Dhalgren (118 page)

"You're sure you're not simply telling me—Oh, I wish I could see you!—or avoiding telling me, that the responsibilities of being a big, bad scorpion are getting in the way of your work?"

"No," I said. "More likely the opposite. In the nest, I've finally got enough people to keep me warm at night. And I can feel safe as anyone in the city. Any scorpions who think about my writing at all are simply dazzled by the object—the book you were nice enough to have it made into. A few of them even blush when descriptions of them show up in it. That leaves what actually goes on between the first line and the last entirely to me. The scorpions caught me without a fight. My mind is a magnet and they're filings in a field I've made—No, they're the magnets. I'm the filing, in a stable position now."

"You're too
content
to write?"

"You," I said, "are a politician; and you're just not going to understand."

"At least you're giving me a little more support in my resolve not to read your work. Well, you say you're still writing. Regardless of
any
personal preface you might make, even this one, I'm just as interested in your second book as I was in your first."

"I don't know if I'm about to waste any time trying to get it to you."

"If I must arrange to have it hijacked, ink still moist, from beneath the very shadow of your dark quill, I suppose that's what I'll have to do. Let's see, shall we?"

"I've got other things to do." For the first time, I was really angry at his affectation.

"Tell me about them," he said, in a voice so natural, but following so naturally from the archness, my anger was defeated.

"I… I want you to tell
me
something," I said.

"If I can."

"Is the Father, here at the monastery," I asked, "a good man?"

"Yes. He's very good man."

"But for me to accept that, you see," I said, "I have to know I can accept your definition of good. It probably isn't the same as mine … I don't even know if I
have
one!"

"Again, I wish I were allowed to see you. Your voice sounds as though you might be upset about something." (Which I hadn't realized; I didn't
feel
upset.) "I'm not oblivious to your efforts to keep our talk at a level of honesty I might find tedious if I didn't have the respect for truth a man forced to tell a great many lies for the most commendable reasons must. I'm not very satisfied with myself, Kid. In the past months, a dozen separate situations have propelled me to the single realization that, to be a good governor, if it is not absolutely necessary to be a good man, it is certainly of inestimable help. Bellona is an eccentric city that fosters eccentric ways. But the reason I'm here, of all eccentric places in this most eccentric place, is because I really want to—"

Dust or something blew into my mouth, got down my throat; I cleared it, thinking: Christ, I hope he doesn't decide my voice is breaking with emotion!

"—to remedy a little of that dissatisfaction. If he is not a good man, the Father is certainly a generous one. He is allowing me to stay here… Of course there's always an odd relation between the head of the state and the head of the state-approved religion. After all, I helped set up this place. Same way I helped set up
Teddy's.
Of course in this case, the biggest—if easiest—job, given my position with the
Times,
was making sure there was no publicity. In your present mood, you can probably appreciate that. But, no, my relation to the Father is not that of commoner to priest. On my side, at any rate, it is duplicitous, fraught with doubt. If I didn't doubt, I wouldn't be here now. I'm afraid the politics works through the spiritual like rot. The good governor at least wants it to be the best rot possible."

"Is the Father a good man?" I asked again and tried not to sound at
all
like I was upset. (Maybe that backfired?)

"Has it occurred to you, my young Diogenes, that if you polished up the chimney of your
own
lamp, you'd be a little more likely to find this mysterious and miraculous Other you are searching out? Why does it concern you so?"

"So I can live here," I said, "in Bellona."

"You're afraid that for want of one good man the city shall be struck down? You better look back across the train-tracks, boy. Apocolypse has come and gone. We're just grubbing in the ashes.
That
simply isn't our problem any more. If you wanted out, you should have thought about it a long time back. Oh, you're very high-minded—and so, at times, am I. Well, as the head of the state religion, the Father does a pretty good job; good enough so that those doing not quite so well would do a bit better not to question—especially if that's all we can get."

"What do you think about the religion of the people?" I asked.

"How do you mean?"

