Man Without a Shadow

by Colin Wilson

  After five minutes of this, Carlotta began to moan and shudder; then she suddenly grabbed Cunningham’s hair and began to writhe like a madwoman. With the light on the top of his great round head, and his eyes in shadow, Cunningham looked like the devil.

  Finally, she quietened down, and Cunningham stood up, his robe now wide open—as it remained for the rest of the ceremony—and made her stand in the middle of her pentagram. He then began chanting formulae in Latin and Hebrew (although some of it was in English), and I called the responses as he had explained. It went something like this: Cunningham intoned: ‘I exorcize thee, creature of ink, by Anston, Cerreton, Stimulator, Adonai. . . .’ I had to call: ‘Abrachay, Araton, Samatoi, Scaver, Adonai.’ Then Cunningham would drone on: ‘I exorcize thee, creature of the feather kind, by Etereton and Adonai. . . .’ I have taken the above from Abrahamelin the Mage, but it sounds roughly like what Cunningham said, and the kind of thing I had to reply. He also scattered a white powder from a dish—probably salt—and burnt some feathers. After ten minutes of this, he stroked Carlotta’s forehead, while I had to stand to one side and swing the gold medal on its chain in small circles in front of her eyes. She went off very quickly, and Cunningham started asking her questions:

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘In front of a door.’

  ‘Open it and go in.’

  ‘I can’t. There is some obstacle.’

  ‘Push it aside and go in.’

  ‘I have pushed it aside. But the door won’t open.’

  She then declared that a man in silver clothes was standing behind her, and Cunningham told her to ask his name. The man apparently replied: ‘Ashtiroth.’

  I cannot detail what then went on for nearly two hours. To me, it sounded mostly mumbo-jumbo. At one point, Carlotta said that she saw two men lowering an effigy of Cunningham into a coffin, and driving a knife through its heart. Cunningham then began to repeat all kinds of strange sounding formulae (which he told me later were ancient Egyptian), and Carlotta described how one of the men had cut his wrist quite badly on the knife. She then said: ‘They know you are working against them.’ Cunningham said: ‘Tell them I shall hunt them down and kill them.’ She said: ‘I can’t speak to them. I can only watch them.’ ‘Then tell Ashtiroth to tell them.’ ‘He says he can’t speak to them either.’

  Unfortunately, the room was now getting horribly cold, and instead of thinking about the magic, I began to wonder if Carlotta wasn’t frozen stiff under the thin white muslin; poor Diana was definitely cold, and kept blowing her fingers, then trying to warm her hands at the brazier, which was filling the room with a curious odour, with a definite component of vegetable decay.

  It was quite an ordeal standing there—at least, after the first half hour. But Cunningham showed no sign of letting up. After a while, he let Carlotta lie on the bed again (she seemed to be still in a trance) and went through the whole magical ceremony again, making me repeat the responses. This woke me up temporarily, but as his chanting went on, I found myself sleeping on my feet—waking up as I was about to fall. Added to all this, I wanted to get down to the lavatory. The room was so full of blue smoke that my eyes were watering. Suddenly, Cunningham grabbed Diana, and called: ‘Into the circle,’ pushing her in so that she stood beside me. This woke me up for a while, but I could see nothing, except that the room was now so smoky that it might have been a pea-soup fog. When he paused for a moment, I hinted that my bladder needed relieving, but all he did was whisper, ‘Keep still.’ So I stood there for another half hour, getting colder and more fed up, although it was a consolation to have my arm round Diana—we helped to support one another. Suddenly Diana gripped my hand, and I opened my eyes. In the corner over the empty cage, there was a definite disturbance of the smoke, as if a draught was coming through the floor. I then had an impression that I was being looked at from the same spot. There was not, as far as I could gather, an actual figure there, although the smoke gave something of this illusion. Cunningham had his back to it, and didn’t seem to notice it. I closed my eyes again, prepared for another hour of discomfort, when Cunningham suddenly stopped chanting. The room was now almost empty of smoke. Cunningham said: ‘Good. They’ve gone.’ He then said: ‘Thank you, Gerard. You’ve been a great help. You too, Diana.’ He then woke up Carlotta—I suspect that she had only been fast asleep—and told her that she could now go to bed. I said that Diana and I would go home immediately, and we left. As we went out of the door, Cunningham asked me: ‘Did you see anything?’ I was feeling so irritable—and also rather taciturn—that I said: ‘No. Not a thing.’ He asked Diana, and she said: ‘I don’t think so.’ But on our way home, she agreed that she thought she had seen a shadowy figure above the cage, and also had a sensation of being looked at. But we both agreed that, after two hours of chanting, incense, sex-magic and cold, it would have been very easy to make us think we’d seen ghosts.

