Ray Bradbury



                   Quicker Than The Eye

    

    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.