A Sea Tale
by Deborah Stein
Deborah Stein, La Noche, watercolor, gouache on paper, 12 x 16 inches, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
A Sea Tale
DEBORAH STEIN | July 2024 | Issue 35
Prologue
I have always wanted to make a children’s book, but stories for children don’t seem to come these last few years. Perhaps because I am a thousand years in and cannot remember what innocence is. I’d have to work harder at clearing the wreckage out of my turtle-heart to open it for that kind of business.
I’m trying to learn and unlearn so many things, yet each attempt to write or even adapt stories for little people ends up a fable for old people who feel the weight of the systems they are stuck in, the opposite of innocence.
And so is my adaptation of a short children’s story called The Fisherman of Cefalú by Italian educator and storyteller Gianni Rodari from his 1962 book, Telephone Tales (republished in English by Enchanted Lion Press). It begins with a Sicilian fisherman who catches a tiny sea creature and a tiny sea creature who begs the fisherman not to throw him back.
In my version of Rodari’s tale, the sardine-like creature promises to make the fisherman rich if the fisherman will feed and care for him. The fisherman takes him home, packing the tiny creature in with his other hungry children. The tiny sardine-sized thing eats and gets strong and goes on to make the fisherman rich, so rich that the fisherman forgets all that the tiny magical creature did to help him. And when the sea creature suggests the now wealthy fisherman might better the world, the fisherman becomes annoyed, shuts the little creature in a clam shell and throws him back to the sea. Finally the fable flips its eventual ending into a perpetual beginning. Also, I added a mermaid.
As I write and rewrite this story which is a fable which is a saga which is a prayer, I’m in the immense ocean of this tale, hanging with gulls, bobbing around the waves with jellyfish, wondering whether to keep my shell open or shut for business. If I tried writing this ten more times until it was for kids would it still work? Would they get the truths of a merciless world I'd love for them to live without? Which is why it’s here instead, for aged worried children who are 100 years old. Perhaps I’m trying to see if it’s more at home here in this shell?
Finally, after finishing this draft, which speaks to the process of writing I guess, I get now how the mermaid is an incomplete invention, how every living creature is a raw draft of a story, an incomplete invention. I get how every story now is just a sea tale in its ancient heart, bobbing around, waiting to be found.
“I’m here to tell you the tide will never stop coming in.
I’m here to tell you whatever you build will be ruined, so make it beautiful.”
— From Spoiler by Hala Alyan
A Sea Tale Chapter One: The Fisherman of Cefalú
Once was a fisherman, lost at sea, the fisherman of Cefalú.
Seascape, Deborah Stein, tea, ink and watercolor, Atlantic Ocean water on paper, 12 x 16 in. 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
Chapter Two: The Sea Creature of Everywhere
And once was a sea creature the size of a sardine, smaller than a sardine, also lost at sea.
The sea creature the size or smaller of a sardine was blown to sea and bobbed upon the waves for forever it seemed. “We knew somehow we’d meet again,” said the sardine boy to the sea.
A story can go many ways. I used to be better at beginnings.
Chapter Three: The Waves
“The Mistral Winds are powerful today,” said the fisherman to himself on his small wooden boat, fishing his way out to sea. He said this to Ernest Hemingway. He said this to the mermaids from every mermaid tale. He said it to whoever might be listening out there on the waves because he knew there weren’t many who would listen for a fisherman let alone listen to a fisherman. He was thinking in particular of his own family. He was thinking of course: the fish.
The sea creature lived inside a scallop shell for a long while. When that shell tossed him out in a storm it was clam shells, oyster shells, once a conch, once even a cowrie, but cowries were cramped quarters, dark holes. He rode in a whale’s blowhole for a bit and many a mermaid’s nest. You could say he was a Bukowski type. Last week he’d gotten notice of a rent increase. It was no secret his landlord was a real asshole. And as his sandcastle crumbled around him, he took only his treasured belongings: a small motorcycle helmet made for him by a kindly seahorse which kept the reef coral from beating his skull in and a miniature painting of a four masted sailing ship he’d found in his travels.
Then the waves carried the castle off. The waves carried off the tiny sardine boy as well.
Deborah Stein, The Sea, watercolor, walnut ink and pencil on paper, finished digitally, 12 x 9 inches, 2023. Courtesy of the artist.
“My landlord is a real asshole,” he said to a hermit crab surfing alongside.
“Aren’t they all?” said the crab over a cigarette break from this story. Then came the jellyfish blowing a smoke ring from its perfect dirty mouth.
“This story is wafting out from the sea’s surface in smoke rings,” said The Story.
“Bubbling actually,” corrected the hermit crab.
“Clever,” said the fisherman, reeling out, coming upon nothing of value, blowing his sails ever more out to see where the true fish hid in this corner of the ocean. There were none.
