The Carp of the Small Room

What it looks like, and what it does

A fat bronze carp with a head as clear as glass. Inside the skull, a tiny lit room: a table, a lamp, a window, a calendar, and a person the size of a grain of rice. The carp turning slowly in dark water.

Floats near the surface at dusk and rotates to show the room to anyone watching. When netted, it dies, and the room goes dark but the calendar keeps its date.

What is known

First caught in 1907 at a reservoir and kept in a jar at the village school. The room inside is plainly furnished. There is a window, and through it a tiny landscape with weather.

Each carp's room is different. The figure within is always one person, never the same in two fish. The calendar on the wall shows a date that advances one day for each of ours. The figures sometimes look up.

What it can do

• Contains a small room that appears to hold a whole life
• Turns to face the observer

Where it stops

• Cannot live in moving water
• Dies within a week of being caught

An encounter

Pym watched the figure in the carp lay a table for one and sit down to eat. He watched it for an hour. When he held up a lamp, the figure stood, and went to the window, and drew its curtain. He let the fish go, and wrote in the school log that it had asked for privacy.

Alfred Pym, schoolmaster, The reservoir at Thorne End, A dusk in September

What is established, and what is only said

• established: Five carp have been examined. All contained a lit room, a single occupant and a calendar.
• incomplete: The calendars advance at one day per day. Their dates do not correspond to any year on record.
• interpretation: Each room may be the last place a drowned person went before leaving. They may be keeping it tidy.

Still unresolved

A sixth carp, caught in 1932, held a room whose occupant turned and waved at the observer, by name.

Where it has been recorded

• Thorne End (confirmed) — Recorded by Alfred Pym, schoolmaster.

Stories about it

• Someone Is Keeping House (Entity story, 4 min) — A schoolmaster at the Thorne End reservoir watches a fish turn its glass head to the bank and show, inside it, a small lit room in which a life of one is being kept in good order.

Connected entities

• Edda Lowe — Both hold a life behind glass, one old and one very small. Both are kept by someone who looks in every day.