Mistification Read online

  "Her or me?" Andra said. "You never cared about her. I cried more than you did when she died."

  "Aren't you a fucking hero, then?"

  Marvo carried the coffee cups to the sink and placed them carefully on the mound of dirty dishes.

  "I had a party last night," Andra's mother said.

  "Did it go well?" Marvo asked. "Did your guests enjoy themselves?"

  "It depends on what you call enjoyment. I believe they did," she said. She discarded the artifice of coffee and poured more brandy into a glass. She stared at Andra. Marvo thought he heard her thinking Make me stop. Tell me to stop it. Look after me.

  But Andra stroked Marvo's brow, she comforted him and looked after him instead, as if she hadn't heard. "Are you hungry?" Andra asked him.

  Andra's mother said, "You look too skinny to be much of an eater. You don't enjoy food, do you? It doesn't make you happy. Perhaps you don't enjoy sex, either. Perhaps my daughter has to look elsewhere for her dinner companion and her partner in bed."

  "I love food."

  "You should see him eat," Andra said. "Like a bear. Like a lion. He eats like an animal with the same appetite."

  Marvo had never considered such a possibility. Did his lack of physical passion send Andra away? He could not enjoy food because it had not been enjoyable in the room; whenever he tasted good food he thought of his grandmother, who could not share it. It didn't mean he had a small appetite, though.

  "We do everything together," he said.

  "Oh, really?" Andra's mother said. Marvo could not control the situation. He could not manipulate her into liking him; he cared too much whether she did.

  She said, "How about some lunch?" and produced an old casserole from the freezer.

  Marvo excused himself and went outside. He ran around the block and further, the rhythm soothing him, making him hungry.

  They did not visit again. Marvo pretended to himself that the visit had gone well, and would ask Andra when they could go again. But Andra's mother would not have him in the house: "Looking down his nose at me. Pretending to be something he isn't. Get rid of him, Andra. He'll only hurt you."

  Marvo pretended he didn't hear this.

  "My grandmother would have loved you," Andra said. "You would have loved each other if it's possible to love someone else's relative."

  Marvo had noticed that parts of Andra's story of her birth were true. The stairs were there, and the attic. He could understand why Andra had said her mother was dead. She was protecting him from having to meet her mother.

  He said, "Your mother worries about you. She has your grandmother's words that you will not marry and she thinks I will hurt you, leave you."

  Andra shrugged. She felt no regret driving away from her family home. No sense of loss.

  "She hates me. She thinks I'm wasting my life," Marvo said.

  "You waste nothing!"

  "Do you think I'm sexless? Like your mother says?"

  "Howsabout I tell you some stories and we'll see?" Andra said.

  Flabby Arms and a Blonde Wig

  I was a prostitute in a mining town for a while before I met you. Me and four other women had a shed each, all lined up with corrugated iron for walls, so that when all four of us were busy they couldn't tell who was who; the grunts and shouts and our own bored moans filled the four sheds without distinction.

  Someone took my photo, while I was there, and I disguised myself under flabby arms, a blonde wig, a cigarette. No one who wanted to know where I was would recognise me with a cigarette or with the yellow tobacco stains on my fingers. I slipped up there, with my disguise. I overdid the detail, because men are the ones who have the stains. Women rarely do; they hold their cigarettes erect, so the smoke rises directly. Men hold their cigarettes down so the smoke passes through their fingers before rising.

  None of the miners noticed my tobacco-stained fingers.

  There was no need for me and my three friends to advertise. We each had a bell beside our door; a token affectation. The bells were disconnected and had never worked; though nobody knew they didn't work because nobody had used them. They were unpressed. Painted above them on the corrugated iron, "Please ring service bell".

  #

  Andra didn't usually tell people about this line of work. Marvo, however, she told in graphic detail. He seemed to enjoy the seaminess; he was so neat and clean and sexless, so lacking in passion, that he was delighted and excited by her descriptions of premature ejaculators, men who shouted "Mother", men who smelt of the dirt and oil, or wine, or beer. Men who wanted odd sex acts but were afraid to ask.

  Andra was not ashamed of her past; each event an experience, a memory. She told Marvo how different her life had been at each of its stages. She told Marvo about her plain religious upbringing: baptism, Holy Communion, confirmation. He was curious, interested in the ritual.

