The Angel Esmeralda - By Don DeLillo Page 0,50
I did what I did to put myself in this place. There was a time in early English law when a felony was punishable by removal of one of the felon’s body parts. Would this be an incentive to modern memory?
I imagine myself being here forever, it’s already forever, eating another meal with the political consultant who licks his thumb to pick bread crumbs off the plate and stare at them, or standing in line behind the investment banker who talks to himself aloud in beginner’s Mandarin. I think about money. What did I know about it, how much did I need it, what would I do when I got it? Then I think about Sylvan Telfair, aloof in his craving, the billion-euro profit being separable from the things it bought, money the coded impulse, ideational, a kind of discreet erection known only to the man whose pants are on fire.
“The fear continues to grow.”
“Fear of numbers, fear of spreading losses.”
“The fear is Dubai. The talk is Dubai. Dubai has the debt. Is it fifty-eight billion dollars or eighty billion dollars?”
“Bankers are pacing marble floors.”
“Or is it one hundred and twenty billion dollars?”
“Sheiks are gazing into hazy skies.”
“Even the numbers are panicking.”
“Think of the prominent investors. Hollywood stars. Famous footballers.”
“Think of islands shaped like palm trees. People skiing in a shopping mall.”
“The world’s only seven-star hotel.”
“The world’s richest horse race.”
“The world’s tallest building.”
“All this in Dubai.”
“Taller than the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building combined.”
“Combined.”
“Swim in the pool on the seventy-sixth floor. Pray in the mosque on the one hundred and fifty-eighth floor.”
“But where is the oil?”
“Dubai has no oil. Dubai has debt. Dubai has a huge number of foreign workers with nowhere to work.”
“Enormous office buildings stand empty. Apartment buildings unfinished in blowing sand. Think of the blowing sand. Dust storms concealing the landscape. Empty storefronts in every direction.”
“But where is the oil?”
“The oil is in Abu Dhabi. Say the name.”
“Abu Dhabi.”
“Now let’s say it together.”
“Abu Dhabi,” they said.
It was Feliks Zuber, the oldest inmate at the camp, who’d chosen the children’s program for viewing. Feliks was here every day now, front row center, carrying with him a sentence of seven hundred and twenty years. He liked to turn and nod at those nearby, making occasional applause gestures without bringing his trembling hands into contact, a small crumpled man, looking nearly old enough to be on the verge of outliving his sentence, tinted glasses, purple jumpsuit, hair dyed death black.
The length of his sentence impressed the rest of us. It was a term handed down for his master manipulation of an investment scheme involving four countries and leading to the collapse of two governments and three corporations, with much of the money channeled in the direction of arms shipments to rebels in a breakaway enclave of the Caucasus.
The breadth of his crimes warranted a far more stringent environment than this one but he’d been sent here because he was riddled with disease, his future marked in weeks and days. Men were sometimes sent here to die, in easeful circumstances. We knew it from their faces, mainly, the attenuated range of vision, the sensory withdrawal, and from the stillness they brought with them, a cloistered manner, as if bound by vows. Feliks was not still. He smiled, waved, bounced and shook. He sat on the edge of his chair when the girls delivered news of falling markets and stunned economies. He was a man watching an ancient truism unfold on wide-screen TV. He would take the world with him when he died.
The soccer field was part of a haunted campus. A grade school and high school had been closed because the county did not have the resources to maintain them. The antiquated buildings were partly demolished now, a few wrecking machines still there, asquat in mud.
The inmates were glad to keep the field in playable condition, chalking the lines and arcs, planting corner flags, sinking the goals firmly in the ground. The games were an earnest pastime for the players, men mostly middle-aged, a few older, two or three younger, all in makeshift uniforms, running, standing, walking, crouching, often simply bending from the waist, breathless, hands on knees, looking into the scuffed turf where their lives were mired.
There were fewer spectators as the days grew colder, then fewer players. I kept showing up, blowing on my hands, beating my arms across my chest. The teams were coached by inmates, the games refereed by inmates, and those of us watching