999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [166]
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 nonartistic. 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 appeared to be in motion, an effect which seemed quite credibly the result of some swaying of the lightbulb dangling above. And it seemed that as I gazed at this object, I could hear a faint roaring sound in which there was definitely something both beastlike and oceanic, as Grossvogel had earlier suggested to us. There was more than a casual 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 upwards, 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 bodylike shapes I distinctly recognized the large-bodied figure of the artist himself, although the significance 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 did project a certain 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 for 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 tide 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—of which he subsequently put out a series of several hundred, each of them with the same tide 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