Russell Hoban - Turtle Diary

‘Too much!’ I heard myself saying. ‘Too much!’ I said it again.

‘What you mean?’ said Sandor, filling up the doorway and growing larger. His breath smelt the same as the cooker. Squid? Kelp? Goat hair?

‘Too much!’ I said again like some clockwork idiot.

‘What?’ said Sandor with a very red face and a very black moustache. ‘What the devil you mean?’

‘You clean that cooker,’ I said.

‘What clean cooker? Who say?’ said Sandor. More breath.

‘You clean cooker, I say.’ I poked him in the chest with my finger. Springy chest, great deal of hair.

‘Mind,’ he said. ‘Go slow, I caution you. Piss off. All best.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not all best. All bleeding worst. Clean that cooker right now.’ I grabbed him by the lapels of his dressing-gown. I was quite surprised to see my hands shoot out and do it. Thin wrists.

‘Aha!’ said Sandor. ‘You better don’t make trouble, you.’ His hands shot out. Thick wrists. All of a sudden I was turned round with my left arm twisted up behind my back. I flung my right arm back as hard as I could and caught him in the face, then we were both on the floor and he had me in, yes, a scissors grip. I started to laugh but lost valuable breath doing it. What a terrible pong he had. His personal smell, no amount of bathing would have helped. He tightened his legs and I felt all my ribs crack. I might have known that a man with a moustache and an accent like that would be an accomplished wrestler. I wished I’d waited till he’d got his trousers on, he was only wearing underpants and I hated his bare legs round me.

We’d fallen out of his doorway into the hall. My face was on the musty threadbare carpet, one ear pressed to the silence of the carpet, the other listening to Sandor’s heavy breathing as he squeezed harder. A train went by on the far side of the common and in my mind I saw it under the wet grey sky, under the trailing edges of grey cloud drifting, the single clatter of the train as lonely, as only as a trawler out at sea, the only diesel putter on the wide grey sea with silence all round as far as the eye could see.

In my mind I saw the wet iron rails receding Putney-wards, cold wet iron in the rain, red lights, green lights shining on the iron, shining red, shining green, fixed and flashing, no confusion. The rails led very likely to Port Liberty. That was my mistake, I’d always thought a sea approach and never thought how very iron and wet the rails were. Tower Hill, the lights would say that passed beyond the trees along the common, Upminster or Edgware. I could see in my mind the grey and rainy air over the trains, over the common, in between the branches of the trees. I stretched out my hands, thought of holding the grey air cool and wet in my hands.

I’d been wrong to feel my past no longer mine. I was joined umbilically to all pasts but why labour it. Squeezing was all very well, the question was: did one in fact want to come out. Was one willing. To be. For whom was the effort being made? Not the untold jackdaws walking on the quay, I wasn’t going to believe that. I’d asked a straight question and I wanted a straight answer. Was it for her? Was it for him? I didn’t think it was for me. Go ahead and squeeze, I thought. I’m not coming out just because you want me out. It bloody isn’t for me.

Not for me at all. On the other hand what was. For anybody. Nothing really. Not for her when she came out and not for him. Nor would my coming-out be for anyone whatever they might think. In that case why hold on to me. A futile gesture. Life went on, one couldn’t stop half way. I was getting angry. There was a redness silently exploding in my mind. Violence. Lovely. Bumpitty bump.

I was on the landing feeling quite wrenched and pulled about. Mr Sandor was one flight down, rubbing himself in various places and looking up at me with great concentration. Now he’s really going to be angry, I thought. I didn’t mind. I didn’t care if we killed each other.

Mrs Inchcliff came racing up the stairs. She’d never smoked, stairs were nothing to her even at sixty. ‘What’s happening?’ she said. ‘Why is everyone lying on the floor? Are you both all right?’

‘We have collision,’ said Sandor. ‘Down we tumble.’ He was still staring at me and I saw in his face that he saw in my face that I wasn’t afraid of him any more.

Later I drove the van back to VANS 4-U. Five hundred and fifteen miles without a dent or a scratch! I was tremendously impressed by that. The shape of the van was so different from the shape of me and my life, how had we managed to stick together without hitting anything for all those miles!

Something very slowly, very dimly has been working in my mind and now is clear to me: there are no incidences, there are only coincidences. When a photograph in a newspaper is looked at closely one can see the single half-tone dots it’s made of. There one sees the incidence of a single dot, there another and another. Thousands of them coinciding make the face, the house, the tree, the whole picture. Every picture is a pattern of coincidence unrecognizable in the single dot. Each incidence of anything in life is just a single dot and my face is so close to that dot that I can’t see what it’s part of. I shall never be able to stand back far enough to see the whole picture. I shall die in blind ignorance and rage.

The men who used to work in the hole in the street are gone, the hole is closed up. I don’t know if the street is different or not. In the shop where I’d seen the oyster-catcher on TV all the screens showed two men in sombreros shooting at each other with revolvers from behind rocks.

I passed an antique shop. There was a brown and varnished sea-turtle shell in the window. A black man — was he from the Caribbean? — was looking at it. He wore a white mac, it was a wet grey day. Next door was a fruiterer, there were oranges. The rain stopped, the sun came out into a gunmetal sky. ‘Well, yes,’ I said aloud. ‘Of course.’

The black man turned and looked at me. ‘Tortuguero,’ he said. He said it like a password but made no secret sign. He said it because he needed to say the name aloud just there and then to me. I nodded, felt dizzy with my face against the dot. How did he know that I knew where Tortuguero was? I shall never see the picture. I could grind my teeth and weep.

On my desk in the middle of the night does some tiny figure look at Madame Beetle and dream of setting her free? Is there any limit to smallness and largeness? Is it possible actually to hold an orange in the hand? Iron and wind are both grey. Would there be oyster-catchers in armour on the rooftops if I looked up?

The sea was wherever it was, and the turtles. It couldn’t be done again. Of those who did the launching there were no survivors. I passed an empty playground. The rocking horse was rocking, all its five seats empty.

I went to the Zoo, to the Aquarium. The turtle tank was empty, still being cleaned. I opened one of the PRIVATE doors, found George Fairbairn on the duckboards behind the fish tanks. There was a clean ocean smell, the illuminated water seemed like clear green time, the wood of the duckboards was like the wood in boats.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘they get off all right?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘they must have done, unless you’ve heard any reports of turtles being picked up off the Cornish coast.’

‘Not so far,’ he said.

I had nothing to say but I felt safe on the boat-feeling wood in the green light of salt-water time.

‘All right?’ he said. ‘You look a little peaky. Fancy a cup of tea?’

‘I’d just like to stay here a while and look at the water,’ I said.