Dhalgren

Kidd swallowed, and did feel a little better. He wiped his forehead (damp), and nodded.

'Like I was saying,' Tak continued, as blond arms with inky leopards set Kidd a steaming glass, 'for me, it's a matter of soul.' He observed Fenster across his knuckles, continuing from the interruption. 'Essentially, I have a black soul.'

Fenster looked from the exiting Newboy. 'Hum?'

'My soul is black,' Tak reiterated. 'You know what black soul is?'

'Yeah, I know what black soul is. And like hell you do.'

Tak shook his head. 'I don't think you understand—'

'You can't have one,' Fenster said. 'I'm black. You're white. You can't have a black soul. I say so.'

Loufer shook his head. 'Most of the time you come on pretty white to me.'

'Scares you I can imitate you that well?' Fenster picked up his beer, then put the bottle back down. 'What is it that all you white men suddenly want to be—'

'I do not want to be black.'

'— what gives you a black soul?'

'Alienation. The whole gay thing, for one.'

'That's a passport to a whole area of culture and the arts you fall into just by falling into bed,' Fenster countered. 'Being black is an automatic cutoff from that same area unless you do some fairly fancy toe-in-the-door work.' Fenster sucked at his teeth. 'Being a faggot does not make you black!'

Tak put his hands down on top of one another. 'Oh, all right—'

'You,' Fenster announced to Loufer's partial retreat, 'haven't wanted a black soul for three hundred years. What the hell is it that's happened in the last fifteen that makes you think you can appropriate it now?'

'Shit.' Tak spread his fingers. 'You can take anything from me you want — ideas, mannerisms, property and money. And I can't take anything from you?'

'That you dare—' Fenster's eyes narrowed—'express, to me, surprise or indignation or hurt (notice I do not include anger) because that is exactly what the situation is, is why you have no black soul.' Suddenly he stood — the red collar fell open from the dark clavicle— and shook his finger. 'Now you live like that for ten generations, then come and ask me for some black soul.' The finger, pale nail on a dark flesh, jutted. 'You can have a black soul when I tell you you can have one! Now don't bug me! I gotta go pee!' He pulled away from the booth.

Kidd sat, his finger tips tingling, his knees miles away, his mind so opened that each statement in the altercation had seemed a comment to and/or about him. He sat trying to integrate them, while their import slipped from the tables of memory till Tak turned to him with a grunt, and with his forefinger hooked down the visor of his cap. 'I have the feeling—' Tak nodded deeply— 'that in my relentless battle for white supremacy I have, yet once again, been bested.' He screwed up his face. 'He's a good man, you know? Go on, drink some of that. Kid, I worry about you. How you feeling now?'

'Funny,' Kidd said. 'Strange… okay, I guess.' He drank. His breath stayed in the top of his lungs. Something dark and sloppy rilled beneath.

'Pushy, self-righteous.' Tak was looking across to where Fenster had been sitting. 'You'd think he was a Jew. But a good man.'

'You met him on his first day here too,' Kidd said. 'You ever ball him?'

'Huh?' Tak laughed. 'Not on your life. I doubt he puts out for any one except his wife. If he has one. And even there one wonders. Anyplace he's ever gone, I'll bet he's gotten there over the fallen bodies of love-sick faggots. Well, it's an education, on both sides. Hey, are you sure you didn't take some pill you shouldn't have, or something like that? Think back.'

'No, really. I'm all right now.'

'Maybe you want to come to my place, where it's a little warmer, and I can keep an eye on you.'

'No, I'm gonna wait for Lanya.' Kidd's own thoughts, still brittle and hectic, were rattling so hard it was not till fifteen seconds later, when Fenster returned to the table, he realized Tak had said nothing more, and was merely looking at the candlelight on the brandy.

Voiding his bladder had quenched Fenster's heat. As he sat down, he said quite moderately, 'Hey, do you see what I was trying to—'

Tak halted him with a raised finger. 'Touche, man. Touche. Now don't bug me. I'm thinking about it.'

'All right.' Fenster was appeased. 'Okay.' He sat back and looked at all the bottles in front of him. 'After this much to drink, it's all anybody can ask.' He began to thumb away the label.

But Tak was still silent.

'Kidd—?'

'Lanya!'

2

Wind sprang in the leaves, waking her, waking him beneath her turning head, her moving hand. Memories clung to him, waking, like weeds, like words: They had talked, they had walked, they had made love, they had gotten up and walked again — there'd been little talk that time because tears kept rising behind his eyes to drain away into his nose, leaving wet lids, sniffles, but dry cheeks. They had come back, lay down, made love again, and slept.

Taking up some conversation whose beginnings were snarled in bright, nether memories, she said: 'You really can't remember where you went, or what happened?' She had given him time to rest; she was pressing again. 'One minute you were at the commune, the next you were gone. Don't you have any idea what happened between the time we got to the park and the time Tak found you wandering around outside — Tak said it must have been three hours later, at least!' He remembered talking with her, with Tak in the bar; finally he had just listened to her and Tak talk to each other. He couldn't seem to understand.

Kidd said, because it was the only thing he could think: 'This is the first time I've seen real wind here.' Leaves passed over his face. 'The first time.'

She sighed, her mouth settling against his throat.

He tried to pull the corner of the blanket across his shoulders, grunted because it wouldn't come, lifted one shoulder: it came.

The astounded eye of leaves opened over them, turned, and passed. He pulled his lips back, squinted at the streaked dawn. Dun, dark, and pearl twisted beyond the branches, wrinkled, folded back on itself, but would not tear.

She rubbed his shoulder; he turned his face up against hers, opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again.

'What is it? Tell me what happened? Tell me what it is!'

'I'm going… I may be flipping out. That's what it is, you know?'

But he was rested: things were less bright, more clear. 'I don't know. But I may be…'

She shook her head, not in denial, but wonder. He reached between her legs where her hair was still swive- sticky, rubbed strands of it between his fingers. Her thighs made a movement to open, then to clamp him, still. Neither motion achieved, she brushed her face against his hair. 'Can you talk to me about it. Tak's right — you looked like you were drugged or something! I can tell you were scared. Try to talk to me, will you?'

'Yeah, yeah, I…' Against her flesh, he giggled. 'I can still screw.'

'Well, a lot, and I love it. But even that's sort of… sometimes like instead of talking.'

'In my head, words are going on all the time, you know?'

'What are they? Tell me what they say.'

He nodded and swallowed. He had tried to tell her everything important, about the Richards, about Newboy. He said, 'That scratch…'