The Ghost-Eater and Other Stories

by Diane Awerbuck

  ‘No, no, he’s right,’ said Andre. ‘It would be better to get this finished.’

  He took hold of his hat with his left hand, and placed his right arm inside of it, dug around for a second, and without any of his earlier flourishes or smiles, pulled out a gold watch with a brown band. He held it up to the light.

  Andre regarded it for a moment, then looked out over the audience. ‘To Heidi, with love. 10/10/86,’ he read. ‘Who here has lost a watch?’

  A young woman’s hand shot up; she stood, picking her way past the crowd with nervous energy and bounded up to the stage. ‘Thank you,’ she said when Andre dropped the thing in her cupped hands. She turned, her loose green dress twirling a little with her, and ran out of the bar. Some audience members watched her go, but the rest were focused on Andre and his hat. Sebastian clapped once, then stopped. Nobody else made a sound.

  Andre dug into his hat again and seemed to find what he was looking for almost immediately: a bar napkin, with some writing on it. He held it up to the audience. ‘It’s a phone number. For Nicola?’

  A squeal broke out from the leopard-print girl who jumped up and then – remembering herself – strode carefully to the stage, took the proffered piece of paper gently from Andre’s hand and walked out of the bar, phone already lit up, her red splash of mouth curved into a crooked grin.

  The show proceeded like this for some time; Andre would pull out jewellery, or a photograph, or a book from the depths of his dull-black hat, and somebody from the audience would jump up to claim it. Some would return to their seats to see what else would come up, but most of them walked out of the bar, looks of satisfaction or relief dancing along their faces. The place was still crowded for a dive bar on a weeknight, but it was emptying out.

  A book, a couple of photographs, a lot of jewellery, almost all of it cheap-looking. A sword, twice as long as the length of Andre’s hat, which was claimed by a young man wearing a baseball cap. One time, Andre put his ear to the hat, and, nodding, indicated to an old man sitting along the back row to approach. He whispered whatever he had heard, or pretended to have heard, to the man. He was one of the few who returned to their seats; in the half-light it wasn’t clear, but Sebastian thought he saw tears on the man’s wrecked old checks.

  Following the leopard-print girl’s departure, Sebastian had quickly grown bored and was watching the proceedings with a frown. ‘Is this performance art?’ he hissed to a bartender, who grimaced and brought him another beer.

  A prolonged silence dragged Sebastian’s attention back to the stage, where Andre held something cupped in his hands. His mouth worked as he chewed at his upper lip, and then he brought a pair of keys to the light. ‘Whose are these?’ he asked. A muscled blond man jumped up and strode towards the stage. ‘Hello! Those are mine.’ His accent was vaguely European. Sebastian, reminded of exchange students, hated him instantly.

  The tall blond reached towards Andre, who still held the keys up to the light. He looked back at the audience with a grin, then back towards the magician. ‘Thank you?’ he said, jiggling his fingers.

  Andre didn’t look at him. ‘These are car keys.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the blonde. ‘My spare keys. I thought they were under the couch, but I couldn’t find them.’

  ‘So – let me be certain that I understand you. You come to my show, in this horrible bar, to see if I’d start bringing back lost things, and find your keys for you?’

  The blonde shrugged. ‘Pretty much, yeah.’ He reached up, took the keys out of Andre’s hand and lightly punched his shoulder. ‘Thanks, brother.’ He jangled the keys, dropped them in his back pocket and began to walk out of the room.

  He made it halfway to the door before Andre called out, ‘Wait.’

  The blond turned, grinned. ‘I haven’t lost anything else, man. Thanks.’

  Andre stood up, and stretched, placing his hat carefully on the arm of his chair. ‘Actually, yes, you have,’ he said through a yawn. ‘You remember that girl, in Brussels, and what you did to her? Well, no,’ he put up a hand, ‘no, you don’t. Not really. You’ve managed to lose that. But I could bring it back. I could even bring the girl back. Would you like that?’

  The blond stiffened, a vein growing prominent above his light-blue collar. ‘I don’t know what—’

  ‘Forget it,’ said, Andre, waving his hand. He slumped back against his chair. ‘Just leave.’ The blond did; the room, half-emptied now, was quiet as Andre scanned the faces of audience. He settled on a young woman in pearls and pointed at her lazily. ‘You. The tumour you got cut out last year – I can bring that back.’ He looked to a tanned, white-toothed man in suspenders: ‘I can give you back those fourteen kilograms.’ He started to gesture at audience members randomly: ‘Nightmares. Drinking problem. The way he smelled after a shower. Herpes!’ he ran on, his voice raised, growing high-pitched.

