Russell Hoban - Turtle Diary

With my eyes closed I could still see the sunlight. For a moment I saw ocean, sharp and real, the heaving of the open sea, the sunlight dancing in a million dazzling points. The turtles would be swimming, swimming. It had been a good thing to do and not a foolish one. Thinking about the turtles I could feel the action of their swimming, the muscle contractions that drove the flippers through the green water. All they had was themselves but they would keep going until they found what was in them to find. In them was the place they were swimming to, and at the end of their swimming it would loom up out of the sea, real, solid, no illusion. They could be stopped of course, they might be killed by sharks or fishermen but they would die on the way to where they wanted to be. I’d never know if they’d got there or not, for me they would always be swimming.

I was in my ocean, this was the only ocean there was for me, the dry streets of London and my square without a fountain. No one could make me freer by putting me somewhere else. I had as much as the turtles: myself. At least I too could die on the way to where I wanted to be. Gillian Vole! Not enough, not nearly enough.

I took paper out of the envelope, took a pen out of my bag. What was there to write? Anything, everything:

Madame Water-Beetle lived in a plastic shipwreck in a tank by the window. In the same tank lived seven red snails. The snails did the snail work and she did the beetle work.

The perversity of the human mind! I folded the sheet in half, put a fresh one on top of the stack, sat there with it blank for a long time. I wished I had somewhere to go besides my flat. Somewhere bright and empty with uncluttered shadows, somewhere not crusted with years of me. Like George’s place.

Sandor stopped in bed Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and for those three days I found the bath and cooker clean every morning. If he used the cooker at odd times when I was out there was no evidence of it. Maybe Mrs Inchcliff was looking after him. And of course he wasn’t buying fresh supplies of squid and seaweed while he was laid up. Maybe he was cooking things that left no trace. I wasn’t quite interested enough to visit him again.

Friday he was up and about again. The bath was almost clean, only a hair or two. The cooker was just that tiny bit mucky but without the usual smell. Well, I couldn’t make a career of it really. The two fights had been sufficient satisfaction, or almost. I could fight Sandor every day and maybe even win now and again by foul means if not fair but I had no way of forcing him to clean the bath and the cooker.

At the shop Harriet and I were polite to each other. It had come to that. Instead of brushing against each other and touching as often as possible we now avoided contact like thieves wary of a burglar alarm. With no prospect of getting her clothes off again I found the thought of her naked charms vivid in my mind from time to time but I didn’t want to be half of the ‘We’ who did this and that and were invited here and there. I didn’t want to be expected anywhere as a regular thing. I didn’t fancy any more early music either, and there were still two recitals left in the series we’d subscribed to. I’d give her the tickets, she could find someone else to go with easily enough.

On Tuesday I’d rung Neaera up to tell her what our expenses had been. The van and the petrol had come to £26.56, which made her share £13.28. The crates and the rope were on me. ‘We promised George Fairbairn a report of the expedition,’ I said. ‘Maybe we ought to drop in at the Aquarium one day soon.’

‘I have done,’ she said. ‘But I’m sure he’d like a visit from you as well.’

I went to see him on Saturday. The two small remaining turtles were back in the tank now, they looked like orphans. Well, I thought, take care of yourselves and grow big and maybe one day somebody will take you to Polperro.

‘Anybody say anything yet?’ I asked George.

‘Nobody’s been,’ he said, ‘except the blokes who work with me. Nobody from the Society.’

‘Maybe nothing’ll happen at all,’ I said. ‘Is that possible?’

‘It’s what I expect,’ he said.

Well, I hadn’t done it to make the headlines. Still I would have thought some notice would be taken in this part of the world at least.

He gave me a cup of tea in STAFF ONLY. The lady with the big boobs smiled from her photo by the duty-roster. No champagne today. It occurred to me just then that I could have brought him a thank-you bottle of something but of course I hadn’t. I never miss.

‘How’re you feeling now that you’ve done it?’ he said.

I shrugged. ‘I think the turtles are better off,’ I said, ‘which was after all the object of the exercise.’

‘But?’ he said.

‘You know how it is,’ I said. ‘Launching the turtles didn’t launch me. You can’t do it with turtles.’ Why was I talking to him like a son to a father? He wasn’t older than I or wiser. Just calmer.

‘You can’t do it with turtles,’ he said. ‘But with people you never know straightaway what does what. Maybe launching them did launch you but you don’t know it yet.’

‘How’s Neaera?’ I said. ‘She said she’d been to see you. I haven’t seen her since we got back.’

‘She’s all right,’ he said, and rolled a cigarette. He did it very deftly, it was a nice smooth cigarette.

‘You think it’s launched her?’ I said.

‘Hard to say,’ he said.

We finished our tea and I left. There were friendly feelings on both sides but neither of us urged the other to stay in touch.

I came home from the museum on Tuesday having written nothing but that Madame Beetle paragraph. I looked at the telephone and said, ‘Ring’. It rang but it wasn’t George, it was William phoning to tell me what our expenses had been. Then in a few minutes it rang again and it was George. He invited me out to dinner and I asked him to my place for drinks first.

The flat looked different with that to look forward to. Everything in it, all the clutter on the desk and the drawing-table, all the books and objects took on new character with the prospect of being seen by him.

I bought whisky and gin and flowers. I had a long bubble-bath, washed my hair, put on the Arab dress I look best in and my posh boots. Patchouli too. I’d bought it for the first time only the other day at Forbidden Fruit but it seemed as if it’d always been my scent.

There was a knock on the door about an hour before George was due.

‘Good evening,’ said Webster de Vere. ‘I hope I’m not disturbing you. Were you in full flow at the typewriter?’

‘Like a river in spate,’ I said, certain for no particular reason that he’d listened at the door before knocking.

‘I mustn’t bother you then,’ he said with a good deal of optical activity. Such bright glances! I said nothing, stood at the door without asking him in. He was bothering me. ‘But I thought,’ he said, ‘perhaps you might be persuaded to abandon your muse briefly for a sherry with me. Dreadful, really, we’ve been neighbours all these years and yet we scarcely know each other.’

‘I don’t think it’s dreadful at all,’ I said. ‘A friendly presence scarcely known can be quite nice.’ I hadn’t meant that to be encouraging but it encouraged him.

‘Then you’ll come,’ he said, his eyes absolutely darting rays of light.

‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘but I can’t. I’m expecting someone in a little while.’

‘Pity,’ he said, lowering his sparkle. ‘Another time perhaps. How’re the snails?’

‘Cleaning up,’ I said, moving back a little with my hand on the door.