by Tamara Gray
‘This is a place’, the dolphin would say, ‘where bubbles always leave a trace, and fish swim in schools with grace. A place, may I add, where giant catfish play catch, not fetch, where mussels play hide so that no one can seek. A place filled with swishes, pops, tunes, and clicks. A home in which my brothers, sisters, mum and I, frolic.’
But of colours the dolphin could not speak, for her eyes could not see the light of day. You see, dolphins of the rivers can only hear.
The young boy, on the other hand, could listen, touch, smell and see. He would tell his dolphin friend about his world of colours he sees so freely.
‘This is a place,’ the boy would praise, ‘where the land is green, and the sky is blue, whilst in-betweens are filled with other amazing hues, such as the pink and grey you have on you.’
‘But the best sight of all, is you my friend, and that smile on your face.’
And that, to the dolphin, was the best sound of all.
When it was time to fish, where the river met the ocean full of purple, green, gold and other shimmering hues, the boy would softly row his small wooden boat whilst the dolphin would spit and splash, till the fish were caught.
‘Spit, splash, spit, splash. We work the fish into the net.’
‘Spit, splash, spit, splash. And then we release most of our catch.’
The two would have so much fun working together.
So the boy and the dolphin were full, and happy.
Days passed. Then months. And years.
Every day the dolphin would wait for the boy. His light footsteps a sweet rhythm to her ears. And every day the boy would look out for the dolphin’s sweet smile bobbing out from the water of the river that met the ocean full of pink, grey and wonderful blues.
One day the boy said, ‘This boat is too small for me.’
And he went and bought a big boat.
‘Grrrr! Wrrrr!’ The boat was loud. But the boy could not hear.
The dolphin was scared. She could not see and now even her hearing was fading.
Still the dolphin smiled. She gave her friend her brightest smile.
But the boy could no longer see.
‘I’m still hungry,’ the boy said, after he had caught all the fish with his fancy new boat.
So off he went, and built factories. Factories that smeared the blue sky and the river that met the ocean, full of yellow, orange, red and blue, with a foul-smelling black.
There were no more colours.
Still, the dolphin smiled.
But the boy who could no longer see and no longer smell, was still hungry.
So he went and built a dam.
And when that happened, there was silence.
No one came, and no one went. No mussels, no bubbles, no fish. No food. There were no more sounds. No swishes, pops, tunes and clicks.
One by one, the dolphin’s brothers, sisters, and mother, fell to the bottom of the river.
Yet, still, the dolphin with tears in her eyes that could not see the light of day, smiled at the boy.
And the boy, still hungry, took the smile, the last of her kind, to an aquarium where all of his kind could touch and see, for a fee.
Days passed, then months.
As the dolphin lay at the bottom of the tank of no colour and no sound, she heard familiar footsteps. Though no longer light, they were still sweet rhythm to her ears. Then she heard a familiar voice.
‘I too have now lost my sight, and now I can hardly hear, much less smell. But here in front of you, my dear son,’ said the boy who was now an old man, to his boy, ‘is the best sight of all.’
As he spoke a wondrous thing happened. Colour flooded the dolphin’s eyes. In her sight, the dolphin, and now the old man’s boy could see the blue sky, green land, and the river that meets the ocean full of yellow, red, orange, and all the world’s shimmering hues.
And the dolphin smiled.
George the Tortoise
by Antonia Michaelis
Thomas Harlow’s first thought was: My God, that’s an ugly animal. He didn’t know if God existed, but he was certain that this giant tortoise was the ugliest he had ever seen. But it was the last of its kind. That was why Thomas was there at Santa Cruz, thousand of miles far away from home, a few air miles to Ecuador and many sea miles from Ecuador to the Galapagos islands.
‘George’, he said to the tortoise. ‘Hello, George.’
It was hot. He was nervous.
‘Are you nervous?’ the woman next to him asked.
He forced a smile.
‘It’s hot,’ he said.
She nodded.
‘We are near the equator. The sun is almost vertically above us. George is lucky with his shell. It’s as if he was born with a big hat to protect him against the sun.’ She laughed.
