Somebody once tried to expose Marvo and Andra in their mind reading. He said they were using a trick, that Marvo could guess the right object because Andra pointed at a certain colour before pointing to it. But no matter how hard they were observed, they were not caught in any trick. This was because there was no trick. They performed real magic with each other. They could read each other's minds.
Marvo did these tricks to put Doctor Reid off the track. He acted like a fake; a false magician.
Andra said, "Do you think we could go back on the stage? I miss it! The promoter called me just yesterday to see how you are going. You're performing anyway, Marvo. Why don't we do it?"
And it began again.
The singer from FEG did a surprise concert at the theatre where Marvo performed.
"I could never do what you do. My voice is too soft," Marvo said.
"Some singers are more needy than others," the singer said. "An ancestor of mine lived a long time ago when there was a great community feeling created by the permission of public expression of piety. No longer was piety a private, anti-social thing; it was open, demonstrative. Competitive. Citizens tried to outdo each other with their expressions of piety; shouted praise to the Lord so loudly their throats cracked, their voices failed. They threw coins at beggars, blessing both coin and beggar. They sang hymns in long, low voices, which gathered crowds. There was one singer whom people came to listen to from the corners of the city. He was a nervous man, dressed in a loose and ragged tunic, his toes turned in and clenched in his sandals, holding onto a cliff-edge of embarrassment. As he began to sing, onlookers laughed. His voice shook, pitched too high amongst the dusty market crowd. He held out his arms, closed his eyes, and began again. The song was one of great love of the Lord, of worship, of devotion. The man sang; the people began to sing. They all thought of God. The mind readers, had their craft been real, would have seen as many different images of God as there were singers; some the Christian God, a cloud-like, formless mass, or a Caesar, from on high. Others saw the pagan gods, ones from early childhood or beyond, the gods of the grandparents. One saw the god Obtala. The man stopped singing and shuffled away, amongst the still-singing crowd. So it is the beauty of a voice; the magic of tone which is most important. The text of words is necessary only to give voice to the music."
"So did he sing forever? Did he always have his voice?"
"No. He lost his magic soon after his only child was born. I will not have children," said the singer. "I don't need them."
"And they don't need you," Andra whispered to Marvo. She saw the future sometimes; she saw rage, and fists, beers, bottles. She saw a child growing up bitter.
"Children don't need you," she said to the singer from FEG.
He smiled. "No, they don't." He asked them to join him on tour, opening the show, softening up the children. The promoter agreed.
On the plane, Marvo met a happy man, who grinned through tobacco teeth, nodding and grinning. He did not speak English well.
"Farmer," he said, patting his chest, "farmer."
"Marvo," said Marvo.
"What is Marvo?"
"Magic. I'm a magician."
"Ah! You make a trick for me. I pay you."
"Which trick do you need?"
"I need a trick of speaking. I need to speak to the girl and she will marry me."
"In which language?"
"My language. I need speaking spell for my own language." He chuckled at his own failings, this happy man with failure imminent.
"I'll give you a trick if you give me a story."
"I can write a story," said the man, "and you will read it later."
Marvo found paper and pen for the man, who began to write.
He wrote in a sharp, scratchy script, and he wrote from left to right, then right to left, like a serpentine.
He filled two pages, then stopped, signing with a flourish.
Marvo asked him to explain.
"This is Dorian dialect. Lost to many now, but I write a story for you with these words. As the ox turns is the writing, boustrophedon. When you read the story, you will see the reason."
It was months before Marvo could find a translation for the story. It was a tale of tilling the field. The man was a farmer. That was not his name.
As the Ox Turns
The cock awakens me each morning and
leaves it as sun the meet to rise I
the barn roof and reaches the sky.
my to grain, pigs my to slops toss I
chickens and grass to my cows. I
ones the but animals many have not do
I do I am proud of. I have a team
afraid is wife my who oxen of
of. She dreamt often that they would
me to never her to harm bring
She saw no harm coming to me. I
them thinking, fears her at laughed
excuses to get out of working the
for room no is there farm
laziness on this farm. I would
clean would she, animals the feed
the barn. I would take the oxen
She field the till and
would go to the house and watch. She would
oxen the when house the leave not
were working. This was not pleasant
understand not could I. Me for
her illogicality. Then I received
who cousin my from letter a
lives in the place where this plane
woman beautiful a of me told He .going is
there, a neighbour's daughter, a
have not did who girl good
flights of fancy. I thought for
girl this of time long a
who my cousin said could not find
to began wife my and husband good a
fear even the barn because
there was oxen the of scent the
She told her mother and all the
difficult became It knew villagers
for me to hold my head up for
released I night one Finally .shame
the oxen, and they stamped through the
yard our in vegetables and flowers
My wife stayed terrified and rigid
very was it, bed her in
difficult to make her leave via the
rose I when. However, window
with the rooster I found my
the and trampled sadly, wife
oxen grazing peacefully on the roses
and sympathy much received I
a buyer for my house, and now I
wife new my meet to go
#
"I was like that oxen," the man in the story had told Marvo. "She cut off my balls and turned me into a slave. Like they do to cats, to tame them. She tried to do it to me."
