I tried it. The lid returned with a snap. There was no elastic band.
"There's the magic," the teacher said. "Trust and belief. The magic is you believed there was an elastic band there because I told you there was."
She laughed her head off. I felt terrible, like everything I trusted was false. I hated her even more after that. She was such a boring bitch. On the last day of school, she came into the room with a big black bag.
"This is my bag of tricks," she said, "no lessons today, just tricks."
She pulled out all these things you see normal magicians have, like a hat, that sort of thing. She got Sammy to sit up the front and she swung a shiny ball on a chain. His head nodded and we all laughed. It looked like he was having a good joke on her.
"You look funny in those clothes, Sammy," she said, "Little pigs don't wear clothes."
Sammy snorted like a hog and took off his school uniform. He was white underneath. Only his arms were brown. We all saw his cock. It was small. He crawled around snorting. Julie got up and walked to the door, to get out. The door wouldn't open.
"I've got a lot of tricks, Julie. Sit down."
The teacher pointed at Julie. Julie sat down. The teacher said, "Arms in air, everyone." She walked around the room. She ran her fingernail down the forearms of some kids, and their skin opened. Blood poured down their arms and caught in the neck of their school shirts.
"Lower your arms."
She said. "Who knows the year of the Norman Conquest?"
I told her the answer.
"Very good," she said. "Here's an animal stamp."
A tiger's paw clawed my face.
"What was the occupation of Sir Joseph Banks?" she asked. No one knew.
The smell of sweet flowers and manure.
"He was a botanist," she said.
We couldn't breathe. We felt buried alive.
Finally she said, "The year of the Great Fire of Rome?" She didn't even wait for an answer this time. The smell of burning, the smell of burnt hair and flesh. We were screaming then, out of our seats, and running for windows that didn't open. We hammered for help but no one heard. The school grounds were deserted. Church bells pealed, Sunday had dawned without us.
The teacher was the one burning. We watched her melt, tried to beat her with our hands and Sammy's clothes but she was too hot. She burnt away without moving or speaking.
We all sat in our desks and cried and cried until the headmaster came and sent us home.
It's a true story, because I was there. I was one of the students, a cheeky boy with no manners, by all reports. I was quick and clever and cruel. I liked to embarrass people, beat them that way.
#
Marvo gave him a trick, a very useful one.
"It's very hard to deal with death, even of someone you thought you hated. You think of those things you said, the little cruelties. The trick is to remember that death is not so horrible when the victim is old. So the trick is this.
"Take a person's age
"Multiply by two.
"If the number is less than seventy, add your age.
"If the number is more than one hundred, subtract your age.
"Do you have a large number?
"That is the age of the person who died."
Marvo tired of the beach after that. He felt sick. They went home, fighting holiday traffic.
Andra made him lie on the bed. She tore strips from all their sheets, soaked them in wine, wrapped them tightly around him and made him lie still until they dried. "All your sorrows and sins are drawn into these sheets," she said. She helped him into the bath. Washed him. She cured him.
They had no sheets to sleep on then, so decided to buy more together. It was a commitment, to go shopping for bedclothes together. Marvo had not bought sheets before; he had always slept in other people's beds. He did not mind what they bought, but he wanted the material to be soft, not shiny.
Andra wanted a restful colour; very important for good love, good sleep. "There was," she said, "a belief in red bed coverings to draw out the pustules of smallpox. I don't think we need to bring our pustules to the surface, do you? I think it's nicer to keep those things inside, don't you?" She smiled. He knew this wasn't true but smiled anyway.
"You have all the answers," he said.
She turned her back to him. "Why do you keep looking, then? So many stories."
"Because you don't have the right answers. Why do we need the magic of releasing good news or dirty gossip to conceal tragedies? Why are the magicians always there to tell the story of the politician's love for young boys when unemployment grows, or news of a great sports win when taxes are raised? That's why I have to follow the bad news, the bad guys. I'm trying to find a source, an explanation. Why am I needed? Why does the mist have to exist? Why is there bad, bad to be concealed?"
"Let's make our bed, Marvo, and you'll see the magic of fresh new sheets."
Marvo and Andra rose early the next day. They had a magic tour lined up. Show after show after show. With them travelled a manager, a young man who could never sit still. He made Marvo nervous with his staccato sentences, his unfinished thoughts.
"Tell me a story," Marvo said as they prepared for a night's performance. "Beginning, middle and end."
Door Stop
He wanders through the town, sniffing, sniffing, looking for babies. He thinks this town is disappointing. In the last town, babies were ripe and plenty, their parents loving and trusting.
