Dhalgren

by Samuel R. Delany

  This is what a good neighborhood in Bellona looks like?

  The ground floor windows were broken in the white house there; curtains hung out

  The street was clean.

  Bare foot and sandal, bare foot and sandal: he watched the pavement's grain slip beneath them.

  A door beside him stood wide.

  He kept walking. Easier to think that all these buildings are inhabited, than that their vacancy gives me license to loot where I will-not loot. Borrow. Still, it's unnerving.

  Loufer had said something about shotguns.

  But he was hungry after all and he was going to- borrow food soon.

  He broke a window with a stick he had found wedging back a garage door, (eight jars of instant coffee on the kitchen shelf,) and sat at the formica dinette table to eat a cold can (can-opener in the drawer) of Campbell's Pepperpot. (Easy!) Marveling between fingerfuls of undiluted soup (salty!), he looked from the paper he'd taken from Faust, to the notebook he'd gotten from Lanya. Made himself a cup of coffee with hot water-after running ten seconds, it was steaming and spitting-from the tap. Finally, he opened the notebook at random and read, in the terribly neat ballpoint:

  It is not that I have no future. Rather it continually fragments on the insubstantial and indistinct ephemera of now. In the summer country, stitched with lightning, somehow, there is no way to conclude . . .

  He looked up at creakings. But it was only some slight architectural shift. Nobody, he subvocalized, lives here now. (The kitchen was very clean.) Without particularly understanding what he'd read (or not understanding it, for that matter) the notes by the absent journalist, coupled with the creak, made the back of his neck tingle.

  Deja vu is a thing of the eye.

  This was like reading lines that echoed some conversation he might have followed idly once on a crowded street. The book hinted he pay attention to part of his mind he could not even locate.

  lability, not affectation; a true and common trait. But if I tried to write down what I say as I move from speech

  He flipped more pages. There was only writing on the right-hand ones. The left-hand ones were blank. He closed the book. He put the coffee cup in the sink, the can in the empty garbage pail: when he caught himself doing it, he laughed out loud, then tried silent justification: he could always stay here, make this place nicer than Tak's.

  That made the back of his neck tingle again.

  He closed the notebook and, with the paper rucked beside it, climbed back out the window.

  He scratched himself on broken glass, but only noticed it a block away when he looked down to see a drop of blood had trickled across the notebook cover, red-brown on the char. He nudged at the new, purple-red scab with the blunt of his thumb, which just made it itch. So he forgot about it and hurried on up Brisbain. It was only ... a scratch.

  Distance? Or destination?

  He had no idea what to expect of either. These lawns and facades needed sunlight, or at least light rain, to be beautiful. The corner trees might be clear green. But mist blurred them now.

  Odd that the elements of pleasure were so many greys, so much fear, so many silences. That house there, gaping through drear drapes with intimations of rugs still out in July-someone had lived there. A Doctor sign hung beside, the door of that one: he mulled on the drugs closeted behind the Venetian blinds. Well, maybe on the way back .. .

  Charcoal, like the bodies of beetles, heaped below the glittering wall on the far corner. The sharpness of incinerated upholstery cut the street's gritty stink. Through a cellar window, broken, a grey eel of smoke slithered the sidewalk to vaporize in the gutter. Through another, intact, flickerings . . . The singular burning among the dozens of whole buildings was the most uncanny thing he'd seen.

  He crossed quickly to the next block.

  The loose rhythm of the day carried him through the streets. Once it occurred to him that he was tired. Later, he looked for the tiredness and found it had dispersed, like the eel.

  This had to be the Heights.

  He trudged on up the sloping street, by a window full of brass: three layers of glass doors in a foyer: the head of a white statue behind a high hedge-all the vulnerable, gloomy elegance bothered him. Break in for another cup of coffee? He wondered why the images of shotguns behind the curtains were stronger here. But laughed at them, anyway.

  He moved, and the movement was a rush of sound among his body's cavities. He slapped the paper and bloody notebook on his thigh, thinking of Lanya, of Milly, of John. From his other hip the orchid swung. Chained in points of view, he loped along, an uneasy vandal, suffering for the pillage his mind wreaked among the fabulous facades. He moved, a point of tension, by homes that would have been luxurious in sunlight.

  He was not sure why he decided to explore off the avenue.

  In the center of the alley was an oak, set in a circle of cobbles, ringed in a decorative fence. His heart beat fast. '

  He passed it.

  The backside of the trunk was ash. Instead of heavy greenery, the rear leaves were shriveled black.

  Eyes wide at the vision, he turned as he passed it, to back away. Then he looked at the houses.

  On both sides of him walls were sundered on smashed furniture, beams, and piled masonry. The demarcation between lawn and street vanished beneath junk. Twenty feet on, the cobbles were upturned. He felt his face squinch against the destruction.

