The Turtle and the Fiddle

     It was a rather cold fall day in the city of Boston. Winter was coming as Eugene biked in the between the narrow alleyways with his guitar resting in its case strapped on his back. The cold air felt refreshing to his body; he cut through it with haste as the frosty wind buffeted his frame. His feet pedaled as fast as they could, his shoulders hunched and his head bent down, his gaze towards the ground. He maneuvered masterfully: constantly evading pedestrians, clearing obstacles; gaining speed.

     His bike struggled to keep up with him, its rusty gears grinded and shrieked. It grinded his gears, too, that he couldn’t afford a better bike. He had pulled this one out of a dumpster a few weeks before and ever since had been using it to get around. He had come to appreciate the flying hunk of junk. He named it Betsy, although he knew it wouldn’t be long before Betsy was an unusable piece of metal.

     Eventually, Eugene came to a screeching and sudden halt -- he had successfully reached his destination: a Chinatown soup café. Leaning Betsy against a street lamp, unconcerned with theft, Eugene walked in to the restaurant. 

     Like always, the little space was crowded with customers, but this didn’t faze Eugene. He walked straight up to the counter where everyone who stood was congregated, stated his name, and that he was ready to pickup his order of egg drop soup. The little Asian woman behind the register nodded, yelled something in Chinese to the man next to her, and he in turn nodded to Eugene, before retreating to the kitchen. Eugene put his elbow upon the counter, and calmly looked around the room, absorbing the setting. He watched as a man brought a bucket full of turtle hatchlings into the kitchen, surely to be slaughtered for some turtle soup. An instant flash of movement by his feet startled him, and he jumped back, looked down, and saw before him one of the turtle hatchlings.  It was alone. It must have escaped, he thought, and instinctively scooped it up and threw it into his fanny pack. The lady called out his order. Eugene paid with a wad of single dollars bills and a meager collection of quarters, thanked her, and rode home as carefully as he could with a turtle hatchling crawling around in his fanny pack.

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      Eugene had nothing but a broken-down apartment way out on the city’s outskirts to call home, but it was the only place he could find that had reasonable rent. Music, his passion, didn’t pay his bills; Eugene’s job was washing dishes at a pizza place two blocks away, although he decided that he was happy doing it if it meant he could come home to Edmund everyday. Edmund was the name of the turtle he had found in the Chinese soup café. He had grown to juvenile size and settled in happily to the tank Eugene had made him. Eugene had given him a big tank and added accessories daily; it was a better home than he himself had. After work he would play music next to the tank, and Edmund and he would be peace itself. Eugene loved Edmund more than anything in the world.

Edmund loved Eugene, too, especially when Eugene played music. It was unworldly, almost godly; the noise that came from Eugene’s cello, or his guitar, soothed Edmund’s ears with sweet serenities that dismissed any worry. Whenever Eugene played a song he liked, Edmund would clap his feet together at the end of it. Whenever Eugene played a song he disliked, Edmund would turn his back.

      One day, when Eugene was at work, his good friend, Dan, one of the pizza deliverymen, approached Eugene.

     “How ya been, buddy?” Dan asked.

         “Honestly, I’m better than ever. Actually, I’m in love, Dan!”  Eugene answered with a hint of humor sparkling in his stare.

     “Congratulations, pal!” Dan exclaimed with a big hug. “Who’s the lucky lady?”

     “It’s actually a turtle. He loves me and I love him. It’s more a father-son relationship; we aren’t getting married or anything. But he seems to appreciate my music more than any human does, and so it makes me happy to go home and play to him everyday.” Eugene laughed and patted Dan on the back.

      Dan let out a loud and hearty laugh. “Boy, I don’t know if you are pulling my leg or not, but you can’t be in love with a turtle! I get that they are cute little creatures, but you should find a woman, get married, and start your life.  A turtle is a creature, not a human! I don’t think it understands music at all.”

