Clowns At Midnight

by Terry Dowling

  It was a popular street theatre tradition of manic buffoonery, mime and character stereotyping that was the source of vaudeville and music hall, of the comedy of everyone from Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and the Marx Brothers to Danny Kaye, Seinfeld and The Simpsons. You only had to watch A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum or a Carry On film, or catch an old episode of The Benny Hill Show and it was all there: the servant swapping places with the master, the young wife cuckolding her foolish, older husband, the braggart full of himself and brought undone. How common the turns and tropes had become.

  The article for Mind Fields had given me a chance to bring it all out again, but it was Carlo’s request that made me get my notes in order the following morning and make a start.

  The Commedia had originated in the theatrical and mime traditions of ancient Greece and Rome, in the characters of Theophrastus and the plays of Plautus and Terence. Then, by way of the medieval mystery, miracle and morality plays, it had re-surfaced in the streets and market squares of mid-sixteenth century Tuscany as a spin-off of Carnival, partly as a reaction to the over-formal and rigid drama of the day.

  Troupes of gifted performers presented scenarios filled with satire, acrobatics and constant improvisation. Four main characters—the Four Masks—Pantalone, Il Dottore, Scapino (or Brighella) and the pivotal Arlecchino, with their distinctive roles and idiosyncrasies, went through their routines with a host of supporting characters—lesser Masks—named ones like Il Capitano, Scaramuccia and Pedrolino or unnamed ones referred to simply as Zanni (the source of our word ‘zany’), almost all identified by grotesquely exaggerated features, signature mannerisms and lazzi: their characteristic stunts or pranks.

  From humble trestle stages in the streets, piazzas and country fairs of Renaissance Italy, the Commedia had spread, borrowing from Carnival and in turn adding spark and zest to that rich tradition, flourishing well into the eighteenth century. It caught the imagination of popular French culture and was celebrated there as the Comedié Italienne, leaving a legacy of stock characters and comic stereotypes—Masks—that underpinned the artistic and comic sensibilities of the Western world. Thus was the roguish Italian prankster Arlecchino transformed into the far more dashing French Arlequin, lover of Columbine, then the gentrified English Harlequin, centrepiece of that grand comic and costumed procession named after him: the harlequinade. Thus did his rogue’s patches become the elegant diamond diaper we had come to know him by.

  But while Shakespeare knew what it was he borrowed from when he wrote The Comedy of Errors, how many playwrights, scriptwriters and comedians did so today? Everyone knew of Harlequin, Columbine and probably Pulcinella—Mr Punch—if none of the others, but modern film and television were rife with the Masks in one form or another. The Commedia may have devolved to TV sitcoms, pantomime and schoolyard performances of Punch and Judy (so rare in these politically correct days), but it still flourished beyond anyone’s wildest dreams in modern-day Venetian Carnevale where so much of it started, in Mardi Gras and Halloween, in everything from the marvellous performances of the Cirque de Soleil to the humblest village fiesta, from the screen clichés of Hollywood to every fourth or fifth piece of advertising. People had simply forgotten.

  The Commedia had to be part of what I wrote for Mind Fields. It was not only a fitting and visually striking lynchpin for my condition, but it had done so much to shape clowning—and, yes, clown-fear for those of us who felt such a thing.

  I wanted to celebrate its role in the making of the modern world and in providing the shape of my danger: the love-hate, hot-cold, stop-go, yes-no pendulum swing of my condition. A counterphobe does these things. Go figure.

  And now there was a new side to it. After speaking with Carlo and seeing the Risi mask, the Commedia’s mid-sixteenth century reappearance in Tuscany completed a circle somehow. More than ever I was determined to research Sardinia.

  Perhaps my angle would be the evolution of the maschera themselves, the actual masks worn by the performers. If I could stand it, I would send along an image file they might care to use. It would illustrate the David Leeton paradox nicely: images provided by the counterphobe author haunted by them, the whole project one huge tolerance test.

  And it was paying dues too, introducing others to a lost form, lost truths, lost ways.