She was young, almost childlike. Her hair was dark and her eyes darker. He asked himself why such a beautiful woman would want to spend her life with an ugly tortoise.
‘Do you see the curve at the front of his shell?’ she asked, ‘the saddle, as we say. It is unique. There are many different tortoises but this one is an Abingdonii. There is only one left…’
He nodded. He knew all this. She had written to him several times. ‘Nobody knows how old he is,’ she said. ‘Something between 50 and 80. I would be nervous speaking to such a rare creature. I am so curious about what he is going to tell you…what he likes…tell him that we are going to do everything…’ She pressed her slim hands together, opened her mouth as if she wanted to add something, closed it again and walked off on one of the tidy paths at the Charles Darwin Research Centre. She left him alone.
He was alone with the world’s ugliest tortoise, a burning equatorial sun and an impossible mission. She had thought he was nervous because he didn’t know what George would tell him. But she was wrong. He was nervous because he was frightened she would find out that he was a fraud. George would not tell him anything. She had invited him to come because she had found his website. Now, he cursed his website.
Dr. Thomas Harlow, animal psychologist, it said on his webpage in a blue font with a purple background. ‘Do you have a problem with your loved one? I can offer an unusual solution. I can talk to your pets. After years of meditation and exercises I have learned to talk to animals.
‘I tune myself into their wavelength and receive the signals of their thoughts. This is the best method to establish the needs of your dog or cat, and for more difficult animals I can offer psychoanalysis. Often the difficulties are hidden in the past. Choose the path that many others have chosen before you. Get in touch with Dr Thomas Harlow.’
He had sat in front of many dogs and cats and had looked them straight in the eye. For hours. For days. For years. And he had never ever heard a single word, or felt a thing. The truth was, he disliked dogs and cats. He disliked all animals. If he was honest with himself, he didn’t particularly like humans either. He certainly didn’t feel guilty about cheating on them. But his PhD was real. He had a PhD in botany. He didn’t believe in psychoanalysis. He did not believe in signals. He believed in the money that he earned.
It was good money. Pet owners were happy when someone told them their cat needed a cat tree, or that their dog bit the postman because as a puppy an evil postman kicked him. But this was different. This was a big thing. For years, scientists from all over the world had tried to encourage George, the last example of the Abingdonii Tortoise, to mate and reproduce. Reproduce, at least, with similar tortoises. But George had refused. When he died his species would be extinct. And humans would feel guilty.
‘Talking to animals,’ said a voice behind him. ‘That’s something you can do? You tune into the right wavelength. You understand the signals of their thoughts. What else? Do you fly as well if the wind has the right wavelength?’
‘No.’ He sighed. ‘You are welcome to poke fun at me,’ said Thomas. ‘But leave me in peace now while I give it a try.’
The person behind him giggled. No. The giggling did not come from
behind him. It came from in front of him.
‘Idiot,’ said the voice. ‘Signals. Wavelengths. Psychoanalysis. Ha!’
Thomas blinked. There was nobody in front of him. Only George. George stood on his huge ugly legs near the pond, stretched his wrinkly neck and looked at him with his small eyes. ‘I know what you are thinking,’ said the voice.
‘You are thinking: ugly.’
Thomas twitched. ‘George?’ he asked silently.
‘It’s Jorge actually, but you can call me George,’ the voice said. It was the voice of an old man—the kind of old man you see in hospitals complaining about the food.
‘I am still Ecuadorian even if most researchers speak English.’
‘You…you are speaking…to me? Here, now? In… my language?’
‘I have had enough time to learn English. There is not much to do around here.’
Thomas shook his head. ‘I can do it… I can really do it!’ he stammered. ‘All this magic with the dogs and cats…and I didn’t know that I can really do it! That’s impossible. I can really talk to animals!’
‘Nonsense,’ said George. ‘You can’t do anything. I talk to humans. Sit down again. It’s impossible to have a conversation with you up there.’
