Mistification (Angry Robot) Read online

  He could tell that the blind man imagined people were in the room with him, that people entered and sat silently. He would guess who it was, and face a blank spot, talking.

  "You can't hurt me like this," he said, "I know your face, I can see it in my mind. My mind is not blind."

  He waved into space with his white cane.

  Marvo felt covetous for the first time. He wanted the cane. It rarely left the blind man's hand, though. Only as he slept.

  The cane had led a very exiting life, Marvo knew. He was an eavesdropper, a listener-in. The blind man told the story of the cane and why such a beautiful thing was discarded.

  He told it often. It was the only story his fellows loved to hear. They woke from lethargy and listened, leaned forward, breathed more quietly. Marvo never told his grandmother he listened to these stories. He thought she wanted her stories to be his only lessons.

  The Cane

  This came from a man who didn't need it any more. Used it for years to beat his wife. He could see all right; everything working okay there. It was the downstairs department, the old one-two. Cos he wanted to, his wife being not bad to look at, but he couldn't. He'd been okay with sluts and scrags, although he was often drunk then. So either the booze propped his prick up or it stole away the memory of his flops.

  He'd try away and fail, and there under the bed sat the cane. He'd reach it out and give her a belt, swipe her with it, and pretend he hated her.

  The wife got tired of this after a while. It wasn't like she deserved it, talked back or whatever. So she got some outside help.

  I don't know if it was magic, or watching what she was doing, but it worked. First, she laid out two large rubber sheets on the lounge room floor. She poured jars of honey over one; wheat on the other.

  Then she slowly removed her clothes. She bathed, soaping each crevice and nook, cleaning each strand of hair. She rinsed until her skin squeaked.

  She walked naked to the room of honey and wheat, where her husband sat waiting and watching. She rolled over and over in the honey till her whole body was covered with it. Then she rolled in the wheat.

  With his help, she removed the grains, rolling them off her skin and into a bowl. They ground the grains in a mill, four hands turning the handle anti-clockwise. The flour she mixed into a dough which she kneaded and kneaded and kneaded. Then she baked it into bread.

  The man ate the bread and was very pleased with the results. So pleased he gave away his wife-beating cane and swore never to use it again.

  #

  "How did she knead the dough?" the men always asked. He was teasing them, making the most of their attention.

  "Between her legs. On her cunt," he said.

  Marvo would not use the cane to beat anybody. It was his magic wand.

  Marvo did not tell his grandmother of his trip to the blind man's bedroom. With quiet in his blood, Marvo entered the room in the hour before dawn. He reached for the cane. Clasped it. It felt alien; it did not feel magical. Marvo was deeply disappointed. He expected a knowing, a familiarity and a rightness.

  He silently carried his magic wand to the room.

  The blind man was very upset with the disappearance of his cane. He blamed another member of the household who took great offence and shot the blind man. Marvo felt somewhat responsible for the blind man's death but knew he needed the wand. The wand was his.

  The stuffed toys were not a difficult prospect. Marvo merely searched the rooms where children had slept; some of them had not been emptied. He took a selection of creatures; a blue rabbit, a pink bear, a small duck, a tiny hippopotamus. These he presented to his grandmother proudly.

  "You have gone beyond childish things," she said, although he was only nine.

  "I need these for my magic."

  Coins he found beneath beds, behind cushions, scattered here and there. Marvo was wealthy with small change.

  He wasn't sure about cards. There were many packs about, but they were kept very carefully and were in constant use. Marvo found stiff paper and had a collection of coloured pens. He borrowed a pack one night and copied each one, returning the cards before morning.

  His grandmother was impressed with his talent.

  Marvo had to create and invent to complete his task. Rope he made from twirling strings together, collecting fabric scraps (old underpants and socks, filthy towels and rags) and unravelling them. Then re-twirling, many hours of careful labour, his concentration on the magic of his rope. The only rope of its kind in the world. He made it far longer than requested. He wanted length and strength in the rope. He used the rope ladder as a gauge of strength.

  The final physical item (patience and time he had no end of) were the handkerchiefs and these he stole and washed in their tiny basin. He felt no one would miss the vile things. Marvo and his grandmother used the rain water that filtered down through a hose system from the roof. Their toilet was a hole in the floor which led directly to a sewer pipe; the smell was terrible but at least they were never embarrassed about making smells themselves. Once the lid was shut, the smell was lessened.

  Marvo spent months collecting his needs, then his training began. Having no distractions, he easily mastered every trick in the book. He then began to create his own, using the basic magic learnt. Soon, the book seemed foolish to him, too easy.

  His grandmother lay on her bed, propped up with pillows and clothes rolled pillow-shape. She was his only audience, and a harsh critic.

