“Thanks, I may come back later,” Greybeard said. “I want to have a look round at the fair now. Do you know of anyone called Bunny Jingadangelow?”
“Jingadangelow? Yes, I know of him. What do you want with him? Go over the bridge and up the road towards Ensham, and you’ll come to his stall; it’s got the words ‘Eternal Life’ above it. You can’t mistake it.
Okay?”
Looking round at the party of singers, Greybeard caught Charley’s eye. Charley rose, and they walked out together, leaving Towin and Becky singing “Any Old Iron” with the wedding party.
“The fellow who’s just got married again is a reindeer breeder,” Charley said. “It seems they’re still the only big mammal unaffected by the radiation. Do you remember how people said they’d never do over here when they were first imported, because the climate was too wet for their coats?”
“It’s too wet for my coat too, Charley… It’s less cold than it was, and by the look of the clouds there’s rain about. What sort of shelter are we going to find ourselves for the night?”
“One of the women back in the bar said we might get lodgings up this way, in the town. We’ll look out.
It’s early yet.”
They walked up the road, taking in the bustle at the various pitches.
Isaac yipped and snuffled as they passed a cage of foxes, and next to it a run full of weasels. There were also hens for sale, and a woman wrapped in furs tried to sell them powdered reindeer antler as a charm against impotence and ill health. Two rival quacks sold purges and clysters, charms against rheumatism, and nostrums for the cramps of age; the few people who stood listening to them seemed sceptical. Trade was dropping off at this time of evening; people were now after entertainment rather than business, and a juggler drew appreciative crowds. So did a fortune-teller – though that must be a limited art now, Greybeard thought, with all dark strangers turned to grey and no possible patter of tiny feet.
An old bent man was masturbating in a ditch and drunkenly cursing his seed before they came to the next stall. It was little more than a wooden platform. Above it fluttered a banner with the words ETERNAL LIFE
on it.
“This must be Jingadangelow’s pitch,” Greybeard said.
Several people were here; some were listening to the man speaking from the platform, while others jostled about a fallen figure that was propped against the platform edge, with two aged crones weeping and croaking over it. To see what was happening was difficult in the flapping light of unguarded torches, but the words of the man on the platform made things clearer.
This speaker was a tall raven figure with wild hair and a face absolutely white except for quarries of slatey grey under his eyes. He spoke in the voice of a cultured man, with a vigour his frame seemed scarcely able to sustain, beating time to his phrases with a pair of fine wild hands.
“Here before us you see evidence of what I am saying, my friends. In sight and hearing of us all, a brother has just departed this life. His soul burst out of his ragged coating and left us. Look at us – look at us, my dearly loved brethren, all dressed in our ragged coating on this cold and miserable night somewhere in the great universe. Can you say any one of you in your hearts that it would not be better to follow our friend?”
“To hell with that for a lark!” a man called, clasping a bottle. He drew the speaker’s accusing finger.
“For you it might not be better, I agree, my friend – for you would go as our brother here did, loaded before the Lord with liquor. The Lord’s stood enough of our dirty nonsense, brethren; that’s the plain truth.
He’s had more than He call stand. He’s finished with us, but not with our souls. He’s cut us off, and manifestly He will disapprove if we persist till our graves in perpetuating the follies we should have left behind in our youth.”