Teatro Grottesco

by Thomas Ligotti

  Nevertheless, Grossvogel went on to explain in detail to those of us who had paid the exorbitant price to see his stageshow exhibit the appalling way in which he was forced to see the world around him, including his own body in its gastrointestinal distress, and how convinced he was that this vision of things would soon be the cause of his death, despite the measures taken to save him during his hospital sojourn. It was Grossvogel’s contention that his only hope of survival was for him to perish completely, in the sense that the person (or the mind or self) that had once been Grossvogel would actually cease to exist. This necessary condition for survival, he maintained, prompted his physical body to undergo a ‘metamorphic recovery.’ Within a matter of hours, Grossvogel told us, he no longer suffered from the symptoms of acute abdominal pains which had initiated his crisis, and furthermore he was now able to tolerate the way in which he was permanently forced to see things, as he put it, ‘under the aspect of the shadow inside them, the darkness which activated them.’ Since the person who had been Grossvogel had perished, as Grossvogel explained to us, the body of Grossvogel was able to continue as a successful organism untroubled by the imaginary torments that had once been inflicted upon him by his fabricated mind and his false and unreal self. As he put it in his own words, ‘Iam no longer occupied with myself or my mind.’ What we in the audience now saw before us, he said, was Grossvogel’s body speaking with Grossvogel’s voice and using Grossvogel’s neurological circuitry but without the interference of the ‘imaginary character’ known as Grossvogel: all of his words and actions, he said, now emanated directly from that same force which activates every one of us if we could only realize it in the way he had been compelled to do in order to keep his body alive. The artist emphasized in his own terribly calm way that in no sense had he chosen his unique course of recovery. No one would willingly choose such a thing, he contended. Everyone prefers to continue their existence as a mind and a self, no matter what pain it causes them, no matter how false and unreal they might be, than to face the quite obvious reality of being only a body set in motion by this mindless, soulless, and selfless force which he designated the shadow, the darkness. Nonetheless, Grossvogel disclosed to us, this was exactly the reality that he needed to admit into his system if his body was to continue its existence and to succeed as an organism. ‘It was purely a matter of physical survival,’ he said. ‘Everybody should be able to understand that. Anyone would do the same.’ Moreover, the famous metamorphic recovery in which Grossvogel the person died and Grossvogel the body survived was so successful, he informed his stageshow audience, that he immediately embarked upon a strenuous period of travel, mostly by means of inexpensive buslines that took him great distances across and around the entire country, so that he could look at various people and places while exercising his new faculty of being able to see the shadow that pervaded them, the all-moving darkness that activated them, since he was no longer subject to the misconceptions about the world that are created by the mind or imagination – those obstructing mechanisms which were now removed from his system – and nor did he mistakenly imagine anyone or anything to possess a soul or a self. And everywhere he went he witnessed the spectacle that had previously so appalled him to the point of becoming a life-threatening medical condition.

