Thirst for Adventure

Chapter 5

As Argus gradually learnt the routines of life with the folk at the fair he was able to do his work more and more automatically, which allowed him time to get to know his surroundings from the inside. His duties were menial — cleaning, painting, repairing, carrying, general labouring. For quite a time though hardly anyone except Leo and a couple of other stringers spoke to him, even to give him a ‘good morning’. ‘Be patient,’ Leo advised. ‘They’re used to stringers coming and going every week or two, like I told you. They get sick of being friendly with someone who leaves the next day.’ So Argus took particular trouble to do his jobs well and to be polite to everyone, and soon he was pleased to see that the thaw forecast by Leo was taking place.

As he got to know his new companions better he met with many surprises. The fat lady, whose name was Ruth, was the easiest — besides Leo — to befriend. She was naturally gregarious, spending all her spare time sitting in the sun at the front of her caravan, collecting gossip and chatting with all who passed. She could not walk far without suffering loss of breath and overheating, so she found it easier to avoid exertion. But Argus could not understand why she was as fat as she was; for she did not seem to eat a lot. Yet she was so fat that if she sat on a chair it would immediately sink into the ground up to its cross-bars, and indeed all her own furniture had been specially made to accommodate her. ‘And my mother was such a little thing’ she confided wheezingly to Argus. ‘Why, if I sneezed she’d be blown across the room. And I was so tiny when I was born.’ She laughed uproariously, and her great sides shook as though she were an ocean in a storm. ‘Now my ears alone would weigh what I did at birth.’

The conjoined twins, Lavolta and Parara, held a great fascination for Argus. He found that Parara, who had spoken to him that first day in the tent, was quite different from her sister. Parara was lively, humorous and outgoing, while her sister was dour and elusive. Parara would greet everyone she knew with warmth and pleasure, and stop to chat. Lavolta, who obviously had no choice then but to stop too, would stand slightly turned away, gazing into the distance and contributing little or nothing to the conversation. One day when Argus asked the twins to help him for a moment, by keeping the tension on a coil of rope he was unwinding to fence off a new enclosure, it was Parara who took the rope and did all the work.

The twins moved around with as much speed and facility as any single person, even though their gait was awkward and graceless. They appeared to have harmonised most of their living relationships; Argus never witnessed an argument between them about when they should eat, for example, or when they should go to bed. Like everyone else he wondered about their visits to the toilet, or what happened if one of the girls had a boyfriend, but he was never brave enough or rude enough to ask. The twins were able to laugh at themselves, but Argus knew they were often asked coarse questions by the crowds who came through the main tent to look at them. He did not want to place himself on that level.

A more disturbing figure was that of Tiresias, the shadowy half man-half woman whom Argus had found so unsettling when he first laid eyes on him. Argus could not decide to which s*x he belonged. Under the artificial embellishments of the special clothes, the moustache, and the haircut, Tiresias was truly a sexually ambiguous figure. And he did not make it any easier for Argus to satisfy his curiosity, because he was always elusive. Seldom seen around the campsite, he kept mainly to his caravan, where, Jud claimed, he made a fortune by entertaining local men in search of something exotic. When all the members of the travelling show were gathered around the big bonfire late at night, as was their custom, Tiresias could sometimes be seen standing unobtrusively in the background, well away from the bright firelight. Argus spoke to him occasionally and was always given a polite answer, expressed in a toneless yet pleasant enough voice that was also sexually indefinable. Argus was unable to explain the fascination and fear that he felt towards Tiresias, but a prickling on the back of his neck and a reddening of his skin always told him when he was near the mysterious half man-half woman.

Another of the exotic figures who had attracted Argus’ attention on his first walk through the big show tent was Titius, the human skeleton. This tall and spindly fellow proved, however, to be boring and irritating. He hung around listlessly all day when not ‘on duty’, complaining to anyone who would listen about anything that was currently annoying him. His fretting wore out Argus’ patience and the boy soon learned to avoid him.

It was the storytellers and the balladeers to whom Argus was most attracted though. As well as Leo, there were two other storytellers: Delta and Cassim, both women, and two balladeers: Cameron and Demy. Whenever they gave public performances Argus tried to arrange his jobs so that he could be nearby; and late at night, when work was over and everyone relaxed, Argus loved to listen to them talk and sing. He particularly liked the fact that they so rarely told the same story twice, or that when they did, they gave it enough new twists to retain its interest. But on the other hand, there were songs whose very familiarity accounted for their attraction, and which he never tired of hearing.

One night Demy sang a ballad which Argus had not heard before but which he was nev

er to forget. There were only a few people left around the fire when Demy picked up his guitar and began:

Now let me sing you a story

Of a child who died one sad day.

It’s a song of love and of loyalty

And the price a girl had to pay.

