Howard Jacobson: Pussy

‘Yes, father .’

‘Yes, father.’

‘So why have I brought you here?’

‘To whip my ass.’

‘I could have done that in your room.’

‘Then why did you bring me here.’

‘It’s because I don’t want your mother to overhear this conversation. You respect your mother, don’t you.’

‘When I see her.’

‘Are you missing her? Is that why you’re watching men doing filthy things to women?’

‘I’m not.’

‘So what are you watching?’

‘Nero.’

‘Why?’

‘I like him He makes people do what he wants.’

‘And do you think it’s right to make people do what you want?’

‘Right?’

‘Allowable? Kind? Fair?’

‘If you’re the boss.’

‘Do you ever feel sorry for these people?’

‘Why should I? They get what’s coming to them. It’s fun, seeing people scared.’

‘By people do you mean women?’

‘Some.’

‘And does this Nero make them do sexual things?’

‘Dad!’

‘Well?’

‘Some of them.’

‘And that turns you on?’

Fracassus buried his face on his father’s desk.

‘Listen,’ Renzo Origen went on. ‘It isn’t easy being a man. Especially a rich man. Women come on to you. They come on to me all the time. But you have to show them respect. You’ll be able to have all the women you like, but you don’t have to hurt them. Think of them as collectables rather than conquests. I’m not saying you shouldn’t let them know who’s boss occasionally. Woman like to be mastered. They say they don’t but take my word for it – they do. Nobody will mind that you’re red-blooded. Men will envy you and even militant women won’t hate you in their hearts. I’ve slapped many a feminist’s bottom, I can tell you. And been thanked for it. But don’t get into weird shit – you know what I mean?’

Fracassus raised his pinhole eyes and shook his head. It suddenly occurred to Renzo Origen, looking into his son’s plump vacancy, that he hadn’t understand a word that had been said to him.

‘Describe to me,’ he said, ‘what you think of when you see a woman.’

‘On television?’

‘In the flesh.’

‘I don’t see any women.’

‘You see your mother.’

‘Not often.’

‘What about Dr Cobalt? You see her.’

Fracassus was finding it hard to swallow.

‘Well?’

‘Well what?’

‘What do you think of when you see her?’

Nothing from Fracassus.

‘In one word.’

Fracassus scratched his head with one hand and patted his hair with the other.

‘You can tell me. I’m not going to be angry.’

‘Pussy,’ Fracassus said.

That was when Prince Origen decided it was time to rethink the direction his son’s education was taking and call in outside help.

‘So that, not to conceal anything from you, Professor, is our problem,’ the Grand Duke declared, opening his hands as though to show his cabinet of painful secrets was now empty. ‘Our son is an orginal. He is the coming man. But it is hard to imagine him, as he is, soothing shareholders or buying off interest groups. Soon he will have media pouncing on his every word. He has to have words for them to pounce on. You may wonder why we are not sending him to college. I mean no disrespect to your profession, Professor, but the academy is not for everyone. It does not teach what we would wish him to learn, and what it does teach we would wish him not to. You wear your erudition lightly, Professor, but there are some it incapacitates for any job but incapitating others. Fracassus’s fulfilment will lie in giving pleasure not in causing pain.’

Professor Probrius smiled and made a pyramid of cogitation with his fingers. This had been one of the gestures that had cost him his job. ‘It would seem to me, Your Highnesses,’ he opined, ‘that you are of two minds about your son’s vocabulary. One the one hand you would like him to be capable of more sophisticated discourse, such as will flatter those who are of his party and persuade those who are not; on the other you fear, as any parent might, what infections he will pick up from language as it is commonly deployed by people aggressively unsympathetic to your way of life.’

‘You put it well,’ the Grand Duke replied, ‘though we are not backward-looking. A benign commercial plutocracy of play cannot be run on democratic lines, but where the people’s wants don’t run counter to our own, we indulge them. I am not their nanny, but in the matter of the few precious rights left to them after generations of Liberal interference – the right to smoke wherever they choose, the right to consume cheap fuel, the right to live in single-colour communities, the right to drink sugary drinks, the right not to have wind farms in their back gardens, the right to fritter away their life-savings at my gaming tables – I am their champion. I don’t scorn their tastes. They enjoy reality tv. So do I. So, I suspect, in your secret heart of hearts, do you, Pofessor. And if Fracassus is likewise entertained, where’s the harm? It keeps him on a level footing with those whose lives will one day be his to play with. It can only be a bonus if he speaks to them in words small enough for them to understand—’

‘Without,’ his wife interrupted, ‘meaning to imply that the people are deficient in understanding—’

‘Exactly,’ the Grand Duke continued. ‘Without meaning to imply any such thing. But when they discover how alike they are despite apparent differences, they will love him.’

‘But—’ interposed his wife again

Professor Probrius showed he was all attention.

‘But – but, he will not be loved by anyone, however small his words, unless he can express himself more sympathetically. He must at least learn to conceal the indifference he feels towards everybody but himself.’

‘My dear—’

‘No, Renzo, we must be honest. We have nurtured a brute.’

‘Not a brute.’

‘A brute!’

‘Because he doesn’t read, my dear…’

‘He does read. He reads the comics you buy him.’

‘Because he doesn’t read what you think he should read…’

‘I am his mother. I have a right to an opinion on his reading.’

The Grand Duke commended himself for not saying, in public, ‘And we know where that leads.’

‘What it comes to,’ he said instead, ‘is that the Grand Duchess and I want Fracassus to be brought up to speed, not just as a speaker but as a man, but not so up to speed – I’m sure you understand me – that he acquires concepts that are destroying our society. You should know that Fracassus has an older brother—’

‘No!’ cried the Grand Duchess.

‘Then maybe you should not know that Fracassus has an older brother. Forget I’ve said anything. But let us at the very least agree on this – personal experience has taught us that you can have too many words.’

The Professor nodded. He was familiar with the argument. ‘It is strange,’ he said, ‘that we have a derogatory term – pleonasm – for the use of more words than are strictly necessary, yet don’t have a laudatory term for the use of fewer words than are strictly necessary. But the truth is, it isn’t quantity that’s the issue. What we need to find for the Prince are the right words. And these we must select with sensitivity. There’s a saying in the teaching profession: don’t scare the horses. Of late we have been scaring them half to death. You tell me Fracassus doesn’t often, for security reasons, leave the 170th floor of the Palace; I fear the spirit of the times would reach him were he to live sealed up on the thousandth. He, too, we must treat as we would a frightened horse.’