Mistification

by Kaaron Warren

  Marvo and Andra became very popular among those who collected people. Odd people; artists, writers, designers, hairdressers; eccentric and unusual. They loved the way Marvo took his cat with him everywhere. Even when he did not set out with it, he would find it at his feet, or nestled at his head. They were almost famous – Marvo had become the most popular children's performer in the country. And he could be guaranteed to be so interested in what people had to say. He loved to hear stories, and he listened to every detail. It was flattering that a man like him would be so fascinated. A man with a life like his. People wanted to claim him as a friend.

  They arrived early at the chairman of British Associated Tobacco's residence for what the invitation had said would be an "informal meal".

  This was an enormous house. Twelve other guests at table, all of them almost famous like Marvo and Andra. The host believed that almost famous now will be very famous soon and knew that the only way to know famous people was to know them before they become famous.

  There was a politician and her husband, an avant-garde painter and his lover – who had not spoken so sex could not be determined – a shopkeeper and his wife who advertised on TV.

  A set of twins who sang and danced. They talked about their family, what a happy life they had led. Marvo no longer envied people with parents. He knew that parents could be cruel, and that having a father did not mean a happy life. He listened to them sing and saw their smiles; he became deaf, mute and blind, he could smell sweat, old sweat. The girls were not clean, and there was a reason for that. They clung to each other and needed no one else. They were unattractive, with that smell, and no one would want them. And that was how they wanted it.

  A school teacher with radical methods was there, and a landscape architect who grew orchids. Also an American diplomat and his wife. They kept very quiet. She carried a cocker spaniel which drooled and sniffed. Marvo was sure they took notes.

  Marvo expected Andra to mention that her father had been an expert orchid grower.

  "I've always been mesmerised by orchids," she said. "Their fleshiness, their easy deaths."

  "You learnt about them from an early age," said Marvo, "didn't you?"

  Andra had forgotten that story. "Oh, yes," she said, "My father taught me about them early on." Marvo smiled at her. He liked to help her remember her stories.

  They sat around and talked of gossip, bitchiness, news. If anyone became passionate, the others would ignore them until the passion subsided. It was the only polite thing to do.

  Andra sat with the host and drank scotch. Marvo talked with the hostess in the kitchen.

  "Bloody bastard," she said, "thinks his job is to make the drinks. Like one?" she asked. Marvo opened the champagne and they shared it from the bottle.

  "My first drink was champagne," Marvo said.

  "Mine was beer, I must admit. Warm beer, drunk through a straw at the beach." The hostess wore expensive clothing, imported. It would not fade or tear and it was flattering. Marvo laughed.

  "Did you know that ale was invented by the Germans? The name was aluth, from the same ancestral root as hallucination," said Marvo. He found it very apt. He disliked the idea of hallucinations and hated the taste of beer.

  "That's about right. Everyone said you got drunk faster that way, drinking it through a straw."

  At the Beach

  I was at the beach with my cousin and her boyfriend. We told our mothers it was just my cousin and me, but the boyfriend was there all along. He was eighteen, he bought the beers. We met him there and drank it.

  There was another guy there, a friend of his, who was angry with me because I wouldn't talk to him. He was horrible. He had a hairy back. So I lay there drinking a can of beer and getting sunburnt. Then I got too hot and went for a swim. It was time to show off my new bikini, anyway.

  So I went diving into the sea and swam, enjoying the salt and the water. Suddenly I was tired. My arms were heavy and I thought I'd rest them for a while. So I let them drop. I thought I'd stand on the bottom and relax. I thought my feet would touch the bottom.

  Well, they didn't. The water rose over my head and I flapped my arms to see how far away the sea bed was. I flapped and flapped. I couldn't find bottom so I flapped back up for air. I couldn't see the sand. I didn't want to swim until I saw the sand so I trod water, turning around and around, looking for trees or whatever.

  It must have been an illusion, because I'm sure I wasn't that far out. But I could see nothing but water. I screamed. Hands grabbed me gently, turned me on my back and towed me along. I grabbed at this person and felt a hairy back. I feel like I slept until I was safe, and awoke to find him arousing me with resuscitation.

  "It's OK. I'm OK," I told him.

  "You're safe now," he said. And the rest is history.

  #

  She blinked brightly at Marvo. "Shall we join the others?" she said.

  Her husband was pouring more drinks. Through his thin white shirt, Marvo could see black matting of hair on front and back. And when the man handed Marvo his drink, their eyes linked and Marvo recognised him as a magician using his skills for personal gain.

  Marvo had learnt that a sense of commitment can stop a person acting. That this wife was under a spell of rescue, and couldn't leave until it was lifted.

  He said to the man, "Food was great at Carlito's the other day. Nothing like a good long lunch with a pleasant companion." He said it in a way which didn't sound like him, he sounded like a man who took long lunches and was capable of blackmail. Marvo rarely ate lunch. He rarely chose to stop his activities.

