Dhalgren

by Samuel R. Delany

  "I want to go for a walk," Lanya said. "Will you two please get up and let me put my pants on?"

  "She's really a head-shrinker?" Denny asked. "She got some crazy man in there?"

  "Yes," Lanya said. "Now will you please move your ass off my foot?"

  "You just don't want to ball," Kid said.

  "Not true. I just do want to get some air."

  Kid rocked up, stood. "Okay. Fine. Who can ball with all these venus fly traps leering at you anyway?" And realized they made him feel far more uncomfortable than he could, comfortably, admit. On the desk in the bay window lay his notebook.

  "Fine reason to get out of here," Lanya said.

  "I dropped my book behind the bed," Denny said. "Just a ... eh ... there, I got it."

  Kid went to the desk and opened the grimy cover. Folded inside was the sheet from the telephone pad, grilled with his handwriting.

  "And the galleys with your corrections are in the top drawer on the right." The last of her sentence was muffled by the T-shirt coming off. "Mr Newboy gave me everything just before he left, when we didn't know where you were."

  Kid sat down on the chair's torn caning.

  Quickly he flipped through till he found a three-quarter-blank page. He pulled loose his pen. The raddled pages chattered at the pressure of his ballpoint He wrote very quickly, with his face screwed; his lips parted across Ms teeth, then pressed together again. Where his spine settled in the sacrum's socket, a suspended tension began to release. Neither he nor it had finished when Denny, behind him, said: "Kid?"

  But he closed the notebook cover over the page. Then he turned around. Lanya, sitting on the bed in her jeans and sneakers, but no shirt, looked up from the book of poems.

  Denny stood in the middle of the room, one hand flat on his thigh. "I ... mmm . . . you said . . . I wanted to tell you, Kid, that, well, when you go on like that with me and call me names and stuff and push me around, I guess I don't mind it." He looked down and swallowed. "But I don't like it that much." The inflection of the sentence didn't resolve, so he added . . . "you know?"

  Kid nodded. "Okay."

  Denny swayed a little, uncomfortably. Lanya suddenly put the book on the floor, and walked up behind him. She put her chin on his shoulder, her arms around his stomach. Denny put his forearm along hers, rubbed the back of her wrist, and waited.

  Kid went and put his arms around both of them; Lanya's bare back under his hands was very warm. One of them held on to his waist. After a moment Denny said: "You're both in the wrong position. Him in front and you on my ass, I don't get a chance at nothing- Hey . . ." And pulled Kid close again when he started to back off. Lanya, head bent, hair brushing Kid's nose over Denny's shoulder, looked up with wide, wide eyes- brighter than any leaf about them. Kid blew at her nose. Denny wriggled. "I don't think three people can kiss each other at the same time . . ." he said.

  "Yes we can," Lanya said. "Here, see . . ."

  A minute later, heads together, arms locked around one another's backs, Kid said, "This is comfortable."

  "I think," Denny said, moving his head down between their chins, "I smell more than either of you."

  "Mmm . . ." Lanya nodded.

  "Didn't you say something about wanting to go out?" Kid asked.

  She nodded again. "Mmmm? Let's go."

  First cold air under his left arm, then his right Her fingers on his chest were the last to leave him.

  He looked at the desk and wondered whether he should take the notebook.

  "You sure keep it hot in here," Denny said.

  "Oh, would you turn that off for me?"

  "How?"

  "Never mind. I'll do it."

  Kid looked up: Lanya squatted before the heater, grunting and twisting at something inside.

  "There." She stood. "Let's go."

  "You ain't gonna put no shirt on or nothing?" Denny asked.

  The sides of the heater, cooling, clanged.

  "Be a doll and let me wear your vest?"

  "Sure," Denny shrugged out of his. "But it won't cover your tits."

  "If I wanted them covered, I'd put on a shirt." She took the vest from him. "There're some advantages to living in this city."

  "You're a funny lady." "You're a funny boy."

  Denny bit on his lip a moment, then nodded deeply. "I guess I sure as fuck am."

  "What are you grinning about?" Lanya asked Kid.

  "Nothing," and ended up grinning harder. "You gonna take up chains too and be a member . . ."

