Mistification (Angry Robot)

by Kaaron Warren

  I was very happy for a while, then someone found out about my sex life. I tried to tell them everybody is free, the body is God's gift and we should use it in the most pleasurable way we know, but they wouldn't take that. Prejudices were too ingrained; they didn't like my type. That's why you see me as I am.

  I think of those people now and wonder what has happened to them. How many took my arrogant advice and what are their lives now?

  #

  Marvo said, "You should study Saint Chrysostom. He was a great and learned man, both the archbishop of Constantinople and a Doctor of the Church. His name was a nickname, meaning 'golden mouth' because of his eloquence. He remains to this day one of history's greatest speakers. He was the one who said: 'I came naked into the world, and I can carry nothing out of it.' His last words were 'Glory be to God for all things.'" This was Marvo's gift to the man.

  "You were there, were you?" said the man. He was the cynical type, finding pleasure in disbelief.

  "His relics were laid in the Church of the Apostles on January 27th. Is that a special day for you?" asked Marvo.

  "I once had a girlfriend whose birthday was January 30th. Is that close enough?" The man really was a cynic.

  Marvo found cynics destructive and boring. "Where are your shoes?"

  "Bare feet are my atonement," the man said, as if he were really suffering.

  Marvo watched Andra's face. She said, "Interesting story. Why did you stop? You should never stop helping people."

  The man looked at her for the first time. "I was talking to your friend here. But my help to you would be to tell you to stick with your own kind. Your own level. Do you understand? Don't reach for the unreachable."

  Marvo watched as her mouth fell open. He pulled her aside and whispered in her ear, "He has no idea who or what you are, Andra. You are better than any man on earth. He's an idiot."

  "He's cruel. You should tell him what you know. Tell him what happened to those people he helped."

  The man buried his head in his briefcase.

  "I could find the answers for the man," Marvo said, "but he has learnt his lesson. The man does not want to know the truth, just as the other man did not want his navel cord back. I am not a cruel person. I won't tell this self-proclaimed prophet that the woman he advised to pay more attention to the body, Make your body important and you will soon find a lover, had been raped after a date; and the man he had advised to find a new job, leave his old one, seek new horizons, had not and would not find a good job ever again. This man born on Christmas Day is no good at giving advice."

  "You should tell him," Andra said. "To prove you love me."

  Marvo did it and was surprised by the result. It seemed that the confirmation of failure was good for the man born on Christmas Day. He could truly atone and move on.

  Marvo got into bed with Andra that night and found flea bane seeds which cause chastity when found between the sheets. She said, "I don't think we're quite ready." With a snap of his fingers, Marvo turned the seeds into oil, which he began to rub into Andra's back, between her shoulder blades. He rubbed and rubbed but did not seduce her. He never took what was not freely given.

  They had slept in the same bed now for a long time without forming a sexual connection. They were waiting. They used the sexual energy as strength. His cat slept on the end of the bed with them, providing comfort and continuity.

  "Life is never dull with you, Marvo," Andra said. "I had a boyfriend once, a dull man. Nothing like you. He was very weak."

  Eagle's Egg

  We met somewhere very dull; at a party. He was a Christian, it was a party for Christians. I was there by mistake, it was a friend's brother's friend or something who was the Christian.

  So I met this guy and talked to him all night till the party ended at midnight. I could not keep my eyes off his fingernails; they were the longest and cleanest I had seen on a man. I imagined them digging in ear and arse, then cleaned on the corner of a precious book. I listened to his dull talk, watched his eyes begin to live as I showed interest in him, saw his confidence make him swagger. I watched his fingernails and plotted to have them.

  I took him home and slept with him a week after we first met. I made him cut his fingernails and I put them in a small box. I still have them somewhere.

  I felt sorry for him. I knew I had to protect him. I knew that before long I would despise him and I didn't think he deserved what might result from that, so I decided to protect him. That's why I didn't sleep with him that first night. It took a week to get an eagle's egg.

  I cooked scrambled eggs, which we ate from one bowl, using one spoon.

  Now you're safe, I thought, stroking his face. Safe from a witch's spell, safe from me when I decide to hate you.

  I'm very good like that. Very good to the person.

  I went to work the next morning, leaving him heavy with sleep, his fingernails clipped close to the skin. I expected to come home to him rested and safe and boring. I thought perhaps he would make lamb chops for dinner and I would enjoy them. No magic, nothing of interest but lamb chops and a simple life.

  I walked into the house expecting to hear dull music and the ting of cooking utensils but all I heard was the high-pitched whine of a phone left off the hook.

  I found vomit all over the house, flecked with eagle eggshells. I'd poisoned the poor man. The eagle egg ate away a part of his stomach lining and to this day he can only digest soft-boiled hen eggs and bananas.