"May I offer this sweet suit? Wee Willie Winkie Wear. In exchange for a bite to eat?" Material shiny, in pink or blue, burgundy or azure. A dear little suit to fit every child, fit like a second skin, shrink to fit, but to look comfortable. Babies crying for no reason, into the night, all day.
Why's the baby crying? He's got his lovely suit, he's not wet. Can't you see he can't breathe? He's hot and he's working for breath.
The man stands under windows in the dark, drinking in the cries, the anger. For this town, he has brought little booties for their feet to itch and prickle, lovely sweet dummies which leave a nasty taste for the babies to suck on.
He wandered through the town, looking for toys on the lawn which indicated older children who may have siblings. Wondersuits on the clothes lines.
Losing patience, his pack growing heavy with his goodies, he considered sleeping, moving to the next town in the morning. Then he saw a house, a single light on. A woman paced, holding a child.
He could hear its soft crying, weak little sniffles of a child not ready to sleep, seeking something to complain about.
His pack bounced as he stepped to the front door.
"I couldn't help hearing your baby's cries," he would say, "I have the perfect thing."
But as he stepped closer to the door, he found he could not walk onto the door stop.
He reached across to the door and knocked. The door was answered quickly; the mother stood there.
"What is it?" she said. "What do you want?"
"I couldn't help hearing your baby's cries," he said. He tried to step over the threshold. Some barrier stopped him.
"You stay away," she whispered. "I told the old woman not to bother, but she buried the afterbirth of my little one under that stone. To keep out evil spirits who wish to do her mischief. Now I see she was right."
The door closed, and he left town without the benefit of rest.
#
"It's a true story," the young man said. "It was my mother. She saved me."
"She was a clever woman, then."
"She's crazy now. All she thinks about is what could have been."
Marvo gave him a crystal ball for his mother. "This will ease her mind," he said.
Andra pulled Marvo by the arm. "Enough stories! We have a show to put on."
"Your costume is on inside out," the young manager said. "And don't forget to speak up! Your quiet voice, people can't always hear you."
"I bring good luck on myself," said Andra, "when I put something on inside out.
For the luck to hold, you must leave it like that till you would take it off normally." Andra didn't bother about things like putting on her clothes the right way. She didn't pluck her eyebrows and she rarely ironed. Nothing was important.22
Before the crowds arrived, Marvo took a quick run around the theatre, up and down the stairs, feeling his thighs and his ankles. He liked to think that way, think of the visits and phone calls he'd had from magicians around the world. Advice, ideas and thoughts. All of it in his head; all of it ready to be sorted.
That night as Marvo walked through a piece of red glass he put one arm through first and made obscene gestures to the audience. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of a stranger, an unimpressed adult face. An angry woman, a woman who hated Marvo, hated magic. She wore a beard, pretending manhood.
Marvo's concentration slipped. He stared at the pale face; it seemed so large, like a balloon.
Doctor Marcia Reid.
The children began to scream, and Andra grabbed his elbow. A stream of thick dark blood ran from his arm, down the glass, patterned the floor in red. He had cut his arm. He saw Doctor Reid leaving and tugged at the young manager's trouser leg. "Follow her, will you? Please?" Marvo knew he would have to find the doctor, that he could never be in the weak position of the one who is caught.
Andra helped him withdraw his arm from the glass and someone came to clean up the mess. She tore her silk tail away and used it as a bandage. He finished the show, calming the screams of the children who loved him.
"She went to the library," the young manager told him. "To the Rare Books Room. They wouldn't let me in because they said I was dirty."
Marvo was neat and dull in both dress and appearance, until he dressed for a performance, when he became flamboyant. He was so quiet though. He always whispered; an enigma to all who met him. Why does he whisper? Why do you whisper, why are you so quiet? He did not tell them where his quiet voice came from. He gestured them to lean closer, and he smelt so nice, like juicy fruit chewing gum or a steak cooking, or like your favourite aftershave or perfume, or like your mum or like your own fart, he smelt so enticing people would lean closer to hear his quiet, quiet voice. They leant so close they felt the prickle of his short hair against their cheek. You don't need to shout to be heard, Marvo was fond of saying. And you don't have to be good to be bad.
It was in this library that Marvo found the blind man. They had a large collection of Braille books.
"I haven't always been blind," he told Marvo. "And I haven't always been rich. What made me rich made me blind."
