The Angel Esmeralda - Don Delillo [61]
I noticed at once that the girls wore matching jackets. This was new. The picture was sharper and steadier, in color. Then I realized they were seated at a long desk, a news desk, not an ordinary table. Finally the scripts—there were no scripts. They were using a teleprompter, delivering lines at fairly high speed with occasional tactical pauses, well placed.
“Greece is selling bonds, raising euros.”
“Markets are calming.”
“Greece is moving toward a new austerity.”
“Immediate pressure is relieved.”
“Greece and Germany are talking.”
“Votes of confidence. Calls for patience.”
“Greece is ready to restore trust.”
“Aid package of forty billion dollars.”
“How do they say thank you in Greek?”
“Efharisto.”
“Say it again, slowly.”
“F. Harry Stowe.”
“F. Harry Stowe.”
They exchanged a fist-bump, deadpan, without looking at each other.
“The worst may be over.”
“Or the worst is yet to come.”
“Do we know if the Greek bailout will do what it is designed to do?”
“Or will it do just the opposite?”
“What exactly is the opposite?”
“Think about markets elsewhere.”
“Is anyone looking at Portugal?”
“Everyone’s looking at Portugal.”
“High debt, low growth.”
“Borrow, borrow, borrow.”
“Euro, euro, euro.”
“Ireland has a problem. Iceland has a problem.”
“Have we thought about the British pound?”
“The life and death of the British pound.”
“The pound is not the euro.”
“Britain is not Greece.”
“But is the pound showing signs of cracking? Will the euro follow? Is the dollar far behind?”
“There is talk about China.”
“Is there trouble in China?”
“Is there a bubble in China?”
“What is the Chinese currency called?”
“Latvia has the lat.”
“Tonga has the ponga.”
“China has the rebimbi.”
“The rebimbo.”
“China has the rebobo.”
“The rebubu.”
“What happens next?”
“It already happened.”
“Does anyone remember?”
“Market plunges one thousand points in an eighth of a second.”
“A tenth of a second.”
“Faster and faster, lower and lower.”
“A twentieth of a second.”
“Screens glow and vibrate, phones jump off walls.”
“A hundredth of a second. A thousandth of a second.”
“Not real, unreal, surreal.”
“Who is doing this? Where is it coming from? Where is it going?”
“It happened in Chicago.”
“It happened in Kansas.”
“It’s a movie, it’s a song.”
I could feel the mood in the room, a pressing intensity, a need for something more, something stronger. I remained detached, watching the girls, wondering about their mother, what she had in mind, where she was leading us.
Laurie said softly, in a lilting voice: “Who do we trust? Where do we turn? How do we ever get to sleep?”
Kate said briskly, “Can computer technology keep up with computerized trading? Will long-term doubts yield to short-term doubts?”
“What is a fat-finger trade? What is a naked short sale?”
“How many trillions of dollars pledged to bleeding euro economies?”
“How many zeros is a trillion?”
“How many meetings deep in the night?”
“Why does the crisis keep getting worse?”
“Brazil, Korea, Japan, Wherever.”
“What are they doing and where are they doing it?”
“They’re on strike again in Greece.”
“They’re marching in the streets.”
“They’re burning banks in Greece.”
“They’re hanging banners from sacred temples.”
“Peoples of Europe, rise up.”
“Peoples of the world, unite.”
“The tide is rising, the tide is turning.”
“Which way? How fast?”
There was a long pause. We watched and waited. Then the news report reached its defining moment, do-or-die, the point of no return.
The girls recited together:
“Stalin Khrushchev Castro Mao.”
“Lenin Brezhnev Engels—Pow!”
These names, that exclamation, delivered in rapid singsong, roused the inmates to spontaneous noise. What kind of noise was it? What did it mean? I sat stone-faced, in the middle of it, trying to understand. The girls repeated the lines once, then again. The men yelled and clamored, these flabby white-collar felons, seeming to reject everything they’d believed all their lives.
“Brezhnev Khrushchev Mao and Ho.”
“Lenin