Russell Hoban - Turtle Diary

Here in the dark of the Aquarium were many green-and-gold-lit windows, huge compared to mine but not magical. The fish all looked bored to death but of course fish aren’t meant to be looked at closely, will not bear close examination. The lobsters scarcely looked more alive than those I’ve seen waiting to be selected by diners at sea-food restaurants. I don’t think the Aquarium ought to do a shark at all if they’re not going to lay on a big one. The leopard shark they have is so small that his vacant stare and receding chin make him seem nothing more than a marine form of twit rather than a representative of a mortally dangerous species. Rays I think ought not to be seen at all outside their natural habitat, too many questions arise.

I’d been aware of the turtles for some time before I went to look at them. I knew I’d have to do it but I kept putting it off. When I did go to see them I didn’t know how to cope with it. Untenable propositions assembled themselves in my mind. If these were what they were then why were buildings, buses, streets? The sign said that green turtles were the source of turtle soup and hawksbills provided the tortoise-shell of commerce. But why soup, why spectacles?

Relative to her size my beetle has more than twice as much swimming-room as the turtles. And in that little tank the turtles were flying, flying in the water, submarine albatrosses. I’ve read about them, they navigate hundreds of miles of ocean. I imagined a sledge-hammer smashing the thick glass, letting out the turtles and their little bit of ocean, but then they’d only be flopping about on the wet floor.

I’m always afraid of being lost, the secret navigational art of the turtles seems a sacred thing to me. I thought of the little port of Polperro in Cornwall where they sell sea-urchin lamps, then I felt very sad and went home.

What a weird thing smoking is and I can’t stop it. I feel cosy, have a sense of well-being when I’m smoking, poisoning myself, killing myself slowly. Not so slowly maybe. I have all kinds of pains I don’t want to know about and I know that’s what they’re from. But when I don’t smoke I scarcely feel as if I’m living. I don’t feel as if I’m living unless I’m killing myself. Very good. Wonderful.

One time I grew a beard. I didn’t want to see my face in the mirror any more while shaving so I stopped shaving. I’d already stopped looking at myself when brushing my teeth and washing my face and I used to comb my hair without a mirror, feeling the parting with my fingers. It was a relief at first but when the beard reached a state of full growth I was constantly aware of walking around behind it so I got rid of it. Since then I’ve had to see my face almost every morning. I don’t shave on my Saturdays off nor on Sundays unless I’m going out in the evening.

I used to think when I shaved and looked at my face that that bit of time didn’t count, was just the time in between things. Now I think it’s the time that counts most. It’s those times that all the other times are in between. It’s time when nothing helps and the great heavy boot of the past is planted squarely in your back and shoving you forward. Sometimes my mind gives me a flash of road I’ll never see again, sometimes a face that’s gone, gone. Moments like grains of sand but the beach is empty. Millions of moments in forty-five years. Letters in boxes, photos in drawers.

So breakfast is a useful thing, a rallying point for all the members of me. We all sit together at the table by the window to start the day off. My face comes along as well. Breakfast is always the same, perfectly reliable, no decisions, no conflicts: orange juice, muesli, a three-minute boiled egg, a slice of buttered toast, coffee that I grind myself.

There’s a tiny kitchen on the landing just outside my door, a cooker and a little fridge and a sink. Mr Sandor uses it before me in the morning, Miss Neap comes after me. Mr Sandor always leaves the cooker sticky and smelling heavily organic. I don’t know what he has for breakfast. Squid maybe. Kelp. Nasty-looking little parcels in the fridge. I always leave the cooker clean for Miss Neap. I could have a word with Sandor about it but cleaning the cooker seems less tiresome. The problem only arises in the mornings. Even on weekends he always has lunch and supper out. Once I attempted a conversation with the man and he waved a foreign newspaper about and grunted something through his heavy moustache about scoundrels in government. He seems violent and heavily burdened with thoughts of whatever country the newspaper is from. He carries a briefcase, the kind that looks as if it might be full of sausages. I’ve no idea what he does for a living. Miss Neap works at a theatre-ticket agency and visits her mother in Leeds some weekends. Her hair is that kind of blonde that only happens after fifty, she wears a pince-nez and a tightly-belted leopardskin coat and has blue eyes like ice. If Sandor breakfasted after me and before her I think he’d leave the cooker clean.

The sea turtles are on my mind all the time. I can feel something building up in me, feel myself becoming strange and unsafe. Today one of those women who never know titles came into the shop. They are the source of Knightsbridge lady soup and they ask for a good book for a nephew or something new on roses for a gardening husband. This one wanted a novel, ‘something for a good read at the cottage’. I offered her Procurer to the King by Fallopia Bothways. Going like a bomb with the menopausal set. She gasped, and I realized I’d actually spoken the thought aloud: ‘Going like a bomb with the menopausal set.’

She went quite red. ‘What did you say?’ she said.

‘Going like a bomb, it’s the best she’s written yet,’ I said, and looked very dim.

She let it pass, settled on Lances of Glory by Taura Strong and did not complain to Mr Meager about me, which was really quite decent of her. But I have to be careful.

Every evening a lady and her husband and their greyhound bitch go slowly past the house. The husband and wife must be in their early sixties and the greyhound isn’t young. The husband drags one leg and when the windows are open I can always hear them coming and know who it is even if I don’t look out. They walk on opposite sides of the street, wife and greyhound on one side, husband on the other. The husband works for London Transport I think. Why a greyhound? Perhaps it’s a retired racer. The street is very narrow and so are the pavements, which may explain why they walk on opposite sides although I’ve seen other couples walk side by side. Perhaps he needs more space around him because of his bad leg. The greyhound of course walks very slowly too, as if she’s forgotten any other way of going. When I see them in the evening slowly passing by they look larger than life and allegorical.

The Underground trains are above ground where the District Line passes the common. On the right the tracks disappear behind a wall, on the left they converge towards Parsons Green and Putney Bridge. I watch the trains a lot. There are six lights on the front of each train, two vertical rows of three, and the pattern in which some are lit and some are dark tells the destination. For Special trains all six are lit. Three on the left and the bottom one on the right say Upminster, and so forth. There’s a little sign as well that says where they’re going. By watching with binoculars I’ve learnt most of the light code, I still don’t know all of the signals. I rather like seeing the lights pass in the dark and thinking: Tower Hill or whatever. Sometimes I look at the empty tracks with my binoculars. The solid grey iron is peculiarly pleasing to the eye, the coloured lights almost taste red and green in the mouth. I used to go birdwatching with the binoculars. Sometimes I hear an owl on the common.