Howard Jacobson: Pussy

Sitting outside a rough habitation were a dozen of the saddest, blackest individuals Fracassus had ever seen. They appeared to have been staring vacantly into space until the party wandered over, whereupon they bent their heads industriously and began the drilling.

‘It must hurt their hands to do that,’ Fracassus said. He wanted to show what a great interest he was taking in the indigenous customs of Spravchik’s country.

‘Not any more,’ Spravchik said. ‘They were doing this when you were still a bacterium in the belly of a wriggle fish. Here’ – he seized a finished necklace of beads from a woven basket and hung it around the Prince’s neck – ‘a gift from the Numa people. Now we’ll go over to witness the fermentation ceremony and have a drink.’

Fracassus fingered the beads and got immediately drunk.

‘Strong, huh?’ Spravchik said, enfolding Fracassus in his arms.

‘You?’

‘The drink. We’ll make a man of you before you leave us… Unless I can persuade you to stay. Will you?’ (It was the same low serpent hiss Spravchik used to persuade contestants to sell their sisters for sixpence.) ‘Say yes. We could invade a country together. I’ll let you pick one. What do you say Professor Probrius? Can I have him? And you Dr Cobalt? Your role is the mother’s, I presume. Can you bear to part with him?’

There was much mirth and saying ‘If only’, but it was impossible to know if the invitation was genuine.

On the road down the from the mountain Spravchik continued to enthuse about the Numa people and their customs. But the moment they were back on flat land he began to inveigh against their laziness, their alcoholism, the tawdriness of what he called ‘their shitty little customs, and the cost to the exchequer of keeping them in welfare.

The party fell quiet. Fracassus because he was asleep, Professor Probrius and Dr Cobalt because of who they were.

‘I know what you are thinking,’ Spravchik said to Dr Cobalt whom he had picked from the start as subversively liberal.

‘I’m not thinking anything, Minister, except how beautiful your country is.’

‘I appreciate your flattery but I know your culture and I know you are wondering how I can praise the peasants when I am among them and wish to exterminate them when I am not.’

‘I hadn’t thought you wished to exterminate them, Minister,’ Dr Cobalt said.

‘There you are. That’s the very judgmentalism I was referring to. Exterminate is just a manner of speaking. I could as easily have said ‘remove’ or ‘relocate’, but I wanted to provoke you into outrage. And I have succeeded. Allow me to say that you don’t appreciate the complexity of holding several conflicting portfolios simultaneously. I have to be all things to all people in this country. On the mountain I am Culture Secretary. Down here I am Minister for Home Affairs.’

Fracassus had woken up. ‘And you are beautiful as both,’ he said, slurring his speech.

As was the custom in Cholm, Minister Spravchik kissed him on the mouth.

Picture the emotions warring in the chest of young Fracassus. Word of his fame as the hero of Gnossia reached him intermittently. Cholm was mountainous and the signal erratic. He tweeted his thanks to his admirers but couldn’t be sure they ever reached them. This was the wrong place to be at such a time. It was as though the world was celebrating his birthday without him. But didn’t Spravchik’s company compensate for this? He wasn’t sure whether to be flattered by Spravchik’s friendship or miffed that Spravchik wasn’t adequately flattered by his. Did Spravchik always mean what he said? Where, for example, was the promised wrestle?

But the most perplexing question of all concerned heroism. Could one be a hero and a hero-worshipper?

To the best of anyone’s knowledge, that’s to say to the best of his own knowledge, Fracassus didn’t dream, but he was getting perilously close to dreaming of Vozzek Spravchik. He felt spurred to emulation but somehow diminished at the same time. Was heroism a virtue one could forfeit in the act of admiring it in others? He would have liked to discuss this with his father, but his father was far away. This left only Professor Probrius, whom he didn’t like and after more than half a dozen words couldn’t follow, and Dr Cobalt, but Dr Cobalt was a woman. Could a man – should a man – discuss heroism with a member of the very sex heroism existed to impress?

He decided he would raise the matter with her casually, much as he might raise the matter of a missing shirt. Just by the by, did she happen to know of a book on heroism? She wondered why he wanted it. She ventured to hope he hadn’t gone overboard on Spravchik.

‘Overboard?’

‘Well he is what many would regard as a heroic figure and I can see that you respect him.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘There’s nothing wrong with respecting any man so long as he is worthy of it.’

‘And you think Spravchik isn’t? Is that because he drinks?’

‘Not just that. The man has an appalling human rights record.’

‘Because he arm-wrestles bears?’

‘No, I wouldn’t call arm-wrestling a bear a violation of human rights. Though it might violate animal rights.’

‘What if the bear wins?’

‘Good for the bear, but the gay and lesbian people he imprisons and the women he flogs for having abortions won’t be consoled by that.’

Fracassus allowed his mouth to fall open. There was an unwritten code at the Palace as to what did and did not constitute appropriate conversation between a Prince and his tutor. There were grey areas but abortions weren’t one of them. As for any sexualities other than heterosexuality, no mention was permitted of these either after Jago’s dereliction. Had foreign travel caused Dr Cobalt to forget herself?

She asked herself the same question. ‘I apologize if I have offended you, Your Highness,’ she said. ‘I thought you were asking my opinion.’

‘I asked you to recommend a book on heroism.’

‘You are right to correct me. That was indeed what you asked. You might, in that case, like Bear Grylls’ Spirit of the Jungle.’

Fracassus shook his head in frustration. ‘No, no, not a story,’ he said. Spirit of the Jungle sounded like the stuff his mother had tried to force on him. Spirits, fairies, fantastic beasts. What would Spravchik think of him reading a book about animals you couldn’t wrestle because they weren’t really there? ‘I want something more… I don’t know the word… more true, not made up, more something like an atlas or a Bible.’

‘I will think about it,’ Dr Cobalt said. Later that day she arranged for Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Thomas Carlyle’s On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History to be delivered to the Prince’s kindle and waited for what he would have to say to her about them.

In the meantime she wondered if she’d gone too far and would be recalled to Urbs-Ludus. She told Kolskeggur what she’d done.

‘You brought up the matter of Spravchik’s violations of human rights with the Prince?’

She screwed her eyes up. ‘Have I been a fool?’

‘What did Fracassus think?’

‘Fracassus doesn’t think. He looked ill-pleased.’

‘By you, or by Spravchik’s violations?’

‘I very much doubt the latter. He has grown up in a jungle of human rights violations.’

‘Tut, tut.’

‘Are you tutting me or the Grand Duke?’

He kissed her forehead. A fatherly kiss. ‘I’ll tell you what I think,’ he said. ‘Whenever I heard people talking about human rights in my university I wanted to reach for my shotgun.’