Queequeg’s Ramadan was supposed to last all day, so I decided not to bother him until evening.
I have always believed that people should be allowed to follow their own religious customs, no matter how strange those customs may seem to someone else.
After all, every religion has practices that outsiders may find ridiculous.
So even though I thought Queequeg’s beliefs about Yojo were rather strange, I saw no reason to interfere.
Queequeg believed he understood what he was doing.
He seemed perfectly satisfied with his religion.
And since arguing with him would change nothing, I decided to leave him alone.
Besides, perhaps all of us are a little crazy when it comes to religion.
Some people worship one god, some worship another, and some believe their own traditions are the only correct ones.
Maybe none of us has much room to laugh at anyone else.
Toward evening, I decided that Queequeg’s fasting and religious rituals must finally be over.
I went upstairs and knocked on our door.
There was no answer.
I knocked again.
Still nothing.
I tried the door, but it was locked from the inside.
“Queequeg?”
I spoke softly through the keyhole.
Nothing.
“Queequeg, why don’t you answer?”
“It’s me. Ishmael.”
Still nothing.
I began to worry.
I had given him the whole day to complete his religious ceremony, but now I wondered whether something terrible had happened to him.
Perhaps he had suffered a stroke.
I looked through the keyhole, but the angle was awkward.
All I could see was part of the bed and a section of the wall.
Then I noticed something that made me even more uneasy.
Queequeg’s harpoon was leaning against the wall.
The landlady had taken it from him the previous evening before we went upstairs.
That seemed strange.
But then I thought about it.
Queequeg almost never went anywhere without his harpoon.
If it was still inside the room, then he must be inside too.
There could be no mistake about that.
“Queequeg!”
I called again.
“Queequeg!”
No answer.
Something had to be wrong.
I tried to force the door open, but it wouldn’t move.
I ran downstairs and found the chambermaid.
“Something’s wrong with Queequeg!” I told her.
She immediately looked frightened.
“Oh, dear! I thought something was wrong.”
“I went to make the bed after breakfast, but the door was already locked.”
“I couldn’t hear a sound.”
“It’s been completely quiet ever since.”
“I thought maybe you had both gone out and locked your luggage inside.”
Then she suddenly panicked.
“Good heavens! Mrs. Hussey!”
“Murder!”
“Apoplexy!”
She rushed toward the kitchen, and I followed her.
Mrs. Hussey soon appeared.
She was holding a mustard pot in one hand and a vinegar bottle in the other.
She had apparently been busy preparing the dining table while scolding her young servant.
“Where is the woodshed?” I asked.
“Quick! We need an axe!”
“Queequeg must have had a stroke!”
“I need to break the door down!”
I turned and started running upstairs again.
Mrs. Hussey quickly stopped me.
“What on earth is wrong with you, young man?”
“Get an axe!”
“Please, someone get a doctor while I break open the door!”
The landlady put down the vinegar bottle.
“Wait a minute.”
“Are you planning to break down one of my doors?”
She grabbed my arm.
“What’s wrong with you, shipmate?”
I quickly explained everything.
Mrs. Hussey listened carefully.
Then she suddenly remembered something.
“No!”
“I haven’t seen it since I put it there.”
She hurried to a small closet underneath the stairs.
After looking inside, she came back looking even more alarmed.
“Queequeg’s harpoon is gone!”
She gasped.
“He must have killed himself!”
“Oh, no. This is just like what happened to poor Stiggs.”
“Another blanket ruined!”
“Lord have mercy on his poor mother!”
“This is going to ruin my house.”
Then she suddenly started thinking about business again.
“Does the poor fellow have a sister?”
“Where’s that girl?”
“Betty!”
“Go find Snarles the painter.”
“Tell him I want a sign that says, ‘No suicides allowed here, and no smoking in the parlor.'”
“If we’re going to make a sign, we might as well cover both problems at once.”
Then she heard a noise.
“What was that?”
“You!”
“Stop!”
I was already rushing upstairs.
Mrs. Hussey followed me and caught up just as I was preparing to force the door open again.
“I won’t allow it!” she cried.
“You are not going to destroy my property!”
“Go get the locksmith.”
“There’s one about a mile from here.”
Then she suddenly reached into her pocket.
“Wait!”
“I have a key.”
“Maybe this one will work.”
She put the key into the lock and turned it.
The door opened slightly.
But then we discovered that Queequeg had locked it with another bolt from the inside.
Mrs. Hussey stared at it.
I stepped back.
“We’ll have to break it down.”
I moved several steps away to get a running start.
The landlady tried to stop me again.
But I pulled free and charged straight at the door.
With a tremendous crash, the door burst open.
The knob slammed into the wall so hard that pieces of plaster fell from the ceiling.
Then I stopped in amazement.
Queequeg was sitting right in the middle of the room.
He was completely calm.
He was sitting on the floor with his legs folded beneath him.
Yojo was resting on top of his head.
Queequeg didn’t look at me.
He didn’t look at the landlady.
He barely seemed alive.
He looked like a carved statue.
“Queequeg?”
I walked toward him.
“Queequeg, what’s wrong with you?”
Mrs. Hussey stared at him.
“Has he really been sitting like that all day?”
Neither of us received an answer.
We couldn’t get a single word out of him.
I almost wanted to push him over simply to make him change position.
He had probably been sitting like that for eight or ten hours.
He hadn’t eaten anything all day either.
“Mrs. Hussey,” I said, “he’s alive, at least.”
“Please leave us alone.”
“I’ll take care of this.”
The landlady finally left.
I closed the door behind her.
