Ray Bradbury. Quicker Than The Eye

                Ray Bradbury
                http://blogs.myspace.com/mysteryal

                Quicker Than The Eye
                1996

     It  was  at  a  magic show I saw the man who looked enough like me to be my
twin.
     My  wife  and  I were seated at a Saturday night performance, it was summer
and  warm,  the  audience  melting in weather and conviviality. All around I saw
married  and  engaged  couples  delighted and then alarmed by the comic opera of
their lives which was being shown in immense symbol onstage.
     A woman was sawed in half. How the husbands in the audience _smiled._
     A  woman in a cabinet vanished. A bearded magician wept for her in despair.
Then, at the tip-top of the balcony, she appeared, waving a white-powdered hand,
infinitely beautiful, unattainable, far away.
     How the wives grinned their cat grins!
     "Look at them!" I said to my wife.
     A  woman  floated  in midair. .. a goddess born in all men's minds by their
own  true  love. Let not her dainty feet touch earth. Keep her on that invisible
pedestal.  Watch it! God, don't tell me how it's done, _anyone!_ Ah, look at her
float, and _dream._
     And  what  was that man who spun plates, globes, stars, torches, his elbows
twirling  hoops, his nose balancing a blue feather, sweating everything at once!
What,  I  asked  myself,  but  the  commuter  husband,  lover, worker, the quick
luncher, juggling hour, Benzedrine, Nembutal, bank balances, and budgets?
     Obviously,  none  of us had come to escape the world outside, but rather to
have  it  tossed  back  at  us in more easily digested forms, brighter, cleaner,
quicker, neater; a spectacle both heartening and melancholy.
     Who in life has not seen a woman disappear?
     There,  on the black, plush stage, women, mysteries of talc and rose petal,
vanished.  Cream  alabaster  statues,  sculptures  of summer lily and fresh rain
melted  to  dreams,  and  the  dreams  became empty mirrors even as the magician
reached hungrily to seize them.
     From  cabinets  and  nests  of  boxes, from flung sea-nets, shattering like
porcelain as the conjurer fired his gun, the women vanished.
     Symbolic,  I  thought. Why do magicians point pistols at lovely assistants,
unless through some secret pact with the male subconscious?
     "What?" asked my wife.
     "Eh?"
     "You were muttering," said my wife.
     "Sorry."  I  searched  the  program. "Oh! Next comes Miss Quick! The _only_
female pickpocket in the world!"
     "That can't be true," said my wife quietly.
     I  looked to see if she was joking. In the dark, her dim mouth seemed to be
smiling, but the quality of that smile was lost to me.
     The orchestra hummed like a serene flight of bees.
     The curtains parted.
     There,  with  no  great  fanfare,  no  swirl of cape, no bow, only the most
condescending  tilt of her head, and the faintest elevation of her left eyebrow,
stood Miss Quick.
     I thought it was a dog act, when she snapped her fingers.
     "Volunteers. All _men!"_
     "Sit down." My wife pulled at me.
     I had risen.
     There  was  a  stir.  Like  so many hounds, a silently baying pack rose and
walked (or did they run?) to the snapping of Miss Quick's colorless fingernails.
     It  was  obvious  instantly that Miss Quick was the same woman who had been
vanishing all evening.
     Budget show, I thought; everyone doubles in brass. I don't like her.
     "What?" asked my wife.
     "Am I talking out loud again?"
     But  really,  Miss  Quick  provoked  me.  For she looked as if she had gone
backstage,  shrugged  on  a  rumpled  tweed  walking  suit,  one size too large,
gravy-spotted  and  grass-stained,  and then purposely rumpled her hair, painted
her  lipstick askew, and was on the point of exiting the stage door when someone
cried, "You're _on!"_
     So  here  she was now, in her practical shoes, her nose shiny, her hands in
motion but her face immobile, getting it over with .
     Feet firmly and resolutely planted, she waited, her hands deep in her lumpy
tweed pockets, her mouth cool, as the dumb volunteers dogged it to the stage.
     This mixed pack she set right with a few taps, lining them up in a military
row.
     The audience waited.
     "That's all! Act's over! Back to your seats!"
     Snap! went her plain fingers.
     The  men,  dismayed,  sheepishly peering at each other, ambled off. She let
them stumble half down the stairs into darkness, then yawned:
     "Haven't you forgotten something?"
     Eagerly, they turned.
     "Here."
     With  a  smile like the very driest wine, she lazily unwedged a wallet from
one of her pockets. She removed another wallet from within her coat. Followed by
a third, a fourth, a fifth! Ten wallets in all!
     She  held  them  forth, like biscuits, to good beasts. The men blinked. No,
those were not their wallets! They had been onstage for only an instant. She had
mingled  with  them  only in passing. It was all a joke. Surely she was offering
them brand-new wallets, compliments of the show!
