Dhalgren

by Samuel R. Delany

  I took the cap off the bottom of the elbow drain and lots of hair and purple gunk fludged out on the floor. Took the taps off. Should have done that before I took the cap off, because there was a little surge of rusty water out of each-that went down the drain and onto the floor. Then I unscrewed the collars from inside the taps.

  D-t came out, squatted, and watched a while, sometimes handed me tools; finally asked, whimsically, "What the fuck are you doing?" and helped me whobble the sink

  from the wall (standing suddenly when it almost fell) on its enameled claw and ball.

  "I'm putting the sink back together," I told him because I'd just decided to.

  D-t grunted and shoved at the bowl-back. The fore-joints of his thumbs are both crooked; which I'd never noticed before.

  There was some string on the window sill, and I brought in a can of putty from the kitchen. But when I'd pried up the lid with the screwdriver, the surface was cracked like Arizona. And I didn't know where any oil was. D-t came back with a bottle of Wesson, and I couldn't think of any reason why not. D-t settled back to watch.

  "Now we could of got a place without no leaky sink," D-t said. "But then I guess there wouldn't be nothing to do."

  I laughed as much as I could holding the cold-water pipe up while trying to screw the fitting back down over it.

  I asked him something or other.

  Don't recall his exact answer, but somewhere in it, he said; ". . . like when I first got here, I used to walk along the street and know I could break into just about any house I wanted, and I was just scared to death . . ."

  We talked about that. I remembered my first walks in these streets (D-t said: "But I broke in, anyway.") While we talked I recall thinking: It is not that I have no future. Rather it continually fragments on the insubstantial and indistinct ephemera of then. In the summer country, stitched with lightning, somehow, there is no way to conclude; but here, conclusion itself is superfluous. I said

  I've lost a name. So? If the inhabitants of this city have one thing in common, it is that such accidents don't interest them; that is neither lauded here as freedom nor wailed as injury; It is taken as a fact of landscape, not personality. something to D-t about: "What this place needs is a good wind, or a lightning-storm. To clean it out. Or thunder."

  "Oh, man," D-t said. "Oh, man- No! No, I don't think I could take that. Not here," and chuckled (like, I suspect, someone under sentence). We really got into some talk. In that quiet way where you're into the feeling, if not the information. Once he asked me how long I thought I could keep it up, here, and I said: "I don't know. How long can you?" and he laughed too. I was wrapping string around the joint and the fastening on the other end of the cold-water pipe when someone in the doorway said: "Hi, Kid."

  I looked up.

  Frank stood there looking like he didn't know whether or not to put his hands in his pockets.

  "Hello," I said and went back to the fixture.

  "How're you doing?"

  I grunted.

  "Glad I found you. Nobody seemed to know where you were: I wanted to know if I could talk to you about something."

  I was mad at him for interrupting; also because, ignoring him, I had to sort of ignore D-t. "What do you want?"

  The doorframe creaked; Frank shifted on the jamb.

  Then the floorboards; D-t shifted his squat

  Reading over my Journal, I find it difficult to decide even which incidents occurred first I have hysterical moments when I think finding that out is my only possible hope/salvation. Also wonder at some of the things I have not written down: the day with Lanya when she took me to the city museum and we spent from before dawn to after dark sitting around in the reconstructed 18th century rooms ("We could live here, like Calkins!" and she whispered, smiling, "No . . ." and then we talked about a run here: and again she said, "No ..." this time not smiling. And I won't But all the talking we did there, and wandering, growing hungrier and hungrier in the pearl light through the ceiling panes because we could not bare to leave), should make this the longest and most detailed incident In this Journal because it was where she showed me thing after thing and told me about them, to make them mean something for me; she became a real person, by what she knew and what she did, more than anyway she ever could by what was done to her, done to her, done: which was so easily the way I've always wanted to define her. Wanting her to take Denny and the whole nest there; and-holding a small painting she had taken down from the wall to show me something about how the canvas was prepared In the seventeenth century ("Christ, I used to spend weeks making black oil and Meriquet! I'm surprised I didn't asphyxiate someone.")- "W ell,"

  Frank said, settling with the idea of talking to me while I wasn't looking at him, "I was wondering -I mean: How could someone like me go about joining up with you guys?"

