Illusions

Kathe Koja

Illusions in Relief

Little boy at the basement window, his gray tongue slack on the glass, small ugly face one big shiver of delight as Joseph, seeing him, rose, shivering himself, to readjust the makeshift paper curtain. Firm ripping noise of the duct tape no cover for the boy's sad grunt, his mother's snarl, curse and beseechment all in a word. Joseph's hand ached as he picked up the X-acto knife, silently slit one black-cheeked harlequin from the old magazine page on the table before him, added the harlequin to the larger distortion behind him: his latest work. It had brought the boy and his mother; a fat white man with no hair and many boils; an old couple, ailment not casually apparent, who with the grim humor of wolves had stationed themselves just at the end of his driveway: we'll get you, sooner or later. They probably would, too. Joseph dissected another harlequin, carefully poised its torso, doppelganger, beside the first—no. No, not there, steady fingers tremored just a little by someone's voice, not the boy's or his mother but definitely one of the new ones, very close to the window.

"Please," just above his head, intimate and sick, "I want to talk to you, I only want to talk to you," as he placed the harlequin, studied it or tried to, "please talk to me, talk to me, talk to me," a groan, near-orgasmic entreaty, he imagined a mouth rubbing wide against the glass, drier than the boy's lips, scaly with a kind of saucy poison, the words it made unimportant beside the tone, the timbre and reek of that voice and his hand was on the knife, he had cut and placed another piece without realizing: the first harlequin's head was now that of a lion, bald and nearly earless, eyes old with the limitless deceits of those promised to show it mercy; the second harlequin's torso issued, limp and smug, from the lion's bony mouth. The voice had stopped.

Joseph set the knife down; he was very tired. Upstairs, closed blinds, the unfresh smell of a house shut tight too long; if only he could open a window, one fucking window, was that to much to ask. Reaching for a beer he noticed with dull dismay that the refrigerator was almost empty, he would be forced to go shopping again. He hated shopping: they followed him around the grocery store, blocked his desperate cart with their empty ones. Hey, aren't you? I just want. Please, for my boy, my sister, my dad.

Can't shop, can't get gas, people following him home, inexplicably convinced of the help he could not give. Letters and notes and pictures, the pictures were the worst, jammed in the mailbox before they stole it. People rolling on the grass, digging it up—if he looked out there right now he was sure to see them, somebody was always digging up the grass. There was even a guy who was counting it; he wrote the day's tally on the sidewalk and threw a fit if anyone walked on it. Chipping pieces off the front porch, creeping around the back yard with lighted candles, leaving love offerings: food, porno magazines, obscure religious tracts. Once he had kicked open the back door, scattering them a moment, and "I'm not Jesus," he had screamed, "I can't help you, why don't you mother-fuckers go home?" and that of course had only made it worse. No wonder the neighbors hated him.

Empty beer already. He opened another one, stood drinking in the cool air of the open refrigerator, wishing he could get drunk and go to bed. Simple pleasures. No rest for the fucking wicked, though, or even the merely cursed. God they were fierce out there tonight, if he didn't get right back to work he was going to start seeing things and oh boy how he hated that. Oh boy oh boy. Snakes' heads in the shower, a face flying large around the kitchen, the severed limbs of bloodless fetuses lying scattered in the basement steps—keep your fucking brain tumors, your cancers and crotch rot and lost kids and lost minds, I'm losing mine too but there was no stopping, no, and he knew it, welcomed it too; he would not have stopped for the world, would not in fact have healed them if he could; ugly, selfish, true. He had never in his life done work like this and it was worth everything, all the waste and sorrow they shit on him, every holy dollop, every crusty squirt. Everything. And the pair of too-large eyes blinking solemn semaphore, just inches from his own, assured him with matchless conviction that this in fact was simply so. He woke in his chair with a headache and wet pants: spilled beer, almost a canful, and he reached in angry terror for the collage, had he spilled on it, fucked it up?