  Sitting at my laptop on the veranda, I began turning my notes into a preliminary draft.

  The original Commedia masks were half-masks, fashioned from tan leather darkened to brown or black and made glossy by constant handling and use in bright sunlight. The Carnival masks, by contrast, were originally full-face, often brightly coloured and gorgeously adorned.

  With the growing popularity of the Commedia, it was easy to see how the forms merged: the Commedia masks gaining colour and adornment at odds with their humble, market-square beginnings, the Carnival maschera becoming more comfortable half-masks with the distinct personalities of Arlecchino, Il Capitano, Scaramouche and the rest.

  Yes, that would be my approach: tracing how the masks changed, how they began with the revival of the ancient Greek masks of kings, queens and heroes, the young and old, masks representing satyrs, demons and buffoons, originally of linen and plaster and made oversized, with exaggerated features so they could be easily seen by spectators in the highest rows of an amphitheatre. I had images of many of them in my TT collection: later terracotta copies of the less permanent, long-gone originals. Such an irony that sacred, classical forms should be borrowed, adapted, given a new relevance and lustre and channelled through the remarkable phenomenon that was Carnival.

  It said something about the constancy, the indominatibility of the human spirit; something that was worth telling, worth remembering: how Carnival had originally been a pagan thing, carne vale, the ritual farewell to the last of the meat at winter’s end before the new year’s return to plenty. It had been an affirmation of the great cycle of life, of the struggle between winter and summer, famine and bounty, death and re-birth. Then, following Venice’s great victory over a rival state in 1162, the celebrations in San Marco Square saw Carnival born—re-born—as a Christian festival. Now it commemorated the struggle between good and evil, salvation and damnation, Christ and the Devil, filled with processions and performances in celebration of faith and eternal hope.

  It soon spread. Throughout medieval Europe, in the week before Lent, the devils of the mystery plays roamed the streets, playing pranks on the citizens and carrying out all sorts of harmless mischief. Honest, God-fearing folk could step outside their ordinary lives for a time, could enact the great struggle of good versus evil, take part in the great seasonal cycles of death and re-birth, of life triumphing over death.

  At Carnival, everything was permitted. The masks already bestowed licence, already harkened back to primal forms and pagan ribaldry, to revels and ancient rituals, to oracles and antique gods. The new theatrical form, the Commedia, made full use of these thrilling, darkly evocative qualities. How readily the vestigial cuckold’s horns on the Commedia mask of a zanni recalled those of the devils in a mystery play being forced back into the Hellmouth by avenging angels.

  Carnival had always had its dark underside, its dimension of chaos and pagan excess barely held in check, but with the Commedia it became popular in a different way, all wholesome entertainment, innocent fun and allowable, nothing to worry about.

  Which is possibly why long-nosed Nascone, Dr Peste and Naso Turco, so many Commedia/Carnival hybrids, haunted the higher numbers of my TT disks. They were part of a clever deception, a con job, this jollying up and dusting off of older, darker things.

  No wonder masks, clowns and puppets terrified me so. All such fun, such good fun, but what about when the eyes stared too intently and the grins were so locked and manic? They belonged to something else then, were from somewhere else entirely, borrowed and pretending. They could get away with anything. Everything was permitted.

  This was the other part of my article, the main part. This is w
hat made coulrophobia almost impossible to endure. Not just living with the affliction, but wondering why the rest of the world didn’t. Wondering how people could laugh at clowns so easily, so casually enjoy a puppet show or respond to masked figures so equably, even smile at an intriguing magazine article that framed someone’s personal nightmare as an interesting clinical condition. Didn’t they see the trickery, the malice, the sinister intent behind the greasepaint and papier mâché?

  The line from the cheapo 1985 horror film Clownhouse invariably came to mind when I pondered this question, the scene where the coulrophobic kid tries to explain to his older brother why he fears clowns so much: ‘You never know what they really are.’ That was it exactly: the sense of something other.