  She considered a moment, sucking her underlip. "Nope." One nipple was just visible inside the leather lapel. The other was covered. "Just curious." And picked up her harmonica from the floor by the bed.

  They play me into violent postures. Adrift in the violent city, I do not know what stickum tacks words and tongue. Hold them there, cradled on the muscular floor. Nothing will happen. What is the simplest way to say to someone like Kamp or Denny or Lanya that all their days have rendered ludicrous their judgment of the night? I can write at it. Why loose it on the half-day? Holding it in the mouth distills an anger dribbling bitter back of the throat, a substance for the hand. This is not what I am thinking. This is merely (he thought) what thinking feels like.

  They were quiet through the living room. At the head of the steps Denny began giggling. Lanya hurried them down. They reached the porch, hysterical.

  "What's so funny?" she asked three times; three times her face recovered from the contortions of mirth.

  Kid thought: There's a moment in her laughter when she's very ugly. He watched for it, saw it pass again, and found himself laughing the harder. She took his hand, and he was very glad she did. The stridence smoothed in his own voice.

  Denny's leveled, too, from some relief Kid did not understand.

  "Where's your school?" Kid asked.

  "Huh?"

  "Denny told me you were teaching in a school. And Madame Brown said something about classes."

  "You told me about the school," Denny said,

  "It's right down there. That's where we're going now."

  "Fine."

  She bit both lips and nodded; then slid her arm up to link Kid's elbow, held out her other hand to Denny . . . who pretended not to see and tightroped along the curb. So she dropped Kid's hand too.

  The green jacket was new. The shirt between the brass zippers looked old. He came from the corner, unsteadily, head slightly down. His varying steps took him indiscriminately left or right. Twenty-five? Thirty? His black hair was almost shoulder length. In the bony face there was nothing like eyes. He ... staggered closer. Tiny lids were pursed at the back of fleshed-over sockets otherwise smooth as the insides of teacups. One leaked a thread of mucus down his nose. He came on, missing the lamppost by a lucky detour. On twine around his neck hung a cardboard sign, lettered in ballpoint:

  "Please help me. I am deaf and dumb."

  Denny stepped closer to Lanya and took her arm. The blind-mute passed. "Wow-" Denny started, softly. Then breath stopped.

  The heavy blond Mexican in the collarless blanket-shirt hurried from a doorway. The irregular tap of the blind-mute's cowboy boots stopped when the Mexican seized his shoulder; his head came way up and swung in the air like sniffing as the Mexican took the blind-mute's hand. He pressed his fist against the mute's palm, and pressed again, and pressed again, making different shapes. The blind-mute nodded. Then they hurried to the corner, holding one another's arm.

  "Shit . . ." Denny said, wonderingly and lingeringly. He looked at Lanya. "We seen him before, you know? The big spic. He pushed Kid, you know? Just came up to him in the street and pushed him."

  "Why?" Lanya asked. She reached across to hold the right lapel of Denny's vest with her left hand.

  "Don't tell me everything in this fucking city happens for a reason," Kid said. "I don't know."

  "Well," Lanya said, "usually, in Bellona, everything happens for . . ." Then she sucked her teeth. "Deaf and blind? That's heavy. I was in San Francisco once. Y
ou know the welfare office on Mission Street?"

  "Yeah," Kid said. "I tried to get on welfare out there, but they wouldn't let me."

  She raised an eyebrow. "I was walking by it once . . . reading the signs on the Page Glass Company? When I looked down, I saw a dumpy woman in a flowered house dress leading this old man who was tapping a cane. But when she got to the steps, she stooped down to feel around. And she was saying, 'Now I know . . . I know where it is.' Three more steps, and I realized she was blind, too. I watched them till she finally got them through the door. It was fascinating, and a little horrifying. But when I went on, I began to think: What a marvelous image for most of human history, not to mention current politics. Practically every relationship I know has something in it of-and then of course it struck me, and I began to laugh right there on the street. But the point is, it really hadn't occurred to me all the time I'd watched them. And all I could do was think how lucky I was and I had decided not to be an artist, or a writer or a poet. Because how could you use a perfectly real experience like that in a work of art today, you know?"

