Atlantis: Three Tales

a

It is for the other world that the madman sets sail in his fools' boat;it is from the otherworld that he comes when he disembarks. — MICHEL FOUCAULT, Madness and Civilization Voyage through death to life upon these shores. — ROBERT HAYDEN, "Middle Passage" i. Skyscrapers — that'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. it. The tallest building in the world was in New York —the Woolworth Building. Most people knew that; but he knew, counting basements and sub-basements, the Woolworth had exactly sixty stories —and not many people knew that. in. 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 Papa— a 3 S A M U E L R. D E L A N Y iv. recently elected bishop—and 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. v. 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, vi. nothing about him felt fresh. Stretching, he arched his back, pulled his fists against his chest; the noblet of flesh on the left side —one male, milkless teat—caught 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 car—especially 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 toes—but 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 c/avigerae, 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 red— 4 A T L A N T I S : MODEL 1924 and 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 fondness—for 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 bank—Sam slid from one seat, moved across the aisle, and into another, to peer by purple tassels —against 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...