  It couldn’t be rational where I was concerned—how could it?—but always, rigorously, it was. That was the point. This wasn’t just the sense of unreality and depersonalisation most phobic subjects felt. This skirted the edges of paranoid schizophrenia. It was why, with Jack’s help, I had gone with the flow, encompassed the paradox and internal logic when it called, even while knowing it was false in terms of the larger world. The clown-fear would stay, but I had jollied it down to a neat David Leeton package, something I knew the properties of and could deal with, even play with. I seemed to have managed it. I was one of the lucky ones.

  But on this Monday, I just couldn’t begin to concentrate. Too much had happened. Too much was unresolved: the purpose of the tower, the fate of the bottle-trees, the black page on Disk 4, now the strange wheeled cart on Disk 5. I finished four pages of text, determined not to look them over yet, then did a piece for my agent, Anna, a ‘David Leeton is currently working on’ human interest update that I emailed through twenty minutes later. Still full of restless energy then from tackling the article, I began a couple of lyric patterns too, jotting down several interesting chorus hooks that might yield something later.

  But the long haul of the novel escaped me. It was the familiar casualty of too much preoccupation with my condition. Flirting with it in song lyrics was one thing, but I tried to keep my fiction clear and unsullied. My novels were a kind of control for the other David Leeton.

  Still, I tried, I really tried, though I knew things were amiss when I found myself checking the irrigation system for the bonsai once too often, and squaring up the magazines under the coffee table when I took a tea break.

  I felt aimless, ill at ease. Perhaps it was some hold-over from finding the hieroglyph on Disk 5, the sinister black page on Disk 4. If Jack hadn’t put them there, then who? But it wasn’t something I could afford to dwell on. I answered emails, lost an hour there, then tried to write again but found it all so forced. Beyond the windows, beyond the veranda, was the same overwhelming sunlight, the same wearying heat and shimmer, the sense of days merging into one another in a way no clock or calendar could prevent.

  Cabin fever, I told myself. I needed something, some word, some clue.

  ‘Out along Edenville Road,’ Gemma had said at the Risi party.

  But where? It was 11.3 kilometres of occasionally sealed, mostly dirt and gravel road winding among dry grassy hills, occasional copses of trees. There were dozens of byways leading off to who knew where, so many driveways leading to hilltop homesteads, threading away to houses you never saw. No point in looking really. Too much territory to cover.

  But it would be doing something, anything. Taking a position in the world, like with the bottle-tree and reclaiming the TT disks. It wasn’t just Gemma—how could it be?—rather the possibility she represented. That was it. The hope of her. Someone like her.

  It was foolish, selfish, tellingly desperate, I knew, but the emptiness, the aimlessness she could change (that I needed changed, to put it more honestly) made her everything all of a sudden. Small compliment to her, but I truly didn’t see it as something trivial. This was more than the Nelson Syndrome. At worst she was a variable made precious and worthy, even numinous (that word was oddly there!) by this need to have her be a part of what was happening. It was—just different.

  All sorts of fancies came then: the prospect of discovering her walking along or checking her mail, of just driving over a rise and seeing her there. Or meeting the Risis on their way into Kyogle, or the Kesbys, or the Tramontes, almost anything and anyone would do.

  And I could drop off a copy of the opening to my article in the Risi mailbox. Yes, that would be my excuse; that would justify it. And it would keep the connection with Carlo fresh, put me in a position to receive more of his views on things we seemed to have in common.

  I couldn’t bring myself to look it over, so I simply printed off a copy, put it in an envelope, scrawled a few words to Carlo on the front. Then at 3:15 I locked the house and drove out, set off along the gravel backroad with two missions. I was simply delivering something to a neighbour’s mailbox, and I was a rather pathetic knight errant looking for a quest, some hint of dragonry, the smallest glimpse of a damsel’s turret or a brigand’s lair in the hot afternoon. I didn’t run the car’s air-conditioner; rather drove with the windows down, wanting to be in the day as much as I could.

  Just doing it soothed me. Everything was different. I even found myself singing Holy Meg, matching the words to the melody I’d put together.

