The Collected Short Fiction

  Quisser contended that his parents actually enjoyed watching him sit in terror before the Showman, until he could not stand it any longer and asked to go back to the car. At the same time he was quite transfixed by the sight of this sideshow character, who was unlike any other he could remember. There he was, Quisser said, standing with his back to the audience and wearing an old top hat and a long cape that touched the dirty floor of the small stage on which he stood. Sticking out from beneath the top hat were the dense and lengthy shocks of the Showman's stiff red hair, Quisser said, which looked like some kind of sickening vermin's nest. When I asked Quisser if this hair might actually have been a wig, deliberately testing his memory and imagination, he gave me a contemptuous look, as if to stress that I was not the one who had seen the stiff red hair; he was the one who had seen it sticking out from beneath the Showman's old top hat. The only other features that were visible to the audience, Quisser continued, were the fingers of the Showman which grasped the edges of his long cape. These fingers appeared to Quisser to be somehow deformed, curling together into little claws, and were a pale greenish color. Apparently, as Quisser viewed it, the entire stance of the figure was calculated to suggest that at any moment he might twirl about and confront the audience full-face, his moldy fingers lifting up the edges of his cape, reaching to the height of his stiff red hair. Yet the figure never budged. Sometimes it did seem to Quisser that the Showman was moving his head a little to the left or a little to the right, threatening to reveal one side of his face or the other, playing a horrible game of peek-a-boo. But ultimately Quisser concluded that these perceived movements were illusory and that the Showman was always posed in perfect stillness, a nightmarish mannikin that invited all kinds of imaginings by its very forbearance of any gesture.

  'It was all a nasty pretense,' Quisser said to me and then paused to finish off his glass of wine.

  'But what if he had turned around to face the audience?' I asked. While awaiting his response, I sipped some of my mint tea, which did not seem to be doing much good for my queasy stomach, yet at the same time was causing no harm either. I lit one of the mild cigarettes that I was smoking on that occasion. 'Did you hear what I said?' I said to Quisser, who had been looking toward the stage located in the opposite corner of the Crimson Cabaret. 'The stage is the same,' I said to Quisser quite sternly, attracting some glances from persons sitting at the other tables in the club. 'The panels are the same and the designs on them are also the same.'

  Quisser played nervously with his empty wine glass. 'When I was very young,' he said, 'there were certain occasions on which I would see the Showman, but he wasn't in his natural habitat, so to speak, of the sideshow tent.'

  'I think I've heard enough tonight,' I interjected, my hand pressing against my queasy stomach.

  'What are you saying?' asked Quisser. 'You remember them, don't you? The gas station carnivals. Maybe just a faint memory. I was sure you would be the one to know about them.'

  'I think I can say,' I said to Quisser, 'I've heard enough of your gas station carnival story to know what it's all about.'

  'What do you mean, "what it's all about"?' asked Quisser, who was still looking over at the small stage across the room.

  'Well, for one thing, your later memories, your purported memories, of that Showman character. You were about to tell me that throughout your childhood you repeatedly saw this figure at various times and in various places. Perhaps you saw him in the distance of a schoolyard, standing with his back to you. Or you saw him on the other side of a busy street, but when you crossed the street he wasn't there any longer.'

  'Something like that, yes.'

  'And you were then going to tell me that lately you've been seeing this figure, or faint suggestions of this figure—sketchy reflections in store windows along the sidewalk, flashing glimpses in the rear-view mirror of your car.'

  'It's very much like one of your stories.'

  'In some ways it is,' I said, 'and in some ways it isn't. You feel that if you ever see the Showman figure turn his head around to look at you... that something terrible will happen, most likely that you'll perish on the spot from some kind of monumental shock.'

  'Yes,' agreed Quisser. 'An unsustainable horror. But I haven't told you the strangest part. You're right that lately I have had glimpses of... that figure, and I did see him during my childhood, outside of the sideshow tent, I mean. But the strangest part is that I remember seeing him in other places even before I first saw him at the gas station carnivals.'

  'This is just my point,' I said.

  'What is?'

  'That there are no gas station carnivals. There never were any gas station carnivals. Nobody remembers them because they never existed. The whole idea is preposterous.'

  'But my parents were there with me.'

  'Exactly—your dead father and your mentally incompetent mother. Do you remember ever discussing with them your vacation experiences at these special gas stations with the carnivals supposedly annexed to them?'

  'No, I don't.'

  'That's because you never went to any such places with them. Think about how ludicrous it all sounds. That there should be filling stations out in the sticks that entice customers with free admission to broken-down carnivals—it's all so ridiculous. Miniature carnival rides? Gas station attendants doubling as sideshow performers?'

  'Not the Showman,' interrupted Quisser. 'He was never a gas station attendant.'

  'No, of course he wasn't a gas station attendant, because he was a delusion. The whole thing is an outrageous delusion, but it's also a very particular type of delusion.'

