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• Darwin's Tortoise : ONE-ACT PLAY, excerpt 1 , ONE-ACT PLAY, excerpt 2

Darwin's Tortoise, translated by Gwynneth Dowling

ONE-ACT PLAY, excerpt 1

Context:

This is very near the beginning of the play. Harriet, who looks like a hunchbacked old woman, pays a visit to the Professor.

Sample text

HARRIET:

Call me Harriet.

PROFESSOR:

Alright then, Harriet. You wanted to see me. Have you seen enough?

HARRIET:

I read your two volumes of The History of Contemporary Europe.

PROFESSOR:

Oh, you’ve read them?

HARRIET:

In the library.

PROFESSOR:

That doesn’t matter. You’ve read them nonetheless. Even if you didn’t buy them. Take a seat. There’s thirty years life’s work in The History of Contemporary Europe. These are the proofs for Volume Three. It’s coming out in May.

HARRIET:

It’s … huge.

PROFESSOR:

It’s an unparalleled piece of work.

HARRIET:

Indeed, it’s impressive. Although …

PROFESSOR:

Although? Although what?

HARRIET:

Chapter 27: ‘The Dreyfus Affair’

PROFESSOR:

Yes, I know Chapter 27. What about it?

HARRIET:

Will all due respect ... it wasn’t like that.

PROFESSOR:

It wasn’t like that? There’s a mountain of documentation swallowed up in that chapter. What do you mean, ‘it wasn’t like that’?

HARRIET:

With all due respect, it wasn’t.

PROFESSOR:

And how and what do you know, Madam?

HARRIET:

I was there, in Paris, when they took poor Captain Dreyfus.

PROFESSOR:

You were there? (He bursts out laughing.) Excuse me, Madam, you’ve nothing to be ashamed of. I blame our long line of Education Ministers, who’ve successfully created a race of illiterates when it comes to history. People confuse Charlemagne with Alexander the Great. They think Garibaldi was a cyclist. They’ve no idea of dates. Mrs Robinson, the Dreyfus Affair hit the headlines in 1894.

HARRIET:

October 10. That was the day when they arrested the Captain. Not the 13th. What happened was that they didn’t go public until the 13th, because they were scared that …

PROFESSOR:

You must excuse me, Harriet. As you can see I’m a little pushed for time here. But if you write down your telephone number my wife will arrange a date for us to continue this fascinating line of conversation.

HARRIET:

You write that his last words in court were ‘I love France. I’m innocent’. No, Dreyfus didn’t say that. Or anything else. He couldn’t speak for crying. I’ve also found some inaccuracies in Chapter 74.

PROFESSOR:

‘The Battle of Verdun’?

HARRIET:

The trenches weren’t like you described.

PROFESSOR:

This is going too far! What right have you to say that?

HARRIET:

I was there. That gives me the right.

PROFESSOR:

So you were there. Next you’re going to tell me you were there at the bombing of Guernica.

HARRIET:

I’m in the photograph. Underneath the screaming horse.

PROFESSOR:

Where on earth have you escaped from? Who the hell are you?

HARRIET:

I’m Darwin’s tortoise.

PROFESSOR:

What?

HARRIET:

Charlie drew a picture of me. You can see it in Chapter 7 of the book, The Origin of Species. Although of course I’ve changed a lot since then. When I got on the boat I’d already lived through 28 springs and that was in 1836, so I must’ve been born in 1808. I can’t put my finger on the exact day, but I like the 28th of March. It sounds right to me. So I celebrate my birthday on the 28th of March. My first 28 years were nothing but food and sex. I never thought about anything else. But everything changed when those Englishmen first set foot on the island. I’d never seen an Englishman. I’d never even seen a person. They seemed so strange to me … people. And that’s what did it for me. My curiosity. I went up to take a look and when I came round again we were on the high seas. When he found me, Captain FitzRoy said ‘This beast’ll make enough soup to feed the entire crew’. But Charlie wouldn’t allow it. He took me to his cabin and put me in a basin. ‘Don’t worry Harry’. Yes, Harry. You heard right. The greatest Naturalist that history has ever known and he couldn’t tell the males from the females.

Copyright

The above sample taken from the translation Darwin's Tortoise by Gwynneth Dowling is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

ONE-ACT PLAY, excerpt 2

Context:

Harriet tries to convince the Professor that she is indeed Darwin’s tortoise. The Professor will eventually accept her proposal to be her note-taker and to record her memories of some of the greatest events in history.

Sample text

HARRIET:

You think I’m just a mad old woman. You don’t believe I’m Darwin’s tortoise.

PROFESSOR:

Madam, you’re not a tortoise. You’re not Darwin’s tortoise, you’re not anyone’s. Your face does have the look of a tortoise, yes … but just like others look a like a dog or a monkey. You do have a shortish neck, and that hump might make you think of a shell … If they do call you ‘The tortoise’ around where you live, I must admit it’s a good nickname.

HARRIET:

You don’t believe me. Then how do you explain this?

HARRIET shows her back to the PROFESSOR.

HARRIET:

You can touch it.

The PROFESSOR goes to touch it. But in the end does not.

PROFESSOR:

Yes, this is very odd. A rare skin condition, I suppose. But that doesn’t make you a tortoise. You’re walking on two legs. You can talk. You can read!

HARRIET:

I’ve evolved.

PROFESSOR:

?

HARRIET:

Charlie predicted this eventuality. It’s noted in Chapter 13: ‘In extreme circumstances, living matter can evolve at an accelerated rate’. Charlie used to call this ‘exponential evolution under extraordinary stimuli’. Precisely. Extraordinary stimuli. I’ve had a bucketful. I got on that boat and all these interesting things began to happen. I’ve gone from here to there, wherever History has taken me. I was there at the opening of the Eiffel Tower and saw the Reichstag Fire. I watched the Germans marching on Paris and the Americans on the beaches of Normandy. I saw the October Revolution. I saw Perestroika! It never crossed my mind that I could benefit from any of this, but I now see that my memory is an asset. People kill over the past, and I’ve got more of a past than anyone. Why not offer it to a professional in exchange for a little bit of help? I went to the library, I looked out the History section and I found your two volumes. So very grand. So littered with errors. I thought, ‘I could help this man’. I propose that you become my note-taker. I’ll tell you everything. I can reveal what you won’t find in any document. What did Lenin say on his deathbed? What did John Paul I die of? I can tell you. In exchange for very little. But if you think I’m just an old nut, I’ll find some other historian. I’ve got a list.

PROFESSOR:

‘In exchange for very little’. In exchange for what?

HARRIET:

I want to go home.

Copyright

The above sample taken from the translation Darwin's Tortoise by Gwynneth Dowling is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Entry written by Gwynneth Dowling. Last updated on 4 May 2011.

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