     But  now  the  men began feeling themselves, like sculptures finding unseen
flaws  in old, hastily flung together armatures. Their mouths gaped, their hands
grew more frantic, slapping their chest-pockets, digging their pockets.
     All the while Miss Quick ignored them to calmly sort their wallets like the
morning mail.
     It was at this precise moment I noticed the man on the far right end of the
line,  half  on  the  stage.  I lifted my opera glasses. I looked once. I looked
twice.
     "Well,"  I  said  lightly.  "There  seems  to  be  a man there who somewhat
resembles me."
     "Oh?" said my wife.
     I handed her the glasses, casually. "Far right."
     "It's not _like_ you," said my wife. "It's _you!"_
     "Well, almost," I said modestly.
     The  fellow  was  nice-looking.  It  was  hardly  cricket to look thus upon
yourself  and  pronounce  favorable  verdicts. Simultaneously, I had grown quite
cold.  I  took  back  the  opera  glasses  and  nodded,  fascinated.  "Crew cut.
Horn-rimmed glasses. Pink complexion. Blue eyes-"
     "Your absolute twin!" cried my wife.
     And  this  was  true.  And  it  was strange, sitting there, watching myself
onstage.
     "No, no, no," I kept whispering.
     But  yet,  what  my mind refused, my eye accepted. Aren't there two billion
people  in  this  world? Yes! All different snowflakes, no two the same! But now
here,  delivered into my gaze, endangering my ego and my complacency, here was a
casting from the same absolutes, the identical mold.
     Should  I  believe, disbelieve, feel proud, or run scared? For here I stood
witness to the forgetfulness of God.
     "I don't think," said God, "I've made one like _this_ before."
     But, I thought, entranced, delighted, alarmed: God errs.
     Flashes from old psychology books lit my mind.
     Heredity. Environment.
     "Smith! Jones! Helstrom!"
     Onstage,  in  bland drill-sergeant tones, Miss Quick called roll and handed
back the stolen goods.
     You borrow your body from all your forebears, I thought. Heredity.
     But isn't the body also an environment?
     "Winters!"
     Environment, they say, surrounds you. Well, doesn't the body surround, with
its lakes, its architectures of bone, its overabundances, or wastelands of soul?
Does  not what is seen in passing window-mirrors, a face either serene snowfalls
or  a  pitted  abyss,  the  hands  like  swans  or  sparrows, the feet anvils or
hummingbirds,  the body a lumpy wheat-sack or a summer fern, do these not, seen,
paint the mind, set the image, shape the brain and psyche like clay? They _do!_
     "Bidwell! Rogers!"
     Well,  then,  trapped  in  the  same  environmental  flesh,  how fared this
stranger onstage?
     In  the old fashion, I wanted to leap to my feet and call, "What o'clock is
it?"
     And  he,  like  the  town  crier  passing  late  with  my  face, might half
mournfully reply, "Nine o'clock, and all's well
     But was all well with _him?_
     Question:  did  those  horn-rims  cover  a  myopia not only of light but of
spirit?
     Question:  was  the  slight  obesity  pressed to his skeleton symbolic of a
similar gathering of tissue in his head?
     In  sum,  did  his  soul  go  north  while  mine went south, the same flesh
cloaking us but our minds reacting, one winter, one summer?
     "My God," I said, half aloud. "Suppose we're absolutely _identical!"_
     "Shh!" said a woman behind me.
     I swallowed hard.
     Suppose,  I  thought,  he  _is_  a chain-smoker, light sleeper, overeater,
manic-depressive,  glib  talker,  deep/shallow thinker, flesh fancier...
     No  one  with that body, that face, could be otherwise. Even our names must
be similar.
     Our names!
     "...1...bl . . . er..." .
     Miss Quick spoke his!
     Someone coughed. I missed it.
     Perhaps  she'd  repeat  it.  But  no,  he, my twin, moved forward. Damn! He
stumbled! The audience laughed.
     I focused my binoculars swiftly.
     My  twin  stood  quietly,  center  stage  now,  his  wallet returned to his
fumbling hands.
     "Stand straight," I whispered. "Don't slouch."
     "Shh!" said my wife.
     I squared my own shoulders, secretly.
     I  never  knew  I  looked  that fine, I thought, cramming the glasses to my
eyes.  Surely  my  nostrils  aren't that thinly made, the true aristocrat. Is my
skin that fresh and handsome, my chin _that_  firm?
     I blushed, in silence.
     After  all,  if  my wife said that was me, accept it! The lamplight of pure
intelligence shone softly from every pore of his face.
     "The glasses." My wife nudged me.
     Reluctantly I gave them up.
     She trained the glasses rigidly, not on the man, but now on Miss Quick, who
was  busy  cajoling,  flirting, and repicking the pockets of the nearest men. On
occasion my wife broke into a series of little satisfied snorts and giggles.