  "My grandmother wailed and screamed at my confirmation, as she had at my birth.

  "'Hands off, hands off!' she screamed. The bishop had both hands laid on me. She never forgave him. Said his left hand on me during the ritual meant he'd robbed me of my chance at a husband.

  "'Doomed to a life of spinsterhood,' she told me all the time, hugging me like I needed all the help I could get. Once I said, 'Who calls not having to get married "doom"?' and she slapped me.

  "Funny thing, the bishop turned out to be one of the bad guys. He never touched me – I think he heard my grandmother's voice too clearly: hands off, hands off.

  "Plenty of the others got molested though. I used to be jealous, because they were popular with him. They were smiled at in church. All I got were glares. I blamed my grandmother and hated her for it. The authorities didn't find out till much later. By then, Grandma was dead and couldn't see how right she was."

  "And you never got married," said Marvo.

  "Never got married. I had to fill my life in other ways."

  Marvo was not always sure when Andra was teasing him. He didn't know the established ways; he didn't know the history of marriage, the ways of it, who wanted it and who didn't.

  "I was only a prostitute for four months," she said. "I've done many other things. I saved a woman from death by putting a spell on her husband once."

  "Tell me about that after you've told me about the man who brought you a present."

  Andra sighed. They arrived home, she ran a bath and they climbed in; as she scrubbed his back (she had not got out of the habit of giving pleasure) she said,

  "Once, on a day when the temperature reached 38°C outside, and inside the sheds it was 48°C, a man came to visit.

  "We were resting with the doors open to allow the hot breeze to blow over our sweating bodies. We were all large and our bodies sweated well and although the breeze was hot, it cooled us.

  "The day was silent. No creature would move in that heat; not the birds, the dogs or the men. I read an X-rated comic book one of the men had left behind."

  The water had gone cold. Marvo let more hot in, let some cold out.

  "What were some of the stories in the comic?" he asked. He took Andra's foot and began to gently massage.

  "Most of the stories were very silly."

  Girl Talk

  The first story in the comic book was quite short. It was pretty boring too. It started with these women; you could only see their faces because of the way the light was. There were three of them, and they talked about what their men would do when they got home. The light changed, and you could see they were naked. They talked some more about it, how the men would bring home feathers, they'd bring home massage gel and whips. They'd bring home other men with massive penises, and the men would watch it all.

  The light changed again and the you saw that the women were in chains. They couldn't leave the room. They lay there all day waiting for the men to come and talking about what would happen when the men came home. It was boring.

  #

  The Man of her Dreams

  In this comic book, there was one good story. It
was about a magician, who hypnotised his victims to believe he was the man of their dreams. Once their fantasy began he would follow. So, one believed the magician was a footballer, very athletic. Another thought he was a cold and unobtainable librarian, and he had to pretend disinterest as she made love to him.

  #

  "Finish the story about the gift now," Marvo said. He didn't want to hear about magicians.

  The Nice School Teacher

  Another story in the comic was about a school teacher.

  This teacher could be very grouchy or very friendly. And the students figured out it was whether or not she'd had some lovin' the night before. That's what it said in the comic, "some lovin'". It wasn't the most X-rated comic.

  Anyway, so she had been grouchy for months, been missing out. And it was coming up to exam time and all the kids knew that there was trouble if she didn't get laid soon.

  So all the boys came up with a great idea; one of them would fuck her brains out the day before the exam, and she would be really easy on them.

  She was a very attractive woman by the way. With a blouse unbuttoned at the top and big tits, high heels, that sort of thing. So all the boys wanted to volunteer. They all pulled out their cocks and measured for the biggest. There were two the same size, and both thought they'd be the best for the job. So one of the girls had to volunteer to decide who was the best. Everyone watched carefully, and the one who'd lasted the longest won.

  The winner went to the teacher's house the night before the exam and knocked on the door. She answered in a towel.

  So she lets him in, gives him a drink. And they start doing it, in the shower, on the bed, all that. And the guy's having a really good time, you can tell. He doesn't care if he fails the exam, he wants to stay there forever.

  But she looks really bored. She says, "Excite me." He doesn't know what to do, so he rings up his friends.

