Dhalgren (123 page)

"Pardon me?"

"Do you believe I had that dream?"

She looked confused. "I'm not sure what you mean. But… don't you?"

"Yes," I said. "Oh, Jesus Christ I do! I… I believe it was a… I had that dream." And realized there was a whole well of anguish from which only a single cup had been dipped. She hadn't understood. But that was all right.

Over her face was a mask of compassion: "Kid, there was nothing in the study to say that it couldn't happen the way you said. You remember it very clearly, and told all the details. Yes, I believe it was a dream. I don't know

whether or not you do, but it's probably not a bad idea for you keep trying."

Over mine was a mask of relief: "Madame Brown," I said, "I am
not
going back into a mental hospital. The place I was in, for a leprosarium, was pretty nice. But I think I'd have to be crazy to go into one again. And you can read that any way you want!"

That made her laugh. "Though, in Bellona, the problem would be if you
wanted
to go in a hospital." Suddenly she cocked her head the other way. "Do you know why I offered you that job with the Richards, the morning I met you in the park?"

"You said it had something to do with—" I put two fingers on the optic chain across my chest—"these."

"Did I…?" Her smile turned inward, became preoccupied. "Yes, I suppose I did." She blinked, looked at me. "I told you the story of what happened at the hospital, with my friend, that night—I mean the night it all…"

"Yeah." I nodded.

"There was one point when I was coming down the third floor corridor and my friend was at the other end, trying to open one of the doors. A young, male patient was helping her, who… what shall I say? Looked very much like you. I mean I was only with him for perhaps a minute. He was working very hard, trying to pry back this locked door with a piece of wood or metal—he had done something terrible to his hands. His hands were much smaller than yours; and the bandages had come loose from two of his fingers." She grimaced. "But then some people needed help at the other end of the hall and he went off with them. I'd never seen him before—well, I was usually in the office. More sadly, I never saw him again. But when—how much later?—I saw you, in Teddy's, that night with your face cut, then again, wandering around the park the next morning, barefoot, with your shirt hanging open, the resemblance struck me immediately. For a moment I thought you
were
the same person. And you'd helped us; so I wanted to help you—" She laughed. "So you see these—" she touched her own beads—"these really meant… nothing."

I frowned. "You think maybe I'm … I was in the hospital
here?
That I never came here, from somewhere else? That I've been here all the—"

"Of course not." Madame Brown looked surprised. "I said the young man looked something
like
you; he had something of your carriage, especially at a distance. He was about your size and coloring—maybe even a little smaller. And I'm sure his hair was dark brown, not black—though this was all at night, by lights coming in the windows. I think, when he went away, someone—one of the other patients—called to him by name: I don't remember what it was, now." Her hands fell to her lap. "But that, anyway, is the real reason I offered you the job. I don't know why, but I thought it might be a good time to clear that up."

"I haven't always been here," I said. "I came here, over the bridge, over the river. And soon I'm going to leave. With Lanya and Denny…" It had felt very important to say.

"Of course," Madame Brown said; but looked puzzled. "We all have to go on from where we are. And of course we've all come from where we've been. Certainly, at
some
point, you must have come here. More important, though, is not to get trapped in some circle of your own, habitual—" Outside, the dog barked. "Oh, that must be my next patient," Madame Brown interrupted herself. The dog barked, kept barking.

Madame Brown frowned, half rose from the chair, one hand again absently at her beads. "Muriel!" she called; her voice was loud and low. "Muriel!"

It must have been something in the juxtaposition: the chains of lenses and prisms, or perhaps that she had said the beads meant nothing convinced me I was about to learn their
real
meaning; not that I
was
the person in the hospital but that somehow I or he… or that
way
she called the dog made me try to remember some place or some time when she, or someone else, had called it; not even
my
name, but possibly some other, if I could recall it—each element seemed about to explain the others, clearing the pattern; and that scratch… I got chills. I was being nudged, pushed, about to be reminded of… what? Anything more than the vast abysms of all our ignorances? Whatever, it was vastly sinister and breathlessly freeing. But I did
not
know; and that mystic ignorance wrung me out with gooseflesh.

"Well," Madame Brown was saying. "Our time is about up. And I'm pretty sure that's my next patient."