    
     Miss Quick was, indeed, the goddess Shiva.
     If  I  saw  two  hands,  I  saw  nine. Her hands, an aviary, flew, rustled,
tapped,  soared, petted, whirled, tickled as Miss Quick, her face blank, swarmed
coldly over her victims; touched without touching.
     "What's in this pocket? And _this?_ And _here?"_
     She  shook their vests, pinched their lapels, jingled their trousers: money
rang.  She  punched them lightly with a vindictive forefinger, ringing totals on
cash  registers.  She  unplucked  coat buttons with mannish yet fragile motions,
gave  wallets  back,  sneaked  them away. She thrust them, took them, stole them
again,  while  peeling  money  to count it behind the men's backs, then snatched
their watches while
     holding their hands.
     She trapped a live doctor now!
     "Have you a thermometer!?" she asked.
     "Yes." He searched. His face panicked. He searched again. The audience cued
him with a roar. He glanced over to find:
     Miss Quick standing with the thermometer in her mouth, like an unlit smoke.
She whipped it out, eyed it.
     "Temperature!" she cried. "One hundred ten!"
     She closed her eyes and gave an insincere shake of her hips.
     The  audience  roared.  And  now  she  assaulted her victims, bullied them,
tugged at their shirts, rumpled their hair, asked:
     "Where's your _tie?"_
     They clapped their hands to their empty collars.
     She plucked their ties from nowhere, tossed them back.
     She  was  a  magnet  that  invisibly drew good-luck charms, saints' medals,
Roman  coins,  theater  stubs,  handkerchiefs, stickpins, while the audience ran
riot, convulsed as these rabbit men stood peeled of all prides and protections.
     Hold  your  hip  pocket,  she  vacuumed  your  vest.  Clutch your vest, she
jackpotted your trousers. Blithely bored, firm but evanescent, she convinced you
you  missed  nothing,  until she extracted it, with faint loathing, from her own
tweeds moments later.
     "What's this?!" She held up a letter. "'Dear Helen: Last night with you-'"
     A furious blush as the victim tussled with Miss Quick, snatched the letter,
stowed  it  away.  But a moment later, the letter was restolen and reread aloud:
"'Dear Helen: Last night-'"
     So the battle raged. One woman. Ten men.
     She kissed one, stole his belt.
     Stole another's suspenders.
     The women in the _audience-whinnied._
     Their men, shocked, joined in.
     What   a   magnificent  bully,  Miss  Quick!  How  she  spanked  her  dear,
idiot-grinning,   carry-on-somehow  men  turned  boys  as  she  spun  them  like
cigar-store  Indians,  knocked them with her brontosaur hip, leaned on them like
barber-poles, calling each one cute or lovely or handsome.
     This  night,  I  thought,  is  lunatic! All about me, wives, hilarious with
contempt,  hysterical  at being so shabbily revealed in their national pastimes,
gagged  for  air. Their husbands sat stunned, as if a war were over that had not
been  declared,  fought  and  lost before they could move. Each, nearby, had the
terrible look of a man who fears his throat is cut, and that a sneeze would fill
the aisle with heads .
     Quickly! I thought. _Do_ something!
     "You, _you_ onstage, my twin, dodge! Escape!"
     And she was coming _at_ him!
     "Be firm!" I told my twin. "Strategy! Duck, weave. Zigzag. Don't look where
she says. Look where she _doesn't_ say! _Go_ it! now!"
     If  I  shouted  this,  or  merely  ground it to powder in my teeth, I don't
recall, for all the men froze as Miss Quick seized my twin by the hand.
     "Careful!" I whispered.
     Too  late.  His  watch  was  gone. He didn't know it. Your watch is gone! I
thought. He doesn't know what _time_  it is! I thought.
     Miss Quick stroked his lapel. Back off! I warned myself.
     Too late. His forty-dollar pen was gone. He didn't know it. She tweaked his
nose. He smiled. Idiot! There went his wallet. Not your nose, fool, your _coat!_
     "Padded?" She pinched his shoulder. He looked at his right arm. No! I cried
silently, for now she had the letters out of his left coat pocket. She planted a
red  kiss  on his brow and backed off with everything else he had on him, coins,
identification,  a  package of chocolates which she ate, greedily. Use the sense
God gave a cow! I shouted behind my face. Blind! _See_ what she's doing!
     She whirled him round, measured him, and said, "This _yours?"_ and returned
his tie.
     My  wife  was  hysterical. She still held the glasses fixed on every nuance
and  vibration  of  loss and deprivation on the poor idiot's face. Her mouth was
spoiled with triumph.
     My  God! I cried in the uproar. Get off the stage! I yelled within, wishing
I could really yell it. At least get out while you have _some_ pride!
