As for the name given to me at birth, it is irrelevant, I am here to tell stories.
The first story I have to tell is not my own. It is the best story I have ever heard, though, so I give to
what is not mine to give, but to one such as myself who lives on the Outside, the concept of intellectual
property is absurd. Every new idea is constructed from ideas which preceded it. Words have a life of
their own, we are merely their vessels.
It will be easy enough to guess at the name of the Welsh storyteller who wrote the brief story I present
to you now, a gem of a story.
After the Fair, a story about compassion
The fair was over, the lights in the coconut stalls were put out, and
the wooden horses stood still in the darkness, waiting for the music
and the hum of the machines that would set them trotting forward. One
by one, the naptha jets [which illuminated the stalls] were turned down
and the canvases pulled over the little gaming tables. The crowd went
home, and there were lights in the windows of the caravans.
Nobody had noticed the girl. In her black clothes she stood against the
side of the roundabouts, hearing the last feet tread upon the sawdust
and the last voices die in the distance. Then, all alone on the
deserted ground, surrounded by the shapes of wooden horses and cheap
fairy boats, she looked for a place to sleep. Now here and now there,
she raised the canvas that crowded the coconut stalls and peered into
the warm darkness. She was frightened to step inside, and as a mouse
scampered across the littered shavings on the floor, or as the canvas
creaked and a rush of wind set it dancing, she ran away and hid again
near the roundabouts. Once she stepped on the boards; the bells round a
horse's throat jingled and were still; she did not dare breathe again
until all was quiet and the darkness had forgotten the noise of the
bells. Then here and there she went peeping for a bed, into each
gondola, under each tent. But there was nowhere, nowhere in all the
fair for her to sleep. One place was too silent, and in another there
was the sound of mice. There was a straw in the corner of the
Astrologer's tent, but it moved as she touched it; she knelt by its
side and put out her hand; she felt a baby's hand upon her own.
Now there was nowhere, so slowly she turned toward the caravans on the
outskirts of the field, and found all but two to be unlit. She waited,
clutching her empty bag, and wondering which caravan she should
disturb. At last she decided to knock upon the window of the little,
shabby one near her, and, standing on tiptoes, she looked in. The
fattest man she had ever seen was sittting in front of the stove,
toasting a piece of bread. She tapped three times on the glass, then
hid in the shadows. She heard him come to the top of the steps and call
out 'Who? Who?' but she dare not answer.
'Who? Who?' he called again.
She laughed at his voice which was as thin as he was fat.
He heard her laughter and turned to where the darkness concealed her.
'First you tap,' he said, 'then you hide, then you laugh,'
She stepped into the circle of light, knowing she need no longer hide
herself.
'A girl,' he said. 'Come in, and wipe yor feet.' He did not wait but
retreated into his caravan, and she could do nothing but follow him up
the steps and into the crowded room. He was seated again, and toasting
the same piece of bread. 'Have you come in?' he said, for his back was
towards her.
'Shall I close the door?' she asked, and closed it before he replied.
She sat on the bed and watched him toast the bread until it burnt.
'I can toast better than you,' she said.
'I don't doubt it,' said the Fat Man.
She watched him put the charred toast on a plate by his side, take
another round of bread and hold that, too, in front of the stove. It
burnt very quickly.
'Let me toast it for you,' she said. Ungraciously he handed her the fork
and the loaf.
'Cut it,' he said, 'toast it, and eat it.'
She sat on the chair.
'See the dent you've made on my bed,' said the Fat Man. 'Who are you to
come in and dent my bed?'
'My name is Annie,' she told him.
Soon all the bread was toasted and buttered, so she put it in the center
of the table and arranged two chairs.
'I'll have mine on the bed,' said the Fat Man. 'You'll have it here.'
When they had finished their supper, he pushed back his chair and
stared at her across the table.
'I am the Fat Man,' he said. 'My home is Treorchy; the Fortune-Teller
next door is Aberdare.'
'I am nothing to do with the fair,' she said, 'I am Cardiff.'
'There's a town,' agreed the Fat Man. He asked her why she had come
away.
'Money,' said Annie.
Then he told her about the fair and the places he had been to and the
people he had met. He told her his age and his weight and the names of
his brothers and what he would call his son. He showed her a picture of
Boston Harbour and the photograph of his mother who lifted weights. He
told her how summer looked in Ireland.
'I've always been a fat man,' he said, ' and now I'm the Fat Man;
there's nobody to touch me for fatness.' He told her of a heat-wave in
Sicily and of the Mediterranean Sea. She told him of the baby in the
Astrologer's tent.
'That's the stars again,' he said.
'The baby'll die,' said Annie.
He opened the door and walked oout into the darkness. she looked about
her but did not move, wondering if he had gone to fetch a policeman. It
would never do to be caught by the policeman again. She stared through
the open door into the inhospitable night and drew closer to the stove.
'Better to be caught in the warmth,' she said. But she trembled at the
sound of the Fat Man approaching, and pressed her hands upon her thin
breast as he climbed up the steps like a walking mountain. She could
see him smile through the darkness.
'See what the stars have done,' he said, and brought in the
Astrologer's baby in his arms.
After she had nursed it against her and it had cried on the bosom of
her dress, she told him how she feared his going.
'What shoould I be doing with a policeman?'
She told him that the policeman wanted her. 'What have you done for a
policeman to be wanting you?'
She did not answer but took the child nearer to her wasted breast. Ha
saw her thinness.
'You must eat, Cardiff,' he said.
Then the child began to cry. From a little wail its voice rose up into a
tempest of despair. The girl rocked it to and fro in her lap, but
nothing soothed it.
'Stop it! Stop it' said the Fat Man, and the tears increased. Annie
smothered it in kisses. but it howled again.
'We must do something,' she said.
'Sing it a lullaby.'
She sang, but the child did not like her singing.
'There's only one thing,' said Annie, 'we must tke it on the
roundabouts.' With the child's arm around her neck she stumbled down
the steps and ran towars the deserted fair. the Fat Man panting behind
her.
She found her way through the tents and stalls into the center of the
ground where the wooden horses stood waiting, a clambered up onto a
saddle. 'Start the engine,' she called out. In the distance the Fat Man
could be heard cranking up the antique machine that that drove the
horses all the day into a wooden gallop. she heard the spasmodic
humming of the engines; the boards rattled under the horse's feet. She
saw the Fat Man get up by her side, under the horse's feet. She saw the
Fat Man get up by her side, pull the central lever, and climb on to the
saddle of the smallest horse af all. As the roundabout started, slowly
at first and slowly gaining speed, the child at the girl's breat stoped
crying and clapped its hands. The night wind tore through its hair, the
music jangled in its ears. Round and round the wooden horses sped,
drowning the cries of the wind with the beating of their hooves.
And so the men from the caravans found them, the Fat Man and the girl
in black with a baby in her arms, racing round and round on their
mechanical steeds to the ever-increasing music of the organ.