Dhalgren

by Samuel R. Delany

"The brush with civilization did me good, though. Then I wandered out on my own again. Have you been to the monastery, out by Holland?"

  "Huh?"

  "I've never been there either but I've heard some very sincere people have set up a sort of religious retreat. I still can't figure out if they got started before this whole thing happened, or whether they moved in and took over afterward. But it still sounds impressive. At least what one hears."

  "John and Mildred are pretty sincere."

  "Touche!" She puffed a chord, then looked at him curiously, laughed, and hit at the high stems. He looked; and her eyes, waiting for him to speak, were greener than the haze allowed any leaf around.

  "It's like a small town," he said. "Is there anything else to do but gossip?"

  "Not really." She hit the stems again. "Which is a relief, if you look at it that way."

  "Where does Calkins live?"

  "Oh, you like to gossip! I was scared for a moment." She stopped knocking the stalks. "His newspaper office is awful! He took some of us there, right to where they print it. Grey and gloomy and dismal and echoing." She screwed up her face and her shoulders and her hands. "Ahhhh! But his house-" Everything unscrewed. "Just fine. Right above the Heights. Lots of grounds. You can see the whole city. I imagine it must have been quite a . sight when all the street lights were on at night." A small screwing, now. "I was trying to figure out whether he's always lived there, or if he just moved in and took it over too. But you don't ask questions like that."

  He turned and she followed.

  "Where is his house?"

  "I think the actual address is on Brisbain South."

  "How'd you get to meet him?"

  "They were having a party. I was wandering by. Someone I knew invited me in. Phil, actually."

  "That sounds easy."

  "Ah, it was very difficult. You want to go up there and meet Calkins?"

  "Well, everything looks pretty scroungy down around here. I could wander up and see if somebody would invite me in." He paused. "Of course, you're a girl. You'd have an easier time, wouldn't you? To be ... decorative?"

  She raised her eyebrows. "Not necessarily."

  He glanced at her in time to catch her glancing back. The idea struck him as amusing.

  "You see that path behind the soccer posts?"

  "Yeah."

  "It exits right on to Brisbain North. Which turns into Brisbain South after a while."

  "Hey!" He grinned at her, then let his head fall to the side. "What's the matter?"

  "I'm sad you're going. I was all set for a dangerous, exciting afternoon, wandering about with you, playing my harmonica for you."

  "Why don't you come?"

  Her look held both embarrassment and collusion. "I've been."

  Hammering sounded behind them.

  To his frown, she explained: "One of John's work projects. They've gotten back from lunch. I know there's food left. The guy who does the most of their cooking, Jommy, is a friend of mine; do you want to eat?"

  "Naw." He shook his head. "Besides, I haven't decided if I want-"

  "Yes, you have. But I'll see you when you get back. Take this." She held out the notebook. "It'll give you something to read on the way."

  For a moment he let his face acknowledge that she wanted him to stay. "Thanks ... all right."

  "That's one nice thing about this place," she answered the acknowledgement; "when you come back, I will see you." She raised her harmonica to her mouth. "You can't lose anybody here." In the metal, her eyes and nostrils were immense darknesses, set in silvered flesh, cut through, without lid or lash or limit, by green and green. She blew a discord, and walked away.

  As he left the eyeless lions, it occurred to him: You can't make that discord on a harmonica.

  Not on any harmonica he'd ever had.

  He'd walked three blocks when he saw, in the middle of the fourth, the church.

  Visible were two (of presumably four) clocks around the steeple. Nearing, he saw the hands were gone.

  He scrubbed at his forehead with the back of his wrist. Grit rolled between skin and skin. All this soot . . .

  The thought occurred: I'm in fine shape to get myself invited into a house party!

  Organ music came from the church door. He remembered Lanya had said something about a monastery . . . Wondering if curiosity showed on his face, he stepped carefully-notebook firmly under his arm-into the tiled foyer.

  Through a second door, in an office, two of the four spools on the aluminum face of an upright tape recorder revolved. There were no lights on.

  It only really registered as he turned away (and, once registered, he had no idea what to do with the image): Thumb-tacked above the office bulletin-board was the central poster from Loufer's wall: the black man in cap, jacket, and boots.

