Thirst for Adventure

Chapter 10

Forgetting courtesy, he watched open-mouthed as the man grabbed at the woman’s arm and pulled her roughly. Leo thought he should intervene, but the man looked much too big and strong for him; and besides, he wondered if this was perhaps the normal way of things in the city. Then an old woman arrived huffing and creaking.

‘What are you doing, Tira?’ she said crossly to the girl. ‘Causing such a scene. You ought to be ashamed.’

‘You don’t know what he’s like,’ the younger woman answered angrily.

‘As bad as you, that’s what he’s like. You’re well suited.’ The three of them started walking back along the alley, accusations and counter-accusations flying between them. Leo watched spellbound till they were out of sight.

Just as they turned the corner and disappeared from his view the boy became aware of a trickle down his leg. He looked, and saw a white runnel of forgotten ice cream; at the same time he felt again the chilled wet patch from his pocket. Not knowing the ways of ice cream, the boy was astounded. But his attempts to remove the half-melted mess from his pocket were a disaster. He hated to throw any away, so he tried l*****g it off his hands, which quickly became a sticky embarrassment. And no matter how much he tried to clean out his pocket it seemed impossible — a cold Augean dip. It was not until he found a drinking-fountain, twenty minutes later, that he was able to clean himself properly and bid farewell to his first ice cream.

For the rest of the afternoon Leo roamed the streets and enjoyed the sights of the town. He saw a dog being wheeled along on a large red trolley by an old man who was apparently its owner. He saw a stall full of enormous orchids and was as staggered by their blatant beauty as he was frightened by their fierce mouths. He saw a caged bird singing a song that Leo knew was one of despair. And he saw other sights that he did not understand: a clock with numbers in the wrong sequence, a woman walking quickly along the street talking to herself, a man dressed in wedding clothes standing alone on a street corner.

As he passed one building Leo was accosted by a middle-aged woman with dark hair and a golden collar around her neck. ‘I know what you’re doing,’ she said to the boy. ‘And you’ll find part of it in here. There are a lot of answers in this house.’ She put her arm on his shoulder, in a familiar but over-intimate gesture. ‘Come on in,’ she said. ‘Have you got some money? It won’t cost much. And you’ll have a good time. Don’t you want to be a man?’

Leo instinctively shied away from her touch. ‘No, no,’ he stammered, unsure of what he was being offered but unable to trust the woman. ‘I’m in a hurry.’ He started to move away but the woman tried to detain him.

‘Oh, come on,’ she said. ‘Don’t be frightened. It’ll be the best afternoon of your life.’

When the boy kept backing away the woman lost interest in him and he was able to make good his departure. Yet he felt humiliated by the encounter: it made him feel smaller and younger than he believed himself to be.

A few blocks further on Leo came to a high wire fence which seemed to separate one part of the town from the other. Try as he might, he could find no break in this fence, and eventually he was forced to abandon his search. He stood for quite a time looking through the mesh. In the distance he could see figures moving, people going about their business in, apparently, much the same way as the people on his side. Yet none of them came close enough to the fence for him to speak to them; so the function of the barrier remained a mystery.

It was getting late in the afternoon and Leo realised it was time to start back for the fair. Suddenly he felt such a rush of weariness that he doubted whether he had the strength to walk all that way. Yet he knew he had no choice, and he forced himself to call up reserves from the bottomless pit of energy that had never failed him in the past. With a determined lifting of the head he began walking.

The stalls were closing as he passed through the market areas once more. From one that was still open he purchased some food; it appeared to be a mixture of cheese and fruit, wrapped in unleavened bread. It was delicious and he ate it hungrily. It freshened his body somehow, and after that he found the walk easier.

On the edge of the market area he recognised a House of the Past. He had not been in one since Random but he entered it with gratitude, and sat in its peace for half an hour or so, before resuming the journey to the common in the quickening dark of twilight.

The event of the day that gave him the greatest pleasure, however, was the warm welcome he received from Leo and Jud and Demy and Parara and others who were cooking around the main fire when he returned.

‘Here’s the farm boy, back from the big city,’ gurgled Ruth, the friendly fat woman. ‘Find any cows to milk dear? Seen all the sights? Here, sit down next to me and have a bowl of soup and tell me about all the temptations you gave in to.’ Leo knew he was back among friends and his heart warmed to them. When the fair moved, the day after next, he went with them.

Chapter Eight

How’s that?’ asked Jasper.

