“Madam,” he started again, “behind me is a freakshow. An exhibit of the unfortunate, the despised, and the outcast. An exhibit where all such are drawn together to give you, a normal member of the general public, a chance to jeer and laugh at those less fortunate than you. Imagine! You may be unhappy about the shape of your nose, the line of your jaw, the way your eyes stick out. But all this fades into insignificance when you see a man whose spine grows out of the top of his head. Unsightly facial hair? We have a bearded woman! Weight problem? We have from one end of the spectrum to the other: a living skeleton, and somebody so astoundingly, grotesquely fat that we haven’t actually been able to discern his or her sex. If you have any feelings of inadequacy whatsoever, then here is the place to come, to point and say, ‘There, but for the grace of God, go I!’”
A crowd was growing. A young woman nervously held up her hand. “I … I … I have freckles.”
Cabal gestured fiercely over his shoulder with his thumb. “We have the Dalmatian Boy. Next?”
A man called, “I have a bit of an overbite.”
“Then gaze in delighted wonder upon the Human Shark. Next!”
“My nose is a little too pert,” said an almost stereotypical blond woman on the arm of a wealthy man.
“It can’t be as pert as Simone Sans-Nez the Noseless Girl’s. Next!”
“I’m ginger,” called a teenage boy.
“So you are. Yes, my friends! The House of Medical Monstrosity! Slake your thirst for abomination and abnormality! Feast your eyes on the people who really are worse off than yourselves! Draw self-esteem from their abasement!” There were a lot of people in front of him now, but nobody wanted to be the first to buy a ticket. He needed a sheep to lead the flock. He flicked his gaze quickly over the rapturous, vacant faces until he saw one whose gaze was locked on one of the lurid paintings that decorated the front of the sideshow. Cabal glanced quickly at them, following the man’s line of sight. Then, with quiet confidence, he looked back out into the crowd in no particular direction. It was a complete coincidence that his eyes met the man’s as he said, “And, for the first person to buy a ticket, the chance to have your photograph taken with Layla, the luscious, lissom, lithely Latex Lady.”
“I’ll buy a ticket!” shouted the man unnecessarily loudly, the sweat showing on his lip. “Me!”
Cabal was beginning to realise that this year could well turn out to be an interesting experiment into behavioural psychology. He doubted Marko the Moulting Man would have turned the trick.
“You, sir! You’re a very lucky man! Here you go! Ticket number one!” The spiel was beginning to come along as well. You just had to give the poor fools the impression that you were doing them a favour and they ate from your hand. The money was handed over, and the small piece of pasteboard exchanged. The man was almost feverish with excitement. Cabal wondered what he would give in exchange for something more than a photograph. He began to think that he’d let the stationmaster off very lightly indeed. He addressed the crowd.
“But don’t be disappointed! Throughout the evening, we’ll be offering other spot prizes based on your ticket number, so … so …” There was only one thing left to say. “Roll up! Roll up! Come one! Come all! Tell your friends that you were brave enough, that you were bold enough, to enter the House of Medical Monstrosity!”
And so, its welcoming smile widening until the fangs showed, the carnival began its first night.
CHAPTER 5
in which Cabal plays with dolls and horst broadens his vocabulary
Fairs and carnivals are not, by nature, profound experiences. They are there to amuse and distract, to draw the citizens from their grey workaday lives into something that has a flavour of the extraordinary. The lights dazzle, the sideshows amaze, the rides excite, the stalls frustrate, but all pleasantly. It is a jolly pickpocket and a charismatic confidence trickster. The rubes … the suckers … the
The Cabal Bros. Carnival was something special, though. Something unusual. Something different. Whereas a normal carnival is a shallow, ephemeral experience intended to take average persons out of the mundane world and fool them — for as long as they are prepared to be fooled — into believing that fun really does travel the highways and byways as a bolus of giggles and glee, the Cabal Carnival wore that belief as a mask. It was, however, merely a facsimile of a facade. Behind the wide, welcoming smile was a mantrap baited with desires and delight, pleasures and popcorn, hedonism and hot dogs of dubious content. Satan, who was after all something of an authority in matters of temptation, was quite right when he had said that the carnival lowered the defences of those who walked through its gate. Everybody comes to the fair to have a good time in the full expectation of being ripped off at some point. All that was different here was the scale of the loss.
But all this is theory. Examples are more salutary.
“He’re here to have fun.” It was said in a tone that indicated that the alternative was a split lip.
Rachel hoped it wouldn’t come to that; the last one had only just healed. “I
He looked around. Before them spread the carnival, a whirling chaos of sound and light and smells that promised so much. Calliope, neon, and the scent of fresh popcorn created a new world: a place of wonders and excitement and fun. Yes, its true function was to tempt to contentiousness, to blasphemy, argumentation, and murder, but you could also win coconuts.
Ted regarded it all with the sour expression of a man who expects disappointment, and usually deals with it by putting the source in the hospital. He held out his hand towards Rachel, and she took it quickly, allowing herself to be drawn through the gates and onto the fairground proper. As they walked through, they passed the farmer on whose land the carnival was set up.
He stood, thumbs hooked into his waistcoat pockets, looking very pleased with himself, smiling and nodding at everybody who paused at the gate to buy tickets as if he owned the carnival, too. In truth, he was keeping a headcount, partially to make sure that he wasn’t cheated out of his rent, but mainly for the sheer pleasure of running the steadily increasing number through some simple mental arithmetic and revelling in the hefty sum that popped out starboard of the equals sign. He would doubtless have been less happy if he had known what was waiting for him in the shrouded future, at a time shortly after he left his deathbed. If he’d been under the impression that the Ministry of Agriculture was addicted to unnecessary paperwork, first contact with Arthur Trubshaw would set things in perspective.
In the wide paths that led between attractions, Ted and Rachel walked. Had a curious bystander watched them for a few minutes, he would have observed that it was not immediately obvious why the couple had come at all.
Rachel seemed to be walking through a partial version of a carnival. Most of the time she seemed guarded and anxious, and though occasionally she would suddenly react pleasurably to something that caught her eye, it would quickly fade from her face, driven out by a shadow of conditioned ambiguity. She had long since learned not to have opinions, and if she couldn’t help but have one, she was careful not to express it around Ted. After all, he might disagree. The ambiguity extended to her appearance, a gallant but hopeless attempt to be pretty for Ted, and nondescript for all other men. She simply ended up being a smudge of a woman, in nice but dull clothes, in nice but dull colours. She wore too much make-up — eye-shadow and concealer — that concealed her natural prettiness, and something else, too.
Ted was also a figure of uncertain purpose. He was at a funfair, but he was not having fun. He had a girlfriend, but she was not his friend. He did not walk with her, but instead herded her like a grudging sheepdog, alert for any possible threat to his ownership. He was caught in the conflict between showing her off and the real possibility that some man might actually look. If the curious bystander had continued to watch for a moment too long, he would certainly have found himself with Ted, wide-eyed and mouth-breathing, Sunday-clothed and poorly hair-cut, standing toe-to-toe and demanding to know what the curious bystander found so fascinating about his girlfriend.
They washed between stalls, he fraught with suspicion, she with shifting apprehensions, unaware that they were objects of attention for a curious bystander.
