Dhalgren

“I don’t know what to say either,” I said.

Lanya hugged me. She almost knocked me over.

De

Someone put hands against my back and said: “Hey, watch it! Don’t fall!” Paul Fenster—I hadn’t even seen him among the spectators—was steadying me as we came apart.

Re-reading this single description of Paul Fenster between these soiled cardboards, this thought: Since life may end at any when, the expectation of revelation or peripity, if not identical to, is congruent with insanity. They give life meaning, but expectation of them destroys our faculty for experiencing meaning. So I am still writing out these incidents. But now I am interested in the art of incident only as it touches life…but I have written that at least three other places among these pages. What I haven’t written is that, because of it, I am less and less interested in the incidence of art. (“Sex without guilt?” Entelechy without anticipation!) I just wonder would Paul have done anything differently that evening in the park if he’d known he was going to be shot in the head and neck four times, six hours later.

Lanya said: “It’s all right if we fall, Paul. It’s okay.”

Someone threw another length of chain into the circle. Manticore and iguanadon caught it up, blundering together, casting ghost-lights. Clap!

“Hey, I like your school,” De

“I was telling you about De

I said: “I’ve never seen any children there. I’ve heard their voices. On the tape recorder. But I don’t believe you ever had any real children in there.”

Lanya looked at me oddly.

Fenster laughed. “Well, you brought us five of them yourself.”

“But there weren’t any…” Inside, it felt like two disjoined surfaces had suddenly slipped flush; the relief was unbearable. “I put five of them…in the school?”

“Woodard, Rose, Sammy…?” Lanya said.

“You remember,” De

“I remember,” I said. “I know who I am…”

“Michael Henry,” De

I put my hand on Fenster’s shoulder. “You go dance.”

“Naw, I’m not into the bare-ass bit.”

I frowned at the dancers; only fifteen or twenty were naked.

“Go on.” I pushed at him; he stepped back. “You don’t have to take your clothes off. You just go dance.”

Fenster looked at Lanya. To stand up for him? I flashed on him pulling her shirt closed across her breasts, buttoning the top button, patting her head, and walking away.

“Go ahead.” I was angry. “Dance!”

“Come on, Kid,” Lanya said, taking my arm.

Fenster walked off now, laughing.

“You wa

“Come on,” Lanya said. “Let’s go sit down.”

De

Fenster walked between the dancers, now pushed, now helping a girl wearing just a sopping T-shirt who fell against him, now ducking beneath one of the glittering lines pulled between bright creatures prancing at the tree.

“What are you trying to do?” Lanya asked.

“Take off my clothes. I don’t need anything…anything now.” I tossed my boot on top of my vest. I lifted my chin and raised the seven chains and the projector. Links dragged my nipples. I held them up, swaying, and let go. Some hit my nose and cheek and ear. Some fell across my shoulder, and slid off, clattering, to the grass. I looked down to undo the twin hooks on my belt; pushed down my pants. Lanya held my arm so I wouldn’t fall getting my foot out the cuff.

“Feel better?” De

I tried to undo the clasp at the side of my neck. A file of insects, it felt like, charged down my belly, caught in the hair of my groin. The optic chain sagged around my ankle.

“I think you broke it,” Lanya said.

“I can fix it again,” De

“No,” I said.

From the commune, from the nest, and from the people who’d just come to watch, they clapped and leaped beside the fire. Seven more, barking, calling, and yipping, broke from the loose ring, turned among and beneath (one very black girl jumped over) the beaded chain that crossed and crossed the clearing. The heads of beasts blown out of light like glass broke scarves of smoke; our throats tickled from the harsh air.

Three silhouetted figures, heads together, came toward me, whispering. Copperhead, center, conferred with Raven and Cathedral. Raven and Copperhead were naked. (The different curl and color of their hair, suddenly bright at the sides of their heads with the fire behind them…) Copperhead had his hand on Raven’s shoulder.

Copperhead was saying: “Protection! Did you get that? Calkins asking for protection—?”

Cathedral said: “Scorpions don’t protect nothing.”

Copperhead said: “They shot out practically every God-damn window in the God-damn fucking building. Man, it was something!”

Raven asked: “They shot up Calkins’s place? The sniper…?”

Copperhead said: “Not Calkins’ place! And it weren’t no fuckin’ sniper! It was them people back at that big store. You remember that big fuckin’ apartment house Thirteen used to be in, up on the sixteenth floor? God damn, man, they shot the whole fuckin’ place up, practically every God-damn window in the building!”

“Shit, man!” Cathedral shook his head. “The honkeys is bad as the niggers.”

Copperhead humphed: “Protection!”

Raven laughed.

They walked away in the dark.

I watched the fire. One pants leg was still around my ankle. The optic chain, as I swayed, swayed against my calf. “I want to…to dance.”

“Then get your foot out your pants cuff,” De

Each Clap! struck something inside my skull that made a flash all its own. My ears thundered as though only inches from the drum. Each explosion left some crazy echo stuttering in the tattered noise. I stepped forward, moiling my genitals in my hand. They felt sensitive. I stepped again.

“Watch it—”

Lanya must have held my pants leg down with her foot, because they came off. I stumbled, but kept going. Toward the dance.

In a black turtleneck sweater he stood, with folded arms, among the spectators. He didn’t see me looking at him. But Lady of Spain and D-t and a couple of others did and stopped dancing. Prisms and lenses hung down from my neck. Mirrors and prisms swung from my wrist. Lenses and mirrors dragged from my ankle behind me in the grass.

He shifted a little. Firelight shook its patina across his brown hair.

“Hey…!” I said loudly. “I know who I…who I am now. Who are you?”

He looked at me, frowning.

“Who are you?” I repeated. “Tell me. I know who I am!” A few more dancers stopped to listen. But the clapping was still awfully loud. I shook my head. “Almost…”

“Kid?” he asked; it had taken him until then to recognize me, naked. “Hey, Kid! How’re you doing?”

It was the man who’d interviewed me at Calkins’ party.

“No,” I said. “I know who I am. You say who you are.”

“William…” he began. “Bill…?” And then: “You don’t remember me?”

“I remember you. I just want to know who you are!”

“Bill,” he repeated. And nodded, smiling.

Two people who’d stopped to listen began to clap again.

“I know that,” I said. “I remember that. What’s your last name?”

He raised his head a little. His smile—a dragon, bobbing by, stained his face a momentary green—tightened: “You tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine.” His mouth stayed a little open, waiting for a laugh to come out.