Dhalgren

  He smiled and contemplated murder.

  And here, he thought, it would be so much easier to get away with ... "I don't think you'd like them."

  Hands together in her lap, she leaned forward: "Please."

  He dragged the book into his lap (like I was covering myself, he thought. I could kill her). "All right." Something tickled the underside of his thigh. It was sweat catching on the chain that bound him. "Ill read . . ." He opened the book, coughed: "This one." He took a breath, and looked at the paper. He was very hot. The chains across his back pulled: he was hunching his shoulders. When he opened his mouth, for a moment he was sure no voice would come.

  But he read.

  He dropped word after word into the room's silence.

  Meaning peeled away from his voice and raveled.

  Sounds he had placed together to evoke a tone of voice mis-sounded. The mouth's machinery was too clumsy to follow what Ms eye knew. He read each word, terribly aware how the last should have fallen.

  Once he coughed.

  For one phrase he grew quieter, easier. Then, frantically, at a place where his voice closed out a comma, he wondered, Why did I choose this one! I should have chosen any one except this!

  Hoarsely he whispered the last line, and put one hand on his stomach to press away the small pain. He took some more deep breaths and sat back. The back of his shirt was sopping.

  "That was lovely."

  He wanted to and didn't laugh.

  ". . . Lost inside your eye . . ." she misquoted. No, paraphrased.

  His stomach tightened again.

  "Yes, I liked that very much."

  He arched his fingers there, and said: "Thank you."

  "Thank you. I feel..."

  He thought: I'm too tired to kill anyone.

  ". . . feel that you have given me something of yourself, a very precious thing."

  "Uhh." He nodded vaguely. Tension finally forced the laugh: "You just like it because you know me." With the laugh, some of the tiredness went.

  "Definitely." She nodded. "I don't know any more about poetry than Arthur does. Really. But I'm glad you read it. For the trust."

  "Oh." Something more terrifying than the possibility of murder happened in him. "You really are?" A cold metallic wire sewed somewhere, taking small stitches. "I better get back up to finish the mopping." He began to move on the couch, preparing to stand.

  "I'm very glad you read that poem to me."

  He stood. "Yeah. Sure. I'm glad you . . . liked it," and hurried for the door. It closed behind him far too loud. In the hall, his face heating, he thought: She was going to say something else to me! What else was she going to . .. ? He hurried to the elevator.

  In 19-B he filled the pail again, kicked off his sandal, and slushed the mop in suds. Foam, mop-strands and water returned him to varied beaches. He mopped angrily, remembering waves.

  The water slopped his feet. It had been warm when he put it in the pail. Each stroke wet the baseboard further along.

  They're cheating me, he thought and twisted the mophead. Among failing suds the water was black. I've got to tell them, he thought, that I know it. At least ask them why they're not paying me what they said. Of course they didn't say it to me. Not that I need the money, even . . . That made him even angrier.

  He sloshed up more beaches in his mind, moving from room to room.

  I don't have a name, he thought. Tides and tides, rolled from the tangled cords. These things I'm writing,they're not descriptions of anything. They're complex names. I don't want her to believe what they say. I just want her to believe I said them. Somewhere (Japan? Yeah . . .) I walked up the wharf from where the little boats were tied and the black rocks gave out to sand. And everything, even the sand slipping back under my feet, looked miles away like it used to all the time when I was tired, when I was a kid. One of the other fellows from the ship called to me. What did he call me? And how could I have possibly answered?

  His eyes stung; he sniffed for the detergent smell. - Or was the smoke thicker? He wiped his face on his cuff.

  In the hall, people laughed: footsteps. A door closed.

  Gooseflesh enveloped him. His next heartbeat shocked loose his breath; he breathed. Perhaps ten seconds later he realized how tightly he was holding the handle. He laid the mop on the floor, went to the open door, and looked into the . . . empty hall. For at least a minute.

  Then he got the mop and began to work again.

  They're cheating me! he thought to replay the familiar. The tone was wrong. To think words set off pricklings. More water.

  His hands, soaked and soaked again, were translucent, the yellow all out of the horn, flesh white and ragged around the fragment nails and swollen crowns. Yeah, leprosy. He recalled Lanya sucking his middle finger with something like relief. What she liked was funny. Especially what she liked in him. Her absence mystified.