No. "God," he said, a soft statement of fact. It was even titled: "Working by the Light of Burning Human Bodies." He turned on the gooseneck lamp to examine it more closely. "Jesus God," he said. Nothing was waiting for him in the shower. He watched the Today show while he ate, the dregs of a box of Rice Krispies, all powder and grit. Somebody from a local talk show called. He didn't even bother to sneer at the message; his machine was full of them. Back downstairs to look, again, at the collage. Shivering, he turned it on the stack so it faced away from him.

It was always like this when a piece was finished: a kind of listlessness, a feeling of waiting for the next thing. Of course for sheer drastic grotesquerie he could always try a trip to the grocery store, in fact would have to and to hell with the cover of darkness, it never did him any good anyway.

It was always nerve-wracking, that first crack of the front door. Keys out and ready, face composed into a mask less indifference than sheer brick wall: go. Heads, turning, and hands already out—more of them today, maybe thirty. Ignore them all. Somebody was rubbing at his calf. Someone else grabbing for the sleeve of his jacket. He wrenched his arm away, kicked out his leg, small polka of revulsion, get off me and maybe he even said it out loud because somebody sighed, somebody else said please and oh Jesus it was the magic word, pleasepleaseplease like a swarm of insects. He slammed the car door without even won#dering if hands were there. Screw them. Something else he couldn't cure. He spent the ride home worrying about the money he had spent.

Very soon he would have to choose between food and the gas bill, and after that, what? The house? Stop it, he told himself, maybe it won't come to that, maybe it'll stop and they'll go away. Yeah, and maybe one day they'll break in and eat you, oh boy, and he had to laugh at that. He knew with a dry certainty that he could have sold the collages.

Anybody crazy enough to camp out in his back yard for weeks on end would surely be crazy enough to pay large sums of money for what they thought was a cure. He would sooner bum them, every one. Bad enough that this inexorable craziness had rushed into his home, his very life, worse yet that his reactions to the visions their sickness sent had gone beyond merely shaping to dominate his work; he would not commit the final act. A voyeur, yes; without trying but it was still the truth. But he was not a whore. They sent things to him, he made art from them, a closed loop and that was that, final. Halfway down the street, almost home when he saw with despairing clarity that the crowd had doubled at least; word was out, then, that the hermit had emerged. Now he would have to fight his way in, with groceries yet. Rage made his head pound, he felt like running them over, all of them, human bowling pins, whee! Stop it, he said, you're crazier than they are, but the image would not leave him and he had to laugh. Welcome to nirvana. As it was he could only manage two bags. Investigating the con#tents he was depressed to find S.O.S. pads, tomato sauce, pepper and paper towels, a hearty ragout, you bet. "Son of a bitch" and back he went, get the rest or die trying.

He was halfway up the porch again, grim elbows-out death march, when a woman in a red jogging suit fastened on him and would not, would not, let go. He was actually dragging her along and she was ro lightweight, he was losing breath, slowing down when out of the bubble of faces sharp muddy-brown eyes, no rapture there, meeting his and all at once the woman let out a mighty howl and dropped from him, yelling, "He punched me in the titV and in the sudden grateful light- ness Joseph gained the door and slammed inside, sagged to the floor with the bags and laughing in breathless bursts. The cold of the basement, why was it always so damp, what the hell was he doing down here anyway. Half-asleep, and in the comer of his midnight bedroom some dog, graceful bas-relief ballet, paws hanging broken and the bones of its throat hideously warped, warping still under an incredible inner pressure until the head blew free like geysering water, hounding him, ha ha, all the way down the stairs, whispering half-heard prophecy until he threw an empty bottle at it just to shut it up. The bottle shattered on the wall, glass sparkling across the sheaf of collages; he sat down, sighing, to work. Was working. Had been, how long, who knew. Assembled before him a picture of a scalpel, of a little girl, of a fat woman masturbating, of a bottle of 1890's patent medicine. Never Fails to Bring Relief. I've heard that about a lot of things, he thought, and started to cry, a dull monotonous sound, huh-huh-huh like air squeezed in bursts from his chest, heard above the noise his name. Someone saying his name.

