Mao II - Don Delillo [95]
“And you reply with terror.”
“He is saying terror is what we use to give our people their place in the world. What used to be achieved through work, we gain through terror. Terror makes the new future possible. All men one man. Men live in history as never before. He is saying we make and change history minute by minute. History is not the book or the human memory. We do history in the morning and change it after lunch.”
She reloads and shoots.
“What happened to the hostage?”
She waits, her thumb on the shutter release. She lowers the camera and looks at the interpreter.
He says, “We have no foreign sponsors. Sometimes we do business the old way. You sell this, you trade that. Always there are deals in the works. So with hostages. Like drugs, like weapons, like jewelry, like a Rolex or a BMW. We sold him to the fundamentalists.”
Brita thinks about this.
“And they are keeping him,” she says.
“They are doing whatever they are doing.”
Rashid raises his glass to drink. She sees his right hand is shaky. She repositions the camera and resumes shooting.
He puts down the glass and looks into the camera.
He says, “Mao believed in the process of thought reform. It is possible to make history by changing the basic nature of a people. When did he realize this? Was it at the height of his power? Or when he was a guerrilla leader, at the beginning, with a small army of vagrants and outcasts, concealed in the mountains? You must tell me if you think I’m totally mad.”
She leans across the table and takes his picture.
He says, “Mao regarded armed struggle as the final and greatest action of human consciousness. It is the final drama and the final test. And if many thousands die in the struggle? Mao said death can be light as a feather or heavy as a mountain. You die for the people and the nation, your death is massive and intense. Die for the oppressors, die working for the exploiters and manipulators, die selfish and vain and you float away like a feather of the smallest bird.”
She moves toward the end of the roll.
He looks into the camera and says, “Be completely honest. I want to hear you say it, so I’ll finally know. Living in this filth and stink. Talking to these children every day, all the time, over and over. But I believe every word, you know. This room is the first minute of the new nation. Now tell me what you think.”
The interpreter drinks and wipes his mouth with a napkin.
“He is saying very simple. There is a longing for Mao that will sweep the world.”
Eloquent macho bullshit. But she says nothing because what can she say. She runs through the roll, leaving a single exposure. On an impulse she walks over to the boy at the door and removes his hood. Lifts it off his head and drops it on the floor. Doesn’t lift it very gently either. She is smiling all the time. And takes two steps back and snaps his picture.
She does this because it seems important.
It takes the boy a moment to react. He gives her a look of slow and intelligent contempt. He wants her to see every muscle moving in his face. He is very dark, wearing the picture of his father safety-pinned to his shirt, and his eyes are slightly murderous, this is the only word, but also calm and completely aware. He knows her. He wants her to think she is someone he has thought about and decided to hate. His hair is matted and sweaty from the hood and he hates her not because she has humiliated him but because he knows who she is, there is pleasure in his knowing, a violence in the eye that shows how hate and rage repair the soul.
She sees his eyes decide, the little flash of letting go, and he attacks her now. She protects the camera, turning a shoulder toward the boy, and she thinks it is only seconds before the interpreter will step between them. The boy hits her hard in the forearm and reaches in for the camera and she throws an elbow that misses and then slaps him across the face.
There is a pause while everyone reflects on what has happened. They see it again. Brita feels it beating in her chest, happening again.
She waits