Dhalgren

by Samuel R. Delany

  I stopped shouting soon because my throat hurt; and heard, between the claps: "Bunny, whyn't you get in there and show 'em how it's done!"

  "Don't be silly, dear! We'll just watch." "Naw, come on! I ain't never really seen you dance." "Smile when you say that. Why don't you?" "Aw, come on. I wanna see what you can do," Something in the fire exploded; sparks shot above the flame tips, showering. The myriad narrow parabolas extinguished.

  Dollar, his pimpley back bright with sweat, stood centered in the clearing, feet wide, knees and head bent. Each clap detonated something in his belly that flung his hands, hips, and shoulders about.

  Some of the commune kids were naked. John danced with his brown beard up, his blond hair back, and his brass orchid waving on his hand overhead. A girl had gotten her legs caught in the chain going around, and fallen; she sat a long time, head forward, hair the color of dry leaves down across one breast. A few times she tried to stand. But another length of chain fell on her shoulder when someone dropped another end; she seemed too weighted to rise.

  A griphon flickered twice: Adam bobbed and jerked. Chains and shocked hair swung and clattered and went out behind the reeling beast.

  Bunny, barking shrill as a lap-dog, a dozen strands caught among up-thrust fingers, suddenly pranced forward, shaking back silver hair. Pepper, haunched behind him, followed, clapping and grinning like the devil.

  An elderly black woman who'd brought some of the supper-boxes, stonely silent till now, cackled, beginning to clap too. The heavy, black-haired man with the bamboo flute had finally gotten out of his pants and danced up to her, trying to bring her into the circle. He piped and bobbed and bounced around: it was pretty phoney and for a second I thought she would pinch his crank. But she got into it anyway and clapped for him-

  And I stopped, landing on both heels, jarred to the scalp.

  I turned in the furor, looking for someone (Thinking: Where did it come from . . ï ? Why now . . . ? What. . . ? then throwing that away and just trying to hold on to it); Lanya, shirt open and flapping, breasts shaking, eyes closed under quivering lids, turned to me behind at least five chains. I reached through them and caught her shoulders. Her eyes snapped wide. "Michael..." I said. "What?"

  A chain pulled down across my arm; a prism nipped my wrist. Lady of Spain was at one end, hauling.

  "Mike Henry ..." I looked down between my elbows at the trampled grass. "Michael Henry . . . ?" One of her bare feet moved. "What's that?" Very slowly, I said: "My first name is Mike . . . Michael. My middle name is Henry." I looked up. "My last name-Fl . . . ? Fr . . . ?"

  Lanya narrowed her eyes. Then she grabbed my forearm with the same hand her harmonica was in.

  The edge bit; which brought me back: "What did I say?"

  But she was looking around us, among the others. "Denny!"

  "Lanya, what did I say?"

  Her eyes snapped back to mine. She had a funny smile, intense and scared. "You said your first name was-" around us they clapped-"Michael. Your sec-one name-" they clapped again-"is Henry. And your last ... ?"

  My jaw clamped so hard my head shook. "I... I had it for a second! But then I..."

  "It begins with 'F." She called again: "Denny!" "Wait a minute! Wait, I ... no, I can't remember! But the first name-"

  "-Michael Henry..." she prompted. Denny ran up. "What . . . ?" He put a hand on her shoulder, a hand on mine. "Come on, you wanna-" "Tell him, Kid!"

  I dropped Lanya's elbows and took both of Denny's. He was breathing very hard. "My name is Michael-" another clap-"Henry . . . something. I don't remember the last one now." I took a deep breath (clap!). "But two out of three is pretty good!" I must have been grinning pretty hard.

  . "Wow!" Denny said. He started to say a couple of other things, but finally just shrugged, grinning back.

  "I don't know what to say either," I said.

  Lanya hugged me. She almost knocked me over.

  Denny hugged us both, getting his head between ours and wiggling it back and forth and laughing. So Lanya had to hold him up with one hand. We all staggered. I put my arm around him too. Somebody pulled a chain against my back. It either broke or one of the people holding it let go. We staggered again.

  Someone put hands against my back and said: "Hey, watch it! Don't fall!" Paul Fenster-I hadn't even seen him among the spectators-was steadying me as we came apart.

