Madness Read online

  ‘Right you are! And turtle steak! You ever have a turtle steak, Bill?’

  ‘I never have, Jack. But I can’t wait.’

  ‘A turtle steak’s better than a beefsteak if you cook it right. It’s more tender and it’s got one heck of a flavour.’

  ‘Listen,’ the paunchy man said to the fisherman. ‘I’m not trying to buy the meat. The manager can have the meat. He can have everything that’s inside including the teeth and toenails. All I want is the shell.’

  ‘And if I know you, baby,’ his wife said, beaming at him, ‘you’re going to get the shell.’

  I stood there listening to the conversation of these human beings. They were discussing the destruction, the consumption and the flavour of a creature who seemed, even when upside down, to be extraordinarily dignified. One thing was certain. He was senior to any of them in age. For probably one hundred and fifty years he had been cruising in the green waters of the West Indies. He was there when George Washington was President of the United States and Napoleon was being clobbered at Waterloo. He would have been a small turtle then, but he was most certainly there.

  And now he was here, upside down on the beach, waiting to be sacrificed for soup and steak. He was clearly alarmed by all the noise and the shouting around him. His old wrinkled neck was straining out of its shell, and the great head was twisting this way and that as though searching for someone who would explain the reason for all this ill-treatment.

  ‘How are you going to get him up to the hotel?’ the paunchy man asked.

  ‘Drag him up the beach with the rope,’ the fisherman answered. ‘The staff’ll be coming along soon to take him. It’s going to need ten men, all pulling at once.’

  ‘Hey, listen!’ cried a muscular young man. ‘Why don’t we drag him up?’ The muscular young man was wearing magenta and pea-green Bermuda shorts and no shirt. He had an exceptionally hairy chest, and the absence of a shirt was obviously a calculated touch. ‘What say we do a little work for our supper?’ he cried, rippling his muscles. ‘Come on, fellers! Who’s for some exercise?’

  ‘Great idea!’ they shouted. ‘Splendid scheme!’

  The men handed their drinks to the women and rushed to catch hold of the rope. They ranged themselves along it as though for a tug of war, and the hairy-chested man appointed himself anchor-man and captain of the team.

  ‘Come on, now, fellers!’ he shouted. ‘When I say heave, then all heave at once, you understand?’

  The fisherman didn’t like this much. ‘It’s better you leave this job for the hotel,’ he said.

  ‘Rubbish!’ shouted hairy-chest. ‘Heave, boys, heave!’

  They all heaved. The gigantic turtle wobbled on its back and nearly toppled over.

  ‘Don’t tip him!’ yelled the fisherman. ‘You’re going to tip him over if you do that! And if once he gets back on to his legs again, he’ll escape for sure!’

  ‘Cool it, laddie,’ said hairy-chest in a patronizing voice. ‘How can he escape? We’ve got a rope round him, haven’t we?’

  ‘The old turtle will drag the whole lot of you away with him if you give him a chance!’ cried the fisherman. ‘He’ll drag you out into the ocean, every one of you!’

  ‘Heave!’ shouted hairy-chest, ignoring the fisherman. ‘Heave, boys, heave!’

  And now the gigantic turtle began very slowly to slide up the beach towards the hotel, towards the kitchen, towards the place where the big knives were kept. The womenfolk and the older, fatter, less athletic men followed alongside, shouting encouragement.

  ‘Heave!’ shouted the hairy-chested anchor-man. ‘Put your backs into it, fellers! You can pull harder than that!’

  Suddenly, I heard screams. Everyone heard them. They were screams so high-pitched, so shrill and so urgent they cut right through everything. ‘No-o-o-o-o!’ screamed the scream. ‘No! No! No! No! No!’

  The crowd froze. The tug-of-war men stopped tugging and the onlookers stopped shouting and every single person present turned towards the place where the screams were coming from.

  Half walking, half running down the beach from the hotel, I saw three people, a man, a woman and a small boy. They were half running because the boy was pulling the man along. The man had the boy by the wrist, trying to slow him down, but the boy kept pulling. At the same time, he was jumping and twisting and wriggling and trying to free himself from the father’s grip. It was the boy who was screaming.

  ‘Don’t!’ he screamed. ‘Don’t do it! Let him go! Please let him go!’

  The woman, his mother, was trying to catch hold of the boy’s other arm to help restrain him, but the boy was jumping about so much, she didn’t succeed.

  ‘Let him go!’ screamed the boy. ‘It’s horrible what you’re doing! Please let him go!’

  ‘Stop that, David!’ the mother said, still trying to catch his other arm. ‘Don’t be so childish! You’re making a perfect fool of yourself.’

  ‘Daddy!’ the boy screamed. ‘Daddy! Tell them to let him go!’

  ‘I can’t do that, David,’ the father said. ‘It isn’t any of our business.’

  The tug-of-war pullers remained motionless, still holding the rope with the gigantic turtle on the end of it. Everyone stood silent and surprised, staring at the boy. They were all a bit off-balance now. They had the slightly hangdog air of people who had been caught doing something that was not entirely honourable.

  ‘Come on now, David,’ the father said, pulling against the boy. ‘Let’s go back to the hotel and leave these people alone.’

  ‘I’m not going back!’ the boy shouted. ‘I don’t want to go back! I want them to let it go!’

  ‘Now, David,’ the mother said.

  ‘Beat it, kid,’ the hairy-chested man told the boy.

  ‘You’re horrible and cruel!’ the boy shouted. ‘All of you are horrible and cruel!’ He threw the words high and shrill at the forty or fifty adults standing there on the beach, and nobody, not even the hairy-chested man, answered him this time. ‘Why don’t you put him back in the sea?’ the boy shouted. ‘He hasn’t done anything to you! Let him go!’

  The father was embarrassed by his son, but he was not ashamed of him. ‘He’s crazy about animals,’ he said, addressing the crowd. ‘Back home he’s got every kind of animal under the sun. He talks with them.’

  ‘He loves them,’ the mother said.

  Several people began shuffling their feet around in the sand. Here and there in the crowd it was possible to sense a slight change of mood, a feeling of uneasiness, a touch even of shame. The boy, who could have been no more than eight or nine years old, had stopped struggling with his father now. The father still held him by the wrist, but he was no longer restraining him.

  ‘Go on!’ the boy called out. ‘Let him go! Undo the rope and let him go!’ He stood very small and erect, facing the crowd, his eyes shining like two stars and the wind blowing in his hair. He was magnificent.

  ‘There’s nothing we can do, David,’ the father said gently. ‘Let’s go on back.’

  ‘No!’ the boy cried out, and at that moment he suddenly gave a twist and wrenched his wrist free from the father’s grip. He was away like a streak, running across the sand towards the giant upturned turtle.

  ‘David!’ the father yelled, starting after him. ‘Stop! Come back!’

  The boy dodged and swerved through the crowd like a player running with the ball, and the only person who sprang forward to intercept him was the fisherman. ‘Don’t you go near that turtle, boy!’ he shouted as he made a lunge for the swiftly running figure. But the boy dodged round him and kept going. ‘He’ll bite you to pieces!’ yelled the fisherman. ‘Stop, boy! Stop!’

  But it was too late to stop him now, and as he came running straight at the turtle’s head, the turtle saw him, and the huge upside-down head turned quickly to face him.

  The voice of the boy’s mother, the stricken, agonized wail of the mother’s voice rose up into the evening sky. ‘David!’ it cried. ‘Oh, David!’ And