  "I don't get it," Denny said. "What do you mean?" (Without Denny's vest, Kid noticed one of the five chains Denny wore was copper. His back and shoulders, here and there pricked with pink, looked white as stone.)

  "It's just that . . ." Lanya frowned. "Well, look, Denny-you've heard the expression . . ."

  He hadn't.

  When they'd tried to explain for a block and a half, Kid realized that Denny was now between them once more ("But why can't you use something anyway that somebody already said?" Denny demanded once more. "I mean if you say where you got it from, maybe . . ."), but Kid could not remember switching positions: gruffly he switched back.

  "That's the school." Lanya squeezed Kid's arm. "It doesn't look like one, I know. But I guess that's the point."

  "It looks like a drug store," Denny said. "I wouldn't want to put a school in no place that looked like a drug store. I mean not around here."

  "It was a clothing store," Lanya said.

  "Oh." Denny's tongue made a hillock on his cheek. "It sure looks like a drug store."

  "I hope not." Lanya actually sounded worried.

  "I don't think it should look like any sort of store at all," Kid said. "I mean if you don't want people busting in."

  "That was the idea," Lanya said. "I didn't think it looked like a store at all. At least since we took the sign off. Just a house with a large front window. There isn't any writing on it."

  "I seen drug stores like that." Denny nodded in self-corroboration. "People around here are always busting into drug stores and doctors' offices 'cause they think they can find shit. And they find some, too."

  Lanya jiggled the handle. "I thought it looked like a coffee shop." The door swung in.

  Turning inside, Kid saw curtains in front of the window. Light prickled the weave. "I didn't notice those from the outside."

  "That's because the window's so dirty, it really doesn't matter."

  "It sure is dark," Denny muttered. "You got electricity here, don't you?"

  "There're lanterns," Lanya said. "But I don't think we'd better use them now."

  "Put your lights on," Kid told Denny. Denny's hand rattled in chains.

  Lanya's hand leapt to shadow her face. ". . . that surprised me!" She laughed.

  Shadows from the chairs swung on the linoleum as what had been Denny moved toward a blackboard stand. "It sure looks like a school inside."

  "Actually started out just as a day-care center. You have no idea how many children there are in Bellona! We don't either. They don't all come here."

  "You take care of them while their parents go to work?" Kid asked.

  "I really don't know what their-" she glanced at him, closed her lips, moved them across her teeth-"what their parents do. But the kids are better having each other to play with some place where it's safe. And we can teach things here. Things like reading; and arithmetic. Paul Fenster got the thing started. Most of the kids in my section, in all the sections really, are black. But we've got three white children who're holed up with their parents over in the Emboriky department store."

  "Shit," Denny said. "You take those bastards?" "Somebody has to." "I don't think I'd fall in love with any of them."

  "Yes, you would. They're all cute as the devil." She picked up a lantern that had dropped from its nail and hung it back. "When Paul suggested that I take over a section, at first I really wondered. I'm not a social crusader. But you wouldn't believe how good these kids are. And quiet? With a bunch of seven, eight, and nine year olds, it's a little unnerving just how quiet they can be. They do practically anything I say."

  "They're all probably scared to death." Lanya made a face. "I'm afraid, really, that's what it is."

  "Of you?" Denny's great light bobbed. "No." Lanya frowned. "Just scared. It was my idea to try actually teaching something . . . just to pass the time. It works out a lot better than letting them run loose-mainly because they don't run." She blinked. "They just sat around and fidgeted and looked unhappy." She turned to the table. "Well, anyway, here-"

  The aluminum face of a four-spool tape recorder, interrupted with a quorum of dials, twin rows of knobs, tabs, and multiple ranks of jack-sockets, gleamed above coiled wire, on which lay three stand-mikes and several earphones.

  ". . . since you're here-" Lanya sat one rod-mike upright-"you might as well help. I was going to try something out that I've been working on-Denny, if you're going to keep that thing on, please be still! It's distracting!"

  "Okay." A chair rasped back. Denny's light, quivering, lowered about it; and consumed it. "Okay. What do we do?"

  "You can start off by keeping quiet." She pressed a switch; two spools spun. "Then it gets more complicated. This is a great machine. It's two free and reversible four-track recorders on one chassis, with built in cell-sink." She pressed another tab; the spools slowed. She blew a run on the harmonica toward the mike, pressed the off button. Another finger went down on a black tab. The spools halted, reversed; another finger went down.

