Madness

by Roald Dahl

  ‘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
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 backwards, as though trying perhaps to get a little further away from something that was beyond their understanding. But the father and mother came forwards 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 …’

  ‘Thank you,’ the father said.

  ‘Oh, thank you!’ the mother cried. ‘Thank you so very much!’

  ‘Willy,’ the manager said, beckoning to the fisherman.

  The fisherman came forwards. He looked thoroughly confused. ‘I never seen anything like this before in my whole life,’ he said. ‘This old turtle was the fiercest I ever caught! He fought like a devil when we brought him in! It took all six of us to land him! That boy’s crazy!’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ the manager said. ‘But now I want you to let him go.’

  ‘Let him go!’ the fisherman cried, aghast. ‘You mustn’t ever let this one go, Mr Edwards! He’s broke the record! He’s the biggest turtle ever been caught on this island! Easy the biggest! And what about our money?’

  ‘You’ll get your money.’

  ‘I got the other five to pay off as well,’ the fisherman said, pointing down the beach.

  About a hundred yards down, on the water’s edge, five black-skinned almost naked men were standing beside a second boat. ‘All six of us are in on this, equal shares,’ the fisherman went on. ‘I can’t let him go till we got the money.’

  ‘I guarantee you’ll get it,’ the manager said. ‘Isn’t that good enough for you?’

  ‘I’ll underwrite that guarantee,’ the father of the boy said, stepping forwards. ‘And there’ll be an extra bonus for all six of the fishermen just as long as you let him go at once. I mean immediately, this instant.’

  The fisherman looked at the father. Then he looked at the manager. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘If that’s the way you want it.’

  ‘There’s one condition,’ the father said. ‘Before you get your money, you must promise you won’t go straight out and try to catch him again. Not this evening, anyway. Is that understood?’

  ‘Sure,’ the fisherman said. ‘That’s a deal.’ He turned and ran down the beach, calling to the other five fishermen. He shouted something to them that we couldn’t hear, and in a minute or two, all six of them came back together. Five of them were carrying long thick wooden poles.

  The boy was still kneeling beside the turtle’s head. ‘David,’ the father said to him gently. ‘It’s all right now, David. They’re going to let him go.’

  The boy looked round, but he didn’t take his arms from around the turtle’s neck, and he didn’t get up. ‘When?’ he asked.

  ‘Now,’ the father said. ‘Right now. So you’d better come away.’

  ‘You promise?’ the boy said.

  ‘Yes, David, I promise.’

  The boy withdrew his arms. He got to his feet. He stepped back a few paces.

  ‘Stand back, everyone!’ shouted the fisherman called Willy. ‘Stand right back, everybody, please!’

  The crowd moved a few yards up the beach. The tug-of-war men let go the rope and moved back with the others.

  Willy got down on his hands and knees and crept very cautiously up to one side of the turtle. Then he began untying the knot in the rope. He kept well out of the range of the big flippers as he did this.

  When the knot was untied, Willy crawled back. Then the five other fishermen stepped forwards with their poles. The poles were about seven feet long and immensely thick. They wedged them underneath the shell of the turtle and began to rock the great creature from side to side on its shell. The shell had a high dome and was well shaped for rocking.

  ‘Up and down!’ sang the fishermen as they rocked away. ‘Up and down! Up and down! Up and down!’ The old turtle became thoroughly upset, and who could blame it? The big flippers lashed the air frantically, and the head kept shooting in and out of the shell.

  ‘Roll him over!’ sang the fishermen. ‘Up and over! Roll him over! One more time and over he goes!’

  The turtle tilted high up on to its side and crashed down in the sand the right way up.

  But it didn’t walk away at once. The huge brown head came out and peered cautiously around.

  ‘Go, turtle, go!’ the small boy called out. ‘Go back
to the sea!’

  The two hooded black eyes of the turtle peered up at the boy. The eyes were bright and lively, full of the wisdom of great age. The boy looked back at the turtle, and this time when he spoke, his voice was soft and intimate. ‘Good-bye, old man,’ he said. ‘Go far away this time.’ The black eyes remained resting on the boy for a few seconds more. Nobody moved. Then, with great dignity, the massive beast turned away and began waddling towards the edge of the ocean. He didn’t hurry. He moved sedately over the sandy beach, the big shell rocking gently from side to side as he went.

  The crowd watched in silence.

  He entered the water.

  He kept going.

  Soon he was swimming. He was in his element now. He swam gracefully and very fast, with the head held high. The sea was calm, and he made little waves that fanned out behind him on both sides, like the waves of a boat. It was several minutes before we lost sight of him, and by then he was halfway to the horizon.

  The guests began wandering back towards the hotel. They were curiously subdued. There was no joking or bantering now, no laughing. Something had happened. Something strange had come fluttering across the beach.

  I walked back to my small balcony and sat down with a cigarette. I had an uneasy feeling that this was not the end of the affair.

  The next morning at eight o’clock, the Jamaican girl, the one who had told me about Mr Wasserman and the coconut, brought a glass of orange juice to my room.

  ‘Big big fuss in the hotel this morning,’ she said as she placed the glass on the table and drew back the curtains. ‘Everyone flying about all over the place like they was crazy.’

  ‘Why? What’s happened?’

  ‘That little boy in number twelve, he’s vanished. He disappeared in the night.’

  ‘You mean the turtle boy?’

  ‘That’s him,’ she said. ‘His parents is raising the roof and the manager’s going mad.’

  ‘How long’s he been missing?’

  ‘About two hours ago his father found his bed empty. But he could’ve gone any time in the night I reckon.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He could.’