Greybeard

by Brian W Aldiss

  “Come in and get reborn, you bag of bones!”

  Not relishing this mode of address, even if delivered by rote, Greybeard said sharply, “I want to speak to Bunny Jingadangelow. Is he here?”

  The old witch coughed and sent a gob of green phlegm flapping towards the floor.

  “Dr Jingadangelow ain’t here. He’s not at everyone’s beck and call, you know. What do you want?”

  “Can you tell me where he is? I want to speak to him.”

  “I’ll fix you an appointment if you want a rejuvenation or the immortality course, but I tell you he ain’t here.”

  “Who’s behind the screen?”

  “My husband, if you must know, and a client, as if it’s any of your business. Who are you, anyway? I never seen you before.”

  One of the shadows flopped more widely across the roof, and a high voice said, “What’s the trouble out there?”

  Next moment, a youth appeared.

  The effect on Greybeard was like a shock of cold water. Through the toils of the years he had arrived at the realization that childhood was now no more than an idea interred within the crania of old men, and that young flesh was an antiquity in the land. If you forgot about rumours, he was himself all that the withered world had left to offer in the way of a youngster. But this — this stripling, dressed merely in a sort of tunic, wearing a red and green necklace like Norsgrey’s, exposing his frail white legs and arms, regarding Greybeard with wide and innocent eyes...

  “My God,” Greybeard said. “Then they are still being born!”

  The youth spoke in a shrill, impersonal voice. “You see before you, sir, the beneficial effects of Dr Jingadangelow’s well-known combined Rejuvenation and Immortality Course, respected and recommended from Gloucester to Oxford, from Banbury to Berks. Enrol yourself here for a course, sir, before you are too late. You can be like me, friend, after only a few trial doses.”

  “I believe you no more than I believed the parson,” Greybeard said, still slightly breathless. “How old are you, boy? Sixteen, twenty, thirty? I forget the young ages.”

  A second shadow flapped across the roof, and a shabby grotesque with a plantation of warts on his chin and forehead hobbled into view. He was bent so double that he could scarcely peer up at Greybeard through his tangled eyebrows.

  “You want the treatment, sir? You want to become lovely and beautiful again, like this fine young attractive fellow?”

  “You’re not a very good advertisement for your own preparation, are you?” Greybeard said, turning again to regard the youth. He stepped forward to peer at him more closely. As the stunning first effects wore off, he saw that the youth was in fact a flabby and poor specimen with a pasty countenance.

  “Dr Jingadangelow developed his wonderful treatments too late to help me, sir,” said the grotesque. “I run up against him too late in life, you might say, but he could help you, as he did our young friend here. Our young friend is actually one hundred and ninety-five years old, sir, though you’d never think it to see him. Why, bless him, he’s in the full bloom of youth, as you could be.”

  “I never felt better in my life,” the youth said, in his curious high voice. “I’m in the full bloom of youth.”

  Suddenly Greybeard grasped his arm and swung him so that the light from the crone’s lantern gleamed directly onto the boy’s face. The boy cried out in sudden hurt. The innocence in his eyes was revealed as vacancy. Thick powder on his face furrowed up into tracks of pain; he opened his mouth and exposed black fangs behind a frontal layer of white paint. Slipping away, he kicked Greybeard fiercely on the shin, cursing as he did so.

  “You rogue, you filthy little swindler, you’re ninety years old — you’ve been castrated!” Greybeard swung angrily on the ancient man. “You’ve no right to do such a thing!”

  “Why not? He’s my son.” He shrank back with raised arm in front of his face. He showed his twisted and pocked jaw, champing with fury. The “boy” started to scream. As Greybeard turned, he shrieked, “Don’t touch my dad! Bunny and I thought of the idea. I’m only earning an honest living. Do you think I want to spend my days haggard and starved like you? Help, help, murderer! Thieves! Fire! Help, friends, help!”

  “Shut your — ” Greybeard got no further. The crone moved, leaping from behind him. She swung her lantern down across the side of his face. As he twisted around, the old man brought a thick stick down on his neck, and he tumbled towards the crumbling concrete floor.

