Dhalgren (11 page)

He left the fountain, gazing on grey, his belly cooler, blades whispering at his jeans. Across the damask of doubt and hesitation was unexpected joy like silver.

Something… He'd survived.

He pranced on the hill, happily oblivious to heart and bowels and the rest of the obstreperous machinery. This soft, this ecstatic grey, he swung through, in lop-looped chain, tasting the sweet smoke, buoyed on dusty grass.

The long, metallic note bent, broke to another. Someone was playing the harmonica—silver? Artichokes? Curiosity curved through, pressed down his mouth at both corners.

Like some color outside this grey range, music spilled the trees. He slowed and walked wonderingly into them. His feet came down in hushing puddles of grass. He frowned left and right and was very happy. The notes knotted with the upper branches.

In a tree? No… on a hill. He followed around the boulders that became a rise. The music came down from it. He looked up among leaf-grey and twig-grey. Picture: the harp leaving the lips, and the breath (leaving the lips) become laughter. "Hello," she called, laughing.

"Hello," he said and couldn't see her.

"Were you wandering around all night?"

He shrugged. "Sort of."

"Me too."

While he realized he had no idea of her distance, she laughed again and that turned back into music. She played oddly, but well. He stepped off the path.

Waving his right hand (caged), grasping saplings with his left (free), he staggered on the slope. "Hey… I" because he slipped, and she halted.

He caught up balance, and climbed.

She played again.

He stopped when the first leaves pulled from her.

She raised her apple eyes—apple green. Head down, she kept her lips at the metal organ.

Roots, thick as her arms, held the ground around her. Her back was against a heavy trunk. Leaves hid her all one side.

She wore her shirt. Her breasts were still nice.

His throat tightened. He felt both bowels and heart now; and all the little pains that defined his skin. It's stupid to be afraid… of trees. Still, he wished he had encountered her among stones. He took another step, arms wide for the slant, and she was free of foliage—except for one brown leaf leaning against her tennis shoe.

"Hi…"

A blanket lay beside her. The cuffs of her jeans were frayed. This shirt, he realized, didn't
have
buttons (silver eyelets on the cloth). But now it was half laced. He looked at the place between the strands. Yes, very nice.

"You didn't like the group last night?" She gestured with her chin to some vague part of the park.

He shrugged. "Not if they're going to wake me up and put me to work."

"They wouldn't have, if you'd pretended to be asleep. They don't really get too much done."

"Shit." He laughed and stepped up. "I didn't think so."

She hung her arms over her knees. "But they're good people."

He looked at her cheek, her ear, her hair.

"Finding your way around Bellona is a little funny at first. And they've been here a while. Take them with a grain of salt, keep your eyes open, and they'll teach you a lot."

"How long have you been with them?" thinking, I'm towering over her, only she looks at me as though I'm too short to tower.

"Oh, my place is over here. I just drop in on them every few days… like Tak. But I've just been around a few weeks, though. Pretty busy weeks." She looked out through the leaves. When he sat down on the log, she smiled. "You got in last night?"

He nodded. "Pretty busy night."

Something inside her face fought a grin.

"What's… your name?"

"Lanya Colson. Your name is Kidd, isn't it?"

"No, my name isn't Kidd! I don't know
what
my name is. I haven't been able to remember my name since… I don't know." He frowned. "Do you think that's crazy?"

She raised her eyebrows, brought her hands together (he remembered the remains of polish; so she must have redone them this morning: her nails were green as her eyes) to turn the harmonica.

"The Kid is what Iron Wolf tried to name me. And the girl in the commune tried to put on the other 'd'. But it isn't my name. I don't remember my God-damn name."

The turning halted.

"That's like being crazy. I forget lots of other things. Too. What do you think about that:" and didn't know how he would have interpreted his falling inflection either.

She said: "I don't really know."

He said, after the silent bridge: "Well, you
have
to think something!"

She reached into the coiled blanket and lifted out… the notebook? He recognized the charred cover.

Biting at her lip, she began ruffling pages. Suddenly she stopped, handed it to him—"Are any of these names yours?"

The list, neatly printed in ballpoint, filled two columns:

"What is this shit?" he asked, distressed.
"It
says Kit, with that Indian last name."

"Is that your name after all?"

"No. No, it's not my name."

"You look like you could be part Indian."

"My mother was a God-damn Indian. Not my father. It isn't my name." He looked back at the paper. "Your name's on here."

"No."

"Colson!"

"My
last
name. But my first name's Lanya, not Virginia."

"You got anybody in your family named Virginia?"

"I used to have a great aunt Virgilia. Really. She lived in Washington D.C. and I only met her once when I was seven or eight. Can you remember the names of anybody else in your family? Your father's?"

"No."

"Your mother's?"

"…what they look like but… that's all."

"Sisters or brothers?"

"…didn't have any."

After silence he shook his head.

She shrugged.

He closed the book and searched for speech: "Let's pretend—" and wondered what was in the block of writing below the lists—"that we're in a city, an abandoned city. It's burning, see. All the power's out. They can't get television cameras and radios in here, right? So everybody outside's forgotten about it. No word comes out. No word comes in. We'll pretend it's all covered with smoke, okay? But now you can't even seen the fire."

"Just the smoke," she said. "Let's pretend—"

He blinked.

"—you and I are sitting in a grey park on a grey day in a grey city." She frowned at the sky. "A perfectly ordinary city. The air pollution is terrible here." She smiled. "I like grey days, days like this, days without shadows—" Then she saw he had jabbed his orchid against the log.

