Mao II - Don Delillo [79]
Karen went backwards into the lives of the women, she saw them coming toward the camera in the narrow streets, then back even further to when they were growing up, to when they put on the veil and looked out at the world from the black wrapping, backwards to what it felt like dressed head to foot in black the first time, calling out a name under the burning sky.
The living carried signs and chanted. Khomeini the idol-smasher is with God today. Hours into night, under floodlights, the living beat their hands against their chests in grief.
Early in the park, first thing, she talked to those who were awake. A few people sat huddled on benches with coffee in paper cups and a woman spread a blanket over the pool fence.
Karen said, “We will all be a single family soon. Because the day is coming. Because the total vision is being seen.”
Then she climbed onto the bandshell stage and went among the bodies in sleeping bags and burlap and plastic. She talked to people one by one, squatting down flatfooted, her fingers linked an inch above the floor.
She said, “Prepare the day. Be ready in your mind and heart. There is plan for all mankind.”
She made her way across the stage, searching for bodies with open eyes.
She said, “Heart of God is only homeland. Pali-pali. Total children of the world.”
The sounds of bitter sleep, the moans that rose from untellable dreams. And she talked to those who lay awake. Totally talked. Rough coughing all around her, the nasal scrape, the measure of those bodies breathing, it sounded very much like work. Stale air holding close, the old dead smell of bedding and sweat and pee and slept-in clothes. She talked in the intimacy of first light with sleeping people all around.
She said, “For there is single vision now. Man come to us from far away. God all minute every day. Hurry-up time come soon. ”
The police minicab scooted past the box huts webbed in blue sheeting, past two men in hooded jerseys sharing a smoke. Past the woman in the broken folding chair sitting lopsidedly asleep. Past the man on the ground with pigeons moving near his head, poking for food in his hair and clothes. Past the whole population that knows the laws of the nomad encampment, all their bundles tight, bags containing bags, people edged down, reading the space their lives are assigned.
Karen came down from the stage and looked for someone who might listen. She had Master’s total voice ready in her head.
13
There were two stories about the ferry. It was hit by shell-fire from gunboats about thirty miles from the Lebanese coast and it turned around and came back to Larnaca. Two dead, one missing, fifteen wounded. Or the ferry was very near the Lebanese port of Junieh when it was struck by land-based artillery batteries or rocket launchers and it turned around and came back to Larnaca. One dead, one missing, nine wounded.
Bill was down at the harbor watching the ferry put in. He counted eighteen holes in the white hull. The ferry was called Zeno the Stoic and held one thousand passengers but the story was that only fifty-five had made the voyage.
Another story concerned the gunboats operating in Lebanese waters. They might have been Syrian, Israeli or Lebanese, and if they were Lebanese the story had it that they might have been operating from a makeshift base controlled by a Christian general who thought the ferry was an Iraqi freighter carrying arms to a rival faction.
But if the ferry was hit by land-based batteries, the story was that Shiites loyal to Syria did the shelling, or Shiites loyal to Iran, or possibly Christians loyal to Israel. The other story said the Syrians themselves were responsible.
Bill watched passengers come out of the opening in the bow and walk slowly along the pier toward a group of waiting people. It was midday and hot and he thought if he’d arrived a day or two sooner he would now be among them, slumped and trudging or dead somewhere or said to be missing. The story was that the casualties had been picked up at sea by Royal Air Force helicopters and taken to one of the