  "Who were you at lunch with?" asked the woman.

  "Ooh, gossip!" one of the guests said.

  Dinner parties are not the places to discuss differences of opinion. The mist is thick, and the bullshit. People must pretend to like each other for the duration of the food, and make complaints only to people who weren't there, only later. Marvo and Andra had learnt this with an early failure. No arguments at dinner. Only jokes and lies. As the wife set the table, she dropped a knife.

  "A woman will visit soon," Andra said. The husband glanced sharply at his wife.

  "But you're already here," he said, "you're already visiting, Andra."

  "Lucky she didn't drop a fork or you'd be calling Marvo a fool," said Andra. She was drunk. Marvo liked it when she toned down her seriousness.

  Andra weighed the cutlery in her palm. She said, "Aluminium was precious, in the last century. Rich people would pay $100,000 a pound for it, when it was natural metal. Then two men discovered they could produce aluminium themselves, and a lot of rich people found themselves with almost worthless material."

  The American diplomat's wife said, "I love that you know that! You're about the most interesting woman I've met in a long time." She had drunk two bottles of wine herself and was only now livening up. Her dog licked Andra's toes.

  Marvo squeezed the hostess's hand as he left.

  "He's got a very hairy back," he whispered. His gift to her was support; belief in what she said.

  He heard, later, that she left her husband.

  Marvo hated a party to end. He was enlivened by this one, and talked all the way home. "I had a dream about the future the other night," he said.

  Andra reached over in the darkness of the car and squeezed his thigh. "What happened?" She hoped he would tell her of a home together, growing old, a vision of the two of them rocking in chairs, sharing wine.

  But he said, "I dreamt of having a place, a huge house, where people could come and go. Weary travellers rest in this home. They see a place of beauty, see wonders like talking mice and everlasting port bottles, and they stay for weeks. When they emerge the world has gone ahead without them. It was a wonderful dream."

  After that dinner, after his dream, Marvo was enthusiastic for the next show. He performed tricks, traditional and untraditional. He made dollar coins appear from ears, changed one orange into three, read thoughts, found a bowl of goldfish in a scarf, made pe
ople disappear, sometimes reappear, and cut them in half. He lulled the audience into a relaxed state, sang them into drowsiness with his simple, predictable tricks. Then he made the floor open up and they were sucked into a darkness, there was no noise, sound or smell. Then Marvo's voice began to talk.

  "What a beautiful world. How I love my friend. I love to work. I love to watch a comedy rather than the news." The floor would open up and they would be in the auditorium again; Marvo gone, slides of a beautiful volcano erupting, a magnificent fire, a delightful poppy field.

  "How nice," said the people. "How nice it makes me feel."

  Time came when the theatre manager and his stories, his tucked-in place and his small profile, became dull to Andra. She had a trick in mind, a large fish tank, plenty of water, some danger. She and Marvo had worked on it, but the theatre manager turned up his nose. He said it was trite, overdone. He was lying; the trick scared him. He knew that this trick would put Marvo so far out of his league they could never talk again.

  "Not bad with tricks myself," he said one night, and began to demonstrate, fumbling with cards and coins, his lips moving in encouragement. Marvo had been feeling loyalty towards the man. Didn't want to discard him, but the dull and plodding theatre manager pretending to be a magician was enough to turn his stomach. It was time to move on, to grow. There was nothing more to learn from the man. Marvo had spent hours waiting for wisdom, listening to him talking, talking, but nothing ever came out. He had in Marvo the most audience he'd had in years, and he did not take a breath to let Marvo interrupt.

  Andra was waiting for Marvo to decide; she would not talk him into it or make any move without his genuine agreement.

  "I'm ready," Marvo said. "He's gone too far. He thinks he's the same as me, that he can do what I do. We can leave him now."

  Andra, assistant, lover, companion, manager, organised a breakfast meeting with a new promoter for Marvo.

  "Morning is good time for conviction and discussion," she told him. "This is a big-time promoter who understands your work."

  Marvo was not keen to go; he hated meeting with people who he didn't know, who might consider him a foolish artist (and a children's artist at that) and be keen to make fun of him. He said, "Why don't you go on your own? I'll stay home and run a nice hot bath for you to hop into when you get home." Marvo had had no formal education into how to be an adult. He still practised the barter and reward method of deal making.

  "I need you to come with me. The time is auspicious for both of us to be there; we want support and we want to book a show at this theatre. If we get it, you can do the fish tank act we've been working on."

  He agreed, as he did to almost anything Andra said. He trusted her with his life, with his magic.

  "All right. So long as you're there too."

  Thinking back, much later, Andra would wonder if perhaps she played a role in Marvo's death. The breakfast meeting led to the theatre, to the fish tank. She did not see how she could have behaved differently. Only a vision of the future could have changed her actions.

