“By this time the audience had climbed the ladder of marvels to Rango the Missing Link, exhibited by Heinie Bayer. Rango was an orangoutang, who could walk a tightrope carrying a parasol; at the mid-point, he would suddenly swing downward, clinging to the rope with his toes, and reflectively eat bananas; then he would whirl upright, throw away the skin, and complete his journey. After that he sat at a table, and rang a bell, and Heinie, dressed as a clown waiter, served him a meal, which Rango ate with affected elegance, until he was displeased with a badly prepared dish, and pelted Heinie with food. Rango was surefire. Everybody loved him, and I was of their number until I tried to make friends with him and Rango spat some chewed-up nuts in my face. It was part of Heinie’s deal with the management that Rango had to share a berth with him in our Pullman; although he was house-trained he was a nuisance because he was a bad sleeper, and likely to stick his hand into your berth in the night and pinch you — a very mean, twisting pinch. It was uncanny to poke your head out of your berth and see Rango swinging along the car, holding on to the tops of the green curtains, as if they were part of his native jungle.
“After Rango came Zitta the Jungle Queen. Snake acts are all the same. She pulled the snakes around her neck, wound them around her arms, and as a topper she knelt down and charmed her cobra by no other means than that of the unaided human eye, with which she exerts hypnotic dominance over this most dreaded of jungle monsters, as Charlie said, and ended by kissing it on its ugly snout.
“This was good showmanship. First the sunny side of nature, then the ominous side of nature. The trick, I learned, was that Zitta leaned down to the cobra from above its head; cobras cannot strike upwards. It was a thrill, and Zitta had to know her business. As I grew older and more cynical I sometimes wondered what it would be like if Zitta exercised her hypnotic powers on Rango, and kissed him, for a change. I don’t think Rango was a lady’s man.
“This left only Willard, Andro the Hermaphrodite, and Happy Hannah to complete the show; Zovene the Midget Juggler was only useful to get the audience out of the tent. On the basis of public attraction it was acknowledged that Willard must have the place of honour once Abdullah was on display. Charlie was in favour of giving Andro the place just before Abdullah but Happy Hannah would have none of it. She was clamorous. If a natural, educational wonder like herself, without any gaff about her, didn’t take precedence over a gaffed monsterosity she was prepared to leave carnival life and despair of the human race. She made herself so unpleasant that she won the argument; Andro became very shrewish when he was under attack, but he lacked Hannah’s large, embracing, Biblical flow of condemnation. When he had said that Hannah was a fat, loud-mouthed old bitch his store of abuse was exhausted; but she sailed into him with all guns firing.
” ‘Don’t think I hold it against you personally, Andro. No, I know you for what you are. I know the rock from whence ye are hewn — that no-good bunch o’ Boston Greek fish-peddlers and small-time thieves; and I likewise know the hole of the Pit whence ye are digged — offering yourself to stand bare-naked in front of artists, some of ’em women, at fifty cents an hour. So I know it isn’t really you that’s speaking against me; it’s the spirit of an unclean devil inside you, crying with a loud voice; and I rebuke it just as our dear Lord did; I’m sitting right here, crying, “Hold thy peace and come out of him!” ‘ “This was Hannah’s strength. All her immense bulk was crammed with Bible knowledge and quotations and it oozed out of her like currant-juice oozing out of a jellybag. She offered herself to the public as a Biblical marvel, a sort of she-Leviathan. She would not allow Charlie to speak for her. As soon as he had given her a lead — And now, ladies and gentlemen. I present Happy Hannah, four hundred and eighty-seven pounds of good humour and chuckles — she would burst in, ‘Yes friends, and I’m the living proof of how fat a person can get and still bear it gladly in the Lord’s name. I hope every person here knows his Bible and if they do, they know the comforting message of Proverbs eleven, twenty-five: The liberal soul shall be made fat. Yes friends, I am here not as a curiosity and certainly not as a monsterosity but to attest in my daily life and my public career to the Lord’s abounding grace. I don’t hafta be here; many offers from missionary societies and the biggest evangelists have been turned down in order that I may get around this whole continent and talk to the biggest possible audience of the real people, God’s own folks, and attest to the Faith. Portraits of me as you see me now, each one individually autographed by my own hand, may be purchased at twenty-five cents apiece, and for another mere quarter I will include a priceless treasure, this copy of the New Testament which fits in the pocket and in which each and every word uttered by our Lord Jesus Christ during his earthly ministry is printed in RED. No Testament sold except with a portrait. Don’t miss this great offer which is made by me at a financial sacrifice in order that the Lord’s will may be done more abundantly here in Pumpkin Centre. Don’t hang back folks; grab what I’m giving to you; I been made fat and when you possess this portrait of me as you see me now and this New Testament you’ll hafta admit that I’m certainly the Liberal Soul. Come on, now, who’s gonna be the first?’
“Hannah was able to hawk her pictures and her Testaments because of an arrangement written into every artiste’s contract that they should be allowed to sell something at every show. They made their offer, or Charlie made it for them, as the crowd was about to move on to the next Wonder. The price was always twenty-five cents. Sonny had a book on body-building; Molza had only a picture of himself with his throat full of swords-a very slow item in terms of sales; Professor Spencer offered his personally written visiting cards, which were a nuisance because they took quite a while to prepare; Em Dark sold throwing knives Joe made in his spare time out of small files — a throwing knife has no edge, only a point; Heinie sold pictures of Rango; Zitta offered belts and bracelets which she made out of the skins of the snakes she had mauled to death — though Charlie didn’t put it quite like that; Andro was another seller of pictures; Willard sold a pamphlet called Secrets of Gamblers Revealed, which was offered by Charlie as an infallible protection against dishonest card-players you might meet on trains; a lot of people bought them who didn’t look like great travellers, and I judged they wanted to know the secrets of gamblers for some purpose of their own. I read it several times, and it was a stupefyingly uncommunicative little book, written at least thirty years before 1918. The agreement was that each Wonder offered his picture or whatever it might be after he had been exhibited, and that when the show had been completed, except for the Midget Juggler, Charlie would invite the audience once again not to leave without one of these valuable mementoes of a unique and unforgettable personal experience and educational benefit.
“From being an extremely innocent little boy it did not take me long to become a very knowing little boy. I picked up a great deal as we travelled from village to village on the train, for our Pullman was an educational benefit and certainly, for me, an unforgettable personal experience. I had an upper berth at the very end of the car, at some distance from Willard, whose importance in the show secured him a lower in the area where the shock of the frequent shuntings and accordion-like contractions of the train were least felt. I came to know who had bottles of liquor, and also who was generous with it and who kept it for his own use. I knew that neither Joe nor Em Dark drank, because it would have been a ruinous indulgence for a knife-thrower. The Darks, however, were young and vigorous, and sometimes the noises from their berth were enough to raise comment from the other Talent. I remember one night when Heinie, who shared his bottle with Rango, put Rango up to opening the curtains of the Darks’ upper; Em screamed, and Joe grabbed Rango and threw him down into the aisle so hard that Rango screamed; Heinie offered to fight Joe, and Joe, stark naked and very angry, chased Heinie back to his berth and pummelled him. It took a full hour to soothe Rango; Heinie assured us that Rango was used to love and could not bear rough usage; Rango had to have at least two strong swigs of straight rye before he could sleep. But in the rough-and-tumble I had had a good look at Em Dark naked, and it was very different from Happy Hannah, I can assure you. All sorts of things that I had never heard of began, within a month, to whirl and surge and combine in my mind.