“Mostly jellyfish here,” said the jellyfish, lighting his next cigarette with his last cigarette, sign of a significant problem.
This isn’t about the jellyfish although there are lots of jellyfish in this sea.
“More jellyfish might be nice. Maybe a mermaid?” This Story responds.
Chapter Four: A Crash
An eternity.
A package of tobacco and four sneaker waves later, the fisherman catches onto a sea stack with his line and tugs and struggles and tugs some more.
A Sea Tale in Process, Photo by Deborah Stein, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
The fisherman brought his net down under what he thought was a giant fish on the line, maybe a shark, but when it emerged from the rocky sea and landed in the boat it was just a rock.
“It's just a stupid rock!” he yells to no one listening. He yells to Ernest Hemingway.
The little thing croaked as loudly as he could to the fisherman, the cacophony of the sea crashing all around the boat but the Mistral Wind hollering was a nuisance to their communication, drowning out the tiny strange sardine-like voice. The fisherman was the first person the creature had pleaded with for years. “HELP H E L P! ASSISTANCE PER FAVORE!”
The Story is reporting that the fisherman will soon find out that the rock is a clam and the clam contains a tiny creature inside.
“I’M NOT A ROCK!” the creature yells from the clam.
“Stupid clam,” says the only fisherman in the boat, prying open the clam with his thumbs, finding a sardine inside. The fisherman steadies his reading glasses to see a thumbnail of a childish thing with fins and legs, with a head the size of a pearl on a pin, and glistening skin! Listening! He pokes at the little thing, pries it from the clam shell, sees its pale fins, the thinness of its tiny legs, its shimmering pearl head.
The sea calms. The Story calms too.
“This minuscule creature, the size of a pin, is a theme in this story,” says The Story. “The size of the moon when it is very far away also is a theme in this story.”
A story can have many themes and that’s what might make it truer. What is the theme you are living right now? It is also the theme of this story.
“Stupid sardine-looking thing,” says the fisherman, squeezing the thing from the clam in his fist, raising his arm to throw it back to sea but the miniscule creature, stinking of seaweed, cheap vodka and Clamato, the creature the size of a thumbnail, the size of a sardine but not a sardine, with arms and legs and little boots on each tip of its tailfin, and a head the size of the very far away moon and the heart of Bukowski, is screaming a shriek, “Hey!Whoa!Ouch! You’re hurting me!”
The grizzled fisherman, stinking himself of seaweed, salt, bait, returns, “I’m up to my ears in children and can’t keep you,” and leans back to pitch.
The little thing catches its breath: “Wait! I can make you rich! And though I’m living on cheap booze in broken shells all around this sea, floating nowhere with a gang of squid and hermit crabs and jellyfish, I know this sea from its deepest depths to its minnowy shallows! If you can make me comfortable and feed me as you feed your children, I’ll help you bring in the biggest fishes, all I can find. I’ll show you where the pearls and treasures live, but you know, I myself cannot eat pearls! Everything in the sea is free but it's a slim time…and what you see here,” motioning to all of his very small self, “is no cannibal.”
Deborah Stein, Meeting, Watercolor, gouache, digital collage, 18 x 12 in, 2023. Courtesy of the artist.
The Fisherman is a wretched fellow himself in this story’s beginning.
A slim time at sea is a slim time on land.
“All those children,” says the old man counting. “Do you know what all those teeth sound like, chattering in the cold in a rickety house on stilts by the sea? I can’t bring home more teeth to chatter, even your tiny teeth have no value to me. My walls have crumbled down. I can’t bring you home,” then, “Did you say pearls?”
And we are far from the shore now. We are in the middle of the sea of the story, finding our way to some next thing. All we have is hope in this part. All we have is each other.
Sardine Boy, Deborah Stein, watercolor study, 2023. Courtesy of the artist.
Chapter Five: The Transaction
The fisherman hides Sardine Boy’s little fins in a suit he’s sewn himself and gives the sardine boy a home on a cluttered shelf with a little bed made from a matchbox. In return, Sardine Boy gives the fisherman pearl after pearl and shows him where sea treasures wait.
The fisherman cannot believe how much the sardine boy can eat.
Sardine Boy eventually becomes a bigger sardine boy now, with a healthier fin on his back and chubby little legs with which to swim. He is trained as the company accountant, crunching numbers, pistachios from Etna, Arancini, and Involtini of all types.
Deborah Stein, Land, watercolor, gouache, ink, digital collage 12 x 9 in., 2023. Courtesy of the artist.
But in time, even with all the pleasures of land and riches, the sardine boy becomes quite sad.
“The fisherman owns a fleet of boats now,” says The Story. “He’s swiftly become quite rich. In come all the hauls of all the fish in the sea now. He even sells the sea’s shells to tourist shops by the seashore and to jewelers and canneries and road makers in his now enormous boats with their enormous nets which drag every living thing to land in this version.”