  Again, for him a situation that could not happen. There were young women sitting at tables, scantily clad, entertaining antique men with physiognomies like ill-furled sails. Their lips were red, their cheeks pink, their eyes dark and lustrous. The girl nearest Greybeard wore stockings of a wide mesh net that climbed up to the noble eminence of her crotch; here they met red satin knickers, frilled at the edges, as though to conceal a richer rose among their petals, and matching in hue the brief tunic, set off with inviting brass buttons, that partially hid a bosom of such splendour that it made its possessor’s chin appear undershot.

  Between this spectacle and Greybeard were a number of legs, one pair of which he identified as Martha’s. The act of recognition made him realize that this was far from being a dream and that he was near to being unconscious. He groaned, and Martha’s tender face came down to his level; she put a worn hand to his face and kissed him.

  “My poor old sweetheart, you’ll be all right in a minute.”

  “Martha... Where are we?”

  “They were mobbing you for laying hands on that eunuch at the garage. Charley heard them and fetched Pitt and me. We came as soon as we could. We’re going to stay here for the night, and you’ll be all right by morning.”

  Prompted by this remark, he recognized two of the other pairs of legs now; both sprouted mud and marsh grass; one pair was Charley’s, one Jeff Pitt’s. He asked again, more strongly, “Where are we?”

  “Lucky you didn’t get yourself killed,” Pitt grunted.

  “We’re next door to the garage where they attacked you,” Martha said. “It’s a house — to judge by its popularity — of rather good repute.”

  He caught the fleeting smile on her face. His heart opened up to her, and he pressed her hand to show how he cherished a woman who could make even an unpleasant pleasantry. Life flowed back into him.

  “Help me up, I’m mended,” he said.

  Pitt and Charley took hold of him under his arms. Only the pair of legs he had not recognized did not move. As he rose his gaze travelled up these solid shanks and up the extravagant territory of a coat fashioned from rabbit skins. The skins preserved the heads of these lagomorphs, teeth, ears, whiskers, and all; the eyes had been replaced with black buttons; some of the ears, improperly preserved, were decaying, and a certain effluvium — probably encouraged by the warmth of the room — was radiated; but the effect of the whole was undeniably majestic. As Greybeard’s eyes came level with those of the coat’s wearer, he said, “Bunny Jingadangelow, I presume?”

  “Dr Bunny Jingadangelow at your service, Mr Timberlane,” the man in the coat said, flexing his sacrolumbar regions sufficiently to indicate a bow. “I’m delighted that my ministrations have had such excellent and speedy effect on your injuries — but we can discuss the state of your indebtedness to me later. First, I think you should exercise your circulation by taking a turn about the room. Allow me to assist you.”

  He took a purchase on Greybeard’s arm, and began to walk him between the tables. For the moment, Greybeard offered no opposition as he studied the man in the rabbitskin coat. Jingadangelow looked to be scarcely out of his fifties — perhaps no more than six years older than Greybeard, and a young man as men went these days. He wore a twirling moustache and sideburns, but the rotundity of his chin attained a smoothness now seldom seen or attempted. There was over his face such a settled look of blandness that it seemed no metoposcopy could ever decide his true character.

  “I understand,” he said, “that before you tried
to attack one of my clients you were seeking me out to ask my help and advice.”

  “I did not attack your client,” Greybeard said, freeing himself from the man’s embrace. “Though I regret that in a moment of anger I seized hold of one of your accomplices.”

  “Tosh, man, young Trotty is an advertisement, not an accomplice. The name of Dr Jingadangelow is known throughout the Midlands, you understand, as that of a great humanitarian — a human humanitarian. I’d give you one of my bills if I had one on me. You should realize before you start feeling pugilistic that I am one of the great figures of the — er, where are we now — of the twenty-twenties.”

