Mao II

by Don DeLillo

  9

  Bill reminded himself to read the pavement signs before he crossed the street. It was so perfectly damn sensible they ought to make it the law in every city, long-lettered words in white paint that tell you which way to look if you want to live.

  He wasn’t interested in seeing London. He’d seen it before. A glimpse of Trafalgar Square from a taxi, three routine seconds of memory, aura, repetition, the place unchanged despite construction fences and plastic sheeting—a dream locus, a double-ness that famous places share, making them seem remote and unreceptive but at the same time intimately familiar, an experience you’ve been carrying forever. The pavement signs were the only things he paid attention to. Look left. Look right. They seemed to speak to the whole vexed question of existence.

  He hated these shoes. His ribs felt soft today. There was a slight seizing in his throat.

  He wanted to get back to the hotel and sleep a while. He wasn’t staying at the place in Mayfair that Charlie had mentioned. He was in a middling gray relic and already beginning to grouse to himself about reimbursement.

  In his room he took off his shirt and blew on the inside of the collar, getting rid of lint and hair, drying the light sweat. He had Lizzie’s overnight bag with his robe and pajamas and there were some socks, underwear and toilet articles he’d bought in Boston.

  He didn’t know if he wanted to do this thing. It didn’t feel so right anymore. He had a foreboding, the little clinging tightness in the throat that he knew so well from his work, the times he was afraid and hemmed in by doubt, knowing there was something up ahead he didn’t want to face, a character, a life he thought he could not handle.

  He called Charlie’s hotel.

  “Where are you, Bill?”

  “I can see a hospital from my window.”

  “And you find this encouraging.”

  “I look for one thing in a hotel. Proximity to the essential services.”

  “You’re supposed to be at the Chesterfield.”

  “The very name is incompatible with my price structure. It smells of figured velvet.”

  “You’re not paying. We’re paying.”

  “I understood about the plane fare.”

  “And the hotel. It goes without saying. And the incidentals. Do you want me to see if the room’s still available?”

  “I’m settled in here.”

  “What’s the name of the place?”

  “It’ll come to me in a minute. In the meantime tell me if we’re set for this evening.”

  “We’re working on a change of site. We had a wonderful venue all set up, thanks to a well-connected colleague of mine. The library chamber at Saint Paul’s Cathedral. Precisely the dignified setting I was hoping to find. Oak and stone carving, thousands of books. At noon today they began receiving phone calls. Anonymous.”

  “Threats.”

  “Bomb threats. We’re trying to keep it absolutely quiet. But the librarian did ask if we wouldn’t like to conduct our meeting elsewhere. We think we’ve got a secure site just about pinned down and we’re arranging a very discreet police presence. But it hurts, Bill. We had a gallery and vaulted ceiling. We had wood-block floors.”

  “People who make phone calls don’t set off bombs. The real terrorists make their calls after the damage is done. If at all.”

  “I know,” Charlie said, “but we still want to take every possible precaution. We’re cutting the number of press people invited. And we’re not revealing the location to anyone until the last possible moment. People will gather at a decoy location, then be driven to the real site in a chartered bus.”

  “Remember literature, Charlie? It involved getting drunk and getting laid.”

  “Come to the Chesterfield at seven. You’ll have some time to look at the poems you’re going to read. Then we’ll go off together. And when it’s over, a late dinner, just the two of us. I want to talk about your book.”

  Bill felt better about the reading now that he knew someone was paying his hotel bill. He put a menu card on the coffee table and got his medication tin from his jacket pocket. He emptied the contents onto the card, a total of four uncut tablets. The rest of his supply sat in prescription vials of lovely amber plastic in a bureau drawer in his bedroom at home. Depressants, antidepressants, sleep-inducers, speed-makers, diuretics, antibiotics, heart-starters, muscle relaxants. In front of him now were three kinds of sedatives and a single pink cortical steroid for intractable skin itches. Pathetic. But of course he hadn’t known he’d be doing Boston and London. And the meager sampling would not diminish the surgical pleasure of slicing and dividing, the happy sacrament of color mixing. He bent over the low table, wrapped in the calm that fell upon him when he was cutting up his pills. He liked the sense of soldierly preparation, the diligence and rigor that helped him pretend he knew what he was doing. It was the sweetest play of hand and eye, slicing the pills, choosing elements to take in combination. It was right there on the card, nicely and brightly pebbled, a way to manage the confusion, to search out a state of being, actually shop among the colors for some altering force that might get him past a momentary panic or some mischance of the body or take him safely through the long evening tides, the western end of the day, a wash of desperation coming over him.

  He regretted not having his illustrated guides with their cautions and warnings and side effects and interactions and lovely color charts. But he hadn’t known he’d be doing an ocean.

  He concentrated deeply, sectioning the tablets with his old scarred stag-handle folding knife, undetected by security at three airports.

  The taxi swung onto Southwark Bridge. Bill had the poems in his lap and occasionally raised a page to his face, muttering lines. A soft warm rain made shaded patterns on the river, bands of wind-brushed shimmer.

  Charlie said, “About this fellow.”

  “Who?”