  'And what type would that be?' asked Quisser, who was still sneaking glances at the stage area across the room of the Crimson Cabaret.

  'It's not some type of common psychological delusion, if that's what you were thinking I was about to say. I have no interest at all in such things. But I am very interested when someone is suffering from a magical delusion. Even more precisely, I am interested in delusions that are a result of art-magic. And do you know how long you've been under the influence of this art-magic delusion?'

  'You've lost me,' said Quisser.

  'It's simple,' I said. 'How long have you imagined all this nonsense about the gas station carnivals, and specifically about this character you describe as the Showman?'

  'I guess it would be more or less absurd at this point to insist to you that I've seen this figure since childhood, even if that's exactly how it seems and that's exactly what I remember.'

  'Of course it would be absurd, because you're definitely delusional.'

  'So I'm delusional about the Showman, but you're not delusional about... what do you call it?'

  'Art-magic. For as long as you've been a victim of this particular art-magic, this is how long you've been delusional about the gas station carnivals and all related phenomena.'

  'And how long is that?' asked Quisser.

  'Since you humiliated the crimson woman by calling her a deluded no-talent. I told you that she had connections you knew absolutely nothing about.'

  'I'm talking about something from my childhood, something I've remembered my entire life. You're talking about a matter of days.'

  'That's because a matter of days is exactly the term that you've been delusional. Don't you see that through her art-magic she has caused you to suffer from the worst kind of delusion, which might be called a retroactive delusion. And it's not only you who's been afflicted in the past days and weeks and even months. Everyone around here has sensed the threat of this art-magic for some time now. I'm beginning to think that I've found out about it too late myself, much too late. You know what it is to suffer from a delusion of the retroactive type, but do you know what it's like to be the victim of a severe stomach disorder? I've been sitting here in the crimson woman's club drinking mint tea served by a waitress who is the crimson woman's friend, thinking that mint tea is just the thing for my stomach when it very well may be aggravating my condition or even causing
it to transform, in accordance with the principles of art-magic, into something more serious and more strange. But the crimson woman is not the only one practicing this art-magic. It's happening everywhere around here. It drifted in unexpectedly like a fog at sea, and so many of us are becoming lost in it. Look at the faces in this room and then tell me that you alone are the victim of a horrible art-magic. The crimson woman has quite a few adversaries, just as she is connected with powerful allies. How can I say exactly who they are—some group specializing in art-magic, no doubt, but I can't just say, with a fatuous certainty, "Yes, it must be some particular gang of illuminati," or esoteric scientists, as so many have begun styling themselves these days.'

  'But it all sounds like one of your stories,' Quisser protested.

  'Of course it does, don't you think she knows that? But I'm not the one with that grotesque yarn about the gas station carnivals and the sideshow tent with a small stage not unlike the stage on the opposite side of this room. You can't keep your eyes off it, I can see that and so can the other people around the room. And I know what you think you're seeing over there.'

  'Assuming you know what you're talking about,' said Quisser, who was now forcing himself to look away from the stage area across the room, 'what am I supposed to do about it?'

  'You can start by keeping your eyes off that stage across the room. There's nothing you can see over there except an art-magic delusion. There is nothing necessarily fatal or permanent about the affliction. But you must believe that you will recover, just as you would if you were suffering from some non-fatal physical disease. Otherwise these delusions may turn into something far more deadly, on either a physical level or a psychic level, or both. Take my advice, as someone who dabbles in tales of extraordinary doom, and walk away from all of this madness. There are enough fatalities of a mundane sort. Find a quiet place and wait for one of them to carry you off.'

  I could now see that the intense conviction carried by my words had finally had its effect on Quisser. His gaze was no longer drawn toward the small stage on the opposite side of the room but was directed full upon me. He did remain somewhat distraught in the face of the truth about his delusion, yet he seemed to have settled down considerably.

  I lit another of my mild cigarettes and glanced around the room, not looking for anything or anyone in particular but merely gauging the atmosphere. The tobacco smoke drifting through the club was so much thicker, the amber light several shades darker, and the sound of raindrops still played against the black painted windows of the Crimson Cabaret. I was now back in the cabin of that old ship as it was being cast about in a vicious storm at sea, utterly insecure in its bearings and profoundly threatened by uncontrollable forces. Quisser excused himself to go to the rest room, and his form passed across my field of vision like a shadow through dense fog.

