Mistification Read online

  The old man was raking it in; Marvo could see that money was to be made with truth, as much as fantasy. Marvo imagined himself as a preacher, very wealthy, dispensing the truth to adoring fans. But he knew it was not possible. The note told him that. To go beyond what the old man was doing would be too dangerous for him and for the profession. They could not be seen; not be known to many people. The old man's last customer walked away crying. Marvo watched, his face twisted.

  The old man packed up his cards, his props. "You don't approve, young man?"

  "I was told that it was the job of the magician is to keep the truth from the people; to show only the beauty."

  "That is true. But you always have a choice. You are a true magician and filled with power." He led Marvo to a park bench in the sun. "There are many magicians, but few are true. We recognise each other easily because we see the truth. We do not acknowledge the false magicians. They are the ones who play tricks when the source is known. The point of magic to those types is the revelation. It is not real magic. Real magic is so amazing the idea of a solution is not even considered."

  "You say those words, yet you don't help with the mist," Marvo said. "You are clearing the mist away for people."

  The old man raised his fingertips, leaking peppermintscented mist from them.

  "You do have a choice. I kept the mist for many years but I find I am losing my control of it. Around me, people forget things. Names and the fact they have children. I decided to tell the truth because I knew that every time a child is forgotten, left to die in a hot car, I was responsible. Me."

  He turned his head away.

  "I won't lose control," Marvo said.

  "Most likely. I hope for your sake that is true. My way, I am in pain all the time. My bones grow against me."

  "You could carry a potato in your pocket until it goes black. That helps with pain."

  The old man smiled at him. "You are one of the strongest I've known. Seek the real as well as the fake. All knowledge makes you stronger." He slumped, almost asleep with exhaustion.

  "Can I help you home?" Marvo said.

  "No!" It was a snarl, a yellow-toothed, stink-breathed snarl. "We cannot meet beyond this. You can see already the interest we are causing."

  It was true – children and their parents were gathered around the two expectantly.

  "Children always know us, more so when we are together. Here, this will satisfy them."

  The old man pulled out a handful of boiled lollipops. Marvo tied his cape around his shoulders and handed them out. "No show today, no show."

  Every parent let their child take the sweet from a stranger and Marvo said to the old man, "You should show them all the truth of what can happen to a child."

  "They will learn it soon enough. They are all safe today." The old man shook Marvo's hand. "You keep looking for answers. You look everywhere. Not just at the magic shows."

  Marvo did not tell the old man this was old information. He knew how to look. He'd been doing it for three years.

  Marvo sought out others, listening, hearing.

  The more he saw, the more he realised that he was one of few. He knew how to spy and stalk, because he saw it all the time on TV. Spies wore black and they hardly ever got caught. Marvo dressed in black and walked on clouds. He followed those who called themselves witches, watched the circle of skyclad worshippers face north, south, east and west, to invoke the energies and the blessings of the elements. He saw no magic there, only ritual.

  Marvo went to performances, séances and readings. He realised that not many true magicians lived off their magic. It made it harder for them to be found that way. He was determined that he would be easy to find, that the others could find him if they wanted.

  He saw a lot of magic that wasn't true magic: he saw the pretence, the trickery. One magician who appeared on television would move a pen without touching it, and the audience would sigh and blow air through their teeth. Hypnosis, thought Marvo, because the magician moved the pen by blowing it, while pretending to move it with his mind.

  This magician would bend a key simply by touching it gently, making the women and some of the men think, "I would bend too, if he touched me so gently." Marvo saw these looks and practised the touch himself, the gentle stroking, the magic of giving pleasure. He did not tell the people that the key had been bent in advance, had been pressed on the chair as the magician was standing, or against the table as he pushed himself back.

  Another magician would read the minds of the audience, tell them what they were holding, the colour of it, how precious it was. Only Marvo could see the tiny mirror in his palm, only Marvo knew that good eyesight was magic all in itself.

  His grandmother had told him he should accept all magic, but the illusionists stretched this beyond belief.

  Marvo took to walking the streets and staring into people's eyes. They stared back or they looked away. He did not find recognition.

  Then he saw an advert in the newspaper: "MAGICIANS WANTED", and he called the number.

  "What can you do?" the man said. He sat on a dusty old couch, sunken in the middle. He seemed strangely short.

  "Tricks of a varied nature. I am a master of concealment." Marvo hid his face behind his cloak, holding it up like a bat's wing. The man laughed. Marvo's soft voice did not make him feel confident.

  "How old are you?" he asked.

  "Is that important?" asked Marvo. He closed his eyes and opened them again. The man suddenly saw an old fellow sitting opposite him, shaking and smiling, smoking a black cigarette.

