Howard Jacobson - Pussy

Fracassus, meanwhile, was revelling in a freedom he rarely enjoyed. For five minutes in the Nowhere Palace he thought he’d found his Nirvana, but now the tumult of election stimulated his fickle mind. He had no idea what the people were voting for. It was the uproar that aroused him, the flags, the cheering, the atmosphere of combat. He had never seen a crowd before, except from the seventieth floor of the Palace. Close up, it was another event entirely. He couldn’t have known that people massed could generate such heat, or affect the way the very light was refracted. Was the ground shaking or was that his blood moving quicker through his veins? It was as though one of his favourite television programmes had come alive on the streets. Nero could have ridden through on a chariot. Fracassus heard the citizens hailing him. Hail Nero! Hail Fracassus!

Some among the throng put radios to their ears, though Fracassus didn’t know whether that was to drown out the noise of the plebiscite or get more news of it. Vans with loud hailers toured the streets. Two buses faced off in the square, each flashing graphs and figures on giant screens, the same sum appearing now as profit, now as loss, now as what the electorate stood to gain from war, now as what armed conflict with one or other of the sister Republics beyond the Wall would cost them.

Fracassus wanted to know which bus to support. Which side would the Emperor Nero have been on?

The Grand Duke had misgivings. By politics – the politics of which it was time Fracassus gathered some awareness – he didn’t mean supporting one side or another. An overview was what he wanted for his son, an ability to use words like liberty and freedom and know in a rough sort of way what they meant; how, again in a rough sort of way, they should sound; and why, in a more precise sort of way, they were never to be granted. But he didn’t want Fracassus dirtying his hands by actual association. War or Peace? Without being especially enamoured of Peace, no one took the prospect of War seriously. It was just another occasion for a referendum. They might as well have been deciding between meat or fish for lunch. But that was still no reason for Fracassus to be down there mixing with the proponents of either. He was glad, at least, that they had come out without their regalia. Despite the heat he turned up his coat collar and advised Fracassus to do the same. This was not a place for a Grand Duke and his son to be seen.

‘You don’t have to support any bus,’ he said.

‘But which is true?’

There it was, the very thing the Grand Duke feared. Truth! Soon his son would be wearing the flat cap of revolution, loading the bus with explosives and driving it at the Palace.

‘That depends on your angle of vision,’ he said.

‘Well I like the red bus better than the blue bus,’ Fracassus said. ‘It’s got more people around it.’

A scrawny old gentlemen standing by them in the crowd overheard him. Until now he’d been waving his stick at the red bus and cackling. He had wild hair and carried a plastic shopping bag stuffed with papers. Fracassus wondered if he was a soothsayer. In every episode of The Life and Loves of the Emperor Nero a soothsayer appeared wearing rags and waving a stick. There must have been thousands of them in Ancient Rome. ‘You like red better than blue,’ he said, turning his wild eyes on the Prince. ‘That’s the most intelligent political statement I’ve heard all day. Do you hear that, Philander’ – he was shouting now at the Advocate for War, unless he was the Advocate for Peace, addressing the crowd through a loud hailer from the open top of the red bus – ‘I’ve got someone here who understands your message. Better red than dead. Ha!’

The old man threw back his head and cackled again. Fracassus thought his neck might snap. In the Life and Loves of the Emperor Nero the Emperor made a practice of snapping soothsayers’ necks with one hand. He did it with a little twisting gesture, like screwing the top off a bottle. There were schools in the Republic where kids entertained one another in the playground copying that gesture. Bonum nox noctis, you old fart. Snap! Pity poor Fracassus who, having no such friends to play with, had to make his own entertainment.

‘Let me tell you something,’ the old man said, turning again to Fracassus as though surprised to see him still there, ‘a father should never live to see his son grow up. Look at him up there, the fraud, grinning like a choirboy and spewing excrement. He was all excrement when he was a baby and he’s all excrement again. I wish it would blow back down his loud hailer and choke him. Can you hear what he’s saying? The Republic is in danger. Ask him who from and he’ll give you a different answer every day. Today it’s the Republic of Gnossia. They’re going to steal our jobs and rape our women, he says. Have you ever been to the Republic of Gnossia? They have full employment and their women are ten times more beautiful than ours. They would rather impale themselves on the Wall than even visit us. Do you know how I know that? He told me. What do you say to that?’

Fracassus was not accustomed to conversing with strangers. He felt himself colour. He ransacked his intelligence for an answer. He was about to say ‘Fuck, nigger, cunt,’ when he remembered the word he’d learnt that very day. ‘Classy,’ he replied in panic, jutting his jaw.

The soothsayer went wild with excitement, rolling his head so that his hair flew in all directions, gesticulating with his stick, laughing crazily. ‘Do you hear that, Philander – he thinks you’re classy. Another one! And all because I paid for you to have a private education.’

Hearing his name called, the Advocate raised his hand. For a split second he resembled a schoolboy waving to his father from the steps of his school. Fracassus had never been to school or even seen one but he had, without pleasure, watched repeats of Brideshead Revisited on television. All faggots.

The old soothsayer must have read his mind. ‘My fault, all my fault,’ he rambled on. ‘I should never have sent him there in the first place. An academy for scoundrels who speak a smattering of Latin, that’s all it is.’ Then, taking Fracassus by the arm, ‘Come on, come with me and we’ll meet him. He can’t resist an opportunity to demonstrate his charm on someone new. Hey, Philander, give your voice a rest and meet your new fan. He’s a nobody and he looks too young to vote so there’s no advantage to you in talking to him. That should appeal to your sense of the topsy-turvy. Don’t do what’s worth doing, do what isn’t. Your old school motto – Quid debeamus facere oppositum . Come down from your lying battle bus and tell this boy what you’re going to do when you win the vote even though you won’t.’

To the Prince’s acute embarrassment, the Advocate – son or no son, excremental liar or truth-teller – descended and was among them. In a matter of seconds he had pushed through the adoring crowd and was pumping Fracassus’s hand as if it were some magic trick and he the magician.

Fracassus was immediately star-struck. He knew who was pumping his hand. He’d seen him countless times on television, reading the weather forecast. So soothsaying ran in the family. The famous need only one name and Philander was his. No other weather forecaster in the Republic was better known or more loved. Not for the quality of his prognostications but for his looks, the pre-pubescent face, the mischievous smile, the collop of hair the same lemon custard colour as the Grand Duke’s, the Grand Duchess’s, and Fracassus’s own. But above all for the gleam of what critics of him called his mendaciousness. Every grin a lie, they said. But how could one complain when every lie came companioned with a grin.