  “The fellow in Athens who initiated the whole business. I’d like to get your sense of the man.”

  “Is he Lebanese?”

  “Yes. A political scientist. He says he’s only an intermediary, with imperfect knowledge of the group in Beirut. Claims they’re eager to release the hostage.”

  “Are they a new fundamentalist element?”

  “They’re a new communist element.”

  “Are we surprised?” Bill said.

  “There’s a Lebanese Communist Party. There are leftist elements, I understand, aligned with Syria. The PLO has always had a Marxist component and they’re active again in Lebanon.”

  “So we’re not surprised.”

  “We’re not unduly surprised.”

  “I depend on you to tell me when we’re surprised.”

  Two detectives met them in a deserted street not far from Saint Saviours Dock. There was renovation in progress in the area but the buildings here were still intact, mainly red brick structures with hoists and loading bays. They approached an old grain-warehouse leased to a plumbing-supply firm that had just gone out of business. The police had arranged entry and there was still a working telephone.

  The four men went inside. They checked the open space being used for the conference. A rostrum, folding chairs, auxiliary lighting. Then they went into the main office and Charlie telephoned his colleagues and told them to load the bus and come ahead. Bill looked around for a toilet. Seconds after Charlie hung up, the phone rang. One of the detectives answered and all of them could hear the voice at the other end shouting, “Bomb, bomb, bomb,” and the man’s accent made it sound like boom boom boom. This seemed pretty funny to Bill, who had to take a leak and saw no reason to do it in the street.

  The call annoyed the detectives. One of them anyway. The other just gazed across the office at a bookshelf filled with specification manuals. Bill found a toilet and was the last one out. One detective took up a position near the front door and the second man moved their car about fifty yards up the street and then called headquarters.

  Charlie said, “I wish I understood the point.”

/>   He and Bill went across the street and waited for the bomb unit to arrive and search the building.

  “The point is control,” Bill said. “They want to believe they have the power to move us out of a building and into the street. In their minds they see a hundred people trooping down the fire stairs. I told you, Charlie. Some people make bombs, some people make phone calls.”

  Soon they were talking about something else. The rain stopped. Charlie crossed the street, said something to the detective and came back shrugging. They talked about a book Charlie was doing. They talked about the day Charlie’s divorce became final, six years earlier. He recalled the weather, the high clear sky, distanceless, flags whipping on Fifth Avenue and a movie actress getting out of a taxi. Bill reached for his handkerchief. The blast made him jerk half around but he didn’t leave his feet or go back against the wall. He felt the sound in his chest and arms. He jerked and ducked, shielding his head with his forearm, windows blowing out. Charlie said goddamn or go down. He turned his back to the blast wave, bracing himself against the wall with his elbows, hands clasped behind his head, and Bill knew he would have no remember to be impressed. He also knew it was over, nothing worse coming, and he straightened up slowly, looking toward the building but reaching out to touch Charlie’s arm, make sure he was still there, standing and able to move. The detective across the street was in a deep crouch, fumbling with the radio on his belt. The street was filled with glass, snowblinking. The second detective remained in the car a moment, calling in, and then walked toward his partner. They looked over at Charlie and Bill. Dust hung at the second-storey level of the warehouse. The four men met in the middle of the street, glass crunching under their shoes. Charlie brushed off his lapels.

  The bomb experts arrived and then the press bus and some publishing people, more detectives, and Bill sat in the back of the unmarked police car while Charlie huddled with different groups making new plans.

  About an hour later the two men sat under the vaulted skylight in a dining room at the Chesterfield, eating the sole.

  “It means a day’s delay. Two at the most,” Charlie said. “You definitely ought to change hotels so we can move quickly once we’re set.”

  “You showed presence of mind, taking that protective stance,”

  “Actually that’s the recommended air-crash position. Except you don’t do it standing up. I knew I was supposed to lower my head and lock my hands behind my neck but I couldn’t place the maneuver in context. I thought I was on a plane going down.”

  “Your people will find another site.”

  “We have to. We can’t stop now. Even if we go to the bare minimum. Fifteen people in five rowboats on a secluded lake somewhere.”

  “Anybody have a theory?”

  “I talk to an antiterrorist expert tomorrow. Want to come along?”

  “Nape.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “I’ll be in touch, Charlie.”

  “Rowboats are not the answer, come to think of it. Isn’t that where they got Mountbatten?”

  “Fishing boat.”

  “Close enough.”

  Bill knew someone was looking at him, a man sitting alone at a table across the room. It was interesting how the man’s curiosity carried so much information, that he knew who Bill was, that they’d never met, that he was making up his mind whether or not to approach. Bill even knew who the man was, although he could not have said how he knew. It was as if the man had fitted himself to a predetermined space, to an idea of something that was waiting to happen. Bill never looked at the man directly. Everything was a shape, a fate, information flowing.

  “I want to talk about your book,” Charlie said.

  “It’s not done yet. When it’s done.”

  “You don’t have to talk about it. I’ll talk about it. And when it’s done, we can both talk about it.”

  “We were nearly killed a little while ago. Let’s talk about that.”

