Dhalgren

  In the pause, Kid considered looking up but didn't.

  "When I'm not actually working, I have no choice: I must consider it worthless. But when I'm engaged in it, writing, revising, shaping and polishing, by the same process, I have to consider it the most important thing in the world. And I'm very suspect of any other attitude."

  Kid looked up now: the expression leaving New-boy's face was serious. But laughter marks were replacing it. "Ah, when I was a young man, as young as I once thought you were, I recall I labored with incredible diligence over a translation of Le Bateauivre. Here I am at the respectable, if a bit garrulous, threshold of old age, and last night, in the front library at Roger's, after everyone else had gone up, I sat there working-by hurricane lanterns: the electricity is off in that wing now-on Le Cimetiere marin. The impulse was thoroughly the same." He shook his head, still laughing. "Have you found any mistakes?"

  "Um," Kid said. "Not in the first three sheets."

  "I spent yesterday and most of today checking it against your fair copy. I've put a couple of queries here and there. You'll get to them as you go through."

  "Where?"

  "The first one's near the front." Newboy set down his cup and leaned over Kid's shoulder. "Next sheet. There. It's the poem you had the loose copy of it on blue paper just stuck in the notebook. It looked like somebody else had written it out for you. Did you perhaps intend a comma in the third line? I checked it back with the version in your notebook, and neither one has it. Except for the phrasing, I wouldn't have-"

  "The copy in the notebook has a comma, doesn't it?" Kid frowned and flipped handwritten pages. His eyes stumbled among words, trying not to be caught between any two, till he found the notebook page. "It's not there." He looked up. "I thought I put one."

  "Then you did intend it. Here, use my pencil. Just cross out the question mark I put by the line. I had a feeling you might-what's the matter?"

  "I thought I had a comma there. But I didn't."

  "Oh, I'm always discovering I've left out words I was sure I wrote down in first draft-"

  "You ..."

  Mr Newboy started to question, grew uncomfortable with that, so returned his eyes to the line.

  ". . . just read it and knew I'd wanted one there?"

  Newboy began to say several things, but stopped (after a little nod) before voice, as if curious what silence would affect.

  Two emotions clawed the inside of Kid's skull. The fear, as it rose, he questioned: Is this some trick of autonomic nerves that causes the small of my back to dampen, my heart to quicken, my knees to shake like motors; it was only a comma, the smallest bit of silence that I have misplaced-only a pause. I am quaking like Teddy's candles. The joy, mounting over, obliterating, and outdistancing it, was at some sensed communion. (Newboy had known!) To restrain it, Kid told himself: Between two phrases like that, why shouldn't Newboy be able to tell? He lowered his head to read on: his eyes filled with water and the emotion tore through such logic. And the darkness under. He anticipated their collision to make some wave. But like two swirls of opposite spin, they met-and canceled. He blinked. Water splashed from his lashes across the back of his hand.

  There had been a recurrent pain on the back of his right shoulder that, three or four years ago, had intrigued him because it would be a pulsing annoyance for hours or even days and then would, in a second, vanish: no prod-dings or contortions could recall it. He hadn't for years, till now.

  Tensing his shoulders, he read the next poem, and images set to at the backs of his eyes, their substance and structure familiar, their texture alien, alien and grave. He kept blinking, to finish the line in his mind; eyes opened to finish it on the page, where it demanded new bulbs. Boxes of glass ticked their clear covers on stunned marvels. Things were safe, and that was so horrifying his heart was pulsing in the little pit at the base of his throat as though he were swallowing rock after rock. "Mr Newboy?"

  "Mmm?" Papers shuffled.

  Kid looked over.

  Newboy was going through the illustrations.

  "I don't think I'm gonna write any more poems."

  Newboy turned another black page. "You don't like them, reading them over?"

  Kid peeled off the next paper ribbon. The first two words of the first line of the first poem were transposed-

  "Here!" Mr Newboy offered his pencil. "You found a mistake?" He laughed. "Now see, you don't have to write quite so hard as that! Wait! You'll tear the paper!"

