Atlantis: Three Tales
ATLANTIS
BOOKS BY SAMUEL R. DELANY
FICTION
The Jewels of Aptor
The Fall of the Towers
The Ballad of Beta-2
Babel-17
Empire Star
The Einstein Intersection
Nova
Equinox
Dhalgren
Trouble on Triton
Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand
Return to Nevèrÿon
:
Tales of Nevèrÿon
Neveryóna
Flight from Nevèrÿon
Return to Nevèrÿon
They Fly at Ãiron
The Mad Man
Atlantis: Three Tales
Hogg
Bread & Wine (graphic novel, drawn by Mia Wolff)
Aye, and Gomorrah (stories)
Phallos
Dark Reflections
NONFICTION
The Jewel-Hinged Jaw
The American Shore
Heavenly Breakfast
Starboard Wine
The Motion of Light in Water
The Straits of Messina
Silent Interviews
Longer Views
Times Square Red, Times Square Blue
Shorter Views
1984: Selected Letters
About Writing
THREE TALES
Samuel R. Delany
Â
Wesleyan University Press
Middletown, Connecticut 06459
Copyright © 1995 by Samuel R. Delany
All rights reserved
Produced by Incunabula, Post Office Box 31626, Seattle,
WA
98103-1626
A limited first edition of
Atlantis: Three Tales
was published by Incunabula in May 1995.
Excerpts from an earlier version of
Atlantis: Model 1924
first appeared in two issues of
The Kenyon Review
, Fall 1993 (Vol.
XV
, No. 4) and Fall 1994 (Vol.
XVI
, No. 4).
Excerpts from an earlier version of “Eric, Gwen, and D. H. Lawrence's Esthetic of Unrectified Feeling” first appeared in
Callaloo
, Spring 1991, Vol. 14, No. 2.
Excerpts from an earlier version of “Citre et Trans” first appeared in
Pacific Review
(Spring 1991) and
Fiction International
#22 (Spring 1992).
The author extends his warmest thanks to editor Ron Drummond and book designer John D. Berry; to Edward Brunner for Crane and train lore; and to Frank Robinson and Bill Blackbeard for sharing their expertise on '20s pulp magazines and record players.
Cover art:
The Voice of the City of New York Interpreted, 1920â22: The White Way I
, by Joseph Stella, Collection of The Newark Museum.
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG1NG-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Delany, Samuel R.
Atlantis: three tales / Samuel R. Delany
        p.     m.
Contents: AtlantisâEric, Gwen, and D.H. Lawrence's esthetic of unrectified feelingâCitre et trans.
ISBN
0-8195-5283-6
I. Title
PS
3554.
E
437
A
85Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 1995
813'.54âdc20
94-48726
For
Iva Hacker-Delany,
John R. Keene, Jr.,
and
Dennis Rickett
All the little household gods
    Have started crying, but say
Good-bye now, and put to sea.
    Farewell, dear friend, farewell . . .Â
â
W. H. AUDEN
, “Atlantis”
The long shadow thrown from this single
    obstruction to its own light!
Thought flies out from the old scars of the sea
    as if to land. Flocks that are longings
come in to shake over the deep water.
It's prodigies held in time's amber
old destructions
and the theme of revival the heart asks for.
         The past and future are
full of disasters, splendors
shaken to earth, seas rising to overshadow
    shores and roaring in.
â
ROBERT DUNCAN
, “Atlantis”
Eric, Gwen, and D.H. Lawrence's Esthetic of Unrectified Feeling
Note to the reader:
This icon
falls at the beginning of various paragraphs thoughout the opening novel. It indicates alternative text to come, which the reader should read at a point of her or his own choosing in the midst of the marked paragraph or section. On a shaded gray background, the alternative text follows the paragraph (or section) with the icon. This is one-limited-way the writer encourages the reader to construct his or her own text.
Distinctly praise the years . . .
â
HART CRANE
, “For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen”
It is for the other world that the madman sets sail in his fools' boat; it is from the other world that he comes when he disembarks.
