Dhalgren

by Samuel R. Delany

  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 something. 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.

  "Nothing."

  "What did they think they were going to get?"

  "I don't know. Shit. They just wanted to beat up on somebody, I guess."

  Tak shook his head. "No. That doesn't sound right. Not scorpions. Everybody's too busy trying to survive around here just to go beating up on people for fun."

  "I was up at the Calkins place, trying to look over the wall. Lanya said he keeps the bastards patrolling the damn walls."

  "Now there." Loufer shook a finger across the table. "That's like I was telling you, Jack. It's a strange place, maybe stranger than any you've ever been. But it still has its rules. You just have to find them out."

  "Shit," he repeated, indignant at everybody's questioning of the incident. "They beat hell out of me."

  "Looks like they did." Tak turned across the table. "Jack, want you to meet the Kid, here. Jack just pulled into town this afternoon. The Kid got in yesterday."

  Jack pushed himself forward and reached out to shake.

  "Hi." He shook Jack's small, sunburned hand.

  "Jack here is a deserter from the army."

  At which Jack glanced at Tak with dismay, then covered it with an embarrassed smile. "Ah . . . hello," he said with a voice out of Arkansas. His short-sleeve sport-shirt was very pressed. Army shorn, his skull showed to the temple. "Yeah, I'm a God-damn deserter, like he says."

  "That's nice," then realized how flip that sounded and was also embarrassed.

  "Tak here has been trying to tell m
e about how to get along in this place," Jack offered: he had either not taken offense, or just not heard. "Tak's a lot smarter than I am, you know. It's pretty funny here, huh?"

  He nodded.

  "I was gonna go to Canada. But somebody told me about Bellona. Said it was a pretty swinging place, you know? So I thought I'd stop off here. On the way." Now he looked around the bar. The woman howled again: the purple angora had abandoned her. The howl moved predictably once more toward laughter and she sat, alone, shaking her dark red hair over her drink. "I ain't ever seen a place quite like this. Have you?" Jack offered the conversation back to him.

  "Oh, I bet you ain't," Tak intercepted. "Now the Kid here, you know, he's my age? You probably would have thought he was younger than you are. Jack here is twenty. Now seriously, how old would you say the Kid here is?"

  "Uh ... oh, I don't know." Jack said, and looked confused.

  (He wanted to look at the engineer's shadowed face again, but not yet.)

  "Where the hell did you run off to this morning, anyway?"

  A dog barked, somewhere in the bar.

  About to turn and answer Tak, he looked toward the noise. Claws scrabbled; then, bursting between the legs of the people next to them, the black muzzle and shoulders!

  He snatched his arm up from the barking.

  At the same time, Lanya arrived: "Hey, come on, girl!"

  Others had turned to watch the beast bark up at their table.

  "Come on. Quiet down." Lanya's hand strayed on the shaking head, played on the black snout. "Be quiet! Quiet, now." The dog tried to pull its head away. She grabbed its lower jaw and shook it gently. "What you making so much noise about? Shhhhh, you hear me? Shhhh!" The dog turned its brown eyes from the table, to Lanya, back to the table. Bright pricks from the candles slid on the black pupils. It licked her hand. "There now. Be quiet." In the other was a wad of wet paper towels. She sat down, put them on the table: they trickled on the wood.

  Jack's hands were back in his lap.

  Tak pushed up his cap; the shadow uncovered his large, blue eyes. He shook his head, and sucked his teeth in general disapproval.

  "Come on, now," Lanya said once more to the dog.

  It waited beside the table, panting.

  He reached out toward the dark head. The panting stopped. He passed his fingers over the rough hair, the wiry brows. The dog turned to lick the ham of his thumb. "Yeah," he said. "You just be quiet."

  "Is Muriel bothering you people?" Purple Angora sucked a sighing breath. "I tell her-" he gestured toward the woman at the bar-"she shouldn't bring her in here. Muriel is just not that well trained. She gets so excited. But she will bring her in here every night. I hope she hasn't annoyed you."

  Lanya reached again to rough the dog's head. "She's an old dear! She didn't bother anybody."

  "Well, thank you." Purple Angora bent to drag Muriel back to the bar by the collar. Once he glanced back, frowned at them-

  "See if you can wipe some of that stuff off your face," Lanya said, wrinkling hers.

  "Huh? Oh, yeah." He picked up a towel and held it to his temple; which stung. Water rolled down.

  He rubbed the blood off his cheek. Picked up another towel (the first now purple to the rim) and wiped his face again.

  "Hey," Jack said. "I think you're . . ." with a vague gesture.

  "Lord-!" Lanya said. "I'll get some more towels."

  "Huh? Am I bleeding again?"

  Tak took him by the chin and turned his face. "You sure are," and pressed another towel against his head.

  "Hey!" He reached across for Lanya's arm. "Look, let me just go to the men's room. I'll fix it up."

  She sat again. "Are you sure ... ?"

  "Yeah. I'll be back in a little while." With one hand he held the paper to his face; with the other, he picked up the notebook. ("What happened to him?" Tak was asking Lanya. And Lanya was leaning forward to answer.) He pushed through the people next to them toward where the men's room ought to be.

  Behind him, music began, staticy as an old radio; more like somebody's wind-up victrola. He turned in front of the rest room door.

