Greybeard

“Thank you, madam. You are saying you would hide yourself and your offspring. Or you would exhibit yourself and might well get killed, as happened to a foolish woman who bore a girl child near Oxford. If we suppose that a small number of women have borne children, we must remember that many must have done so in the isolated settlements that now lie off any beaten track. The news of the birth would not circulate.

“Next, consider the plight of the children. You might hold that their lot would be enviable, with all the adults in the neighbourhood to spoil and protect them. Deeper knowledge of humanity will persuade you otherwise. The rancorous envy of those people without children would be insupportable, and aged parents would be unable to ward off the tangible effects of that envy. Babies would be stolen by motherhood-mad harridans, by crazy sterile old men. Young children would be the constant prey of the sort of blackguards I was forced to associate with some eighty years ago, when I travelled with an itinerant fair for my own protection. By the time the children — boys or girls — reached their early teens, one can only draw back aghast at the thought of the sexual indignities to which they would be exposed -“

“Chammoy’s experience must bear out all you say,” Greybeard cut in. “Leave out the hypocrisy, Jingadangelow, and get to the point.”

“Chammoy needed my protection and my moral influence; besides which, I am a lonely man. However, my point is this: that the biggest menace any child could face would be — human society! If you wonder why there are no children, the answer is that if they exist, they hide from us in the new wilds, away from men.”

Martha and Greybeard looked at each other. They read in each other’s eyes an acknowledgement of the likelihood of this theory. In its support, they could recall the persistent rumours, dating back at least ten years, that there were gnomes and small human-like shapes in the bush that vanished when a man went near. And yet… It was too much to swallow at one time; in their minds and bodies they were dry of the belief in living children.

“This is all part of your madness, Jingadangelow,” Greybeard said harshly. “Your mind is obsessed with getting hold of more of these young creatures. Please leave us. We want to hear no more — we have our own madnesses to contend with.”

“Wait! You’re mad, Greybeard, yes, not I! Was my reasoning not clear enough? I’m saner than you are, with your crazy desire to get to the mouth of the river.” He leant forward and clasped his hands together in a sort of agony. “Listen to me! I have a reason for telling you all this.”

“It had better be good.”

“It is good. It’s an idea. It’s the best idea I ever had, and I know you — both of you — will also appreciate it.

You are both reasonable people, and it has been a great delight to come across you again after all these centuries, despite that unfortunate incident this morning, for which I fancy you were even more to blame than I — but, no, let’s forget that. The truth is, that seeing you made me yearn for intelligent company — not the company of the fools that surround me now.” Jingadangelow leant forward and addressed himself solely to Greybeard. “I am offering to give up everything and come along with you, wherever you go. I shall follow your lead implicitly, of course. It’s a great and noble renunciation. I make it purely for my soul’s sake, and because I am bored with these imbeciles who follow me.”

In the brief silence that followed, the fat man looked anxiously at his listeners; he tried a smile on Martha, thought better of it, and switched it off.

“You collected the fools who follow you, and you must put up with them,” Greybeard said slowly. “That’s something I think I learned from Martha not a million years ago: however you envisage your role in life, all you can do is perform it as best you can.”

“But this Master role, good heavens, it is not my only role. I wish to leave it behind.”

“I don’t doubt you have a dozen roles you can play, Jingadangelow, but I’m equally sure that the essence of you lies in your roles. We don’t want you with us — I have to be brutally frank. We are happy! For all that everyone has lost since the terrible accident back in 1981, one thing at least we have gained — there is no longer need for the hypocrisies and shams of civilization; we can be our natural selves. But you would cause dissent among us, because you carry the old rigmarole of mask-wearing into these simple days. You’re too old to drop it now — how many thousands of years old are you? — and so you would never find peace with us.”

“You and I are philosophers, Greybeard! The salt of the earth! I want to share your simple life with you.”

“No. You couldn’t share it. You could only spoil it. It’s no deal. I’m sorry.”