “Bigi!” I responded, “Here I am.”  Hineni. Bigi was my mother’s pet name for me. But it was clearly not her voice, and I was surprised.

It was God.  The Bible has since reported: “Now the Lord prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.” Great fish, mind you, not whale.  I will never understand how a whale managed to get the credit for my act.

I also question the use of the word “prepared,” not only because it smacks of flour and seasoning, but because nothing could have prepared me for what was to follow.  And God didn’t even try.  To be sure, He had His hands full with Jonah, whom He’d commanded to be a prophet and who had run off to sea instead. For me, swimming away wasn’t an option.  This was God, who meant business. 

By the third day, the temptation of Jonah was becoming too great for me to resist.  Had I tear ducts, I would have wept.  Many so-called vegetarians say they make an exception for fish because fish don’t have feelings.  We have feelings, just no way of expressing them.

When, finally, “God spake unto the fish and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land,” I again wanted to weep—this time with joy. Instead, I took off at thirty miles an hour straight to my mother.

After I broke my fast, I told my mother what had happened. She said she was proud of me.  She told me that once when she was young, her scales shining like silver, her yellow-brown finlets edged with satiny black, a boy named Jonah had caught her and then carefully removed the hook and thrown her back.  It was after that close call that she hatched me and over three hundred of my brothers and sisters.

“You’re saying this was the same Jonah?” I asked, incredulous.  “And that is why I wasn’t allowed to eat him?” 

“Perhaps,” she said. “Perhaps not.” Then she said, “Bigi, swim up to the surface for a moment and tell me what you see.”  With a lunge I obeyed, and made it to the surface and back in only two minutes.  I reported to my mother that I saw a wave, in fact many waves, white-tipped and glistening.

“And where were they going?” my mother asked.

“Going?” I asked.  “I couldn’t tell.  I saw only that they were moving and going somewhere.”

“It’s the same with the things we do,” my mother said.  “That boy – I’m sure his name was Jonah – couldn’t know what would happen if he threw me back, and couldn’t know that you would one day save the life of a man called Jonah.  And I don’t suppose you can know the result of saving this man, or where it will lead. You can be sure only that it will lead somewhere, and that it was the right thing to do.”

As I settled down to digest my meal I thought about my mother’s words. They made it seem unimportant that some whale got the credit for being God’s instrument.  What had happened to me, after all, was but one roll of a wave in a constantly moving sea.  Perhaps even God didn’t know where the waves would lead.

After that I slept, my belly full.

Dedicated to my son, Jonah Ari Peppiatt

Reprinted in Collateral Damage: 48 Stories by Nancy Ludmerer (Snake Nation Press 2022), available via 

nancyludmerer.com