Brian Aldiss - Greybeard

“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.

“ Doctor 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. “They 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 the youth was in fact a flabby and poor specimen with a pasty countenance.

“Doctor 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 direct on to 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 round, 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 crutch; 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, which partially hid a bosom of such splendour that it made its possessor’s chin appear undershot.

Between this spectacle and Greybeard was 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 he 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 a hold of him under his arms. Only a 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?”

“Doctor ‘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 rabbit-skin 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.