  Sebastian was impressed by this speech but was distracted by movement towards the back of the bar; some people had begun to shuffle out – mostly those who had already received something from the magician – but a few unfamiliar figures were leaving too, the pearl-necklaced woman among them.

  ‘Don’t you people understand what I can do? I could bring back anything. The bathwater and the baby. All back!’

  Andre’s list continued, growing louder, shriller – threatening the return of diseases, of debts, most frequently of submerged memories – and his audience dissipated rapidly around him, those caught near the front turning over tables and chairs to get out.

  The last member of the audience to leave, a young man in an oversized tuxedo, tripped over a chair, shattering it, and scrambled out the door on his hands and knees. Sebastian looked at the mess of a bar around him, surprised to see that it could look worse than it usually did, and then at Andre, who had stopped yelling and was slumped against his chair, mopping at his forehead. Sebastian got to his feet and started clapping his hands. ‘Bravo!’ he called once, then resigned himself to merely applauding.

  Andre looked up from behind his mussed-up hair, and placed a hand on his hat. He frowned.

  ‘I said leave,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, jeez, sorry, man. I thought that was more for the, you know. The actors.’

  Andre raised himself to his feet. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘The actors – the guys you planted with the watch and the jewellery and stuff. That was awesome, guy. Really … avant garde.’ He waved his hands in the air, threatening to knock down the pitcher of water set down beside him. ‘I don’t know, I’m not much good at theatre stuff. It was cool, though.’

  Andre strode towards him, unbuttoning his cufflinks with his hat cradled under his free arm. ‘You’re drunk,’ he said, sitting down on the barstool next to Sebastian, and setting the hat down on the stool to his right. ‘Are you saying you didn’t know what the show was about?’ Sebastian sat down too.

  ‘No, no, I was here for … I like this bar. But I’ll be sure to tell my friends about you. Really great show. Maybe I can be an actor in it too, next time. That’d be cool.’

  Andre pursed his lips, and then, slowly, smiled. ‘No, I believe you misunderstand. This was not a trick. Those people were not actors.’

  ‘Ha!’ said Sebastian, too loudly. ‘Magician’s secrets and stuff. I gotcha.’

  Andre looked at Sebastian for a long time. Then he chuckled, the jarring noise of his laughter echoing in that recently emptied room. ‘Did you get this drunk on purpose?’

  Sebastian propped his elbows on the bar top – he didn’t like his shirt that much anyway – and stared at the space between them. ‘Well, I mean, let’s say it wasn’t exactly an accident.’

  ‘I can see that,’ Andre took hold of his hat, and placed it on the bar, brim down. His fingers tapped out a short beat on its edge. ‘Do you want to know something interesting?’

  ‘I might,’ Sebastian ventured.

  ‘About eighteen months ago, Glenfiddich lost a shipment of fifty-year-old whisky.’

  Sebast
ian looked from Andre to the row of cheap amber bottles lined up behind the bar, and back again. ‘That’s interesting,’ he lied.

  ‘Yes,’ said Andre, lifting his hat from the bar top and brushing the dampened brim with a low mutter. Where the hat had stood was a dusty, opaque bottle of whisky. Sebastian’s eyes focused for long enough to read the label.

  ‘Well, shit,’ he said, finally. He looked sidelong at Andre, who was reaching behind the bar for two cleanish glasses. ‘Were you always magic?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I mean it’s not like there are obvious indicators of latent magical capacity, but I believe it started happening when I got this hat.’

  ‘It is a very nice hat,’ said Sebastian. ‘Where’d you buy it?’

  Andre shot him a look. ‘For what possible reason would anybody buy a hat like this? No, my uncle left it to me when he died.’

  ‘Right, and that made you want to be magic.’

  ‘No, let me finish. I didn’t want anything like that. I was thirteen years old and I wanted to be a pilot. The hat … I think I hid it in my closet a week after I got it.’ He took a swig of the scotch, shivered a little as it went down.

  ‘Oh. Yeah, I guess I wouldn’t really want a hat like that either if I was thirteen. But, um, how did you …’

  ‘That first week, before I put the hat away, a classmate of mine suffered a psychotic break.’