‘Well, you see dear, being a lusus, it means you’re given a very fortunate life.’

‘What’s a lusus?’ Leo whispered to Mayon.

‘A kind of a freak,’ the man whispered back.

But Jasper was pursuing the point. ‘How do you figure that, fortunate?’ she asked. ‘I mean, no offence, but I guess most people think if you’re born a lusus you’ve been given a pretty tough deal.’

‘Oh no,’ the fat woman remonstrated as though the idea had never occurred to her before. ‘Oh no, quite the opposite. I mean, everyone’s a freak anyway. I’m just lucky that I don’t have to work at it. I make a good living out of being myself. I don’t have to do anything; people pay to see me as I am, whereas other people have to go and dig potatoes or trade or fish or sew clothes in order to keep themselves alive. They’re unlucky that their freakishness just isn’t as obvious as mine, so they can’t make much of it. Then there’s the ones who worry that people can’t tell that they’re a lusus, so they set out to make themselves a bit more conspicuous. They don’t believe people can see it when it’s on the inside of them, so they recreate it on the outside, just to be sure. They’re the ones who dress funny or paint their bodies or mark themselves. Do you know, I knew a man once, he had messages carved into his skin, all over his body, whole sentences, so you could read him like you’d read a book.’

‘What did they say?’ asked Mayon with interest.

‘Oh, all sorts of things,’ Ruth chuckled. ‘I remember up his left leg it said: “We always go too far.” ’ She shook with helpless mirth. ‘Now ain’t that the truth! It’s always the simplest words are the truest.’ She became serious again. ‘But you know, all he was trying to do was to let people know he was a lusus. As if everyone doesn’t know that about everyone else already!’

‘How do you mean, everyone is?’ Leo asked shyly.

‘Oh my dear,’ the fat lady said. ‘We’re all different, aren’t we? So we’re all freaks to each other. Now you look at Mayon here. The way his eyebrows meet in the middle like that. And have you ever noticed his hands? His little finger’s as long as his fourth finger.’ Mayon gravely held his hands out for inspection, while Ruth continued. ‘There ain’t a person been born that you can’t find something like that about them. But it’s not just on the outside, it’s on the inside too. Take the other day, when Mayon was reading his book by candlelight, and he got too close to the candle and the book caught on fire — why, everyone else was running around looking for a bucket full of water, and Mayon, what was he doing? Sitting there laughing, that’s what.

‘And another thing, you watch him when he’s about to start eating. He closes his eyes for a minute and says something — very quietly, so that no-one notices but me. And you ask him what he thinks about burials, and what he wants done with his body after he dies. You see, he’s got different reactions and thoughts and opinions from everyone else, and so have we all, and that’s another way we’re all freaks.’

‘My nose has got a big bump in the middle,’ said Leo. ‘And I’ve got a birthmark on my right leg.’

‘Course you have dear,’ said Ruth. ‘It’s all a matter of degree. With me, my fat’s more obvious, and on a bigger scale than the bump in your nose, that’s all. Now imagine if that bump was the size of a coconut. Why, you’d be able to have my kind of life then, and very lucky you’d think yourself too.’

‘I don’t think I’m lucky,’ said Tiresias, speaking for the first time. He was sitting in the shadows, and Leo could only just make out his slight, ambiguous figure.

‘No, well dearie, that’s because you accept other people’s judgements about you, instead of making up your own mind. You’ve got to look at yourself from your point of view, not someone else’s, and decide for yourself what your good points are, and then what you don’t like, and want to change. It’s no good being unhappy because other people say you should be. Just like it’s no good being happy when everyone tells you how well off you are. The things they think you should feel good or bad about mightn’t be the things that mean much to you. People tell you to listen to the song of the thrush, when in your heart you know yours is the song of the night owl. You’ve got to find your own music. It’s already playing inside you; all you have to do is listen a little harder, so it’s not drowned out by all the noise around about.’

The last of the coals were still glowing and putting out a surprising amount of warmth. Assisted by Cassim and Mayon, Ruth got to her feet and, with farewells to all, lumbered away to bed. The others too began to leave. Leo and the young girl Jasper were left to put out the fire, but they hesitated to do it, so settled was its glow.

‘I like Ruth,’ Jasper said at last. ‘She’s so kind.’

‘Yes,’ Leo agreed, ‘after a while you forget that she’s fat, and you just think of her as a nice, friendly lady.’