  Nov. 29th.

  Romain Rolland once called artists ‘the masters of the world, the great defeated’. This, I suppose, is one of my central problems and preoccupations, and the reason that Cunningham interests me. Because he plainly has no intention of being defeated. And yet for all that, I am aware that he has no hope. Why? I can’t explain it. I simply sense it. Still, that’s a poor admission for a writer, so let me try to be more specific. What he lacks is a desire for the simplicity of self-conquest. What is at issue here is our idea of success. For Cunningham, success means power and fame, a life like a procession of an Indian Rajah, noisy success, success that no one can deny. My own vision of success is completely dissimilar. It is a state of sudden illumination that is entirely subjective, something closer to Wordsworth’s vision of that dark hill above the lake and ‘unknown modes of being’. But I’m sick—utterly, miserably sick—of this narrowness of my consciousness, this inability to see or think beyond the present moment. My body has never been so heavily oppressive, my spirit never so totally bound, as at present. My brain is like the engine of a car with a completely flat battery; no amount of effort can stir it into life; I only exhaust myself. My spirit twists and wrenches to bring forth its solution, for I am convinced there is a solution.

  All these gloomy thoughts come to me after having spent the afternoon with Oliver. Luckily, Diana had gone out, knowing that Kirsten would finish his removals today, and afraid he would come in and find her here. Oliver arrived just before she’d gone; he was in a worse mood than I’d seen him for a long time. When he saw Diana, he was about to leave again, but she forestalled him and said she had to go. When she’d gone, he said: ‘So it was you who robbed Kirsten of his wife?’ His tone irritated me, but I said that I thought it might prove to be best for all of us. ‘For Kirsten, at least,’ he said, ‘Gertrude has been tidying his room all morning.’ As soon as he began to gossip about Gertrude, he cheered up. I told him that I was pretty certain I’d marry Diana, as soon as Kirsten divorces her, and he became cynical again: ‘And how long do you suppose it will last?’ I couldn’t be bothered to contradict him. I said that I thought his disappointment over Christine had given him a pessimistic outlook. He said: ‘That’s another thing. Christine. She’s found out where I live. I saw her standing watching me when I went out yesterday.’ I asked him what was the point in bearing a grudge against a twelve-year-old girl. It was pointless, as I should have realized. It wasn’t Christine’s fault. It was Oliver’s fault for imagining she embodied some ideal. And yet I’m sure that, given a chance, she could give Oliver what he needs—I mean love and admiration and loyalty. I sometimes wonder if he doesn’t enjoy torturing himself.

  I offered him something to eat, and made myself a ham sandwich. He refused, but finished by eating two large sandwiches anyway. This seemed to improve his temper, and he told me he intended leaving this place as soon as possible. I asked why (thinking that perhaps he wanted to avoid Christine). But he said: ‘Because that man (meaning Cunningham)
is driving me mad.’

  As soon as he started talking to me, his confidences came out in a rush. It struck me as peculiar that Oliver should think of me as his best friend (he actually said this at one point). He’s so given up to extremes of emotion that I can’t imagine him feeling anything as positive as friendship. However, it was obvious to me that he’s been under great emotional strain, and needed badly to talk to someone.