  Slopping suds over recollected sands, he tried to hallucinate her face. It dissolved in water. He scrubbed the balcony sill, and backed into the room, swinging cords from side to side.

  Confront them about his salary? Yes! Images of gifts for her. But he had not seen one store open; not one! Do they talk salary, he pondered, and I talk wages just to keep up?

  But we haven't talked!

  The inside of his mouth held much more room than the room. As he mopped, he seemed to stagger, shin-deep in tongue, bumping his knees on teeth, and his head against wet, palatal rugae, grasping for an uvula to steady himself. He flopped the mop in the water again, eyes a-sting, and passed his arm across his face; the blunted chain raked his cheek. Energies searched through the mechanic of his body for points to wreck changes. The rhythm and slosh lopped talk out of the brain. "I live in the mouth . . ." he had been mumbling over and over, he realized as he stopped it. Stopping, he mopped harder at the swirling floor.

  "You ... ?"

  He blinked at June in the doorway.

  ".. . didn't get... ?"

  He grunted interrogatively.

  "You said you were going to get me a ... picture of . . ." Her knuckle made its habitual strike at her chin.

  "Huh? But I thought you didn't.. ."

  Her eyes beat, banal and wild. Then she ran from the door.

  "Hey, look, I'm sorry! I didn't think you . . ." thought about running after her, sucked his teeth, shook his head, didn't, and sighed.

  In the kitchen, he changed the dirty water in his pail for clear, then dry-mopped as much as possible of the flood.

  He worked methodically. Every once in a while he made a sound of disgust, or shook his head. Finally he got to swiping after his own footprints. Which was futile; you just made more.

  Balancing on one foot in the doorway, he fumbled at his sandal. Leather and wet flesh: He might as well throw it away. But the tab slipped into the buckle. He picked up his notebook and clacked to the elevator.

  Half a minute later, the door opened (from the door

  beside it, where he did not want to look, came hissing

  wind); he stepped in. The thought, when he recalled it

  later, seemed to have no genesis:

  He did not press seventeen.

  "16" glowed before his falling finger in the falling

  car. No bell-box was on the door.

  Cloth or paper covered the hole inside.

  Jaw clamped, he knocked; clamped tighter when something inside moved.

  The door swung back. "Yeah?" Hot grease clattered.

  Behind the man in the undershirt, the girl came forward, her features disappearing to silhouette before the hurricane lamp on the wall.

  "What'cha want?" the man asked. "You want something to eat? Come on in. What'cha want?"

  "No, I just was . . . well." He made himself grin and stepped inside. "I just wanted to know who was here."

  "You wanna eat, you can." The girl behind the man's shoulder floated back far enough to take light on a cheek bone.

  Against the wall people slept in iron bunks. Men sat on the ma
ttresses on the floor. The lantern-light cast down hard blacks to their left.

  The door swung behind Kidd. When it slammed, only one looked up.

  Against the wall leaned a motorcycle with a day-glo gas tank. In one corner stood a dressmaker's mannequin, splashed with red paint, head twisted to the side, and looped with rounds of greasy chain (but none of the kind Kidd wore under his shirt and pants).

  "I been doing work for the people upstairs. I was just wondering who was down here." The room smelled stale, and the cooking odor brought him momentarily back to a filthy fried-food stand where he had not been able to finish eating in waterfront Caracas. "That's why I came down."

  Somewhere the sound of water ceased. Wet, blond hair dripping down his shoulders, a boy walked, naked, into the room, picked up a pair of black jeans. Glistening, he balanced on one leg. He glanced at Kidd, grinned: then his foot, bunioned, hammer-toed, and mostly ankle (with a dog's choke chain wrapped three times around it), went into the denim.

  "The people upstairs?" The man shook his head, chuckling. "They must be somethin', all the shit that comes down here. What they do to each other all the time? Hey, you want to smoke some dope? Smokey, get our friend here some dope. Get me some too." The girl moved away. "You like dope, man, don't'cha?"

  Kidd shrugged. "Sure."