  Lanya said: "It's all right if we fall, Paul. It's okay."

  Someone threw another length of chain into the circle. Mantichore and iguanadon caught it up, blundering together, casting ghost-lights. Clap!

  "Hey, I like your school," Denny said. "I've been helping Lanya with her kids."

  "I was telling you about Denny, Paul? He was the one who suggested we take that class trip that turned out so well."

  I said: "I've never seen any children there. I've heard their voices. On the tape recorder. But I don't believe you ever had any real children in there."

  Lanya looked at me oddly.

  Fenster laughed. "Well, you brought us five of them yourself."

  Re-reading this single description of Paul Fenster between these soiled cardboards, this thought: Since life may end at any when, the expectation of revelation or peripity, if not identical to, is congruent with insanity. They give life meaning, but expectation of them destroys our faculty for experiencing meaning. So I am still writing out these incidents. But now I am interested in the art of incident only as it touches life ... but I have written that at least three other places among these pages. What I haven't written is that, because of it, I am less and less interested in the incidence of art. ("Sex without guilt?" Entelechy without anticipation!) I just wonder would Paul have done anything differently that evening in the park if he'd known he was going to be shot in the head and neck four times, six hours later. "But there weren't any . . ." Inside, it felt like two disjoined surfaces had suddenly slipped flush; the relief was unbearable. "I put five of them ... in the school?"

  "Woodard, Rose, Sammy . . . ?" Lanya said.

  "You remember," Denny said. "Stevie? Marceline?"

  "I remember," I said. "I know who I am . . ."

  "Michael Henry," Denny said.

  I put my hand on Fenster's shoulder. "You go dance."

  "Naw, I'm not into the bare-ass bit."

  I frowned at the dancers; only fifteen or twenty were naked.

  "Go on." I pushed at him; he stepped back. "You don't have to take your clothes off. You just go dance."

  Fenster looked at Lanya. To stand up for him? I flashed on him pulling her shirt closed across her breasts, buttoning the top button, patting her head, and walking away. ,

  "Go ahead." I was angry. "Dance!"

  "Come on, Kid," Lanya said, taking my arm.

  Fenster walked off now, laughing.

  "You wanna sit down?" Denny asked.

  "Come on," Lanya said. "Let's go sit down."

  Denny took my other arm; but I twisted to look back.

  Fenster walked between the dancers, now pushed, now helping a girl wearing just a sopping T-shirt who fell against him, now ducking beneath one of the glittering lines pulled between bright creatures prancing at the tree.

  "What are you trying to do?" Lanya asked.

  "Take off my clothes. I don't need anything . . . anything now." I tossed my boot on top of my vest. I lifted my chin and raised the seven chains and the projector. Links dragged my nipples. I held them up, swaying, and let go. Some hit my nose and cheek and ear. Some fell across my shoulder, and slid off, clattering, to the grass. I looked down to undo the twin hooks on my belt; pushed down my pants. Lanya held my arm so I wouldn't fall getting my foot out the cuff.

  "Feel better?" Denny asked.

  I tried to undo the clasp at the side of my neck. A file of insects, it felt like, charged down my belly, caught in the hair at my groin. The optic chain sagged around my ankle.

  "I think you broke it," Lanya said.

  "I can fix it again," Denny said. "I got nails-"

/>   "No," I said. From the commune, from the nest, and from the people who'd just come to watch, they clapped and leaped beside the fire. Seven more, barking, calling, and yipping, broke from the loose ring, turned among and beneath (one very black girl jumped over) the beaded chain that crossed and crossed the clearing. The heads of beasts blown out of light like glass broke scarves of smoke; our throats tickled from the harsh air.

  Three silhouetted figures, heads together, came toward me, whispering. Copperhead, center, conferred with Raven and Cathedral. Raven and Copperhead were naked. (The different curl and color of their hair, suddenly bright at the sides of their heads with the fire behind them . . .) Copperhead had his hand on Raven's shoulder.

  Copperhead was saying: "Protection! Did you get that? Calkins asking for protection-?"

  Cathedral said: "Scorpions don't protect nothing."

  Copperhead said: "They shot out practically every God-damn window in the God-damn fucking building. Man, it was something!"

  Raven asked: 'They shot up Calkins's place? The sniper . . . ?"

