Dhalgren (14 page)

"Oh, I don't believe it!" an invisible woman cried and laughed again.

His fingers stung; his arms were trembling.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing, kid?" somebody behind him drawled.

Shaking, he lowered, belt buckle catching a mortice once to dig his stomach; his toes hit at the thin ledges; then the crate: he danced around.

And went back against the wall, squinting.

Newt, spider, and some monstrous insect, huge and out of focus, glared with flashbulb eyes.

He got out an interrogative
"Wh
…" but could choose no defining final consonant.

"Now you know—" the spider in the middle extinguished: the tall redhead dropped one freckled hand from the chains looping neck to belly—"damn well you ain't supposed to be up there." His face was flat, his nose wide as a pug's, his lips overted, his eyes like brown eggshells set with tarnished gold coins. His other hand, freckles blurred in pale hair, held a foot of pipe.

"I wasn't climbing in."

"Shit," came out of the newt on the left in a black accent much heavier than the redhead's.

"Sure
you weren't," the redhead said. His skin, deep tan, was galaxied with freckles. Hair and beard were curly as a handful of pennies. "Yeah, sure. I just
bet
you weren't." He swung the pipe, snapping his arm at the arc's end: neckchains rattled. "You better get down from there, boy."

He vaulted, landed with one hand still on the crates.

The redhead swung again: the flanking apparitions came closer, swaying. "Yeah, you better jump!"

"All right, I'm down. Okay—?"

The scorpion laughed, swung, stepped.

The chained boot mashed the corner of the notebook into the mulch. The other tore the newspaper's corner.

"Hey, come on—!"

He pictured himself lunging forward. But stayed still… till he saw that the pipe, next swing, was going to catch him on the hip—
was
lunging forward.

"Watch it! He's got his orchid on…!"

He slashed with his bladed hand; the scorpion dodged back; newt and beetle spun. He had no idea where they were under their aspects. He jammed his fist at the scaly simulation—his fist went through and connected jaw-staggeringly hard with something. He slashed with his blades at the retreating beetle. The spider rushed him. He staggered in rattling lights. A hand caught him against the cheek. Blinking, he saw a second, sudden black face go out under newt scales. Then, something struck his head.

"Hey, he cut you, Spitt, man!" That was the heavy black accent, very far away. "Oh, hey, wow, Spitt! He really cut you. Spitt, you all right?"

He wasn't all right. He was falling down a black hole.

"The mother fucker! I'm going to get him for that—"

He hit bottom.

Pawing across that leafy bottom, he finally found the remnants of a thought: His orchid had been hanging from his waist. No time had he reached down to—

"Are… you all right?"

—slip his roughened fingers into the harness, fasten the collar about his knobby wrist…

Someone shook him by the shoulder. His hand gouged moist leaves. The other was suspended. He opened his eye.

Evening struck the side of his head so hard he was nauseated.

"Young man, are you all right?"

He opened his eyes again. The throbbing twilight concentrated on one quarter of his head. He pushed himself up.

The man, in blue serge, sat back on his heels. "Mr Fenster, I think he's conscious!"

A little ways away, a black man in a sports shirt stood at the clearing's edge.

"Don't you think we should take him inside? Look at his head."

"No, I don't think we should." The black put his hands in the pockets of his slacks.

He shook his head—only once, because it hurt that much.

"Were you attacked, young man?"

He said, "Yes," very thickly. A nod would have made it cynical, but he didn't dare.

The white collar between the serge lapels was knotted with an extraordinarily thin tie. White temples, below grey hair: the man had an accent that was disturbingly near British. He picked up the notebook. (The newspaper slid off onto the leaves.) "Is this yours?"

Another thick, "Yes."

"Are you a student? It's terrible, people attacking people right out in the open like this. Terrible!"

"I think we'd better get inside," the black man said. "They'll be waiting for us."

"Just a minute!" came out with surprising authority. The gentleman helped him to sitting position. "Mr Fenster, I really think we should take this poor young man inside. Mr Calkins can't possibly object. This is something of an exceptional circumstance."