[Joseph]

Who was out there tonight, looking brown-eyed at the house, at him, standing bareheaded and serene in the dark, a warm peculiar itching on a forearm, just above the ancient mottled wrist. [Joseph let me in] "Fuck you," he whispered, "fuck you to death," warm snot on his lips, too sick to wipe it away, too tired. Nothing is worth this, nothing.

[Joseph]

The back door curtains, pinned shut for your protection, the porch light hadn't worked since he bought the house. Opening the door, no tears but still that endless chuffing sound, he stared out at the diehards, a part of him remarking Shit you look even crazier than they do, and an old man, brittle and fine as an antique weapon, scratching at his arm as he stepped up to the door like a step in a dance, raising one forearm and the sleeve of one forearm to display with silent assurance—surely this will interest you—an irregular coin-shaped patch, the skin a rich and deadly green.

"Joseph," the same voice in and out of his head, and he grabbed the old man by the other arm and dragged him in.

"Cures anything," the old man said, lifting his beer.

"Cheers," Joseph said. He was possessed of a marvelous lightness, a full and expansive drunkenness that was less a state than a symptom; he felt better than he had for months. "Who're you, "drinking, "Santa Claus?" and he laughed again; it seemed he had done nothing but laugh since the old man came in. "Who gives a shit what my name is." The old man drank again, let out a thin scentless belch. "Watch this," and up with the sleeve again, poured a few drops of beer on the green spot. Joseph leaned forward to see the beer foam up like raw acid, sink back into the skin. The spot. The old man looked at his face and laughed.

"I knew you'd like it." "I can't," leaning back, far back, "I can't do anything about that."

"Oh yes you can."

"I said I can't fix that." "Who wants it fixed?"

Morning, Joseph waking to a half-stale cooking smell and bounding up, in terror that he had somehow left something on the stove, was the house burning, or—Ah. Memory. The old man sat at the kitchen table, eating the last of a piece of wheat toast. "You sure got a shitload of food," he said.

"I buy in bulk." There was coffee. Joseph sat across from the old man, who promptly hauled up his sleeve: the green spot had easily doubled. "Just being in the house helps," he said to Joseph.

Joseph rubbed at his face. "Things are getting too weird even for me."

"Don't start," said the old man impatiently. He took a beer from the refrigerator. "We went through all this last night."

"I don't remember that. I don't even know why I let you in." He didn't either. The old man stared at him over the rim of the can, slow slide of Adam's apple in the veiny tube of throat: not unhappy, or hysterical, or worshipful or greedy, not wanting.

"Everybody gets what they don't want," he said. "The trick is to find a way to want it. But that's not your problem, is it?"

Joseph said nothing.

"Your problem is, and stop me if I'm wrong (but I'm not): you don't want to go where it wants to take you. Like me. But I got over that. All I want now," tapping his arm, "is for this to go on." "And you want me to help you."

"I want you to work. You get where you're going the way you're meant to get there. If you don't jerk yourself off with a lot of shit about guilt. Save your own fucking soul, you know?"

"Jesus. Philosophy."

"Jesus is philosophy." The old man finished off the beer, hollow aluminum thump on the tabletop. "Let's go."

Joseph thought he would feel like an asshole, did as he sat down, supremely conscious of the old man, like a column, behind him. Turning green. "Fucking A," Joseph said, and started in again on the dog collage. Scalpel and little girl, fat woman, the patent medicine dripping, running, long voluptuous stream like a waterfall, infinite relief, infinite cure, peace is flowing like a river. His busy hands warm at the palms, cool the tips of his fingers. Sweat on his back. Yes. The little girl, daisy-faced and hair a river too, the fat woman's cum a river, the scalpel splitting skin to make the biggest river of all. It all wound into a road leading into darkest peace, a vortex not black but green, a deep wet green. Joseph raised his head, smiling, took a long happy breath and saw the old man move, just a little to the left; he had taken off his shirt and was staring as happily at his arm, which was green to the shoulder.

"Just look!" the old man said, and waved his arm like a trophy, then bent to examine the collage. "Pretty good," he said. "Better than anything those other fucks ever sent you."