  I never bothered after that to protect people.

  #

  "Did he live?" Marvo asked.

  "Of course he did. I told you he only eats eggs and bananas. You can't eat when you're dead."

  Marvo thought of the eggs she'd cooked for him. In particular, one very large omelette. "Have I eaten eagle eggs?"

  "I will never hate you," she said. "I will love you and cure you until you are three hundred years old. Then we'll think again."

  "I didn't know you were a healer, Andra. I thought you were a collector."

  "You are the only one who knows about my collection."

  Later, she dressed in her magician's assistant outfit and they climbed into the car, preparing for a long drive to a country town when they were booked for a children's party. Andra loved to drive.

  "Tell me a story," Marvo said, his hands a blur of movement and playing cards. "Tell me how you became a healer."

  "My grandmother had a piece of paper confirming that her great-great-grandmother had eaten meat of an eagle. It meant a healing nature to descendants, whether they wanted it or not. I can simply blow on a person with shingles, and the person will be cured.

  "It is a burden to me, the healing power. It means I have to be good. And while I am happy with that and feel it was a good way to use my life, I also want to be bad sometimes. I need that contrast. I need to hurt someone, kick them, but never make them ill. I can use my body for pleasure, or make my mother cry, but when a sick child stands before me I have to rest my hands on that child and heal.

  "Your work, as I understand it, works as a contrast. We cover each other; what one does not do the other does. I use my magic to heal and give new beginnings. I can see where things are wrong; I am willing to see it. You prefer to use your magic to ignore the illness and by ignoring it, destroy it. You hate anything to be wrong. You imagine your childhood was normal, without terror. You imagine we to have a pure and natural relationship. You can't stand anything to be askew."

  "All of that is true," Marvo said. "Tell me: what does eagle meat taste like?"

  "It tastes like chicken. Eagles should not be so majestic, for their own good. Beauty so desirable is destructive. I'm glad not to be beautiful."

  Marvo stared at her in disbelief.

  "You're not beautiful?" he said, as if his education had failed him there.

  She said, "Not like the eagle, who finds it hard to keep her things about her. She's so lovely her pieces are desired, everyone wants some. She loses her eggs to people needing protection
. She loses her beak to Greenlanders, who fasten it to their whaling harpoons to bring good luck. And there was that woman I helped. Remember? The one who couldn't hold a foetus."

  Andra had given a woman with a history of miscarriage an eagle's stone to carry. She provided her with a typed sheet of information, to give her faith in the cure. This walnut-sized light brown stone is found only in eagle's nests. Its geological name is argillaceous oxide of iron, which has settled around other materi>als. Take care of this stone: it is believed that the eagle can't hatch her eggs without it.

  Tied to your thigh during childbirth, it will bring an easy and light birth.

  "Do you ever think of that eagle?" Marvo said. "Perhaps you don't know the story of the childless eagle."

  Andra shrugged. She could not be sentimental about her cures. She felt a human birth was more important that than of an eagle, no matter how beautiful the bird was. She said, "This is only folklore. There may not be truth in it, or there may."

  "I know of an eagle whose stone was stolen as she had feathered her nest to prepare for children. She never reproduced and was ostracised."

  "Eagles don't have civilised social mores like we do," said Andra, formality and an air of education her defence against Marvo.

  "Yes, they do," said Marvo.

  They put on a good show in the country. Andra even came home with a rotten tooth wrapped in a tissue.

  "Look at this!" she said. "The granddad whinged about it aching so I pulled it out for him."

  "What are you going to do with it?"

  "Add it to my collection."

  Some teeth she'd taken from work. Others were given to her by a lover who worked in the morgue and had no respect for the dead.

  "You know that to cure toothache," she said, "a person should carry the tooth from a corpse of the opposite sex in their pocket. I keep them separate, male and female. To affect the one is to affect the other, thus, the tooth gone from one, the pain from another."

  "You should start a business healing toothache," Marvo said. "Forget fortune telling. You will always find customers. People love sweets but they hate going to the dentist."

  Just hearing from Marvo that she could do it gave her the strength she needed to heal. It began there.

  Andra had many women come to her complaining of barrenness. She had the success of an earlier childbirth experience with an eagle's stone, but did not think the solution was right in every case. The spirit remained the same, though. Marvo also told her about his grandmother's experience, where she was cast out of her own village for giving them what they wanted.

  She tied dock seeds to the arms of one woman and told her to go home and try. The woman fell pregnant. Andra felt the scent of the dock seeds, crushed between the two bodies, would be exciting to them, and in their fervour that would forget the purpose and enjoy the pleasure. Then would the process be able to work.