  The meeting went well. Andra did most of the talking, but at the end, when they all stood up the man reached across the table and shook Marvo's hand.

  "Good deal," said the man. Andra smiled at him but Marvo could sense her anger at being ignored. He blinked at the man and a small mist filled his eyes. The promoter tripped over the front step of the restaurant and fell, cutting his chin. Andra squeezed Marvo's hand gratefully, then helped the man up. He took her hand.

  "Thanks," he said.

  That night, they performed a reasonable show but not their best. They wanted to leave without tears. "This was our last night," Marvo told the theatre manager as they sat to lukewarm coffee afterwards.

  The theatre manager began to protest, "I wasn't born yesterday, you've got a contract, I know what you've been up to." He didn't take rejection well.

  Marvo let the mist rise. The theatre manager gave the contract to Marvo, who burnt it.

  "Are you really firing us?" Marvo asked. "Do we have to go? You've been such a friend to me."

  "I'm afraid the ride's over. I've got a real show coming in tomorrow. Amateur Night is over."

  "Will you eat with us? One last time?"

  "Of course I'll eat with you. We'll break bread and talk dirty."

  Marvo nodded. He took a pen off the desk, some paper clips. He picked up a rubber seal which had fallen onto the floor. These he put in his pocket.

  Andra and Marvo prepared for the meal carefully. They asked others. The diplomat from the US embassy (they never understood what he did) and his wife, who had liked Andra so much, plus a woman Marvo met on the bus and her boyfriend. They wanted it to be lavish. They rarely had people in their home.

  After years of living on scraped food, Marvo loved a huge plateful, with more on the stove.

  The first TV cooking show he saw, many years after he left the room, was like a magic show to him – true magic, not illusion. He was glad he had not seen one in the room, because his mouth watered as he watched. He always had to buy food when the show was over, because it made him hungry. Magic made him hungry.

  After he ran from the room, he ate in restaurants and fastfood plazas, and there were plates full which did not need to be scraped and transferred. The meals could be eaten where they were found.

  It slowly made sense to him that food was made up of other foods – if you added two or more together you created a third.

  Science. Experimentation. Who thought of doing this – who was the first one to bake a cake?

  Chefs have been around forever. Men made cooking a religious rite and took the role for themselves at the time of the discovery of fire. There is evidence that the ancient Babylonians made cakes.

  There were plenty of classes, cooking classes, but Marvo was always terrified by the sight of people who knew what was inside an egg, who had made sandwiches alone.

  There was much to learn in cooking. There was great lore and mystery; great healing. Eating is something that every single creature who ever existed on this planet has done. We all know what it is like to eat.

  Andra said, "You can help me cook for our guests. We'll make a practice meal today, another tomorrow. I'll tell you a story as we work."

  Oatcake Meal

  A fisherman's wife taught me how to make oatcakes. Her husband was a terrible man. He slept with women other than her and returned with a diseased cock. He beat her and treated the food she cooked with disrespect.

  She was the greatest cook I have met. A pure love for her art meant each mouthful of her food was like a kiss. Her husband merely shoved it into his mouth, talking about his horrid adventures during the chewing process. He was a truly horrible man.

  He didn't like me at all, of course. I was someone for his wife to talk to, and he didn't like that. He kept asking where I was from, and I said a new place each time. It became a game. The woman and I would talk while she cooked and we thought of even more bizarre places of birth. I described my true birth once and she thought that was hilarious.

  So she cooked these awful oatcakes, and they came out dusty with meal. We had been talking all morning about freedom, and how her husband didn't treat her as anything but his possession.

  She took a deep breath, closed her eyes and blew the meal off the oatcakes.

  Two days later, we heard news that his ship had been blown out to sea by a freak hurricane. They found his body caked with salt.

  #

  Marvo watched Andra take down the sea salt and grind it finely.

  "People think salt is an unhealthy additive, but it is vital to survival. Carrying salt in the pocket is another protection against the evil eye."

  "Your face tastes salty," said Marvo. "You taste like you've been swimming in the Dead Sea."

  "If you were my grandmother, you'd be convinced I'd been ill-wished," said Andra. She licked him back. "You, however, have no trace of salt. No one wishes you ill,"

  "Of course not," said Marvo. Fo
r a moment he forgot about Doctor Reid and those he had hurt with his magic.

  Andra would later think how strange it was that with all the portents of doom on her side, it was Marvo who was doomed.

  "There is magic in not eating, also," said Andra. "Magic in fasting for a cause because it seems so extreme, to die for lack of food. The spittle of a fasting person is said to cure itches and creeping sores, and the bites of hornets and beetles. Licking a wart first thing in the morning should make it disappear, and you don't even have to be fasting. Toads are great for curing the King's Evil should there be no kings around. Also for bloody noses. We could, if we wished, cook the toad when we cook the seafood; it also needs to be placed in water and slowly heated, slowly stewed. They take much longer though, perhaps separate from the other food is best."