  ‘I could now know the world directly through the senses of my body,’ Grossvogel continued. ‘And I saw with my body what I could never have seen with my mind or imagination during my career as a failed artist. Everywhere I travelled I saw how the pervasive shadow, the all-moving darkness, was using our world. Because this shadow, this darkness has nothing of its own, no way to exist except as an activating force or energy, whereas we have our bodies, we are only our bodies, whether they are organic bodies or non-organic bodies, human or non-human bodies, makes no difference – they are all simply bodies and nothing but bodies, with no component whatever of a mind or a self or a soul. Hence the shadow, the darkness uses our world for what it needs to thrive upon. It has nothing except its activating energy, while we are nothing except our bodies. This is why the shadow, the darkness causes things to be what they would not be and to do what they would not do. Because without the shadow inside them, the all-moving blackness activating them, they would be only what they are – heaps of matter lacking any impulse, any urge to flourish, to succeed in this world. This state of affairs should be called what it is – an absolute nightmare. That is exactly what I experienced in the hospital when I realized, due to my intense gastrointestinal suffering, that I had no mind or imagination, no soul or self – that these were nonsensical and dreamlike intermediaries fabricated to protect human beings from realizing what it is we really are: only a collection of bodies activated by the shadow, the darkness. Those among us who are successful organisms to any degree, including artists, are so only by virtue of the extent to which we function as bodies and by no means as minds or selves. This is exactly the manner in which I had failed so exceptionally, since I was profoundly convinced of the existence of my mind and my imagination, my soul and my self. My only hope lay in my ability to make a metamorphic recovery, to accept in every way the nightmarish order of things so that I could continue to exist as a successful organism even without the protective nonsense of the mind and the imagination, the protective dream of having any kind of soul or self. Otherwise I would have been annihilated by a fatally traumatic insanity brought on by the shock of this shattering realization. Therefore the person who was Grossvogel had to perish in that hospital – and good riddance – so that the body of Grossvogel could be free of its gastrointestinal crisis and go on to travel in all directions by various means of transportation, primarily the inexpensive transportation provided by interstate buslines, witnessing the spectacle of the shadow, the darkness using our world of bodies for what it needs to thrive upon. And after witnessing this spectacle it was inevitable that I should portray it in some form, not as an artist who has failed because he is using some nonsense called the mind or the imagination, but as a body that has succeeded in perceiving how everything in the world actually functions. That is what I have come to show you, to exhibit to you this evening.’

  I, who had been lulled or agitated by Grossvogel’s discourse as much as anyone in the audience, was for some reason surprised, and even apprehensive, when he suddenly ended his lecture or fantasy monologue or whatever I construed his words to be at the time. It seemed that he could have gone on speaking forever in the back room of that art gallery where low-watt lightbulbs hung down from the ceiling, one of them directly above the table that was covered with a torn section of bedsheet. And now Grossvogel was lifting one corner of the torn bedsheet to show us, at last, what he had created, not by using his mind or imagination, which he claimed no longer existed in him any more than did his soul or self, but by using only his body’s organs of physical sensation. When he finally uncovered the piece completely and it was fully displayed in the dull glow of the lightbulb which hung directly above it, none of us demonstrated either a positive or negative reaction to it at first, possibly because our minds were so numbed by all the verbal build-up that had led to this moment of unveiling.

  It appeared to be a sculpture of some kind. However, I found it initially impossible to give this object any generic designation, either artistic or non-artistic. It might have been anything. The surface of the piece was uniformly of a shining darkness, having a glossy sheen beneath which was spread a swirling murk of shades that almost seemed to be in motion, an effect which seemed quite credibly the result of some swaying of the lightbulb dangling above. There appeared to be a resemblance in its general outline to some kind of creature, perhaps a grossly distorted version of a scorpion or a crab, since it displayed more than a few clawlike extensions reaching out from a central, highly shapeless mass. But it also appeared to have elements poking upward, peaks or horns that jutted at roughly vertical angles and ended sometimes in a sharp point and sometimes in a soft, headlike bulge. Because Grossvogel had spoken so much about bodies,
it was natural to see such forms, in some deranged fashion, as the basis of the object or as being incorporated into it somehow – a chaotic world of bodies of every kind, of shapes activated by the shadow inside them, the darkness that caused them to be what they would not be and to do what they would not do. And among these body-like shapes I recognized distinctly the large-bodied figure of the artist himself, although the significance of the fact that Grossvogel had implanted himself therein escaped me as I sat contemplating this modest exhibit.

  Whatever Grossvogel’s sculpture may have represented in its parts or as a whole, it contained more than a suggestion of that ‘absolute nightmare’ which the artist, so to speak, had elucidated during his lecture or fantasy monologue earlier that evening. Yet this quality of the piece, even for an audience that had more than a slight appreciation of nightmarish subjects and contours, was not enough to offset the high price we had been required to pay for the privilege of hearing about Grossvogel’s gastrointestinal ordeal and self-proclaimed metamorphic recovery. Soon after the artist unveiled his work to us, each of our bodies rose out of those uncomfortable folding chairs and excuses for departing the premises were being spoken on all sides. Before making my own exit I noticed that inconspicuously displayed next to Grossvogel’s sculpture was a small card upon which was printed the title of the piece. TSALAL NO. 1, it read. Later I learned something about the meaning of this term, which, in the way of words, both illuminated and concealed the nature of the thing that it named.