  "Hey, yeah. I thought you looked like you did." He grinned and hooked his thumbs over his beltless jeans; his first finger joints were tattooed love and hate. Between thumb and forefinger on the left was a large, red 13. "The noise that comes down here out of that place; was he beatin' her up last night?"

  "Huh?" Kidd asked. "I thought you made all the damn noise."

  Someone else said: "Oh, man, there was all sorts of crying and stuff comin' down."

  And someone else: "Look, Thirteen; what come up from this place must be pretty weird too sometimes."

  The second voice was familiar. Kidd looked for it:

  Sitting on the bottom bunk, out of the light, was the newspaper carrier, Joaquim Faust-who now raised a finger in greeting. "How you doing, kid?"

  Kidd gave back a bewildered smile.

  There was someone in the bed Faust sat on.

  Smokey returned with a glass jar, a plastic hose and brass bowl in the rubber stopper.

  Thirteen took it from her. "God-damn water pipe, and you think somebody would fill it up with water-or wine or something. That's nice too, you know? Creme de Menthe or like that." He shook his head. "Nobody's got time." On the wall he struck a wooden match. "Some good hash, man." He pursed his lips on the rubber tube. The flame suddenly inverted over the brass. The bottle swirled with grey. "Here you go!" he mouthed, with tucked chin.

  Kidd took the warm glass and sucked sweet, chalky smoke.

  The arch of air grew solid beneath his sternum: breath held, palate tight, somewhere after ten seconds he felt sweat on the small of his back. "Thanks ...!" Smoke exploded from his nose.

  The pipe had gone to others.

  "What kind of work you doing?"

  "Hey, Thirteen, he gonna eat?" somebody called from the kitchen.

  Through the doorway Kidd saw an enamel stove licked with burn marks.

  The boy from the shower stooped to buckle his

  boots. "Give you a hand in a second." He tucked his

  cuffs into the boot tops, and stood. Scratching his wet

  belly, he ambled inside and asked, "What is that shit,

  ï anyway?"

  "I've been moving furniture around for them, upstairs." Kidd said. "Thirteen-that's you?"

  Thirteen raised his tattooed hand, then snapped his fingers. "Sure. Come on in, come on inside and sit." The girl passed Thirteen the water pipe and he extended it toward Kidd. "And have another toke."

  Kidd drew in another chest full, and passed the pipe to someone else who wandered by.

  Holding in the hash, Kidd noticed the mirror on the side wall, the end table with the crumpled antimacassar lingering from previous occupancy. He coughed: "How-" plosive with smoke-"long have you guys been down here?" What covered the door hole was the framed photograph of mother, father, and three children in their dated sailor suits, with the cracked coverglass.

  "Too-" Thirteen exploded smoke of his own-"much. Somebody left that in the hallway, you know?"

  He nodded.

  Thirteen went on, "I just been here a couple of weeks. I mean in this place. Guys in and out here all the time. I don't even know how long I been in the city. Months, maybe. Cool. You?"

  "Days." He looked again to Faust.

  Faust was looking intently at the shape in the blanket.

  Thirteen looked too, shook his head. "She got messed up, you know? I think she's got an infection or something. Course, it could be bubonic plague for all I know." He jabbed Kidd with his elbow. "Long as you're healthy, Bellona is great. But there's no doctors or nothing, you know?"

  "Yeah. That must be bad."

  From the kitchen; "What did you put in this shit, huh?"

  "Will you stop bitching? Half of it's from last night."

  "Then I know half of it won't kill me."

  "Here, do something huh! Scrape that." A kitchen knife growled over metal.

  "This place used to be all scorpions." Thirteen nodded toward the bed. "That's when she came here; she decided to be a member. Which is fine if you can do it. Guys get messed up like that too. But now she got an infection ... If that's what it is."

  Smokey returned with the waterless pipe, waiting at Thirteen's shoulder.

  Kidd took it, sucked; Thirteen nodded approval.

  "You . . . guys . . . are . . . ?" Kidd loosed smoke-spurts between his words.

  "-Scorpions? Shit, no ... Well, you know." He scrunched his face, with an appropriate hand joggle. "I don't intend to be, again, ever; and Denny in there," he thumbed at the boy from the shower who passed by the kitchen door, "ain't exactly on active duty any more." And that one's Denny, Kidd thought.

