Dhalgren

size and coloring — maybe even a little smaller. And I'm sure his hair was dark brown, not black — though this was all at night, by lights coming in the windows. I think, when he went away, someone — one of the other patients — called to him by name: I don't remember what it was, now.' Her hands fell to her lap. 'But that, anyway, is the real reason I offered you the job. I don't know why, but I thought it might be a good time to clear that up.'

'I haven't always been here,' I said. 'I came here, over the bridge, over the river. And soon I'm going to leave. With Lanya and Denny…' It had felt very important to say.

'Of course,' Madame Brown said; but looked puzzled. 'We all have to go on from where we are. And of course we've all come from where we've been. Certainly, at some point, you must have come here. More important, though, is not to get trapped in some circle of your own, habitual—' Outside, the dog barked. 'Oh, that must be my next patient,' Madame Brown interrupted herself. The dog barked, kept barking.

Madame Brown frowned, half rose from the chair, one hand again absently at her beads. 'Muriel!' she called; her voice was loud and low. 'Muriel!'

It must have been something in the juxtaposition: the chains of lenses and prisms, or perhaps that she had said the beads meant nothing convinced me I was about to learn their real meaning; not that I was the person in the hospital but that somehow I or he… or that way she called the dog made me try to remember some place or some time when she, or someone else, had called it; not even my name, but possibly some other, if I could recall it — each element seemed about to explain the others, clearing the pattern; and that scratch… I got chills. I was being nudged, pushed, about to be reminded of… what? Anything more than the vast abysms of all our ignorances? Whatever, it was vastly sinister and breathlessly freeing. But I did not know; and that mystic ignorance wrung me out with gooseflesh.

'Well,' Madame Brown was saying. 'Our time is about up. And I'm pretty sure that's my next patient.'

'Okay.' I felt relieved too, somehow. 'Hey, thanks a lot.'

'Would you like to arrange another—'

'No. Thanks, no, I don't want to come back.'

'All right.' She stood up and considered saying something: Which, I guess, was: 'Kid, please don't think I'm smug. About you, or about any of the things we've talked about I may not understand. But it's not from not caring.'

I smiled. The gooseflesh rolled on—'I don't think you're smug—' and rolled away. 'But I knew I wasn't going to come here more than once — as a patient. So I had to get something for my troubles. I've spent a lot of time in therapy. And you have to know how to use it.' I laughed.

She smiled. 'Good.'

'I'll see you next time Lanya has Denny and me over for dinner — if not before. So long. Hey, if you want to talk about any of this with Lanya, go ahead.'

'Oh, I wouldn't—'

'If she asks you anything, tell her what you think. Please.'

She pressed her lips a moment. 'All right. Then it probably will provide us with at least thirty-six hours solid conversation.' She opened the door for me. 'So long. I'll see… Oh, hello … I'll be with you in a few moments.'

'Sure.' The guy sitting on the desk corner, smiling up from the Newboy volumes, was the long-haired kid I'd seen cross-legged the night in the book-store basement, doing Om.

Madame Brown went back in her office and closed the door.

I went to the desk and picked up three of the books beside him. 'I'm stealing these. Tell Madame Brown Lanya'll bring them back if she really wants them…' I was going to say more, but even that sounded silly.

'Sure. I'll tell Dr Brown as soon as I go in.' Which made me wonder what he thought about me calling her 'Madame'. I went into the hall. As I passed Muriel, sitting on the top step, watching me with gentled eyes, I heard the office door open.

I wrote all this down because today the page with the list of names on it is missing from the notebook. When I got back to the nest from the session, I started browsing through and I couldn't find it. How many times have I read it over? I was planning to make myself read some of the Newboy. But as soon as I realized that page was gone, I suddenly felt an obsession to read it again, and began searching through the entries again and again on the chance I might have overlooked it. How many times have I read it before? (And now the only name I can remember from it is William Dhalgren.) At last, just to pull my mind away from it, I started writing out the above (and truncated) account of the hour Lanya arranged for me to have with Madame Brown, while she was off at her school. And what does it get me? The writing it down, I mean?

in their hands; the optic chain (a hundred feet? two hundred feet of it?), stretched among a dozen as they danced, glittered in beast light, sending flaked reflections along the undersides of leaves. Around us, they howled into the night, delighted, some going near the brazier, some going away.

Copperhead scrubbed at his mouth with his wrist. His eyes looked very red, his whole face burnished and flickering. 'Hey, how do you like that?' he said. 'Protection! That bastard Calkins wanted God-damn protection!' He turned from me to Glass. I laughed. Clapping perforated it. Copperhead looked up, suddenly; began to bellow and clap too, his palms hollowed. He was off rhythm so it carried a long way. He kept on bobbing his head to Glass's bobbing head, till finally he got it, though he was laughing, now. Dragon Lady, beyond the toppled furnace, one boot propped on a fallen cinderblock, kneaded her shoulder, pensive and intent, watching the dance, her jade beast momentarily out.

Lanya turned and jumped, her blue shirt mapped with sweat; she held a chain high with one hand. She moved her harmonica across her mouth with the other, blowing discord after discord. Her forehead was glazed, her hair wet down her brow.

Jommy, I guess it was, broke out between Mildred and some bird of paradise (Cathedral shouting, 'Hey, watch it—'), staggering into the dazzling web, and grabbed a strand for balance. Denny's end — I jumped — broke (between mirror and prism) but he just whirled the loose length; finally looped it around somebody else's strand and held it high with both hands. An end someone else had dropped snaked and jerked through fire-lit grass. I stepped forward, grabbed it up, and dodged beneath it, jumping from foot to foot and bellowing. D-t and Spider and Raven and Cathedral and Tarzan (he really can dance good as the niggers) and Jack the Ripper and Filament and Angel made a web: one strand vibrated; another went slack in catenaries between taut lengths. Gladis paused, with a fist full of green cloth over her great belly, swaying and breathing with her mouth wide. She ducked from a strand that tightened against her cheek, swung away, and began to clap.

I stopped shouting soon because my throat hurt; and heard, between the claps: 'Bunny, whyn't you get in there and show 'em how it's done!'

'Don't be silly, dear! We'll just watch.'

'Naw, come on! I ain't never really seen you dance.'

'Smile when you say that. Why don't you?'

'Aw, come on. I wanna see what you can do.'

Something in the fire exploded; sparks shot above the flame tips, showering. The myriad narrow parabolas extinguished.

Dollar, his pimply back bright with sweat, stood centered in the clearing, feet wide, knees and head bent. Each clap detonated something in his belly that flung his hands, hips, and shoulders about.

Some of the commune kids were naked.

John danced with his brown beard up, his blond hair back, and his brass orchid waving on his hand overhead. A girl had gotten her legs caught in the chain going around, and fallen; she sat a long time, head forward, hair the color of dry leaves down across one breast. A few times she tried to stand. But another length of chain fell on her shoulder when someone dropped another end; she seemed too weighted to rise.

A griphon flickered twice: Adam bobbed and jerked. Chains and shocked hair swung and clattered and went out behind the reeling beast.

Bunny, barking shrill as a lap-dog, a dozen strands caught among up-thrust fingers, suddenly pranced forward, shaking back silver hair. Pepper, haunched behind him, followed, clapping and grinning like the devil.

An elderly black woman who'd brought some of the supper-boxes, stonely silent till now, cackled, beginning to clap too. The heavy, black-haired man with the bamboo flute had finally gotten out of his pants and danced up to her, trying to bring her into the circle. He piped and bobbed and bounced around: it was pretty phoney and for a