  The matter of Grossvogel’s sculpture – he subsequently put out a series of several hundred, each of them with the same title followed by a number that placed it in a sequence of artistic production – was discussed at length as we sat waiting in the diner situated on the main street of the dead town of Crampton. The gentleman seated to my left at one of the few tables in the diner reiterated his accusations against Grossvogel.

  ‘First he subjected us to an artistic swindle,’ said this person who was prone to sudden and protracted coughing spells, ‘and now he has subjected us to a metaphysical swindle. It was unheard of, charging us such a price for that exhibition of his, and now charging us so outrageously once again for this “physical-metaphysical excursion.” We’ve all been taken in by that –’

  ‘That absolute fraud,’ said Mrs Angela when the man on my left was unable to complete his statement because he had broken into another fit of coughing. ‘I don’t think he’s even going to show up,’ she continued. ‘He induces us to come to this hole-in-the-wall town. He says that this is the place where we need to gather for this excursion of his. But he doesn’t show his face anywhere around here. Where did he find this place, on one of those bus tours he was always talking about?’

  It seemed that we had only ourselves and our own idiocy to blame for the situation we were in. Even though no one openly admitted it, the truth was that those of us who were present had been very much impressed with Grossvogel on the day when he entered the art gallery and had us assist him in throwing all of his works on exhibit into the back of a battered pick-up truck. None of us in our small circle of artists and intellectuals had ever done anything remotely like that or even dreamed of doing something so drastic and full of drama. From that day it became our unspoken conviction that Grossvogel was on to something and our disgraceful secret that we desired to attach ourselves to him in order to profit in some way by our association with him. At the same time, of course, we also resented Grossvogel’s daring behavior and were perfectly ready to welcome another failure on his part, perhaps even another collapse on the floor of the gallery where he and his artworks had already once failed to everyone’s thorough satisfaction. Such a confusion of motives was more than enough reason for us to pay the exorbitant fee that Grossvogel charged for his new exhibit, which we afterward dismissed in one way or another.

  Following the show that night I stood on the sidewalk outside the art gallery, listening once again to Mrs Angela’s implications regarding the true source of Grossvogel’s metamorphic recovery and artistic inspiration. ‘Mr Reiner Grossvogel has been medicated to the eyeballs ever since he came out of that hospital,’ she said to me as if for the first time. ‘I know one of the girls who works at the drugstore that fills his prescriptions. She’s a very good customer of mine,’ she added, her wrinkled and heavily made-up eyes flashing with self-satisfaction. Then she continued her scandalous revelations. ‘I think you might know the kind of medications prescribed for someone with Grossvogel’s medical condition, which really isn’t a medical condition at all but a psychophysical disorder that I or any of the people who work for me could have told him about a long time ago. Grossvogel’s brain has been swimming in all kinds of tranquilizers and anti-depressants for months now, and not only that. He’s also been taking an anti-spasmodic compound for that condition of his that he’s supposed to have recovered from by such miraculous means. I’m not surprised he doesn’t think he has a mind or any kind of self, which is all just an act in any case.

  ‘Anti-spasmodic,’ Mrs Angela hissed at me as we stood on the sidewalk outside the art gallery following Grossvogel’s exhibit. ‘Do you know what that means?’ she asked me and then quickly answered her own question. ‘It means belladonna, a poisonous hallucinogenic. It means phenobarbital, a barbiturate. The girl from the drugstore told me all about it. He’s been overdosing himself on all of these drugs, do you understand? That’s why he’s been seeing things in that peculiar way he would have us believe. It’s not some shadow or whatever he says that’s activating his body. I would know about something like that, now wouldn’t I? I have a special gift that provides me with insight into things like that.’

