Man Without a Shadow

by Colin Wilson

  So I went home, leaving Oliver with Cunningham. Kirsten walked back with me; he was wide awake, and talked non-stop about music being the first of the magic arts, etc. He wanted to come up to my room, or me to go into his, but I said I was too sleepy.

  In fact, Diana was fast asleep when I got in, and I simply climbed in beside her, and went off to sleep myself. But two hours later I woke up in a fever of desire, and made love to her. I was startled by the intensity of my own need for her—it was as if my mind had been cleared of all distractions so that I could suddenly grasp how much she means to me.

  Nov. 27th.

  Strange things are happening over at Cunningham’s. I helped Kirsten move some of his stuff over there this afternoon. We didn’t intend to disturb Cunningham, but the door of the upstairs room was locked, and Oliver was out, so there was no alternative but to knock on Cunningham’s door. We could hear someone moving around inside. Finally, he opened it, and the most awful smell came out—incense mixed with burnt meat—and Cunningham himself was wearing a peculiar black robe with a hood. His eyes were either very tired, or he was under the influence of some drug. He handed me the key without looking at me properly, and slammed the door again.

  Later: I was writing the above when Gertrude arrived. She seemed to be in a strange mood, and said casually that everything is now over between us. I had a feeling that she wanted me to deny this, give her reasons for making her change her mind, but was unable to speak. When she’s with me, I realize that she has a curious power of exciting me sexually—far greater, in its way, than Caroline ever had. This I suppose to be due to her air of separateness, a kind of inner reserve that she couldn’t abandon no matter how hard she tried. Diana lacks this; I sometimes feel that when she gives her body, she has no awareness of giving something of importance; it is something she hardly values. Consequently, sex with Diana never produces a feeling of violation, of overcoming obstacles; Diana has a capacity for giving herself so completely that she seems to dissolve into oneself. This satisfies me emotionally and gives her an absolute hold over me. Gertrude can never give herself to the same extent; but the consequence is that she arouses far more straightforward animal lust in me.

  Still, it was obvious to me from the beginning that Gertrude has nosed out what is going on with Diana. I naturally felt reluctant to talk of it to her—it would seem too much like gloating over a new mistress. She asked me bluntly why Diana’s clothes are all over the place. I explained that she and Kirsten have broken up. She then asked me why Diana’s stockings are on the bathroom floor, and I had to admit that she was staying here. She then said rather coldly: ‘You don’t have to lie to me about these things; what about her husband?’ When I told her the story of Diana and the bookmaker type, her nose wrinkled with disgust. It was obvious she had difficulty in preventing herself from saying: ‘Oh, she is that kind of a woman, is she?’ (Women have a most phenomenal capacity for seeing other women as they want to see them; their capacity for distortion is so great that it’s a good thing there have never been any women philosophers.)

  I was interested to see her indignation about Diana. I wanted to ask her about her standards of morality, that allowed her to go to bed with me, yet condemn Diana for escaping from an unsatisfactory marriage. But she steered clear of this, and said that she thought Kirsten needed to be taken care of. Thinking that this might give a new direction to her interests, I started to talk about Kirsten, said that I was convinced of his genius, and then gave her a brief character-sketch, emphasizing that Kirsten is too abstracted and other-worldly to make a satisfactory husband. Then Gertrude suddenly declared that she was convinced that Cunningham was an evil influence; I wasn’t prepared for this, since they seemed to get on perfectly last night. When I pressed her to be more explicit, she said: ‘I haven’t met many evil persons in my lifetime, but I have a feeling that he is actively evil.’ This gave me a sense of despair—it is useless trying to talk to Gertrude about certain things; she has an absolutely closed mind. I couldn’t make her see that Cunningham is probably much like the rest of us—a man who doesn’t really feel very much at home or very secure in the world, who has an unusual amount of vitality, but is strangely weak in purpose. This now seems to me to be the truth. I understand what Diana meant in her trance when she said that he doesn’t live from his centre. I myself am uncertain what I ought to do with my life—I call myself a writer because this seems about the most plausible of my notions of myself; but I feel no sense of destiny as a writer, as I think Shakespeare and Dickens probably did. And yet I undoubtedly have a kind of magnet at my centre that, whether I like it or not, draws all my energies into a knot, so that all my living seems to me a constant effort in a certain direction—even though I couldn’t define that direction. I believe this also applies to Oliver and Kirsten. But I feel it does not apply to Cunningham, any more than it applied to Austin. I feel there is something oddly pathetic in all this talk about magic—even if there is something in it. I find this difficult to express—but it seems to me like the way that very young animals try to suck at any object that reminds them of the mother’s teat, but don’t succeed in getting milk! I think Cunningham is right to be jealous of Spender, Isherwood and Co. He possesses as much talent as anyone of that generation; the only trouble is that he has never learned to keep it concentrated on one purpose. The result, I think, is that he has come to compromise more and more as he’s got older, and many of his compromises have probably been bad—in the moral sense. But I don’t sense evil in him; only weakness.