"You know. Reverend Amy's church; George; June; that whole business."

"Does anyone take that seriously?"

"For a governor," I said, "you're pretty out of touch with what the people are into, aren't you? You've seen the things that have shown up in this sky. There're posters of him out all over town. You published the interview, and the pictures that made them gods."

"I've seen some of it, of course. But I'm afraid all that black mysticism and homoeroticism is just not something I personally find very attractive. And it certainly doesn't strike me as a particularly savory basis for worship. Is Reverend Tayler a good woman? Is George a good… god?"

"I'm not that interested in anybody's religion," I told him. "But if you want to bring the purpose of the church down to turning out people who do good things: When I was awfully hungry, she fed me. But when I was hurt and thirsty, someone at your gate told me I couldn't get a glass of water."

"Yes. That regrettable incident was reported to me. Things do catch up to you here, don't they? When you were unpublished, however, I published you."

"All right." My laugh was too sharp. "You've got the whole thing down, Mr Calkins. Sure, it's your city. Hey, you remember the article about me saving the kids from the fire the night of the party? Well, it wasn't me. It was George. I was just along. But he was down there, searching through the fire, seeing if anybody needed help. I just wandered by; and the only reason I stayed was because he told me the ones who'd started out with him from Teddy's had gotten too chickenshit and run. I heard the kids crying first, but George was the one who busted into the building and got the five of them out alive. Then, when your reporter got to him later, George made out like it was all me, because he didn't want the acclaim, prestige, and attendant hero-worship. Which, in the mood I am now, I approve of. Now is George a
bad
man?"

"I believe—" the voice was dry—"implicit in what you originally asked was that so necessary distinction between those who
do
good and who
are
good."

"Sure," I said. "But explicit in what you said was that bit about making do with what you can get. I can get George if I need him. He's genial enough for a god, with some nicely human failings like a history of lust."

"I think I'm still Judeo-Christian enough to be uncomfortable with expressly human demiurges."

"In the state approved religion, the governor is God's appointed representative on earth, if I remember right. Isn't that, when all is said and done, what makes the relation between the head of the state and the head of the church as ticklish as you were just telling me it is? You're as much of a god as George, minus some celestial portents and—of course, I'm just guessing—a couple of inches on your dick."

"I suppose one valid purpose of poets is to bring blasphemy to the steps of the altar. I just wish you hadn't felt obliged to do it today. Nevertheless, I appreciate it as a political, if not a religious necessity."

"Mr Calkins," I said, "most of your subjects aren't sure whether or not this place even exists. I'm not presenting any long considered protest. I wasn't sure there
was
a Father till today. I was just asking—"

"What
are
you asking, young man?"

What I'd intended to come back with got cut away by my realization of his real distress.
"Um…"
I tried to think of something clever and couldn't. "…is the Father a good man?"

When he didn't answer, and I began to suspect/recall why, I wanted to laugh. Determined to go in silence, I got off the arm of the chair. Three steps, though, and my blubbering broke into a full throated giggle that threatened torrents. If Calkins could have seen, I would have flashed my lights.

Brother Randy, robes blowing about his sneakers, stepped around the corner. "You're going?" He still wore bis methadrine grimace.

"Um-hm."

He turned to walk with me. The breeze that had been dull in my left ear now grew firm enough to beat my vest about my sides; it tugged Randy's hood off. I looked at the lone Australia on the South Pacific of his skull. It wasn't nearly as big as I'd imagined from the edge. He saw me looking; so I asked: "Does that hurt?"

"Sometimes. I think the dust and junk in the air irritate it. It's a lot better now than it used to be. Before, it was all down over my ear and the back of my neck—when I first got here. The Father suggested I shave my head; that's certainly given it a chance to heal." We reached the steps. "The Father knows an awful lot about medicine. He's made me put some stuff on it and it seems to be clearing up. I thought for a while he might have been a doctor or something, once, but I asked him…"

In the pause I nodded and started down. I'd swear he was on something, and the moment he'd started talking I'd gotten auditory visions of the endless rap.