Marvo had never considered the possibility of having his cat desexed. He was not even sure what sex it was, sometimes, or even if it existed to anyone but him.
When the plane landed, his fellow passenger disappeared to his new life.
The translator was curious as to the origins of this story, but Marvo was not in a position to tell him. The translator said, "The black ox. This story gave me a great shiver, because of a story I know about a man.
• • • •
The Black Ox
And a great man he was. So good for this village, selfless, he didn't do it for himself, our greatest fisherman. New roof for the school room he built himself and on cold nights he was out, taking food over hills and hills to the old man, blankets to the widow. That's who we thought the cocks were crowing for, at night. The old man who'd finished his life, not our young one, not our young man.
But it was him. The doctor said he is all rotted inside and some say that's why he was so good. They want to dig up his yard to find the dead children there, the dead wives. They say no man can be so sick and so good at the same time.
Now he lies mortal ill. The black ox has trampled on him.
#
&n
bsp; Marvo said, "You should not fear such a beautiful, such a useful creature. You see?" Marvo reached into his pocket and drew out a black marble ox. "Keep this ox with you, stroke it if you like. Love the creature for its strength; don't blame it for your sorrow." Marvo forgot where he collected these things; the ox, other small ornaments, ribbons, socks, shoelaces. It was natural to him, pocketing small items. People were too embarrassed to say anything. They couldn't believe Marvo was a thief, but things went missing when he visited. Soon, they forgot the item ever existed.
"How do you grieve a man who isn't buried yet?" the man said. Marvo asked the question of Andra when he returned to her.
Andra took him to the graveyard where her grandmother was buried. He found the sense of grief there palpable, almost edible.
Marvo returned to the graveyard again and again. There were stories he couldn't leave behind.
A man he met there told the story of his child's strange birth.
Bitter Seed
She was born in a leap year, you see. People kept telling us how lucky that was, but they were only guessing. It seemed like it should have been lucky, because it was rare. Then a person who really knew these things gave me a terrible glimpse of the other side of the story.
She said that either the mother or child will die within a year, when the year of birth is leap. I didn't believe her, of course. I'm not superstitious. But the seed was planted. We had passed six months without mishap – our child was beautiful, healthy, my wife the same. We believed in the luck people kept insisting was ours.
I didn't tell my wife of the witch's prophecy, for fear ill luck would pursue us in the same way. It was painful for me to see my wife so happy, my child so perfect, and believe, more and more each day, that one of them would have to die.
#
"Did you choose which one?" Marvo said. He knew the answer to this one; he had heard the story before, about a horse and a loved one. He looked around to read a headstone. "Did you choose?"
The man looked horrified.
"What do you mean? It wasn't up to me to choose. I could only protect my family as best I could.
"And I didn't. I took them to a small community and we lived on the outskirts. I didn't tell my wife why. I still didn't want two people's negativity working.
"I kept my family alive. But we hated each other by the end of the year; our marriage was not built for solitude and confinement. Once we returned to the city, when I felt we were safe, she left me.
"She is not cruel, or hateful, so she allows me to see the child. But I have lost their love. The witch was almost right. I have lost both my wife and my child."
Marvo rarely came across love so he barely recognised it.
"I come here to remind myself that others have far greater losses," said the man.
Marvo felt a softness about his ankles and jumped. He thought perhaps a soft and mossy arm was reaching up from the grave.
But it was his cat; his familiar grey cat. The one which had found him in the city, and which appeared here and there, now and then. Marvo reached to dig his fingers into his deep fur.
Marvo found a story in his head; a true story. He said, "I have experienced greater loss. I have never owned a dog; I didn't graze my knees running away in kiss chasie. I do not know how my mother smells. I never ate the pastry off a sausage roll at school, I didn't learn how to read in a classroom of children. I cannot swim. I never learnt. I never swam a race or ran one. I cannot kick a football or catch a basketball. I can only recently cook. I did not learn dirty songs; I still don't know any. I know no one in a grave. I don't know what it feels like to sit on a father's lap. I never believed in Father Christmas. So I have lost all this because I never had it."