Sardine Boy sees that the fisherman is a mean boss who pays deficient wages, and speaks to his employees and wards as if they are lowly or thick.
“A terrible feeling,” says The Story.
The Sardine Boy lay ignored. The fisherman mogul, eventually forgets his tiny accountant, and how the creature gave up the secrets of the sea to give him his new life. The fisherman can’t even remember the sardine boy’s name.
Another Chapter: A Digression
Maybe you are wondering, were there better times for the small sardine lad? When was there kinship? Were there affections?
Maybe you want to hear about the understory before the story of his entanglement in the net of The Fisherman of Cefalú, how this sardine-like boy became lost at sea in the first place?
Because I’m guessing we all know how a fisherman might get lost at sea. But a child who is like a sardine who aims to help a poor fisherman and creates a monster instead?
There was a mermaid he remembered best. He remembers the way she found him lost in a kelp forest and how she pried him from the mouth of a man-o-war. He remembers the nest she made from a sea urchin so the octopi wouldn’t bother him. He remembers the little boots she gave him that turned his two finnish fins into tiny feet that could walk.
He stayed there for a time.
She had told him not to stray too far or the current would take him but soon enough he was led away by jellies. Same old story.
It was this mermaid he’d always hoped would find him again but he’d be the first to admit he never quite knew if she was real or an illusion. And he never quite knew if he was an illusion to her either.
What he did know is she showed him kindness. And something that felt like love. And to be loved for your authentic self in one’s tiny life is everlasting, real or illusion, on land or underwater.
Maybe it was she who gave him his strange little life itself?
We won’t ever really know.
We do know he was looking for something or someone for all his days until the fisherman came along.
Deborah Stein, Found, watercolor, ink and gouache, on paper, then collaged digitally, 12 x 16 in. 2023. Courtesy of the artist.
Chapter Six: The Meeting
The sardine boy calls a meeting.
The fisherman and Sardine Boy will assemble at noon in the cove of Cefalú in the town where the fisherman is now mayor and is cornering the market on seaweed.
The Sardine Boy in his little suit to hide his little fin speaks first: “There is trouble afoot if you keep being so cruel—you cannot go on like this!” He continues, “Or of course you can go on like this but nothing good will come of it,” pointing to the sea and its few tired fish left in it.
“You could do something good for the world with all that money.”
And at that, in an act of really forgetting his promise to take care of our little fellow, the fisherman acts instead in the spirit of organizational change, grumbling, “Same old story.” He slams our poor little creature shut in a shell, winds the string from his pocket from his Christmas panettone around it and throws Sardine Boy back to sea to be taken by the waves, forgetting him forever.
Deborah Stein, Same Old Story, watercolor, ink, gouache on paper, then collaged digitally, 12 x 16 in. 2023. Courtesy of the artist.
Chapter Seven
Deborah Stein, The End/The Beginning watercolor, ink, gouache on paper, then collaged digitally, 12 x 16 in. 2023. Courtesy of the artist.
Afterward: Amy
I ask my friend Amy if this ending is too real.
I write: Amy, I think it’s too real somehow and not real enough. I feel like it equates with something happening in the world and not sure anyone wants a story that will break their hearts. It is an old forever tale that goes something like this.
I thought maybe I just needed to throw a mermaid at the problem—not a Hans Christian Anderson mermaid but a fairy godmother, some kind of intimate interloper. But she became a beacon. I fell too in love with her. I fell too in love with Sardine Boy, lost and more lost forever, an eternal cyclical folktale. Maybe it's about me and my dog.
Perhaps the end is always a beginning.
With every toss the sardine child transforms. His tiny heart hardens but really it softens. Sardine Child is not like Pinocchio. Sardine Child is more like…Sardine Child. Every time. Because really, this is the ending which is also a beginning which is the thing fairytales are made of, right? Am I doing this right?
Within the time it takes to skip a stone on water, Amy writes back:
"Deb,
Are we not all magical chubby sardines thrown back to the sea, and also the ones who do the throwing?
Love,
Amy
Index
Deborah Stein, Chocolate Sardines, digital photograph, 2023. Courtesy of the artist.
Deborah Stein is an artist and writer who lives between New York City and Northern New Mexico with her partner James and their little dog Pablo. Her second solo show, VIBRANT MATTER is at LDBA Gallery in Santa Fe through May 19, 2024. Deborah was a fiction fellow working with Sabrina Orah Mark at the Under The Volcano residency in Tepoztlán, Mexico in January 2023, and was in residency at The Fine Arts Works Center in Provincetown, MA in May 2023. Her art and writing has appeared in Khôra, Rowayat, The First Person and in collaboration with Here Projects. When she isn’t working on her art she’s writing, each is part of the other for her. Both enter into the classes she teaches and her practice lends support to the artists she strives to encourage and inspire through her rogue art school, The StoryCamp Disco.