â
MICHEL FOUCAULT
,
Madness and Civilization
Voyage through death
to life upon these shores.
â
ROBERT HAYDEN
, “Middle Passage”
   | Skyscrapersâthat's what he was most eager to see. But before entering the city the train dropped between earthen walls tangled with winter trees, the dirt sometimes becoming out the window, for hundreds of feet, concrete. |
  | The tallest building in the world was in New Yorkâthe Wool-worth Building. Most people knew that; but |
 | Bring such information out at the right time, and people said, “What a smart boy!” which made up a little for the guilt he felt over his school grades: they'd been bad enough to silence Papaâ |
 | recently elected bishopâand make Mama cry. Finally they'd decided to let him leave (clearly school was doing him no good) and come north to stay with his brother. Sam's toes felt sticky in his socks. |
  | Last night, he'd decided not to take his shoes off, afraid his feet might smell. This morning, however, though he'd already gone into the little bathroom with its metal walls to wash his face and hands, |
 | nothing about him felt fresh. Stretching, he arched his back, pulled his fists against his chest; the noblet of flesh on the left sideâone male, milkless teatâcaught a thread or fold in his shirt, |
pulling till it cut.
He sat forward quickly, trying to look disinterested, waiting for the soreness to fall from his chest. A minute on, when he sat back, cambric brushed him: the sensitivity had become, surprisingly, pleasant. Again, he felt himself shift within his wool trousers. Insistently alert to his body, sensual and stale under cloth, he glanced around the carâespecially at the women in their seats, black and white, beginning to arrange themselves.
Five times now he'd noticed, first with distress, then with curiosity, and finally with indifference, that if he sat on the rumbling plush, relaxed, and let his knees fall wide, through loose wool the train's joggling gave him an erection.
Pulling his knees together, he sat back again and arched his fingers on the cushion, so that blue nap slipped under his nails. (Amidst the wheels' cacophony, Sam could hear a “. . .tut-tut-tut-tut-tut . . .” just like the song.) The first joints of his fingers (and his toesâbut people didn't see those) had grown too much: tall as he was, the initial joints had clubbed into those of someone even bigger.
Digitus clavigerae
, or something like it, his oldest brother, Lemuel, had said it was called. Not that that made him feel any better about it. Youngest child, lightest child (hair once cornsilk pale before puberty had turned it rough and redâand
adolescence darkened it further), a surprise child, Mama had called him. Mama's pet, the others said, which, while sometimes it held their ire, now had become a term of fondnessâfor most of them, most of the time. But he was the one among the ten who hadn't finished high school. Well, when he'd worked awhile in New York and grown more serious, the older ones could settle him into night school and help him toward a diploma. That's what Papa said; and since she always listened to Papa, Mama said he could go. And see the skyscrapers.
On either bankâSam slid from one seat, moved across the aisle, and into another, to peer by purple tasselsâagainst November gray, filigreed branches separated wooden houses, one and two drab stories.
Watching the dawnscape, still iceless, flip along, he contemplated for the thousandth time the astonishing process by which the seamless and inexorable progression of the present slipped away to pack the past with memories, like numbered stanzas in a song, like cells in a comb, like cakes in a carton, to be called back (though, he'd already ascertained, most he'd never recall) in whatever surprising, associative order.
There'd been, he remembered now, that poor-white family with the six children the white conductor had brought into the Jim Crow car last night and, after looking around, settledâwith their twine-tied boxes and traveling basketsâin the three rows of seats at the car's head. “If you all want to sit together, this is about the best we can do.” One of the girls and two of the boys had been barefoot, just as if it were summer. “In a couple of hours you all could come in here anyway.” The father's coat had been out at both elbows and his hair stuck straight down from under his straw hat in blond blades. Holding the shoulder of his mother's sweater, with a fall of silver silk over each ear and eyes like circles cut from gingham, above the seat back the littlest stared at all the car's dark faces, to fix finallyâpink lips lax in a thoughtless âo'âon Sam, four seats behind and across the aisle, as if Sam, and not they, were the anomaly here. Sam had slid his fingers under his thighs.