  I have no idea how long Quisser was gone from the table. My attention became fully absorbed by the other faces in the club and the deep anxiety they betrayed to me, an anxiety that was not of the natural, existential sort but one that was caused by peculiar concerns of an uncanny nature. What a season is upon us, these faces seemed to say. And no doubt their voices would have spoken directly of certain peculiar concerns had they not been intimidated into weird equivocations and double entendres by the fear of falling victim to the same kind of unnatural affliction that had made so much trouble in the mind of the art critic Stuart Quisser. Who would be next? What could a person say these days, or even think, without feeling the dread of repercussion from powerfully connected groups and individuals? I could almost hear their voices asking, 'Why here, why now?' But of course they could have just as easily been asking, 'Why not here, why not now?' It would not occur to this crowd that there were no special rules involved; it would not occur to them, even though they were a crowd of imaginative artists, that the whole thing was simply a matter of random, purposeless terror that converged upon a particular place at a particular time for no particular reason. On the other hand, it would also not have occurred to them that they might have wished it all upon themselves, that they might have had a hand in bringing certain powerful forces and connections into our district simply by wishing them to come. They might have wished and wished for an unnatural evil to fall upon them but, for a while at least, nothing happened. Then the wishing stopped, the old wishes were forgotten yet at the same time gathered in strength, distilling themselves into a potent formula (who can say!), until one day the terrible season began. Because had they really told the truth, this artistic crowd might also have expressed what a sense of meaning (although of a negative sort), not to mention the vigorous thrill (although of an excruciating type), this season of unnatural evil had brought to their lives. What does it mean to be alive except to court disaster and suffering at every moment? For every diversion, for every thrill our born nature requires in this carnival world, even to the point of apocalypse, there are risks to be taken. No one is safe, not even art-magicians or esoteric scientists, who are the most deluded among us because they are the most tempted by amusements of an uncanny and unnatural kind, fumbling as any artist or scientist does with the inherent chaos of things. It was during the moments that I was looking at all the faces in the Crimson Cabaret, and thinking my own thoughts about those faces, that a shadow again passed across my foggy field of vision. While I expected to find that this shadow was Quisser, my table companion for that evening, on the way back from his trip to the rest room, I instead found myself confronted by the waitress who Quisser had claimed was so loyal to the crimson woman. She asked if I wanted to order yet another cup of mint tea, saying it in exactly these words, yet another cup of mint tea. Trying not to become irritated by her queerly sarcastic tone of voice, which would only have further aggravated my already queasy stomach, I answered that I was just about to leave for the night. Then I added that perhaps my friend wanted to drink yet another glass of wine, pointing across the table to indicate the empty glass Quisser had left behind when he excused himself to use the rest room. But there was no empty wine glass across the table; there was only my empty cup of mint tea. I immediately accused the waitress of taking away the empty wine glass while I was distracted by my reverie upon the faces in the Crimson Cabaret. But she denied ever serving any glass of wine to anyone at my table, insisting that I had been alone from the moment I arrived at the club and sat down at the table across the room from the small stage area. After a thorough search of the rest room, I returned and tried to find someone else in the club who had seen the art critic Quisser talking to me at great length about his gas station carnivals. But all of them said they had seen no one of the kind.

  Even Quisser himself, when I tracked him down the next day to a hole-in-the-wall art gallery, maintained that he had not seen me the night before. He said that he had spent the entire evening at home by himself, claiming that he had suffered some indisposition—some bug, he said—from which he had since fully recovered. When I called him a liar, he stepped right up to me as we stood in the middle of that hole-in-the-wall art gallery, and in a tense whisper he said that I should 'Watch my words.' I was always shooting off my mouth, he said, and in the future I should use more discretion in what I said and to whom I said it. He then asked me if I really thought it was wise to open my mouth at a party and call someone a deluded no-talent. There were certain persons, he said, that had powerful connections, and I, of all people, he said, should know better, considering my awareness of such things and the way I displayed this awareness in the stories I wrote. 'Not that I disagreed with what you said about you-know-who,' he said. 'But I would not have made such an open declaration. You humiliated her. And these days such a thing can be very perilous, if you know what I mean.'

  Of course I did know what he meant, though I did not yet understand why he was now saying these words to me, rather than I to him. Was it not enough, I later thought, that I was still suffering a terrible stomach disorder? Did I also have to bear the burden of another's delusion? But even this explanation eventua
lly fell to pieces upon further inquiry. The stories multiplied about the night of that party, accounts proliferated among my acquaintances and peers concerning exactly who had committed the humiliating offence and even who had been the offended party. 'Why are you telling me these things?' the crimson woman said to me when I proffered my deepest apologies. 'I barely know who you are. And besides, I've got enough problems of my own. That bitch of a waitress here at the club has taken down all my paintings and replaced them with her own.'

  All of us had problems, it seemed, whose sources were untraceable, crossing over one another like the trajectories of countless raindrops in a storm, blending to create a fog of delusion and counter-delusion. Powerful forces and connections were undoubtedly at play, yet they seemed to have no faces and no names, and it was anybody's guess what we—a crowd of deluded no-talents—could have possibly done to offend them. We had been caught up in a season of hideous magic from which nothing could offer us deliverance. More and more I found myself returning to those memories of gas station carnivals, seeking an answer in the twilight of remote rural areas where miniature merry-go-rounds and ferris wheels lay broken in a desolate landscape.