  Marvo, who had been pretending to smoke the wand he found on the desk, flicked it to full size. He pushed it up his nose. The man laughed in shock.

  "You do kid's tricks. We're looking for adult magicians. Come back when your act has matured."

  Marvo left, taking with him the list of names and phone numbers he had found on the desk and memorised. He saved the list of magicians for five years, making changes as he heard of them, keeping it ready to be used. He studied the names, knew them by heart, knew what magic they performed. El Dor played with fire; Shri Genfi the Shaman spoke hypnotic tongues.

  Marvo went back to washing dishes. He was a popular workmate because he was so helpful in people's trouble. He was effective because he saw things others didn't see, like a shaman.

  He had never been a sick child, recovered, though, as many ancient shamans were. Perhaps they had lain sick in their beds, hearing all. No one expected a sick child to be listening. They then knew the troubles before they were spoken. That was part of the cure. The people thought, "If he knows my trouble without me telling him, he must know the answer." They had faith, belief. That was the beginning of the solution.

  Marvo was a shaman too. He listened behind the wall when he was in the room, desperate for sound to remind him he was alive. He heard everything.

  At work, he helped and gave solutions. He was careful about this. In history people had feared and hated shamans, not understanding their power. People tried to prove that shamanism was a psychosis, brought on by epilepsy.

  Marvo was selective about who he helped. But he was not so careful about some of the things he did. Things he'd seen on TV but not tried. A list he held in his head.

  Things like sleeping overnight in a department store to see the dummies come to life. He collected many treasures the night he did that: old receipts, pieces of sharp plastic, packaging, discarded toys. The police didn't arrest him because he had no items of value and because they were susceptible to the mist.

  He climbed a tower to hang a flag. He danced in steam on the hottest day ever when it rained on the footpath. Each time he was collected, spoken to. "People don't do these things. You need to think about your behaviour."

  Finally, when he was seventeen, he took a mud bath in the foundations of a construction site. Naked. He had a bag of small things he'd found: parking tokens, the contents page of a book, a library card with the name Jonas McCready, a paint bottle lid. That was too m
uch for the mist, even, so they sent him on a voyage of the mad. He was allocated a lawyer who helped him into a clinic.

  He met some very interesting people in the psychiatric clinic. There, it would be easy to stop thinking, stop being. Sit and wait.

  There was a man there who felt the weight of sin very greatly. Not his own sins; he did not commit any. The sins of the world. He spent most of his time weeding.

  Marvo sat on the grass beside the flower bed and watched him. "Would you like to hear a story?" he asked. The man nodded.

  "And then you will tell me one," said Marvo. The man nodded again, wiped his nose with his sleeve, his bare hands dripping with warm earth.

  "Hands and noses, precious things. Do not take them for granted, especially if you are embarked on an adulterous affair. Your nose would once have been cut off, had you been caught, and for the remainder of your short life you would have been marked," said the man.

  The pollen in the air was thick. Marvo sneezed; the nurse who watched over both of them sneezed too. She was the one nurse who made him smile, who watched his tricks without asking for explanation. Her name was Andra.

  The gardener did not sneeze. Marvo later met an idiot on a bus who reminded him of this man. Idiots make more sense than doctors; they should not be disregarded, Marvo learned.

  "I'll tell you the story while you work," Marvo said. The man nodded. Marvo told a story he'd learnt from Chrysostom's historian.

  Caesar's Augurs

  There are humans who can see the future and use the present; others who can't. My lawyer can't. Although I suppose I'm not doing a jail term for theft. He understood that I did not realise the removal of those little things mattered; people had not cared in the big house where I grew up.

  The judge had me sent here.

  As we left the court room, the lawyer placed his hand on my shoulder.

  He said to me, "I'm sorry. It's the judge. She dislikes me." I shook my head. I told him that in ancient Rome, incompetent lawyers would purchase cauls from miscreant midwives. Strapped to their chests, they believed it would make them win. "Perhaps that would work for you," I told him. Because the ancient Romans knew how to use the present.

  In the year 44 BC, though they did not call it that, a group of men sat sprawled around a marble room, wittily degrading servants and others lower than them. Many were lower: these men were augurs, and they sat next to Caesar and his officials. There were never thirteen; even then that number was considered unlucky.

  They needed to know everything that was happening. Have current information. They had a great interest in politics and the affairs of the people whose lives they may change in a moment. They watched and waited. One amongst them was quieter, yet it was to him that the others listened to more often.

  The augurs were happy to be talking and joking and not having to work. Thus, they did not welcome the messenger who came to them.

  "There is a great wind to the north," spoke the messenger, hair tossed and clothes awry.

