Eleven by Patricia Highsmith Read Free Book Online

little dots of its nostrils, but if the terrapin smelled it, it showed no interest. Victor looked under the sink and pulled out a large wash pan. He put two inches of water into it. Then he gently dumped the terrapin into the pan. The terrapin paddled for a few seconds, as if it had to swim, then finding that its stomach sat on the bottom of the pan, it stopped, and drew its feet in. Victor got down on his knees and studied the terrapin’s face. Its upper lip overhung the lower, giving it a rather stubborn and unfriendly expression, but its eyes—they were bright and shining. Victor smiled when he looked hard at them.
    “Okay, monsieur terrapène,” he said, “just tell me what you’d like to eat and we’ll get it for you!—Maybe some tuna?”
    They had had tuna fish salad yesterday for dinner, and there was a small bowl of it left over. Victor got a little chunk of it in his fingers and presented it to the terrapin. The terrapin was not interested. Victor looked around the kitchen, wondering, then seeing the sunlight on the floor of the living-room, he picked up the pan and carried it to the living-room and set it down so the sunlight would fall on the terrapin’s back. All turtles liked sunlight, Victor thought. He lay down on the floor on his side, propped up on an elbow. Theterrapin stared at him for a moment, then very slowly and with an air of forethought and caution, put out its legs and advanced, found the circular boundary of the pan, and moved to the right, half its body out of the shallow water. It wanted out, and Victor took it in one hand, by the sides, and said:
    “You can come out and have a little walk.”
    He smiled as the terrapin started to disappear under the sofa. He caught it easily, because it moved so slowly. When he put it down on the carpet, it was quite still, as if it had withdrawn a little to think what it should do next, where it should go. It was a brownish green. Looking at it, Victor thought of river bottoms, of river water flowing. Or maybe oceans. Where did terrapins come from? He jumped up and went to the dictionary on the bookshelf. The dictionary had a picture of a terrapin, but it was a dull, black and white drawing, not so pretty as the live one. He learned nothing except that the name was of Algonquian origin, that the terrapin lived in fresh or brackish water, and that it was edible. Edible. Well, that was bad luck, Victor thought. But he was not going to eat any terrapène tonight. It would be all for his mother, that ragoût, and even if she slapped him and made him learn an extra two or three poems, he would not eat any terrapin tonight.
    His mother came out of the bathroom. “What are you doing there?—Veector?”
    Victor put the dictionary back on the shelf. His mother had seen the pan. “I’m looking at the terrapin,” he said, then realized the terrapin had disappeared. He got down on hands and knees and looked under the sofa.
    “Don’t put him on the furniture. He makes spots,” said his mother. She was standing in the foyer, rubbing her hair vigorously with a towel.
    Victor found the terrapin between the wastebasket and the wall. He put him back in the pan.
    “Have you changed your shirt?” asked his mother.
    Victor changed his shirt, and then at his mother’s order sat down on the sofa with A Child’s Garden of Verses and tackled another poem, a brand new one for Mrs. Badzerkian. He learned two lines at a time, reading it aloud in a soft voice to himself, then repeating it, then putting two, four and six lines together, until he had the whole thing. He recited it to the terrapin. Then Victor asked his mother if he could play with the terrapin in the bathtub.
    “No! And get your shirt all splashed?”
    “I can put on my other shirt.”
    “No! It’s nearly four o’clock now. Get that pan out of the living-room!”
    Victor carried the pan back to the kitchen. His mother took the terrapin quite fearlessly out of the pan, put it back into the white paper