The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More (2 page)

"Fantastic," the plump wife said. "Go ahead and buy it,
baby."

"Don't worry," he said. "It's mine already." And to the
fisherman, he said, "How much for the shell?"

"I already sold him," the fisherman said. "I sold him shell and
all."

"Not so fast, feller," the paunchy man said. "I'll bid you
higher. Come on. What'd he offer you?"

"No can do," the fisherman said. "I already sold him."

"Who to?" the paunchy man said.

"To the manager."

"What manager?"

"The manager of the hotel."

"Did you hear that?" shouted another man. "He's sold it to the
manager of our hotel! And you know what that means? It means turtle soup,
that's what it means!"

"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 light. 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 a moment later, the boy
was throwing himself on to his knees in the sand and flinging his arms around
the wrinkled old neck and hugging the creature to his chest. The boy's cheek
was pressing against the turtle's head, and his lips were moving, whispering
soft words that nobody else could hear. The turtle became absolutely still.
Even the giant flippers stopped waving in the air.

A great sigh, a long soft sigh of relief, went up from the crowd. Many people
took a pace or two backward, as though trying perhaps to get a little further
away from something that was beyond their understanding. But the father and
mother came forward together and stood about ten feet away from their son.

"Daddy!" the boy cried out, still caressing the old brown head.
"Please do something, Daddy! Please make them let him go!"

"Can I
be
of any help here?" said a man in a
white suit who had just come down from the hotel. This, as everyone knew, was
Mr
Edwards, the manager. He was a tall, beak-nosed
Englishman with a long pink face. "What an extraordinary thing!" he
said, looking at the boy and the turtle. "He's lucky he hasn't had his
head bitten off." And to the boy he said, "You'd better come away
from there now, sonny. That thing's dangerous."

"I want them to let him go!" cried the boy, still cradling the head
in his arms. "Tell them to let him go!"

"You realize he could be killed any moment," the manager said to the
boy's father.

"Leave him alone," the father said.

"Rubbish," the manager said. "Go in and grab him. But be quick.
And be careful."

"No," the father said.

"What do you mean, no?" said the manager. "These things are
lethal! Don't you understand that?"

"Yes," the father said.

"Then for heaven's sake, man, get him away!" cried the manager.
"There's going to be a very nasty accident if you don't."

"Who owns it?" the father said. "Who owns the turtle?"

"We do," the manager said. "The hotel has bought it."

"Then do me a
favour
," the father said.
"Let me buy it from you."

The manager looked at the father, but said nothing.

"You don't know my son," the father said, speaking quietly.
"He'll go crazy if it's taken up to the hotel and slaughtered. He'll
become hysterical."

"Just pull him away," the manager said. "And be quick about
it."

"He loves animals," the father said. "He really loves them. He
communicates with them."

The crowd was
silent,
trying to hear what was being
said. Nobody moved away. They stood as though hypnotized.

"If we let it go," the manager said, "they'll only catch it
again."

"Perhaps they will," the father said. "But those things can
swim."

"I know they can swim," the manager said. "They'll catch him all
the same. This is a valuable item, you must realize that. The shell alone is
worth a lot of money."

"I don't care about the cost," the father said. "Don't worry
about that. I want to buy it."

The boy was still kneeling in the sand beside the turtle, caressing its head.

The manager took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and started wiping his
fingers. He was not keen to let the turtle go. He probably had the dinner menu
already planned. On the other hand, he didn't want another gruesome accident on
his private beach this season.
Mr
Wasserman and the
coconut, he told himself, had been quite enough for one year, thank you very
much.

The father said, "I would deem it a great personal
favour
,
Mr
Edwards, if you would let me buy it. And I promise
you won't regret it. I'll make quite sure of that."

The manager's eyebrows went up just a fraction of an inch. He had got the
point. He was being offered a bribe. That was a different matter. For a few
seconds he went on wiping his hands with the handkerchief. Then he shrugged his
shoulders and said, "Well. I suppose if it will make your boy feel any
better. . ."