Dhalgren

"Jesus!" Jack exclaimed. "That's salty!"

  "Have some brandy," Tak reiterated. "Spicy food is good with booze. Go ahead. Drink some more."

  "You know-" he still considered the poster-"I saw that thing hung up in a church this morning?"

  "Ah!" Tak gestured with his glass. "Then you were down at Reverend Amy's. Didn't you know? She's the chief distributor. Where do you think I got my copy?"

  He frowned at the poster, frowned at Tak (who wasn't looking), frowned at the poster again.

  Eyes of ivory, velvet lips, a handsome face poised between an expression disdainful and embarrassing. Was it ... theatrical? Perhaps theatrical disdain. The background was a horizonless purple. He tried to put this rough face with his memory of the astounding second moon.

  "Try this!" Lanya exclaimed. "It's good."

  It was. But mumbling through the tasteless crumbs

  under it, he stepped outside and breathed deep in the

  thick smoke. He couldn't smell it, but he felt his heart

  in his ears in a moment, very quick and steady. He

  searched for either blotted light. A rapist? he thought. An exhibitionist? He is approaching the numinous: gossip; the printed word; portents. Thrilled, he narrowed his eyes to search the clouds for George once more.

  "Hey," Lanya said. "How you feeling?"

  "Tired."

  "I left my blankets and stuff in the park. Let's go back."

  "Okay." He started to put his arm around her-she took his hand in both of hers. She cupped his from the wrist, her fingers like orchid blades. Blades closed, and she held his little finger, his forefinger, kissed the horny palm, and would not look at his confusion. She kissed his knuckles, opening her lips, and lay her tongue there. Her breath warmed in the hair on his hand's back.

  Her face was an inch away; he could feel the warmth of that too. In his reiterate curiosity, and his embarrassment, he offered, obliquely, "You know ... the moon?"

  She looked at him, still holding his fingers. "What moon?"

  "I mean ... when we saw the two moons. And what you were talking about. Their being different."

  "Two moons?"

  "Oh, come on now." He lowered his hand; hers lowered with it. "Remember when we came out of the bar?"

  "Yes."

  "And the night was all messed up and streaked?" He glanced at the enveloping sky, fused and blurred.

  "Yes."

  "What did you see?"

  She looked puzzled. "The moon."

  "How-" something awful at the base of his spine-´ "many?"-clawed to his neck.

  Her head went to the side. "How many?"

  "We were all standing outside the bar, and in the sky we saw . . ."

  But she laughed and, laughing, dropped her face to his hand again. When she looked up, she halted the sound to question. "Hey?" And then, "Hey, I'm kidding you . .. ?"

  "Oh," he said.

  But she saw an answer that confused. "No, really, I'm just kidding. What were you going to say about it?"

  "Huh?"

  "You were about to say something?"

  "Naw, it's nothing."

  "But. . . ?"

  "Don't do that again. Don't kid like that. Not . . . here."

  She looked around too when he said that. Then pushed her face against his hand again. He moved his fingers between her lips. "I won't," she said, "if you'll let me do this," and slid her mouth around his wrecked thumb.

  As expression releases the indicated emotion, as surface defines the space enclosed, he felt a strange warmth. It grew behind his face and made his breath shush out. "All right," he said, and, "Okay," and then, "... Yes," each more definite in meaning, each more tentatively spoken.

  Tak pushed the door back hard enough to make the hinges howl. He walked up to the balustrade, fingering his fly and mumbling, "Shit!" saw Lanya and stopped. "Sorry. I gotta take a leak."

  "What's the matter with you?" she asked the swaying Loufer.

  "What's the matter? Tonight's trick isn't going to put out. Last night's is all caught up the biggest fag-hag in the city." His zipper hissed open. "Come on, I want to take a leak." He nodded to Lanya. "You can stay here, sweetheart. But he's gotta go away. I got this hangup. I'm piss-shy in front of men."

  "Fuck off, Tak," he said, and started across the roof.

  She caught up, her head down, making a sound he thought was crying. He touched her shoulder, and she looked up at him in the midst of a stifled giggle.

  He sucked his teeth. "Let's go."