"Okay." I felt relieved too, somehow. "Hey, thanks a lot."

"Would you like to arrange another—"

"No. Thanks, no, I don't want to come back."

"All right." She stood up and considered saying something: Which, I guess, was: "Kid, please don't think I'm smug. About you, or about any of the things we've talked about I may not understand. But it's not from not caring."

I smiled. The gooseflesh rolled on—"I don't think you're smug—" and rolled away. "But I knew I wasn't
going
to come here more than once—as a patient. So I had to get something for my troubles. I've spent a lot of time in therapy. And you have to know how to use it." I laughed.

She smiled. "Good."

"I'll see you next time Lanya has Denny and me over for dinner—if not before. So long. Hey, if you want to talk about any of this with Lanya, go ahead."

"Oh, I wouldn't—"

"If she asks you anything, tell her what you think. Please."

She pressed her lips a moment. "All right. Then it probably will provide us with at least thirty-six hours solid conversation." She opened the door for me. "So long. I'll see… Oh, hello … I'll be with you in a few moments."

"Sure." The guy sitting on the desk corner, smiling up from the Newboy volumes, was the long-haired kid I'd seen cross-legged the night in the book-store basement, doing
Om.

Madame Brown went back in her office and closed the door.

I went to the desk and picked up three of the books beside him. "I'm stealing these. Tell Madame Brown Lanya'll bring them back if she really wants them…" I was going to say more, but even that sounded silly.

"Sure. I'll tell Dr Brown as soon as I go in." Which made me wonder what he thought about me calling her "Madame". I went into the hall. As I passed Muriel, sitting on the top step, watching me with gentled eyes, I heard the office door open.

I wrote all this down because today the page with the list of names on it is missing from the notebook. When I got back to the nest from the session, I started browsing through and I couldn't find it. How many times have I read it over? I was planning to make myself read some of the Newboy. But as soon as I realized that page was gone, I suddenly felt an obsession to read it again, and began searching through the entries again and again on the chance I might have overlooked it. How many times have I read it before? (And now the only name I can remember from it is William Dhalgren.) At last, just to pull my mind away from it, I started writing out the above (and truncated) account of the hour Lanya arranged for me to have with Madame Brown, while she was off at her school. And what does it get me? The writing it down, I mean?

in their hands; the optic chain (a hundred feet? two hundred feet of it?), stretched among a dozen as they danced, glittered in beast light, sending flaked reflections along the undersides of leaves. Around us, they howled into the night, delighted, some going near the brazier, some going away.

Copperhead scrubbed at his mouth with his wrist. His eyes looked very red, his whole face burnished and flickering. "Hey, how do you like that?" he said. "Protection! That bastard Calkins wanted God-damn protection!" He turned from me to Glass. I laughed. Clapping perforated it. Copperhead looked up, suddenly; began to bellow and clap too, his palms hollowed. He was off rhythm so it carried a long way. He kept on bobbing his head to Glass's bobbing head, till finally he got it, though he was laughing, now. Dragon Lady, beyond the toppled furnace, one boot propped on a fallen cinderblock, kneaded her shoulder, pensive and intent, watching the dance, her jade beast momentarily out.

Lanya turned and jumped, her blue shirt mapped with sweat; she held a chain high with one hand. She moved her harmonica across her mouth with the other, blowing discord after discord. Her forehead was glazed, her hair wet down her brow.

Jommy, I guess it was, broke out between Mildred and some bird of paradise (Cathedral shouting, "Hey, watch it—"), staggering into the dazzling web, and grabbed a strand for balance. Denny's end—I jumped—broke (between mirror and prism) but he just whirled the loose length; finally looped it around somebody else's strand and held it high with both hands. An end someone else had dropped snaked and jerked through fire-lit grass. I stepped forward, grabbed it up, and dodged beneath it, jumping from foot to foot and bellowing. D-t and Spider and Raven and Cathedral and Tarzan (he really can dance good as the niggers) and Jack the Ripper and Filament and Angel made a web: one strand vibrated; another went slack in catenaries between taut lengths. Gladis paused, with a fist full of green cloth over her great belly, swaying and breathing with her mouth wide. She ducked from a strand that tightened against her cheek, swung away, and began to clap.

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 pimply 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…? 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 second 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.