Dhalgren

make up some work time. Then I began to see how awful they were. Suddenly I got absolutely furious. And tore them up — two big ones, a little one, and about a dozen drawings I'd done. Into lots of pieces. And threw them away. Then I washed every dish in the house.'

'Shit…' He frowned at the top of her head.

'I think I did some drawing after that, but that's more or less when I really stopped painting. I realized something though—'

'You shouldn't have done that,' he interrupted. 'That was awful.'

'It was years ago,' she said. 'It was sort of childish. But I—'

'It frightens me.'

She looked at him. 'It was years ago.' Her face was greyed in the grey dawn. 'It was.' She turned away, and continued. 'But I realized something. About art. And psychiatry. They're both self-perpetuating systems. Like religion. All three of them promise you a sense of inner worth and meaning, and spend a lot of time telling you about the suffering you have to go through to achieve it. As soon as you get a problem in any one of them, the solution it gives is always to go deeper into the same system. They're all in rather uneasy truce with one another in what's actually a mortal battle. Like all self-reinforcing systems. At best, each is trying to encompass the other two and define them as sub-groups. You know: religion and art are both forms of madness and madness is the realm of psychiatry. Or, art is the study and praise of man and man's ideals, so therefore a religious experience becomes just a brutalized aesthetic response and psychiatry is just another tool for the artist to observe man and render his portraits more accurately. And the religious attitude I guess is that the other two are only useful as long as they promote the good life. At worst, they all try to destroy one another. Which is what my psychiatrist, whether he knew it or not, was trying, quite effectively, to do to my painting. I gave up psychiatry top, pretty soon. I just didn't want to get all wound up in any systems at all.'

'You like washing dishes?'

'I haven't had to in a long, long time.' She shrugged again. 'And when I have to now, actually I find it rather relaxing.'

He laughed. 'I guess I do too.' Then: 'But you shouldn't have torn up those paintings. I mean, suppose you changed your mind. Or maybe there was something good in them that you could have used later—'

'It was bad if I wanted to be an artist. But I wasn't an artist. I didn't want to be.'

'You got a scholarship.'

'So did a lot of other people. Their paintings were terrible, mostly. By the laws of chance, mine were probably terrible too. No, it wasn't bad if I didn't want to paint at all.'

But he was still shaking his head.

'That really upsets you, doesn't it? Why?'

He took a breath and moved his arm from under her. 'It's like everything you — anybody says to me… it's like they're trying to tell me a hundred and fifty other things as well. Besides what they're saying direct.'

'Oh, perhaps I am, just a bit.'

'I mean, here I am, half nuts and trying to write poems, and you're trying to tell me I shouldn't put my faith in art or psychiatry.'

'Oh no!' She folded her hands on his chest, and put her chin there. 'I'm saying I decided not to. But I wasn't nuts. I was just lazy. There is a difference, I hope. And I wasn't an artist. A tape editor, a teacher, a harmonica player, but not an artist.' He folded his arms across her neck and pushed her head flat to its cheek. 'I suppose the problem,' she went on, muffled in his armpit, 'is that we have an inside and an outside. We've got problems both places, but it's so hard to tell where the one stops and other takes up.' She paused a moment, moving her head. 'My blue dress…'

'That reminds you of the problems with the outside?'

'That, and going up to Calkins'. I don't mind living like that — every once in a while. When I've had the chance, I've always done it rather well.'

'We could have a place like Calkins'. You can have anything you want in this city. Maybe it wouldn't be as big, but we could find a nice house; and I could get stuff like everybody else does. Tak's got an electric stove that cooks a roast beef in ten minutes. With microwaves. We could have anything—'

'That—' she was shaking her head—'however, is when the inside problems start. Or start to become problems, anyway. Sometimes, I don't think I have any inside problems at all. I think I'm just giving myself something to worry about. I'm not scared of half the things half the people I know are. I've gone lots of places, met lots of people, had lots of fun. Maybe it is all a matter of getting the outside problems solved. Another not nice thing: When I look at you, sometimes I don't think I have a right to think I have any problems, inside or out.'

'Don't you want to do anything? Change anything; preserve anything; find any…' He stopped because he felt distinctly uncomfortable.

'No.' She said it very firmly.

'I mean, maybe that would make it easier to solve some of the outside problems, anyway. You know, maybe you'd feel happier if you could get another dress.'

'No,' she repeated. 'I want wonderful and fascinating and marvelous things to happen to me and I don't want to do anything to make them happen. Nothing at all. I suppose that makes you think I'm a superficial person… no, you're too intelligent. But a lot of people would.'

He was confused. 'You're a marvelous, deep, fascinating person,' he said, 'and therefore you should be world-famous this instant.'

'For twenty-three, I'm famous enough, considering I haven't done anything. But you're right.'

'How are you famous?'

'Oh, not really famous. I just have lots of famous friends.' She rolled her head once more to her chin. 'It said in that article that Newboy had been nominated three times for the Nobel Prize. I know three people who've actually won it.'

'Huh?'

'Two in the sciences, and Lester Pearson was a good friend of my uncle and would come spend weeks with us at my uncle's summer place in Nova Scotia. The one in chemistry was very pleasant — he was only twenty-nine — and connected with the university. We were very close for a while.'

'You went out on dates and things. With all your famous friends?'

'No, I hate that. I never go on dates. These are people I met and I talked to and I liked talking to, so I talked to again. That's all.'

'I'm not famous. Would you be happy in a place like Calkins', living with me?'

'No.'

'Why not? Just because I'm not famous?'

'Because you wouldn't be happy. You wouldn't know what to do there. You wouldn't fit.' Then he felt all her muscles, thigh to shoulder, tighten on him. 'That isn't true! I'm being awful.' She sucked her teeth. 'Do you know, I was terrified to go up to Roger's with you. It had nothing to do with what I was wearing: I thought you'd behave dreadfully — you'd either Ooooh and Ahhh the whole afternoon to death, or you'd shut up and be a big silent hole in the day.'

'You think I've never been in any nice places before?'

'But you weren't like that,' she said. 'That's the point! You were perfectly fine, you had a good time, and I'm sure Mr Newboy enjoyed it. If anyone spoiled it, it was me with my silly dress. And I'm a mean, small, petty person for worrying about such things in the first place.' She sighed. 'Do I get points at all for keeping it to myself this long?' She sighed again. 'No, I guess not.'

He blinked at the wild sky and tried to comprehend: he could follow her logic, though the emotions behind it confused.

After a while she said: 'I grew up in some awfully big houses. Some were almost as big as Roger's. When I was at boarding school, once, my uncle said I could have some kids to the summer place for my birthday. It came on a long weekend and they said I could have ten kids up from Thursday night till Sunday afternoon. There was one boy at the Irving School — the boys' school next to ours— named Max, whom I thought was just great. He came from a poor — well, poorish family. He was on scholarship. He was intelligent, sensitive, gentle… and gorgeous — I was probably in love with him! I would have been perfectly happy to take him off for the weekend all by himself. But