Fenster took dark brown hands from his pockets and came over. "I'm afraid it isn't exceptional. We've checked, now come on back inside."

With surprising strength Fenster tugged him to his feet. His right temple exploded three times en route. He grabbed the side of his head. There was crisp blood in his hair; and wet blood in his sideburn.

"Can you stand up?" Fenster asked.

"Yes." The word was dough in his mouth. "Ah… thanks for my—" he almost shook his head again, but remembered—"my notebook."

The man in the tie looked sincerely perplexed. With a very white hand, he touched his shoulder. "You're sure you're all right?"

"Yes," automatically. Then, "Could I get some water?"

"Certainly," and then to Fenster. "We can certainly take him inside for a glass of water."

"No—" Fenster spoke with impatient resignation— "we
can't
take him inside for a glass of water." It ended with set jaw, small muscles there defined in the dark skin. "Roger is very strict. You'll just have to put up with it. Please, let's go back in."

The white man—fifty-five? sixty?—finally took a breath. "I'm…" Then he just turned away.

Fenster—forty? forty-five?—said, "This isn't a good neighborhood to be in, young fellow. I'd get back downtown as fast as I could. Sorry about all this."

"That's all right," he got out. "I'm okay."

"I really am sorry." Fenster hurried after the older gentleman.

He watched them reach the corner, turn. He raised his caged hand, looked at it between the blades. Was that why they had…? He looked back toward the street.

His head gave a gratuitous throb.

He collected the paper and the notebook, mumbling profanity, and walked out.

They'd apparently gone back through the gate. Motherfucker. Motherfuckers, he thought. The gloom was denser now. He began to wonder how long he'd been away from the park. Four or five hours? His head hurt a pot. And it was getting dark.

Also it looked like rain… But the air was dry and neutral.

Brisbain South had just become Brisbain North when he saw, a block away, three people run from one side of the avenue to the other.

They were too far to see if they wore chains around their necks. Still, he was overcome with gooseflesh. He stopped with his hand on the side of a lamp post. (The globe was an inverted crown of ragged glass points, about the smaller, ragged collar of the bulb.) He felt his shoulders pull involuntarily together. He looked at the darkening sky. And the terror of the vandal-wrecked city assailed him: His heart pounded.

His armpits grew slippery.

Breathing hard, he sat with his back to the post's base.

He took the pen from his pocket and began to click the point. (He
hadn't
put the orchid on…?) After a moment, he stopped to take the weapon from his wrist and put it through his belt loop again: moving armed through the streets might be provocative…?

He looked around again, opened his notebook, turned quickly past "Brisbain" to a clean page, halfway or more through.

"Charcoal," he wrote down, in small letters, "like the bodies of burnt beetles, heaped below the glittering black wall of the house on the far corner." He bit at his lip, and wrote on: "The wet sharpness of incinerated upholstery cut the general gritty stink of the street. From the rayed hole in the cellar window a grey eel of smoke wound across the sidewalk, dispersed before" at which point he crossed out the last two words and substituted, "vaporized at the gutter. Through another window," and crossed out
window,
"still intact, something flickered. This single burning building in the midst of dozens of other whole buildings was," stopped and began to write all over again:

"Charcoal, like the bodies of beetles, heaped below the glittering wall. The sharpness of incinerated upholstery cut the street's gritty stink." Then he went back and crossed out "the bodies of" and went on: "From a broken cellar window, a grey eel wound the sidewalk to vaporize at the gutter. Through another, intact, something flickered. This burning building," crossed that out to substitute, "The singular burning in the midst of dozens of whole buildings," and without breaking the motion of his hand suddenly tore the whole page from the notebook.

Pen and crumpled paper in his hand; he was breathing hard. After a moment, he straightened out the paper, and on a fresh page, began to copy again:

"Charcoal, like beetles heaped under the glittering wall…"

He folded the torn paper in four and put it back in the notebook when he had finished the next revision. On the back the former owner of the notebook had written:

…first off. It doesn't reflect my daily life. Most of what happens hour by hour is quiet and still. We sit most of the time

Once more he made a face and closed the cover.

