Mao II - Don Delillo [29]
Bill said, “Have you ever flown over Greenland with the rising sun? Four seasons, four major compass headings.”
He took his whiskey up off the floor.
Brita said, “I’ve heard about a man and woman who are walking the length of the Great Wall of China, approaching each other from opposite directions. Every time I think of them, I see them from above, with the Wall twisting and winding through the landscape and two tiny human figures moving toward each other from remote provinces, step by step. I think this is a story of reverence for the planet, of trying to understand how we belong to the planet in a new way. And it’s strange how I construct an aerial view so naturally.”
“Hikers in shaggy boots,” Karen said.
“No, artists. And the Great Wall is supposedly the only man-made structure visible from space, so we see it as part of the total planet. And this man and woman walk and walk. They’re artists. I don’t know what nationality. But it’s an art piece. It’s not Nixon and Mao shaking hands. It’s not nationality, not politics.”
“Yak-hair boots,” Scott said.
“Those shaggy boots they wear in the land of the blue snow or whatever.”
“When I think of China, what do I think of?”
“People,” Karen said.
“Crowds,” Scott said. “People trudging along wide streets, pushing carts or riding bikes, crowd after crowd in the long lens of the camera so they seem even closer together than they really are, totally jampacked, and I think of how they merge with the future, how the future makes room for the nonachiever, the nonaggressor, the trudger, the nonindividual. Totally calm in the long lens, crowd on top of crowd, pedaling, trudging, faceless, sort of surviving nicely.”
Karen reached across the table and cut Bill’s lamb into neat pieces for him.
“I was telling Scott,” she said. “What was I saying?”
“They have a security detail trained in babies,” Scott said. “A nationwide chain of baby-proof hotels.”
“I was saying about this official orange sign of the state.”
Brita gave a delayed laugh, scanning the table for cigarettes.
“I believe in the God of the stumblebum,” Bill said. “The waitress with a throbbing tooth.”
Scott laughed because Brita was laughing.
He cut some bread.
He said, “The book is finished but will remain in typescript. Then Brita’s photos appear in a prominent place. Timed just right. We don’t need the book. We have the author.”
“I am in pain,” Brita said. “Pour more wine.”
She laughed, turning in her chair to scan the room for cigarettes.
Scott laughed.
Bill looked at his food, seeming to know it was changed somehow.
“Or maybe not a prominent place,” Scott said. “Maybe a little journal in the corn belt.”
“No, no, no, no,” Karen said. “Let’s imagine Bill on TV. He is on the sofa talking.”
“We have the pictures, let’s use them to advantage. The book disappears into the image of the writer.”
“No, wait, he is sitting in a chair facing a host in a chair, leaning real close, a bespectacled host with his chin in his fist.”
“Did you actually see the baby?” Brita said.
Scott laughed and this made Brita laugh.
Bill said, “Our theme is four. Earth, air, fire and water.”
“What’s the Day of Blood?” Karen said. “Not that I couldn’t easily guess.”
Scott didn’t take his eyes off Brita.
“Bill has the idea that writers are being consumed by the emergence of news as an apocalyptic force.”
“He told me, more or less.”
“The novel used to feed our search for meaning. Quoting Bill. It was the great secular transcendence. The Latin mass of language, character, occasional new truth. But our desperation has led us toward something larger and darker. So we turn to the news, which provides an unremitting mood of catastrophe. This is where we find emotional experience not available elsewhere. We don’t need the novel. Quoting Bill. We don’t even need catastrophes, necessarily. We only need the reports and predictions and warnings.”
Karen watched Bill touch his fork to a piece of meat.
He said, “I know the road sign you mean. The one for the deaf