Russell Hoban - Turtle Diary

The turtle in Lear’s Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò looks like a hawksbill in the drawing. The man at the bookshop has not got a tiny body nor does his head grow too large but there is a good deal of Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo in him.

Through the silent-roaring ocean

Did the turtle swiftly go;

Holding fast upon his shell

Rode the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.

With a sad primeval motion

Towards the sunset isles of Boshen …

Madame Beetle is shaped somewhat like a sea turtle, especially in profile. Seen from above she’s more elongated, less shield-shaped. Her motion is primeval but not sad. Today I cleaned the tank and the filter and she’s been patrolling her domain with renewed interest, repeatedly going up and down one side that was green with algae and is now clear. I wonder if she’s looking at her reflection. ‘Domain,’ I said as if she were free and not the prisoner of my flagging invention. The shipwreck looks quite good now, a little furry and spotty, its foretop lost in green curling fronds. All of the plants are putting out new growth.

Very naval Madame Beetle looks, as neat and boaty as a model at the Science Museum. Her underside is tan with regular transverse black lines as neat as the planking one sees in models. A Victorian one-man submarine perhaps, or a little armoured galley. Up and down the sides she goes then once round the tank rowing her smooth and undulating course. Beyond her little ocean I see rooftops and the sky.

I was on the South Bank one day by the Royal Festival Hall. It was a sunny day with a bright blue sky. I was looking up at a train crossing the Hungerford Bridge. Through the train I could see the sky successively framed by each window as the carriages passed. Each window moving quickly forward and away held briefly a rectangle of blue. The windows passing, the blue remained.

Now suddenly the weather is hot, the days are heavy and humid. There are more and more strong-voiced people in the shop with sunglasses and cameras and American Express Travellers’ Cheques. Many American couples as they age seem to make a sexual exchange: the man looks feminine, the woman masculine. Or perhaps the woman takes over both sexes and the man vacates his altogether. One big strong leathery lady was in yesterday buying guidebooks and maps. She seemed to be carrying her husband under her arm as some ladies carry little dogs on buses. ‘You’d better go buy some antiques, John,’ she said to him. ‘I’m going to be here for a while.’ ‘Right,’ said John when she’d set him on his feet. He went out with his telephoto lens thrusting before him like a three-foot optical erection. If the authorities ever twig what cameras are about they’ll make old men stop flashing their telephotos.

The ocean is striking back. In this morning’s Times there was an item about a Japanese seaweed called Sargassum muticum that’s spreading everywhere. It fouls propellers and traps boats, said the report. That was to be expected.

Saturday afternoon I went to the Zoo again. The sunlight was brilliant in Regent’s Park, the air was sticky with ice-cream and soft drinks, people were rowing boats, there were girls in bikinis everywhere in the green grass and the young men walking with their shirts off. Inside the Aquarium it seemed darker than ever. I scarcely looked at the turtles, saw them out of the corner of my eye swooping like bad dreams in the golden-green.

I found George Fairbairn and we went into the room behind the turtle tank. There was another room off that one with a lot of small tanks in it, and he showed me a little turtle somebody’d given the Aquarium when they found out how big it would grow. It was some kind of Ridley he thought but he wasn’t sure which kind. I held it in my hand. One wouldn’t expect a little black sea turtle to be cuddly but it was. It was about nine inches long, heavy and solid, and waggled its flippers in a very docile way. It felt such a jolly nice little piece of life.

After we’d been chatting for a while I came right out with it, standing there between two rows of tanks with the little turtle in my hand. There were big cockroaches hopping about on the floor. ‘What if the turtle freak were to propose a turtle theft to the Head Keeper?’ I said.

‘Head Keeper wouldn’t be all that shocked by it,’ he said.

‘How would we go about it?’ I said.

‘Best time would be when we’re cleaning and painting the tank,’ he said. ‘We take the turtles out and put them in the filters and they stay there for a week maybe while the maintaining gets done. So they’re not on view and maybe for the whole week the Society wouldn’t even know they’re gone.’

‘But if you help me do it there’s really no way of hiding your part in it, is there?’ I said.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I guess there isn’t.’

‘Would they bring charges against you?’ I said. ‘Would you get sacked?’

‘They wouldn’t bring charges,’ he said, ‘and I don’t think I’d be sacked either. I’m Head Keeper and I’ve been here twenty-seven years, that counts for something. They’d take it up at a Council meeting and consider my reasons but they’d be batting on a sticky wicket actually. The RSPCA’s always interested in anything that might be considered cruelty to animals and if I said that keeping the turtles here was cruel the Zoological Society mightn’t want to push it too far.’

What about me? I wondered. Would I be had up for it? Not unless George Fairbairn grassed on me, and he wasn’t the sort to do that. ‘Are you willing to do it?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s one of those things that’s pretty well got to be done. I’ll let you know a couple of days in advance when we’re going to clean the tank. It won’t be for a month or two yet. Where’re you thinking of launching them?’

‘Brighton?’ I said. Brighton was close, and I was beginning to want it over and done with as quickly as possible.

‘Brighton’s as good as any place I suppose. Although they might have a better chance starting out farther west.’

‘Where’d they come from?’ I said.

‘Madeira.’

Madeira. The name sounded like boats and sunlight. I gave him my telephone numbers at the shop and at home. We shook hands and I left without looking at the turtles. They’d become an obligation now, and heavy.

On my way to the South Gate I saw the woman who’d been in the shop asking about turtle books. She was coming towards me, heading for the Aquarium I had no doubt. Damn you, I thought, surprised at the violence of my feelings. Damn her for what? I might as well damn myself as well, for not being young, for being middle-aged and nowhere and unhappy, for having turtle fantasies instead of living life. She had turtle business in mind, I was certain of it. And I knew she was going to ask me some kind of direct question and I was going to answer it and then we’d both be in it, it wouldn’t be just mine any more. It was the sort of situation that would be ever so charming and warmly human in a film with Peter Ustinov and Maggie Smith but that sort of film is only charming because they leave out so many details, and real life is all the details they leave out.

She was looking at me and I couldn’t look away or pretend not to recognize her. Damn her, damn her I thought. We both stopped and I could see her turning the whole thing over in her mind. She has the kind of face that doesn’t hide anything, you can read it right off. Vulnerable, I suppose. Why hasn’t she learned not to be vulnerable, she’s old enough. She was certainly going to speak, was bound to speak, couldn’t help but speak but it was difficult for her, she felt shy. Suddenly I felt sorry for her. Maybe she’d been thinking about the turtles longer than I had, maybe I and not she was the one who was intruding. All right, I thought, I’m sorry. Go ahead, speak.