  "What about Jack?" she asked.

  "Huh? Fuck Jack. We're not going to take him with us."

  "Oh, sure; I didn't mean . . ." And followed him toward the stairwell.

  "Hey, good night, Tak," he called. "I'll see you around."

  "Yeah," Loufer said from the cabin door, going in: the hair on his shoulder and the side of his head blazed with back-light.

  "Good night," Lanya echoed.

  The metal door grated.

  A flight into the dark, she asked, "Are you mad at Tak . . . about something?" Then she said: "I mean, he's a sort of funny guy, sometimes. But he's-"

  "I'm not mad at him."

  "Oh." Their footsteps perforated the silence.

  "I like him." His tone spoke decision. "Yeah, he's a good guy." The newspaper and the notebook were up under his arm.

  She slipped her fingers through his in the dark; to keep from dropping the notebook, he had to hold her near.

  At the bottom of the next flight, she asked, suddenly: "Do you care if you don't know who you are?"

  At the bottom of the next, he said, "No." Then he wondered, from the way her footsteps quickened (his quickened to keep up) if that, like his hands, excited her.

  She led him quickly and surely through the basement corridor-now the concrete was cold-and up. "Here's the door," she said, releasing him; she stepped away.

  He couldn't see "at all.

  "Just a few stairs." She moved ahead.

  He held the jamb unsteadily, slid his bare foot forward . . . onto board. With his other hand, he raised notebook and newspaper before his face, thrust his forearm out.

  Ahead and below, she said, "Come on."

  "Watch out for the edge," he said. His toes and the ball of his foot went over the board side and dangled. "And those damn meat hooks."

  "Huh . . . ?" Then she laughed. "No-that's across the street!"

  'The hell it is," he said. "When I came running out of here this morning, I nearly skewered myself."

  "You must have gotten lost-" she was still laughing-"in the basement! Come on, it's just a couple of steps down."

  He frowned in the dark (thinking: There was a lamp on this street corner. I saw it from the roof. Why can't I see anything . . .) let go the jamb, stepped . . . down: to another board, that squeaked. He still held his arm up before his face, feeling for the swaying prongs.

  "One of the corridors in the basement," she explained, "goes under the street and comes up behind a door to the loading porch across from here. The first few times I came to visit Tak, that happened to me too. The first time, you think you're losing your mind."

  "Huh?" he said. "Under the ... street?" He lowered his arm.

  Maybe (the possibility came, as relieving as fresh air in these smoke-stifled alleys) he'd simply looked down from the roof on the wrong side; and that was why there was no street-light. His semiambidextrousness was always making him confuse left and right. He came down two more board steps, reached pavement.

  He felt her take his wrist. "This way . . ."

  She led him quickly through the dark, up and down curbs, from complete to near-complete darkness and back. It was more confusing than the basement corridors. "We're in the park, now, aren't we ... ?" he asked, minutes on. Not only had he missed the entrance, but, at the moment he raised from his reveries to speak, he realized he did not know how many minutes on it was. Three? Thirteen? Thirty?

  "Yes . . ." she said, wondering why he wondered.

  They walked o
ver soft, ashy earth.

  "Here," she told him. "We've reached my place."

  The trees rustled.

  "Help me spread the blanket."

  He thought: How can she see? A corner of blanket fell across his foot. He dropped to his knees and pulled the edge straight; felt her pull; felt her pull go slack.

  "Take all your clothes off . .." she said, softly.

  He nodded, unbuttoned his shirt. He had known this was coming, too. Since when? This morning? New moons come, he thought, and all of heaven changes; still we silently machinate toward the joint of flesh and flesh, while the ground stays still enough to walk, no matter what above it. He unbuckled his pants, slipped out of them, and looked up to notice that he could see her a little, across the blanket, a blot moving furiously, rustling laces, jeans-a sneaker fell in grass.

  He pushed off his sandal and lay down, naked, on his back, at the blanket's edge.

  "Where are you . . . ?" she said.

  "Here," but it sounded, shaking the mask of his face, more like a grunt.