  One woman whom Andra saw had no control over her life – everything was ruled by magic. She wouldn't leave the house without consulting her horoscope and she carried spells and amulets wherever she went. Andra told her she needed to choose just one thing. Horoscope or spells or trusting her own instinct. Otherwise all would be confused.

  The woman didn't like this, and went to another healer, an untrue witch. There are many untrue witches; Andra knew them at a glance.

  Andra was told the woman had a look of absolute astonishment when she was run over by a bike. She died carrying a spell in her pocket which was supposed to protect her from mechanisms.

  "Had that woman trusted her ears and eyes rather than her spell, she would be alive," Andra said to Marvo. "This is the power we have. This is why we need to be so cautious."

  Marvo watched Andra use plants to heal, remembered which was which and how they helped. He watched as she helped people walk and run, make love, fall pregnant. She made people happy.

  Another woman came to Andra for help.

  "It's my husband," the woman said, "nothing unusual." She laughed, trying to trivialise her presence in the home of a witch.

  "Does he beat you?" asked Andra.

  "Only when he's had a few," said the woman. "Not otherwise."

  "You must every morning pass this bottle over his head. It will change colour according to his nature; when the bottle appears black, cook him these mushrooms. Make him a lovely meal. If it appears blue, put the bottle away until the next morning. He will soon stop drinking, and that will cure the cause, thus the symptom."

  Andra sent the woman home. She had no qualms about merging magic with science. They came from the same source.

  The mushroom was called Coprinopsis atramentaria. It is usually harmless when cooked, but contains a chemical similar to the active principal in Antabuse.3 If eaten in conjunction with alcohol it can cause nausea and vomiting.

  "Where did you learn about the mushrooms?" asked Marvo.

  "It was after your story about your grandmother dancing over the mushrooms. I remembered some of the magic I had been taught about them."

  "I'm surprised you forgot to begin with. You rarely forget anything."

  Andra, honest with herself, said, "I think I chose to forget it because I don't want to try it on my mother. I don't want to take away her single joy."

  "Your mother is alive?"

  "Of course she is," Andra said. "Oh." She smiled. "Yes, the story of my birth. Well, in some ways she did die. When I was eighteen she started to drink and she hasn't stopped since. That is like a cancer, I think."

  "We should visit her," said Marvo. "We'll visit her and she'll see that she has you, and me also, if she wants me." Marvo thought having a mother to visit would be wonderful. He had never visited a mother.

  Andra agreed to the visit.

  Marvo dressed with great care in jeans and a T-shirt, no cape because some people thought it frightening. He felt bereft without his cape. He felt straight-laced, too dull for Andra. He practised his big laugh and wrote a list of things to say. He had not yet learnt the basic lesson, that a character, if it is to be played well, must have many elements of truth in it. He had seen it all on TV, how when the door was opened you smiled and laughed. He bought flowers and chocolate because he had seen that as well, a hundred times.

  "Can we take my cat?" he asked.

  "She's allergic."

  They arrived at Andra's mother's home before lunch.

  "It's her best time, her freshest, clearest time," Andra said. "We'll get her before drinks."

  Her mother opened the door, her mouth sucked into the shape of a bow.

  "Come in, come in," she said, peppermint filling her mouth. Marvo handed her flowers and chocolate, and she put them down without looking at them or commenting. She asked them to sit at the kitchen table, and Marvo sat straightbacked, because he could not lean his elbows on a table covered with crumbs, stains, dried lumps. Andra sprawled her arms across to take his hand. They sat that way, holding up a barrier fence.

  "She started early on the booze. Sorry, Marvo. I thought she'd be okay," Andra whispered while stroking his hair. Her mother noticed nothing.

  Andra's mother made coffee, filled hers liberally and openly with brandy.

  "Toothache," she said. Marvo had already made a bad impression on her. Too smart, too quiet, too clean.

  "So what do you do?" she asked.

  "I told you already, Mum. He's a magician."

  "How nice. Perhaps he's got a magic spell to protect a house from unwanted visitors."

  Andra rolled her eyes. She had not wanted to come here. She wanted Marvo to herself; she did not want to share him.

  "Though the house is always protected for you, isn't it, Andra? Just wait till I'm cold in my grave, will you? Before you move your arse in?"

  Her mother poured more brandy into the cup, not worrying about the coffee this time. "You know her father was a hardworking man. A good man. Hard-working men are good men, aren't they, Marvo, and what is it you said you did?"

  Marvo smiled. He was nervous, wanting
this mother to like him for Andra's sake.

  "It's only a small house but he paid it off in his own lifetime. That made him happy, providing for his daughter. I have to leave it to her whether I want to or not. She knows it. That's why she treats me so badly."

  "I don't treat you badly," Andra said, but gently.