The man had not blinked since Marvo began talking. He could not imagine such loss, such lacking. He said, "I can teach you a dirty song," and they sat on a park bench and sang the words to "The Old Grey Mare".
The Old Grey Bull said,
"Let's have a anotheree
down by the scruberee
I'll supply the rubberree."
The Old Grey Mare said,
"You can go to buggeree
Ain't gonna fuck ya no more."
Marvo found comfort at the cemetery. He wondered what it would be like to visit your dead, to see them lying there, their names and dates legible so you can never forget, so you knew when they died. He spoke to people at graves, asked them the story of their grief.
"When is death said to occur?" said another man. "My wife did not speak for the last six months of her life; the attack paralysed her so. So she was dead already, in a way. We could no longer communicate. But she could squeeze my hand when her strength was good, and her eyes were always very expressive.
"She went into a coma, four days before she died. Death there? There was no mind left in that body. A case of flesh and bone. But her brain still registered as functioning. Then her brain and heart stopped, and officially, she was dead.
"But I remember her laugh, her shouts, her favourite colour. She is not dead in my memories. Perhaps she will be alive until I forget her."
Marvo thought about his grandmother; he could remember her words and little else, also her age, something he had only had comparison to since his emergence from the room.
The man said, "But she knew she was going to die months earlier, when an old tree fell on our property. She said, 'An omen of death,' and smiled. It was a joke then, but perhaps that smile was a grimace, perhaps her spirit left her body at that moment and left her body to collapse. I think death occurred when the tree fell, and there was nothing I could do."
Something about that place made Marvo talk. "You still remember; the way she smelt, her favourite joke, her favourite food. She will not be dead until you forget her."
The man nodded, comforted. "I'll never forget her," he said.
"It's hard to forget a truly loved person." Marvo still remembered his grandmother, though the details of her face were long since faded. It was the stories he remembered mostly. The lessons she taught him.
Marvo, tired of the sight of death, collected Andra for a holiday at the beach.
Marvo spent many hours at the beach. He was distracted there, he could forget his future. Let the mist fill the air. When he relaxed, he exhaled it like smoke. He rolled his pants and removed his shirt. He placed his shoes neatly at his side and he watched the children, thinking they looked so natural, so at home in this habitat. He ate fish and chips for most meals. He watched them and imagined his own childhood holiday at the beach, a holiday which did not exist.
Marvo travelled beach roads and met beach people. A young man tried to sell him tickets to a show. Marvo knew they were stolen; the boy tried to gloss over that with a story.
School Teacher – Nasty
The teacher could not control her pupils. It wasn't funny. She didn't interest us in the slightest so we ignored her. I know you think you've heard it before. The teacher with the bad class, can't teach them a thing. Don't stop me, though, as I'm telling the story. Wait till the end and then decide.
She tried to teach us the beauty of history, the magic. We didn't even flatter her enough to laugh.
She was a fucking bitch, our teacher. She was a fucking dog. She hated us all. The only one she liked was fucking Joanie who licked her arse and did homework. Who did history homework? Who wanted it, who needed it?
So the bitch thought she'd get us all in by learning magic, and she started pulling PingPong balls out of our ears, boring shit like that. We played tricks of our own; we put her drawer in upside down, put red ink on her chair so it looked like she had her period without knowing it. We couldn't figure out why she didn't dob us in. Then she played this wooden trick on us.
The trick was shaped like a miniature Rapunzel's tower. It had a long, cylindrical base, a triangular lid. On the lid were three symbols, a square, a circle and a triangle. On the base were the same three symbols.
The teacher demonstrated the trick. "It's simpl
e," she said. "All you have to do is hook the elastic band in the base onto the hook on the lid." She showed us the hook; it was as long as the base. She replaced the lid, turned it, then pulled it out and let go. It fell back with a click.
I laughed, thinking, What a dumb trick. That's so easy. So she gave it to me.
I tried and tried to hook the bloody elastic band. There was only a thin hollow in the base so I couldn't see, I had to go by touch. I tried to match the symbols on the lid, but they were like this.
I could match two at a time but never the third.
It wouldn't sink in. I kept thinking this was the secret. If I could match all three I could be able to snare the band. But I couldn't match them. They didn't match.
"Give up?" the teacher said. "Give up? Give up?"
Finally I had to. She picked up the trick, hooked the band, let go. Then she laughed. "There's no band there. The shape of the triangular lid slipped it from my fingers, draws it back with a snap."
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