  But despite her gifts, along with her excellent pastries, Mrs Angela’s psychic coffeehouse did not thrive as a business and ultimately went under altogether. On the other hand, Grossvogel’s sculptures, which he produced at a prolific pace, were an incredible success, both among local buyers of artistic products and among art merchants and collectors across the country, even reaching an international market to some extent. Reiner Grossvogel was also celebrated in feature articles that appeared in major art magazines and non-artistic publications alike, although he was usually portrayed, in the words of one critic, as a ‘one-man artistic and philosophical freakshow.’ Nevertheless, Grossvogel was by any measure now functioning as a highly successful organism. And it was due to this success, which had never been approached by anyone else within our small circle of artists and intellectuals, that those of us who had abandoned Grossvogel upon hearing him lecture on his metamorphic recovery from a severe gastrointestinal disorder and viewing the first in his prodigious Tsalal series of sculptures now once again attached ourselves and our failed careers to him and his unarguably successful body without a mind or a self. Even Mrs Angela eventually became conversant with the ‘realizations’ that Grossvogel had first espoused in the back room of that storefront art gallery and now disseminated in what seemed an unending line of philosophical pamphlets, which became almost as sought after by collectors as his series of Tsalal sculptures. Thus, when Grossvogel issued a certain brochure among the small circle of artists and intellectuals which he had never abandoned even after he had achieved such amazing financial success and celebrity, a brochure announcing a ‘physical-metaphysical excursion’ to the dead town of Crampton, we were more than willing once more to pay the exorbitant price he was asking.

  This was the brochure to which I referred the others seated at the table with me in the Crampton diner: the photographic portraitist who was subject to coughing jags on my left, the author of the unpublished philosophical treatise An Investigation into the Conspiracy against the Human Race on my right, and Mrs Angela directly across from me. The man on my left was still reiterating, with prolonged interruptions of his coughing (which I will here delete), the charge that Grossvogel had perpetrated a ‘metaphysical swindle’ with his high-priced ‘physical-metaphysical excursion.’

  ‘All of Grossvogel’s talk about that business w
ith the shadow and the blackness and the nightmare world he purportedly was seeing . . . and then where do we end up – in some godforsaken town that went out of business a long time ago, and in some part of the country where everything looks like an overexposed photograph. I have my camera with me ready to create portraits of faces that have looked upon Grossvogel’s shadowy blackness, or whatever he was planning for us to do here. I’ve even thought of several very good titles and concepts for these photographic portraits which I imagine would have a good chance of being published together as a book, or at least a portfolio in a leading photography magazine. I thought that at the very least I might have taken back with me a series of photographic portraits of Grossvogel, with that huge face of his. I could have placed that with almost any of the better art magazines. But where is the celebrated Grossvogel? He said he would be here to meet us. He said we would find out everything about that shadow business, as I understood him. Furthermore, I have my head prepared for those absolute nightmares that Grossvogel prattled on about in his pamphlets and in that highly deceptive brochure of his.’

  ‘This brochure,’ I said during one of the man’s more raucous intervals of hacking, ‘makes no explicit promises about any of those things you’ve imagined to be contained there. It specifically announces that this is to be an excursion, and I quote, to a “dead town, a finished town, a failed town, a false and unreal setting that is the product of unsuccessful organisms and therefore a town that is exemplary of that extreme state of failure that may so distress human organic systems, particularly the gastrointestinal system, to the point of weakening its delusional and totally fabricated defenses – e.g. the mind, the self – and thus precipitating a crisis of nightmare realization involving . . . ,” and I think we’re all familiar with the shadow-and darkness talk which follows. The point is, Grossvogel promises nothing in this brochure except an environment redolent of failure, a sort of hothouse for failed organisms. The rest of it is entirely born of your own imaginations . . . and my own, I might add.’