  Bulldozers?

  Grenades?

  He could not imagine what had caused this. Paving-stones were smashed, loose, or upside down in raw earth, so that he was not even certain where the next street began. Frowning, he wandered in the debris, stepped over a pile of books, vaguely seeking the source of a smoke plume waving fifty feet away, then, suddenly, not seeking it.

  He picked up a clock. The crystal flaked out, tinkling. He dropped it and picked up a ballpoint pen, wiped the ashes against his pants, clicked the point in and out. Half under plaster was a wooden chest, slightly larger than an attache case. With the toe of his sandal, he nudged up the lid. White powder swirled above forks, spoons, and knives bound in grey ribbon, then settled to the purple velvet. He let the lid clack, and hurried to the Avenue.

  He practically ran Brisbain's next three blocks, past houses empty and elegant. But now he was aware of lawn poles askew, of shapeless heaps between them, of windows, which, beyond pale curtains, were light as the sky behind them.

  He was still clicking the ballpoint pen. So he put it in his shirt pocket. Then, at the next corner, he took it out again and stood very still. If a wind came now, he thought, and caused any sound on this drear street, he would cry out.

  There was no wind.

  He sat down on the curb, opened to the notebook's first page.

  to wound the autumnal city

  he read once more. Hastily he turned the page over to the clear side. He looked down the four streets, looked at the corner houses. He sucked a breath through closed teeth, clicked the point out and began to write.

  In the middle of the third line, without taking pen off paper, he swept back to cross it all out. Then, carefully, he recopied two words on the next line. The second was "I." Very carefully now, word followed word. He crossed out two more lines, from which he salvaged "you," "spinner," and "pave," dropping them into a new sentence that bore no denotative resemblance to the one from which they came.

  Between lines, while he punched his pen point, his eye strayed to the writing beside his:

  It is our despair at the textural inadequacies of language that drives us to heighten the structural ones toward

  "Annn!" out loud. There was not a pretty word in the bunch. Roughly he turned the notebook back around the paper to avoid distraction.

  Holding the last two lines in his head, he looked about at the buildings again. (Why not live dangerously?) He wrote the last lines hurriedly, notating them before they dispersed.

  He printed at the top: "Brisbain"

  Lifting his pen from the "n", he wondered
if the word had any other meaning than the name of the Avenue. Hoping it did, he began to recopy, in as neat a hand as he could, what he had settled on. He altered one word in the last two lines ("cannot" became "can't"), and closed the book, puzzled at what he had done.

  Then he stood.

  Struck with dizziness, he staggered off the curb. He shook his head, and finally managed to get the world under him at the right angle. The back of his legs were cramped: he'd been in a near-fetal squat practically half an hour.

  The dizziness gone, the cramps stayed with him for two blocks. As well he felt choked up in his breathing. That put him in touch with a dozen other little discomforts that he had ignored till now. So that it was not for another block after that he noticed he wasn't afraid.

  The pulling in the back of his right shin, or the mental disquiet? He gave up pondering the preferable, looked at a street sign, and noticed that Brisbain N had become Brisbain S.

  Click-click, click-click, click-click: realizing what he was doing, he put the pen in his shirt pocket. Along the street, beside him, was a stone wall. The houses across from him, porched and lawned and spacious and columned, all had broken windows.

  The car-a blunt, maroon thing at least twenty years old-grumbled up behind.

  He'd jumped, in surprise, turning.

  It passed, leaving no impression of the driver. But two blocks ahead, it turned in at a gate.

  Willow fronds draped the brick above him. Walking again, he ran two fingers along the mortared troughs.

  The gate was verdigrised brass, spiked at the top, and locked. Ten yards beyond the bars, the road got twisted up in the shaggiest pines he'd ever seen. The brass plate, streaked pink with recent polish, said: ROGER CALKINS

  He looked through at the pines. He looked back at the other houses. Finally he just walked on.

  The street ended in brush. He followed the wall around its corner into bushes. Twigs kept jabbing beneath his sandal straps. His bare foot went easier.

  In the clearing, someone had piled two crates, one on another, against the brick: children after fruit or mischief?

  As he climbed (notebook and paper left on the ground) two women behind the walls laughed.

  He paused.

  Their laughter neared, became muffled converse. A man guffawed sharply; the double soprano recommenced and floated off.

  He could just grasp the edge. He pulled himself up, elbows winging. It was a lot harder than movies would make it. He scraped at the brick with his toes. Brick rasped back at knees and chin.

  His eyes cleared the top.

  The wall was covered with pine needles, twigs, and a surprising shale of glass. Through spinning gnats he saw the blunt pine tops and the rounded, looser heads of elms. Was that grey thing the cupola of a house?

  "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 perpl
exed. 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. And locked it. Mother-fuckers, 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 .. . ?