  Sebastian stared. ‘Uh. What? I don’t—’

  ‘Stop interrupting: it’s vulgar.’ Andre ran two spatulated fingers across his eyebrows. ‘He wasn’t a friend of mine or anything, but I knew him. The classmate. He was very nearly what you would call the class clown. Not genuinely funny, but we were thirteen, and it didn’t take much to make us laugh then. He sufficed, with his pratfalls. Physical comedy.’ He swirled his glass, scowling at it. ‘And I don’t know what he was doing – pretending to be a helicopter? A girl? Something banal and ridiculous. And one of my friends said – he said, “He’s lost his marbles.” And there I was with my magician’s hat, and I’d practiced a couple of basic palms, and of course we had marbles at hand, it was that kind of school and we were that kind of age – so I said, “It’s fine, I’ve got his marbles right here,” meaning to reach in and pull out two or three of whatever marbles I had with me. Laughs all around. They were those worthless ones, with the toothpaste stripe. I was never very good. He knocked back his drink, and poured another for both of them. ‘So I reached in to this hat right here, and pulled out three little globules. Which I realised immediately weren’t marbles, because they squished, like rubber. And they stank of blood. Meanwhile, our class clown had fallen to the ground, having some kind of fit … which, granted, did produce some laughter to start with, and then the very specific silence of a group of scared adolescent boys.’ Andre offered the bottle to Sebastian, who hesitated only briefly before refilling his own glass. ‘We were close to a hospital, so they could take him away quite quickly, which was a mercy. Later it came to light that he’d suffered severe haemorrhaging in the brain pan, from unknown sources – perhaps an undetected tumor, or parasites. We got new caterers in.’

  ‘He’s at an institution for the disabled, now. Needs constant care to keep from choking on his own spit. Poor chap, he would’ve grown up to become quite handsome, otherwise. I see him sometimes. And, assuming custodial services at the old alma mater are what they used to be, bits of his brain are probably still drying behind the gymnasium lockers. Where I left them.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Sebastian. They clinked glasses. ‘Why didn’t you try to …’

  ‘Put them back?’ Andre took a swig. ‘Apparently, it doesn’t operate that way. All I got was a hat slightly smeared with grey matter. The hat taketh, but it does not giveth again.’

  ‘Huh. Which magic school did you learn that at?’

  Andre laughed again. ‘Nowhere. I learned it when I turned a friend into a vegetable and couldn’t turn him back. There isn’t a manual.’

  ‘So … you don’t know why you’re all magic and stuff?’

  ‘No.’ Andre shook his head, holding his drink in two hands. ‘Perhaps I’m just lucky.’

  ‘And the stuff with the hat?’

  Another shake of the head. ‘You don’t really leave your room very much when you think you can lobotomise people by accident. The hat was also in my room and when I saw it again, it seemed to belong with me.’ He ran a crooked finger along it, as if it were a pet.

  Sebastian eyed their reflection in the bar’s mirror.

  ‘So it just sort of … happened?’

  ‘That’s what I’m saying.’

  ‘And you don’t know why?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘There’s nobody who you think might be … responsible for all this?’

  Andre looked over, eyes red and narrowed. ‘How do you mean?’

  Sebastian shrugged. ‘I don’t know, man, I mean … You shouldn’t let stuff just happen to you, you know? Be passive about shit. It’s probably not right.’

  ‘You think I should find out why I have a magic hat that kills my friends?’

  ‘Okay, my girlfriend left me a while ago. And I’ve been trying to figure out whose fault that was. Because just letting it happen and not questioning it … that seems wrong.’

  Andre lit a cigarette. ‘Perhaps it was all your fault.’

  Sebastian reached for his scotch. Andre laughed and slugged him too hard on the shoulder. ‘I’m joking with you. I’m sorry. Genuinely. Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I ought to do a little research and find out where this thing came from.’ He stroked his hat again, and Sebastian thought he saw it move. ‘I’m getting tired of this show business thing, anyway. People come from everywhere and act like I’m a lost and found.’

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ said Sebastian.

  Andre gestured at Sebastian’s beard, sweatpants, sandals. ‘This whole situation is because your young woman left you?’

