Don DeLillo - Zero K

Half a dozen troops poised within a ruined battlement, looking over the parapet, rifle butts protruding from the wall notches, and one soldier wears a comic-strip facemask, brightly colored, long pink face with green eyebrows, rouged cheeks and a leering red mouth. Everything else is black-and-white.

I did not have to ask myself what the purpose was, the meaning behind all this, the mindset. It was Stenmark. It was here because. The visual equivalent, more or less, of his address to the group in the boardroom.

The boardroom. When was that? Who exactly was in the group? Stenmark’s world war. The man passionate, trembling at times.

Men in black walking single-file, each with a long sword, sunup, ritual murder, black head to foot, a chill discipline marking their stride.

Soldiers asleep in a bunker, stacks of sandbags.

Exodus: masses of people carrying whatever possessions they can manage, clothing, floor lamps, carpets, dogs. Flames rising across the screen behind them.

It takes me a while to notice that the soundtrack has become pure sound. A prolonged signal that rejects any trace of expressive intent.

Riot police tossing stun grenades at people retreating across a broad promenade.

Two elderly people on bicycles in devastated terrain. In time they ride alongside a column of tanks in a snowy field, a single limp body visible in a ditch.

Bodies: slaughtered men in a jungle clearing, vultures stepping among the corpses.

It was awful and I watched. I began to think of others watching, other screens, other halls, level after level throughout the entire complex.

Children outside a minivan, waiting to enter, black smoke hanging still in the distance, one child looking back that way, the others turned toward the camera, faces blank.

Hand-to-hand, six or seven men with knives and bayonets, some in camo jackets, concentrated bloodletting, up close, a tall man staggered, ready to fall, the others thrusting into the instant of stop-action.

Another drone image, ruined town, ghost town, small figures scavenging among the rubble.

A soldier’s unshaved face, the raw warrior breed, black knit cap, cigarette jutting from his mouth.

A cleric in rapid stride, Orthodox priest, canonical garments, his cape, his cassock, people marching behind him, others joining, folding into the picture, fists raised.

Facedown corpse on a potholed road, bomb debris everywhere.

The halls are jammed with people watching the screens. All of them thinking my thoughts.

Another comic-strip facemask, a cartoon facemask, a soldier among others, formed up, rifle held across upper body, his white face, purple nose, red lips curled in a sardonic sneer.

A woman in a chador, seen from the rear, stepping out of a car and walking head-down into a crowded square where a few people notice and watch and then begin to scatter, camera pulling back, then the blast, purely visual, seeming to rip the screen apart and shred the air around us. All those watching.

Mourners at graveside, some with automatic weapons strapped over their shoulders, the same black smoke seen earlier, a long way off, not climbing or spreading but utterly, eerily still, resembling a painted backdrop.

A small child with a funny hat squatting bare-ass to crap in the snow.

Then there is a pause and the steady keening noise of the soundtrack fades away. The screen fills with a numb gray sky and the camera slowly levels and the first impressive image is repeated.

Troops come striding out of the mist.

But this time the shot is prolonged and the men keep coming and there are wounded among them, limping figures, bloodied faces, a few men helmeted, most wearing black knit caps.

Sound resumes, realistic now, explosions somewhere, aircraft flying low, and the men begin to advance more warily, weapons held tight to bodies. They move past a mound of burning tires into city streets, buildings collapsed, wreckage everywhere. I watch them walking over shattered stonework and there are isolated shouts soon overwhelmed by the concentrated discharge of weapons.

It looks and sounds like traditional war, men in arms, and I recall the warped nostalgia that Stenmark had talked about, all the world wars embedded in these images, a soldier with a cigarette in his mouth, a soldier asleep in his bunker, a bearded soldier with a bandaged head.

Sounds of local gunfire and the men take cover, searching out the source, firing back, and the soundtrack flows into the action, loud, close, voices calling, and I have to step back from the screen even as the camera becomes more intimately involved, creeping along the terrain for close-ups of men’s faces, young and not so young, fingers gripping triggers, bodies edged against the frame of a ruined structure. It’s quick and clear and magnified, a sense of something impending, and all I’m able to do is watch and listen, a sudden clutter of sound and image, the camera sways and jitters and then finds a man standing in the hulk of a wrecked car, rifle sweeping the area. He fires several times, upper body flinching in rhythm. He ducks down and waits. We all wait. The camera scans the area and it is empty debris and light rain and then the single figure is back in sight, kneeling on the driver’s seat and firing once out of the shattered side window. Periods of near silence and the camera remains angled on the crouched man, who wears a headband, no helmet, and then the firing resumes from various quarters and the picture jumps and the man is hit. This is what I think I see. The camera loses him and catches only traces of muddled background. The noise becomes intense, rapid firing, a voice repeating the same word, and then he is back, wandering out into the open, without his rifle, camera steadying, and he is hit again and goes to his knees and I’m reciting these words to myself as I watch. He is hit again and goes to his knees and there is a distinct image of the figure, khaki field jacket, jeans and boots, spiky hair, he is three times life size, here, above me, shot and bleeding, stain spreading across his chest, young man, eyes shut, surpassingly real.

It was Emma’s son. It was Stak.

He topples forward and the camera spins away and that’s who it was, the son, the boy. Battle tanks approaching now and I need to see him again because even though there is no doubt, it happened too fast, it was not enough. A dozen tanks in lazy array rolling over sandbag barriers and I stand here waiting. Why would they show it again? But I have to wait, I need to see it. The tanks move along a road that bears a sign with Cyrillic and Roman characters. Konstantinovka . There is a crude drawing of a skull above the name.

Stak in Ukraine, a self-defense group, a volunteer battalion. What else could it be? I keep looking and waiting. Did the recruiters know his age or even his name? He’s a native son come home. Birth name, acquired name, nickname. All I know is Stak and maybe this is all there is to know, the kid who became a country of one.

I have to stay until the screen goes dark. I have to wait and see. And if they send an escort for me, the escort will have to wait. And if Stak doesn’t reappear, then let the picture fade, the sound die, the screen roll up, the entire hall go dark. The other halls empty out, an orderly flow of people, but this hall goes dark and I stand here with my eyes shut. All the times I’ve done this before, stand in a dark room, motionless, eyes shut, weird kid and grown man, was I making my way toward a space such as this, long cold empty hall, doors and walls in matching colors, dead silence, shadow streaming toward me.

Once the dark is total, I will simply stand and wait, trying hard to think of nothing.

I see a taxi parked three or four feet from the sidewalk and then a man in the gutter on his knees, shoes off, set behind him, and he is bowing, head to the pavement, and it takes me a moment to understand that he is the driver of the taxi and that the direction is Mecca, he is bowing toward Mecca.