Stanley Elkin - The MacGuffin

But Druff was in it deep now. Mikey would have his say. Bored or not, Druff would have to hear him out. It was, he supposed, almost his official duty as City Commissioner of Streets.

So the kid spoke his piece. In his old dad’s living room had, as it were, his day in court. Druff imagined Mikey rather enjoyed it, glad to get it off his chest finally, and probably feeling grateful that it was his father to whom he was telling the story, as if the story he was telling, no matter the light in which it put him, discharged, at least a little, some filial obligation he may have felt toward the old man, made up for never having brought home good enough grades, say, or given him grandkids.

It was full of detail.

He admitted that on the night Su’ad was run down he had been with her. They had attended the lecture together, an overview of the Arab- Israeli question delivered by an Arab congressman from the state of Delaware with whose conciliatory views Su’ad was in strong disagreement. Afterward, during the Q and A, Su’ad had quarreled with him. How, she asked, could he betray his own people? How, she wondered, could he even bring himself to lick up under the Israelis by referring to them at least three times in his talk as “our Israeli cousins”? The gentleman from Delaware said he felt both sides must rededicate themselves to finding a reasonable solution — he had suggested one, but Mikey had forgotten the details — to what, given the region’s long, complicated history and the antagonists’ apparently intractable positions, were problems that were only apparently insoluble.

“Solutions to apparently insoluble problems?” Su’ad had said. “But, sir,” she’d said, “I believe in the fell-swoop theory of history.”

“The fell-swoop theory of history?”

“Yes,” Su’ad had said, “when problems are apparently insoluble, final solutions must apparently be found.”

There were Jews in the audience. They made angry hoots and catcalls. Two or three started to come forward.

And Mikey, for love, rising in her defense, speaking out, backing her up, for love having his say in public, even if it was only “Stand back. Don’t touch her!” In the dark, Druff imagined, his eyes shut, mediating between Su’ad and the two or three furious Jews with his big body.

It was only afterward, he told his father, as they walked together to the parking lot to pick up the car in which he intended to drive her back to her dorm, that he thought to remind her, well out of hearing of the last stragglers leaving the auditorium, that his own father was a politician, a man who’d devoted his life to serving the public, and that it was the duty of such people to find solutions to problems that seemed insoluble and that, really, she had gone just a little too far, really, didn’t she think?

“Your father,” Su’ad had said, “doesn’t serve the public, he serves the infrastructure. He sends men to fix the streets. In winter he dispatches trucks to salt them, just as if they were soups or meats or vegetables.”

“Me?” Druff said. “You stood up for me? I’m touched.”

“Thanks, Dad, but that wasn’t really exactly the way. She was in a bad mood. PMS. You don’t normally think of women in chadors as even having periods, but, I don’t know, something was eating at her. If I said ‘black’ she’d say ‘white,’ if I said ‘up’ she’d say ’down.’ If I said ‘rugs’ she said… Well, you know what I mean.”

“Rugs?”

“Sir?”

“You said ‘rugs.’ What did she say?”

“It’s an example,” his son said uncomfortably. “I don’t think I ever actually said ‘rugs.’ ”

“Did Su’ad smuggle rugs, Mikey?” Druff asked, closing in, getting on, he supposed, toward the bottom of things, though still not excited (despite the fact that several times now he’d interrupted his son’s relation of the account of the proceedings on the night of — never mind, he’d actually forgotten — to stop them — Mikey, Su’ad — somewhere between the auditorium — those last, probably Jewish, stragglers — and the parking lot where he would admit her into the car she couldn’t possibly be both riding in and run down by at the same time), really not even off boredom’s dime, puzzles, as he’d just so recently noted, being always more interesting than their solutions, though how he, the most nouveau of gumshoes, could possibly know this he did not possibly know.

“Su’ad? Su’ad was a rug merchant, Daddy.”

“Ahh,” Druff said, “a rug merchant. She had a license to sell rugs?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know if she had a license.”

“You never saw it.”

“I never asked about any license.”

“But Mikey,” Druff said, “there are all sorts of city ordinances. Restaurants have to be licensed to dispense food and drink. People are licensed to drive taxis, to sell newspapers from kiosks. Elevators are licensed. Souvenir vendors pay license fees before they’re permitted to hawk their wares outside stadiums — jerseys with the team logo emblazoned on the front, pennants for the home team, pennants for the visitors. My God, son, the man who sells you your hot dog from his little cart has to have a license. His ketchup is licensed, his mustard and napkins and piccalilli. These were rugs from the Middle East, Iran, from all those problematic, difficult trouble spots the gentleman from Delaware was telling you about that night. Why would the licensing requirement on a high-ticket item like a Persian carpet from a region of hot, intractable positions and insoluble problems be waived when a man selling pencils out of his cap or an organ grinder with a monkey dressed up like a bellboy has to go through City Hall before he’s allowed to hit the streets? Can you think of a reason?”

“No.”

“I mean, think about it, if you were in Su’ad’s position I should think you’d go around absolutely flaunting your license, waving it in front of you like someone surrendering on a battlefield with a white handkerchief.”

“I guess.”

“Well, of course,” said Druff. “So if you never asked to see it, and she never offered to show it to you, don’t you suppose it’s stretching things to say she was a rug merchant?”

“I guess.”

“Sure.”

“Su’ad smuggled rugs,” Mike said flatly, his face pale, his spirit without heft. His eyes were closed now. Squeezed tight. He seemed diminished in size to Druff, his very bulk deflated. Druff was as still as his son. He waited him out. When Mikey finally opened his eyes to look at his father, Druff simply stared at him. He offered no reassurances, and something new seemed gradually to creep across his son’s face like a shadow — bafflement, curiosity.

Because Druff was this hope pumper. It was his nature. He pumped hope for Mikey, for Rose Helen, even, as a politician, for his constituents, telling them their lives could be better, simpler, fixed like tickets, bargained for and traded up. It was not only his nature, it was his job. Maybe it had been his job even before it had become his nature. I have to be a hope pumper, Druff thought, it’s what I do. Nevertheless, the hope pumper wasn’t pumping no hope now. The well was dry. And he was waiting.

Then Mikey resumed explaining himself. Though he managed to follow him, Druff, distracted, was barely able to take it all in. He had to concentrate. Other things were on his mind, too.

“I don’t know what she wanted from me. When we got to the parking lot she was still bitching. It was that lecturer she was angry at, not me, the audience that hissed her and booed her when she made that remark. A few of them were trailing us, some of them were actually lined up along the path waiting for her as we went by. Their quarrel was with Su’ad, not with me. They made fun of the way she dressed. They passed remarks. I don’t think she even heard them, that she paid any attention. She was too busy complaining to me, arguing with me. As if I’d said those things. You’ve heard her. You know how she gets. She’s pretty hipped on this Palestine thing. They followed us to the parking lot. They milled around. I’m saying, ‘Look Su’ad, just get in the car. This isn’t any time to be standing out here.’ And she’s still lecturing me. About U.S. policy, the Israel lobby… Bitching at me as if I were responsible for what was happening over there. Finally I just had to shove her into the car. I mean, they were steamed.”