"…and he said he wasn't.

"So long." He waved his big, translucent hand.

All the way across the broken overpass I tried to assemble what I had of the man behind the wall (my lights flashing through two flowered grills of stone, a web of light around his body); I even wondered what he'd
felt
during our conversation. The one thing that cleared when all my speculations fell away was that I had an , urge to write.

We didn't say all those things in that way; but that is what we talked about Reading it over brings back the reality of it for me. Would it for him? Or have I left out the particular, personal emblems by which he would recall and know it?

(Do you have that restless…? like it says in the back of the magazines. Sure.) But sitting here, in a back booth at Teddy's, tonight, while Bunny does her number to not-quite-as-many-as-usual customers
(I
asked Pepper if he wanted to come with me but he really has this thing about going in here, so I brought my notebook for company), I see all it has produced is this account—and
not
what I wanted to work on. (Bunny lives in a dangerous world; she wants a good man. What she can get is Pepper … no, an image Pepper at his best [when he can smile] consents to give, but he's usually too tired or ashamed to. Is it my place to tell her that, bringing my blasphemy to the altar steps, sharing with her the data from my noon journey? I just wish I enjoyed his dancing more.) This is not a poem. It is a very shabby report of something that happened in the Year of Our Lord it would be oh-so-nice to write down, month, day, and year. But I can't.

If Dollar doesn't stop pestering Copperhead, then Copperhead will kill him. If Dollar stops pestering Copperhead, then Copperhead will let him alone. If Copperhead is going to kill Dollar, then Dollar will not have stopped pestering Copperhead. If Copperhead lets Dollar alone, then Dollar will have stopped pestering Copperhead. Which of the above is true? The one with the fewest words, of course. But that's faulty logic. Why? Three times blessed is the Lord of Devine Words, the God of Theives, the Master of the Underworld, duel sexed in character, double dealing in nature, yet one through all defraction.

her elbow across his jaw.

John said, "Hey…!" and went back, hands up, palms out.

The sound she made was something I'd never heard out of anybody. She kicked at his leg, got him under the knee. He grabbed at her arm again but it wasn't there, so he pulled back.

And stumbled over a root, right up against the trunk. Which made him really mad: he swung at her again.

She jumped. Straight up. His fist landed against her arm. She came down raking at his neck. His shirt tore.

He hit her, hard. But it didn't matter; I thought she was going to bite his throat out. She bit something. He hissed, "Shit…!"

Denny grabbed my arm. "Hey, don't you wanna stop her…?"

"No," I said. I was scared to death.

John tried to punch her in the stomach.

Both of them twisted, missing.

Milly kept circling around them and Jommy started to say, "Hey, somebody…" and then saw the rest of us and just swallowed.

John pushed her away in the face. She grabbed his arm and yanked. Not pulled, yanked. His elbow hit the tree. He yelled, and hit her flat-handed in the jaw.

"FUCKER…!" she shouted so loud you knew it hurt her throat. "FUCKER…!"

Her right fist came down from her left ear and hammered his face. Like an echo his head cracked back against the trunk.

"Hey! Stop it… Stop…" Then I guess he really tried to break out. He shouted, grabbed her wrist…

She was meat red from the neck up, yanking her fist over, twisting his fingers; then grabbed one fist with the Other and swung it against his neck.

"Jesus…" Jommy said, to me I realized. "She's crazy…" But he stepped back from the look I gave him.

John tried to grab her in some sort of bear hug. He kicked out, and they both went down, him pretty much on top. Everyone stepped back together.

Flailing out, she came up with a handful of grass. Then there was grass in his hair and he yelled again.

His ear was bleeding. But I don't know what she'd done.

"Hey, look!" Milly said, loud and upset. "Why doesn't somebody…" Then it struck her that if somebody was, the somebody was going to have to be her.

She started forward.

I touched her on the shoulder and she looked sharply around.