  The augurs conferred for many hours to decide the good or bad signs innate in the wind. The city was settled after years of civil war. The augurs decided that the wind blew well for Caesar. Truthfully, it was easy to say so because for many months, the man had been sole ruler of the Roman world.

  The augurs were right on that occasion: their ruler had a pleasant and successful day. They were not called upon again until one week later, when Caesar gathered them to him. They had helped him so greatly in the past with their apt and correct interpretation of the signs.

  "Tell me," he said, "what of this mark?" His back was red with a raised rash.

  "Your wife needs to cut her fingernails, perhaps?" snickered one. The others did not laugh. They conferred for many hours, until Caesar grew bored with waiting.

  "Good or bad?" he shouted. "Answer me." The augurs, nodding to each other, agreed.

  "The omen is good. You may walk without fear," they said. The quiet augur had not spoken. He saw something different than the others, yet he was bound to leave the change happen. It was in his instructions; it was his birthright. Afterwards, he would need skill to bring cloud and mist.

  The good reputation of the augurs could have been ruined, but they denied advising Caesar to go out. They claimed to have suggested he stay in and dine instead, and that he had insisted upon going out. Who were they to argue with the great leader?

  After Caesar's death and the consequent battle for power, augurs became very much in demand. The leaders were unsure after years of disloyalty, murder, trickery. Sixteen augurs sat in the great room, chewing rich food and deciding the movements of the great.

  Loyalty was not an important trait amongst the augurs. Nor, perhaps, was honesty – they would attempt to read the signs in a way attractive to Caesar; good news put the augurs in a powerful position.

  If one was absent for reasons of illness or other, their lives were endangered, or at least their positions.

  "To be ill on this day is not good," would say the remaining augurs.

  "Perhaps ill luck for our great city to have such illness on this day."

  The augurs could not help their arrogance. They were members of the patrician class. They were the aristocrats; they were men. They were constantly reminded of the superiority of these positions and they constantly reminded others. They married the empire's most beautiful women and slowly turned them to hags, they took younger and younger lovers.

  Trabea, the traditional dress of their class, helped with the arrogance. Pure white, with a rich purple border, it set them apart from the grubby, grey crowd.

  They would never wear second hand clothes; they could be the clothes of a man who died at sea before the journey was over. These clothes will dog the wearer with bad luck. Perhaps the man lost a bucket at sea. Whatever you do, don't lose that bucket at sea. A terrible portent of doom.

  The augur who had been silent was found guilty and put to death. In that way, the augurs proved their worth.

  #

  "Interesting theory," said the gardener.

  "No, it's truth," said Marvo. "That quiet augur is an ancestor of mine."

  Marvo learnt about trust when the historian told him this story. He learnt not to trust, and that everyone was more interested in self-preservation than helping others, especially when it could be presented as selflessness.

  "It must be true then, if you know the person. Were there weeds in Rome? Perhaps there is another theory, there were too many weeds."

  "Tell me that theory, or another one," Marvo said.

  The gardener rubbed his face with dirt-covered hands and nodded. "The weeds are God's curse upon Adam, you see, as punishment for his behaviour. The weeds grow, and if there are too many then Man's actions can't be accounted for. I think perhaps that in Rome there were too many people listening to your relative and not pulling up the weeds. They let the weeds grow and their city collapsed. There's a story for you."

  Marvo knelt and helped pull weeds. They worked in silence.

  "Marvo, I'd like some help please," said the nurse, Andra.

  He rose, dusted off his knees.

  "You looked like you needed rescuing," Andra said. "Ten more weeds and you would have been there for good."

  "Perhaps," Marvo said.

  She was such an odd nurse. She wasn't cheery and friendly. She didn't make the patients feel better. She cleaned the bed pans and washed the patients. She was very quiet. She didn't talk to anyone. But she watched Marvo all the time. In his small, private room at the hospital he collected many things: little balls of hair, a plastic spoon from lunch. He had food hidden as well because he hated to be hungry. Packets of biscuits, of potato chips, of dried fruit and nuts.

  Andra said, "Where did you find these things?" He was pleased she did not ask why. He thought she sounded envious, as if she wished she had found the things first and honestly wondered about their history.

  He had small buttons and coins; in his drawer he had more secret things, jewellery hidden fr
om its owners, wallets.

  They walked together back to his room, Marvo wiping his dirty hands on his pants.

  "Tell me a story," he said. She had given him a marvellous scrub in the morning. "Tell me a story," he said. "Tell me a story."

  "That's not my thing."

  "What is your thing?"

  She winked at him. That afternoon, she slipped his nightpills into her pocket, leaving him drug-free, alert.

  That night, when all the others in the ward were drugged and asleep, Andra came to him. He was sitting up, waiting, wide-eyed. She sat on his bed and spoke in a whisper which made him feel like home.