  "I see your hands moving," she said. "I know where the Ace of Hearts is." She taught him many more tricks and would not let him rest until they were right.

  For three years Marvo played and played his tricks until the movements were as natural as scratching an itch.

  His grandmother was patient with him. They talked in their whisper; he never learnt to talk much above it, in all his life. He needed the microphone even for the smallest audiences; his act was mostly demonstration. He did not talk much.

  The house was all he knew. During his time there, he imagined it was the entire world; the places he saw on the television were other rooms of the house, some bigger than others, some vast, incredibly huge. He saw on the TV rivers and lakes, and the sea. He wondered why the water did not flow through their room. His grandmother did not know either.

  His grandmother talked and talked (whispered and whispered) until she could talk no more. Then she slept.

  She told him few tales about herself. They made her too sad. Once, when she made him sit quietly for many hours, sit and do nothing while she rested, he crawled to her bed and whispered, "I hate you." She had told him about hate and he had seen the faces hatred drew on people on TV. He had seen the faces of the men in green, on the blind man and on the head man.

  He didn't understand how she could rest with her eyes open and if she was watching, why couldn't he do something interesting?

  "I hate you," he said.

  "Don't say that. You can't take back a word like hate. It's there forever. And it can only turn against you."

  "How, Grandmother?" A story would be better than sitting in the corner.

  "Hatred can eat you up. Like love, it is rarely reciprocated to the same degree. You love your tricks, Marvo. You must be careful to let people believe they ARE tricks, at all times. Let them think there is an answer, an explanation. If they think your magic is true, they will hate you. This has happened to me more than once."

  The Barren Village

  I lived in a village where there was much barrenness. The women were not falling pregnant, the cows were dry and the fields lay fallow.

  This village had been in existence for many hundreds of years, each hardship dealt with and overcome. This generation, however, were weaker than the others. They had no sense of community, or history. They did not care what their parents had done, only what they could take from life.

  But they were a good group at heart; kind to each other and loving of children born – though none were under three in this village. No child had be
en born for three years.

  I was not the healer of the village. I made food, collected food. They decided the healer was powerless to do anything. She tried, with science, to undo the emptiness of the wombs, but she failed.

  So, through connivance and magic, my mother and I caused an uproar. We sent this husband to that wife; that wife to that son; that daughter to that husband; that wife to that bachelor. I was only fifteen but I helped.

  They enjoyed it, let me tell you. It was a cold and misty weekend, nothing to do but stay indoors.

  And they did, let me tell you.

  Every woman of childbearing age fell pregnant. In response the cows gave milk and the fields grew wheat.

  I was the only one not pregnant; the only one who remembered the weekend.

  "I don't remember my husband doing this," said one wife, "Did he do it while I was asleep? Disgusting."

  I did not remind them of their adventures. Plans were made to marry the unmarried girls off.

  My mother said, "Why bother? Let them live together with me and my daughter, in my home, and we will bring up the children that way." A reasonable suggestion, I thought, looking at the bachelors of the village.

  There was Tom, who beat his dog. Adam, an idiot who stared directly into the sun for most of the day, hoping to sneeze and prove himself sane, because idiots can't sneeze. If you need to sneeze, looking into the sun dilates the eyes and triggers the sneeze process. Adam stared and stared, but no sneeze came.

  John, bow-legged and bow-backed. And others, equally unattractive.

  The girls thought my mother's idea was marvellous, but the villagers began to look at us strangely.

  "Why is her daughter not pregnant?" they said.

  I confessed I had helped the process, and they thanked me, gifted me, glorified me. Then a girl came of age but could not fall pregnant.

  "Tell me the trick," she said. "Give us your ingredients."

  "There is no trick," I said.

  This was a mistake. The villagers were torn between fearing us, believing we had performed true magic, and hating us, thinking we were keeping it to ourselves. Either way, we became outcasts in that place.

  No one would buy my food, or talk to me, or serve me. I had no food but that which I cooked. I had no companionship; the girls went to husbands foul.

  I hated that loneliness. So I searched in books, dusty and old, to find a fertility recipe.

  There is a mushroom called Amanita muscaria, shaped like an erect, fiery topped penis. I told them of this fungus, and they were happy to believe I was a ritual prostitute, that I danced over the mushrooms, squatted over them with naked genitals, that this crude dance sent good seed to womb.

  Once I had provided this explanation, I became popular again. It had all been spoiled for my mother and I, though, and we moved from there soon after.

  #

  "Did you go to a better place?" Marvo asked

  She closed her eyes. "That's a story you already know."

  "Did you enjoy it, Grandmother? Did you have fun with all the other girls?" He couldn't imagine his old grandmother doing that thing they did on TV.