  I looked around at him to catch D-t already looking, and looking away.

  "I mean," Frank went on, "is there some initiation, or something? Does some-body have to bring you in; or do you guys just get together and take a vote?"

  "What do you want to know for?" I asked. "Aren't you happy over at the commune? Or is this just research for an article you're planning to do for the Times?"

  "An article on how to get into the scorpions?" Frank laughed. "No. I just want to know because

  she said, "No, I don't think so. It's a gamble enough with you. Not just yet. Maybe later," and re-hung the painting, upside down.

  We laughed.

  So I hung seventeen paintings upside down- "Come on! Stop . . ." she insisted, but I did anyway. Because, I explained, anyone who comes along will notice them like this, frown, maybe turn them right-side up again. And will end up looking at them a little longer. "I'm only doing it for the ones I like."

  "Oh," she said, dubiously. "Well, okay."

  But it Is more memorable unfixed. And to me, that's important. (Only while I'm actually writing, for an instant it is actually more vivid . . .) So I'll stop here, tired.

  Except to tell about that funny argument with Denny, which I still do not understand, where I thought I was going to kill the little bastard. And Lanya just seemed uninterested. Which made me so mad I could have killed her too. And so I spent an afternoon with a bottle of wine and Lady of Spain, bitching about the two of them, and passing the bottle back and forth-she had taken to wearing many rings- and we staggered to the Emboriki, daring each other to break in, which we didn't do, but saying to her, as we strutted by, with our arms around each others' shoulders, "You're my only real friend here, you know?" all very maudlin, but necessary. Then we shouted: "Mother-fuckers! God damn shit-eating motherfuckers!" echoed in the naked street "Come on out from there and fight!" We were hysterical, lerching up and down the curb, spilling wine. "Yeah!" Lady of Spain yelled. "Come on and-" then burped; I thought she was going to vomit, but no: "-down!" Her eyes were very red and she kept rubbing them with her ringed fingers. "Come on down and-" then she saw him: at the large window on the third floor. He was holding a riffle under one arm. The pigeon chest, the too-long hair, even the blue, blue shirt that, from the street, I could tell was too big: recognizing him made me feel odd. "Hey," I said to Lady of Spain and told her who he was. She said: "No shit?" I laughed. Then she said, "Wait a minute. Does he recognize you?" But I began to shout . . . well, things are getting a little tight in the park." He glanced back out in the hall. "We got some real funny people around. Although it looks a little crowded here too." He decided on his pockets. "You guys getting hungry yet? I probably shouldn't mention it, but John and Milly are quite beholden to you since you quit hitting them up for care packages."

  "An oversight," I said.

  "Shouldn't have mentioned it."

  I turned back under the sink, looked for something to do but couldn't really find anything. So I kept looking.

  "You guys seem to have a real thing going here. I'm not happy with what's going on around me where I am. I want to know where I get my transfer, where I can buy a ticket-"

&n
bsp; again. I called him every kind of name I could, between fits of laughing. Lady of Spain insisted: "Look, he's got a gun!" nowhere near as drunk as she'd been. "Kid, let's get out of here!" But I kept up. He watched. Once he moved to rest the butt on the sill, the barrel pointing straight up. I think he was grinning. Finally we left.

  The city is a map of violences anticipated. The armed dwellers in the Emboriki, the blacks surrounding them, the hiss from a turned tap that has finally stopped trickling, the time it takes a group who go out to come back with bags of canned goods, packaged noodles, beans, rice, spaghetti, each is an emblem of inalienable, coming shock. But the clashes that do occur are all petty, disappointing, minor, inconclusive, above all stupid, as though the city prevents any real anxiety's ever resolving. And the result? All humanity here astounds; all charity here is graced.

  Lady of Spain and I reached the nest, still laughing, astounded we were alive.