  All of them come over, the girls and the boys. One by one the boys fuck her, and she lies there looking happier and happier. Then she makes the girls give her a massage, with everyone watching, really enjoying it. And she makes the girls kiss her and stuff. Finally, she points to this one guy, a real geek who didn't even get to measure up with the others and hasn't been to the teacher yet.

  She undoes his pants and out jumps this really enormous cock. He puts it in her and she writhes around, throws him onto his bottom and shakes around like she's having a fit. Finally, she's happy, and she makes everyone go home.

  All the next morning, they congratulate each other, how clever the plot was, how she'd pass them for sure, now. But when they get into the class, there's some horrible old guy there.

  "Where's our teacher?" they ask.

  "I'm your teacher," says the old guy. "Didn't you read the school bulletin last week? Yesterday was her last day. Now, is everyone ready for the exam? I hope you all spent last night cramming."

  #

  Andra always found the story very funny, but Marvo was not amused. He watched Andra's face, her amusement. He saw she enjoyed being coarse, enjoyed a crude joke. She didn't find coarseness seductive, she found it funny. He touched her neck tenderly and he never swore; he talked about things soft and beautiful, things small and sweet. They had not made love. Andra had touched him, though, his thin, long, delicate penis, and she imagined how it would swell, once it was inside her. Fill her completely. Sometimes he caressed her shoulders and whispered things to her, told her how wonderful she was. But still he didn't make love to her.

  "Tell me more about the four women in the sheds," he said. "Tell me about the gift."

  The Gift

  I was lying on my bed, reading the comic book, when I heard footsteps coming towards the sheds. There was nothing to walk to past the sheds; I knew a man was coming to us.

  I heard the woman in the first shed groan, "It's the Bush Pig."

  There was a man. He squealed, high-pitched and piercing, as he fucked, with his eyes squeezed shut, his mouth screwed up into a piggy snout.

  He knew each of us by name; the only man in town who did. The other men called us The Women, or by the name of some long-lost love. Not slags, or cunts or whores, because they wanted to have the pretence they were seeing girlfriends.

  Of all the women, only I ever wanted the Bush Pig's business. He was so vile; he arrived unwashed, and paid in coins sticky and numerous. I licked the sweat from between his shoulder blades, sucked his sour breath in through my open mouth.

  I rose from my bed and stood in the doorway. I had a sarong tied under my arms, a mauve silky thing which clung to my breasts and hips in the heat. 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. 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 precious stone.

  It was a ruby, supposed to make the wearer courageous and brave. The ruby banishes grief, something handy when you need to get used to loss. The ruby smothers the bad effects of a luxurious life, and distracts the thoughts from evil. My life could be said to contain luxury; I don't starve for food, heat or love. My thoughts are sometimes evil; I can't help it. I see what people do and suffer from their actions and I cannot help but think them ill.

  #

  Andra owned other rings, gifts to herself. She had a diamond as an antidote to Satanic temptation. Her topaz ring protected her from poison. A beautiful amethyst prevented drunkenness, something her mother, through bad example, had taught her to avoid. She had a ring of turquoise, a charm against the evil eye, and her emerald promoted piety.

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

  "Where is the ruby?" asked Marvo.

  She had it safe. "I don't know the story of the ruby. Perhaps you can find it."

  Marvo said, "English sovereigns since Edward the Confessor could bless cramp rings – made from iron, lead, bronze, or especially efficacious from the hinge, handle or nails of a coffin."

  Andra began to make rings to sell at the market. She considered Marvo kingly enough and asked him to bless them.

  That night, Marvo thought about the shed. Four walls, trapped. He held her closer than ever, tighter. She felt good in his arms. His cat sat at their feet, tickling them with his whiskers.

  It took a long time for Marvo to find the true story of the broken ruby ring. He began his search with a false premise – that the man, the Bush Pig, was dead. His story seemed to have died with him. The searching was enjoyable, though, and Marvo found so many small things people no longer wanted: stubs of pencils, lost socks, chair cushions, cloth bags and china plates.

  Marvo was going to give up when he discovered the man was not dead at all but living in a cave in Coober Pedy. He was happy to talk to Marvo and he remembered Andra with great fondness.

  The Ruby

  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 on a door or getting it caught in a drain or something. This ring was cut deliberately by my wife, tired of me. 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 reme
mbered where. She even wrote in to a clairvoyant, who said, "Dear Ruby, the special item you are 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.