Mistification (Angry Robot)

by Kaaron Warren

  "Hop in," said Marvo. Doctor Reid took in the driver with a glance. A young man, a thin man with a welcoming smile.

  "Thanks," said Doctor Reid.

  The young man started the car.

  "Have a drink," said the driver. He gestured a can with a straw in it. It was warm beer, disgusting.

  "Drink up," said the driver, and Doctor Reid could only do as she was told.

  She felt drunk very quickly and her vision was blurred.

  "Nice night," she said. "Nice night for a drive."

  "For a drive?"

  "Yeah, drive," said Doctor Reid.

  They passed a signpost which could send them in four directions. The driver stopped the car.

  Doctor Reid felt a chill throughout her body. A mist was rising around the car, an ice mist for her soul to freeze on.

  "The magic is all powerful and we will die to protect it," said the young man, back to Marvo the Magician now.

  She said, "But you did not die."

  "My needs are dead. My feelings, my emotions, and my laughter. These are dead."

  The doctor clutched at the door behind her back. She released her seat belt. Marvo just watched her.

  "Perhaps you will die but you cannot kill," said Doctor Reid. She chose to believe this. "You can destroy. You destroyed a good man, a world leader who worked against you. He believed in truths and realities."

  World Leader

  The military took over his country and arrested him as a drug lord. This, during his interrogation: "You are a drug lord." The military commander leaned on the desk so heavily it creaked.

  "I am not. I serve my people with honesty," the world leader said quietly.

  "You don't understand the pain that honesty can bring. You think the people want the truth about how many are dying: How many hurt, how much cruelty. The people can only take it in small doses before they turn to drugs and alcohol." The commander smiled, grimaced.

  "I told my people everything," the world leader said.

  "You told them all you knew. We, however, did not tell you everything." The military man's voice rose to a shout.

  "I need not know everything to know that the magic is wrong, that it must be exterminated." The world leader did not raise his voice.

  "You do not understand. Without the magicians, all the ugliness would be revealed. All reason for living, all excuses for our existence would be destroyed. Society and civilisation would collapse into anarchy. And you, the righteous destroyer." With this, the commander pushed him with both hands.

  "You have no faith in the world," said the world leader from the floor.

  "You have no grasp of reality, for all your bleatings of truth. I sentence you to death as a destroyer of the fabric of society." The commander turned his back, dismissing the man.

  The misled leader died in jail. His death, dealt with by the magicians of the press, appeared to be that of a madman – a killer, fascist, baby-fucker. An evil man dying an unusual death.

  His birth, forty-seven years earlier, had also been unusual. His mother, fourteen years old. His father, fifteen. They ran away from their small country village to escape the threat of death (such a terrible thing, to make love. Hurtful to all things). They lived quite happily, found a room to sleep in and the boy found a job. Only as the pains began did the girl panic.

  "Take me home," she said, and the boy, unwilling to take responsibility, put her into the car they had stolen from his father (who had called in the police) and began the fourhour drive.

  "Hurry hurry hurry," breathed the girl the way she had been told. He drove faster.

  They were still an hour from home. The girl began to scream softly. He drove faster than he had ever driven, losing caution.

  He took a corner; there was a bridge; a river. He missed the bridge. The car sank into the river and reached the bottom.

  The water reached over the opened windows and poured in. She could not move fast enough; he removed his seat belt, then hers, and tried to lift her out.

  "I can't move," she said. The water was cool around her swollen belly. "I want to stay here."

  She made him roll her underpants off and recline the seat, so that when she laid back the water reached her shoulders, lapping around her ears. She breathed the way she had been told to breathe.

  This is where the baby was born. In the water; held quickly aloft. Cord cut with nail scissors. Voice powerful, clear, outraged. A most unusual birth.

  #

  Marvo knew Marcia Reid was angry at this scapegoating, this blaming the world leader for the ills of the world. He said, "Each person is responsible for his own addiction. And the work I do affects the work of others. Each person I save will save, or at least not hurt, others."

  She opened the door and threw herself out. She would run as soon as she landed.

  She did not land. She fell towards the centre of the earth, twisting and spinning, and the crust of the earth closed over her head, leaving her in darkness, in the pitch, in the black, in the forever.

  Marvo draped the set of blue beads he had been given in the village of Araby around his neck. He felt secure with the glass warming against his skin; he felt protected, as if something else was taking responsibility for him. And he wanted that; he needed to disassociate himself from what he had done, and what he was about to do.

  He was numb, after the disappearance of Doctor Reid. Marvo could no longer be a magician. Removing Marcia Reid took almost the last of his magic and Marvo now had to learn how to look after himself.

  He did not wish to live forever. Worse, he no longer cared for Andra. He could not care for anyone. He felt the absence of love like a cancer, like a presence which sat heavily in his stomach, in his blood.