     He meant what he said kindly and Eugene appreciated it, but it also frustrated him because Dan himself had never seen the joy in Edmund when Eugene played him a tune he liked on the cello. Dan didn’t understand that Edmund wasn’t a creature; he was a soul just like him. Dan, with his words, had only inspired Eugene to create Edmund a mini turtle-sized fiddle, to discover if a turtle could actually understand music like a human.

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     The process of creating a miniature fiddle was not easy to Eugene, what had seemed like a fun idea in his head at the time really wasn’t. It required meticulous measurements when cutting the wood, hours of browsing for the right wood, and overall, a great degree of both time and effort.

     The result was, no doubt, the world’s smallest violin.

     There was no way to teach Edmund how to play, so Eugene just put the fiddle immediately in the tank where Edmund liked to sit and listen to him play cello or guitar. Edmund slowly made his way over, picked up the fiddle, and to Eugene’s amazement he began to play. It sounded horrible -- just awful -- like the sound of nails scratching a chalkboard. It was because Edmund dragged the bow across the strings in the most incorrect way possible and did it every time. Eugene wanted to take the fiddle away; to stop the cacophony of notes coming from the creature and his little creation. However, it was how Edmund would learn, so Eugene refrained, and instead began to try and play along.

     Amazingly, after a few hours of playing with his new fiddle, Edmund was playing even better than Eugene ever had. He took a video, and went to work the next day, excited to prove Dan wrong about the musical ability of a turtle.

     Dan was not only impressed when he saw it, but bewildered.

     “Dude! This is so UNREAL! Get this on YouTube or something! Send this in to America’s funniest videos! I’ll call the news! You are going to get famous as ‘the dude who can jam with his turtle that can play the worlds smallest violin!” Dan’s eyes were shining.

     “I need the money,” Eugene agreed.

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      Within weeks, after putting the video on YouTube and finding a few local news stations to cover the story, Eugene and Edmund were known everywhere throughout the globe. People were not only amused by the fact that a turtle was playing alongside a human, but people actually liked the music that they played. The two became an international sensation. Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble joined them in some performances, and in other performances opera singers joined them with full orchestras. But Edmund always took the spotlight, even in front of millions, as the primary virtuoso, inducing standing ovations without a hint of nervousness.

      Eugene now no longer lived in a shabby apartment; he lived in a modest yet affluent abode in New Zealand, along with Edmund who occupied a 35,000-gallon tank and owned hundreds of fiddles and even an underwater piano. Edmund and Eugene still performed, but it actually became a common occurrence to see a man play backup for a turtle. Eugene had simply uncovered musical ingeniousness that had existed genetically within the turtle species all along. It was discovered that Tortoises excelled at flute, while sea turtles excelled at drumming, and freshwater turtles excelled at playing any stringed instrument.

      Eugene was extremely happy that he had discovered that turtles were musically ingenious because once he did they were no longer cooked into soup. They became prized possessions in human society and were treated even better than cats had been treated in ancient Egyptian society.  

     Although Eugene was happy that turtles were no longer being slaughtered and eaten as food, other animal species were. Eugene was sure that each species in the animal kingdom was genius in some ability but he wasn’t sure how to prove it. He decided to dedicate his life to studying other species of the animal kingdom, testing them with assortments of tasks, like sewing, carpentry, and even fiddle playing, just to see if he couldn’t discover some ingenuity in their capabilities. He hoped that if he could discover what each animal species was genius in, humans would stop hunting them and eating them, and start loving them by celebrating their abilities, because they had done so for turtles.

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     Three decades later, Edmund passed away at the age of 30. It happened peacefully, overnight. He was holding the very first fiddle Eugene had made for him all that time ago.

     As Eugene walked upstairs on that morning, after working all night with Tony the Tarantula and trying to teach him how to make origami, he felt an instinctual sense of dread and, when he first saw Edmund, he somehow knew immediately that he was alive no more. He picked him up and stroked him. A single tear rolled off of the tip of his nose, falling upon Edmund’s shell.