  “You may be widely known. I’m not arguing about that. I met a poor mad fellow, Norsgrey, and his wife, who had been to you for treatment — ”

  “Wait, wait. Norsgrey, Norsgrey... What kind of name is that? Not on my books...” He stood with his head raised and one finger planted in the middle of his forehead. “Oh, yes, yes, yes, indeed. Mention of his wife had me baffled for a moment. Strictly between you and me...” Jingadangelow manoeuvred Greybeard into a corner; he leaned forward and said confidentially, “Of course, the complaints of one’s patients are both private and sacred, but poor old Norsgrey hasn’t really got a wife, you know, any more than this table has; it’s a she-badger that he’s rather too fond of.” He tapped his forehead again with an ample finger. “Why not? Thin blood needs a little warmth abed these chilly nights. Poor fellow nutty as a walnut tree...”

  “You are broad-minded.”

  “I forgive all human faults and follies, sir. It’s part of my calling. We must mitigate this vale of tears what way we can. Such understanding is, of course, part of the secret of my wonderful curative powers.”

  “Which is a way of saying you leech a living out of old madmen like Norsgrey. He is under the delusion that you have made him immortal.”

  During this conversation Jingadangelow seated himself and beckoned to a woman who hobbled over and set down two drinks before them. The doctor nodded and waved a pair of plump fingers at her in thanks. To Greybeard he said, “How strange to hear ethical objections again after all these years — quite takes me back... You must lead a secluded life. This old chap Norsgrey, you understand, is dying. He gets noises like frying in his head; it’s a fatal dropsy. So — he mistakes the hope I have given him for the immortality I promised him. It’s a comfortable error, surely? I travel, if I may for a moment indulge in a personal confidence, without any such hope; therefore Norsgrey — and there are many like him, luckily — is more fortunate than I in spirit. I console myself by being more fortunate in worldly possessions.”

  Greybeard set down his drink and looked about. Although his neck still ached, good humour filled him.

  “Do you mind if my wife and friends join us?”

  “Not at all, not at all, though I trust you are not bored with my company already. I hoped some talk of this and that might precede any business we might do together. I thought I had recognized a kindred spirit in you.”

  Greybeard said, “What made you think that?”

  “Mainly the intuitive feeling with which I am richly endowed. You are uncommitted. You don’t suffer as you should in this blighted time; though life is miserable, you enjoy it. Is this not so?”

  “How do you know this? Yes, yes, you are correct, but we have only just met — ”

  “The answer to that is never entirely pleasing to the ego. It is that, although all men are each unique, all men are also each much the same. You have an ambivalence in your nature; many men have an ambivalence. I only have to talk with them for a minute to diagnose it. Am I making sense?”

  “How do you diagnose my ambivalence?”

  “I am not a mind reader, but let me cast about.” He expanded his cheeks, raised his eyebrows, gazed into his glass, and made a very judicious face indeed. “We need our disasters. You and I have weathered, somehow, the collapse of a civilization. We are survivors after shipwreck. But for us two, we feel something deeper than survival — triumph! Before the crash came, we willed it, and so disaster for us is a success, a victory for the raging will. Don’t look so surprised! You’re not a man, surely, to regard the recesses of the mind as a very salubrious place. Have you thought of the world we were born in, and what it would have grown into had not that unfortunate little radiation experiment run amok? Would it not have been a world too complex, too impersonal, for the likes of us to flourish in?”

  “You are doing my thinking for me,” Greybeard said.

  “It is a wise man’s role, but so is listening.” Jingadangelow quaffed his drink and leaned forward over the empty glass. “Is not this ragtaggle present preferable to that other mechanized, organized, deodorized present we might have found ourselves in, simply because in this present we can live on a human scale? In that other present that we missed by a neutron’s breadth, had not megalomania grown to such a scale that the ordinary simple richness of an individual life was stifled?”

  “Certainly there was a lot wrong with the twentieth-century way of life.”

  “There was everything wrong with it.”

  “No, you exaggerate. Some things — ”

  “Don’t you think that if everything spiritual was wrong with it, everything was wrong with it? It’s no good getting nostalgic. It wasn’t all drugs and education. Wasn’t it also the need for drugs and the poverty of education? Wasn’t it the climax and orgasm of the Machine Age? Wasn’t it Mons and Belsen and Bataan and Stalingrad and Hiroshima and the rest? Didn’t we do well to get flung off the roundabout?”