That night they had an amazing drunk, all the beer in the house, watching the greening of the old man. Joseph told him everything, everything that had happened since the first time, that original supplicant, his first vision or dream: "I thought I was going crazy," Joseph said. "I bet you did."

The old man drank. "I bet you were."

"I called the police," shaking his head, tired amazement still at his own naivete, "They told me I'd have to press charges, you know. for trespass. Okay. Fine, for the first one or two. Or ten. But after that, shit." Slow sluice of Pabst Blue Ribbon. "They tried to make out it was my own fault, attractive nuisance, like I had too many Christmas lights or something. The traffic was incredible.'''' and incredibly he laughed, and the old man laughed too. It was funny in a way. A weird way. "Open another one of those for me," the old man said. "You got it." Snap pop off comes the top, drink it on down and we'll never stop. He told the old man about the reporters, the tabloids and minicams, the failed attempts to make it stranger than it was which had to fail because there was no way, no way it could be: the shared hysteria often, twenty, fifty people, faces changing all the time, chasing their terrified messiah who wanted only to be left alone. "Pictures," he told the old man bitterly. "Of babies. With no arms. Pictures of old people with big fucking tumors, close-ups of tumors. Dead wives or missing kids or who the hell knows what. They taped 'em to the window. Facing in. That was when I used to try to open the drapes." More beer. '''Why, you know? Why do they think I can help them? It wasn't me made them crazy." And the visions, more certain with each one that he was going madder, working under their pernicious influence and waking to find grotesquerie, and beauty, beyond anything he had ever hoped to do: a power so harsh he was helpless before his own talent, magnified by their need, by the pain they carried like the seeds of some rich disease. Manna in reverse. The multitude feeding him.

"How can I say no to it?" wild, spilling his beer, head pointed to the ceiling, compass of grief revealed. "I don't want them to be hurt, but I can't help them anyway, and they keep giving me this stuff, how can I turn it down? How can I do that? I can't do that." The old man opened another beer for them both, drank with lips green at the comers. "Come on," a gentle hand on Joseph's. "Back to work."

Waking in darkness. The old man, long swath of color in the metal folding chair. Joseph had to piss something terrible. On his way back from the bathroom he chanced a look outside: they were still there."Hey," second day, third? Who knew. He had done six new pieces. "Hey. What the hell's happening to you anyway?"

The old man's luminous smile; his teeth were as falsely white as ever. "Feels great," he said. "Riding the current usually does."

Eighteen, nineteen new pieces, they poured out of him like water. The old man was totally green now but insisted there was more to come, wait, just wait a little longer.

"Wait for what," said Joseph, but mildly. He felt better, oh God how much better he felt. He hadn't had a vision, a hallucination, since the old man came, except of course (of course) for the ones the old man carried, but those, oh those were different. Because they actually did something. For someone else, someone besides Joseph. Although they left him with an aftertaste, a restlessness that was perhaps a curve in the circle begun by the old man, instigated by the offering of his willful mutation, a cycle that nourished them and itself: more art equals more change equals more art, infinite cure, yes. Never Fails to Bring Relief. The people outside did not leave but no new ones came. Joseph, pointing at the collages, told the old man. "Then these must all be for you."

"Not really," he said. Palms to cheeks, a long yawn, Joseph rubbed his eyes to consider this last piece: the pristine alien beauty of wasps in promenade, long black streamers like cries of wonder from the skeleton children be#neath, their skeleton mothers askip in their own inimitable waltz. He turned, to display it to the old man, hey look at this. "Hey, look at this," he said, turning all the way in his chair. Nothing. "Hey," louder. He got up, still holding the collage, walked all around the basement. He realized he didn't even know the old man's name. He went upstairs, searched the house collage in hand,

"Hey!"

The front door was unlocked. He sat in the chair nearest the door to consider this. The collage was still in his hand. Someone knocked at the door and he opened it. It was a girl, young girl, with a mild case of acne and no right hand. "Here," he said, and gave her the collage. As it left his hand and touched hers one of his fingers blossomed a bright and ineffable green.