  Neon lights had come on in a cage hung up behind the bar. (The redhead's face (forty-five? fifty?) was soap yellow in the glare:

  ("Muriel! Now, Muriel, be quiet!'* (The fugitive barking stilled and the Purple Sweater sat up once more.) Through the black curtain stepped a boy in a silver lame G-string. He began to dance in the cage, shaking his hips, flicking his hands, kicking. His ash-pale hair was flecked with glitter; glitter had fallen down his wet brow. He grinned hugely, open mouthed, lips shaking with the dance, at customers up and down the bar. His eyebrows were pasted over with silver.

  The music, he realized through the static, was a medley of Dylan played by something like the Melachrino Strings. The "boy" was anywhere between fifteen and an emaciated thirty-five. Around his neck hung glittering strands of mirrors, prisms, lenses.

  He pushed into the bathroom as a big man in an army jacket came out fingering his fly.

  He locked the door, put his notebook on the cracked porcelain tank (he'd left the paper on the table), looked at the mirror and said, "Christ. .. /"

  Tap turned full, the cold water only trickled over the tear-shaped stain. He pulled paper towels, rasping, from their container, and let them soak. Minutes later the sink was awash with blood; the battleship linoleum was speckled with it; but his face was clear of gore and

  leakage.

  Sitting on the toilet, pants around his shins, shirt open, he turned up a quarter-sized mirror on his belly and gazed down at a fragment of his face with an eye in it. Water beaded his eyelashes. He blinked.

  His eye opened to see the drop, pink with dilute

  blood, strike the glass and spread to the gripping callous.

  He let go, took the notebook from the toilet tank,

  turned it back on his thighs, and took out his pen. The

  coil pressed his skin:

  "Murielle"

  He doubted the spelling, but wrote on:

  "Seen through blood, her clear eyes . . ." He crossed

  out "clear" methodically, till it was a navy bar. He

  frowned, re-read, rewrote "clear", and wrote on. He

  stopped long enough to urinate and re-read again. He

  shook his head, leaned forward. His penis swung against cold porcelain. So he wiggled back on the seat; rewrote the whole line.

  Once he looked up: A candle by the painted-over window was guttering.

  "Remembering," he wrote, "by candle what I'd seen by moon . . ." frowned, and substituted a completely different thought.

  "Hey!" Pounding at the door made him look up. "You all right in there, Kid?"

  "Tak?"

  "You need some help in there? Lanya sent me to see if you'd fallen in. You all right?"

  "I'm okay. I'll be out in a minute."

  "Oh. Okay. All right."

  He looked back at the page. Suddenly he scribbled across the bottom: "They won't let me finish this Goddamn" stopped, laughed, closed the book, and put the pen back in his pocket.

  He leaned forward on his knees and relaxed: The length and splash surprised him. There wasn't any toilet paper.

  So he used a wet towel.

  Light glittered on the dancer's hips, his shaking hair, his sweating face. But people had resumed their conversations.

  He pushed through, glancing at the cage. "Well, you certainly look a lot better," Lanya said. Jack said, "Hey, I got you and your girl friend a beer. One for you too, see, because I didn't want you to think ... well, you know."

  "Oh," he said. "Sure. Thanks."

  "I mean Tak ain't let me buy anything all evening. So I thought I'd get you and your girl friend a beer." He nodded and sat. "Thanks." "Yeah, thanks," Lanya said. "She's a very nice girl."

  Lanya gave him a small Well-what-can-you-do look across the table and drank.

  The music growled to a stop in the middle of a phrase; people applauded.

 
Jack nodded toward the cage, where the dancer panted. "I swear, I never been in a place like this. It's really too much, you know? You got a lot of places like this in Bellona?"

  "Teddy's here is the one and only," Tak said. "No other place like it in the Western World. It used to be a straight bar back before. Improvement's not to be believed."

  "It sure is pretty unbelievable," Jack repeated. "I've just never seen anything like it."

  Lanya took another swallow from her bottle. "You're not going to die after all?" She smiled.

  He saluted her with his and emptied it by a third. "Guess not."

  Tak suddenly twisted in his seat. "Ain't this a bitch! Hot as it is in this God-damn place;" He shrugged out of his jacket, hung it over the bench back, then leaned one tattooed forearm on the table. "Now that's a little more comfortable." He furrowed the meadow of his chest, and looked down. "Sweating like a pig." He slid forward, stomach ridged by the plank, and folded his arms. "Yeah, that's a little better." He still wore his cap.

  "Jesus," Jack said, looking around. "They let you do that in here?"

  "They'd let me take my pants down and dance on the fucking table," Tak said, "if I wanted. Wouldn't they, Lanya-babes? You tell 'em."

  "Tak," Lanya said, "I'd like to see that. I really would." She laughed.

  Jack said: "Wow!"

  The dancer was climbing from the cage down to the bar; he made a joke with somebody below; somebody else gave him a hand, and he leaped lightly away.

  At the doorway, a group had just come in.

  A couple of men in leather had gone up to a tall black with a khaki shirt: Even by candlelight, sweat stained his shirt flanks. Other black men around wore suits and ties. People were putting tables together.

  The redhead's laughter carried her across the bar. She took the black's beam-broad, khaki shoulders. He embraced her; she struggled, still laughing. Muriel barked about their knees.

  Sepulchral Teddy, like some leather-sheathed plant, set bottles down, held back chairs. The tall black fell into his seat; his fists cracked open like stone on the table. Others sat around him. He reared back, stretched his arms, and caught the woman in coveralls with one and