Mistification

by Kaaron Warren

  The ruby, however, was not to be found.

  I ate the carrot cake in its entirety, swallowed it down and abused my wife for its scratchy texture. I ignored the sharp pain that came when I swallowed orange juice or anything acidic the next day, and the next week, until my throat swelled and I went to the doctor (my wife would not take me; she was angry with me for still living).

  I am allergic to antibiotics. For the first time in my life, I had to stay in hospital. I stayed there a long while.

  I had always had trouble with my bowels. Thus, it was two weeks before my stool contained the two sharp gold pieces. They were placed in a jar of preserving fluid and put onto my bedside table. I recognised the metal, pictured the pieces joined on my wife's thin finger. I could not check her finger to see if it was still there; she did not come to see me and she did not answer the phone.

  I was released after a month, clutching the jar and nothing more. My voice was ruined forever. I could only whisper, and, when excited, squeal like a pig.

  When I sold the house, I painstakingly packed every item to send to charity. Behind a foot heater in the back of my cupboard I found a dirty package of cotton wool. Unwrapping it, I expected to find a tooth, a memento of childhood, perhaps. Instead, I found the ruby.

  #

  Marvo held the ruby up before the Bush Pig man. "This one?"

  "I guess it is. Looks to be."

  "And why did you give all you had to a prostitute in a shed?" Marvo asked the Bush Pig man. "She thought you were dying, that she had inherited your worldly goods." The man looked surprised.

  "I felt such pity for her. She was so out of place; she didn't have the armour the others did. She was kind to me, didn't turn away. She made me feel attractive again. I thought she needed to escape, that she was unhappy. I thought that if I gave her all I had it would be enough for her to make a new life. She could leave and start again. She deserved it. And I did not want the ring any longer. The gold I had stolen, the money earned doing work I hated. It wasn't a true sacrifice. I didn't want anything I gave away."

  "So you don't want this back, then?"

  "No, please tell her to keep it. Is she doing well? She must be, to have you looking out for her. Is she doing well?"

  "She's doing very well. She is as happy as anyone can be. You helped her with your gift. Helped her to escape."

  Marvo rewarded the man for his story. He healed the man's throat, fixed his voice so it inspired confidence and friendship.

  Later, he told Andra that the man had spoken well, and that he'd wanted Andra to have a better life.

  "Isn't he kind?" said Andra. "I did start again. I left soon after. I set myself up in a shop, and sold things to make people fat. But I was happy there. He wanted to think I was there because of circumstances rather than choice so he could feel sorry for me."

  She tucked the ruby away. In honour of the Bush Pig man, she sewed a new costume, shiny ruby red and encrusted with small ruby sparkles.

  Marvo and Andra practised magic and did small shows. They both enjoyed these, though Andra was sometimes bored by the repetition, so she watched the audience and diagnosed problems. If the person was nice, Andra would help them. They were booked and rebooked in one wealthy suburb, party after party. Often there were more adults than children.

  "They're here for you," Marvo said. "They want to be cured."

  Andra helped the nice ones.

  Doctor Marcia Reid was not nice. "I'm a friend of a friend," she said, her face pulled tight by her hair style. "Friend of a friend of a friend. You're a fascinating woman."

  She took a large sip of the pineapple daiquiri she held.

  "Marvo is the fascinating one," Andra said.

  "No, you," Doctor Reid said. "There is a contagion about you. You know that I am making a name for myself in the field of anthropology and human belief. I study the theory of magic and I understand the two kinds: homoeopathic and contagious. I understand homoeopathy, I believe in natural healing. And I understand contagion. I am fascinated by the human era of the Black Plague."

  "You're wrong," Andra said. She didn't often argue. "You use your knowledge in the wrong way, used your experience to pass judgement. Homoeopathic magic is imitative magic. It copies something, apes its characteristics, to make the magic strong. Like the horned beast fertility rites, homoeopathic magic is a mirror."

  "You have a lot to learn, Andra. I could be good for you. I want to dabble in your world in order to understand it. I know you know how to cure my skin rash." Andra looked at her in disgust.

  "You'll have to wait until the moon is in Scorpio," she said. Marvo heard an unfamiliar sharpness in her voice.

  Doctor Marcia Reid was not good for Andra. Marvo could see her wilting under the woman's questions, weakening under her scorn. He knew all the things she said. She told Andra he was lying, that Marvo was a liar as all men were. Hidden, he watched her listening to Andra talking nervously. He watched the doctor nod as if she understood and he wanted to mist her brains out.

  The doctor watched as Andra dealt with a patient.

  "All your patients are women?"

  "I'm not so good with men. They always want more."

  "You've had some bad luck, perhaps. Or some women bring out the worst in the best of men."

  "There was plenty of worst to bring out!"