Eleven years old, she went walking

Down the bed of a stream

And she walked through the water so carefree

Lost in her own private dream.

The name of the girl was Sunday

And she lived up Random way.

She had a dog called Milo

Who was walking with her that day.

Milo was leaping through water,

Loving the splash and the spray,

Staying ahead of his mistress,

The beautiful girl, Sunday.

The dog found a cliff where the water

Fell a hundred feet sheer

And he stood on the edge looking over

With not a tremor of fear.

But Sunday, she saw the danger.

She knew of the boulders below.

She started forward to save him,

To save the dog Milo.

The rocks were wet with the water

And sleek with the moss so green,

The dog turned and slipped, as his mistress

Slid on the bright stony sheen.

The two went over together,

Embraced in love and in fear.

The boulders stood waiting to break them,

To become their funeral bier.

And their bodies lay fatally shattered

On the rocks at the foot of the fall.

But the girl so true and so faithful,

She was not broken at all.

No, the girl so true and so faithful,

She was not broken at all.

Demy finished the song with a sad chord and sat looking into the fire, his head bowed. Since the mention of Random and the name Sunday Argus had been frozen with fear and horror. But Leo turned to him and said, ‘You’re from Random aren’t you? Does the story ring a bell with you?’ Then he saw from the tears on Argus’ face that it did indeed.

‘No-one knows,’ said Argus, his voice breaking with long-suppressed sobs, ‘no-one knows if that’s the way it really happened. But we think that’s probably right.’ He wiped his face and stood up. ‘How did you come to hear of her?’ he asked Demy.

‘I was in the valley at the time’ the man answered, embarrassed at the grief he had caused the boy. ‘Everyone was talking about it. The people were devastated. She seemed to be such a loved child. I wrote the song a few weeks later, after I’d moved on to other parts. I was a wandering balladeer at the time, travelling on my own.’

‘Everyone did love her,’ Argus sobbed, tears running down his face again. ‘When you’re a kid, you don’t think that you love your sister exactly, but you know that you care about her and you’d rather die yourself than have any harm come to her. But it’s not enough to want to save someone. Now I know I love her but I can’t tell her that, and I miss her. I miss her all the time.’ He stumbled away into the darkness, out into the empty expanse of the common, but Leo came after him and led him gently to a rock where they could both sit. ‘I’m sorry about crying back there,’ the boy said, ‘in front of everyone.’

‘Tears are part of the healing,’ Leo answered. ‘They’re one of the ways your soul heals itself after a wound. Just like when you’re hot your body sweats, to bring your temperature down.’

‘But I still don’t understand why people have to die,’ Argus said. ‘I guess that’s one of the things I’m meant to have worked out before I go home again, but some of the questions just seem too hard sometimes.’

‘Nothing dies,’ Leo answered him. ‘There is no death. Just change. Nature understands that. It’s only Man who doesn’t. Death is an invention of Man. Your sister’s body is metamorphosing back into the rich earth in which she is buried. Her atoms are rearranging into new and wonderful patterns. A flower gets eaten by an insect; it changes into part of the body of that insect. The insect is eaten by a trout; it becomes part of that trout. The trout gets old and stops breathing; its poor body disintegrates and gets washed away until it reintegrates with the soil and humus, along the fertile river flats. And from that soil grows a flower once more. That’s what happens to our physical bodies in the process called death.

Your sister was more than just a body. A head and a trunk and four limbs. Do you think that’s all you are? No. That’s not you. There’s much more to you. Inside that arrangement of flesh and bones there’s an abstract, indefinable something that is the real you and is a collage of your past and present, all the experiences and feelings and thoughts that you’ve ever had. And when the time comes for that essential you to leave its physical body, then away it goes, on fresh adventures, into a state of being that we can be sure will provide us with more new and wonderful experiences, even if we can be sure of nothing else about it.’

The man and the boy were silent, looking out into the mysterious darkness. ‘I can never understand why people get buried in those big solid coffins,’ Leo said at last. ‘It just interferes with the process of change. Makes it hard for the physical body to move on to its next stage.’ The two stood and walked slowly back to the bonfire, whose flames had now become coals and would soon be ashes.

‘I’m glad Demy wrote the song,’ Argus said. ‘It’s nice to know she’s remembered like that.’ Presently they retired to the caravan, for the healing process called sleep. Argus had not shared a bed with anyone since, as a little boy afraid of storms, he had snuggled in with his sister, but this night he climbed in under Leo’s eiderdown and, comforted by the gentle storyteller’s warmth, he spent the night at peace.

Two days later, knowing that the show was about to pack its tents and vans and move to a new town, Argus resolved to explore Ifeka while he still had a chance. For all the time he had spent there he had only seen the outer suburbs. He received permission from Jud to take a day off and go into the centre of town.