They Do the Same Things Different There

by They Do the Same Things Different There (v5. 0) (epub)

  The darkness, the darkness had come. The proper darkness, solid, weighty, and it lumbered across the theatre toward him. And he could hear his audience die, every one of them, and the demons came in, or was it the angels, or was it both, were they both here together, had they put aside their differences and stopped their war and come to see the show? His audience were lost; the angels and demons were in their seats now, crushing down their corpses. And the darkness, all the darkness, all about, unyielding, and pure, and the only light left in the world shone down upon him and Lucy.

  His patter dried. He stumbled over his words. Stumbled over his feet. He panted, he licked his lips.

  From the void came a voice, a single voice, and it was sharp like gravel, and he didn’t think there was anything human in it at all.

  “Give us a good trick, magic man. And maybe we’ll spare your life.”

  It was in just such a theatre that the Great Zinkiewicz had first seen the darkness. It had not been a good show. The audience weren’t attentive, he thought some of them were drunk. And Lucy was talking too much again, in spite of what he’d said to her the night before: it was all in the rhythm, he kept explaining to her, gently, the act could work only in a very exact rhythm. “I just feel there’s more I can offer,” she’d said. “I just stand about looking decorative, and getting sawn in half, and stuff. I’m worth more than that.” And he had promised he’d try to find a better way to include her in the show, and they’d kissed, and then made love. And, do you know, he thought he’d probably even meant it.

  As they’d trudged toward the grand finale, he’d given her the signal, and she’d nodded, gone into the wings. And out she had wheeled the Cabinet of Vanishments.

  “Behold,” said Zinkiewicz. “The Cabinet of Vanishments! Now, my wife will vanish before your eyes. When she gets locked up in my special box, and I tap upon the door, and say the magic word—yes, you all know it, abracadabra! I don’t know what it means, no one knows what it means, if we knew it wouldn’t be magic—I’ll say the word, and my wife will be gone!”

  He’d felt at last a flutter of interest from the audience.

  His wife had said, perkily, whilst wagging her finger at him, “And just you make sure I get back in time for tea!” Audience death once more. Jesus.

  He closed the door on her, and he felt a relief that she was out of sight. And a sense of something else, deep inside, some new confidence. Or power.

  He tapped on the door three times with his wand. “Abracadabra,” he said.

  He opened the door. She’d gone. There was some half-hearted applause.

  He closed the door again. “Now to bring her back,” he said. “I suppose!” And there was some laughter at that, and he thought to himself, you see, Lucy, one can improvise comedy, but only if one’s a professional.

  “Abracadabra,” he said. He opened the door. The cabinet was empty.

  He closed the door. He turned to the audience, smiled, but he felt it was a sick smile, and he could feel himself beginning to sweat.

  “I’ll try again,” he promised them. “Abracadabra!”

  Still nothing—but no, really nothing—and this time it seemed to Zinkiewicz the cabinet was not merely empty, it somehow seemed to have no inside at all. Black, just black, a darkness. That would spill out into the world unless. Unless he slammed the door shut.

  He did. He held the door closed. He felt it, he felt something beat against it, thrum against his fingers. He didn’t dare let go. He didn’t dare hold on either, he didn’t dare stand so close, because he knew that for all its fancy design and name the cabinet was just a bit of plywood a few inches thick, it wouldn’t be enough to contain what was growing within. And at the thought of it he pulled away, as if he had been burned—and for a moment he thought he had, and he stared down at his fingers, expecting them to be charred and black. They weren’t. They weren’t, but he stared at them anyway—and for too long, he could hear behind his back the audience stir from stultified silence and begin to heckle.

  He turned back to them. He didn’t know what to say. His tongue felt heavy, sick, and yes, his fingers, they still burned. “I’m sorry,” is what he came out with. “I’m sorry.”

  And behind him he heard it, and he knew now he wasn’t imagining it: there was a knocking from within the cabinet, something impatient to be released. And then there was a voice to it—“Hey!” Muffled, but still sounding perky, so annoyingly perky. “Hey, let me out! Is it time for my tea yet?”

  There was some polite laughter, they thought it was part of the act. He opened the door. There was Lucy. He took her hand to help her out, she had to bow so her feather headdress wouldn’t get caught, and her sequins sparkled as they came out from the dark. They made their bows together. They went for two bows, although the applause didn’t really warrant it.

  That night in their digs they had argued. She told him this wasn’t what she had expected from their marriage. It wasn’t just the act anymore, it was the entire marriage. She was bored with the constant travelling. It wasn’t as exciting as she’d expected. She thought they’d be on television by now. “Do you still love me?” he’d asked. She’d thought about it. “I don’t know,” she’d replied.

  She turned away from him in the bed, and he wanted to reach out towards her, but he was too proud, or too frightened he’d be rebuffed. And he lay there in the darkness, and it seemed to him that it was a darkness so profound, and he wished they’d left the bathroom light on, or had the curtains open, anything, the darkness was beginning to hurt his eyes. And he felt that surge of power inside him again, and he knew she was right, he should be better than this, it was all supposed to be better.

