He enjoyed a good social life. He went out often – usually leaving his family behind. His wife didn't enjoy the smoke, the noise, the crush of bodies. Or the sight of him with his tongue down someone's throat.
He could not remember, later, which came first. The mirror or the sickness. But it didn't matter, because the mirror was the reason he was so sick. He broke the mirror, holding it steady in a toilet, somewhere in the city, steady so the powder didn't spill off. He sniffed, then dropped the mirror and it broke into pieces which lay glittering on the ground. Luckily he had already taken the powder. He stumbled past someone who went into the stall with glass, knelt down and threw up. It was a woman; she was wearing a skirt. Her knees were cut; the blood, he felt, sealed his fate. In his mood of elevated emotions, he felt this.17 He went home to his family and woke with a headache. He could not remember whether the headache had been there the day before. His wife said no, but it felt like an ever-present ache, a forever thing that would not go away.
He weakened within days, and became ill.
The mirror, he thought, I should have cleaned up the mirror.
His wife moved into the spare room. She could not stand the smell of his sickness and it was worse at night. His girls wouldn't kiss him and they did not bring friends home.
He was very sick. But he took his tired body back to the club, and scrabbled on the tiles seeking shards, thinking that to re-assemble the mirror would be to heal himself. He found one, which imbedded itself in the still fat-flesh of his thumb.
#
Marvo said, "What happened to that man?"
"That man took seven years to die," said the girl.
Marvo gave this girl a man twenty-five years older, a good, kind, loyal man undamaged by the vagaries of life. Their love was lasting.
Marvo spoke to a man about a job; a sad thin old man who did not care who worked, who died. He said, "Profession?" Marvo said, "Story Hearer."
The man wrote it down. Staring at the paper, he said, "The heat, nothing I've ever suffered. Imagine being slowly baked, very slowly, or like a frog, which can be killed painlessly, they say, by placing it in a pot of cold water and slowly, slowly, heating it to death.
"Though Professor Rushton, Department of Zoology, says that this is pure superstition. Pure fantasy. How do these things happen? Frogs feel the same heat changes we do. Putting them into cold water and slowly cooking them in ever-increasing heat is inflicting the same pain it would inflict on us. Please, tell your friends. Frogs will feel the pain."
Marvo saw this as a good example of the myth being more interesting than the truth. Another reason Marvo preferred magic to science; science could explain too well. And magic could take the guilt out of actions, whereas science only denied guilt in actions directly related to its practice, such as vivisection.
"This is how I felt," said the thin old man.
Pointing Finger
Slowly getting hotter, my blood boiling, cooking my flesh from the inside out.
So my brain was not sharp; it was dull and stupid. I forgot all I had learnt. Forgot my schooling, my credentials, my science. All I knew was superstition, now, and what I saw was a man with burnt skin pointing bone at me.
I did not believe that death would come to me from his bone. I knew there was no truth in it. Yet all my knowledge could not dispel my absolute terror at my doom.
I stumbled away from that man, my whole body shaking more than his single digit.
I was rescued from the desert; the people looking for me found me.
You would think, then, that I would lose my fear, think the magic ineffective.
No. I cannot rid myself of the thought of that bone, and all I can eat are bones, I throw anything else up, and soon I will die from this insane diet.
#
Marvo understood the man was lying about his fear. Marvo knew that people often do lie about fears and loves; he learnt this from his grandmother.
"What are you really afraid of?" asked Marvo. "It's not that pointing bone. Your fear lies elsewhere."
"My fear is that my life has been wasted by cynicism. I see every choice as two parts, now. Then, I saw only one. I wish I knew what my life would have been down those other paths.
"But there are too many. A million paths to choose from in my life, each life leading to another choice, each path has ten paths to choose from."
Marvo gave this man an accidental death, a death so sudden his life flashed before his eyes and it was not the one he had lived.
Marvo left the thin old man to his accidental death. He felt weakened, he was not invigorated. He no longer wanted to find a job. He booked into a hotel with a TV, and he watched, sound off, all day. He watched the result of his weakness. The footage was clear, sharp. Marvo's mist was not at work. He saw fire and fights. He saw crime figures, he saw babies dying, he saw mothers crying. He lay in his room, the sound of sirens outside, the images of despair within. He cried, salt tears stinging his eyes. He tugged at the ragged bedspread he lay on, tearing it in strips, tying the strips into a ball of cotton. He was angry at the mission he'd been given. He was angry because he knew nothing, nothing.
He left the TV on, and went out to the street. He had picked an area of great activity for his retreat. There was the smell of sour milk, the footpath was patterned with vomit flowers and blood stars. He was bumped as he walked, bumped, pushed. He had to walk in the gutter in some places, his feet kicking solid things, sending them rolling or scuttling away.