  "I did not. I was not ready for pregnancy."

  Marvo was barely shocked by this; they shared a lot, in their small prison.

  Marvo listened to his grandmother, taking in every word whether he understood it or not. Each piece of information he used later in his life.

  He learnt to lie about what he loved and feared. Every story he told had an element of deception about it. He learnt it from her, this carefulness of spirit. She taught him that to give it all is to surrender; that true emotions and thoughts are secrets to be kept forever. He practised on her; if he was feeling boredom and hatred towards her he would give her a hug. If she asked his opinion of a show they watched he would lie. He became very good at it; better than her.

  He caught her weeping one day and the sight made him want to cry. But he said, "Shut up, will you? Your noise is painful."

  She was not making a sound, but she snivelled the tears away.

  "Pathetic," Marvo said, though he longed to hug her as she hugged him when he was sad.

  He felt guilty, so when he saw chocolate in the kitchen he snatched it up from its place – slipped down between the stove and the sink. Marvo often found treasures there. As a free man, he sometimes hid small morsels in his own clean kitchen, to try to recapture that moment of discovery.

  He described the scene to his grandmother and she said they had been making chocolate mousse. It was a fancy sounding dessert for such rough men, but Marvo had seen a woman around lately, a soft and gentle woman who spent her time in the head man's room. She did not stay for long, to Marvo's disappointment. She was so lovely to listen to.

  He took the four squares of chocolate to his grandmother.

  "Chocolate," she said. "Two bits each." Marvo was only ten, but he was already wary of addiction.

  "I've never tried it before, so why start now? You have it all."

  He watched as his grandmother dusted a square off and placed it on her tongue. She saved the other pieces, took one only every few days, and within a week her stash was gone.

  "Chocolate," his grandmother told him, "is reward and taunt all in one. It gives you energy and gives you problems. It can make you fat." When they saw chocolate on TV, she would dig her fingers into his shoulders, lick her lips, suck her teeth as if to dredge a skerrick of flavour. They watched the chocolate unwrap itself and wait to be cracked.

  Marvo became a great listener. It was his contact with the outer world, the world outside the room, listening to the conversations of the men and the women who lived out there. He heard what they said through the walls, he heard what they did. He knew when it was safe to travel to the countries on the other side of the wall. He knew who loved who, who lied to who, who was the boss and what problems they experienced. Listening was something he did well; and he would always use it to his advantage. He listened, questioned.

  He discovered dissatisfaction, or at least the name for what he was feeling when he saw food on TV and wondered at its taste. He said, "Why can't we eat a plateful of food, like on TV, where they get whole bits of food?" He had returned from the kitchen, where he scraped plates for their night meal.

  His grandmother said, "The scraping is part of the power of the food. Much great magic comes from scrapings. An old piece of flint used by our ancestors as a tool will calm a stomach ache or soothe inflamed eyes. Add a scraping to water, swallow it down (swallow scrapings many thousands of years old) or press it upon the aching part. Very powerful magic.

  "In Wales, a tomb from the fourteenth century has been all but destroyed as people come and scrape, scrape, scrape, at the stone columns. Scraping, scraping, for their eyes or their tummies.

  "Our scrapings are for our tummies, are they not? You must never despise any form of magic."

  This is one lesson Marvo later chose to forget. He couldn't abide all magic. He learnt to despise the magic of illusionists, for their trickery and fakery; but he didn't believe they were magic, so didn't imagine he was disobeying his grandmother.

  He didn't care about the history of scrapings. He was tired of scrappy food, of silence, of being still. He wanted to run, but he could only guess how it felt. He saw races on TV, wondered how they knew when to start, saw them racing, running, the sweat, the heat of them. Arms in the air for victory, arms dangling simian-like for loss. Throats pulsing, red-faced excitement.

  Marvo tried to run from one end of the room to the other. He pushed himself off from the wall, took three or four lunging, thrilling steps, and his grandmother threw a pillow at his face. It was the closest she could go to hurting him. She would have hurt him, if she could be sure he wouldn't fall or scream, and she pinched his elbow, the punishment she gave instead of a belting or a yelling. Pinched hard so his mouth opened and his eyes watered, but he didn't cry. He never cried.

  He practised in slow motion, long silent steps which stretched his muscle
s and made him strong. His arms swung perfectly. He moved from one end of the room to the other, for hours at a time.

  His grandmother watched him, each lap her eyes getting tighter, squintier, until she had to face the wall to escape the repetition, her wig slipping to reveal her scalp. Marvo would learn that she had already lost her magic and could not protect herself from frustrations, irritations.

  Marvo never got tired of repetition. It was one of the things which made him a magnificent magician. He took delight in practice, doing things one hundred or two hundred times, over and over.