Russell Hoban - Turtle Diary

He lit a cigarette and kept shaking the match but it wouldn’t go out. He blew it out. ‘Why did you think I … Why did you think it had anything to do with me?’ he said, and certainly his voice was shaking.

‘Well, it wasn’t mine,’ I said lamely, hearing how idiotic I sounded.

‘How could it not be yours?’ he said. He looked cruel when he said it. ‘You had a dreadful feeling, a terrible dream or thought or something and you say it wasn’t yours but mine. That’s rather curious, isn’t it?’ His voice seemed to be coming from a dark and tiny place, he seemed clearer and smaller and sharper and farther away as he spoke. I felt as if I might faint.

‘Stop it,’ I said. ‘You’re not being honest.’

‘Perhaps you’re not either,’ he said. ‘Some people won’t look at what’s in them, they sweep everything under the carpet. Everything’s quite all right with them, they’re never depressed. When the shark comes up out of the dark and the chill that’s somebody else’s shark not theirs. They’re all right, Jack.’

I almost hated him for that. Any situation imposes rules of some kind and a gentleman abides by them. By coming to his door in a half-crazed state I’d created a situation in which a gentleman would have been equally open even if it made him look as crazy as I was. William G. was not wholly a gentleman and I was sorry for us both.

‘You’re being careful,’ I said.

‘I’m being careful!’ he said. ‘What about you? You’ve had green water and a shark and now you’re trying to put it on me so it won’t be you that’s falling apart.’

We were both frightened and angry, a long silence followed. Then we began to speak calmly and politely, avoiding the shark. We exchanged humdrums, presentable bits of ourselves: what I did, what he did, how this was and that. We became slightly acquainted in the dreariest conventional way. I wanted to be shot of the whole turtle affair and I knew he did too but there it was like a massive chain welded to leg irons on both of us and clanking maddeningly.

We couldn’t get to a better place in our conversation. It simply became a matter of sitting there until we could move away from our common discomfort and go back to our separate individual ones. We repeated things that needed no repetition: I said of course we must share the cost of the van, he said he’d let me know as soon as George Fairbairn got in touch with him. We both mumbled about the possible inconvenience of having to act on short notice, both agreed that that’s how it was with this sort of thing.

I went home by bus.

‘Did Miss H. ever reach you?’ Harriet said when I came into the shop on Monday.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘she did.’

‘I hope it was all right,’ she said, ‘giving her your address and telephone number.’

‘Perfectly all right,’ I said. ‘Silly of me not to have given it to her before.’

‘I had no idea she was a friend of yours,’ said Harriet.

‘Haven’t known her long actually,’ I said busying myself unwrapping a shipment.

‘Funny when you meet authors,’ said Harriet. ‘Mostly they don’t look as you’d imagine them.’

‘How would you have imagined her?’ I said.

‘Short rather than tall,’ said Harriet, ‘plump rather than thin. Married rather than not. She isn’t married, is she?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘She isn’t.’ I made a lot of noise with the wrapping paper and the conversation lapsed.

Harriet is next in line to Mr Meager and senior to me at the shop. She’s about thirty and I can remember when she did her hair in the style of the Ladies-in-Waiting at the Coronation. She’s a tall thin girl from quite a good family, her father is an MP and her face is a constant reproach even though she’s not at all bad-looking. She used to dress very conservatively, lived at home, walked as if the streets were full of rapists and wore shoes that looked as if they were designed for self-defence.

I don’t recall just when it happened but all of a sudden she came in one day wearing sandals, the kind you get at shops where they sell Arab dresses and incense. There were her white naked startled feet at the bottom of the still conservatively dressed pleated-skirt Harriet and I guessed she’d lost her virginity but little else. Her nervous-looking feet still hadn’t left home. Thank God my feet are in shoes most of the time. They don’t look as if they will ever walk in happy ways and I’m pleased not to see them.

Harriet’s feet walked easier after a time. She took to wearing long full skirts and cheesecloth blouses, her hair came down. She got herself a room, stopped wearing a bra every day and bought Time Out every week.

So there was her copy of Time Out in the kitchen at the shop and I had a look at the Classified adverts, CLAIRVOYANT and HYPNOTISM were available, ANOREXIA NERVOSA, CONSULTATIONS IN CONFIDENCE. Also NUDIST CLUB (Females free), MASSAGE TUITION, RUBBER ENTHUSIASTS, TAROT DIVINATION, NATURAL FOODS, CANDLE-MAKING, ATTRACTIVE ORIENTAL CHICK (Why was she in Miscellaneous instead of Lonely Hearts?), HOMOSEXUAL MEN AND WOMEN, PICNIC — Bring just one ingredient to share, ENCOUNTER, GROWTH CENTRE, QUAESITOR, KALEIDOSCOPE — Bio-Energetic Workshop. I glanced only briefly at Lonely Hearts in which Sensitive sensual male, 23, Handsome Aquarius, 37, and UP TO SIX DATES from only £1 offered themselves.

There are times when I do something and then I say: It’s come to that. That is of course different things at different times. It’s come to a lot of thats in my life and I suppose they’ll keep happening right up to the last and final one when perhaps my last words will be: It’s come to that.

BIO-FEEDBACK, said one advert. Alpha-Wave Machine. I’d read something about that in a magazine. People who can do proper meditation get into a state of quiet alertness in which their brain waves change, and there are now machines for monitoring the brain waves so you can hear yourself getting into or out of the state that produces alpha waves. I didn’t think I could make even one alpha wave, I didn’t think there was one quiet place in my brain. I just wished the turtles and Neaera H. would go away although sometimes I didn’t. I wished that I could turn off my head, stop thinking. My dreams are usually busy with Dora and the girls so I don’t even have any spare mental time when I’m asleep and I mostly wake up feeling worn out. Sexual fantasies offer a little distraction but aren’t really restful. Reading is all right but not always, Dostoyevsky overstimulates my mind. Cinemas are cosy until you have to go home, TV feels like self-abuse.

Lately my fantasies have been of a place that doesn’t exist. Not Port Liberty. Port Liberty is for the clear-eyed, the competent, the strong. My fantasy is of a give-up place. At County Hall maybe, in a grotty corridor, a door with frosted glass: DEPARTMENT OF CAPITULATION AND UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER. The usual stand-up desks along the wall with dried-up biros on chains. Forms to fill in: Campaigns in which served, Terms if sought, Next of kin. A kindly Indian civil servant to give procedural advice. One capitulates or surrenders unconditionally, signs things over and is sent to some kind of refuge for non-contenders. I never imagine the refuge, just the giving up. Whether they have TV or books or brothels I don’t know but it’s out of the struggle. Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas, ease after war and all that. At least there’s a model of Port Liberty but the Department of Capitulation and Unconditional Surrender doesn’t exist anywhere in any form. The loony-bin isn’t the same thing. I’m not crazy but then maybe nobody is. So I rang up Mr Bio-Feedback.