  Kidd unhunched his shoulder, unbent his spine, and let his fingers relax about the yellow shaft. He breathed again. "They're going to fix that, aren't they?"

  "Oh, yes. That's why you're looking it over now."

  Kid read, and remembered: "The parts I like, well . . ." He shook his head, with pursed lips. "They just don't have anything to do with me: somebody else wrote them, it seems, about things I may have thought about once. That's pretty strange. The parts I don't like-well, I can remember writing those, oh yeah, word by word by word."

  "Then why aren't you going to write any-?"

  But Kid had found another mistake.

  "Here," Newboy said. "Why don't you lay the galleys on your notebook so you can write more easily."

  While Kid passed the halfpoint of the next galley, Newboy mused: "Perhaps it's good you're not going to write any more: you'd have to start considering all those dull things like your relation to your audience, the relation between your personality and your poetry, the relation between your poetry and all the poetry before it. Since you told me you weren't responsible for those notes, I've been trying to figure out whether it just happened or whether you were making a conscious reference: You managed to reproduce, practically verbatim, one of my favorite lines from Golding's translation of the Metamorphosis."

  "Mmm?"

  "Are you familiar with it?"

  "It's a big green and white paperback? That's the one Shakespeare used for some of his plays. I only read about the first half. But I didn't take any lines from it, at least not on purpose. Maybe it just happened?"

  Mr Newboy nodded. "You amaze me. And when you do, I suspect I'm rather a smaller person for having such petty notions in the first place. Well, the line I was referring to was from the last book anyway. So you hadn't gotten to that one yet. Tell me, who do you think should read your poems once they're published?"

  "I guess people who . . . well, whoever likes to read

  poetry." /

  "Do you?"

  "Yeah. I read it more than I read anything else, I guess."

  "No, that doesn't surprise me."

  "You know, in bookstores for the schools I used to go to, or down in the Village in New York, or in San Francisco, they got whole sections for poetry. You can read a lot of it there."

  "Why poetry?" Kid shrugged. "Most poems are shorter than stories."

  Newboy, Kid saw, was suppressing a laugh. Kid felt embarrassed.

  "And you're not going to write any more?"

  "It's too hard." Kid looked down. "I mean if I kept it up, I think it would kill me, you know? I never did it before, so I just didn't understand."

  "That's sad-no, I can be more honest than that. It's frightening for one artist to see another one, any other one turn away from art."

  "Yeah." Kid's eyes came up. "I know. I really know that. And I wish-I wish I didn't frighten you as much as I do. What is it? What's the matter with you, now?"

  "Nothing." Newboy shook his head.

  "I wish I didn't," Kid repeated. "The last poem . . ." Kid began to turn through the galleys. "What did you think of that one, I mean compared to all the rest of them?"

  "The one in meter? Well, it isn't finished. We printed it up to where you broke off. That's another thing I wanted to query about-"

  "How do you like what there is?"

  "Frankly, I didn't think it was as strong as many of the others. When I went back over it the fourth or fifth time, I began to see that the substance of it was probably on its way to a great deal of richness
. But the language wasn't as inventive. Or as clean."

  Kid nodded. "The rhythm of natural speech," Kid mused. "I had to write it. And it was pretty bad, wasn't it? No, I don't think I'll write any more. Besides, I'm probably never going to have another book published . . . ?" He raised an eyebrow at Newboy.

  Newboy, lips pursed, considered. "I could say that I sincerely don't believe that should be a consideration. Or that, as I remember it, it was something like eleven years between my first and second book of poems. Or that I think you're asking for confirmation of something that really doesn't have anything to do with poetry."

  "What else could you say?" .

  Newboy's lips unpursed. "I could say, 'Yes, possibly you won't.'"

  Kid grinned quickly and went back to correcting.

  "It's very silly to commit yourself to something like that, if you're going to write or not. If you wrote those, you will write more. And if you promise yourself you

  won't, you'll just be very unhappy when you break the promise. Yes, a good part of me doesn't like the idea of an artist giving up art. But this is another part of me talking. Believe me."

  Kid's mind was on Lanya.