  "I know. We've all suffered," the doctor said. "Tell me yours and I'll tell you mine. You've always have man problems, haven't you, Andra? It's one of your things."

  Andra nodded.

  Man Problems

  I know when men are lying. I had trouble finding a man until Marvo came along. He didn't know it all. I'd never tell him everything I've done. At fifteen I started going out with a much older man, a lawyer who bought me gifts. Actually, he brought them. They were his wife's. He brought them from one bedroom to the next. He brought a fur coat I refused to wear. It felt wrong to wear skin. It wasn't until I grew and learnt my magic that I realised the importance of transference. If I wore those skins, I could take on the consciousness of the animals. I never wore leather shoes and I never ate meat until I found a spell to use transference for power.

  The older man was a lawyer and very dull. He went out with me because he wanted my youth, my vitality; wanted it back, he would say, but he had never had it.

  I went with him to grown-up dinners, and took him to my parties. There was one dinner which was very important to him. He warned me to behave, and said it would be my fault if things went wrong. He shouted at me not to be late.

  We arrived precisely on time and were rewarded with looks of surprise. We stood uncomfortably in the lounge room, drink-less, until the man finished showering and the woman finished in the kitchen. I was given a glass, gin and tonic. I sipped at it and wondered why such a nasty drink could be so popular. He had a glass of whisky for his nerves.

  "Don't say anything stupid," he whispered in my ear. "Nice to see a home with traditional roles," he said to the hosts, "woman cooking, man fixing drinks." The man and woman exchanged looks of disgust and boredom, it seemed to me. I laughed.

  "Yes, and the cat sleeps all day and the dog barks," I said, a very feeble joke.

  The man and woman laughed aloud. They liked me better then him. He was angry at my success.

  "Shut up," he whispered. "Don't talk." He wanted people to say how young, pretty and silly I was, though it was easily apparent that neither pretty nor silly suited me.

  The other guests arrived and I was the youngest by fifteen years. One woman (who had gone out with my boyfriend for while) said, "And how's school?" I did not take offence.

  "It's terrible at the moment. We've got this new guy at school who thinks he has to fight all the guys and fuck all the girls to be accepted. So he goes around poking everyone; pokes the guys to get them fighting and uses the same method for the girls. Pokes like this." I leaned across the couch and poked the woman's partner in the ribs. He giggled.

  "Very seductive," he said, staring me in th
e eye.

  Adults are bloody kids, I thought.

  "So how successful is he?" asked my boyfriend's ex-girlfriend.

  "No one'll touch him," I said. "He's too desperate."

  "You're very wise for your age," said the ex-girlfriend. "Very wise for a young thing like you."

  "Come, sit down," said the host.

  The table was set beautifully, with plates all matching, linen napkins, cutlery like rows of soldiers. And three lighted candles.

  I could hear my grandmother saying, "Don't sit down, girl, you've got enough luck on the dark side of the moon. Get rid of one of the candles or run, run, come to me who loves you."

  I picked up one candle and blew away its flame. I turned the candle upside down and read the base. Wax dripped onto my dress. "Thought so," I said, and placed the candle away from the table. "Taken off the market in thirteen countries around the world," I said as I sat.

  I was fine at his dinners, where nonsense could be talked and lies told. He was terrible at my parties. He looked so old that everyone thought he was a parent, and hid drugs and cigarettes and beer on his approach. Couples stopped kissing, hands stopped stroking bulges.

  I would say, "This is my boyfriend," but the silence would remain. It was hurtful to him, and he took it out on me. He would berate me, squeeze my arm till it hurt, kick my ankles. After a night with him I was slyly bruised.

  We finally broke up when his firm moved him to another state and I didn't want to leave my friends at school.

  Another fellow I went out with was tall, thin and smelly. I watched him shower, watched him scrub and wipe and clean, but he would emerge still stinking. I changed his diet to no avail. He had no friends but me. I made him believe so completely that he was attractive and desirable he decided to leave me to find a more beautiful woman.

  For power's sake, I kept him there a while longer. When he tried to leave, I told him what magic I had been using to make him stay. I told him he could not leave until I released him.

  "I went to a lot of trouble to keep you here," I said. I was very good to him. Once he believed I had used spells to keep him, had wanted him so much I was willing to use magic to keep him, he was convinced of his own power.

  "The bits I used for your spell are hard to find," I said, as he packed his suitcase. He kept giving me little kisses on the forehead, as if to say, "I still love you like a friend. But we have moved apart."

  "Some hairs from a wolf's tail, plucked at the zoo that day you took me there. Bones of a toad which has been nibbled by ants. Only the bones from the left side; the bones from the right would have an inverse affect. A very special piece of flesh, called a hippomanes, found in the head of a newly born colt." He stopped his movements and stared at me.

  "I have a friend who works in a stable." He continued to stare.

