Howard Jacobson - Pussy

Professor Probrius wasn’t sure that was a good idea. The Prince had only recently got off a long haul flight and was no doubt suffering jet-lag.

‘And I have just knocked someone out with my fist,’ Fracassus added.

The Minister roared his approval. ‘Show me how you did it.’

‘Not a good idea,’ Probrius put in, fearing another diplomatic incident. ‘Perhaps in a few days, when the Prince is recovered, Minister.’

‘Just name the day. That will be beautiful. I have a full size wrestling ring.’

‘That is an occasion we all look forward to,’ said Dr Cobalt.

‘Looking forward can be dangerous,’ said Spravchik, ‘but not as dangerous as looking back.’

Fracassus decided against trying to match his verbal style again. ‘How long have you been doing your show?’ he enquired instead.

‘Is a question I am always asked: which came first, your political career or show business? Chicken/egg, egg-/chicken. I say they came together. What’s the difference? The people love my show and vote for me. The people vote for me then watch my show. Trust the people. They don’t make the false divisions intellectuals do. Whoever touches the soul of the people embraces truth. The people sometimes need guidance but they are never wrong. The people are beautiful. You want tickets?’

Probrius and Cobalt were about to shake their heads but Fracassus nodded his.

‘We are recording this evening. You must come. All of you. I will get you tickets. Never put off doing until tomorrow what you can do today – and that includes invading your neighbours…’ He paused to measure his effect. ‘Only having fun with you,’ he went on.

‘Sometimes fun can be mistress to a not-so funny deed,’ Professor Probrius said, though the moment he said it he couldn’t understand why he had.

Nor could Secretary Spravchik. He narrowed his eyes and showed his teeth, much as he did when offering a contestant money to betray his best friend’s political affiliations to the secret police. Professor Probrius started from the steely light. Fracassus felt drawn into it. This was the first great man he had ever encountered face to face. Compared to Spravchik, Philander and Hopsack were minnows. And Eugenus Phonocrates was dead. ‘Yes, please,’ he said. He had a new word and wondered if he had the courage to use it. ‘Tickets would be beautiful.’

‘It takes great faith to ask,’ the Minister said, clasping Fracassus to him again. ‘And it takes even greater faith to give. I am guided by my faith in everything I do. I have so much faith in me you can hear it beating against my ribs. No man has more faith.’

Fracassus listened and could hear it. He had promised his mother he would write and now he knew what he would say. ‘Dear Mother, I have just held genius in my arms. Don’t worry. Not a Rationalist Progressivist. Not a hooker either. Your loving son, Fracassus.’

That night he sat on the front row of ‘Whistle Blowers’ and when the crowd rose to bait the faint of heart, so did he. ‘Spravnos!’ he shouted.

Professor Probrius also planned his email to his employers. ‘We have barely been away three days but already Fracassus has won the hearts of all Gnossians, and is now further extending his understanding of foreign customs,’ he would write. ‘He is winning friends and forging new alliances wherever we go. The honour he is lending to the name of Origen is all you would have wished for.’

Lying in Yoni Cobalt’s arms he whispered ‘Spravchik.’

The Doctor jumped up. Many were the hours and long were the nights through which she’d lain in a fever of desire, imagining just such a moment as this – she and Kolskeggur alone in a foreign place, listening to the howling of the wolves, far from television and the internet, every minute before dawn theirs to do with as they wanted. And he had chosen to whisper ‘Spravchik’ in her ear. What did he mean by it? Was he playing some perverted jealousy game? Was he one of those men who needed to feel rejected before he could feel loved? ‘I’m not turned on by Spravchik if that’s what you’re trying to find out,’ she said.

‘I should hope you’re not,’ Probrius said. ‘Neither am I. But it would appear our little Prince is. For a supposed tough guy he’s easily swayed by other tough guys, wouldn’t you say?’

‘What are you implying?’

Professor Probrius laughed. He didn’t know. That the boy was easily impressed, that was all.

Yoni Cobalt saw it as the Prince trying out what sort of man to be. He’d been groomed to greatness. But what kind of greatness? It was up to them, wasn’t it, to show him other ways than Spravchik.

Kolskeggur Probrius kissed her fondly. ‘You want to make a good man of him, do you? Who are your models? Jesus? Gandhi? Doesn’t he own too much property to make it into their league? You can’t grow up on a Monopoly board and hope to direct others how to live nobly.

‘You can if you discard the Monopoly board.’

‘And the television.’

‘Yes, and the television.’

‘And the internet.’

‘Yes and the internet.’

‘And the social media.’

‘Yes, definitely the social media.’

‘And then there’s abnegation of the ego.’

‘So we’ll leave him to Spravchik, then?’

They went to sleep thinking their own thoughts. Not for the first time, Probrius felt that if he could only stay patient things would work out nicely in his favour. Fracassus a saviour? Hardly. Fracassus a scourge, more like.

He listened to what the wind was saying, and it agreed with him.

Minister Spravchik would not hear of Fracassus and his party leaving just yet. He put a super-stretch government limo at their disposal, together with an interpreter and a guide to the country’s monuments and museums. Just as the car was about to pull away he ran out in front of it, waved it down, and jumped inside. He was wearing a track suit in the colours of his country and a bobble ski-ing hat. ‘You two can get lost,’ he told the interpreter and the guide, pointing his thumbs back over his shoulder.

Fracassus added another expression to his collection. You two can get lost. And then the thumbs. He’d use that one day.

‘What I think we’ll do first,’ Minister Sprachik told them, pouring himself a Slovitzvitzvička from the limo’s cocktail cabinet and knocking it back in one swallow, ‘is go up into the Blackbread Mountains where you will be able to see indigenous handicrafts being made and taste the local brew. Then if there’s time we’ll go back down into the White Canyon and do the same.’

He foamed with laughter, which Fracassus reciprocated.

The colour went out of Spravchik’s face. ‘The idea of meeting indigenous people amuses you?’

‘No,’ Fracassus said. All the colour that had fled Spravchik’s face flew into his. ‘I thought it amused you.’

‘Why would it amuse me? I am Culture Secretary. The welfare of our most ancient and poorest inhabitants is of the first importance to me.’

They drove into the mountains in silence. Fracassus had never been into mountains before. But he couldn’t look around him. He was too upset.

Spravchik’s mood, however, appeared to improve. ‘Come,’ he said, when the car stopped at the summit. ‘First we enjoy the view – the greatest in the world. Then we watch the ceremony of the threading of the beads. People have been practising the art of bead threading on this very spot for hundreds of thousands of years. They mine the quartz from the mountain, shape them with fintstones, drill holes through them with a sharpened dogwood stick which they rub between their hands – a method unique to Cholm – then string them on ropes made from the wild grape liana. Come. Look.’