  He told me first of all about how Cunningham had prevented him from committing suicide. Amusingly enough, he’d decided on this after reading a pessimistic novel by Artsybashev called The Breaking Point, that paints a grim picture of life and declares that suicide is the only dignified way out. (I read it myself years ago and found it bad and depressing—and also faked, because if the author had really believed it, he’d have committed suicide instead of writing a book.) However, Oliver read it at a time when he was feeling very low, and its Buddhistic pessimism seemed to him an accurate account of the human situation.

  His account of how Cunningham stopped him corresponded pretty closely with Cunningham’s own account. For a few days after this, he felt happy and exalted, and was sure that Cunningham was going to provide him with a solution to all his problems. There was only one fly in the ointment (it obviously took Oliver a tremendous effort to tell me this, and I found myself admiring a strange, despairing honesty in him). Cunningham preached the need for destroying all sexual taboos, rooting out all sexual shame, in order to discover one’s ‘true will’. He asked Oliver what he found most repulsive in sex; Oliver admitted that he had always loathed the idea of homosexuality. He hadn’t expected Cunningham to take this so seriously; but in fact, Cunningham returned to the subject again and again, told Oliver it was due to repressions instilled by his parents, and that the total destruction of his suicidal impulses depended on his coming to terms with homosexuality. The result of this was that after a week, Oliver gave way. First of all, he consented to sleeping with some silky-haired little fairy whom Cunningham picked up in Lancaster, and finally slept with Cunningham himself. He said he did all this in a genuinely ascetic spirit (I can believe this, remembering how he used to sleep on the bare wires of his bed and indulge in other forms of self-torture). But the result was the realization that, contrary to Cunningham’s expectations, he realized he had no repressed homosexual trends at all; he found it all rather boring (I could have told Cunningham this; if he really wants to release Oliver’s deepest repression, he should get him into bed with Christine). In spite of this, Cunningham periodically insists that Oliver should overcome his revulsion—hence the scene that I witnessed the other morning (I was pretty sure at the time that something was going on between Oliver and Cunningham, and yet simply couldn’t imagine Oliver as a queer).

  But the major shock, according to Oliver, was the matter of his exhibition. I remember that he always refused to even try to exhibit his work, saying that he didn’t want impertinent busybodies telling him how he ought to paint. When Cunningham said he would get his paintings exhibited, he hardly took him seriously. But the result of being written about by various art magazines, and even bombarded with requests for him to give lectures to art schools, was that he lost all sense of privacy. Luckily, the gallery refused to give people his address; but even so, he got letters from enthusiastic art students who wanted to come and admire him—all of which he took care not to answer—and requests to talk about his painting on the Third Programme.

  From any other person, I would have suspected these complaints of lacking sincerity; but I know Oliver too well to suppose anything of the sort. I remember the passage in Rilke in which he advises young poets to take care to remain unknown as long as possible, because fame will destroy their sense of privacy; he must have been thinking of people like Oliver.

  He says that he has now begun to find the constant presence of Cunningham oppressive. Cunningham has been sensible enough not to try to influence Oliver’s painting, but he still makes comments, and generally gives Oliver a feeling of being under some kind of an obligation.

  I failed to sympathize with a great deal that Oliver said. After all, he’s better off now than he was a year ago; he can always go and hide where no one can find him, and he’s now in no danger of starving.

  Oliver complained that all money is paid direct to Cunningham, who is his ‘agent’, so that he has no money of his own. I told him that if he is really determined to move, I would lend him enough money to find himself another place. Besides, all he has to do is go to the gallery and say that in future all money is to be paid direct to him. But, like myself, he is a moral coward when it comes to offending anyone (unless he’s afraid that Cunningham might put a spell on him!).

