“On the bally, Charlie allowed his wit a freer play. As Zovene juggled with his spangled Indian clubs, Charlie would say, in a pretended undertone which carried well beyond his audience: ‘Pretty good, eh? He isn’t big, but he’s good. Anyways, how big would you be if you’d been strained through a silk handkerchief?’ The young bloods would guffaw at this, and their girls would clamour to have it explained to them. And when Zitta showed her snakes, she would drag the old cobra suggestively between her legs and up her front, while Charlie whispered, ‘Boys-oh-boys, who wouldn’t be a snake?’

“Inside the tent Charlie urged the young men to model themselves on Sonnenfels, so that all the girls would be after them, and they’d be up to the job. And when he came to Andro he would ogle his hearers and say, ‘He’s the only guy in the world who’s glad to wake up in the morning and find he’s beside himself.’ He particularly delighted in tormenting Hannah. She did her own talking, but as she shrieked her devotion to the Lord Jesus, Charlie would lean down low, and say, in a carrying whisper, ‘She hasn’t seen her ace o’ spades in twenty years.’ The burst of laughter made Hannah furious, though she never caught what was said. She knew, however, that it was something dirty. However often she complained to Gus, and however often Gus harangued Charlie, the Spirit of Carnival was always too much for him. Nor was Gus whole-hearted in her complaints; what pleased the crowd was what Gus liked.

“Hannah attempted to fight fire with fire. She often made it known, in the Pullman, that in her opinion these modern kids weren’t bad kids, and if you gave them a chance they didn’t want this Sex and all like that. Sure, they wanted fun, and she knew how to give ‘em fun. She was just as fond of fun as anybody, but she didn’t see the fun in all this Smut and Filth. So she gave ‘em fun.

“ ‘Lots o’ fun in your Bible, boys and girls,’ she would shout. ‘Didn’t you know that? Didya think the Good Book was all serious? You just haven’t read it with the Liberal Heart, that’s all. Come on now! Come on now, all of you! Who can tell me why you wouldn’t dare to take a drink outa the first river in Eden? Come on, I bet ya know. Sure ya know. You’re just too shy to say. Why wouldn’t ya take a drink outa the first river in Eden?—Because it was Pison, that’s why! If you don’t believe me, look in Genesis two, eleven.’ Then she would go off into a burst of wheezing laughter.

“Or she would point—and with an arm like hers, pointing was no trifling effort—at Zovene, shouting: ‘You call him small? Say, he’s a regular Goliath compared with the shortest man in the Bible. Who was he? Come on, who was he?—He was Bildad the Shuhite, Job two, eleven. See, the Liberal Heart can even get a laugh outa one of Job’s Comforters. I betcha never thought of that, eh?’ And again, one of her terrible bursts of laughter.

“Hannah understood nothing of the art of the comedian. It is dangerous to laugh at your own jokes, but if you must, it is a great mistake to laugh first. Fat people, when laughing, are awesome sights, enough to strike gravity into the onlooker. But Hannah was a whole World of Wonders in herself when she laughed. She forced her laughter, for after all, when you have told people for weeks that the only man in the Bible with no parents was Joshua, the son of Nun, the joke loses some of its savour. So she pushed laughter out of herself in wheezing, whooping cries, and her face became unpleasantly marbled with dabs of a darker red under the rouge she wore. Her collops wobbled uncontrollably, her vast belly heaved and trembled as she sucked breath, and sometimes she attempted to slap her thigh, producing a wet splat of sound. Fat Ladies ought not to tell jokes; their mirth is of the flesh, not of the mind. Fat Ladies ought not to laugh; a chuckle is all they can manage without putting a dangerous strain on their breathing and circulatory system. But Hannah would not listen to reason. She was determined to drive Smut back into its loathsome den with assaults of Clean Fun, and if she damaged herself in the battle, her wounds would be honourable.

“Sometimes she had an encouraging measure of success. Quite often there would be in the crowd some young man who was of a serious, religious turn of mind, and usually he was accompanied by a girl who had preacher’s daughter written all over her. They had been embarrassed by Charlie’s jokes when they understood them. They had been even more embarrassed when Rango, at a secret signal from Heinie, left his pretended restaurant table and urinated in a corner, while Heinie pantomimed a waiter’s dismay. But with that camaraderie which exists among religious people just as it does among tinhorns and crooks, they recognized Hannah as a benign influence, and laughed with her, and urged her on to greater flights. She gave them her best. ‘What eight fellas in the Bible milked a bear? You know! You musta read it a dozen times. D’ya give it up? Well, listen carefully: Huz, Buz, Kemuel, Chesed, Hazo, Pildash, Jidlaph, and Bethuel—these eight did Milcah bear to Nahor, Abraham’s brother. Didya never think of it that way? Eh? Didn’t ya? Well, it’s in Genesis twenty-two.’

“When one of these obviously sanctified couples appeared, it was Hannah’s pleasure to single them out and hold them up to the rest of the crowd as great cutups. ‘Oh, I see ya,’ she would shout; ‘it’s the garden of Eden all over again; the trouble isn’t with the apple in the tree, it’s with that pair on the ground.’ And she would point at them, and they would blush and laugh and be grateful to be given a reputation for wickedness without having to do anything to acquire it.

“All of this cost Hannah dearly. After a big Saturday night, when she had exhausted her store of Bible riddles, she was almost too used up for her ritual bath. But she had worked herself up into a shocking sweat, and sometimes the smell of wet cornstarch from her sopping body spread a smell like a gigantic nursery pudding through the whole of the tent, and bathed she had to be, or there would be trouble with chafing.

“Her performance on these occasions made Willard deeply, cruelly angry. He would stand beside Abdullah and I could hear him swearing, repetitively but with growing menace, as she carried on. The worst of it was, if she secured any sort of success, she was not willing to stop; even when the crowd had passed on to see Abdullah, she would continue, at somewhat lesser pitch, with a few lingerers, who hoped for more Bible fun. In the Last Trick it was Willard’s custom to have three people cut the cards for the automaton, instead of the usual one, and he wanted the undivided attention of the crowd. He hated Hannah, and from my advantageous peephole I was not long in coming to the conclusion that Hannah hated him.

“There were plenty of places in southern Ontario at that time where religious young people were numerous, and in these communities Hannah did not scruple to give a short speech in which she looked forward to seeing them next year, and implored them to join her in a parting hymn. ‘God be with you till we meet again,’ she would strike up, in her thin, piercing voice, like a violin string played unskilfully and without a vibrato, and there were always those who, from religious zeal or just because they liked to sing, would join her. Nor was one verse enough. Charlie would strike in, as boldly as he could: And now, ladies and gentlemen, our Master Marvel of the World of Wonders—Willard the Wizard and his Card-Playing Automaton, Abdullah, as soon to be exhibited on the stage of the Palace Theater, New York—but Hannah would simply put on more steam, and slow down, and nearly everybody in the tent would be wailing —