     Eugene did not weep.

     That night, he buried Edmund at sea, and hundreds of thousands of New Zealander’s and celebrities and musicians from around the world hastily gathered to join and mourn with him. Eugene had plenty of money and he knew what he wanted to do in order to preserve Edmund’s spirit for eternity: he planned to make Edmund’s shell into a guitar.

So, the next day, Eugene traveled to the mountains of New Zealand.

     He had heard stories in the past from locals who claimed that the most renowned guitar craftsman throughout the globe resided up there, living like a hermit, in a stone house upon a flowery hill.  Determined to find the expert craftsman, he bought a tent and filled a camping backpack with enough provisions to last at least a week in the wilderness. Eugene left food for his animals to last a week, grabbed Edmund’s shell, and departed. His friends and family called him crazy; many doubted that he would survive in the treacherous terrain of the mountains. He had never even camped before, and most doubted that the hermit craftsman wasn’t anything but a myth. However Eugene ignored their fears and carried on adamantly.

     Within hours of trekking, Eugene was already fatigued. He was not in the most impeccable form, physically, and the hot sun upon his side kept his thirst a constant struggle to quench. The most exhausting component was indubitably his backpack. It made him feel as if he was giving somebody a piggyback ride. Thankfully, streams were abundantly scattered throughout the beautiful landscape that surrounded him.

     I am Legolas.

     Eugene hopped over boulders and kept his stride as he pictured himself as a character from The Lord Of The Rings; a lot of the trilogy was filmed in the New Zealand countryside.

     Eventually, as night fell, he made camp. He was situated on a slope, within the thick of the forest, his tent pitched upon a grassy knoll. He dared not make a fire. In the morning he would proceed up the mountain. Sleep came easily to Eugene, surrounded with the ambience of nature, as a babbling brook murmured nearby.

      However, he soon awoke, to the sound of a Harpsichord.

     Unsure of whether or not it was a dream, Eugene crawled out of his tent and began to listen for the origins of the music; it was coming from the babbling brook. Trying not to break a twig with his step, he made his way over to it with subtlety.

     As Eugene came into sight of the brook, he saw a man perched upon the highest rock, playing the harpsichord and humming pleasantly.

     The man turned to Eugene, “Ah, I have been waiting for you!” he beckoned, and the music stopped.

     Before Eugene could react, the man hopped down from the rock, and approached. He was a giant; at least 10 feet tall, with a ponytail the size of Eugene’s body, and a braided beard that went down to his knees. He wore a satchel. Sheathed in its quiver, hanging behind his back, he wielded a bow & arrow. In his hands was the Harpsichord. He smelt of manure as he towered over Eugene. His face was decorated with tattoos, although it was hard to see anything under the layers of mud that lay caked upon his cheeks.  His voice was deep, his eyes claimed clairvoyance, and his demeanor appeared kind. Eugene didn’t know what to say, he was completely awestruck.

     “Are you the mythical man I seek?” his voice sounded delicate.

     The man let out a booming laugh that seemed to shake the ground around them.

     Right then, a gusty breeze erupted; the trees shook, leaves whirled around in the warm air, and he smiled, “I, the Blacksmith of the Mountain, have been told by the great spirits, that it is my duty to craft you a weapon.”

     “Not a weapon, an instrument!”

     “My friend, I will make you a guitar, and that is a weapon. You will use it to fight for peace and love on this earth. Use it wisely. Now, ask me no more, and go to sleep. I will be here, in the morning, with your ‘instrument’.”

      The next morning, Eugene awoke and found the same giant man, at the same babbling brook, with a guitar in his hands rather than a harpsichord. Last night, Eugene had left Edmund’s shell outside of his tent, for him, the  ‘Blacksmith of the Mountain’, to build Eugene his ‘weapon’. It was all very strange, but it was exactly what the whole journey was for.