  Of course, I suspect that Gertrude is aware of the atmosphere of sexuality that he exudes. This is something of which I have become steadily more aware over the past few days—almost as if he wanted to drop the concealments and show himself to me in full. But this only deepens my sense of his weakness. He is a victim of the sexual confidence-trick. It is obvious that every girl represents a challenge, a privacy, a self-enclosed identity, and that his immediate desire is to tear off her clothes, drive his assault weapon into her, and say: ‘There, take that, you bitch.’ Then, with a satisfied grin, make another tick in his book of sexual conquests. I sympathize with this; I recognize the same urge in myself. Yet it is finally a self-frustrating activity when carried on in this spirit, like killing flies in summer; no matter how many you kill, there are still billions left in the world, and they are ineradicable; they’ve existed for millions of years, and will probably still exist when the world comes to an end. So this continual conquest is like drinking vinegar to quench your thirst. Wedmore told me a story that didn’t strike me as important at the time. Cunningham had sex with every woman in the house during the period that Wedmore was there; many of them obviously wanted to continue sharing his bed, but he asked Wedmore to help him in evading them. He did this by playing them off against one another, and by making use of the menfolk to whom they were supposed to be attached. After one complicated manœuvre, Wedmore remarked that Cunningham would have done better to avoid these women in the first place. Cunningham replied: ‘That’s true, but I had to possess them once.’ This is significant; it indicates, I think, his compulsive need to keep ‘possessing’ different women, as if to prove something to himself. This also struck me about Cunningham’s story of seizing the princess in the middle of her engagement party and rushing her off to bed. I can imagine him, afterwards, saying to himself: ‘I did it. I am godlike. How many other men could have done that?’—and yet somehow not feeling any different. And this brings me to another point about Cunningham: his constant need to thumb his nose at society. He is too aware of society.

  Nov. 28th.

  Things get crazier. Diana and I were eating supper last night—peacefully and happily, because she had left that filthy factory for good, and Kirsten had moved into Cunningham’s (two men spent half the afternoon wrestling his piano downstairs). There was a knock at the door; we thought it might be Kirsten again, and she rushed into the bathroom; but it was Cunningham, l
ooking completely exhausted. I offered him some wine; he poured himself half a pint of Medoc, drank it straight down, then vanished into the bedroom and closed the door. We left him to himself. Diana and I wanted to celebrate, so we took a bus out to Woolwich, had some beer in a pub, and went across on the ferry, and then back. I felt absurdly happy, although it was a raw, misty evening, and there was an icy wind on the river. On the way back, I asked her point-blank about Tom Drage, the bookmaker type—she once told me that she had never ‘given herself’ to him. Now I pressed her, she said that she hadn’t ever given herself to him. To begin with, she had more than a suspicion that he already had a wife, or at least a permanent mistress. He once tried to persuade her to go with him to an hotel, but she thought it too sordid and refused. I asked her about the night I saw her coming off the waste ground; she said that he had been trying to persuade her to go away with him for the week-end, and had been particularly persistent. She admitted that he’d got her half-undressed and had a determined attempt at raping her, but claimed that he didn’t succeed. I asked if he changed his mind and abandoned the attempt; she looked embarrassed and said: ‘No, something else happened.’ I didn’t press her, but gather that his enthusiasm was his undoing.