  Another door (leading to the chapel itself?) was ajar on darkness.

  He stepped back to the sidewalk-

  "Hey, there!"

  The old man wore maroon bell bottoms, gold-rimmed spectacles; underneath a dull corduroy jacket, a bright red tanktop: beard, beret. He carried a bundle of newspapers under one arm. "How you doing on this pearly afternoon?"

  "Hello."

  "Now ... I bet you're wondering what time it is." The old man strained his ropy neck. "Let me see." He gazed at the steeple. "Let me see. That would be about. .. eleven . . . twenty-five." His head came down in wheezy laughter. "How do you like that, hey? Pretty good trick, huh? (You want a paper? Take one!) It is a trick. I'll show you how to do it. What's the matter? Paper don't cost you. You want a subscription?"

  "Under your beard . . . where'd you get that thing around your neck?"

  "You mean . . ." The old man's free hand moved to the peppery hair that went without break from the top of his chest to his chin. He unfastened the necklace, which fell, like a diamond snake. ". . . this? Where'd you get yours?"He'd thought collar and cuff hid his own. "On my way here. It says it comes from Brazil."

  The old man held the end of the chain close to see: "... Japan?" then extended the end for him to look.

  On the tab of brass were stamped letters: ade in Japan. Before ade there was a squiggle undoubtably m.

  The old man got it around his neck again and finally managed to secure it with one hand.

  He looked down at the papers: he could read, just at the old man's crumpled cuff:

  BELLONA TIMES

  Wednesday, April 1, 1979 NEW BOY IN TOWN!

  He frowned at that

  "I didn't see your chain," the man went on, in un-requested explanation. "But you wouldn't have asked if you hadn't got one yourself, now, would you?"

  He nodded, mainly to make the geezer continue-ï an urging not needed.

  "I guess it's like a prize for an initiation. Only you didn't know you were being initiated? And that sort of upset you, I bet."

  He nodded again.

  "My name's Faust," the old man said. "Joaquim Faust."

  "Wakeem ...?"

  "You're pronouncing it right. From your accent, though, I bet you wouldn't put the same letters in it I do."

  He reached for Joaquim's extended hand: Joaquim caught his up in a biker shake. "You say-" Joaquim frowned before he let go-"you got yours on your way here? Outside Bellona?"

  "That's right."

  Joaquim shook his head and said, "Mmmmmm," while a roaring that had been gathering seconds now, broke over head. They looked up. Nothing was visible in the haze. The jets lingered disturbingly long, then pulled away. The taped organ sounded soft after it.

  "On the clock," Joaquim said. "The front face. That little stub used to be the minute hand. So you can about figure out which way it's pointing."

  "Oh. What about the hour?"

  Joaquim shrugged. "I left the office around eleven. Least I guess it was eleven. I haven't been gone that long."

  "What happened to the ... hands?"

  "The niggers. The first night, I guess it was. When all that lightning was going on. They went wild. Swarm
ed all over. Broke up a whole lot of stuff around here- Jackson's just down there."

  "Jackson?"

  "Jackson Avenue is where most of the niggers live. Used to live. You new?"

  He nodded.

  "See if you can get hold of the paper for that day. People say you never seen pictures like that before. They was burning. And they had ladders up, and breaking in the windows. This guy told me there was a picture of them climbing up on the church. And breaking off the clock hands. Tearing each other up, too. There's supposed to be one set of pictures; of this big buck, getting after this little white girl ... a whole lot of stink about them pictures. 'Rape' is the nasty word they didn't use in the paper but rape is what it was. People was saying Calkins shouldn't've printed them. But you know what he did?" Joaquim's twisted face demanded answer.

  "No. What?" he ceded, warily.

