Samuel Delany - Dhalgren

"Oh, Tak…" Milly shook her head.

"I've been arguing with him all night," John said. "Hey." He looked over at the picnic table. "Did Nightmare come by for the stuff?"

"Yep." Brightly.

"How is he?"

She shrugged — less bright.

He heard the harmonica, looked:

Back on her blanket, the other girl bent over her mouth harp. Her hair was a casque of stained bronze around her lowered face. Her shirt had slipped from one sharp shoulder. Frowning, she beat the mouth holes on her palm once more. The notebook lay against her knee.

"Tak and me were up looking at the place I want to put the shelters. You know, up on the rocks?"

"You've changed the location again?" Milly asked.

"Yeah," Tak said. "He has. How do you like it around here, Kid? It's a good place, huh?"

"We'd be happy to have you," John said. "We're always happy to have new people. We have a lot of work to do; we need all the willing hands we can get." His tapping palm clove to his thigh, stayed.

He grunted, to shake something loose in his throat. "I think I'm going to wander on."

"Oh…" Milly sounded disappointed.

"Come on. Stay for breakfast." John sounded eager. "Then try out one of our work projects. See which one you like. You know, those are some strange streets out there. You don't know what you're gonna find in 'em."

"Thanks," he said. "I'm gonna go…"

"I'll take him back down to the avenue," Tak said. "Okay, so long, you guys."

"If you change your mind," Milly called (John was beating his leg again), "you can always come back. You might want to in a couple of days. Just come. Well be glad to have you then, too."

On the concrete path, he said to Tak: "They're really good people, huh? I just guess I…" He shrugged.

Tak grunted: "Yeah."

"The scorpions — is that some sort of protection racket they make the people in the commune pay?"

"You could call it that. But then, they get protected."

"Against anything else except scorpions?"

Tak grunted again, hoarsely.

He recognized it for laughter. "I just don't want to get into anything like that. At least not on that side."

"I'll take you back down to the avenue, Kid. It goes on up into the city. The stores right around here have been pretty well stripped of food. But you never know what you're gonna luck out on. Frankly, though, I think you'll do better in houses. But there you take your chances: somebody just may be waiting for you with a shotgun. Like I say, there's maybe a thousand left out of a city of two million: Only one out of a hundred homes should be occupied — not bad odds. Only I come near walking in on a couple of shotguns myself. Then you got your scorpions to worry about… John's group?" The hoarse, gravelly laughter had a drunken quality the rest of Tak's behavior belied. "I like them. But I wouldn't want to stick around them too much either. I don't. But I give them a hand. And it's not a bad place to get your bearings from… for a day or two."

"No. I guess not…" But it was a mulling "no."

Tak nodded in mute agreement

This park is alive with darknesses, textures of silence. Tak's boot heels tattoo the way. I can envision a dotted line left after him. And someone might pick the night up by its edge, tear it along the perforations, crumple it, and toss it away.

Only two out of forty-some park lights (he'd started counting) were working. The night's overcast masked all hint of dawn. At the next working light, within sight of the lion-flanked entrance, Tak took his hands out of his pockets. Two pinheads of light pricked the darkness somewhere above his sandy upper lip. "If you want — you can come back to my place…?"

"…Okay."

Tak let out a breath—"Good—" and turned. His face went completely black. "This way."

He followed the zipper jingles with a staggering lope. Boughs, black over the path, suddenly pulled from a sky gone grey inside a V of receding rooftops.

As they paused by the lions, looking down a wide street, Tak rubbed himself inside his jacket. "Guess we're about to get into morning."

"Which way does the sun come up?"

Loufer chuckled. "I know you won't believe this—" they walked again—"but when I first got here, I could have sworn the light always started over there." As they stepped from the curb, he nodded to the left. "But like you can see, today it's getting light—" he gestured in front of them—"there."

"Because the season's changing?"

"I don't think it's changed that much. But maybe." Tak lowered his head and smiled. "Then again, maybe I just wasn't paying attention."

"Which way is east?"

"That's where it's getting light." Tak nodded ahead. "But what do you do if it gets light in a different place tomorrow?"

"Come on. You could tell by the stars."

"You saw how the sky was. It's been like that or worse every night. And day. I haven't seen stars since I've been here — moons or suns either."

"Yeah, but—"

"I've thought, maybe: It's not the season that changes. It's us. The whole city shifts, turns, rearranges itself. All the time. And rearranges us…" He laughed. "Hey, I'm pulling your leg, Kid. Come on." Tak rubbed his stomach again. "You take it all too seriously." Stepping up the curb, Tak pushed his hands into his leather pockets. "But I'm damned if I wouldn't have sworn morning used to start over there." Again he nodded, with pursed lips. "All that means is I wasn't paying attention, doesn't it?" At the next corner he asked: "What were you in a mental hospital for?"

"Depression. But it was a long time ago."

"Yeah?"

"I was hearing voices; afraid to go out; I couldn't remember things; some hallucinations — the whole bit. It was right after I finished my first year of college. When I was nineteen. I used to drink a lot, too."

"What did the voices say?"

He shrugged. "Nothing. Singing… a lot, but in some other language. And calling to me. It wasn't like you'd hear a real voice—"

"It was inside your head?"

"Sometimes. When it was singing. But there'd be a real sound, like a car starting, or maybe somebody would close a door in another room: and you'd think somebody had called your name at the same time. Only they hadn't. Then, sometimes you'd think it was just in your mind when somebody had; and not answer. When you'd find out, you'd feel all uncomfortable."

"I bet you would."

"Actually, I felt uncomfortable about all the time… But, really, that was years back."

"What did the voices call you — when they called?"

At the middle of the next block, Tak said:

"Just thought it might work. If I snuck up on it."

"Sorry." The clumsiness and sincerity of Tak's amateur therapy made him chuckle. "Not that way."

"Got any idea why it happened? I mean why you got — depressed, and went into the hospital in the first place?"

"Sure. When I got out of high school, upstate, I had to work for a year before I could go into college. My parents didn't have any money. My mother was a full Cherokee… though it would have been worth my life to tell those kids back in the park, the way everybody goes on about Indians today. She died when I was about fourteen. I'd applied to Columbia, in New York City. I had to have a special interview because even though my marks in high school were good, they weren't great. I'd come down to the city and gotten a job in an art supply house — that impressed hell out of them at the interview. So they dug up this special scholarship. At the end of the first term I had all B's and one D — in linguistics. By the end of the second term, though, I didn't know what was going to happen the next year. I mean about money. I couldn't do anything at Columbia except go to school. They've got all sorts of extracurricular stuff, and it costs. If that D had been an A, I might have gotten another scholarship. But it wasn't. And like I said, I really used to drink. You wouldn't believe a nineteen-year-old could drink like that. Much less drink and get anything done. Just before finals I had a breakdown. I wouldn't go outside. I was scared to see people. I nearly killed myself a couple of times. I don't mean suicide. Just with stupid things. Like climbing out on the window ledge when I was really drunk. And once I knocked a radio into a sink full of dishwater. Like that." He took a breath. "It was a long time ago. None of that stuff bothers me, really, any more."