Howard Jacobson - Pussy

Philander, being Philander, felt the need to go into print at once, firstly to show that he got the joke and enjoyed it, and secondly to discourse on the name Maccus which went back a lot further than The Pirates of the Caribbean, first apearing as the designate for a stock figure of ancient Roman farce, not to be confused with Buccus who, in Philander’s view, was funnier. Perhaps without his actually knowing it, the journalist responsible for the otter story had started a conversation about the nature of buffoonery as differently understood by the ancients and the moderns, indeed as bearing widely differing interpretations today. To note a resemblance between the Grand Duke Fracassus and him was inevitable given their close political connection, and without doubt flattering to himself, bearing in mind his subordinate position. But while they were both buffoons, the buffoonery of the one was not to be confused with the buffoonery of the other. His own, if he would be permitted to say so, was entirely self-aware – an act of conscious self-disparagement aimed at puncturing his own and society’s pomposity and preventing people from confusing levity with falsehood – whereas Fracassus’s proceeded from too deep an engrossment in the cares of office for him to notice he was being ridiculous or be concerned about it. Where he, Philander, was the author of his own buffonery, Fracassus was its victim. But let us not despair! The great Plato, it should never be forgotten, had abhorred a sense of humour in a ruler, by which logic, as a person entirely lacking in one, the Grand Duke Fracassus was a more natural leader, Platonically speaking, than he, Philander, would ever be.

Called to explain this, Philander pleaded loyalty. What else was he saying but that Fracassus was ideally suited for the role of solemn majesty that awaited him? But wriggle on the pin head as he might, Philander stood accused of calling the man whose election he was meant to be working for a clown. And an inferior clown, at that, to his accuser. He had to go. Acta est fabula , he wrote in his goodbye email to Fracassus. The play is over – though it wasn’t so far over that Philander had no further part to play in it. Before the day was out he was working for Sojjourner Heminway.

Grievous as Philander’s defection might have been, it wasn’t. Nor was he the only recreant in the months leading up to the election. Of Fracassus’s original team, only Caleb Hopsack remained. Ideologically, Hopsack felt at one with Fracassus. The Grand Duke and the Leader of the Ordinary People’s Party – it was a marriage of converging interests made in political convenience heaven. Hopsack attended the Palace every morning, was photographed with or without Fracassus in front of the Golden Gates, and brought news from the remotest corners of The Republics. Good news and bad, though it was easy – as with the Philander affair – to confuse the two. It was Hopsack who, as a politician incapable of inspiring loyalty himself, best understood why the people loved those whom no one else could. Where the Sojjourner camp took comfort from the spectacle, as they saw it, of rats deserting a sinking ship, the populace saw a beleagured leader betrayed by inferior men. Fracassus had promised to Muck Out the Pig-Pen. Well, these were the squeals the Pigs made when they resisted eviction. Rats, pigs – who needed them? The fewer influential followers Fracassus had, the more honourable they believed him to be. Other politicians could boast their lickspittles and cronies. Fracassus stood alone. His isolation proved his authenticity.

Authenticity became the word of the campaign. At least he says what he means, Hopsack’s people tweeted. And saying what one meant became more important than meaning what one said.

Sojjourner no sooner secured Philander’s services than she wished she hadn’t. What she’d hoped would be a public relations coup turned into its opposite. Was she so desperate that she needed Fracassus’s cast offs? Was she so lacking in integrity herself that she was indifferent to its absence in others? Quick to see her mistake, she sent Philander to tour the remotest corners of The Republic on a bus, from which he made exactly the same speeches he’d made when he was working for Fracassus.

Otherwise, Sojjourner’s operation appeared to be on track. ‘Appeared to be’ in the sense that pollsters showed her enjoying a healthy lead over her opponent, no matter that her rallies were less populous and ecstatic. The website Brightstar , which had been on Fracassus’s side ever since his birth, read the polls as a Liberal conspiracy to keep Fracassus out and saw her unenthusiastic rallies as the true measure of her unpopularity. She was too dumpy to be liked, it said, too small to be seen, too shrill to be listened to, too cold to excite hope, too excitable to calm fears, too assertive to be womanly, too remote from the struggles of ordinary people, too close to a pampered elite, too ambitious, too pushy, too ready to play the woman card, though, frankly, anyone less like a woman… and much else in that vein.

If it didn’t say that she was too clever for her own good it was only because it didn’t want to invite comparisons with Fracassus who was definitely clever enough for his.

With only a few weeks of the election left to run, Fracassus believed it was time to mention her trousers. Those trousers, he tweeted.

That jacket, Sojjourner’s people tweeted back.

But the trousers were more telling.

Professional commentators wondered if she’d turn up for the televised debate in a slit skirt and stilettos. There was little doubt that this would put Fracassus on the back foot. It was well known that a slit skirt could induce catalepsy in Fracassus. Only on the right woman, he tweeted, when this matter was raised publicly. Whatever his protestations, who could say, if Sojjourner were to wear a skirt, that Fracassus, guided by a power greater than himself, wouldn’t attempt to slide his hand under it?

Sojjourner scotched all such expectations in advance by insisting that while light entertainment, or whatever name he gave to groping women, might be his field of operations, serious politics was hers. Election watchers called this her first mistake of the night. At a stroke she took the fun out of the debate and showed that she was out of touch with the times. People, even of her class, had grown weary of gropee victimology. Frankly, no one cared where Fracassus put his hands. Her second mistake was to mention the glass ceiling. So what if no other woman in history had ever made it to be Prime Mover? People weren’t going to be gender-bullied into making her the first. Her third mistake was to invoke diversity, a concept interpreted by voters to mean people of every sexual orientation and colour but their own. To be white and straight in Urbs-Ludus, when Sojjourner was at the stump, was to feel neglected. Her fourth mistake was to use the word ‘imposture’, enabling Fracassus, who couldn’t believe his luck, to purse his lips in imitation of its prissiness and make as though to kiss an old lady from the far side of the room. Looking directly into camera he mouthed the words ‘Stop It!’, at one and the same time mocking his opponent’s verbosity and reminding viewers that it was he who owned the medium that fed their fantasies. Her fifth mistake, which could be said to encompass all the others, was to oppress viewers with her mastery of argument and comprehensive grasp of affairs.

Watching on a television in Yoni Cobalt’s apartment, Kolskeggur Probrius savoured the delicious irony of it. In the days of the Great Purge of the Illuminati, Sojjourner Heminway had been one of the students instrumental in getting him removed from the University for demeaning those he taught by teaching them too well. Now here she was, falling foul of just such contempt for knowledge herself, only this time the judges were the common people not the privileged élite. The great purge of the purgers had begun.