  This pleased me, even though I’m not sure whether to believe her. Although I had got used to the idea that she had been Drage’s mistress, it faintly disturbed me. . . . Anyway, we went into another pub to celebrate, and I drank two pints of black-and-tan, and Diana drank sherry, and we arrived home at ten o’clock feeling tipsy and very happy. I think if we’d met Kirsten, we would have made no attempt to conceal what is happening.

  Cunningham was still asleep when we got in, but he roused himself and joined us. The first thing he did was to drain another glass of wine, then he lit a cigarette with an abominable smell (he smokes very little as a rule). Then he said: ‘Ah Gerard, I begin to wish I’d introduced you to this earlier. Now I need your help, and you don’t even understand what’s going on.’ I urged him to explain to me. He said: ‘I’ve suspected for some time now that my enemies are trying to kill me. I felt fairly sure of it the other day when someone tried to push me downstairs.’ He explained that it wasn’t a person who had tried to push him—just an invisible force. He then went into a rambling story about some magical order in Paris, which was headed by a German, an Italian and a Hungarian, and of how they had expelled him after a quarrel about publishing certain secrets in their magazine. The Hungarian swore to kill him, and Cunningham had one night become aware of a presence in the room, and a hand that hovered around in the air, waiting to grip his throat! For three days, he said, he performed a ceremony to invoke certain destructive forces under the command of his guardian angel. On the third day, the Hungarian died—apparently of heart-failure, as he walked down the steps of the Bibliothèque Nationale. The trouble with black magic, apparently, is that a competent magician can redirect all your curses back on your own head!

  Now, Cunningham said, he was convinced that the other two had decided that they were strong enough to attack him. To begin with, they had somehow learned where he lived; this enabled them to direct a continual stream of some malevolent influence at the house. He asked me if I had mentioned his address to anyone. I felt rather guilty, and said that I had spoken to Radin, who had come and talked to me while Cunningham was out of the room. I didn’t tell him that I’d actually had lunch with Radin. Cunningham said: ‘Ah, that explains it. I know that man is an enemy. You shouldn’t have given him my address. He must have sent someone into the house to pick up some article belonging to the house—otherwise it is impossible to direct a psychic stream accurately.’ I had drunk so much beer—and in any case, got so used to Cunningham’s eccentricity—that I didn’t even suspect him of being dotty. However, this explains why Cunningham had come to sleep at my place—there was no ‘psychic stream’.

  However, the next problem was to thwart the enemies, and this demanded that he should find out where they were, and what they were planning. He said: ‘I must have a clairvoyant,’ and looked speculatively at Diana. She immediately said: ‘I don’t want to be hypnotized again.’ ‘Not even when your refusal may cost me my life?’ She looked so miserable and undecided that I asked him if we couldn’t get anyone else in her place. ‘Oliver’s no use. He’s an even worse hypnotic subject than you. That child Christine might be the answer if we could get hold of her.’ I pointed out that, at half past ten at night, there was no hope of getting hold of Christine; she’d be fast asleep in bed. Then I thought of Carlotta, and suggested her. He said: ‘Yes, she might do, although I’m afraid she’d let her own personality get in the way.’ However, we agreed to try Carlotta; I hastened downstairs to phone her, and Diana came with me, claiming she wanted to buy cigarettes. As soon as we were in the street, she said: ‘I don’t want to let him hypnotize me again. He wants to gain power over me.’ I asked her what she meant, and she said: ‘He wants to rape me.’ I said I was sure Cunningham wanted to rape anything female and presentable, but she wouldn’t change her view.

  I rang Carlotta, and she immediately agreed to take a taxi over—evidently my talk about Cunningham needing her help excited her. She didn’t even ask questions. When we came out of the phone box, Diana said: ‘I wish we could get away from him. He wants to eat up our lives.’

