Tours of the Black Clock

85

1947. I COME TO the place one afternoon while walking, I lose track much better when I walk, I’ve walked every day now for a long time, the place is there on the sidewalk before me, and though there isn’t a single sign that it happened here I know immediately even though I haven’t been conscious of where I’m going, and I step back looking around me and realize I’m in front of the hotel and that high above me one of those windows is the window. I look at the place on the sidewalk and begin to smash myself against the stone of the hotel and strike at the sharp edges of the edifice with my wrists that I might open up some vein and pour the blood of my impure mongrel mother over the city that it will be fouled in some way that fouls him in turn, that fouls the humiliation he inflicted on this city by which he meant to glorify his squalid vagabond womanless youth and to make meaningless the way the city beckoned her away from him sixteen years ago. Soon there’s blood all over. They come and stop me soon. Five or six of them pull me down, before they do I’ll ring the Ring with the black blood of the Indian who bore me, twisting bloody wet in the grasp of them, my guardians who appear from nowhere to protect me from myself, and who will always be with me for as long as he lives, his moment joined to mine.

T.O.T.B.C. — 10