  I promised to raise this matter with Cunningham—tactfully, without letting him know that Oliver has spoken to me. When he left, an hour ago, he seemed more cheerful. But I then began to think that he doesn’t know when he’s well off—I wouldn’t object in the least to having my work known. And if he hadn’t met Cunningham, I presume he would have committed suicide—although, having heard Oliver’s version, I am doubtful about this. Then, having reflected that Oliver is a kind of spiritual hypochondriac, who is simply constitutionally incapable of allowing himself to be happy, I realized that I have no right to talk. I have everything that should make me happy—my freedom, the books I need, a girl I’m in love with—and I still feel this inexplicable oppression of spirit. Perhaps I need to escape. . . . I don’t know. Where should I go? I always had a romantic notion of going to the Aran Isles, imagining a misty land where the soul would confront the bareness of the sea and sky and throw off all its civilized boredom. But when I read Synge’s book about them, I realized that they are simply cold, wet and fishy, and not nearly as convenient as London from the point of view of libraries.

  It’s so easy to agree with Axel—that the world is nothing but disappointment, that life is an indignity. Yet somehow I can’t believe this.

  Sunday morning: I am writing this in the bedroom, while Diana irons clothes in the other room. Cunningham told me last night that he has a publisher interested in my Methods and Techniques of Self-Deception; he borrowed the manuscript two weeks ago—the hundred pages I typed out in Kentish Town—and sent it to a man called James Curzon of Lloyd and Rich; yesterday he got it back with a letter that says: ‘I feel this book shows a remarkable and original talent, and if the second part maintains the same standard, we shall be happy to publish it.’ The letter goes on to say that I can’t expect a sale of more than a couple of thousand copies, and that they would like to see a novel if I decide to write one.

  This is why I can’t make up my mind about Cunningham. He agrees that I’ll be lucky if I make a hundred pounds out of the book, and that the publishers might easily lose money. So what possible motive can he have for trying to get it published?

  On the other hand, the whole business is rather strange. He didn’t tell me about the Lloyd and Rich offer until I had begun to talk about Oliver. I went over after supper, and found Carlotta installed, laundering his clothes. I got him to come out to a pub for a drink, and then told him that I’m worried about Oliver, and that I think Oliver wants to go away. Cunningham immediately became slightly indignant, and asked me if I thought he was interested in Oliver solely for the sake of the money. I assured him I didn’t. But he then told me he had a surprise for me, took me back up to his room, and produced the letter. Naturally, I was overwhelmed, and decided to go home immediately and settle down to typing the rest of the book. Remembering my complaints in my journal a few hours earlier, I felt guilty. However, Cunningham said it would be a good idea to keep them waiting for a while. It was then that I recalled that the date on the letter was the twenty-fourth—four days ago. Of course, it may simply have been waiting around the publishers’ office for three days, or have been delayed in the post. This seems very odd. I also had a devil of a job persuading Cunningham to return the first half of t
he typescript—he said he had left it upstairs somewhere. At this point, Carlotta said that she had seen it in a cupboard, and went and fetched it. I caught the expression on Cunningham’s face—it was murderous exasperation. (From several things he said, I gather that he is already wishing that he hadn’t invited Carlotta to act as his medium last night; she actually behaves as if she’s married to him.)

  Finally, Cunningham settled down to a fairly frank discussion of Oliver. Most of it struck me as nonsense. He told me that he had been forcing Oliver to undergo homosexual experiences to ‘learn his true will’, and had concluded that he was originally mistaken in supposing that it was repressed homosexuality that was Oliver’s trouble. At this point, I said: ‘I can tell you Oliver’s trouble,’ and told him about Christine. As soon as I’d spoken, I regretted it. He said slowly: ‘Ah, I see. I think you may have found the solution.’ I quickly told him that Christine’s father is a difficult character, who wouldn’t hesitate to accuse us all of violating his daughter if he thought he could get us into jail.