The Giant Turtle
Once upon a time there was a man who lived in Buenos Aires, and he was very happy because he was healthy and hard-working. But one day he fell ill, and the doctors told him that only by going to the country could he get well. He did not want to go, because he had little brothers and sisters to feed; and he grew sicker every day. Until a friend of his, who was the director of the Zoo, said to him one day:
"You are my friend, and a good, hard-working man. That is why I want you to go and live in the forest, and take plenty of exercise in the open air to get well. And since you are a fine shot with a rifle, hunt the animals of the forest and bring me their skins, and I will pay you in advance so that your little brothers and sisters can eat well."
The sick man agreed, and went to live in the forest, far away, even farther than Misiones. It was very hot there, and that did him good. He lived alone in the woods and cooked for himself. He ate birds and forest animals that he hunted with his rifle, and fruit afterwards. He slept under the trees, and when the weather was bad he built a shelter of palm leaves in five minutes, and sat there smoking, very content in the middle of the forest that roared with wind and rain.
He had made a bundle of the animal skins and carried it on his shoulder. He had also caught many poisonous snakes alive, and he kept them inside a great gourd, because over there gourds grow as big as a kerosene can. The man had good colour again; he was strong and he had an appetite. And one day when he was very hungry, because he had caught nothing for two days, he saw on the shore of a great lagoon an enormous jaguar trying to eat a turtle; it had stood the turtle up on its edge to put a paw inside and dig the meat out with its claws. When it saw the man the jaguar gave a terrible roar and leapt at him. But the hunter, who was a fine shot, aimed between its eyes and broke its skull. Then he took its skin, so big it could have served as a carpet for a whole room.
"Now," the man said to himself, "I am going to eat turtle, which is very good meat."
But when he went up to the turtle, he saw that it was already wounded, and its head was almost torn from its neck; the head hung by two or three threads of flesh.
In spite of his hunger, the man felt sorry for the poor turtle, and he dragged it with a rope to his shelter and bandaged its head with strips of cloth torn from his shirt, because he had only one shirt and no rags. He had dragged it because the turtle was immense, as tall as a chair, and as heavy as a man.
The turtle stayed pushed into a corner, and there it spent days and days without moving.
The man tended it every day and afterwards gave it little pats on the back.
At last the turtle got well. But then it was the man who fell ill. He had a fever and his whole body ached.
Then he could no longer get up. The fever kept rising, and his throat burned with thirst. The man understood that he was gravely ill, and he spoke aloud, although he was alone, because his fever was very high.
"I am going to die," the man said. "I am alone, I cannot get up any more, and I have no one to give me even some water. I am going to die here of hunger and thirst."
And a little later the fever rose higher still, and he lost consciousness.
But the turtle had heard him, and understood what the hunter said. And it thought:
"The man did not eat me the other time, though he was very hungry, and he healed me. Now I am going to heal him."
So it went to the lagoon, found the shell of a little turtle, and after cleaning it well with sand and ashes filled it with water and gave the man a drink, as he lay on his blanket dying of thirst. Then at once it went looking for tasty roots and tender herbs, which it brought to the man to eat. The man ate without knowing who was feeding him, because the fever made him delirious and he recognised no one.
Every morning the turtle went through the forest looking for better and better roots to give the man, and it was sorry it could not climb trees to bring him fruit.
So the hunter ate for days and days without knowing who fed him, and one day he came to his senses. He looked all around and saw that he was alone, for there was no one there but himself and the turtle, which was an animal. And again he said aloud:
"I am alone in the forest, the fever will come back, and I am going to die here, because only in Buenos Aires is there medicine to cure me. But I will never be able to get there, and I am going to die here."
And as he had said, the fever came back that afternoon, stronger than before, and once more he lost consciousness. But this time too the turtle had heard him, and it said to itself:
"If he stays here in the forest he will die, because there is no medicine, and I have to take him to Buenos Aires."
Having said this, it cut thin, strong vines, which are like string, laid the man very carefully on its back, and tied him on well with the vines so that he would not fall. It tried many times to fit the rifle, the skins and the gourd of snakes, and at last it managed what it wanted without disturbing the hunter, and then it set off.
Loaded like that, the turtle walked and walked and walked, day and night. It crossed forests and fields, swam rivers a league wide, and went through swamps where it was almost buried, always with the dying man on top. After eight or ten hours of walking it would stop, undo the knots and lay the man very carefully in a place where the grass was good and dry.
Then it went to look for water and tender roots, and gave them to the sick man. It ate too, although it was so tired it would rather have slept.
Sometimes it had to walk in the sun; and since it was summer, the hunter had such a fever that he raved and was dying of thirst. "Water! Water!" he cried every little while. And every time the turtle had to give him a drink.
So it went on for days and days, week after week. Each day they were closer to Buenos Aires, but each day the turtle grew weaker too, each day it had less strength, although it never complained. Sometimes it lay stretched out with no strength at all, and the man would half come to his senses. And he would say aloud:
"I am going to die, I am sicker and sicker, and only in Buenos Aires could I be cured. But I am going to die here, alone in the forest."
He thought he was still in his shelter, because he noticed nothing. Then the turtle would get up and set off again.
But there came a day, an evening, when the poor turtle could go no farther. It had reached the end of its strength, and it could do no more. It had not eaten for a week so as to arrive sooner. It had no strength left for anything.
When night had fallen completely, it saw a distant light on the horizon, a glow that lit up the sky, and it did not know what it was. It felt weaker and weaker, and so it closed its eyes to die together with the hunter, thinking sadly that it had not been able to save the man who had been good to it.
And yet it was already in Buenos Aires, and it did not know. That light it saw in the sky was the glow of the city, and it was about to die just as it reached the end of its heroic journey.
But a city mouse (perhaps the very mouse who brings children a coin for their teeth) found the two dying travellers.
"What a turtle!" said the mouse. "I have never seen such a big turtle. And what is that you are carrying on your back? Is it firewood?"
"No," the turtle answered sadly. "It is a man."
"And where are you going with that man?" the curious mouse went on.
"I am going... I am going... I wanted to go to Buenos Aires," the poor turtle answered in a voice so low it could hardly be heard. "But we are going to die here, because I will never get there..."
"Oh, silly, silly!" said the little mouse, laughing. "I never saw a sillier turtle! You are already in Buenos Aires! That light you see over there is Buenos Aires."
When it heard this, the turtle felt an immense strength, because there was still time to save the hunter, and it set off again.
And while it was still dawn, the director of the Zoological Garden saw a muddy and terribly thin turtle arrive, carrying on its back, tied with vines so that he would not fall, a man who was dying. The director recognised his friend, and ran himself to fetch medicine, with which the hunter was cured at once.
When the hunter learned how the turtle had saved him, how it had made a journey of three hundred leagues so that he could have medicine, he would not be parted from it. And since he could not keep it at home, which was very small, the director of the Zoo promised to keep it in the Garden and to look after it as if it were his own daughter.
And so it was. The turtle, happy and content with the love everyone has for it, walks all over the Garden, and it is the same great turtle we see every day eating the grass around the monkey cages.
The hunter goes to see it every afternoon, and it knows its friend from far away, by his footsteps. They spend a couple of hours together, and it never wants him to leave without giving it a loving pat on the back.
THE END
Jungle Tales, 1918
Horacio Quiroga, 1918. Translated for Zeitzung from the Spanish text at Ciudad Seva. Public domain.