  “You only ask questions,” Greybeard said.

  “They are themselves answers.”

  “That is double talk. You are giving me double talk. No, wait — look, I wish to talk more with you. I can pay you. This is an important conversation... Let me get my wife and friends here.”

  Greybeard rose. His head ached. The drink had been powerful, the room was noisy and hot, he was overexcited. It was seldom anyone talked about anything but toothache and the weather. He looked about for Martha and could not see her.

  He walked through the room. There were stairs leading to the rooms above. He saw that the painted women were neither so voluptuous nor so busy as he had at first imagined. Though they were padded and painted, their skins were stamped with the liver marks and whorls of age, their eyes were rheumy. Bizarrely smiling, they reached out hands to him. He stumbled through them. They were full of liquor, they coughed and laughed and trembled as he went by. The room was full of their motions, like a cage of captive jackdaws.

  The women waved — had he once dreamed of them? — but he took no notice. Martha had gone. Charley and old Pitt had gone. Seeing that he was all right, they must have returned to guard the boats. And Towin and Becky — no, they had not been here... He remembered what he had been seeking Bunny Jingadangelow for; instead of leaving, he turned back to the far corner, where another drink awaited him and the doctor sat with an octogenarian hussy on his knee. This woman sat with one hand about his neck and with the other stroked the rabbit heads on his coat.

  “Look, Doctor, I came here to seek you not for myself, but for a couple who are of my party,” Greybeard said, leaning over the table. “There’s a woman, Becky; she claims that she is with child, though she must be over seventy. I want you to examine her and see if what she says is true.”

  “Sit down, friend, and let us discuss this expectant lady of yours,” Jingadangelow said. “Drink your drink, since I presume you will be paying for this round. The delusions of elderly ladies is a choice topic for this time of night, eh, Jean? No doubt neither of you would recall that little poem — how does it go now? ‘Looking in my mirror to see my wasted skin,’ and yes —

  “ ‘But time, to make me grieve,

  Part steals, part lets abide,

  And shakes my fractured frame at eve

  With throbbings of noontide.’

  “Touching, eh? I fancy your lady has a few throbbings left, nothing more.
But I shall come and see her, of course. It is my duty. I shall naturally assure her that she is in the family way, if that is what she desires to hear.” He folded his fleshy hands together and frowned.

  “There’s no chance she might really be about to bear a child?”

  “My dear Timberlane — if you will pardon my not using your somewhat inane sobriquet — hope springs as eternal to the human womb as to the human breast, but I am surprised to find you seem to share her hope.”

  “I suppose I do. You said yourself that hope was valuable.”

  “Not valuable: imperative. But you must hope for yourself — when we hope for other people we are invariably disappointed. Our dreams have jurisdiction only over ourselves. Knowing you as I do, I see that you really came to me for your own sake. I rejoice to see it. My friend, you love life, you love this life with all its blemishes, with all its tastes and distastes — you also desire my immortality cure, do you not?”

  Resting his throbbing head on his hand, Greybeard quaffed down more drink and said, “Many years ago I was in Oxford — in Cowley, to be accurate — when I heard of a treatment, it was just a rumour, a treatment that might prolong life, perhaps for several hundred years. It was something they were developing at a hospital there. Is it possible this could be done? I’d want scientific evidence before I believe.”

  “Of course you do, naturally, undeniably, and I would expect nothing less of a man like you,” Jingadangelow said, nodding so vigorously that the woman was almost dislodged from his lap. “The best scientific evidence is empirical. You shall have empirical evidence. You shall have the full treatment — I’m absolutely convinced that you could afford it — and you shall then see for yourself that you never grow a day older.”

  Squinting at him cunningly, Greybeard said, “Shall I have to come to Mockweagles?”

  “Ah ha, he’s clever, isn’t he, Ruthie? He’s prepared the way for himself nicely. That’s the sort of man I prefer to deal with. I — ”