  "He went down and hunted up the nigger in the pictures and had somebody interview him; and he printed every thing. Now if you ask me, what he shouldn't have printed was that interview. I mean, Calkins is all interested in civil rights and things. He really is. The colored people in this town had it bad I guess, and he was concerned with that. Really concerned. But that nigger had the dirtiest mouth, and didn't use it to talk nothing but dirt. I don't think he even knew what a newspaper interview was. I mean, I know the colored people got it rough. But if you want to help, you don't print a picture of the biggest, blackest buck in the world messin' up some little blond-headed seventeen-year-old girl, and then runnin' two pages of him saying how good it was, with every other word 'shit' and 'fuck,' and 'Wooo-eeeee', how he's going to get him some more soon as he can, and how easy it's gonna be with no pigs around! I mean not if you want to help-do you? And because of the article, Harrison-his name was George Harrison-is some sort of hero, to all the niggers left over in Jackson; and you'd think just about everybody else too. Which shows you the kind of people we got."

  "But you didn't see it, though?"

  Faust waved that away.

  "There's this other colored man up from the South, some civil rights, militant person-a Mr Paul Fenster? He got here right around the time it happened. Calkins knows him too, I guess, and writes about what he's doing a lot. Now I would guess this guy probably has some decent intentions; but how's he going to do anything with all that George Harrison business, huh? I mean it's just as well-" he looked around-"there's not too many people left that care any more. Or that many niggers left in Jackson."

  He resolved annoyance and curiosity with the polite question:

  "What started it? The riot I mean."

  Joaquim bent his head far to the side. "Now you know, nobody has the story really straight. Something fell."

  "Huh?"

  "Some people say a house collapsed. Some others say a plane crashed right there in the middle of Jackson. Somebody else was talking about some kid who got on the roof of the Second City bank building and gunned somebody down."

  "Somebody got killed?"

  "Very. It was supposed to be a white kid on the roof and a nigger that got shot. So they started a riot."

  "What did the paper say?"

  "About everything I did. Nobody knows which one happened for sure."

  "If a plane crashed, somebody would have known."

  "This was back at the beginning. Things were a hell of a lot more confused then. A lot of buildings were burning. And the weather was something else. People were still trying to get out. There were a hell of a lot more people here. And they were scared."

  "You were here then?"

  Joaquim pressed his lips till mustache merged with beard. He shook his head. "I just heard about the newspaper article. And the pictures."

  "Where'd you come from?"

  "Ahhhhh!" Faust waggled a free finger in mock reproval. "You have to learn not to ask questions like that. It's not polite. I didn't ask nothing about you, did I? I told you my name, but I didn't ask yours."

  "I'm sorry." He was taken back.

  "You going to meet a lot of people who'll get all kinds of upset if you go asking them about before they came to Bellona. I might as well tell you, so you don't get yourself in trouble. Especially-" Faust raised his beard and put a thumb beneath his choker-"people wearing one of these. Like us. I bet if I asked your name, or maybe your age, or why you got an orchid on your belt . . . anything like that, I could really get your dander up. Now couldn't I?"

  He felt the discomfort, vague as remembered pain, in his belly.

  "I come from Chicago, most recently. Frisco before that." Faust reached down to hold out one leg of his belled pants. "A grandpa Yippie, yeah? I'm a traveling philosopher. Is that good enough for you?"

  "I'm sorry I asked."

  "Think nothing of it. I heard Bellona was where it was at. It must be, now. I'm here. Is that good enough?"

  He nodded again, disconcerted.

  "I got a good, honest job. Sold the Tribe on the comer of Market and Van Ness. Here I'm Bellona's oldest newspaper boy. Is that enough?"

  "Yeah. Look, I didn't mean-"

  "Something about you, boy. I don't like it. Say-" Eyelids wrinkled behind gold-rimmed lenses-"you're not colored, are you? I mean you're pretty dark. Sort of full-featured. Now, I could say 'spade' like you youngsters. But where I was comin' up, when I was comin' up, they were niggers. They're still niggers to me and I don't mean nothing by it. I want all the best for them."

  "I'm American Indian," he decided, with resigned wrath.

  "Oh." Joaquim tilted his head once more to appraise. "Well, if you're not a nigger, you must be pretty much in sympathy with the niggers." He came down heavy on the word for any discomfort value it still held. "So am I. So am I. Only they won't ever believe it of me. I wouldn't either if I was them. Boy, I got to deliver my papers. Go on-take one. That's right; there you go." Faust straightened the bundle under his arm. "You interested in rioting niggers-and just about everybody is-" the aside was delivered with high theatricality-"you go look up those early editions. Here's your paper, Reverend." He strode across the sidewalk and handed another paper to the black minister in pavement-length cassock who stood in the church door.