  Thirteen took the pipe, sucked, and went off into a ï coughing fit.

  "Hey, will she be all right?" Kidd asked, coming to the bed.

  Faust made some noncommittal lip movement, lost in beard. "Somebody ought to take care of this girl." He kneaded his maroon and raveled knee.

  She she she "She asleep?" sleep sleep. The hash was coming on. Sleep.

  The olive landscape, mountains of shoulder and hip, was immobile.

  Nobody there. Pillows?

  Faust moved over for him.

  Kidd sat on the bed's edge, warm from Faust.

  "Isn't there a doctor any place in the city?" all over the city, city?

  Faust's wrinkles shifted around on his face. "These sons of bitches wouldn't know if there was. I can't figure out whether to let her sleep or make her eat."

  "She must be pretty tired if she can sleep through all this noise," Thirteen said. Coming up, Smokey handed the pipe to Faust, who closed his wrinkled eyelids when he sucked. When he. When.

  "Maybe," Kidd suggested, "you better let her sleep. Save some food for when she wakes up,".

  "That-" Thirteen shook a tattooed finger-"is brains at work, Joaquim. Which are in short supply around here . . . Man!" He shook his head, turned away.

  "Maybe," Faust nodded.

  Kidd wondered whether it was Faust or the hash that muddled the meaning.

  "Here."

  He looked up for the pipe. Pipe. Plate? A plate of. Denny, face and chest still wet, stood in front of him, holding out a plate in a white, bath-wrinkled hand.

  "Oh, thanks."

  Faust took the other one.

  "You ain't got no fork?" Denny asked.

  "No." It was rice, it was onions, it had string beans in it, and corn. "Thanks." He looked up and took the fork. Water tracked on the white arm, shimmered in adolescent chest-hair, broken with acne.

  Thirteen said, "You gotta give people food, you know? I mean, to be peaceable." Behind him, Smokey, plate just under her chin, ate eagerly.

  It had meat in it too. Hash brought ed
ges out from the grease that transformed the odor. He ate. And those were . . . nuts? No. Crisp potatoes. As the tastes staggered in his mouth, a muffled man's voice said something? something like, "Stop it! Now, stop it!" and a woman's wail rose toward the metallic.

  He looked around, wondering which other room they were in.

  Faust glanced at the ceiling.

  So did Thirteen. "See what I'm talking about?" He sucked his teeth and shook his head. "They really go on up there."

  The wail, which began to balk now toward sobbing, could have been either June or Mrs Richards. He had not realized before four for how alike their voices were.

  Frowning, he ate more of the greasy rice (Bacon grease? Well, at any rate, bacon) and listened to forks tick tin.

  Denny ate on one of the mattresses on the floor, back to Kidd: The marble knobs of vertebrae disappeared under the corn-colored hair which dried, lightened, curled.

  Thirteen came from the kitchen at the rap on the door. "Hey, it's Nightmare!" Thirteen stepped back on his sudden shadow. "Sweetheart, you just made hash time! And have something to eat for dessert."

  It and the blazing apparition in the doorway went out.

  "Come on in." Thirteen stepped back again. "What can we do for you?"

  The tickings had stopped.

  "I'm looking-" Nightmare stepped forward, jingling-"for mother-fuckers who want to run." He pushed away the tangled braid from his shoulder; his hand stayed to massage the heavy muscle below the scratches, favoring that arm. "I'm not even gonna ask you, Thirteen. You're chicken shit." He nodded toward Faust. "Ain't she got out of the fuckin' bed yet?" Faust jammed another fork of rice somewhere into his beard and shook his head.

  Thirteen stepped back to one side of the door, Smokey to the other.

  Nightmare walked forward between them. His lips pulled from his broken tooth and his face creased with something like concern. Then he shook his head.

  Kidd thought how many different meanings could reside in one gesture. The thought prickled through his stuttering mind. Nightmare-his eyes were the grey-green of wet, wet clay-looked at him. And blinked.

  "You staring like you got toothpicks propping up your eyelids again," Nightmare said, grimacing. "Every time I seen you. Which is twice. I don't like that."

  Confused, Kidd looked at his plate.