The Lesson of the Blind Man
I was never expected to make a success of myself, what with my father being in jail for murder. His own father, he killed: my granddad. I found out once I was grown up. Shoved him over a cliff with the family watching from the picnic table, me right at his feet. I remember laughing at the game and never making the connection that Granddad and Dad both disappeared at the same time had anything to do with that shove.
"What did he say?" my mother asked. "What did Granddad say to make Daddy so mad?" I was the only one who could answer – my father never spoke to my mother again.
I didn't know the answer. I wasn't listening. I was glad to be standing there, with my dad. I never liked Granddad: he used to pinch at me, asking how school went and other bland questions. I was scared of him. When his spittle flew during conversation, I was too scared to wipe it from my cheek. I preferred to let it sit there and sink into my skin.
There were a lot of connections I never made. That's another reason nobody expected much of me. I was stupid.
I didn't finish high school; hated school. They called me Ted Ripper, as if my Dad had killed more than one person. It was very annoying.
I was lucky, after a lot of years pottering around, eating cheese sandwiches because I couldn't afford meat, that sort of thing, I was found by the first person who thought I was smart enough to be of use.
He was an amateur but brilliant historian, inspired, and he kept me on as his assistant for many years.
It was very tragic, when he died. I knew he'd been born on an ocean liner, right on the equator, and no one could decide what nationality he was. So it would have been nice for him to die somewhere special. But he keeled over and died.
He left everything to his historical society – papers, money, the lot. But I managed to pick up something I had had my eyes on for a long time.
These two sheets of paper.
Firstly,
In the land of tin
In the State of Wandering
In the Place of Edin's Castle
find this:
Then think this:
Can you carry what you find? Not far.
Can you take it to a place?
Where people gather and then leave,
Where the walls are ancient,
Where the people are old,
Light is there.
Place the object
in the place.
The square;
you'll know the one.
Place the object
in the place
At the time.
And the time is this:
There is a year of months;
There is one month.
There is a month of days;
There is one day.
There is a day of hours;
There is one hour.
There is an hour of minutes;
There is one minute.
And this is the minute:
That of the perfect egg.
And this is the hour:
That before Christ's last.
And this is the day:
The number of months
For the book of names
to be completed.
And this is the month;
Think of thanks.
But listen to this:
What's light is lightest light.
What's dark is darkest dark.
Take dark to light
or
take light and take dark.
An historical and geographical treasure map. The old man spoke often of its existence. Telling me he was saving it for his retirement. Well, I figured, you're retired now. So I pinched it.
It took me two years to track down the answers to the clues. At each stage I thought I had it, then one element would be wrong. Finally, I had answered almost every question. The last paragraph remained a mystery; that I would ad lib.
My track took me to Britain; Scotland; Edinburgh. I was distracted for a while by the terminology, but I found that Britain, though not one land, came from the Phoenician Baratanak – Land of Tin.
Scotland is not a state, but it came from the Celts, who finally settled there, who were known as Scuit, or to roam, wander.
Edin's Castle was simple.
Edinburgh.
The diagram had me for weeks, until I remembered those children's drawings, like this:
This is a Mexican on a bicycle, and it struck me that I was looking at a table, some chairs, and perhaps a pond with ducks or an umbrella with wings. It was a short step to the beer garden of the Three Ducks hotel.
Every night people met and sat at the table, men and women. After a week, I realised I would have to come after hours, if I was to check the tables. They were always taken. Within the broad, single central leg of the table, the hollow centre of it, rested a small ebony box. I had the dark. And the light; within kilometres sat the Light Cathedral, an ancient structure attended solely by the inhabitants of the retirement village which surrounded it. There was my place; next, my time. The perfect egg, traditionally, takes three minutes. Christ died at 3pm. The book of names I took to be the Domesday book; completed in eight months. And the month of thanks; in the area I was in, Europe, that month is September. The time of the Harvest Festival. September the 8th, at three minutes past three. It was only July. I spent the next two months trying to open the box, without breaking it; it remained firmly sealed. I went to the cathedral an
d saw, before me, many thousands of squares. On my hands and knees now I sought. I wanted to find the place before the day came. I looked at each small tile carefully, waiting to "know". One hour passed, then each minute ticked. I refused to rush; I did not want to miss it. Finally, I found one tile, scratched with a small sun. I went home and waited for the day. I was fortunate in that there was no worship that day. I entered the cathedral. Quickly, now, I placed my ebony box squarely over the tile. It sat comfortably. I sat to wait, staring at the box. As the moment approached, I felt a warmth at the back of my head. Turning, I discovered a shaft of light pouring through a small hole in the ceiling.
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