  She fell against him, her flesh as warm as sunlight in the dark, slipped on top of him. Her knees slid between his. Happily, his arms enclosed her; he laughed, and rocked her to the side, while she tried to find his mouth with hers, found it, pushed her tongue into it.

  A heat, whose center was just behind his groin, built, layer around layer, till it seemed to fill him, knees to nipples. The bone behind her crotch hair moved on his hip while she clutched his shoulders-but he did not get an erection.

  They rocked, kissed; he touched, then rubbed her breasts; she touched, then rubbed his hands rubbing her; they kissed and hugged, five? ten minutes? He grew apologetic. "I guess this isn't . . . well, I mean for you . . ."

  Her head pulled back. "If you're worried about it," she said, "you've got toes, a tongue . . . fingers ..."

  He laughed-"Yeah."-and moved down: his feet, then his knees, went off the blanket into grass.

  With two fingers, he touched her cunt. She reached down to press his hand against her. He dropped his mouth; she spread her fingers, her hair pressed out between them.

  The odor, like a blow against his face, brought back -was it from Oregon?-an axe blade's first hack in some wet pine log. He thrust out his tongue.

  And his cock dragged against the blanketing; the tenderer oval pushed forward in the loose hood.

  She held his head, hard, with one hand; held his two fingers, hard against her hip, with her other.

  He mapped the folds that fell, wetly out, with his tongue; and the grisly nut in the folded vortex, and the soft, granular trough behind it. She moved, and held her breath for half a minute, gasped, held it again; gasped. He let himself rub against the blanket, just a little, the way he used to masturbate when he was nine. Then he crawled up onto her; both her hands, thrust between her thighs, caught his cock: he pushed into her. Her arms fought from beneath him, to lock suddenly and tightly, on his neck. Holding her shoulders, he pushed, and retreated, and pushed again, slowly; pushed again. Her hips rolled under his. Her heels walked up the blanket, ankles against his thighs.

  Finally, she clutched his fist, like a rock or a root-knob, too big for her fingers, first out from them- hunching and hunching, he pressed the back of her hand into grass; between her spread fingers, grass blades tickled, his knuckles-then, as he panted and fell, and panted, she dragged it by jerks, to the blanket; dragged up the blanket; and finally held it against her cheek, her mouth, her chin.

  His chin, wet and unshaven, slipped against her throat. He remembered how she had sucked his thumb before and, taking a curious dare, opened his fingers and thrust three into her mouth.

  The realization, from her movement (her breaths were loud, long, and wet beside him, the underside of her tongue between his knuckles hot), that it was what she had wanted, made him, perhaps forty seconds after her, come.

  He lay on her, shuddered; she squeezed his shoulders.

  After a while, she practically woke him with: "Get off. You're heavy."

  He lifted his chin, "Don't you . . . like to be held afterward?"

  "Yes." She laughed. "You're still heavy."

  "Oh," and he rolled-taking her with him.

  She squealed; the squeal became laughter as she ended up on top of him. Her face shook against his, still laughing. It was like something she was chewing very fast. He smiled.

  "You're not heavy," he said, and remembered her saying she was four or eight pounds overweight; it certainly wasn't with fat.

  In the circle of his arms, she snuggled down; one hand stayed loose at his neck.

  The contours of the ground were clear beneath his buttocks, back, and legs. And there was a pebble (or something, (under the blanket?) under his shoulder (or was it a prism on his chain) ... there ...

  "You all right?"

  "Mrnm-hm." He got it into a depression in the ground; so it didn't bother him. "I'm fine."

  He was drifting off, when she slid to his side, knees lapped with his shins, head sliding to his shoulder. She moved one hand on his belly beneath the chain. Her breath tickled the hair at the top of his chest. She said: "It's the kind of question you lose friends for ... But I'm curious: Who do you like better in bed, Tak or me?"

  He opened his eyes, looked down at what would be the top of her head; her hair brushed his face. He laughed into it, shortly and sharply: "Tak's been telling tales?"

  "Back at the bar," she said, "while you were in the john." Actually, she sounded sleepy. "I thought he was joking. Then you said you'd been there in the morning."

  "Mmmm." He nodded. "What did he say?"

