Howard Jacobson: Pussy

They stripped, shook hands, then took up their positions. Fracassus looked up into the sky. Above him eagles soared. The sun beat down. ‘Spravnos!’ Spravchik shouted, and so it began. Their feet locked, their big toes, equally matched despite the difference in their years, clamped like spanners or the claws of eagles. Fracassus felt the strain of effort through his thighs and back. Spravchik hummed quietly to himself. The advantage went this way and that. Doubtful it stood, as two spent swimmers that do cling together.

The light began to dim.

And all day long the noise of battle rolled…

The following day, back in the Ministry, the two men, limping slightly, talked zoning and location.

‘Build it wherever you like,’ Spravchik said.

That was when Fracassus had his brain wave. ‘Let’s build it on Blackbread Mountain,’ he said.

Spravchik leapt from his chair and embraced him. Then he stepped back and tapped his lip.

Was he wondering what to do about the Numa, Fracassus enquired. If so, he had the perfect solution. They could work in the kitchens and thread beads in the foyer.

Spravchik embraced him again. ‘Nice thought,’ he said. ‘But we must respect their ancient culture.’

Fracassus nodded. ‘How do we do that?’

‘We move them on.’

Fracassus was relieved. He’d hoped Spravchik would see it that way.

He stayed on a year to see the project through its developmental stage. He tweeted links to artists’ impressions of the building. Classy partnership: classy building.News of its construction travelled far and wide. The Pleasure Temple of Numa, the pillars of its sacrificial temple stretching high into the clouds.

Yoni Cobalt, in Kolskeggur Probrius’s arms, wondered how long it would be before they’d be throwing babies who showed gay tendencies off its ramparts.

‘Shh,’ Kolskeggur Probrius said.

The party left Cholm by train. Fracassus was sad to leave. He felt that a part of himself would always remain here. He and Spravchik had embraced in private on the morning of the departure. Fracassus liked to think that between men of surpassing power there existed a sort of electric force field and that when they embraced, especially for the final time, sparks like those emitted by the First Creation would fly between them. No such sparks flew between Spravchik and Fracassus, but it was a melancholy farewell notwithstanding.

Though the journey was reputed to be beautiful, Fracassus didn’t notice the meadows or the streams. There was good coverage on the train and he didn’t want to miss it. He was pleased to find his name wherever he looked and to see himself widely talked about. ‘What’s a wunderkind?’ he asked Professor Probrius.

‘A wonder child. Why?’

‘That’s what they’re calling me.’

‘That’s what you are, Your Highness.’

Less satisfying was the news from Urbs-Ludus. More disturbances were reported. Every day another demonstration against something. Every demonstration lasting longer than the one before. He sent an email to his father in the language of Twitter which was now the only language he could think in. He hoped it would convey the seriousness of his concern. Minister Spravchik sad to see me go. Everyone is. Even a wunderkind has to stay focussed.

Probrius hadn’t arranged for a car to meet them this time. He didn’t want another Spravchik situation. Better to get their passports stamped and slip in otherwise unobserved. A little more fuss was made of Fracassus on account of his title than Probrius thought necessary, but sycophancy always put the boy in better temper. ‘Welcome to Plasentza,’ Prince Fracassus.’ When a stranger called him Prince it was as though he had never heard the word before and became a stranger to himself. He would stand around, waiting to collect every rag of accolade, before he could be persuaded to move on. The luggage was being sent on ahead so they could walk through the city. Fracassus rarely walked and had certainly never walked anywhere like this.

‘What have your brought me to?’ he asked as they left the station. He had noticed people sleeping on the floor. He guessed this was because their trains were late. But then he saw people sleeping in shop doorways as well.

‘It’s called an advanced liberal democracy,’ Probrius explained.

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means there’s no monarchy, no presidency and no dictatorship.’

‘So who runs the place?’

‘Elected members of parliament.’

‘Who elects them?’

‘The people.’

‘Who elects the people?’

‘No one elects the people. They’re the people. They just are.’

Fracassus scratched his face.

‘This,’ Professor Probrius went on, ‘is considered to be the fairest form of government mankind has yet devised.’

Fracassus pointed to a couple of beggars sleeping top to tail in a cardboard box in the doorway of a coffee shop. He asked if they were toe-wrestling. Professor Probrius said he didn’t think so.

‘Then why are they here?’

‘Because there’s nowhere else for them to sleep.’

‘But aren’t they the people?’

‘You are indeed a wunderkind, Your Highness,’ Professor Probrius said. ‘You put your finger at once on the contradiction at the heart of government by the people. It doesn’t work because people aren’t nice to one another.’

‘Just a minute – ‘ Dr Cobalt began, but Professor Probrius stared her into silence.

‘How,’ Fracassus wondered, ‘do you unelect the people?’

Dr Cobalt was again frozen into silent compliance by Probrius’s stare.

‘It’s been tried, Your Highness. Your father has been wrongly accused of doing that very thing. A better way, in my view – and, if I may say so, in the the view of many experts – is to give the people what they want in the full knowledge that they don’t know and then let them give the power back to you.’

Dr Cobalt could contain herself no longer. ‘Whereupon it will cease to be a liberal democracy,’ she said.

‘And whose fault will that be?’ Professor Probrius asked.

Fracassus had the answer. ‘The people’s.’

‘It’s never a good idea,’ Professor Probrius said, feeling he was coaching the Prince already, ‘to tell the people you are saving them from themselves. Better to tell them you’re saving them from someone else.’

‘Like who?’ Fracassus wondered.

‘Like anyone you can come up with.’

De Cobalt’s look met Professor Probrius’s. Like your father , they were both thinking.

Fracassus had an identical thought.

The following morning a bomb went off not many streets from their hotel. Six people were killed. Dozen injured. Fracassus watched the news on the hotel television. He could smell sweet gunpowder. And something worse.

It was by no means the first time such a crime had been committed and innocent bystanders killed or wounded. ‘This is the price we pay for our freedoms,’ a senior politician was saying. He had been accused before of taking a sort of satisfaction in it, as though a healthy liberal democracy needed the occasional atrocity to justify itself. But in one form or another almost all the politicians interviewed in the immediate aftermath of the bombing said the same. It was the price – the terrible price – the country paid for its freedoms.

Did Fracassus think it was too high a price? All one can say for sure is that he tweeted Terrible price to pay for freedom.

Because of the outrage, the Prince and his party weren’t allowed to leave the hotel that day. All three sat and watched the television in the hotel lobby in silence. Two hours after the bomb went off a terrorist group claimed responsibility. An hour after that the leader of a civil rights organization warned against scapegoating the immigrant group whose ethnicity the terrorists shared. Already, Probrius nudged Fracassus into noticing, more concern had been expressed for the safety of the immigrant group than for the lives that had been lost. Makes you wonder who the victims are,Fracassus tweeted.