  Back in my room, Cunningham casually asked Diana if she had a cigarette, and she had to admit she’d forgotten to buy them; she got an ironical look. Cunningham then went and took a bath, and borrowed my razor to shave. Carlotta took nearly an hour to get over—said she couldn’t get a cab—but she finally arrived around midnight, and we went up to Cunningham’s.

  I hardly recognized his room. He had draped the walls with black curtains, had a skeleton in one corner, and had set up a kind of altar where the bed used to be. Although the window was wide open, the awful smell of incense and burnt meat still lingered. I noticed in the corner of the room a large cage—the kind of thing that pet shops sell for guinea-pigs or hamsters—and presume that this is where he got whatever animal had been sacrificed. I only hope that he killed it quickly.

  Cunningham then—rather to Diana’s dismay—flung off all his clothes in the middle of the room, and pulled on his ‘robe’—which is rather like a black dressing-gown. Many of the signs on it unmistakably represent erect phalluses. He then ordered Carlotta to strip. He said it so seriously and peremptorily that she began unzipping her skirt without even asking questions. I hastily said that Diana and I would leave the room; Cunningham said he would need me for the actual incantation. So I said I’d come back in five minutes. I opened the door—and immediately closed it again, for I saw Kirsten coming up the stairs below. Luckily he didn’t see me. Cunningham told me to lock the door. A moment later Kirsten knocked, and Cunningham told him that he would be engaged for the next hour, and asked him to come back later. We heard Kirsten going up to his room, and shortly afterwards, the piano started (this annoyed Cunningham, who was afraid that it might interfere with his hypnosis). By this time, Carlotta was naked. Cunningham started to rub her body with some kind of oil, and announced that she would have to prepare herself with a sex ritual. I guessed the nature of the ritual, and said we’d be back in five minutes. Then Diana and I unlocked the door and crept downstairs.

  Oliver’s door was locked—possibly he was asleep—so we went down into the street, and walked around the block. Diana asked me if I took all this magic seriously; I said I didn’t know, but it was obvious that Cunningham took it seriously. Finally, we went back up to the room. Carlotta was now dressed in a white garment that covered her from head to foot, and was drinking what looked like a very large gin and orange (I gathered later that this is just what it was). Cunningham had inscribed a pentagram on the floor, in front of the ‘altar’, and a smaller one in the far corner of the room. He presented me with a piece of parchment with various letters on it, and short sentences in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. He spent about
five minutes coaching me in the correct pronunciation of these. He then made Diana take off her dress, and put on a red garment—but allowed her to keep on the rest of her things, even her shoes. I was the only one in the room who was normally dressed, but Cunningham said that his ceremonial robes were in Paris, and I would have to take the risk of irritating the ‘powers’ by appearing in everyday clothes. Since I was fairly sure the whole thing was imagination, I made no objection.

  Carlotta was obviously in a very strange mood—whether this was auto-suggestion or something in her drink I don’t know. But her eyes were glowing, and she was as pink as a baby.

  Cunningham gave Diana a black vase full of some powder, and told her to throw it on the brazier whenever he raised his hand towards her. He announced that everything was ready, and made me take up my position inside the pentagram. He then made Carlotta lie on the couch, and pulled up her robe around her throat. I expected her to raise objections; instead, she lay with her eyes closed. He then kissed her on the navel and on both breasts, and proceeded with the ‘sexual invocation’. I must confess that I now felt no desire to leave the room; I also noticed that Diana was staring, fascinated. As to Carlotta, I’m quite certain that her pleasure was intensified by the knowledge that the whole thing was being watched by us. She lay there while Cunningham covered her like a great black bat, with his face and shoulders suspended over her face, looking down on her, and making love as impersonally as if he was an animal. It suddenly came to me that this is the truth of all ‘black magic’; by destroying all taboos, it appeared to release forces that were completely beyond the experience of the participants. I can easily imagine what would happen if this room had been full of men and women, and a Black Mass in progress; within minutes it would turn into a sexual orgy.