  He pulled it away, to reflect on: Golding's Metamorphosis. He'd seen the book on a dozen shelves in a dozen bookstores, picked it up as many times, read the back cover, the first page of the introduction, flipped through three or four pages, unable to read more than three or four lines on each. (The same thing, he realized, had happened with Pilgrimage.) The first half? He'd been unable to read a whole page! Poetry, he thought. If it makes me start lying to a guy like this, I should stop writing it.

  Kid corrected the last half-dozen sheets in silence drenched with vision. He flipped them, rattling like dry feathers, together.

  He leaned on the couch arm (he breathed gently: but felt breath's coolness only on the left side of his upper lip) and looked at the paper over his lap. I've just corrected the last half-dozen sheets, he thought: his upper arms were bone tired. Pains pulsed in his finger joints. He loosened his grip on the pencil.

  The title-page, he noticed now, read:

  BRASS

  ORCHIDS

  BY

  He started to smile; the muscles of his mouth blocked it.

  Mr Newboy, gone to the kitchen, returned now with another steaming cup.

  "I guess-" the smile broke through-"you better take the 'by' off the title page."

  "Ah," Mr Newboy raised his chin. "That does bring up a sort of strange subject. I talked to your friend Mr Loufer. And he told me about-"

  "I mean it's okay," Kid said. "I think it would be a good idea if it came out with no name. Anonymously."

  "Mr Loufer said that you're-rather picturesquely- called 'the Kid' by many of your friends?"

  "That would look pretty stupid," Kid said. " 'Poems by the Kid.' I think it would be better with nothing." Somewhere beneath the thing inside that made him smile, there was the beginnings of embarrassment. He sighed, still smiling.

  Gravely, Mr Newboy said: "If you really feel that way, I'll tell Roger. Are you finished looking them over?"

  "Yeah."

  "That was quick. How were they?"

  "Uh, fine. I mean not that many mistakes."

  "That's good."

  "Here."

  "Oh, are you sure you wouldn't like to keep the notebook?"

  It was opened back in the middle. Kid lowered the papers to his lap. To avoid the feeling of confusion he let his eyes take the page's opening lines:

  Poetry, fiction, drama-I am interested in the arts of incident only so far as fiction touches life; oh no, not in any vulgar, autobiographical sense, rather at the level of the most crystalline correspondence. Consider: If an author, passing a mirror, were to see one day not himself but some character of his invention, though he might be surprised, might even question his sanity, he would still have something by which to relate. But suppose, passing on the inside, the character should glance at his mirror and see, not himself, but the author, a complete stranger, staring in at him, to whom he has no relation at all, what is this poor creature left. . . ?

  Newboy was saying, "You're all sure now that you don't want to write again. But be certain, inspiration will come, arriving like one of Rilke's angels, so dazzled by its celestial journey it will have completely forgotten the message entrusted to it yet effectively delivering it merely through its marvelous presence-"

  "Here!" Kid thrust out galleys and notebook. "Please take it! Please take it all. Maybe ... I mean, maybe you'll want to check something else." He watched his extended hands sway to his thumping heart.

  "All right," Newboy said. "No, you keep the notebook. You just may want it again." He took the papers, and hefted his case against his hip. "I'll take these back to Roger this evening." The papers rustled down in the case. "I probably won't be seeing you again. I really don't know how long the printing will take. I wish I could see the whole project through." He snapped a last snap. "I'm sure he'll send me a copy when it's done-however your mail system works here. Good-bye." His hand came forward. "I've really enjoyed the time we've spent together, the talks we've had. Do say good-bye to your little girl friend for me?"

  Kid shook. "Yes, sir. Um . . . thank you very much." The notebook was on the floor, one corner over Kid's bare foot.

  Newboy walked to the steps.

  "Good-bye," Kid repeated into the silence.

  Newboy nodded, smiled, left.

  Kid waited for the disturbing memory to flicker once more. His heart quieted. Suddenly he picked up his and Newboy's coffee cup and went into the kitchen.

  Seconds after he began to rinse them in the sink, he noticed how firm the water pressure was. He ran his forefinger around the crock rim. The water hissed on the enamel.