  He didn’t know her anymore. He didn’t know her. Their magic was gone.

  And he realized all the darkness in the room was her, it was her, it was coming from her. He could feel it now, it was pouring out of her. With every breath she made she was spitting more of it out, and it lay heavy on her, and it lay heavy on him, and it was going to suffocate him unless he stopped it. He’d lost her. He’d lost her. She’d been swallowed up whole.

  He got up. She didn’t stir.

  He packed the truck with all the props he needed for his magic act, his costume, the takings from the last three weeks of performance. He drove off into the night.

  Within a few days the truck ran out of petrol. There hadn’t been a petrol station. There was barely even a road anymore. He abandoned the truck. He found a horse cart amongst the rubble that lay about, so much rubble, things thrown away and no longer wanted. He loaded the cart. He picked up the handle. It was so heavy. He had to be strong. He walked.

  The world was cracked, and the darkness was pursuing him, and he had to outrun it. And in some towns there was talk of war.

  He did a few tricks for coins and food. Most of his tricks didn’t work without an assistant.

  Some nights, if the ground was dry, he slept underneath the cart. He could pull the canvas covering down for added warmth or shelter. One morning he woke to find a little girl was curled up, at his feet, like a dozing cat.

  “Oi!” he said. “Wake up!” The girl did, stretched, looked at him without shame or curiosity. “Who are you?” he demanded. “Where have you come from?”

  She didn’t answer.

  And he didn’t ask again, because he felt somehow if he did she would go away.

  When he pulled the cart along, she walked beside him. And the next town he reached, he played his act, and she was there. She knew the tricks just as well as he did. And she had her own sequined dress, it fitted perfectly.

  The distance between towns seemed greater and greater. Sometimes they’d walk for weeks before they’d reach a new one. And when they did the people were hostile, or hid from them altogether. The paths were hard to walk, the ground rough, chewed up even, and no matter how much it rained the mud beneath their feet seemed so hard and sharp and unyielding. “I can’t go on
,” he’d say to the girl, “I don’t see why we’re going on,” and he might cry, and then the girl wouldn’t look at him, as if she were embarrassed. One day he dropped the handle of the cart. “I’ve had enough,” he said, “if we must walk, I’m not carrying this anymore!” Without missing a beat she went to the cart, tried to lift it herself, tried to drag it behind her. She was such a little thing, but she managed it; he could see her grit her teeth with the effort, and then force one foot on in front of the other, so slowly, too slow—she was going to pull the cart no matter how long it took. Shamed, he went back, relieved her. She smiled at him then, just a little smile, and it was of triumph, but it was not unkind. On he walked. On she walked, always keeping pace.

  He called her Lucy; it was what it said on the posters. And sometimes as she slept beside him he thought he could see something of his wife in her face. Sometimes he liked to pretend this was his wife, but small, and silent, from the years before he’d met her. And sometimes he didn’t need to pretend, he knew it was true.

  “Give us a good trick, magic man. And maybe we’ll spare your life. You, and that brat of yours.”

  He tried his best. But the cards kept slipping through fingers damp with sweat.

  “Haven’t you got anything better?”

  He pulled a rabbit out of his hat. He pulled a hat out of a rabbit.

  “Last chance, magic man.”

  He didn’t know what to do. He looked at Lucy for help.

  Lucy didn’t seem afraid. She seemed as blandly unaffected by this as she was by everything else. And for a second the man rather envied her. And for a second he was rather frightened of her too.

  She held his gaze for a moment, then turned, and left the stage.

  He thought she’d abandoned him. And he couldn’t blame her.

  But she came back, and when she did, she was wheeling on the Cabinet of Vanishments.

  “No,” he said to her. “No.”

  She shook her head at that. She set it down centre stage. She presented it to the audience. And so, he went on with the act. He cleared his throat.

  “I shall say the magic word, abracadabra. I . . . I don’t know what it means. No one does. What it means, I.” His voice cracked. “Maybe that’s why it’s magic.”

  There was laughter. Real laughter, or were they mocking him?

  He opened the cabinet. There was no darkness in there, the darkness had all got out long ago.

  And Lucy gestured that he should step inside.

  “No, I’m the magician,” he said.

  She ignored that. With a bow, with a flourish, she once more waved him toward the box.

  “No,” he said. And this time he was quite firm.

  She stared him down for a little while. Then she leaned forward, and he thought she was going to speak at last, he thought she was going to whisper something in his ear. He bent down to listen. She kissed him lightly on the cheek.

  “Get on with it,” came the voice from the audience.

  They got on with it. Lucy climbed inside the cabinet. She looked so tiny there suddenly, you could have fitted five Lucys inside, more maybe. He closed the doors on her. One didn’t shut properly, the rainwater, the warping—and there was laughter again, and this time they were definitely mocking him. He had to hold the door to keep it flush.

  “Goodbye,” he said to her. And he liked to imagine that inside she mouthed a goodbye to him too.