     The  laughter  had  erupted a volcano in the theater, high and rumbling and
dark.  The dim grotto seemed lit with unhealthy fever, an incandescence. My twin
wanted to break off, like one of Pavlov's dogs, too many bells on too many days:
no reward, no food. His eyes were glazed with his insane predicament.
     Fall! Jump in the pit! _Crawl_ away! I thought.
     The  orchestra sawed at destiny with violins and Valkyrian trumpets in full
flood.
     With  one  last  snatch,  one last contemptuous wag of her body, Miss Quick
grasped my twin's clean white shirt, and yanked it _off._
     She  threw  the shirt in the air. As it fell, so did his pants As his pants
fell,  unbelted,  so  did  the theater. An avalanche of shock soared to bang the
rafters and roll over us in echoes a thundering hilarity.
     The curtain fell.
     We  sat,  covered  with  unseen  rubble.  Drained  of  blood, buried in one
upheaval  after another, degraded and autopsied and, minus eulogy, tossed into a
mass  grave, we men took a minute to stare at that dropped curtain, behind which
hid  the  pickpocket  and  her  victims,  behind which a man quickly hoisted his
trousers up his spindly legs.
     A  burst  of applause, a prolonged tide on a dark shore. Miss Quick did not
appear to bow. She did not need to. She was standing behind the curtain. I could
_feel_  her  there,  no  smile,  no  expression. Standing, coldly estimating the
caliber  of  the  applause,  comparing  it  to the metered remembrances of other
nights.
     I  jumped  up  in an absolute rage. I had, after all, failed myself. When I
should  have  ducked, I bobbed; when I should have backed off, I ran in. What an
ass!
     "What  a  fine  show!"  said  my  wife  as  we milled through the departing
audience.
     "Fine!" I cried.
     "Didn't you like it?"
     "All  except  the  pickpocket. Obvious act, overdone, no subtlety," I said,
lighting a cigarette.
     "She was a whiz!"
     "This way." I steered my wife toward the stage door.
     "Of  course,"  said my wife blandly, "that man, the one who looks like you,
he  was  a  plant.  They call them shills, don't they? Paid by the management to
pretend to be part of the audience?"
     "No  man  would  take money for a spectacle like that," I said. "No, he was
just some boob who didn't know how to be careful."
     "What are we doing back here?"
     Blinking around, we found we were backstage.
     Perhaps  I  wished  to  stride  up  to  my  twin, shouting, "Half-baked ox!
Insulter  of all men! Play a flute: you dance. Tickle your chin: you jump like a
puppet! Jerk!"
     The truth was, of course, I must see my twin close-up, confront the traitor
and  see  where  his true flesh differed from mine. After all, wouldn't _I_ have
done better in his place?!
     The backstage was lit in blooms and isolated flushes, now bright, now dark,
where the other magicians stood chatting. And there, _there_ was Miss Quick!
     And there, smiling, was my _twin!_
     "You did fine, Charlie," said Miss Quick.
     My twin's name was Charlie. Stupid name.
     Charlie patted Miss Quick's cheek. _"You_ did fine, ma'am!"
     God,  it  was  _true!_ A shill, a confederate. Paid what? Five, ten dollars
for letting his shirt be torn oft, letting his pants drop with his pride? What a
turncoat, traitor!
     I stood, glaring.
     He glanced up.
     Perhaps he saw me.
     Perhaps some bit of my rage and impacted sorrow reached him.
     He  held  my gaze for only a moment, his mouth wide, as if he had just seen
an old school chum. But, not remembering my name, could not call out, so let the
moment pass.
     He saw my rage. His face paled. His smile died. He glanced quickly away. He
did  not  look  up  again, but stood pretending to listen to Miss Quick, who was
laughing and talking with the other magicians.
     I  stared at him and stared again. Sweat oiled his face. My hate melted. My
temper  cooled.  I  saw  his  profile clearly, his chin, eyes, nose, hairline; I
memorized it all. Then I heard someone say:
     "It was a _fine_ show!"
     My wife, moving forward, shook the hand of the pickpocketing beast.
     On the street, I said, "Well, _I'm_ satisfied."
     "About what?" asked my wife.
     "He  doesn't  look like me at all. Chin's too sharp. Nose is smaller. Lower
lip  isn't  full  enough.  Too much eyebrow. Onstage, far oft, had me going. But
close  up,  no,  no. It was the crew cut and horn-rims fooled us. _Anyone_ could
have horn-rims and a crew cut."
     "Yes," my wife agreed, "anyone."
     As  she  climbed into our car, I could not help but admire her long, lovely
legs.
     Driving  off, I thought I glimpsed that familiar face in the passing crowd.
The  face,  however, was watching _me._ I wasn't sure. Resemblances, I now knew,
are superficial.
     The face vanished in the crowd.
     "I'll  never  forget,"  said  my  wife, "when his pants-fell!" I drove very
fast, then drove very slow, all the way home.