by John Marsden
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 Argus, 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 Argus 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. Argus 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. Argus, 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 Argus 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. Argus 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. Argus 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. Argus 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,’ Argus thought, moving on to the next stall. There was a bigger crowd here, watching what Argus 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. Argus, 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?’
Argus 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 Argus 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.
Argus 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. Argus 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 Argus, 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. Argus 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. Argus 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.
Argus 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 Argus 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 Argus, 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.’
‘I think you should be using a blood knot,’ said Argus with authority.
The man looked up at him, this time with real interest. ‘Well, go right ahead’ he said, promptly handing the whole mess over to the boy.
Argus went to work, quickly tying the difficult knot to connect the first two thick pieces, but labouring somewhat as the pieces became thinner and his hands and eyes became tired. For the twenty minutes or so that it took Argus to do the job, the man watched quietly, helping where he could but generally provi
ng too clumsy to be of real use.
‘You’re a country boy, I’ll be bound?’ he asked Argus when the task was at last completed. ‘Yes,’ Argus nodded, ‘from near Random.’
‘Yes, I thought so. These town boys have a different air about them. What are you doing in these parts?’
‘Oh, just wandering,’ Argus said vaguely, still mindful that he was not supposed to discuss his quest.
‘Ah, I see,’ the man said. ‘I’m sorry I asked. It’s just that one forgets . . . the old customs. I guess your folk live in the traditional way. We’ve been travelling in the populated areas too long. Once there was a time when many a lad like you could be seen following his star across the countryside. Yes, and girls too. Guess it just became too dangerous for many.’
There was a pause while Argus digested all this. ‘What do you do with the fair?’ he asked then.
‘I’m a storyteller,’ the man replied.
Argus, who had a great love for stories, warmed to him immediately. ‘My name’s Argus,’ he said.
‘I’m Mayon,’ the storyteller responded, and the two gravely shook hands. Knowing that the time would come when he would have to be a storyteller himself, seven times over, Argus wondered what he could learn from this man. The opportunity came unexpectedly when Mayon said, ‘Why don’t you get a job here for a while?’
‘Could I?’ Argus asked in surprise.
‘Oh yes, no great problem. They always prefer to take on country boys. And there’s not a week goes by that someone doesn’t leave; so if there’s no vacancy today, there will be tomorrow, in a manner of speaking. These shows always attract drifters. Any strong lad with a practical mind and a good pair of hands can walk into a job here pretty easily. If you’re interested I’ll send you over to my brother’s caravan. He’s in charge of the stringers — they’re the, you know, workers. The fellows who put the tents up and so on.’
Within twenty minutes, to Argus’ great pleasure, he was hired as a stringer by Jud, Mayon’s brother. He was given a bed and a cupboard in Mayon’s caravan, and sent off on his first job — to pick up litter around the shows where he had so recently been an interested customer and spectator.
He worked on various odd jobs until well into the night, with only a brief break when he was invited to dip into Mayon’s cooking pot and serve himself a generous helping of a concoction in which mushrooms, carrots, tomatoes and herbs figured prominently. He was grateful when he was at last free, at around midnight, and he could fall into bed and sleep. It was the first late night he had had since leaving home; and it was the noisiest and most crowded evening that he had ever spent. He had become used to nights spent in solitude under the stars, reviewing the day’s events and thinking his own thoughts. But tonight sleep was upon him too quickly to allow for any conscious thinking.
Chapter Six
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 Mayon and a couple of other stringers spoke to him, even to give him a ‘good morning’. ‘Be patient,’ Mayon 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 Mayon 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 Mayon — 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 sex 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 Mayon, 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,