Marvo climbed into an opaque glass coffin.
The children were silent, and their adults too. The giggling had died down. A child blew wind through his lips and teeth and the children collapsed into giggles again. The adults were not sure about Marvo after watching him. They were offended by a magician who farted as he climbed into his box. Shook his bum and squeezed it to get the last bit of air out, and by the time the children's laughter subsided, was in the coffin and a tank of water was rising from beneath the stage to surround him.
Andra, the magician's powerfully unbeautiful assistant, walked around the tank and the adults laughed this time too, because she looked grotesque on the other side, the gallons of water distorting her movements, stretching her limbs and elongating her features.
She hurried out the other side and children there screamed. They saw her long limbs shrink back and were terrified.
"It's just a trick, it's magic," said one parent, whispering, trying to calm the children. He had seen the limbs shrink, too, but he could rationalise better than a child. "It's called an optical illusion," he said.
There was no movement within the coffin within the tank.
The seconds passed and the audience began to feel constricted in their breathing. Andra's chest rose and fell heavily. They watched her and felt suffocated.
The air was thick; there wasn't enough of it. They started to breathe deeply and slowly, to steal the breath from each other.
Andra said, "If Marvo does not emerge within four minutes, the air within his box will be gone." Everyone counted; the time quickly passed.
Andra stood smiling by his body, her hands resting on her hips, one fingernail nervously and secretly plucking one of a thousand sequins on her leotard.
There was still no movement. Marvo did not appear to be struggling for breath.
In the tank with his coffin were a hundred fish, large and small. They seemed to echo the distress of the humans in the auditorium, struggling against their environment, fighting and swimming erratically.
Time had passed for Marvo to emerge, and the fish seemed to go into a frenzy. A full-scale war left them dead and bleeding, the clear water clouded with blood, the coffin obscured. Children began to whimper and cry, and their parents began to bundle them up, angry that the performance was so unsuitable, so upsetting.
Marcia Reid approached the stage, with the children. She clenched her fists, because she couldn't believe Marvo would die. She was so close to murder, to taking the gun and shooting the evil, killing the magician. Taking control, taking power.
"Get him out!" she screamed. "Get him out of there!" The children screamed, "Get him out, get Marvo out!" and at last someone did something. The tank was lowered into the ground and the coffin hung suspended, dripping with blood-coloured water. Then Andra and the young manager, dressed all in black, manoeuvred and floated it to the floor at the head of the stage and smashed through the lock. Marvo had the only key, inside with him.
Andra opened the lid.
Inside was an enormous fish, its tail bent up to fit into the coffin.
There was a soft cheer from the audience, though they couldn't tell if everything was all right yet.
"Take it out," whispered Doctor Reid.
"Take it out," echoed louder by the audience.
Andra gestured for help. The young manager, glad for a chance to show his strength, bent over the coffin and, with Andra, lifted the huge, slippery fish out of the water.
The audience sighed and sucked in breath at the sight. It was beautiful, green and glowing, pink, orange and strong and a fish to keep forever.
Andra and the young manager got a few laughs as they struggled to place the fish on the stage floor. Its tail flapped weakly, twice, then stopped.
The children squealed as the young manager took a knife from his pocket. Andra shook her head but he did not see the movement, and she wasn't sure enough to insist.
With the children screaming, the young manager sliced open the belly of the fish.
The curled limbs of Marvo the Magician unfurled.
Andra threw her arms out in a gesture of success, of presentation.
The audience, hysterical with relief and delight, cheered and clapped. This was the trick, it was Marvo Magic. They stamped their feet for five minutes, Andra standing with her hands spread, the young manager staring down at Marvo's unmoving body.
The audience were awed that he performed this trick for them, them, that they would be the ones to describe it in later years. How to describe the box he had been in but a coffin? A glass coffin? And how to make a listener believe that it happened this way, that you were not embroidering?
Marvo had not moved, and the audience began to hush. He held in his fingers the key to his own chains, and the audience murmured, "Why didn't he use it? Is he an idiot?"
Marcia Reid, her gun sweaty and difficult to hold, waited for the moment when his head would rise, his face grin, but that didn't happen. The young manager ordered the curtain to be dropped, and he told the audience to go home, that the show was over and it was beginning to rain. They were mostly children and they didn't care about the rain; they wanted to see more Marvo tricks. But the show was over.
Everyone knew something was wrong, that Marvo was in trouble. The children didn't want to go until they knew he was all right, but the adults wanted to leave, because Marvo didn't look well at all, he looked dead, and at least get the kids home, onto home turf, before telling them the truth about why they would never see Marvo again, something like he's gone off in a balloon and he's travelling somewhere over deepest darkest Africa.