  ‘Uh, my girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend. Yeah.’ Sebastian perked up, on more familiar territory. ‘I mean, we had a couple of fights and stuff, but nothing big, and then suddenly … poof. I’ve been trying to figure it out since.’

  ‘I can see that, I can see that,’ he nodded. He took a long, slow drag of his cigarette. ‘Let me tell you, you’ve really done me a favour tonight. I had been – well, I’d been depressed. But thanks to this chat … well, maybe there are some things I can do about that.’

  ‘Aw, well … hey, anything to help,’ said Sebastian, folding a small paper aeroplane out of his soggy drinks napkin.

  ‘That does mean I owe you,’ said Andre.

  Sebastian looked up, the napkin dissolving in his hand. ‘If you want to get the next round?’

  ‘Ha! You’re funny. But no, listen, I mean to really help you. You’ve lost something you used to have.’ Andre’s hand went out to the magician’s hat and placed it on his lap. ‘So please, let me get that back for you. And we’ll be even.’

  Sebastian looked at the black hat and the deeper black inside of it; he thought about what he had lost, and about what he might want back. He thought that there were probably dumber conversations to be having in empty bars somewhere past midnight. He nodded. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Okay. Bring her back.’

  Andre reached down into his hat, his hand, elbow, and shoulder disappearing into its impossible depths. The side of his face flattened against its rim, he scowled at some unknown discomfort. After a minute of this, he slowly began to lift himself out of it again, a thin film of sweat gathering on his upper lip. Finally, and with a thin grunt of effort, Andre yanked his fist out of the black hole inside of his hat, and presented it palm upwards to Sebastian.

  He held a human heart.

  Andre grinned. ‘Sorted! Here you are, my man. It’s all yours.’ The heart beat convulsively, dribbling viscous fluid down his arm.

  Sebastian froze. ‘I can’t take that,’ he said, staring at the twitching red thing.

  Andre’s grin faltered. ‘Oh, God, so
rry. Stupid of me.’ He reached over the bar and grabbed some paper towels, which he used to wrap up the heart. He tore up one of his infinite handkerchiefs to fashion a bow. ‘Here you go. Gift-wrapped for you.’ He put the heart down next to Sebastian’s scotch and patted him on his shoulder with his bloody hand. ‘And now I should be off,’ he said. He placed his hat on his head and strode out into the night, whistling.

  Desperate to look at something other than the heart, Sebastian watched Andre leave the bar. When he fell out of sight, Sebastian turned slowly to take in the evacuated bar around him. Overturned chairs and spilled drinks littered the place, and the spotlight that didn’t have any clear origin was still on.

  He looked at the package next to his drink. It smelled of iron.

  As if from a great distance, he could hear his cellphone begin to ring.

  Coming Clean

  Michael King

  So here I am now, back in Grahamstown from Cape Town for the second time, same as the first time, forty years ago. But this time I have to make a clean breast of it, dredge up some stuff from the past for the record, try to save myself. I know I will feel barriers which will want to hold back memory, and try to stop it from being made public. I know also that I will use words to excuse myself, or to absolve myself, and for that too, I will need repentance, as Father Riordan says. So let me approach the prayer stool which is my computer, and peel back the past, like an onion. (If I may say so, rather a good image, that one, because sure as hell, the consequence will be tears.)

  I made the journey down to Cape Town a fortnight ago, almost exactly to the day forty years since I was last there, in July 1973. This time, I was in my last year as a teacher; that time my last year as a student. I took a leisurely drive down over two days, and settled into a lovely bed and breakfast in Kenilworth, recommended by Val Richards in Grahamstown, who also runs a B&B. I met with a few friends or acquaintances over the next three days, and spent a lot of time in restaurants, eating rather too much. And drinking, the same. On the fourth day, I hired a car to take a long drive throughout the peninsula, because so much had changed and I didn’t remember too well what it had been like earlier, and I wanted to remind myself. I did notice when I was driving down Sir Lowry’s Pass that there is now a huge motor franchise at the start of Somerset West, on the left hand side. I remembered from the old days – the pass then had been a two-lane road, and there was a garage selling petrol at the outskirts of Somerset West. I remember that because I had had to fill up the car. I enjoyed driving down to Cape Town, but being there was a bit disorienting. It was so different from the past, and part of me wanted to retain the past as a memory to be treasured, rather than to revisit it and find it inadequate. I think Dr Johnson said that. I will have to check that; my memory for that sort of detail is fading.