Thomas realised that he had jumped up. He sat down again on the stone wall surrounding the turtle enclosure. His knees were shaking.
‘How do you know what my website says?’
George laughed. It was the hoarse laughter of an old man. The wrinkles on his neck trembled. ‘What if I tell you that I have internet access as well? The connection is sometimes bad but usually I get all the information I need.’ He laughed even more when he saw Thomas’s face. He shook his wrinkly neck and roared with laughter.
‘You didn’t believe that, did you?’ he giggled.
‘You don’t have access to the internet, do you?’
‘My God, I am a tortoise, not a human. Camilla told me about it. The human being with the beautiful eyes who was here a short while ago. The one who got you here.’
‘If you can talk to the humans…why don’t you speak to Camilla?’
‘Imagine if I would speak to the people in the centre. What a to-do there would be! It’s more than enough that I am the last of my species.’
Thomas shook his head and tried to think clearly.
‘Ok,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk. They want you to reproduce, so that your species doesn’t become extinct. They want to ask you what’s wrong. I mean there are two lovely female tortoises in the enclosure…’
The females were busy eating leaves. They were a bit smaller than George but otherwise looked the same as him.
‘I could tell you a secret’, whispered George.
‘Anything to do with those two over there?’
‘With them? No. It is a really, really big secret.’ He winked conspiratorially and moved closer on his clumsy feet.
‘My secret begins in the past. It is an old secret from way back when I was born. Well actually, I was laid, as an egg, on a beach not far from here. On Pinta island.
‘Back then everything was different, of course. Pinta Island was covered with rain forest. Sunflower trees opened their umbrella-like blossoms over the dense jungle of cat’s claw and ferns. Mistletoe and orchids climbed over branches and in the humid air thousands of birds sang, animals rustled, insects flew…and further down, the butterfly bush with its white blossoms and heavy branches, swayed in the wind. As for the beach, ahh yes, the beach was filled with the fragrance of the passionflower; its flowers so complicated…and Darwin’s cotton shining in yellow lampions. But on the rocky coast where only the whisker cactus grew, there I was hidden in a cave.
‘I hatched on a Monday. Of course, I could not have known that it was a Monday but it felt like a Monday. Like a beginning.
‘The shell of the egg burst. I waited for a while to see if anything would happen. Nothing happened. The only thing I heard was the cracking of another eggshell. I started to dig upwards to leave the cave. Another tortoise dug alongside me. Perhaps there were more tortoises behind us, I don’t know. But at some stage the sunlight was shining into my eyes and I saw her. She was very pretty with her oval shell and her four slim legs.
“Hello,” I said. “Do you want to discover what it is, this world?”
‘The other tortoise didn’t say anything. She seemed a little shy. But when I started walking she followed me. We left the shrubs and reached the rocky beach and then we saw the sea. It was so blue and so big and so endless.
“Let’s have a closer look,” I said.
“But we are land tortoises,” she said.
“Only a look,” I said.
‘In this moment a shadow approached over the rocks. And we lifted our heads. Above us flew a buzzard. I knew that it was a buzzard and that it meant certain death. I knew that I had to do something, something special, something tortoises do—but I didn’t know what.
‘I looked at the endless blue sea.
“Dive.” I said.
“We are land tortoises,” she said.
‘But I had started running. I ran as fast as I could towards the blue. With a last final leap I reached it. The blue water felt cool and new. I was frightened of the deep and of…infinity. But my legs knew how to swim. When I surfaced and looked back, I saw the buzzard again, up in the air. He was carrying something in his talons. The tortoise that had hatched next to me, was nowhere to be seen on the beach.
‘When I climbed back on land I was very, very sad. Only a few minutes in this world and I already knew about laughter and infinity, about death and sadness. These were all big things for a small tortoise. Without this other tortoise, my life seemed to make no sense.
‘I gave a name to the other tortoise. I called her Sentida, a Spanish word meaning Heartfelt.
‘In time I grew and grew. Bigger and bigger and bigger… I am a Galapagos giant tortoise, the largest living tortoise…an Abingdonii. Back then there were many of us. I ate leaves and drank dew and when no other tortoise was looking I swam in the infinite sea.