  Somebody struck a dissonance on the piano.

  Curious, Kid turned off the water. The cups clinked on the sideboard. As he crossed the floor, one of the boards squeaked: he had wanted to be completely quiet.

  At the darker end of the auditorium, someone in work clothes stood before the brass innards. The orange construction shoes and the coveralls momentarily recalled the woman on the ladder changing the street signs.

  The figure turned and walked to the couch. " 'Ey ..." A heavy, flattened voice, a slight nod and slighter smile: George Harrison picked up an old Times, and lowered himself to the couch, crossed his legs, and opened the tabloid-size paper.

  "Hello." Kid heard faint organ music.

  "Y's'pos'd' be i' 'eah?" Harrison looked from behind the paper.

  The natural rhythm of English speech; no, Kid thought, it is impossible.

  "You sure you supposed to be in here?" George repeated.

  "Reverend Tayler brought me down." (It would be stupid, he decided, even to try.)

  " 'Cause if you ain't suppose to be in here, she gonna get mad." Harrison smiled, a mottled ivory crescent be- tween his lips' uneven pigment. "Seen you in the bar."

  "That's right." Kid grinned. "And you're in those posters all over town."

  "You seen them?" Harrison put down the paper. "You know, them fellows what make them is a little-" he joggled his hand-"you know?"

  Kid nodded.

  "They good though. They good guys." He shook his head, then pointed at the ceiling. "She don't want no scorpion around here. You sure you're supposed to be in here. Don't matter to me, she said okay."

  "I was hungry," Kid said. "She said I could get something to eat."

  "Oh." Harrison turned on the couch. His green jumpsuit was open to the waist, over a banlon shirt with a raveled collar. "You come for the service?"

  "No."

  "Ain't no scorpion come to the damn service anyway. What you fellows dress up all that shit for?" Harrison laughed, but shook a finger. "It's cool, it's cool."

  Kid looked at the large, lined knuckles and thought of the cracks in black earth. "What kind of service is it?"

  "I just come because she say I should please come, so, you know, I come here sometimes
." Harrison shook his head. "From Jackson, that's where-" and something Kid couldn't follow-"see?"

  Though he didn't, Kid nodded. Then he became curious and asked, "What did you say?"

  "In Jackson. You know what Jackson is?"

  "Yeah, sure."

  But Harrison was laughing again.

  He, Kid reflected, is becoming a god, to see what emerged from his tone of thought. Kid's inner eye was alive with visions of June.

  But George stood, dropping his paper. White leaves opened and fell, one on the couch, several on the floor. "You the one they call the Kid. Yeah?"

  Kid was terrified, and felt stupid for not knowing why.

  "They talk about you. I heard about you. I heard what they said." The finger shook again. "You the one that don't know who he is. I heard them."

  "Nobody around here got anything to do except talk," Kid said. "You know that? You know what I mean about that?"

  The black hand went down against the coverall. The green wrinkled. "So you don't like it here?"

  "Yeah," Kid said. "I like it ... don't you?"

  Harrison nodded, his cheek filled with his tongue. "You ever come over in the Jackson?" The tongue flicked the lips.

  "I've walked through."

  "You know any black people live over there?"

  "No. Well, Paul Fenster .. ."

  "Oh, yeah."

  "But I don't know where he lives."

  "You come over there and see me sometime, huh?"

  "Huh?" Kid was not sure he had caught any of the last words bundled in that voice with a nap longer than velvet.

  "I say 'You come pay a visit on me.' "

  "Oh. Yeah. Thanks." Kid was bewildered. Searching that, he found two questions about things that rhymed which flooding embarrassment blocked. So he narrowed his eyes instead.

  "Kid-" she called from the stairs behind him. Then, in a completely different voice: "George-hi there, babes!"

  Kid turned. "Hey-!"

  George called over him, "Hey there-" and then with a narrowing expression. "Say, this ain't your old man, is it? The guy I been hearing all that talk about over in the bar-well, say! Now the last time I seen your old lady, you know I tell her to bring you down and pay a visit to me, you hear?"

  Lanya came down the steps; George walked toward them.