Howard Jacobson: Pussy

‘They have. A vision of themselves. He is a mirror into their secret selves. They applaud their own words and leave transported.’

‘He should go far.’

‘He will.’

But first he had to address the Plasentza Chamber of Commerce.

Observing his reluctance – for Fracassus had been asked not to make his ‘Kill the Killer’ speech in deference to the feelings of businessmen who might have thought he meant them, and he couldn’t remember what else he believed – Professor Probrius undertook to brief him, though his own understanding of business matters extended little beyond the conviction that the pursuit of money softened men’s brains.

‘Hardens them, you mean,’ Dr Cobalt said one night, by way of pillow talk.

‘I think that’s your politics talking,’ Probrius replied, sitting up on one elbow. ‘In my experience, those we call business men are the quickest of any profession to be impressed by the platitudes of success; to be dazzled by the prosaic financial exploits of one another; and to invest the most basic tricks of their trade, though they don’t surpass the bartering of the schoolyard, with an unfathomable mystique. The whole science of business could be written on the back of a post card.’

‘You’ve never heard of the rich crushing the poor?’

‘I have, my love. I have heard of it and observed it. But the cruellest of men can be gullible, and it is to tickle their gullibility that I am preparing the Prince.’

In which spirit he advised Fracassus…

To claim credit for what he hadn’t done. To inflate figures. To make much of little. To drop names of people he didn’t know. To invoke the sacred mysteries of the ‘deal’ and declare himself a master of its arts. To take delight in scoring the meanest of triumphs over the smallest of men. To reverse the normal rules of polite society and brag about his worth. In short to be himself.

How Fracassus beguiled an audience of bankers, fund-managers and developers three or four times his age, is the stuff of Plasentza business community legend. How he told them that he owned more properties than in actuality he did. How he omitted all mention of his father and presented himelf as a phenomenon of self-generation. How he told them, above their gasps of admiration, that he aimed high. How he told them that he thought big. How he made the shape of something big with his hands. How he divided life into those who push and those who allow themselves to be pushed, and how he was a pusher. How he told them that the first law of business was to know what you wanted, and how he told them that the second law of business was to make sure that you got it. How he told them that enriching oneself was Godly but enriching oneself at the expense of others was very heaven. How he told them that he paid no taxes, for to pay tax only showed one ran one’s business inefficiently. And therefore how he told them that he never would pay tax so long as there was a bone in his body…

As the audience of high aimers and big thinkers rose to reward Fracassus with their admiration – for never had the things they thought found better expression – Professor Probrius counted himself satisfied.

‘Didn’t I tell you?’ he told Dr Cobalt.

‘To be proved right isn’t always to be vindicated morally,’ she said.

‘You mean what’s true shouldn’t be true.’

‘That’s exactly what I mean.’

Vindicated morally or not, Probrius had to admit himself surprised by how well Fracassus’s asseveration that he paid no tax was received, not only by the business leaders and captains of industry, but by the waiters and waitresses, the winer pourers, the glass polishers, the ushers, the security men, the sound engineers, and the members of the press. If the poorest of the poor had been here, Professor Probrius thought, they would have cheered with equal zest. Here, to all men, in an age of business, was the apotheosis of success: ONE WHO PAID NO TAX.

Yet again, Fracassus had his finger on the pulse.

Twitter, too, was busy that night.

Amazing guy. Remember to know what you want and get it. If only I’d known half of what he knows at his age. Amazing.

Inspirational,was another. Think big! Aim high! Wow! Thank you, Prince Fracassus.

Though Prince Fracassus could sink slowly into oblivion for all Dr Cobalt cared, Professor Probrius was her lover and she was conjoined with him in his enterprise, however little she approved of it. She had to enquire, therefore, whether the Prince did not risk losing supporters from one level of society by his assiduous wooing of supporters from another.

Probrius understood her concerns but thought not. There was a universalism in the Prince’s messages, he believed, which Yoni, who’d seen less of him close up, had not grasped. Take tax…. But Yoni Cobalt would not even listen to what Probrius wanted to tell her. So far and no further, she told him. Tax was her red line.

Probrius laughed cynically. ‘The road to hell,’ he said, ‘was paved with politicians’ promises never to cross a red line. At least Fracassus would never make such a promise.’

‘Proimising not to make a promise to cross a red line is also a promise,’ Yoni Cobalt said.

It so fell out that the Prince’s next engagement was to judge a beauty pageant. Miss Plasentza. This time it was Professor Probrius who felt uneasy. He strongly advised the Prince against it. It was off-message, he said. You couldn’t tweet Bombs only kill when we’re scarred to kill the killerone minute, and then talk lipstick and deportment the next. But Fracassus knew his own mind. Judging a beauty pageant beat opening department stores and addressing groups of the hard of hearing.

‘I’m very good with beautiful women,’ he said.

Plasentza being a liberal democracy, its beauty contest was tolerated but not much approved of. It was held bienially in a small hotel on the outskirts of the capital and reported only on local radio. Fracassus agreed to participate on the understanding that the organizers booked the largest ballroom in the country, guaranteed the presence of television cameras, and gave him fifteen per cent of the take. Such was the fascination he engendered, his stipulations were met and his percentage increased to twenty.

He had lost much of his shyness. He could look women in the eye now. And not think they all looked like his mother. He had a metallic suit made for the occasion based on the one worn by Spravchik, and on the big night he inspected the contestants as he remembered the Minister inspecting the Numa women, getting the prettiest of them to twerk for him and then open their mouths to show him their teeth. He lowered his voice and asked each of them in turn if she was here only because she needed money to continue her studies. All but one said they wanted to be a model because the world needed beauty. The exception burst out crying. ‘I can’t believe that you can tell that about me,’ she said. ‘It shows,’ he said. ‘it shows.’ He crowned her Miss Plasentza and backstage, after the show, made her cry again by pushing his hand down her dress.

BOMB BOY TYCOON BLOWS HIS TOP the Plasentza Mail reported. But it soon became clear that far from detracting from his burgeoning reputation, the assault helped it burgeon still more. He was a red blooded young man. He meant what he did as a compliment not a rudeness. He had a love of loveliness in women and was expressing it.

A national debate followed. For many, this was a test case of liberal democracy itself. Enough was enough. People were tired of being told what they could and couldn’t do, could and couldn’t think, could and couldn’t feel. They were fed up with having to feign pity every time the violation alarm was raised by some professional thin-skin who could weep and shake to order. So Fracassus had handled a woman’s breast without remembering to ask her first! People who thought that was a crime needed to live in the real world where violence meant being held up at gun point in the food queue and sexism didn’t stop at the misuse of a pronoun.