Daughters of the Revolution Read Online Free PDF

warning—and he’d allowed the moment to pass. It was still unclear to God whether by “we” Aileen Rebozos meant all the women massed behind men and oppressed through the ages, or whether she meant the foot soldiers in the new sexual revolution, of which, she’d assured him, he was also a part, or whether she meant herself and Mr. Rebozos, whose money turned the world.
    Then suddenly God is slapped again, jarred from his complacency. He thinks first of his conscience, but no; it’s glass. Popping sounds are followed by a blast, then screams, and a few commanding male voices. There’s smoke, fire, even laughter—and a rich, almost human scent of burning rubber. He’s downon the curb, his arse pecked by little stones. A cold puddle of snow has melted beneath him. A shard of glass sticks out from his forehead, and he flings it from him as if it might explode.
    Bomb
. The word travels through the air—bomb, a bomb, a bomb blast. Something has blown up. A woman runs down the street directly in front of God, her face closed so tightly, it is not a face. Is it a woman? Her head is anonymous—it could be any head. Instead of hair, it wears a knit woolen cap, blue and green shot through with metallic thread. The figure runs past. Without thinking, an old schoolmaster’s instinct, he reaches out for the coattail. The figure—not precisely a “woman,” though God can’t say why—does not stop or slow. The coat slides down the length of its back, the figure’s arms fall to its sides and shed the sleeves. God grips it neatly, his prize.
    He has seen revolutionary chaos before, on television: Malcolm X, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, Che Guevara, bra-burning women and Ho Chi Minh! A trash receptacle smokes arrogantly on the sidewalk, the metal torn, the trash spilled and burning in the street. It’s all part of the spectacle; everyone claims responsibility for destroying the order he loves; everyone has a recipe for an explosive device. A block away, the Irish police move in. Do-gooders rush in toward the trouble. He remembers the red writing on the walls of the bus where he first touched Mrs. Rebozos:
Are we not drawn onward we few drawn onward to new era?
She pointed out that the words spelled the same question backward and forward, a palindrome.
    The bomb has carried pieces of him away. There’s been a concussion; he is concussed. The angry new women have done it—he has their blue coat as evidence. His ears ring; he can’t remember where he put his wagon. Usually, he parks along one of the side streets, or occasionally, and though it pains him, inthe paid parking underground. But this afternoon, he can’t visualize his car any more than he can see his own face. He finds himself walking along the river, under the bridge. The yellow twilight drains into the dark. He walks until he can’t retrace his steps and the only course is forward. Then he walks in darkness, on the side of the highway, breaking laws.
    He has never taken a journey like this, alone on foot. Not during the first war, which he spent in Italy. Not during the second war, in China. At the edge of the city, he steps into the fringe: sidewalks, crabgrass, narrow houses with covered porches, the metal detritus of family life—tricycles, charcoal grills. His white face must glow in the dark like a moon. He passes an empty public school, half an acre of macadam surrounded by chain-link fence. A young man brushes by him, whispering, “Smoke, smoke, smoke,” and vanishes. God thinks for a moment that he taught this boy in English 6. He continues past empty lots and convenience stores, along a band of gravel. No cars stop; he would not know what to do if they did. His breath steams companionably around his face. Cold rain begins to fall. A pool of yellow light appears, and a sign within the pool reads CHINESE FOOD—COCKTAILS . Behind the sign, a glassed-in room where people eat. In the distance, beyond the