The mist had turned evening-blue. He got up and started along the street.

Several blocks later he identified the strange feeling: Though it was definitely becoming night, the air had not even slightly cooled. Frail smoke lay about him like a neutralizing blanket.

Ahead, he could see the taller buildings. Smoke had gnawed away the upper stories. Stealthily, he descended into the injured city.

It does not offer me any protection, this mist; rather a refracting grid through which to view the violent machine, explore the technocracy of the eye itself, spelunk the semi-circular canal. I am traveling my own optic nerve. Limping in a city without source, searching a day without shadow, am I deluded with the inconstant emblem? I don't like pain. With such disorientation there is no way to measure the angle between such nearly parallel lines of sight, when focusing on something at such distance.

"There
you are!" She ran out between the lions, crossed the street.

He turned, surprised, at the lamp post.

She seized his hand in both of hers. "I didn't think I would see you again before— Hey! What happened?" Her face twisted in the shadow. She lost all her breath.

"I got beat up."

Her grip dropped; she raised her fingers, brushed his face.

"Owww…"

"You better come with me. What in the world did you do?"

"Nothing!" vented some of his indignation.

She took his hand again to tug him along. "You did
some
thing. People just don't get beat up for nothing at all."

"In this city—" he let her lead—"they do."

"Down this way. No. Not even in this city. What happened? You've got to get that washed off. Did you get to Calkins'?"

"Yeah." He walked beside her; her hand around his was almost painfully tight—then, as though she realized it, the grip loosened. "I was looking over the wall when these scorpions got at me."

"Ohhh!" That seemed to explain it to her.

"'Oh' what?"

"Roger doesn't like snoopers."

"So he sets scorpions to patrol the battlements?"

"I wouldn't be surprised. Sometimes he asks them for protection."

"Hey!" He pulled loose; she swung around. In shadow, her eyes, glaring up, were empty as the lions'. He tried to fix his tongue at protest, but she merely stepped to his side. They walked again, together, not touching, through the dark.

"In here."

"In where?"

"Here!" She turned him with a hand on his arm.

And opened a door he hadn't realized was beside them. Someone in flickering silhouette said, "Oh, it's you. What's the matter?"

"Look
at him," Lanya said. "Scorpions."

"Oh." Leather jacket, cap… and leather pants: long fingers pulled closed the door. "Take him inside. But don't make a big thing, huh?"

"Thanks, Teddy."

There were voices from the end of the hall. The flakes of light on nail-thin Teddy's attire came from candles in iron candelabras.

He followed her.

At the end of the bar a woman's howl shattered to laughter. Three of the men around her, laughing, shed away like bright, black petals: four-fifths present wore leather, amidst scattered denim jackets. The woman had fallen into converse with a tall man in a puffy purple sweater. The candlelight put henna in her hair and blacked her eyes.

Another woman holding on to a drink with both hands, in workman's greens and construction boots, stepped unsteadily between them, recognized Lanya and intoned: "Honey, now where have you been all week? Oh, you don't know how the class of this place has gone down. The boys are about to run me ragged," and went, unsteadily, off.

Lanya led him through the leather crush. A surge of people toward the bar pushed them against one of the booth tables.

"Hey, babes—" Lanya leaned on her fists—"can we sit here a minute?"

"Lanya—? Sure," Tak said, then recognized him. "Jesus, Kid! What the hell happened to
you?"
He pushed over in the seat. "Come on. Sit down!"

"Yeah…" He sat.

Lanya was edging off between people:

"Tak, Kidd—I'll be right back!"

He put the notebook and the paper on the wooden table, drew his hands through the shadows the candles dropped from the iron webs, drew his bare foot through sawdust.

Tak, from looking after Lanya, turned back. "You got beat up?" The visor still masked his upper face.

He nodded at Tak's eyeless question.

Tak's lips pressed beneath the visor's shadow. He shook his head. "Scorpions?"

"Yeah."

The young man across the table had his hands in his lap.

"What'd they get from you?" Tak asked.