Doctor Marcia Reid left too, already changing the scene in her mind so that she had done it, she had killed Marvo. She had not been cheated of that, Marvo had not died before her eyes and stolen from her this final triumph.
This is how she fantasised the death. She decided that she had played a large part in it.
She rose from her seat, children bumping and shouting around her. She raised the gun, but Marvo caught her eye at the last moment and winked.
He knew. The bastard knew. And was willing to let it happen. Hadn't he read the Venerable Bede, who said that suicide was as much the truth when a person allowed their own death? That Jesus Christ had committed suicide, because he did nothing to stop his death, he accepted his fate and went along with it?
Angrily Marcia Reid shot her first bullet.
Marvo the Magician fell heavily, and all but Marcia and Andra gasped. Andra smiled down at him, liking his new joke, his next trick, his surprise.
At her feet, Marvo twitched.
The audience was silent, anticipating the moment when Marvo would rise, lift his arms and enfold them.
His throat pulsed. The blood could not be seen on his black clothes.
Five quiet minutes later, the young manager emerged and bent over Marvo.
Marcia Reid felt a finishing, a completion. She was done.
Andra cared for Marvo's cat, which mourned and wailed; he would not eat. She felt the cat was acting out her own grief, and she gave all her attention to him, transferred her pain to him, so the cat suffered for her as well.
She tried to think of words Marvo had used, clues to why he had died. Allowed himself to die.
Andra was understanding of his need for greatness. She wondered if his death was part of this need.
She admired his need. She needed greatness herself but found it in more subtle places.
A week passed. A week of death and despair, where entire families died in deliberate head-on car crashes. Where children born imperfect were drowned in their baths and the elderly, too slow, were cut down.
Then a glimmer of hope.
On the news, instead of the story of poisoned apples or plague, there was a Marvo the Magician story.
"In a move which appears to demonstrate the existence of real magic, Marvo the Magician, who died under mysterious circumstances last week, has booked eight minutes of air time, the longest commercial thi
s station has seen. The time was booked more than a year ago, a standing order to come into use exactly two weeks after his death. At 4.30pm next Saturday, tune to this station to hear Marvo the Magician speak from the grave."
It caused great excitement. Children who had loved Marvo and children who loved magic, or mystery, or murder, all plotted to be allowed to watch it. It was the middle of the year and nothing interesting was happening. People arranged parties, Marvo the Magician parties, where they would dress up like magicians, every last one of them, all of them thinking it an original idea.
The mist fell away and terrible things happened. Only the promise of Marvo's trick kept many from giving up.
The mutterings of the powerful were not always meaningful. A politician railed against Marvo; from the grave, Marvo discredited him and gained even more respect.
People worshipped in different ways. This meant that Marvo could expect worship; he knew people would look on him as a saviour.
The week passed. In accordance with his request, Marvo's body had been taken to the theatre where he had begun his performances and placed in the position specified by him.
The parties gathered. On Saturday afternoon, they ate and drank, children and adults, enjoying the excuse for a party. Those at home watched alone, or with a partner. Those at work watched if they could; listened to the radio if they could, or feigned disinterest. Thus it was that at thirty minutes past 4 o'clock, a large percentage of the population was ready to witness Marvo the Magician's final trick. They all watched, through a desire to be amused, or through fear, or superstition. Even a person who believed they were modern and insusceptible would not walk under a ladder. Superstition comes from fear, of others or of the future. It is used for protection.
Andra did not want the vultures to sense her weakness. She didn't trust her voice or her silence. She dressed as nobody and was not noticed. The cat refused to be left behind, so she carried him beneath her coat, where she could feel his purr rumble against her chest. Having the cat so close to her skin made her think of Marvo; he had told her once about the smell of his cat.
"When he's sleepy and pliable, his skin warm, his paws soft, not ready to strike, I lean over and nestle my nose in his fur. I breathe in his smell; warm skin, fur and dust, a smell so faint it's hard to identify. I think it's a chemical; the smell of happiness."
Andra wept as she remembered those words.
Marvo's body looked no different. It had been kept cold, like meat, kept fresh. Now it lay on a trestle covered with black damask. He lay naked.
As the moment approached, the cameras began to roll. At the very moment, sunlight poured in, a lesson Marvo had learnt by spending his time with the gurus, and from the blind man's box story, bathing his face in light. Two minutes passed.
People waited.
The corpse's toes began to twitch, his shins and thighs to ripple.
"Oh, my God, he's full of maggots," someone whispered. People backed away. The TV producer looked at his watch.
"He's got five minutes left."
A minute later, his stomach rippled. His fingers twitched.
A minute later, his eyes flicked open and he smiled.