  In the back yard, Lanya told me she had taken Denny to the museum-"for a couple of hours. We looked at all the paintings you especially liked-and Denny turned them right side up. So he could see them, of course." "Smug butch," I said. She said: "Who? Me?" And Denny began to laugh as though somehow the joke were really on the two of us, which had us both wondering. Then he said they'd wandered around, he taking her out to a place called Holland Lake. They crawled into bed beside me, and we talked till it grew light, Denny being the only one of us who doesn't realize how much easier that makes liking one another. And when Denny did a lot of talking, it finally put me to sleep-though I wanted to stay awake-and woke a little later, with them asleep too, in the familiar position.

  We can survive so much.

  And crawling between them (more comfortable, I guess, than the familiar position when all is said and done) went to sleep again till Lady of Spain and Risa, laughing out in the hall, woke us up; I hoped they would come in. But they didn't "Oh, man," I said. "I can't talk to you about shit like that now. I'm busy."

  "Sure Kid," came out real quick, and he stopped leaning on the doorframe. "Maybe later. I'll just hang around . . . till you have some time."

  D-t handed me the string. "Hey, thanks," I told D-t, "but I don't think I should pack that grease trap." So I didn't, but it was pretty much all right anyway.

  Glanced back.

  Frank was gone.

  So we scrubbed out the grease-streaked bowl, more or less quiet, questioning such idiot work and finding the value -a chance to do something with D-t-disappeared, defined. Well, the sink wasn't dripping.

  Something (I heard it) was happening in front of the house. I listened, surprised (looking at D-t look up at me), to somebody get up in the front room, run out of the front door-

  "Uh-oh," I said. "Come on." We went into the hall together. D-t got ahead; I pushed by him out the front door; stopped on the forth step.

  "Jesus Christ!" Frank shouted. "Hey, watch it-!"

  "You want a chain, huh?" Copperhead, crouched, wound the links once more around his fist, pulled back, and swung again. "I'm gonna wrap this one around your fuckin' neck!"

  "God damn, man! Look, all I did was . . . !"

  Some in the loose circle glanced up at me; so did Frank, then jumped back as Copperhead swung: "Hey-!"

  Copperhead, concentrated as a pool player, raised his fist again. *

  "ALL RIGHT!" and I walked down the steps. "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?" which got everybody's attention except Copperhead's. "COPPERHEAD-! Cut It Out!" thinking: This is going to be the time when I have to tangle with him. Thinking also: It's just not worth it. But he hooked around and I snatched the end of his chain and yanked. He let go and snapped his fingers back. It must have hurt his hand because it sure as hell hurt mine.

  I went up to Frank (who looked as scared of me as he was of Copperhead) and said, "What is this, huh? All right, what are you doing in this-"

  "I didn't-" He started at some movement behind me.

  I didn't turn. "I think you better get out of here." It

  must have been Copperhead in some feint. "Go on. Go on, now! Get going."

  He started to say, "Um . . ." and I realized how used I was to people doing what I told them when they weren't doing anything else.

  "Look," I said, "though you are making it harder and harder for me to remember it, so far, you have been my most accurate critic; therefore you deserve some consideration. I'm giving you that consideration now: Scoot!"

  Frank turned, went gingerly between Fireball and Lady of Spain, who broke the circle for him.

  I turned to Copperhead : "You must be really down on me, man. Because I'm always coming along to mess up your fun, right?"

  "Aw, Kid-" Copperhead rubbed his beard with his wrist- "I was not going to hurt him."

  "You were just going to scare him. Sure." I saw the story coming: Frank's annoying manner, too blunt questions, a jibe, a look; and a violence crystallized from the day's boredom.

  Copperhead began to tell it to me, insistently. (I tossed him his chain and he caught and put it around his neck without breaking his sentence.) So I motioned him to come on and, half listening, went up the steps with him.