  ‘Holy Meg, time to beg,

  All the shot and powder’s gone.

  Come the day we’ll fail to see the power of the gun.

  Holy Meg, time to beg,

  Gone the hope we’re founded on,

  Out at dawn and sound the horn to the rising of the sun.’

  I smiled. It sounded good. It did. The chorus worked. Mick and Jeremy could tweak the verses, but it was working.

  ‘See the armies in their lines of silver,

  Sweeping southwards to the sea.

  See the engines of their might, how they shiver,

  Feel the passion of the siege.

  Old Avenger shakes the hill,

  Prince of Peace snarls at the door-or-or.

  ‘Holy Meg, time to beg…’

  I loved it. Loved the irony, singing of old guns and desperate final hours as I drove along a dirt road between dry summer hills, sending up a dust-cloud behind, freed from the cabin, out of the box. Jolly Jack out of his box.

  I stopped at the Risi driveway, crossed to the mailbox and put the envelope inside. There was no other mail.

  I stood for a moment by the locked front gate, looking longingly down the road. I couldn’t see the house, just the distant tree-tops that surrounded it, holding it in its island of green. That would be for another time. For now it was back to the car, then the road and the dust and the song.

  ‘How the banners form a wave of colour,

  Soon we’ll hear the drumming cease.

  Let the thunders have their day and over,

  Leave the valley to its peace.

  Fierce Persuader rakes the hill,

  St Martin’s Fist pounds at the door-or-or.

  ‘Holy Meg, time to beg…’

  I made fine gutsy work of it, pounding on the wheel as I raced along Edenville Road, sending up pennons of dust. David Leeton, Conquistador, Love’s Fool on his quest for Gemma.

  I found nothing, of course. Every turn, every new vista or view down a hillside saw hope come and go. There were houses on their hilltops, strongholds battered by the day. There were peregrine falcons aloft and an eagle even higher, a speck against the blue. Once I saw a swamp pheasant on the road, long-plumed and a rich brown, my first ever, source of the distinctive whump-whump-whump call I’d heard in the evenings. There was people-sign everywhere: washing on lines, shed doors open on deep cool interiors, but no actual people, not even a tractor moving in a far-off field. It was as empty and abandoned-looking as the Rankins’ map.

  Finally I reached the turn-off into Kyogle, and headed there because I needed some kind of destination. I plunged along the Summerland Way, waving to the driver of the first car I saw. He didn’t wave back and I had to smile. Intimacy was calibrated
by roads here. On a graded backroad like Edenville Road, everyone waved; you shared their realm of cattle dips, mending fences and hoping for enough rain to keep the tanks full. You were back in the world somehow. The moment you hit a sealed road, you were just traffic again, passing through, part of a different equation entirely. Maybe you waved to someone driving the same make of vehicle as you, but that was it. You had to have a good dirt road, be back in from it, before you belonged.

  Kyogle lay quiet among its hills in the blazing afternoon, leached of street life for the terrible hours between eleven and six, just like the Rankins’ map again: unchanged, unchanging.

  It was all an automatic, half thought out thing then, parking, getting out of the car, walking from blazing summer glare into the refreshing gloom of the Exchange Hotel.

  I didn’t really expect to find Gemma behind the bar—who knew what her rostered days were? Coming here had been a gesture, part of an act of completion. So it shook me to see her sitting with friends over by the pool tables, three guys and two girls her own age, happily chatting away. She laughed with them, gestured dramatically, leant in to deliver certain remarks, seemed easy and natural with them. It was all so brash and ordinary, so mundane, that I felt more foolish than ever.

  But what could I have expected? She had her life here, her friends and family. Of course she fitted this reality. The idea of finding her alone, sitting quietly, waiting for some resolution David Leeton could provide, some act between us, was foolishness, utter arrogance. The Gemma Ewins of the Risi dinner had been the considerate, neighbourly exception, obliging Carlo and Raina, being kind to a stranger as a favour. Who could blame her?