‘When I was a grown up and could reach the blossoms of the yellow cotton, a Monday came again. The feeling that it is Monday, I mean. A feeling of a fresh start. Like a colour that one can only smell with one’s big toe, if one breathes very quietly. I was six years old and far from being an adult. I moved my head gently into my shell to think about things—when suddenly someone cleared their throat.
“Hello,” said the voice, which sounded familiar. “Excuse me…are you the tortoise who said DIVE?”
“Dive?” I asked and appeared from my shell.
‘And if I weren’t a tortoise I would have fallen over in astonishment. In front of me was HER. Sentida.
“You are…but…the buzzard!” I stuttered.
‘Sentida sighed. “I am one of the few tortoises that ever flew. I dived, back inside my shell.”
“That was it!” I exclaimed. “That was what one had to do!”
“The buzzard realised that he couldn’t eat me and then dropped me on the other side of the island,” said Sentida.
“I ran into the sea thinking that I might be able to swim. Therefore I swam. When I returned to the land the Buzzard had gone.”
“What a surprise to bump into each other again!” I exclaimed. “After all these years!”
“Coincidence, well…” said Sentida and look down on her toes. “I… I am not very good at finding things again. That’s how women are. It took me years to return here to find you.”
I learned a new thing that Monday. I discovered happiness. Unlike a buzzard it has no talons.’ George fell silent. ‘No talons,’ he repeated after a while.
‘And the secret?’ asked Thomas. ‘You wanted to tell me about a secret.’
‘Secret?’ The eyes of the old tortoise were still looking into the past.
‘Yes. It’s about a treasure. A treasure everyone is looking for. But I am tired. Return tomorrow. Then I will tell you about the treasure.’
The female tortoises were still eating their leaves. ‘Their lives seem to depend on leaves,’ George snorted. ‘They are not from my kind.’
‘But they are closely related to your kind.’
‘Would a human kiss an orang-utan?’
Thomas thought for a moment. ‘That depends,’ Thomas laughed.
‘Depends on how much he’s drunk before.’
‘Who, the human or the orang utan?’
‘We can see each other tomorrow,’ he said. George nodded with his wrinkly neck. He did not seem so ugly anymore. Only very old. ‘Say hello to Camilla,’ he said. ‘The human with the beautiful dark eyes.’
Camilla sat on a wall at the entrance of the centre. She was nervously chewing her nails. When she saw Thomas she jumped up.
‘What did he say? Why doesn’t he want to have children?’
Thomas shook his head. ‘We are not there yet,’ he replied. ‘Psychology is a complicated thing. I believe that the problem lies in his childhood. We have just reached the point when he is six years old.’
Then he strolled away towards the coast in search of a place where he could steal a view of Pinta Island. He might possibly have to walk to the other end of Santa Cruz. He hoped it would not take him six years.
* * *
‘So. Did you have a rest?’ asked Thomas.
‘Yes thank you, it was alright,’ replied George. ‘At my age I don’t sleep well anymore. Mostly I just close my eyes and look into the past. I can choose what part of the past I want to live in. It all depends on my mood.’
He observed Thomas with his sparkling eyes. ‘But you are young and impatient. You want to hear about the treasure. It is valuable, very valuable. To be precise, it has a value of ten thousand dollars.’ Thomas whistled through his teeth. Ten thousand dollars, he thought, would come in very handy.
‘At around six years old a tortoise is learning what to eat, how to forecast the weather, how to withdraw into its shell and how to live in its own imagination and memories. Sentida and I learned these things together. We spent every day together except those times when she got lost. She never learned how to find her way back to me so it was my job to find her. We spent ten years learning together. Life was peaceful. Then one day the goats arrived, brought here by humans. The first pair of goats were a bit stupid but did not upset anyone. But this pair of goats created a young one. And when they grew, they gave birth to other young ones. Suddenly there were more and more goats. Every now and then the humans came and killed some goats to eat. But they could never eat them all.