  Andra was so overwhelmed at his return that she wanted to treat him like a king, a god. His cat did not go near him. The cat sniffed at his legs, as cats sniff at scars. He sniffed at decay, at rottenness. Marvo picked him up and held him close, but the cat stared at the roof, the ground, waiting patiently for the chance to escape.

  "I can't believe you're back," Andra said. She squeezed him, hugged, licked and bit. She sat him on a stool in the kitchen and cooked him a meal, which he ate without comment. He did not catch her eye; how could he look at her without guilt, knowing how she felt, knowing he felt nothing.

  She massaged his limbs, hoping to bring him back to life that way. He shook her fingers off in irritation, and scrubbed his skin in the shower to clean off the scented oil.

  "Would you like some wine?" Andra said, through the door. "I made it myself." Marvo knew what would be in it. Grindings of this, scrapings of that.

  "I'm not thirsty," he said. He did not feel guilty about how cruel he was being. He felt nothing.

  Over breakfast the next day, she told him one of his favourite stories:

  The Gift, the Ruby, the Time in the Desert

  It was too hot to smoke, but I lit a cigarette anyway, held it in the ebony cigarette holder I had found when I moved into the shed.

  The man came to me. His hair was plastered to his head, the singlet tight on his body. I could see the flakes of skin flying from his shoulders, wet flakes like snow.

  He followed me into my shed. I dropped my sarong and lay on the bed.

  "I only came to give you this," he said, and handed me the beautifully wrapped box he had under his arm. It was the size of a shoebox, and heavy.

  "Happy Birthday," he said. "For your next birthday." His voice was gentle, soft and clear.

  "Why don't you stay?" I said. "Stay for the afternoon. No charge."

  He did stay, but only for an hour. Then he left. He said, "Don't open the present until it is your birthday."

  He did not return; I did not expect him to. I opened the present as soon as he left, and found two gold pieces which together made a circle, money and a ruby.

  When I saw what the Bush Pig man had given me, I knew he would not be seen again.

  And you found me the story of the ruby and had it set into th
is ring.

  The ruby was once part of a ring. The ring is a broken circle. It was broken in a moment, as things are.

  There was no accident involved; no mad axeman, or catching door or getting it caught in a drain or something.

  This ring was cut deliberately by a wife tired of her husband. She cut the ring in two pieces, removed the jewel (a small ruby, nothing more) and baked the metal pieces in a carrot cake. The ruby she kept in a small piece of cotton wool, and she HID it somewhere, but she never remembered where. She even wrote in to a clairvoyant, who said, "Dear Ruby, the special item you were seeking is behind the heater."

  It seemed unlikely, the heater was built in to a wall of stones. However, she got the Vulcan man in to remove the heater, and she searched amongst the dust for the ruby. She was surprised not to find it; she had heard nothing but good reports about the clairvoyant. This clairvoyant told one woman where her husband was (at a gay bar in the city) and another person, who had lost a watch, found it in her sexy underwear drawer.

  The ruby, however, was not to be found.

  The man ate the carrot cake in its entirety, swallowed it down and abused his wife for its scratchy texture. He ignored the sharp pain that came when he swallowed orange juice or anything acidic the next day, and the next week, until his throat swelled and he went to the doctor (his wife would not take him; she was angry with him for still living). He was allergic to antibiotics and he had to stay in hospital.

  He stayed there a long while.

  This man had always had troubles with his bowels. Thus, it was two weeks before his stool contained the two sharp gold pieces. They were placed in a jar of preserving fluid and put onto his bedside table. He recognised the metal, pictured the pieces joined on his wife's thin finger. He could not check her finger to see if it was still there; she did not come to see him and she did not answer the phone.

  He was released after a month, clutching the jar and nothing more. His voice was ruined forever; he could only whisper, and, when excited, squeal like a pig.

  When he sold the house, he painstakingly packed every item to send to charity. Behind a foot heater in the back of his cupboard he found a dirty package of cotton wool. Unwrapping it, he expected to find a tooth, a memento of childhood, perhaps.

  Instead, the ruby.

  #

  Even this story had no effect on Marvo. Nor did the one of her birth. Marvo accepted that, although he did not care for her now, he owed her honesty.

  He said, "I made a sacrifice, when I lost my life. I gave up my heart, so I can no longer love you. I can only leave you while your memories of me are happy."

  Andra said, "I'd prefer to have you and hate you than not have you at all."

  "No." He kissed her softly, thinking for a minute that life without magic would have meant a life together, but then they may never have met.

  He no longer wished to live forever, so he gave up the partner who was his only chance.

  Marvo told Andra goodbye, and, taking a pack of necessities, including his cape, his rope and his wand, he returned to the room of his childhood. He took much tinned and packaged food, many blocks of chocolate.