  "Thank you, Joaquim." The voice was . . . contralto? There was a hint of ... breasts beneath the dark robe. The face was rounded, was gentle enough for a woman.

  The minister looked at him now, as Joaquim marched down the street. "Faust and I have a little game we play," she-it was she-explained to his bemusement. "You mustn't let it upset you." She smiled, nodded, and started in.

  "Excuse me ... Reverend . .."

  She turned. "Yes?"

  "Eh ..." Intensely curious, he could focus his curiosity on no subject. "What kind of church is this, here?" He settled on that, but felt it hopelessly contrived. What he wanted to ask about, of course, was the poster.

  She smiled. "Interfaith, interracial. We've been managing to have services three times a week for a while now. We'd be very happy if you were interested in coming. Sunday morning, of course. Then again, Tuesday and Thursday evenings. We don't have a very large congregation, yet. But we're gathering our flock."

  "You're Reverend . . . ?"

  "Amy Taylor. I'm a lay preacher, actually. This is a project I've taken on myself. Working out quite well, too, everything considered."

  "You just sort of moved into the church and took it over?"

  "After the people who were here abandoned it." She did not brush her hands off. She extended one. It might have been the same gesture. "I'm glad to meet you." He shook. "Glad to meet you."

  "I hope you come to our services. This is a time of stress for everybody. We need all the spiritual help we can get... don't you think?"

  Her grip (like Joaquim's) lingered. And it was firmer. "Hey, do you know what day it is?"

  She looked down at the paper. "Wednesday."

  "But.. . How do you know when it's Sunday."

  She laughed. It was very self-assured laughter. "Sunday services happen when the paper says Sunday. Mr Calkins conf
uses dates, I know. But there's never more than one Sunday every seven days. Or one Tuesday, either. Now, Thursdays slip up. I went to see him about that. A very polite man. And very concerned about what goes on in his city, despite what some people find a trying sense of humor. I had noticed about the frequency of Sundays myself. He explained about Tuesdays; but he held out for arbitrary Thursdays. He quite nicely offered to declare a Thursday any time I asked-if I would give him twenty-four-hour notice." Her perfect seriousness ruptured with a smile. And she dropped his hand. "The whole business is funny. I feel as strange talking about it as you must hearing it, I'm sure." Her natural hair, her round, brown face: he liked her. "Will you try and come to our services?"

  He smiled. "I'll try." He was even vaguely sorry to lie.

  "Good."

  "Reverend Taylor?'*

  Her sparse eyebrows raised as she looked back.

  "Does this street go toward ... Mr Calkins's?"

  "Yes, his home is about a mile up. You have to cross Jackson. Two days ago some brave soul had a bus running back and forth along Broadway. Only one bus. But then it doesn't have any traffic to fight. I don't know if it's still going. But that would take you to the newspaper office, anyway. Not his home. I suppose you could walk. I did."

  "Thanks." He left her, smiling after him from the doorway. No, he decided. That probably wasn't ,the monastery. He pictured the tape winding and winding as the music dimmed, chord after chord falling from glimmering reels.

  Jackson Avenue was a wide street, but the crowded houses, blurred with noon-smoke, were mostly wood. Trolley wires webbing the intersection were down, in a snarl, on the corner pavement. Two blocks off, wreckage fumed. Billows cleared charred beams, then rolled to.

  A block in the other direction a heavy figure with a shopping bag paused mid-trek between corner and corner to watch him watching. Though it was an arbitrary Wednesday afternoon, the feel was of some ominous Sunday morning.

  There is no articulate resonance. The common problem, I suppose, is to have more to say than vocabulary and syntax can bear. That is why I am hunting in these desiccated streets. The smoke hides the sky's variety, stains consciousness, covers the holocaust with something safe and insubstantial. It protects from greater flame. It indicates fire, but obscures the source. This is not a useful street. Very little here approaches any eidolon of the beautiful.