  "The colt was to die anyway," I said. He nodded. He still had a kind heart, for all his arrogance.

  "A lizard, who drank too much wine and drowned in the vat. I dried him in sun, and reduced to powder, then added a few drops of my blood."

  "What sort of blood?" he asked. He knew something of witchcraft, from documentaries on TV. His stomach, already churning with toad, colt, lizard, did not want to hear about menstrual blood.

  "I cut my finger," I said.

  "Poor thing," he said.

  "There were lots of herbs, like pansy, verbena, sweet basil, mandrake, male fern. All these I mixed to a paste and baked into bread with some cumin seeds. On the fire I threw salt three times. I said:

  "It is not this salt I wish to burn

  It is my lover's heart to turn;

  That he may neither rest nor happy be

  Until he comes and speaks to me." 4

  He stopped packing and remained terrified in my house until I released him. He learnt to treat women with respect, at least. He never used any one like that again.

  There was a very young man once. There would have been trouble if we had been found out. I was stumbling home from a party, having been kicked out of a car for being too drunk. I walked home. It took an hour.

  I was almost there when a young man stopped me.

  "Hey, lady," he said. "Hey, lady, where ya going?" He was fourteen.

  "Why are you out?" I said.

  "I was bored at home. Where do you live?" He could see I was drunk. He could tell by my walk and the way I smiled at him.

  "Not too far away," I said. He came back with me and stayed a few weeks. Then he began to notice little things like the wrinkles under my eyes, the pouches of fat over muscle, the saggy skin.

  "You're old," he told me. "You looked young that night." And he left, taking my toaster as a gift for his mum.

  It didn't take me a moment to recover from this blow.

  Marvo was the first man who could accept me for what I am.

  #

  "But he is still just a man," the doctor said. "You think he is different?"

  "He is."

  "Really. I can help you to realise otherwise."

  Marvo knew then he had to take action.

  It was not an easy seduction. To change a woman who had come to trivialise Andra, to analyse and break her down into subject headings and break her, to change a woman like that Marvo had to use skills other than pure enchantment. Marvo learnt that a good place for people to meet without ulterior motives being assumed was at a party. He dressed in clothes Andra had bought for him and he went to a party to meet Marcia. She believed she knew much about the art of magic; its roots and strands, and she loved to discuss her knowledge.

  She was happy to learn about Marvo and his professed beliefs. She left Andra alone and concentrated on Marvo for a while. He was honest with Andra about the methods he used to seduce Doctor Reid. She was grateful for his protection but wished he didn't enjoy it quite so much.

  Marvo felt a certain attraction to Doctor Reid, though her distrust and dislike of stories was unacceptable. She would tell him nothing about herself, her childhood, and was not interested to hear any version of his life. It was difficult for Marvo not to invent. It frustrated him and made him stupid so that he could not understand the lessons she gave him.

  Marvo romanced Doctor Reid, taking her to see the sunset, glorious colours, a sense and smell of the future around them. "Beautiful," he said, looking at Marcia.

  "I hate to disillusion you," Marcia said, "but it isn't actually beautiful."

  "What are you talking about? It's gorgeous. That sunset is beautiful. All right, in my opinion the sunset is beautiful."

  "I'm sorry, but your opinion is incorrect. In fact, the more beautiful the sunset, the more polluted the sky. Not much to be proud of."

  "Great. Thank you." Marvo found science boring and unsatisfying. He thought that scientists were the new religious fanatics. They told people things and were blindly believed, even when those things were no longer correct, or never were. A fool was merely the difference between someone who heard the theory has been changed and someone who didn't. Like leaving the grill door open when cooking – people did it by habit. But grills were rarely gas any more, and never dangerous, so the action was wasted.

  "People once thought that sunlight was good for you, that man had the internal organs of a horse, that the moon had rivers and lakes," he said. She smiled at him. She knew who he was. What he was. She knew that he preferred happiness to truth, that he liked the mist rather than clarity.

  "People believed a lovely cure for lunacy in Saxon Leechdoms," he continued. "They took a clove-wort and wreathed it with red thread about the victim's neck when the moon was on the wane in the month of April. They were soon healed. Sad for the person who goes insane on the first day of May, May Day, and has to wait a year for April to come."

  "Some people believe those things still. It's magic, to make people believe," Doctor Reid said. She seemed to know so much. "Nothing is true, though. Nothing you do, nothing Andra does. All is illusion. First there was magic to explain the world. It is very easy for the people who believe
d. They can blame everything on fate, and they don't have to make decisions on their own."

  Marvo told Doctor Reid what he knew about sympathetic magic; told her in a way which demonstrated a cynicism about the magic of magic. A cynicism he did not feel. He wanted her to trust him, to talk to him.

  "In science it is important not to be dazzled by amazing facts. You must accept and study, turn the amazing fact into a proven theory. This is how science evolves," she said.