Mao II - Don Delillo [72]
She liked climbing the ladder to Brita’s bed with the little TV in hand and the loft all dark and sitting near the ceiling in the glow, watching without sound.
A daylit scene comes on of a million people in a great square and many banners swung aloft with Chinese writing. She sees people sitting with hands calmly folded over knees. She sees in the deep distance a portrait of Mao Zedong.
Then rain comes on. They’re marching in the rain, a million Chinese.
Then people riding bicycles past burnt-out vehicles. Bicyclists wearing rain shrouds and holding umbrellas. She sees scorched military trucks with people inspecting closely, awed to be so near, and lampposts in the distance arching over trees.
A group of old men come on stiffly posed in Mao suits.
She sees soldiers in the darkness who come jogging through the streets. She is mesmerized by rows and rows of jogging troops and those riot guns they carry.
Then people being routed in the dark, great crowds rent and split, the way a crowd folds away, leaving a space that looks confused.
They show high officials in Mao suits.
The soldiers jogging in the streets, entering the vast area of the daylit square although it is night now. There is something about troops jogging out of streets and avenues into a great open space. They are jogging in total drag step almost lazily with those little guns at port arms and the crowd breaking apart.
Then the portrait of Mao in the daylit square with paint spattered on his head.
The troops come jogging in total cadence in that lazy drag step, row after row, and she wants it to keep on going, keep showing the rows of jogging troops with their old-fashioned helmets and toylike guns.
They show a smoldering corpse in the street.
There are dead bodies attached to fallen bicycles, flames shooting in the dark. The bodies are still on the bikes and there are other bicyclists looking on, some wearing sanitary masks. You could actually say a pile of bodies and many of the dead still seated on their bikes.
What is the word, dispersed? The crowd dispersed by jogging troops who move into the great space.
One crowd replaced by another.
It is the preachment of history, whoever takes the great space and can hold it longest. The motley crowd against the crowd where everyone dresses alike.
They show the portrait of Mao up close, a clean new picture, and he has those little mounds of hair that bulge out his head and the great wart below his mouth that she tries to recall if the wart appears on the version Andy drew with a pencil that she has on the wall in the bedroom at home. Mao Zedong. She likes that name all right. But it is funny how a picture. It is funny how a picture what?
She hears a car alarm go off in the street.
She changes channels and a million Chinese come on in the daylit square. She is hoping to catch more shots of jogging troops. They show the bicycle dead, a soldier’s body hanging from a girder, the row of old officials in Mao suits.
What does it mean that all these old men are dressed in Mao suits and the people in the square are all in shirtsleeves?
The motley crowd dispersed.
They show the great state portrait in the deep distance and she is pretty certain there is no wart in Andy’s drawing.
There is something about troops entering a square, jogging row after row in lazy cadence. She keeps changing channels to see the troops.
They show the bicycle dead.
The daylit square comes on again. It is funny how a picture shows the true person even when it is incomplete.
And in the street when she goes out later there is a taxi that has skidded into a parked car and a third car’s alarm is sounding. People stand around eating and watching. The sodium-vapor lamps bend over the incandescent scene and in the vertigo of intermingled places, the great square in Beijing and the wind-smoked downtown street and the space in the squat building where the TV sits, she stands peering at the crushed car, looking for upside-down bodies and blood dashed everywhere.
They went by. Spare a little change. Went by. Still love you. Spare a little