Dan Simmons - Song of Kali

The small bedroom was made even smaller by the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that filled the better part of three walls. Mrs. Bronstein was eighty-six and seemed too frail to hold herself erect as she sat there on the edge of the bed. The room smelled of Abe's brand of cigars and of leather bookbindings.

"Here, please," said the old woman. Her hand was surprisingly steady as she handed me the small envelope. "Abraham left instructions for you to have this, Robert." Her throaty voice must once have been beautifully exciting. Now, as it measured out the words in the precise diction of an acquired language, it was merely beautiful. "Abraham said that I was to deliver this to you personally — even, as he put it, if I had to walk to Colorado to find you."

At any other time, the image of this frail old woman hitchhiking across the prairie would have brought a smile from me. Now I nodded and opened the letter.

April 9, 1983

"Bobby — If you're reading this letter, then neither one of us is terribly thrilled about recent events. I've just come from my doctor. While he didn't tell me not to buy any long-playing records, he didn't try to sell me any long-term certificates either.

I hope that you (and Amrita?) didn't have to drop anything important. That is, if there could be anything important going on out there in that godforsaken wilderness you're calling home as of this writing.

I recently revised my will. Right now I'm sitting in the park near my old friend the Mad Hatter, enjoying a panatela, and watching some girls in halter tops and shorts tyring to convince themselves that it's really spring. It's a warm day but not so warm that it keeps their goosebumps from showing.

If Momma hasn't told you all yet, my new will leaves everything to her. Everything, that is, except the original Proust editions; the authors' correspondence files in my safety-deposit box; and the rights, titles, modest bank account, and executive editorship of Other Voices . These go to you, Bobby.

Now wait a minute. I don't want to be accused of hanging an albatross around your carefree Polish neck. Feel free to dispose of the magazine as you see fit. If you'd prefer that some other responsible party continue it — fine. I've given you full power of attorney for any such arrangement.

Bobby, just remember what we wanted the magazine to be. Don't unload it on some fucking conglomerate that wants a tax write-off and who'll hire some schmuck who can't tell good prose from day-old piss. If you have to put the magazine to sleep rather than lower its standards, that's all right by me.

If, on the other hand, you decide to keep it going — good . You'll be surprised how portable a magazine like Voices can be. Take it out to wherever the hell it is that you live. (Miller was going to raise the rent on us anyway.) If you do give it a go, don't spend time worrying about continuing "Abe's old editorial policy." Abe didn't have any editorial policy! Just print the good stuff, Roberto. Follow your instincts.

One thing, though. Not all of the best writing has to be Naked Lunch Regurgitated . A lot of the stuff coming in will depress the hell out of you. If it's good, it deserves to be printed, but there's still room for writing that holds out some hope for humanity. At least I think there is. You know better than I, Bobby. You've been closer to the flames and managed to return.

Got to go. There's a cop been eyeing me here and I think he's appraised me correctly as a Dirty Old Man.

You can read this to Momma — she won't rest until you do — but leave out the "day-old piss" and the "fucking" before "conglomerate," Okay? Your first editing chore.

My love to Amrita.

— Abe"

Abe was right. The magazine was quite portable. The college was thrilled to have Other Voices originating from its PO. box, and they obligingly cut back my teaching time to two sections with no cut in pay. I suspect that they would pay me for no teaching if my presence would keep Amrita in their math department. For her part, Amrita is pleased by the easy access to the college computer terminal that shares time with some monster Cray computer in Denver, She recently made the comment — "This place is pretty up to date." While on her way to the math building, she obviously has not noticed the quonset-hut dormitories, cinderblock buildings, and minuscule library.

I find it reasonably easy to edit an Eastern literary journal from the top of a Colorado mountain, although I do have to make five or six trips a year to confer with printers and to visit with some of the writers and sponsors. Amrita has become involved with the publication and has shown surprising strength as a reader. She says that her training in language and mathematics has given her a sense of symbolic balance — whatever the hell that means. But it has been at Amrita's urging that I've tried to include more Western writers including Joanne Greenberg and the Cowboy Poet of Creed.

The results have been encouraging. Subscriptions have gone up recently, we've established several shelf sale outlets, and our old readership appears to be remaining loyal. We shall see.

I have written no poetry. Not since Calcutta.

The Song of Kali never quite goes away. It is a background sound to me like discordant music from a poorly tuned radio station.

I still dream of crossing muddy wastes with gray-wrapped bodies underfoot while distant chimneys send up flames to lick at low clouds.

Some nights the wind comes up and I rise and go to the front window of the cabin and look into the blackness and hear the scrabbling of six limbs on the rocks outside. I wait, then, but the gaunt face with its hungry mouth and its thirsting eyes stays just back in the darkness, held away by . . . by what? I do not know.

But the Song of Kali still is sung.

Recently, not far from us here, an older woman and her grown daughter, both self-described "good Christians," baked her grandson in the oven to drive out the demons that made him cry in the evening.

One of my students here is distantly related to the California high school student who recently raped and murdered his girlfriend and then brought fourteen of his friends to view the body over a three-day period. One boy dropped a brick on the corpse to make sure she was dead. None of the kids thought to mention it to the authorities.

One of the new printers I met at Adamsons in New York last month was Siem Ry, a 42-year-old refugee from Phnom Penh. He had owned his own printing company there and was able to bribe his way into Thailand and to the U.S. a few years ago. He worked his way up in Adamsons after starting over as a printer's devil. Over a few drinks, Ry told me about the forced evacuation of the city and the eight-day forced march which killed his parents. He quietly told me about the labor camp that claimed his wife, and about the morning he awoke to find that his three children had been taken to an "education-labor camp" in a distant part of the country. Ry described a field he stumbled into while escaping. He said that human skulls were piled three-and four-feet deep across half an acre in one place.

The Age of Kali has begun.

I went down to the mobile-home library last week and read up on the so-called Black Hole of Calcutta. It had been only a phrase to me until then. The historical details were not relevent to much of anything. Essentially, the Black Hole was just an airless room crammed full of too many people during one of the sporadic rebellions in the 1800's.

But the phrase still haunts me. I've developed a theory about Calcutta, although theory is too dignified a word for such an intuitive opinion.

I think that there are black holes in reality. Black holes in the human spirit. And actual places where, because of density or misery or sheer human perversity, the fabric of things just comes apart and that black core in us swallows all the rest.