Mao II - Don Delillo [88]
Bill has never walked into a place and told them who he is. They were still boarding. The light was the kind that splits the sky, a high sulfur spearhead fading into night. He went to find his compartment, which consisted of three wire hangers and a bunk. He grew dizzy again and lay down, his forearm over his face to keep the light out. The boat whistle sounded, making him think it was nice, inside the pain, that boats still have whistles that seem to call a song. He thought he was resting well, having a good rest. He thought the pages he’d done showed an element of conflict, the wrong kind of exertion or opposition, a stress in two directions, and he realized in the end he wasn’t really thinking about the prisoner. Who is the boy, he thought.
It was writing that caused his life to disappear.
No blood to head.
He thought of the time, when was it.
Can you wait two shakes.
He fell away from the pain and tried not to return.
He thought of the time, when was it, sitting in a taxi on the way to Idlewild it was called then and the driver said, “I was born,” right, and the point is that we were going to get there about two and a half hours before flight time due to some typical personal mixup and the driver said, “I was born under the old tutelage the earlier the better,” and he told himself at the time be sure to remember this line to recite to a friend or use in a book because these were the important things, born under the old tutelage, and it made his heart shake to hear these things in the street or bus or dime store, the uninventable poetry, inside the pain, of what people say.
He wanted devoutly to be forgotten.
He fell away again, steeply this time, and changed his mind about not returning but he’d forgotten the line, never told it, never used it, maybe thirty-five years ago, Kennedy was Idlewild, time was money, the farmer was in the dell, so steeply it scared him, made him try hard to return.
His father. Can you wait two shakes.
His father. I keep telling you and telling you and telling you.
His mother. I like it better with the sleeves rolled down.
He could hear his breathing change, feel a slowness come upon him, familiar though never felt before, an old slow monotone out of the history of shallow breathing, deeply and totally known.
Measure your head before ordering.
His father. We need to have a confab, Junior.
He knew it completely. The glow, the solus. And it became the motion of the sea, the ship sailing morningward toward the sun.
The gashed hillside above Junieh was clustered with balconied buildings that looked red-fleshed in the early light. Down by the seafront a few open-sided trucks were parked near the disembarking point, stocked with food and drink. Once the passengers were all ashore the cleaning crew boarded and an old man with a limp took the cabins along the starboard side on the upper deck. When he came to the man lying in the bunk he looked at the bruised and unshaved face and the dirty clothes and he put a gentle hand to the pale throat, feeling for the slightest beat. He said a prayer and went through the man’s belongings, leaving the insignificant cash, the good shoes, the things in the bag, the bag itself, but feeling it was not a crime against the dead to take the man’s passport and other forms of identification, anything with a name and a number, which he could sell to some militia in Beirut.
14
He heard a car door slam on the gravel road and then