Marvo did not feel good for tricks this day. His magic felt weak. His mist was thin. Three classrooms of children, all released late, all agitated, pushed through the doors and up the narrow staircase. Fifteen were killed. Many hurt. The mist was thin.
• • • •
He met a man who was stalking the street, seeking beauty, seeking perfection. He gave Marvo a lesson about picking up women. He said, "Always listen, mate, that's the trick. Always keep your ears open. Some of them have a tone in their voice and you can hear the desperation. That's what ya wanna here. Next to them is always a perfect friend."
Marvo told him he should never trust perfection, because it was probably fake. They sat together at a café, ordering coffee, cake and then tea.
Marvo said, "My grandmother told me a story which taught me that sex was not of the greatest import in a relationship. There needs to be other interests as well. But the ancestors were trying to save the race from destruction. They wanted the magicians to choose their lovers carefully, because blood is important, strength and support."
A Weak and Cowardly King
There was a weak and cowardly king, who would not make decisions because he did not want to be blamed for their results. He surrounded himself with well-paid sages who understood his needs and took the blame if a situation went bad, passed the glory to him if all was well. He lost some sages to crowd fury, others to execution, but there were always more. Those who survived would not want for anything in their lifetime.
The gods were very important to the sages and proof of their correctness or failure. One sage advised the king to marry a woman from another land – a woman the king was happy to marry. She was beautiful, with lustrous skin and white teeth. And her race, it was rumoured, worshipped the act of love as a holy procedure, and learnt its secrets and delights from an early age.
The king was still a young man, and he looked forward to many years of physical excitement. He would have some learning to do, though. He did not want his wife unhappy, unsatisfied, seeking elsewhere for her pleasure. The king anticipated many intense lessons.
The morning of the wedding bloomed hot and clear. At the very moment the crier spoke, a soft fall of rain cooled the heads of the listeners, quenched the dry ground, then ceased. "From this moment our king is whole. He has been partnered and may their union bring a handsome heir to our world."
"The gods agree with your decision," whispered the sage whose idea the marriage had been. The king was very pleased. He was lucky to be rich. The p
oor could not afford such heavenly approval.
In the euphoria that followed, the sages took power as they needed it. Ah, the power of accusation. The great sages could point a bent finger at any man and expect an arrest to be made.
The great sages were, by nature, happy to accuse any innocent person, for gain or for the fun of it. The lesser sages, less ruthless and cruel, were not given the power.
Power, the sages know, only goes to he who will use it.
The wedding sage found power now he had never known. He was the love sage, the joy sage. There, the man who beat him physically one time. Dead. There, a girl who rejected him as ugly and old. Dead. But there, another girl, who saw the love sage, not the fat old man. She he took to his bed.
The love sage, though, lost his power. The royal marriage was not a happy one once the physical lust wore out. The king was displeased, and demanded action. It was not difficult for the sages to send disease to the woman, make her disposable. Then one sage gave his own daughter to the king, a daughter well-versed in skills physical and otherwise. She knew how to massage a man's self esteem.
This marriage was successful, and the sage ensured for his family a long line of successful and powerful leaders.
#
Marvo sipped from his coffee. He tucked a teaspoon into his pocket. "I am in that line," he said mildly.
"But you are no leader," said the man. His eyes were flitting from woman to woman, lifting and falling as they walked past.
"No, not really," said Marvo. "Not so you'd notice."
Using the hints the man gave him, Marvo met a girl. She was out with some friends, a girls' night out. She was to be married in a week, but she was happy to dance with Marvo, kiss him. He did not ask her to his room.
She was very proud but nervous to tell this story.
Caution
I am by nature a careful person. I look both ways before crossing the road, check the gas is off and the door is locked. I practice safe sex. Well, I use condoms. My sexual practice was not safe though; a married man with a wife like a vice was not safe.
So when I read my horoscope that day and it said, "You will upset someone today if you are not careful," I had to sit in front of the mirror and command myself to be careless. What could I do? I was helpless in the face of my stars. If his wife was to be upset, then so be it.
I went out, leaving the back door unchecked, (but locked, I admit), walked barefoot and with only the coins needed for my phone call. It was as careless as I could be, wanting the wife to be upset. To know, at least. Oh, and I didn't comb my hair, tugged it into a pony tail. I left a loose strand.
So I carelessly dialled the number I knew off by heart but had never used.
"Hello?" she answered.
I said, "Hello, Judy. My name is Lisa. You don't know me, but I'm sure you've sensed my existence." The stupid woman said nothing. "I thought you might like to know my name, that's all. And if you'd like to picture me as your husband does, I'm a brunette, shoulder-length shiny hair. My eyes are bright and sparkly as he comes in the door. I have cellulite but my legs are quite slim. My stomach is flat. I am not interested in children or his relationship with you."