  California came back this evening. Must have seen him three/five times before I noticed- we were on the back steps-he'd hung both a gold six-pointed star (Hebrew letters on it) and a black swastika (edged in silver) on his light-shield chain. Jack the Ripper, carrying on about something, started to call California ". . . a crazy Jew-bastard . . ." only he saw the star, the bent cross. I could hear the shape the unspoken epithet carved in the silence. Then the Ripper went on about something else. California, since he went away, has changed: his thin hands are tender; his boney shoulders sit more forward; his blue eyes, between strings of his long hair, are wider and angrier. (How odd symbols are!) I think the change is like what I went through when I got my chain of prisms, mirrors, lenses . . . The Ripper's sensitivity surprised me (he did call California a Jew-bastard five minutes later) but then, the derogatory terms we hurl around here with such seeming freedom are actually counters in a complicated game, and the point was the Ripper's. Penalties for miss-play can grow huge-recall the beating Dollar took at Calkins'. The rewards? I suspect, in this landscape, they are just as huge. Am I just being pompous, or is the real and necessary information these epithets generate (making them a real and necessary part of Bellona's own language) the reminder that it is often just when we are most aware of the freedom of the field in which we move that our actions become most culture-bound? D-t, who'd watched from the top, stood with Dragon Lady. They talked quietly and intently as the guys filed past.

  Passing her, Copperhead tried to broaden his anecdote to include her. Maybe because of the small look she gave him (or maybe because her eyes didn't really meet his at all) he finally went on by, just dropping his hand on her shoulder, and she nodded. And went on talking to D-t. Which is a good introduction to why

  over the charred grass stopped conversation. A climb across rocks and among green brush jarred it loose again. Cathedral told Priest the black stone building in the smoke was the Weather Tower.

  I still don't see any vanes, aerials, or anemometers.

  We came around a corner, left hips brushing head-sized stones, right hips (elbows up) scratched by bushes.

  The man in the middle of the court was bent over a tripod. As we came toward him, he looked up: Captain Kamp.

  Who still didn't recognize me until we were on top of him.

  ". . . Kid?"

  "Hello, Captain."

  ï He laughed now. "Now you fellows looked pretty ominous coming across there." He debated whether to give his hand for shaking. Which Angel solved by giving his. They hooked thumbs.

  "Angel," Angel said.

  The pink and brown fists locked, shook. Kamp looked like he'd been expecting the biker shake; later he told me that was the first time he'd seen it.

  "Michael Kamp," Kamp said.

  "Cathedral," Cathedral said:

  Shake.

  "California," Cal
ifornia said:

  Shake.

  "Priest . . . You're the astronaut, huh?"

  Shake.

  "That's right."

  "Spain."

  "That's Lady of Spain," Priest amended:

  Shake. Kamp got a sort of funny smile but figured he best not say anything. Which was best. "Tarzan."

  Shake.

  "Kid."

  We shook.

  And Kamp said, "Sure. I haven't forgotten you now," and everybody laughed. Because it had been so formal.

  "What you gonna do with that?" Priest went to sit on the chipped steps. He'd been complaining about the sore on bis foot.

  "That's a telescope," Lady of Spain said. "The kind with a mirror, right?"

  "That's right." Kamp stepped to the other side.

  "See," Lady of Spain said. (The telescope reminds me of a conversation with Lanya and a whole bunch at the nest I wanted to put down.)

  "What are you gonna do with it?" Priest asked, leaning forward to bend the toe of his sneaker up and down. His chain swung against his brown sunken chest and out, clinking.

  Kamp squinted at the clouds. "Probably not much of anything. Occasionally I've seen a few breaks in the overcast. It occurred to me, now perhaps I might get a look at your sky here. After all those stories about double moons and giant suns . . ."

  In the quiet, I thought about all the times people had not said anything about them.

  "After all-" you hear about voices breaking the silence? I learned how strong that silence had been from the way his After all snapped in my head-"I saw . . . some of it." How long, now, had that silence gone on? "I thought I'd bring the telescope down here to the park- they said the hill here was one of the highest points in the city-and perhaps see if I could just check whether any planets were where they're supposed to be. I found an Ephemeris in the library up at Roger's. Only my watch hasn't been working all week. None of you guys happen to know what the date is, now, do you?"'