Marvo the Magician sat up. The hall was silent. They had all watched two weeks earlier as three doctors proclaimed him dead.
Marvo breathed out, his breath foggy and laden with a drug to make them all believe, accept. Many people worshipped drugs as a god, for healing or for oblivion. Marvo's breath was part of the mist; it helped the magic.
Marvo stood on the high table which held his coffin, raised his hands, then leapt into the air, higher than anyone could imagine possible. He plummeted, then, and people thought, "Again? Again I have to watch him die?"
No. He shattered into a thousand pieces, each leaping up, a small Marvo, each jumping onto the shoulder of an audience member, ready to whisper the truth.
"Listen to me, listen," Marvo said. He was huge on stage, too, big in the camera for all to see. "I have a gift for you. This is a gift my people have had in their possession for all human existence; the time is right to share it."
There was silence but for one crying baby. Marvo, small as a mouse, tickled the child under the chin; she giggled and smiled.
"This is a secret my people do not like to share. They don't like to use it themselves. That is because the sacrifice is great. But the reward is great, too. The reward? Immortality."
This tested his power over his audience. Some snorted and Marvo, thin as a stick, poked elbows into ribs. Listen.
"Once you have the secret, I cannot promise you its success. It is not easily obtainable, and you will have to work all your lives to continue living."
Marvo remembered the Tree of Life. The priests were willing to give the secret to the people, and did so, but the people could not keep the rules.
"There are four rules. Each person who abides by the rules makes the rules stronger. Every disbeliever makes them weaker. Every suicide damages the future and punishes all on earth.26
"The first rule is: You need love. True love. It is there for everybody in different forms. You will need someone you can trust to care for you. And you will need to care for that person. I tell you this person is for love and for your existence. There must be monogamy. I cannot emphasise that enough. Any form of betrayal damages the rules."
It was vital his voice was strong and enticing; it mattered more how he said it, than what he said. This was hard for a man who always spoke quietly.
The rain tapped at the windows; it pattered in a soft sheet. Marvo looked out and the room followed his gaze.
"You need to eat fresh meat to revitalise the cells. By fresh I mean of a new kind, something you have not eaten before. Eagle. Zebra. Cat. Dog. You need to eat fresh meat to absorb that sense of new."
"What about the vegetarians?" one reporter called out.
"The vegetarians will not live forever," Marvo said.
"The third rule is that you must learn to daydream. You must learn to separate your brain from your dreams and to spend your time in dreaming. You look at me and see a young man. But I had an ancestor who lived to one hundred and eighty; another who died at two hundred. You see a young man, but you are looking at potentially three hundred years of life."
Marvo was lying, of course. He figured a lie was worth it.
"The final rule is this: you must accept that the world will live forever, and that you can be a part of it. Each person who follows the rules makes us stronger; each person who doesn't makes us weaker. If you were to jail the unbelievers they would still wreak havoc. If you were to drug them, they would believe. This is a choice up to all of you."
He apologised to the children of the audience who witnessed him die. "I did not mean to upset you," he said. "I didn't realise how much you loved me. You see how something you love so much cannot die?" He was giving them false hope, telling them a lie to make them happy.
"I needed to show you how to live forever, though. Do you understand?"
There was a great cheer in the room. The prospect of death had been lifted from them. Fears can be so easily manipulated.
Marvo said, "Who knows what lies beyond death? Who wants to find out?"
He walked about the room, pinching one person, kissing the next. To their murmurs, he replied, "Eternal life will make each touch more intense. Stroke your arms," he said. Every person watching stroked. He said, "Imagine feeling every pore, every hair, every ancient scar. That is eternal life." Marvo discovered he loved to lie. It was so much easier than the truth.
There was silence, then cheering again. He had given them a precious secret; each and every person watching knew they would use it wisely.
There was no alternative.
There was the numbness, the numbness Marvo had seen and felt in a dream. And Marvo could feel his magic weakening with each trick. Eternal life meant loss of magic. It meant truth to be seen, a life without the mist.
The loss was gradual. The magic he used was not re
placed.
Marvo had one last and vital trick to play. Doctor Reid must be finished with.
He knew she was travelling by road, hitchhiking. She thought she was anonymous that way, that she could escape. She was smart enough to know she needed to escape.
The hitchhiker's tale had never left Marvo.
It was dark. She thought she would take one more lift, then rest where that lift ended.
Doctor Reid loved heat – this Marvo knew. So he made the mist icy, made Doctor Reid freeze as she stood by the side of the road.
Marvo threw the door of his car open and the heat billowed out. Doctor Reid closed her eyes, blissful.
Mistification (Angry Robot) Page 33