She hung up on me, rude bitch.
He called me, not long after, called me plenty. Dud root, he called me, like a teenager, a young boy.
"You were a dud root anyway," he said. Note past tense.
And that's really the end of that story. I didn't turn nasty and bitter, though I did, carelessly, meet his grown son and fall desperately, passionately, "Let's get married now without telling anyone" in love.
He took me home to meet his parents and I felt I knew them.
#
Marvo gave this girl love and respect for her young husband, using the lesson that beautiful things sometimes have ugly beginnings. Ugly beginnings are dulled with drink. New lives can be made. New children born.
Marvo thought about birth, wondered what it was like. He closed his eyes, imagining the darkness of the womb. His eyelids glowed yellow from the fluorescent lights and Marvo, deep in imagination, saw a doctor leaning over his mother's stomach, a light strapped to his head, the light shining through the thin, soft skin of her belly.
"Move it on," said a voice. "Security." Marvo blinked, didn't move, kept his arm stiff when the man tried to move him. He didn't want to leave the nightclub, but then there were two of them, and a crowd, and Marvo worked at the mist but it didn't materialise. One of the men hurt Marvo's head; it ached. He tried to shout and a sick noise emerged, an angry, strange sound.
"Right," said the security guard. Marvo was taken to jail, tested, put in a cell alone, with no one to talk to.
"Tell me a story, tell me a story," he said. He could barely speak.
The prison guard said, "Shut up," and Marvo spent the night, ears ringing with the silence.
Andra came the next day to collect him. He clung to her, his eyes stinging with unfamiliar tears. "Tell me a story," he said, and she told him the one about her strange birth.
"You stay home for a while," she said. And he did, but the call of the story drew him out again.
Marvo caught the train quite late one night. Just to catch a train. It was that time when the underage drinkers are drunk, have finished all their illegal alcohol and are wondering if they can be sober enough to fool their parents by 11pm.
Marvo walked the pedestrian tunnel to the train. A boy of fourteen or so had his penis in his hand, pissing droplets in erratic arcs. His friends surrounded him, laughing. One said to passersby, "Step right up, ladies and gentlemen," and said it again, unable to think of what came next.
Marvo walked past these children, sensing no story, no experience, no depth. They watched their friend pissing in ever-decreasing drops.
On the train, an old man sat, staring blankly ahead, imagining times past, with no future to dream about. His lips moved and his face changed as he re-enacted events. He was re-telling his story, making himself the hero. Marvo could watch his story; he did not have to hear it. Marvo watched as the old man quit his unsuitable job rather than staying twenty years. He married that girl rather than this one, went overseas on holiday rather than to the beach. It was a sad story because the old man would have to go through the turnstiles like everyone else.
Marvo was curious about daydreamers, how certainly they believed what they were dreaming, how certain they were of what they wanted to dream about. People staring into the fire, daydreaming, are in danger of fascination. An unfriendly person could cast a spell, and the dreamer would have to wait until a friend came along and silently picked up the tongs to turn the centre piece of coal over completely. Or you could call the person a xylomancer, and ask them to tell your future. Depending on how you felt.
Marvo sat opposite two young girls on the train who leaned against each other.
"I thought milk was supposed to stop you from throwing up," said one girl. The other said, "I feel sick," Marvo gave them a trick before they told their story.
He gave them the ability to know when to stop. This is the story they told him.
It Was Her Sister
It's not really our story. It belongs to a friend, but she's dead, so we claim it. No one else will tell it.
Our friend took a chance one day and went alone to a bar. There was a man there she wanted to know. He played the piano in the bar, played his own material at the start of the night, then the songs the people wanted to hear later on.
They had been hanging around the house cos the parents were out. They raided the parents' drinking cabinet, drank every bottle in there and put them back. So they were pretty drunk all right. My sister got lost from the rest of them somewhere in town and went to the bar. She was having fun and the piano man liked her, he asked her home for a drink and she wanted more of that stuff, much as she could have. She didn't get sick when she drank. Not like me. It makes me sick straight away.
So we figured out later that she went to the guy's house and we don't know what happ
ened there. She is dead so can't say and he says he can't remember, he was drunk and can't remember. But what's that supposed to mean? He can't remember it so he's not guilty? I don't understand that. Even if you forget you did something, you still did it, right? It doesn't make sense that he got away.
#
Marvo said, "Did the management mind you being so young in the bar?"
The girls looked at each other. The girl telling the story said, "It was my big sister. It was her and her friends."
Marvo listened to the dull story of the girls and was angry at himself for avoiding Andra for this company. He offered to buy them dinner and wine. He smiled at them in a squeezy way, a sexy, you're sexy way.
Mistification (Angry Robot) Page 25