  "That you were cooperative. But basically a cold fish."

  "Oh." He was surprised and felt his eyebrows, and his lower lip, raise. "What do you think?"

  She snuggled, a movement that went from her cheek in his armpit (he moved his arm around her), down through her chest (he could feel one breast slide on his chest; one was pressed between them so tightly he wondered if it wasn't uncomfortable for her), to her hips (his cock rose from between his thighs and fell against his belly), to her knees (he clamped his together around hers) to her feet (he pushed his big toe between two of hers: and she held it). "Intense . . ." she said, pensively. "But I like that."

  He put his other arm around her. "I like you better," and decided that he did. Suddenly he raised his head from the blanket, looked down at her again: "Hey . . . Do you have any birth-control stuff?"

  She began to laugh, softly at first, her face turned into his shoulder, then out full, rolling away from him to her back, laughing in the dark.

  "What's so funny?" He felt the length where she'd been as cold now as it had been warm.

  "Yes. I have taken care of the birth-control . . . 'stuff,' as you. put it." Her laughter went on, as light as leaf tipping leaf. "It's just your asking," she told him at last, "sounds so gallant. Like manners from another age and epoch. I'm not used to it."

  "Oh," he said, still not quite sure he understood. And, anyway, he felt himself drifting again.

  He wasn't sure if he actually slept, but came awake later with her arm moving sleepily against his; aroused, he turned to her, and at his movement, she pulled herself half on top of him: she had been lying there, already excited.

  They made love again; and fell into sleep like stone -till.one or the other of them moved; and once more they woke, clinging.

  So they made love once more; then talked-about love, about moons ("You can't see them at all now," she whispered. "Isn't that strange?"), about madness-and then made love again.

  And slept again.

  And woke.

  And made love.

  And slept.

  House of the Ax

  Beginning in this tone, for us, is a little odd, but such news stands out, to your editor's mind, as the impressive occurrence in our eccentric history. Ernest New-boy, the most notable English-language poet to emerge from Oceana, was born in Auckland in 1916. Sent to school in England, at twenty-one (he tells us)
he came back to New Zealand and Australia to teach for six years, then returned to Europe to work and travel.

  Mr Newboy has been three times short-listed for the Nobel Prize, which, if he receives it, will make him one in a line of outstanding figures in the twin fields of diplomacy and letters which includes Asturias, St-John Perse, and Seferis. As a citizen of a comparatively neutral country, he has been visiting the United States at an invitation to sit on the United Nations Cultural Committee which has just adjourned.

  Ernest Newboy is also the author of a handful of short stories and novellas, collected and published under the title Stones (Vintage Paperback, 434 pp., $1.95), including the often anthologized long story, The Monument, a disturbing and symbolic tale of the psychological and spiritual dissolution of a disaffected Australian intellectual who comes to live in a war-ravaged German town. Mr Newboy has told us that, though his popular reputation rests on that slim volume of incisive fiction (your editor's evaluation), he considers them essentially experiments of the three years following the close of the War when he passed through a period of disillusionment with his first literary commitment, poetry. If nothing else, the popularity of Stones and The Monument turned attention to the three volumes of poems published in the thirties and forties, brought together in Collected Poetry 1950 (available in Great Britain from Faber and Faber). To repeat something of a catch-phrase that has been echoed by various critics: While writers about him caught the despair of the period surrounding the War, Newboy, more than any other, fixed it in such light that one can lucidly see in it the genesis of so much of the current crisis. From his early twenties, through today, Newboy has produced occasional, literary, and philosophical essays to fill several volumes. They are characterized by a precise and courageous vision. In 1969 he published the book-length poem Pilgrimage, abstruse, surreal, often surprisingly humorous, and, for all its apparent irreverence, a profoundly religious work. After several more volumes of essays, in 1977 the comparatively brief collection of shorter poems written in the thirty-odd years since the War, Rictus, appeared.

  A quiet, retiring, scholarly man, Newboy has traveled for most of his life through Europe, North Africa, and the East. His work is studded with images from the Maori and the many cultures he has been exposed to and explored, with his particular personal insight