Pinioned to the bark, his fist shook among the blades.

She was on her knees beside him: "I'll tell you what let's do. Let's take that off!" She tugged at the wrist snap. His arm shook in her fingers. "Here." Then his hand was free.

He was breathing hard. "That's—" he looked at the weapon still fixed by three points—"a pretty wicked thing. Leave it the fuck alone."

"It's a tool," she said. "You may need it. Just know when to use it." She was rubbing his hand.

His heart was slowing. He took another, very deep breath. "You ought to be afraid of me, you know?"

She blinked. "I am." And sat back on her heels. "But I want to try out some things I'm afraid of. That's the only reason to be here. What," she asked,
"happened
to you just then?"

"Huh?"

She put three fingers on his forehead, then showed him the glistening pads. "You're sweating."

"I was… very happy all of a sudden."

She frowned. "I thought you were scared to death!"

He cleared his throat, tried to smile. "It was like… well, suddenly being very happy. I was happy when I walked into the park. And then all of a sudden it just…" He was rubbing her hand back.

"Okay." She laughed. "That sounds good."

His jaw was clamped. He let it loosen, and grunted: "Who… what
kind
of a person are you?"

Her face opened, with both surprise and chagrin: "Let's see. Brilliant, charming—eight—
four
pounds away from being stunningly gorgeous … I like to tell myself; family's got all sorts of money and social connections. But I'm rebeling against all that right now:"

"Okay."

Her face was squarish, small, not gorgeous at all, and it was nice too.

"That sounds accurate."

The humor left it and there was only surprise. "You believe me? You're a doll!" She kissed him, suddenly, on the nose, didn't look embarrassed, exactly; rather as though she were timing some important gesture:

Which was to pick up her harmonica and hail notes in his face. They both laughed (he was astonished beneath the laughter and suspected it showed) while she said: "Let's walk."

"Your blanket…?"

"Leave it here."

He carried the notebook. They flailed through the leaves, jogging. At the path he stopped and looked down at his hip.
"Uhh
…?"

She looked over.

"Do you," he asked slowly, "remember my picking up the orchid and putting it on my belt here?"

"I put it on there." She thumbed some blemish on the harmonica. "You were going to leave it behind, so I stuck a blade through your belt loop. Really. It
can
be dangerous around here."

Mouth slightly open, he nodded as, side by side, they gained the shadowless paths.

He said:
"You
stuck it there." Somewhere a breeze, without force, made its easy way in the green. He was aware of the smoky odor about them for two breaths before it faded with inattention. "All by yourself, you just found those people in the park?"

She gave him a You-must-be-out-of-your-mind look. "I came in with quite a party, actually. Fun; but after a couple of days they were getting in the way. I mean it's nice to have a car. But if you're rendered helpless by lack of gasoline…" She shrugged. "Before we got here, Phil and I were taking bets whether this place really existed or not." Her sudden and surprising smile was all eyes and very little mouth. "I won. I stayed with the group I came in with a while. Then I cut them loose. A few nights with Milly, John, and the rest. Then I've been off having adventures—until a few nights ago, when I came back."

Thinking: Oh—"You had some money when you got here?"—Phil.

"Group I came with did. A lot of good it did them. I mean how long would you wander around a city like this looking for a hotel? No, I had to let them go. They were happy to be rid of me."

"They left?"

She looked at her sneaker and laughed, mock ominous.

"People leave here," he said. "The people who gave me the orchid, they were leaving when I came."

"Some people leave." She laughed again. It was a quiet and self-assured and intriguing and disturbing laugh.

He asked: "What kind of adventures did you have?"

"I watched some scorpion fights. That was weird. Nightmare's trip isn't my bag, but this place is so small you can't be that selective. I spent a few days by myself in a lovely home in the Heights: which finally sent me up the wall. I like living outdoors. Then there was Calkins for a while."

"The guy who publishes the newspaper?"

She nodded. "I spent a few days at his place. Roger's set up this permanent country weekend, only inside city limits. He keeps some interesting people around."

"Were you one of the interesting people?"

"I think Roger just considered me decorative, actually. To amuse the interesting ones. "His loss."

She
was
pretty in a sort of rough way—maybe closer to "cute".

He nodded.

"The brush with civilization did me good, though. Then I wandered out on my own again. Have you been to the monastery, out by Holland?"

"Huh?"

"I've never been there either but I've heard some very sincere people have set up a sort of religious retreat. I still can't figure out if they got started
before
this whole thing happened, or whether they moved in and took over afterward. But it still sounds impressive. At least what one hears."

"John and Mildred are pretty sincere."

"Touché!" She puffed a chord, then looked at him curiously, laughed, and hit at the high stems. He looked; and her eyes, waiting for him to speak, were greener than the haze allowed any leaf around.

"It's like a small town," he said. "Is there anything else to do but gossip?"

"Not really." She hit the stems again. "Which is a relief, if you look at it that way."

"Where does Calkins live?"

"Oh, you
like
to gossip! I was scared for a moment." She stopped knocking the stalks. "His newspaper office is awful! He took some of us there, right to where they print it. Grey and gloomy and dismal and echoing." She screwed up her face and her shoulders and her hands. "Ahhhh! But his house—" Everything unscrewed. "Just fine. Right above the Heights. Lots of grounds. You can see the whole city. I imagine it must have been quite a . sight when all the street lights were on at night." A small screwing, now. "I was trying to figure out whether he's always lived there, or if
he
just moved in and took it over too. But you don't ask questions like that."