  The spools slowed, stopped. Another finger. They reversed.

  From under the table-Kid's eyes jerked down to the metallic-shot speaker cloth-the harmonica, twice as loud and with echo, rang like a mellophone.

  Lanya turned a knob. "Level's a little high. But that's the effect I want for the third track."

  The tape ran back (more tabs: chud-chuk), reversed. Lanya blew another run, and replayed it.

  "Gee," Denny said. "On the tape, it sounds just like you playing."

  No, Kid thought. It sounds entirely different. He said: "It sounds pretty good." But different.

  Lanya said: "It's about okay." She turned one knob a lot, and another only a little. "That should do it." She pressed another tab. "Here goes nothing. Be quiet now. I'm recording."

  Denny's chair leg squeaked on the floor.

  Lanya scowled back over her shoulder, and positioned herself at the mike. Without lifting her sneaker heel, she began swinging her knee to keep time. Her shoulders rounded from the armholes of Denny's vest. She blew a long, bending note. And another. A third seemed to slide from between them, bent back, hung in the half-dark room-light glowed in three of the dials; red hairlines shook-and turned over, became another note, did something to Kid's eyebrows so they wrinkled. And Benny had turned off his shield.

  She played.

  Kid listened, and remembered crouching in dim leaves, leaves tickling his jaw, while she walked beyond him, making bright music. Then something in the playing brought him to the here and now of the room, the plastic reels winding, the tension-arm bouncing inside its tape loop, the needles swinging, three (of the four) signal lights glowing like cigarettes. The music was more intense than memory; emotional fragments, without referent scenes, resolved through the brittle, slow notes. She moved her mouth and her forehead; her two forefingers rose vertical over the silver (her nails were slightly dirty; the music was wholly beautiful), then clamped. Silver slid b
etween her lips. She played, played more, played some phrase she'd played before, then turned the tune to its final cadences, taking it to some unexpected key, and held and harped on the resolving chord sequence; a little trill of notes kept falling into it, every two beats; and falling; and falling.

  She dropped the harp, clutching it in both hands, against her bare breasts, and grinned.

  After maybe ten seconds, Benny applauded. He stuck out his legs from the chair, bounced his heels, and laughed. "That's pretty good! Wow! That's pretty nice!"

  Kid smiled, pulled his bare toes back on top of his boot, pushed his shoulders forward; in his lap his hands knotted. "Yeah . . ."

  Lanya grinned at them both, stopped the tapes. "I'm not finished yet. You guys have to help on the next part." She plugged in one earphone set, tossed it to Denny: "Don't drop-"

  He almost did.

  She started to toss another set to Kid; but he got up and took it. Tangled cords swung to the floor. "I'm going to lay in another track on top of it. Remember that little part just before the end? Well, this time you have to clap there, five times, each time a, little louder. And sort of shout or hoot or something on the last clap." She played the section over.

  Denny started to beat his hands together.

  "Just five times," she said. "Then shout I'll bring you in. Let's try it." They did. Denny hooted like a choo-choo train, which broke Kid up laughing.

  "Come on," Lanya said. "You guys don't have to overdo it!"

  They tried again.

  "That's it. Put your earphones on, and we'll lay it in."

  The rubber rims clasped Kid's ears and damped the room's silence down a level.

  "I'm going to be playing something entirely different." Lanya's voice was crisp and distant through the phones. "But I'll signal you two in with my elbows." She flapped one at them and put on her own phones. The vest swung from her sides. "There we-" she turned on the tape. Momentarily the silence in Kid's phones crackled-"go."

  Kid heard Denny's chair leg squeak; but it was on the tape.

  Then, a long note bent.

  Over it, Lanya began, as the beat cleared, to rattle out, like insects, high triplets, first here, then up half a step, then down a whole one. Her mouth jerked across the organ and she dragged a growl up from the windy lower holes. Then jerk: bright triplets rattled. The old melody wound, beneath them and decorated by them: each time the third batch arrived, they thrust it into a new harmony, and toward Kid's and Denny's cadenced entrance: