Dhalgren

  When he went out on the balcony, the sky was the color of dark stone. His nasal cavity stung. He thought he saw movement down in the grounds. But when he took the rail, to look over, it was only smoke. And his forearms were sore. He went inside. He ate the rest of the sandwich. He drank the Coke, now flat as well as warm.

  Work till sunset in a city where you never see the sun? He laughed. Fuck them if they expected him to get all this stuff to the basement! He ambled, panting, through dressers, easy chairs, day beds, and buffets. The thought occurred to put it in another apartment on the same floor. His next thought was: Why not?

  He turned, gigantic, in the belly-high furniture forest. There was no one else, for practical purposes, in the building. Who would know? Who would care? His bladder suddenly warmed; he started down the hall.

  At the end of an alcove, a hint of tile over the doorsill identified the bathroom. Inside, he flipped a light switch: lights stayed off. But, as he turned, his shin bumped the toilet ring.

  It was pitch dark but he thought, what the hell.

  The particular sound of his water, reiterated by sudden, hot wetness against his foot, told him he'd missed. He varied his aim without the rattle of water on water to sing success. Stop his stream? The memory of the yellow burst of pain at the base of his penis . . . He'd mop later. And let it run.

  He lurched from the darkness and said, "Shit!"

  His wet foot left its spreading print on the notebook, where it lay outside the door. Had it crept after him for soiling? No; he remembered (black and white; no color . . . like some dreams) carrying it with the intention of writing something down. When the lights hadn't worked, he had dropped it there. "It's me, Kidd."

  "Oh, hey, just a second."

  The chain fell. The door opened.

  Behind her, candles flickered on the phone table. The light from the living room tossed unsteady shadows on the rug. A doorway up the hall let out wavering orange. "Come on in."

  He followed June to the living room.

  "Well." Mr Richards peered above the Times, folded small. "You worked on a good bit past sundown I'd say. How's it going?"

  "Fine. There was a whole lot of broken glass in the back room. A vanity turned over."

  "You got the furniture out?" Mrs Richards called from the kitchen.

  "Everything's in the front room. I can do all the back floors tomorrow, and get the rest of the stuff out of there for you. It's not going to be hard."

  "That's good. Arthur . . . ?"

  "Oh, yes," Mr Richards said. "Mary's put out a towel for you. Go right in and run yourself a bath. Do you use an electric razor?"

  "No."

  "I have one, if you want. I put out a safety, for you, anyway. Blade's new. We'd like to invite you to stay for supper."

  "Hey," he said, wanting to leave. "That's very nice."

  Thank you."|

  "Bobby, you put candles in the bathroom?"

  Bobby went Umph over his book.

  "Life by candlelight," Mr Richards said. "It's really something, isn't it?"

  "At least the gas isn't off," Mrs Richards called again. "That's something too." She stepped to the dc "Bobby, Arthur, both of you! This isn't enough light to read by; you'll ruin your eyes."

  "Bobby, put your book down. You heard your mother. You read too much anyway."

  "Arthur, he can't read too much. It's just his eyes." She went back into the kitchen.

  On top of the bookcase by Mr Richards' chair (neither he nor Bobby had ceased their reading) between an edition of Paradise Lost that said "Classics Club" and something thick by Michener, was a volume, thinner than both, with white letters down a black spine: "Pilgrimage/ Newboy." He pulled the book loose. The candles flaked light across the cover. "Did Mrs Brown ever come?" He turned the book over. From the case, black ceramic lions looked somewhere else and glistened. The back blurb was only three uninformative lines. He looked at the front again: Pilgrimage by Ernest Newboy.

  "She'll be here by the time we eat. She always is." June snickered, waiting for Father or Mother to object Neither did. "That's by that poet they told about in the paper. Bobby got it for Mother from the bookstore yesterday."

  He nodded. "Ma'am?" He looked in the kitchen door. "May I look at this?"

  "Certainly," Mrs Richards said, stirring, at the stove.

  He went into the bathroom; probably laid out the same as the one he'd peed all over upstairs. Two candles on the back of the toilet tank put two flecks on each tile; and there was another candle up on the medicine cabinet.

  He turned the taps, sat on the toilet top, and, with Newboy on his notebook, read at the "Prologemena."

  The water rushed.

  After a page he skipped, reading a line here, a verse paragraph further on. At some he laughed out loud.

  He put down the book, shucked his clothing, leaned over the rim and lowered his chained, grimy ankle. Steam kissed the sole of his foot, then hot water licked it.

  Sitting in the cooling tub, chain under his buttocks, he had scrubbed only a minute before the water was grey and covered with pale scalings.

  Well, Lanya had said she wouldn't mind.

  He let that water out, and ran more over his feet, rubbing the gritty skin from his insteps. He'd known he was dirty, but the amount of filth in the water was amazing. He soaked and soaped his hair, rubbed his arms and chest with the bar till the chain tore it. He grounded the balled washrag beneath his jaw, and then lay back with his ears under water, to watch the isle of his belly shake to his heart beat, each curved hair a wet scale, like the shingled skin of some amphibian.

  Sometime during all this, Madame Brown's high laughter rolled into the hall; and a little on, her voice outside the door; "No! No, you can't go in there, Muriel! Someone's taking a bath."

  He let out the water, and lay back, exhausted and clean, occasionally wiping at the tub-line of grit, wider than Loufer's garrison. He pressed his back against porcelain. Water trapped there poured around his shoulders. He sat, wondering if one could will oneself dry. And, slowly, dried.

  He looked at his shoulder, peppered with pores, run with tiny lines he could imagine separated each cell, fuzzed with dark down. He brushed his mouth on his skin, licked the de-salted flesh, kissed it, kissed his arm, kissed the paler place where veins pushed across the bridge from bicep to forearm, realized what he was doing, with scowling laughter, but kissed himself again. He pushed to standing. Drops trickled the back of his legs. He was dizzy; the tiny flames wobbled in the tiles. He stepped out, heart knocking to the sudden effort.

  He toweled roughly at his hair, gently at his genitals. Then, on his knees, he did a slightly better job washing away the hairs and grit and flaky stuff still on the bathtub bottom.

  He picked up his pants, shook his head over them; well, they were all he had. He put them on, combed his moist hair back with his fingers, tucked in his shut, buckled on his sandal, and came out into the hall. Behind his ears was cool, and still wet.

  "How many baths did you take?" Mr Richards asked. "Three?"

  "Two and a half." Kidd grinned. "Hello, Ma- Mrs Brown."

  "They've been telling me how hard you've worked."

  Kidd nodded. "It's not that bad. I'll probably finish up tomorrow. Mr Richards? You said you had a razor?"

  "Oh yes. You're sure you don't want to use my electric?"

  "I'm used to the other kind."

  "It's just you'll have to use regular soap."

  "Arthur," Mrs Richards called from the kitchen, "you have that mug of shaving soap Michael gave you for Christmas."

  Mr Richards snapped his fingers. "Now I'd forgot. That was three years back. I never did open it. Grew a beard since too. I had a pretty good-looking beard for a while, you know?"

  "It looked silly," Mrs Richards said. "I made him shave it off."

  Back in the bathroom, he lathered his jaw, then scraped the warm foam away. His face cooled under the blade. He decided to leave his sideburns half an inch longer. Now (in two distinct
stages) they came well below his ears.

  For a moment, holding a hot washcloth across his face, he contemplated the patterns inside his eyes against the dark. But like everything in this house, they seemed of calculated inconsequence.

  From the kitchen: "Bobby, please come in and set the table. Now!"

  Kidd went into the living room. "Bet you'd hardly recognize me," he said to Madame Brown.

  "Oh, I don't know about that."

  "Dinner's ready," Mrs Richards said. "Kidd, you and Bobby sit back there. Edna, you sit here with June." .

  Madame Brown went over and pulled out her chair. "Muriel, stay down there and be good, hear me?"

  He squeezed between the wall and the table-and took some tablecloth with him.

  "Oh, dear!" Madame Brown lunged to grab a tottering brass candlestick. (In suddenly bared mahogany, the reflected flame steadied.) By candlelight her face had again taken on that bruised-eyed tawdriness she had last night in the bar.

  "Jesus," Kidd said. "I'm sorry." He pulled the cloth back down across the table and began to straighten silverware. Mrs Richards had put out a profusion of forks, spoons, and side plates. He wasn't sure if he got all of them in the right place or which were his or Bobby's; when he finally sat, two fingers lingered on the ornate handle of a knife; he watched them rubbing, thick with enlarged knuckles and gnawed nails, but translucently clean. After baths, he reflected, when you're still alone in the john, is the time for all those things you don't want people around for: jerking off, picking your nose and eating it, serious nail biting. Was it some misguided sense of good manners that had kept him from any of these here? His thoughts drifted to various places he'd indulged such habits not so privately: seated at the far end of lunch counters, standing at public urinals, in comparatively empty subway cars at night, in city parks at dawn. He smiled; he rubbed.

  "Those were my mother's," Mrs Richards said, on the other side of the table. She set down two bowls of soup for Arthur and Madame Brown, then went back to the kitchen. "I think old silver is lovely-" her voice came in-"but keeping it polished is awfully difficult." She came out again with two more bowls. "I wonder if it's that-what do they call it? That sulfur dioxide in the air, the stuff eating away all the paintings and statues in Venice." She set one in front of Kidd and one in front of Bobby, who was just squeezing into place-more plates and silverware slid on the wrinkling cloth; Bobby pulled it straight again.

  Kidd took his fingers from the tarnished handle and put his hand in his lap.

  "We've never been to Europe," Mrs Richards said, returning from the kitchen with bowls for her and June. "But Arthur's parents went-oh, years ago. The plates are Arthur's mother's-from Europe. I suppose I shouldn't use the good ones; but I do whenever we have company. They're so festive- Oh, don't wait for me. Just dig in."

  Kidd's soup was in a yellow melmac bowl. The china plate beneath bore an intricate design around its fluted lip, crossed by more intricate scratches that might have come from cleanser or steel wool.

  He looked around to see if he should start, caught both Bobby and June looking around for the same purpose; Madame Brown had a china bowl but every one else's was pastel plastic. He wondered if he, or Madame Brown alone, would have merited the spread.

  Mr Richards picked up his spoon, skimmed up some soup.

  So he did too.

  With the oversized spoon-bowl still in his mouth, he noticed Bobby, June, and Madame Brown had all waited for Mrs Richards, who was only now lifting hers.

  From where he sat, he could see into the kitchen: other candles burned on the counter. Beside a paper bag of garbage, its lip neatly turned down, stood two open Campbell’s cans. He took another spoonful. Mrs Richards has mixed, he decided, two, or even three kinds; he could recognize no specific flavor.

  Under the tablecloth edge, his other hand had moved to his knee-the edge of his little finger scraped the table leg. First with two fingers, then with three, then with his thumb, then with his fore-knuckle, he explored the circular lathing, the upper block, the under-rim, the wing bolts, the joints and rounded excrescences of glue, the hairline cracks where piece was joined to piece-and ate more soup.

  Over a full spoon, Mr Richards smiled and said, "Where's your family from, Kidd?"

  "New York-" he bent over his bowl-"State." He wondered where he had learned to recognize this as the milder version of the blunt What-nationality-are-you? which, here and there about the country, could create unpleasantnesses.

  "My people are from Milwaukee," Mrs Richards said. "Arthur's family is all from right around the Bellona area. Actually my sister lived down here too-well, she did. She's left now. And so has all of Arthur's family. It's quite strange to think of Marianne and June-we named our June after Arthur's mother-and Howard and your Uncle Al not here any more."

  "Oh, I don't know," Mr Richards said; Kidd saw him preparing to ask how long he'd been here, when Madame Brown asked: "Are you a student, Kidd?"

  "No, ma'am," realizing it was a question whose answer she probably knew; but liked her for asking. "I haven't been a student for a while."

  "Where were you in school, then?" Mr Richards asked.

  "Lots of places. Columbia. And a community college in Delaware."

  "Columbia University?" Mrs Richards asked. "In New York?"

  "Only for a year."

  "Did you like it? I've spent a lot of time-Arthur and I have both spent a lot of time-thinking about whether the children should go away to school. I'd like for Bobby to go to some place like Columbia. Though State, right here, is very good."

  "Especially the poly-sci department," Kidd said. Mr Richards and Madame Brown spooned their soup away from them. Mrs Richards, June, and Bobby spooned theirs toward them. One, he remembered, was more correct; but not which. He looked at the ornate silverware handles, diminishing in size either side of his plate, and finally simply sank his spoon straight down in the soup's center.

  "And of course it's a lot less expensive." Mrs Richards sat back, with a constrained laugh. "Expense is always something you have to think about. Especially today. Here at State-" (Four more spoonfuls, he figured, and the soup would be too low for his compromise technique.) Mrs Richards sat forward again. "You say, the poly-sci department?" She tipped her soup bowl toward her.

  "That's what someone told me," Kidd said. "Where's June going to go?"

  Mr Richards tipped his away. "I don't know whether June has thought too much about that."

  Mrs Richards said: "It would be very nice if June wanted to go to college."

  "June isn't too, what you'd call, well, academic. June's sort of my old-fashioned girl." Mr Richards, tipping his bowl, apparently couldn't get enough; he picked it up, poured the last drops into his spoon, and set it down. "Aren't you, honey?"

  "Arthur, really ... !" Mrs Richards said.

  "It's very good, dear," Mr Richards said. "Very good."

  "Yes, ma'am," Kidd said. "It is," and put his spoon on his plate. It wasn't.

  "I'd like to go to college-" June smiled at her lap- "if I could go someplace like New York."

  "That's silly!" Mr Richards made a disparaging gesture with his soup spoon. "It was all we could do to keep her in high school!"

  "It just wasn't very interesting." June's bowl-pink melmac-moved, under her spoon, to the plate's rim. She centered it again. "That's all."

  "You wouldn't like New York," Mr Richards said. "You're too much of a sunshine girl. June likes the sun, swimming, outdoor things. You'd wither away in New York or Los Angeles; with all that smog and pollution."

  "Oh, Daddy!"

  "I think June ought to apply to the Junior College next term-" Mrs Richards turned in mid-sentence from husband to daughter-"to get some idea if you liked it or not. Your marks weren't that bad. I don't think it would be such a terrible idea to try it out, at the Junior College."

  "Mom!" June looked at her lap, not smiling.

  "Your mother went through college," Mr Richards said, "I went through college. Bobby
's going to go. If nothing else, it's a place to get married in."

  "Bobby reads more than June," Mrs Richards explained. "He reads all the time, in fact. And I suppose he is more school-minded."

  "That Junior College is an awful place," June said. "I hate everybody who goes there."

  "Dear," Mrs Richards said, "you don't know everybody who goes there."

  Kidd, with his middle finger, was exploring the counter sinking about some flathead screw, when Madame Brown said:

  "Mary, how close are we to the second course? Arthur up there looks like he's about to eat the bottom of his bowl."

  "Oh, dear me!" Mrs Richards pushed back in her chair. "I don't know what I'm thinking of. I'll be right in-"

  "You want any help, mom?" June said.

  "No." Mrs Richards disappeared into the kitchen. "Thank you, darling."

  "Pass me your soup plates, everybody," June said.

  Kidd's hand came up from under the tablecloth to join his other on the china plate to pass it-but stopped just below the table lip. Knuckles, fingertips, and two streaks on the back of the hand were smudged black.

  He put his hand down between his legs and looked around.

  Anyway, people were keeping their plates and just passing their bowls. He passed his with one hand, his other between his knees. Then the other joined it and he tried, without looking, to rub his fingers clean.

  Mrs Richards came in with two steaming ceramic bowls. "I'm afraid we're vegetarian tonight." She went out, returned with two more. "But there's nowhere to get, any meat that you can trust," and returned again.