Then I tried to persuade Queequeg to sit in a chair.
He refused.
I tried speaking gently.
I tried joking with him.
I tried being friendly.
Nothing worked.
He wouldn’t move.
He wouldn’t speak.
He wouldn’t even look at me.
I began to wonder whether this was simply another part of his Ramadan.
Maybe this was how people in his homeland practiced fasting.
Perhaps he had to sit on the floor like this for religious reasons.
If that was the case, there was nothing I could do.
He would eventually get up.
Surely it couldn’t last forever.
And if Ramadan happened only once a year, I supposed I could survive it.
I went downstairs for dinner.
Some sailors who had recently returned from a short whaling voyage were telling long stories.
They called such a trip a “plum-pudding voyage” because it was a short voyage in the Atlantic, usually staying north of the equator.
I listened to them for hours.
By the time I went upstairs, it was almost eleven o’clock.
I was certain Queequeg’s Ramadan must finally be finished.
But when I opened the door, he was exactly where I had left him.
He hadn’t moved at all.
Now I was becoming seriously annoyed.
It seemed completely foolish to sit on the floor for an entire day and half the night in a cold room with a piece of wood balanced on his head.
“For heaven’s sake, Queequeg, get up!”
“Stretch your legs!”
“Come downstairs and eat something.”
“You’ll starve to death.”
“You’re going to make yourself sick.”
But Queequeg said nothing.
At last, I gave up.
I decided to go to bed.
Surely he would eventually finish whatever strange religious duty he was performing.
Before getting into bed, however, I took my heavy bearskin coat and placed it over him.
The night was going to be cold, and he was wearing only his ordinary jacket.
I blew out the candle.
But I couldn’t fall asleep.
The thought of Queequeg sitting only a few feet away bothered me terribly.
There he was, wide awake, sitting alone in the cold darkness.
And I was lying in bed trying to sleep beside him.
It was one of the strangest nights I had ever experienced.
Eventually, however, I fell asleep.
When morning came, I opened my eyes and looked toward Queequeg.
He was still sitting in exactly the same position.
It looked as if someone had fixed him permanently to the floor.
But the moment the first sunlight entered the room, everything changed.
Queequeg suddenly stood up.
His joints were stiff from sitting all night.
He moved toward me with a slight limp.
But his face was cheerful.
He pressed his forehead against mine, just as he had done before.
Then he smiled.
“My Ramadan is finished,” he said.
I was relieved.
As I have said before, I don’t object to anyone’s religion.
People should be free to believe whatever they want, as long as they don’t use their beliefs as an excuse to hurt or insult others.
But when someone’s religion becomes so extreme that it causes them real suffering, or makes life unnecessarily miserable, I think someone should at least try to reason with them.
So I decided to talk to Queequeg.
“Queequeg, get into bed.”
“Lie down and listen to me.”
He climbed into bed.
I began explaining what I thought about religion.
I talked about how religions had developed over time and how different peoples had created different traditions.
I tried to convince him that practices such as long periods of fasting and sitting for hours in a cold room were pointless.
They were bad for the body.
They did nothing useful for the soul.
And, in my opinion, they went against ordinary health and common sense.
I told him that he was usually one of the most sensible and intelligent men I knew.
That was why it bothered me so much to see him behaving so strangely during Ramadan.
“You’re a sensible man, Queequeg.”
“That’s why I don’t understand this.”
“Fasting weakens the body.”
“And when the body becomes weak, the mind becomes weak too.”
“So how can thoughts created by hunger be trusted?”
I continued explaining my theory.
I even suggested that many gloomy religious ideas about the afterlife might simply come from people suffering from poor digestion.
Then I made an even stranger argument.
“Think about it, Queequeg.”
“Maybe the idea of hell was invented by someone who ate a badly digested apple dumpling.”
“Then other people kept repeating the idea for generations.”
Queequeg listened quietly.
I asked him whether he had ever suffered from indigestion.
He thought about it.
Then he said that he had experienced it only once in his life.
He told me it happened after a huge feast given by his father, who was a king.
His father had celebrated a great military victory.
Fifty enemies had been killed by the middle of the afternoon.
And that very evening, according to Queequeg, they had all been cooked and eaten.
I immediately raised my hand.
“That’s enough, Queequeg.”
“Please don’t say anything more.”
I already understood what he meant.
I had once met a sailor who had visited Queequeg’s island.
He had told me that after a major victory, the people there sometimes roasted the dead enemies.
The cooked bodies were then placed on large wooden serving dishes.
They were decorated with breadfruit, coconuts, and other food.
Sometimes the dead were even presented with something in their mouths.
The victors would then send these dishes to their friends as gifts.
It sounded horrifying to me.
In their culture, however, it was apparently part of the celebration.
After all my arguments about religion, I don’t think I had changed Queequeg’s mind very much.
For one thing, he seemed to understand religious discussions only when they were explained from his own point of view.
For another, he probably understood only part of what I was saying, no matter how simply I tried to explain it.
And finally, Queequeg probably believed that he understood religion much better than I did.
He looked at me with a strange mixture of sympathy and amusement.
It was almost as if he thought I was a sensible young man who had unfortunately become hopelessly confused about spiritual matters.
Eventually, we both got dressed.
Queequeg then ate an enormous breakfast.
He ordered several kinds of chowder and ate with great enthusiasm.
He seemed determined to make sure the landlady didn’t earn too much profit from his day of fasting.
Once breakfast was over, we left the inn.
We walked toward the Pequod together, chatting casually as we went.
We even picked our teeth with pieces of halibut bone.
At last, we were on our way to the ship.