  He chose to ignore the friendship they shared, to forget the stories she told. He gave up many things, control amongst them. He worried about the world of magic he left behind; he was powerless to control it. His voice was quieter than ever. He couldn't even shop without using gestures.

  The cat would not come with him, preferring to stay with Andra.

  The house of his childhood was a hotel now, like the one he dreamt of, the one where magic happened. Strangely, it seemed even larger than he remembered. It was a popular hotel. The desk clerk was busy; he did not see Marvo walk past him. No one saw Marvo press the panel in the wall and slip inside.

  He wondered belatedly if the body of his grandmother had been found. He did not relish the idea of stumbling over her bones.

  It was the first time he had thought of the house since he had left it. His grandmother had once told him he would need it again, but in all his life, through all his troubles, he hadn't thought of the house. This was the time. Now he needed it.

  He walked unbothered to the place of entry. His grandmother's body was not there, nor any hint of it. The rope ladder was there, and he climbed it. He pulled it up and dropped its length down the other side. He climbed down.

  Nothing had changed. The bed was unmade. The dent made by his grandmother remained.

  The TV was still there, and Marvo laughed at its antiquity. How far technology had travelled. He switched it on; after a flicker and a buzz a picture appeared. News – a fire. Marvo turned it off.

  He removed the sound knob from his pack, where it had stayed all these years, and placed it by the set.

  The room was dusty and cobwebs ran like lacework over ceiling and walls. Marvo knew he had work to do but he lay down on the floor first, on the pillow that smelt of dust and him, him at twelve, and he slept to let the atmosphere sweep over him. It was one of the most magical moments of his life, coming back to the room of his childhood, unchanged for twenty years.

  Although he did not feel a particular emotion, his memory had not been affected, and, for a moment, he was nine years old, surveying the room in search of some activity.

  His things where he had left them. The stuffed toys: blue rabbit, pink bear, small duck, tiny hippopotamus. The pack of cards he'd made.

  He wanted Andra there, to pick up each object and describe it to her, tell her some true stories, tell her the truth. For a moment, he felt he could cry. He removed the cape from his pack and draped it over the things he had left behind, drawing them in, initiating them.

  Marvo set the ancient perfume bottle up by his bed. He had not opened it; he hadn't needed to.

  Marvo put new sheets on the bed and lay down with his book of magic to wait for nightfall.

  He emptied his pockets of his small findings, his small thieveries, and placed them around the room.

  He awoke to noise and activity. The hotel was popular; he would never be bored, listening to sex and arguments, seduction and rejection, dinner table talk and shower singing, toilet noises and balcony silence. Marvo could hear it all from his room and in his mind he pictured the world out there, and wondered what things he would find. He wondered what food would be discarded and hoped there would be bottles with drops left in them. He would start a liquor cabinet. It was another step towards the reversal of eternal life.

  Many months passed. Marvo pottered and slept. The hotel had a seafood restaurant and threw out a lot of food. Whole plates of prawns, loaves of bread, vegetables still crisp. He ate well. He did not live off scrapings. Sometimes, if the noise was great in the hotel, he watched TV with the sound on. It reminded him of outside, as silent TV had reminded him of the room when he was away from it.

  Then his back became unbearably itchy, and for the first time he missed companionship. He wanted someone to scratch his back.

  It was the first feeling he had had since he came back to life. He did not enjoy it.

  He rubbed his back against the wall but the wall was too smooth. He used his wand to scratch bits but that only made other bits worse. Finally he had to lie flat on his stomach like a burns victim and let the itch take hold. He gave in to it, his body twitching and jerking, every nerve saying, "Stop that itch."

  Marvo cried in frustration.

  He could only see a small patch on his back, using a mirror his grandmother had kept hidden under the mattress. He could only see a small square which began to writhe and ripple.

  Spiders, he thought. I have spiders hatching all over my back.

  His neck was a poker of pain, but he could not rest. He watched his back, watched for twelve hours as, from the bubbles and pustules on his back, a small child formed and emerged. In the process, he came to know the child so well he felt as if a lifetime had been shared. He knew then why he had heeded his grandmother, his replacement mother, why he had trusted her so completely. He was her,
he was of her flesh and her mind.

  The child slept there on his back and now Marvo relaxed his muscles and slept also.

  Time was not noted. When Marvo awoke, the child sat, straddling his waist and bouncing. Marvo gently rolled over until the child was in his arms. Her eyes were opaque, murky. She opened her mouth but did not speak. When he touched her skin, it was pliable, soft. He let her sleep on the bed; watched as her eyes cleared and began to see. He fed the child, sang to her, told her stories. A week later, Marvo awoke to find her staring directly into his face. She looked nine years old, or ten. Her consciousness had begun.