Thirst for Adventure

Chapter 7

On the first night after the company left Ifeka they camped on a low windswept plain near a small lake. There was a strange tang in the air, a taste on the wind, that Leo told Argus was the first sharp bite of the ocean. Argus was excited and enchanted. He sat late that night at the big fire, enjoying the cold salt ruffles of air on his face, until the only people left around the coals were Ruth, Leo, the male-female Tiresias, the storytellers Delta and Cassim, the spidery Titius and a dark, attractive young girl named Temora, who had been employed as a stringer just before the convoy left Ifeka.

Argus was only half listening to the conversation, which was about the town of Wintle, where they were headed. With zest and good humour, Ruth was recounting the story of her last trip to Wintle, when she had apparently married a man who had deserted her a week later. Argus did not know how muc

h, if any, of the story was true, but it did not seem to matter to anyone else. ‘A good story is a good story’ was the creed of the professional storytellers of the fair, and Argus was inclined to agree with them.

‘It was a wonderful honeymoon,’ Ruth sighed romantically, ‘until we had an argument one night over who should put the cat out. Well, you know how hard it is for me to get up at nights. Every other night he put it out, but this night he dug his little heels in and nothing would shift him. Maybe I’d worn him out.’ She gave a throaty chuckle. ‘So there was nothing else for it but for me to get up and do it myself. Oh, I wasn’t half mad. So after I’d put the cat out I came back and put him out too. He kicked and struggled but I wasn’t having any. I threw him out the door, down the steps, and that was it. After I’d closed the door on him I never saw him again.’

‘Yes, I remember,’ said Cassim. ‘He was only wearing a pair of shorts. Jud took pity on him and gave him a bed for the night but he went early the next morning, taking Jud’s only good set of clothes. And that was the last any of us ever saw of him.’

‘Well, he could have been worse off,’ Ruth sighed. ‘Remember Marma, the fat lady who used to work on the east coast years ago? Did you ever hear what became of her and her man?’

‘No, what happened?’ Leo asked.

‘Well, she passed out as they were going up a set of stairs one day in the house that they’d bought for their old age. And she fell back on top of the little fellow and crushed him to death. She came to an hour later and found him dead underneath her.’

None of the company seemed to be much moved by this sad tale, except the new girl, Temora. ‘It must be hard being a fat lady,’ she said quietly.

‘Well,’ said Ruth, delighted at finding a sympathetic ear, ‘it’s hard when you have to walk any distance, especially if it’s uphill. There’s no gainsaying that. And it’s not nice when people make unkind remarks to you, like they do in the tent sometimes. But most people just enjoy a chat. I’d have to say, all things considered, that it’s been a good life. You see, I’ve been especially blessed.’

He worked for a few days in an orchard, picking oranges for a married couple who spoke neither to each other nor to him. Their moroseness did not bother Leo, but the work did. It was hot and boring and dirty. As he flicked each orange towards him to be picked, the accumulated layer of dirt on top of the fruit flew into his face; by the end of each day he was spectacularly black. Still, the food was good, and he supplemented the meals by eating huge numbers of oranges, despite the obvious irritation this caused his employers. After four days they told him they would not be needing him any more. As there were still plenty of oranges to be picked, he could only assume that they were not satisfied with his work. Certainly he had been quite slow, but he swung his pack onto his back and set off again without great concern. He did, however, take a dozen oranges with him; they weighed a lot but the refreshment they gave was sweet and nourishing.

As he walked on he quickened his pace, knowing from signs on the road, and from conversations with other travellers, that he was closing in on the large town of Ifeka. The curiosity and excitement that had been sparking in him for a long time now burned steadily. He had never seen a town bigger than Random. Now he was walking past rows of houses that were close together. Children played in their gardens, and there were footpaths made of gravel beside well-defined roads. Sometimes stretches of countryside broke up the clusters of houses, but gradually these became less and less frequent. He slept that night in a haystack, guessing that it could be his last such bed for quite a time. Next morning he was off early, after an oddly mixed breakfast of carrots and oranges.

The traffic became quite heavy and Leo had to adjust his pace occasionally when held up behind family groups or older people. He did not mind but was surprised to find that for the first time on his journey people were not meeting his eye and smiling or exchanging friendly words. He passed a man working in his flower garden. Leo gave him a cordial greeting and stopped to chat, as was the custom in his own valley, but the man ignored him and kept stolidly pulling up weeds. Leo, disconcerted, did not know what to do. He waited for a long, embarrassed moment and finally went on his way, but his cheeks burned for a long time at the insult.

