The Mad Man: Or, the Mysteries of Manhattan by Samuel R. Delany

Author:Samuel R. Delany [Delany, Samuel R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Erotica, Urban
ISBN: 9781504011563
Google: -FUdCAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00W4LL4AI
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2015-06-01T12:00:00+00:00

Part Four: The Place Of Excrement

Nun weiss ich, wenn der letzte Morgen sein wird—wenn das Licht nicht mehr die Nocht und die Liebe scheucht—wenn der Schlummer ewig und nur Ein unerschöpflicher Daum sein wird. Himmlische Müdigkeit fühl ich in mir.

Weit und ermüdend ward mir die Wallfahrt zum heiligen Grabe, drünkend das Kreuz. Die kristallane Woge, die gemeinen Sinnen unuernehmlich, in des Hügels dunkeln schoss quillt, an dessen Fuss die irdiche Flut bricht, wer sie gekostet, wer oben stand auf dem Grenzgebürge der Welt, und hinübersah in das neue Land, in der Nacht Wohnsitz—warlich der kehrt micht in das Treiben der Welt zurück, in das Land, wo das Licht in ewiger Unruh hauset.

—Novalis, Hymnen an die Nacht, IV

The remainder of this tale is a love story.

When they’re happening to you, not when you’re hearing them, love stories are funny and scary and kind of unbelievable and turn your head around because they make you do and think and say things you’d never otherwise do or say. This one was, in that sense, classic. Just like 1Ί1 never forget the day I decided I had AIDS (that April 25, with I ony), I’ll never forget the day this part of the story started: it was about ι hree weeks after having my cellar session on Tony’s return, with Jimmy letting all upset. We’d gone through a loud, sweaty July Fourth, on \\ h ich Pheldon turned up with barbecued ribs and chicken and potato lalad and champagne, half a dozen friends and a van (driven by Lewey, the redheaded sanitation worker), and we all went on this picnic up at Bear Mountain, which was only moderately crazily crowded that year. The day I’m talking about was, however, Tuesday, July 18; I remem-i because it was also the day I decided to do something about Almira Idler’s request.

At work (back in suit and tie, in that blue-walled, anonymous office with three names, the last one joined to the first two by an ampersand), I wondered whether, if I wanted to go to the Pit and ask about what had happened on September 23, 1973, I’d do better with lots of people there (maybe some who even went back that far) or with only a few (that is, when somebody might have time to talk to me). Tuesday is the deadest night in any bar. But I decided to go that night.

The office chat was of rain that evening. I didn’t have an umbrella. Go home first then, I decided, change, and come back downtown. When I got out at my subway stop and, minutes later, turned from Broadway’s crush up Eighty-second, it was a warm quarter to seven. The light had a bronzy gloom, that might, yes have meant rain.

A quarter of the way down the block, he stood—fists in his sweatshirt’s pouches, looking across at the church. (You remember him: the big guy on the Broadway island who’d fished the hamburger from the refuse can ...) I neared: he was standing before

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