     When Eugene first laid his eyes upon the guitar that had been crafted, he could not move. The blacksmith of the mountain simply beamed with pride and handed it to him with a graceful bow. Along the neck of it, the inlays were bedazzled by pieces of Edmund’s shell, the tuning pegs as well. The wood was the color of pearl and made its body resplendent: reflections from when the sun touched it completely enchanted the eye. Eugene’s jaw dropped, and his eyes widened, his words stuck to the tip of his tongue; he was clearly impressed, thoroughly astonished, and entirely captivated by its beauty.

     After a long silence, the masterful craftsman spoke out in a gentle and soft whisper, “Thank you, sir, for this opportunity. This is, hands down, the most beautiful guitar that I have ever had the pleasure to craft. The acoustics are like none I have heard before.  I saved the final application of the pick guard for you to do the honors.”

     Eugene still couldn’t utter a word as he reached out and took the pick guard that was being held out before him.

Holding it in his hands, he realized it was the most magnificent artifact of his entire lifetime: it was Edmund’s shell crafted into a flat, kidney shaped pick guard that radiated brilliance, a kaleidoscope of greens, grey, black and yellow. He had never before seen these colors on Edmund; the pick guard must have been made from the interior of his shell.  He held it in his fingertips, and stroked the mysterious interior pattern as he had stroked the pattern on the exterior of the shell so many times before, when Edmund was alive. A warm flush passed through his body, his knees began to shake, as gravity grew suddenly stronger. All went dark, and Eugene fainted.

     When he awoke, the masterful guitar craftsman was nowhere to be seen, but apparently he had installed the pick guard onto the body of the guitar while Eugene was unconscious and placed him in some sort of oasis on the top of the mountain.

     The beautiful instrument was propped up next to him, next to a mini waterfall and natural stone swimming pool. He and the guitar were both sheltered from the spray of the waterfall by a thick grape vine that surrounded them and provided an umbrella with its canopy. Eugene picked up the guitar and began to play. As he played, he realized how glorious the sound that the guitar emitted out of its sound hole was, and knew he had successfully preserved his beloved turtle’s sprit in the body of this instrument: basic pentatonic patterns were mesmerizing; the instrument sounded musically brilliant. Running his fingers over the smooth pick guard, becoming familiar with the unfamiliar texture of the interior of Edmund’s shell, Eugene felt striations.

      “Damnit!” he cried, worried that he had scratched up the masterpiece on the stone surface, somehow, without even realizing it.

     Bringing the striations close to his eyes, he realized they were actually a series of notes. They were notes that he had never thought of before, but looked as if they had been inscribed there by a man and a mini chisel. Playing them on his guitar, he realized they were the most ingenious chords he had ever heard and, when played together, created a simple yet sweet symphony. He had never contemplated any formation of notes to form any chords like these, and he had never contemplated any formation of chords to form any song like this. It was a miraculous moment. Eugene had an epiphany: turtles were not only musically genius, but had symphonies hidden inside of them, inscribed on the inside of their shells: completely invisible to all, even to themselves.

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     After Eugene made his way off the mountain and found his way back to civilization, he immediately made the chords into a song, and it became his biggest hit yet; it reached the top of the charts in every country in every continent, just because the chord progression was so catchy.  The most learned musicians wanted to know how he had turned such innovative combinations of notes into such a simple progression. The entire world wanted to learn how to play it, cause they all knew how to sing it. The lyrics of the song sang for world peace and so the mass attention worked for a greater good. This pleased Eugene greatly. He donated all of the proceeds to charity.

     However, Eugene never did let the secret out, because he did not want people to know that turtles had symphonies inside of their shells. He knew that if they knew such a thing, then they would rather kill them to steal their symphonies, rather than play as backup for them at their concerts.

     Eugene would never let turtles simply become soup again, for they were fiddlers.