Around lunchtime Leo noticed crowds of people and a number of large tents on a rather poorly maintained common a few hundred yards from the road. Filled with curiosity he went over and mingled with the crowd. It appeared that he had stumbled across some kind of fair, or travelling show. There were food stalls, games, a dance troupe, storytellers, and displays of various oddities, some of them animate and some definitely inanimate. The latter included a collection of carvings made from human bones, and a rock said to have come from the moon. The animate were not so easily visible: there were pictures of them outside a tent but to see them in the flesh, one had to pay. They were supposed to include a two-headed woman, a fat lady, a human skeleton and a person who was half man-half woman. Leo could not pay his money quickly enough, and, heart fluttering with excitement, he went in.

The inside of the tent was shadowy and it took his eyes a few moments to adjust. The exhibits were arranged in a circle of small booths. Other spectators were walking around examining the displays and at each booth there was a low murmur of conversation. Leo went across to the nearest stand and found himself gazing into the eyes of a man of incredible thinness, who was seated on a stool and looking at the spectators. He wore a long tall top hat, and it, like the rest of his strange garb, was striped in orange and green, colours which accentuated his remarkable shape. Leo felt he could have joined his thumb and forefinger around the man’s arms or legs, without any trouble at all. He was reminded of a praying mantis, and giggled at the thought, then blushed at his rudeness. There were people beside him who were not so sensitive, however.

‘Hey mister,’ a girl called out, ‘can I take you home? We need a new scarecrow.’ The crowd tittered but the man continued to look blandly into their faces. ‘Guess he’s heard every line before,’ Leo thought, moving on to the next stall. There was a bigger crowd here, watching what Leo supposed was the two-headed woman. In fact the two-headed woman was two girls who were joined at the stomach. They were seated half facing each other, in the only possible position they could have adopted, and were playing cards, ignoring their fascinated audience. Occasionally one would speak to the other but only in monosyllables, and only to comment on the card game. Leo, not as self-conscious here as he had been with the living skeleton, whose direct gaze he had found disconcerting, stayed a long time, until one of the girls, in the middle of shuffling the cards, looked at him with a casual grin and said, ‘Hiya honey, you live round here?’

Leo gulped and shook his head, then found his tongue and said, ‘No, in the Random valley.’

‘Well, that’s quite a way off,’ the girl said, and Leo warmed to her as someone among all these strangers who appeared to know his home district. The other girl, however, gave him a sour glance and picked up her cards without a comment.

Leo waited a while but the twins said nothing more to him, so he moved on. The fat lady, astoundingly fat, wobbling all over every time she moved or laughed, was deep in conversation with one of the spectators, while she knitted a long scarf. Leo listened to them talking; it was mainly about the fair. It seemed to be a nomadic life, travelling to another town every week or two, always on the road. The longer the fat lady talked, the more ordinary she seemed to Leo, just like some of the women from Random. The boy left her and crossed to another booth, this time the half man-half woman display.

Here was a person who was groomed and dressed as though split down the middle. One half was male: a short haircut, a moustache, men’s clothing. But all that ceased at the dividing line: the moustache was only half a moustache, the clothing specially designed. The hair on the female side was long and decorated with beads. The group gazing at this person was the biggest and quietest group of all. Leo stood at the side and watched with them, fascinated but anxious to avoid notice. There was something frightening yet compelling about the quiet figure who was looking out into the distance, over the heads of the crowd. Leo shivered and walked away. In front of him, as he left the tent, was a group of young people. They were subdued until they got out into the bright sunshine but then they broke into an uproar of speculation and jokes about the hermaphroditic figure they had left behind.

Leo bought some stuffed capsicums for lunch then wandered among the various shows and games. He sat on the grass and listened to a balladeer with a piano accordion, who was singing a melancholy song about a shipwreck. Finally growing bored with the entertainment, he strolled a little further afield, into what was clearly the living area for the members of the travelling fair. It was a quiet part of the common, spread with caravans and tents; few people, apart from toddlers, were to be seen.

Outside one caravan, however, was a man with a brown beard, who was tying pieces of fishing line together. Around him, all over the ground, was a scatter of bits and pieces of fishing equipment. As Leo approached, the man said, with barely a glance at him, ‘Here, give me a hand will you. Put your thumb there, while I tie this.’

‘What kind of knot are you tying?’ asked Leo, obliging but rather sceptical about the ugly lump the man was producing in his line.

‘I don’t know,’ the man said with a laugh. ‘I don’t know much about fishing and I don’t know much about knots. This is my grandfather’s stuff. No-one’s used it since he died, so I thought I’d better have a go at it.’