  Copperhead said: "Not Calkin? place! And it weren't no fuckin' sniper! It was them people back at that big store. You remember that big fuckin' apartment house Thirteen used to be in, up on the sixteenth floor? God damn, man, they shot the whole fuckin' place up, practically every God-damn window in the building!"

  "Shit, man!" Cathedral shook his head. "The honkeys is bad as the niggers." -

  Copperhead humphed: "Protection!"

  Raven laughed.

  They walked away in the dark.

  I watched the fire. One pants leg was still around my ankle. The optic chain, as I swayed, swayed against my calf. "I want to ... to dance."

  "Then get your foot out your pants cuff," Denny said. "You'll trip yourself." He sounded like he didn't want me to go, though.

  Each Clap! struck something inside my skull that made a flash all its own. My ears thundered as though only inches from the drum. Each explosion left some crazy echo stuttering in the tattered noise. I stepped forward, moiling my genitals in my hand. They felt sensitive. I stepped again, "Watch it-"

  Lanya must have held my pants leg down with her foot, because they came off. I stumbled, but kept going. Toward the dance.

  In a black turtleneck sweater he stood, with folded arms, among the spectators. He didn't see me looking at him. But Lady of Spain and D-t and a couple of others did and stopped dancing. Prisms and lenses hung down from my neck. Mirrors and prisms swung from my wrist. Lenses and mirrors dragged from my ankle behind me in the grass.

  He shifted a little. Firelight shook its patina across his brown hair.

  "Hey .. . !" I said loudly. "I know who I... who I am now. Who are you?"

  He looked at me, frowning.

  "Who are you?" I repeated. 'Tell me. I know who / am!" A few more dancers stopped to listen. But the clapping was still awfully loud. I shook my head. "Almost ..."

  "Kid?" he asked; it had taken him until then to recognize me, naked. "Hey, Kid! How're you doing?"

  It was the man who'd interviewed me at Calkins* party.

  "No," I said. "I know who / am. You say who you are."

  "William ..." he began. "Bill... ?" And then: "You don't remember me?"

  "I remember you. I just want to know who you are/" "Bill," he repeated. And nodded, smiling. Two people who'd stopped to listen began to clap again.

  "I know that," I said. "I remember that. What's your last name?"

  He raised his head a little. His smile-a dragon, doffing by, stained his face a momentary green-tightened: "You tell me yours, I'll tell you mine." His mouth stayed a little open, waiting for a laugh to come out.

  But the laugh came from me. William ...? I shouted: "I know who you are!" and doubled with hysteria. "I know .. . I"

  "Hey, Kid? Come on now . . ." Lanya-she and Denny had followed me-took my arm again. I tried to pull away, stumbled into the dancers' chains, and turned, flail- ing my own. But she held on; Denny had me too. I yanked once more and fell against a guy I didn't know who cried, "Owwww!" and hugged me, laughing. I turned in a shield's glare, bright blind a moment, and moments after images pulsed everywhere.

  "Come on, man," Denny kept saying, pulling at my forearm. "Watch out-" and held up a strand of chain so I could get under.

  "That's right," Lanya said. "This way . . ."

  I got dizzy and nearly fell. Fire and branches wheeled on a black sky. I came up against bark and turned my back to it:

  "But I know what his name is! It has to be. He couldn't be anybody else!" I kept telling them, then breaking off into a giggle which, when I let it go, twisted my face in a grin so huge my jaw muscles hurt and I had to rub them with the heels of my palms. "That's got to be who he is! You understand why, don't you? I mean you do understand?"

  They didn't.

  But, for a while, I did.

  And, bursting with my new knowledge, I danced.

  I've never had more fun.

  Then I came back and sat with them.

  Denny's hand was on my knee; Lanya's shoulder was against my shoulder, her arm along my arm. We sat on the roots, ten feet from the high, forking fire, watching the men and women jog and jump to the sounds of their own bodies, one arched and beating the backs of his thighs, one spinning slowly, and shouting loudly, each time her short hair brushed by the sagging branch. Somebody danced with his belt loose and swinging. And somebody else was taking off her jeans.

  Bill, arms folded across his black sweater, among the other watchers, watched.