  “I know how to publish your work. Nobody in this business knows you better than I do. I know what you need.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You need a major house that also has a memory. That’s why they hired me. They want to take a closer look at tradition. I represent something to those people. I represent books. I want to establish a solid responsible thoughtful list and give it the launching power of our mass-market capabilities. We have enormous resources. If you spend years writing a book, don’t you want to see it fly?”

  “How’s your sex life, Charlie?”

  “I can get this book out there in numbers that will astound.”

  “Got a girlfriend?”

  “I had some prostate trouble. They had to reroute my semen.”

  “Where did they send it?”

  “I don’t know. But it doesn’t come out the usual place.”

  “You still perform the act.”

  “Enthusiastically.”

  “But you don’t ejaculate.”

  “Nothing comes out.”

  “And you don’t know what happens to it.”

  “I didn’t ask them what happens to it. It goes back inside. That’s as much as I want to know.”

  “It’s a beautiful story, Charlie. Not a word too long.”

  They looked at dessert menus.

  “When will the book be done?”

  “I’m fixing the punctuation.”

  “Punctuation’s interesting. I make it a point to observe how a writer uses commas.”

  “And you figure two days tops and we’re out of here,” Bill said.

  “This is what we’re hoping. We’re hoping it doesn’t continue. The bomb was the culmination. They made their point even if we don’t know exactly what it is.”

  “I may need to buy a shirt.”

  “Buy a shirt. And let me check you in here. Under the circumstances I think we ought to be able to find each other as expeditiously as possible.”

  “I’ll think about it over coffee.”

  “We use acid-free paper,” Charlie said.

  “I’d just as soon have my books rot when I do. Why should they outlive me? They’re the reason I’m dying before my time.”

  The man stood by the table waiting for them to finish the exchange. Bill looked off into space and waited for Charlie to realize the man was standing there. The table was large enough to accommodate another person and Charlie handled introductions while the waiter brought a chair. The man was George Haddad and when Charlie called him a spokesman for the group in Beirut the man made a gesture of self-deprecation, leaning away from the words, both hands raised. He clearly felt he hadn’t earned the title.

  “I’m a great admirer,” he said to Bill. “And when Mr. Everson suggested you might join us at the press conference I was surprised and deeply pleased. Knowing of course how you shun public appearances.”

  He was clean-shaven, a tall man in his mid-forties, hair gone sparse at the front of his head. He had moist eyes and appeared sad and slightly hulking in a drab gray suit and a plastic watch he might have borrowed from a child.

  “What’s your connection?” Bill said.

  “With Beirut? Let’s say I sympathize with their aims if not their methods. This unit that took the poet is one element in a movement. Barely a movement actually. It’s just an underground current at this stage, an assertion that not every weapon in Lebanon has to be marked Muslim, Christian or Zionist.”

  “Let’s use first names,” Charlie said.

  Coffee came. Bill felt a stinging pinpoint heat, a shaped pain in his left hand, bright and slivered.

  Charlie said, “Who wants to stop this meeting from taking place?”

  “Maybe the war in the streets is simply spreading. I don’t know. Maybe there’s an organization that objects in principle to the release of any hostage, even a hostage they themselves are not holding. Certainly they understand that this man’s release depends completely on the coverage. His freedom is tied to the public announcement of his freedom. You ca
n’t have the first without the second. This is one of many things Beirut has learned from the West. Beirut is tragic but still breathing. London is the true rubble. I’ve studied here and taught here and every time I return I see the damage more clearly.”

  Charlie said, “What do we have to do in your estimation to conduct this meeting safely?”

  “It may not be possible here. The police will advise you to cancel. The next time I don’t think there will be a phone call. I’ll tell you what I think there will be.” And he leaned over the table. “A very large explosion in a crowded room.”

  Bill picked a fragment of glass out of his hand. The others watched. He understood why the pain felt familiar. It was a summer wound, a play wound, one of the bums and knee-scrapes and splinters of half a century ago, one of the bee stings, the daily bloody cuts. You slid into a base and got a raspberry. You had a fight and got a shiner.

  He said, “We have an innocent man locked in a cellar.”

  “Of course he’s innocent. That’s why they took him. It’s such a simple idea. Terrorize the innocent. The more heartless they are, the better we see their rage. And isn’t it the novelist, Bill, above all people, above all writers, who understands this rage, who knows in his soul what the terrorist thinks and feels? Through history it’s the novelist who has felt affinity for the violent man who lives in the dark. Where are your sympathies? With the colonial police, the occupier, the rich landlord, the corrupt government, the militaristic state? Or with the terrorist? And I don’t abjure that word even if it has a hundred meanings. It’s the only honest word to use.”

  Bill’s napkin was bunched on the table in front of him. The two men watched him place the glass fragment in a furrow in the cloth. It glinted like sand, the pebbly greenish swamp sand that belongs to childhood, to the bruises and welts, the fingers nicked by foul tips. He felt very tired. He listened to Charlie talk with the other man. He felt the deadweight of travel, the apathy and vagueness of being in a place that didn’t matter to him, being invisible to himself, sleeping in a room he wouldn’t recognize if he had a picture of it in front of him.