  He tapped on the box three times with his wand. “Abracadabra,” he said. He stepped away from the box, the warped door swung open and revealed that the cabinet was now empty.

  “Can you bring her back?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Bring her back.”

  “No,” he said. “I’m not bringing her back. Not to this place.”

  They came up onto the stage then, and took him by his arms, and bent him over backwards so his spine hurt, and held him tight. He saw that they were demons and angels, both—that they had little lumps for horns, and lapsed haloes, both.

  “Bring her back,” they said.

  And he felt such a power surging through him, the magic was back, even in a world as cracked as this. And he thanked them, sincerely—he thanked them that they had helped him give his best performance, that they had made his act at last mean something. The fear had gone. The fear had gone forever, and they could now do what they liked to him.

  They bit him, and punched him, and pulled at his skin and hair. And he didn’t cry out, he laughed, he barely felt a thing, he was so full of magic now, he was invincible. This enraged them still further. They shut him inside his box, and they set fire to it, and he didn’t cry out, not once, and he looked deep into the flames and fancied he saw in them what Lucy had found so fascinating, and it didn’t hurt, not very much, right up until the end.

  And Lucy turned about, and opened her eyes, and there was noise, and people, and the buildings stood intact, and the smell in the air may not have been clean but at least wasn’t sulphur.

  Her sequined dress was ripped, and spattered with mud.

  There was a pack of playing cards in her hand.

  There was a tongue in her head.

  She began to speak, and the more she said the better she got, and the better she got the louder she became.

  She fanned out the playing cards to the world.

  “Roll up, roll up,” she said. “Prepare to be dazzled by the Great Zinkiewicz!”

  For a while no one paid any attention. But then, even in a world so cracked, the magic began to hold.

  72 VIRGINS

  Michael Bell died, and went to heaven, and was told by the man at the front desk where he could collect his seventy-two virgins. “Oh,” said Michael, much surprised, “I don’t think I’m entitled to . . . There’s been a mistake . . . I mean, I’m not a Muslim,” and the man at the desk looked cross and said that if Michael had any complaints could he please take them up with someone else, it was a busy day, and he had a lot of corpses to process. So Michael apologized, signed the register, took his room key, and set forth into the afterlife.

  He had been assigned his own apartment. They called it an apartment, but it was more like a mansion, really: there was a garden with a swimming pool in it, and a billiard room, and a study, and a kitchen full of all the latest mod cons, and a basement with a swimming pool in it. It would have been far too big for Michael all by himself, so at first he was rather pleased there were seventy-two virgins to help fill it.

  Some of the seventy-two virgins were useless. He could see that in an instant. Eleven of them were babies. Eighteen of them were men. Four of them weren’t even human: he’d been given two virgin cats, one virgin goldfish, and a virgin grey squirrel. But that still left him with thirty-nine virginal women—young (mostly), ripe (he supposed), and his for the taking. “Hello,” he said to the throng, a little shyly, “my name’s Michael, but, uh, why not call me Mike?” He asked them their names. “Goodness,” said Michael, “I’ll never remember all those. Maybe you should all wear name badges?” So, for a while, they did.

  He told them they should feel free to use all the facilities. The swimming pools were at their disposal, and if anyone ever wanted to join him in a game of billiards, all they had to do was ask. None of the virgins liked swimming, apparently. And no one fancied billiards. They would instead crowd into the sitting room around the widescreen television set. They would squabble for space on the single sofa that was there, and shush each other when the ad breaks came to an end. Michael sometimes watched TV with them, but they never seemed to want to watch any of the programs he liked, and besides, he was never fast enough to get a spot on the sofa. Sometimes he’d hang out in the kitchen and make himself toast. He couldn’t work out how to use most of the mod cons, but the toaster was nice and easy. Or he’d go to the billiard room, and he’d roll all the balls from one end of the table to the other, and then walk to the other side, and
roll them all back again.

  He got to know Eliza quite well. Eliza was fond of toast, and would sometimes come into the kitchen when Michael was making some. She wouldn’t say much, but her fingers and his fingers might collide taking slices of bread out of the breadbasket.

  Michael began to think about Eliza a lot. He wondered if she ever thought of him too. One day he asked her why she didn’t watch TV with all the other virgins, and she blushed, and said she didn’t like TV much, and that besides, she’d rather be with him. She wasn’t especially pretty, but she looked as if she were in her teens, and Michael was pushing seventy, and he felt guilty for flirting with her until she told him she’d died of scarlet fever in the 1860s and was therefore older than his grandmother.

  He asked her whether she’d like to be his girlfriend, and steeled himself for a rejection, and she kissed him gently on the cheek and said that that’d be quite all right.

  He was intimidated by his own bedroom. Sweet incense and crushed silks and pillows that were fleshy—he couldn’t sleep like that. He’d kicked the pillows onto the floor. Before they got into bed together, Eliza stacked the pillows high again.

  She said, “I’m scared. Is that silly?”

  He said, “Of course it’s not silly.”

  She said, “You won’t hurt me?”

  He said, “I promise.”