  I sat and panted and smiled (sweat dribbling the small of my back) with contentment over the absolute fact of his revealed identity, till even that, as all absolutes must, began its dissolve.

  "What-?" Denny moved his hand on my leg.

  Lanya glanced at me, shifted her shoulder against mine.

  But I sat back again, silent, marveling the dissolve's completion, both elated and numbed by the jarring claps that measured and metronomed each differential in the change-till I had no more certainty of Bill's last name than I had of my own. With only the memory of knowledge, and bewilderment at whatever mechanic had, for minutes, made that knowledge as certain to me as my own existence, I sat, trying to sort that mechanic's failure, which had let it slip away.

  Dragon Lady, with her boot, shoved in another part of the furnace's cinderblock wall, then turned to add her raucous contention to the argument behind her.

  "You know," Lanya said, as somebody flung a burning brand that landed on the edge of the dish, flame end on the grass, "this place isn't going to be here tomorrow."

  "That's all right," Denny said.

  " Lanya pushed back against me harder, drew up her knees to hug.

  The dance was all around us. The battered grass was tangled with chains, plain and jeweled. Most of the scorpions blazed up, incendiar- up to bring the brandy, that afternoon, to Tak's place - I apologized about opening one of the bottles - he really looked surprised.

  He came out of the shed doorway onto the roof, scratching his chest and his chin and still half asleep. But saying he was glad to see us.

  Denny climbed onto the balustrade to walk, hands out for balance, along the roofs edge. Lanya kept running up and going, "Boo!" at him as though she were trying to make him fall off. I thought it was funny, but Tak said please stop it because it was eight stories down and scar- ing him into a stomach ache.

  So they came back to the shack.

  Denny went inside: "Look what Tak's got on the wall!"

  Thought he meant George, but it was the interview with me from Calkins's party in the Times. Tak had stapled it to the wall just inside the door. The edges were yellow.

  "I keep that there," Tak said, "for inspiration. I sort of like it. Glad to see, after all this, the papers says you're having another book."

  "Yeah," I said. "Sure. Thanks." I really didn't want

  to talk about it It got across, because he was looking at me a little sideways. But Tak is good at picking up on th
ings like that.

  Around us, the sky was close as crumpled lead. The first stanchion of the bridge was just visible through it, like a single wing of some dim bird that might, in a moment, fly anywhere.

  Tak pulled the cork out of the open bottle. "Come on. Let's have a drink." He squatted, his back against the shack wall. We sat next to him. Denny took a swallow, screwed up his face, and from then on just passed it between Lanya and me.

  "Tak," I said, "could you tell me something?" I asked him about the bubbles around the inside of the glasses. "I thought it might have something to do with the water pressure for the city. Maybe it's going down and that causes the ring to start higher?"

  "I think," Tak said to the green-glass neck, "it has more to do with who washes your dishes. You're washing out a glass, see, and you run your finger around the inside to get off the crud, and it leaves this thin coating. But your finger doesn't reach the bottom. Later you put water in the glass, and the air comes out of solution to form bubbles. But the bubbles need something to nucleate on. So the imperfections in the glass and the crud left above

  here any longer.

  Curiosity took me, alone.

  A bed had been overturned against the door but fell back clattering as soon as I pushed it in. They'd put bars up on the ground floor windows, but the panes were mostly smashed, and in the one remaining, I found three of those tiny, multi-haloed holes you get from bullets. There were a couple of sleeping bags still around. Some nice stuff was up on the walls from where they had the place decorated: and a big, almost life-size lion wedged together out of scrap car-parts and junked iron. An acetylene bomb and nozzle leaned in the corner. ("I wonder what hap-pend to the woman who was making that. She was Eurasian," Lanya said when I told her about it, later. "She was a pretty incredible person; I mean even besides building that thing.") The walls of two rooms were charred black. I saw a place where a poster had been burned away. And another place, where a quarter of one was left: George In the night wilderness. Upstairs I guess most of the rooms had never had doors. It was a wreck. Great pieces of plaster had been tugged off the walls. Once I heard what I thought was moaning, but when I rushed into the smashed up room-tools were scattered all over the floor, screwdrivers, nails, pliers, wrenches-it wasn't a the grease line are easier to nucleate on; so you get this definite cutoff-"