Raven said, If I may? Let me explain not just this evening’s illustration, but the grand oeuvre of my work. What I do is not magic. Magic is based in illusion, and illusion is based in lies. Visual fictions and other illusions, Mr. Wagstaffe, worry people who seek certainty from sight. But what I create are not fictions. They are not lies. They are, instead, revelations. I illustrate simply what already exists, by removing —
Yes, we know, said Wagstaffe. The fog that obscures the truth.
Precisely. The way we perceive reality is imaginative. People forget this. One’s own imagination transforms what one sees into images, and then understands these images as things. We think of spectatorship as inherently passive, but it is in fact a highly engaged and active process. Your brain, for example, Mr. Wagstaffe, registers the pattern of light produced by this object you sit upon and translates it into some signifier, but this is not the lone process for your brain to understand it: chair. I do not wish to confuse that process, but merely to focus the brain, each of your brains —
He’s pointing at me, said Sam. At you Adine. At us.
— to a new way of seeing. I wish not to create illusions, but to illustrate. Illusions are about faith, which does not interest me. Faith is only that faculty of man to believe things he knows to be untrue. I am not interested in duping or cajoling my audience. Seeing is believing, and seeing depends on an imaginative use of ambiguities.
Sausage? offered Wagstaffe.
No, said Raven. Further, you see half of something, or the vague shape of something, the brain can still understand it as a whole. And so what if the world the eye sees, or which the brain tells the eye it sees — or which the eye tells the brain it sees — what if it is only a partial version? My illustrations are an attempt to excite those ambiguities and complete the partial version of the world which exists in viewers’ minds. Tonight, I wish to display a whole version of this city to everyone who lives here — the truth about this place, gentle viewers, where you live.
What is that nutcase talking about? said Adine. What whole version of this city? What truth? This is nonsense. It’s psychobabble. Meaningless. How does anyone buy this?
Lucal Wagstaffe chewed thoughtfully on some jerky.
What’s going on, Sammy?
Silence.
Sammy?
Yes.
You there?
Yes Adine.
You’re quiet.
I’m letting them talk Adine.
Everything okay?
Yes Adine.
You seem. . faraway.
I’m here Adine. The big clock is stopped but I’m still doing good communication Adine. I’m doing the work, he said, and he stared into Raven’s hollow dark eyes and scratched the crust on his jaw until something jammy came dribbling out.
THROUGH THE PARK Debbie walked Pop back to Street’s Milk & Things. Near the base of the Slipway, something white lay off the path amid the bushes. A shopping bag, or a sheaf of paper.
Lark, all these bins and still people strew refuse, lamented Pop.
Debbie moved closer: whatever it was flapped slightly, maybe caught in the breeze. She crouched. The white was feathers, the flap was the feeble lift and collapse of a broken wing. And here was the glossy black pebble of an eye, a beak. It’s a bird, she said. It’s hurt.
Don’t touch it, said Pop. It’s probably aswim with germinations.
Debbie knelt, placed her fingertips on the bird’s side, felt a heartbeat as urgent as a drumroll. The whole creature seemed to be one trembling, feathery heart.
It’s one of his, the magician’s, said Pop, let it die.
It’s a living thing! Can we take it to your store?
I’ve no time for resuscitations, I have telephonic appellations to dilate. My house, recall, has been abscondered. Though what make of revolutionaire are you, whom is more concerned with enfeebled birds than motorizing the wheels of restribution? Cause for disbarment from the Movement, prehaps?
We have to save it, said Debbie.
But Pop was lumbering away up the path.
In a nearby trashbin she found Havoc’s placard — FUG THIS SHET PARK — discarded the day before, imagined him lisping his way through this slogan, suppressed a chuckle. She folded the cardboard into a little crib, lined it with crumpled IFC wrappers, and tucked the dove inside.
Pop was gone. Debbie imagined him in his store, ranting into the telephone. The thought exhausted her. So instead of joining him she climbed the slipway to Parkside West Station, boarded a Whitehall-bound Yellowline train, which she rode, with the bird in her lap, all the way home.
HOW ABOUT A little tour of the city? asked Starx, starting the engine.
As you wish, said the illustrationist, resuming his seductive pose in the backseat. Perhaps you could cool the air, though. I find it hot.
Starx cranked the dials, swung the Citywagon onto Entertainment Drive. Where to do you think, Bailie?
But Olpert was listening to the A/C. From it came a strange fupping sound. What is that noise, he said.
It’s the car, Bailie, said Starx. And to Raven: This guy, eh — bit of a nervous bird.
Yes, said Raven.
How about a quick tour to the eastend? Maybe a jaunt through Greenwood Gardens and Bebrog, a stop for lunch in Li’l Browntown. Or we could head out to the Institute, go for a walk around the campus?
I’d prefer, said Raven, to first pay another visit to the bridge.
Guardian Bridge? Again?
Yes.
Whatever you say, said Starx. He turned onto Trappe Street and headed north toward Lowell Overpass. He glanced at his partner. Bailie, you all right?
The sound inside the dashboard was like paper rustling. From the vent what appeared to be a snowflake blasted out on a waft of A/C, performed a little loop-de-loop on the updraft, and settled on Olpert’s thigh: a feather.
He closed his hand over it, shut the vents. The sound died — but Starx turned the fans back on. You deaf, Bailie? Our guest finds it hot.
Indeed, said the illustrationist.
The sound returned: the purr of playing cards threaded through a bike’s spokes.
Don’t you think it sounds weird? said Olpert. Maybe we should turn it off.
In the backseat Raven attended to his manicure with a nailfile. I’d rather not, he said.
See? said Starx. And what do you know about cars anyway, Bailie?
The sound grew louder, more urgent. A second feather came sailing out of the vent. And then another, and another — and with a mighty cough the vents spewed a sudden blizzard: hundreds of feathers swirled into the car in a white squall.
Starx yelled, What the fug!
Olpert was overwhelmed by the scratch and tickle of feathers, a swarm of clawfooted moths. One flew in his mouth, he gagged, batted at the air, and brushed madly at his face.
Starx pulled onto the shoulder and killed the engine. The fans died. The feathers settled. The car’s interior suggested the aftermath of a to-the-death pillowfight.
Wow, said Starx. Weird.
Olpert swept a layer of down onto the floormats.
Most intriguing, said the illustrationist from the backseat.
These wagons, said Starx, they’re communal, never know what other drivers have got up to in them. Maybe the last person tried to roast squab on the carburetor.
Ah, said Raven.
They sat for a moment before Starx restarted the engine, tentatively. Olpert kicked the feathers into a little pile on the floormat and placed his loafers overtop.
Hey, said Starx, mind if we crack the windows now instead?
Fine, said Raven thinly. Though such an episode does raise certain questions, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Bailie?