“What senator?”
“Your senator, darling—Senator Kamikaze.”
“I don’t think I like that,” Shur-lee said. “What’s he horning in on my act for?”
“I’m sure our Beloved Leader will explain everything,” Wesley said. He picked up the telephone.
“Tell him I’m having my nails painted and couldn’t possibly talk to him,” Shur-lee said. “Just make sure you tell him that I expect the news of my coming to Paris to be spread all over town.”
“I don’t quite understand,” Wesley said.
“There’s a certain sweet someone in Paris, Wesley. When he hears I’m coming, he won’t dare dream that he’ll have a chance to even see me. Then, after he’s had a really good chance to eat his heart out, surprise, surprise!”
Chapter Ten
A bearded, somewhat haggard, but still handsome gentleman wrapped in a silk dressing gown, clutching a quart of Piper Heidsieck ’69 in his hand, walked across the floor of a sumptuously furnished room on Boulevard de la Grande Armée* and pulled back, just half an inch, the heavy silk brocade curtain. Instantly, he dropped it.
(* Some scholars of sociological phenomena suggest that the Hollywood technique of overcoming weakness and gross failure by advertising was actually invented by the French. They cite as proof of their theory the number of military monuments, statues, and street names in Paris paying tribute to the French Army.)
“God, they’re still there!” he said. He referred to a small group of perhaps twenty Frenchmen, four of them carrying placards reading “Paris Den #707, Shur-lee Strydent Fan Club,” who were marching slowly up and down, under the trees and under the eyes of both the VIP Guard Detail of the Gendarmerie Nationale and a detachment of the Royal Abzugian Marine Corps.
He was, he knew, safe from them. He didn’t think much of the Gendarmerie Nationale, but he had, since he had sought protection in the Abzugian Embassy* frequently seen proof of the courage and efficiency of the Abzugian Marines. Not one member of the several hundred Shur-lee Strydent Fan Club members who had tried to catch a glimpse, however brief, of their adored’s adored had made it across the sidewalk, much less into the front yard.
(* The Abzugian Embassy was in the apartment of Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov. It had been so designated after the singer had learned that so declaring it would place him and his guests under diplomatic immunity.)
But that was a two-way street. They couldn’t get in, but he couldn’t get out. At first he thought it was something that would pass with time, but he had recently been forced to consider the chilling thought that it was entirely likely he was doomed to spend the rest of his natural life in this gilded (eighteen-room) prison, and never again be allowed to tread the streets of the world as a free man.
He couldn’t even sneak out of the apartment long enough to play some cards with Boris and the guys at the Legion. Disguised in flowing Arab robes, his beard died black, hidden behind dark glasses, he had slipped out of the apartment and flagged a cab. When he pulled the door open, there were three Strydent fans inside, crawling all over themselves for a chance to touch the tender body which had once been close to the (as they phrased it) “divine corpus.” He had made it back to the safety of the Gendarmerie and Abzugian Marine lines, but just barely. His robes were gone, and the elaborate headdress, and when the lines finally closed in protection around him, he had been down to the dark glasses and his jockey shorts.
He raised the bottle of Piper Heidsieck ’69 to his lips, drained it, and started for the wine cellar off the Grand Dining Room for a replacement. He heard the phone ring, but didn’t pay much attention to it, for there were people who did such things as answer telephones. But it kept ringing, even after he had popped the cork on the fresh bottle and taken a couple of healthy pulls. It finally dawned on him what it was. It was Boris’s most private unlisted number—the telephone that even the servants were forbidden to answer, its number known to but a few highly privileged people in the whole wide world.
He paused before deciding to answer it. Most of the people who had the number (Horsey de la Chevaux, “Sexy Doc” Yancey; Prince Hassan; “Scottie” MacKenzie, and Sheikh “Up Yours, Abdullah of Abzug) were at this very moment playing cards at the Legion.
But curiosity strikes the male beast quite as surely as it touches the feminine heart. He went into Boris’s bedroom and, after some effort, located the unlisted phone where it was cleverly concealed in a Louis XIV boite de chambre.
He picked it up.
“Sorry to wake you from your beauty sleep, Old Bull Bellow,” a decidedly American, and as decidedly masculine, voice said, “but we’ve reconsidered.”
“Oh, thank God!”
“My God, what happened to your voice?” the male caller demanded. “You sound, comparatively speaking, like a soprano.”
“This isn’t Boris,” he said.
“Then why did you answer his private telephone?” the caller reasonably inquired. “And if you’re not Boris, who are you?”
“I was afraid for a moment that you would be Shur-lee Strydent,” he said.
“That’s a hell of a thing to say to somebody!” the caller said, horrified.
“Who is this?” he asked.
“I asked first,” the caller countered.
“I’ll tell you, if you don’t spread it around,” he said.
“Deal.”
“This is Sean O’Casey O’Mulligan,” Sean said.
“Never heard of you. Where’s Boris?”
“Not until you tell me who you are,” Sean replied.
“John Francis Xavier McIntyre, at your service.”
“Never heard of you, either,” Sean said.
“But as one Irishman to another, in that sacred bond between brothers, you will tell me, won’t you, why you answered Boris’s phone?”
“It was ringing,” Sean replied.
“I mean, what are you doing in Boris’s bedroom?”
“Answering the phone,” Sean replied.
“Where is Boris, you exception to the rule that all Irishmen are favored with superior intelligence?”
“Who did you say this was?”
“Trapper John McIntyre, you travesty on the good name of Irishmen!”
“Trapper John! El Pecker Checker? Himself?”
“Himself,” Trapper John said. “Now, where’s Boris?”
“Let me say, sir, that this is an entirely unexpected honor and privilege.”
“Thank you. Where’s Boris?”
“He’s playing poker at the American Legion,” Sean said. “Would you care to leave a message?”
“No, I want to talk to him,” Trapper John said. “There’s another phone on the bedside table. The dial part is in the shape of a heart. I don’t like to say, out loud, what the handset part is shaped like. It was a gift from the Monte Carlo Corps de Ballet.”
“I wondered what that was,” Sean said. “I thought it was some sort of an anatomical specimen.”
“It’s actually a trophy, cast from life,” Trapper John said. “Now, listen carefully. I will use little words. Pick up that obscene object and dial Boris at the American Legion. Tell him I want to talk to him. You can relay the messages.”
“Got you,” Sean said. With great reluctance, he picked up the obscene object in which the mouthpiece and earphone were concealed and dialed the number of the American Legion.
“Pecker Checker, sir,” he said after a moment. “Boris isn’t there any more. Boris is on his way here. Is there anything else I can do?”
“Is anybody there?”
“Mr. Horsey de la Chevaux is there,” Sean said. “He answered the telephone and told me that Boris isn’t there.”
“Tell Mr. de la Chevaux that I’m on the other phone.”
“Mr. Horsey, Mr. Pecker Checker is on the other phone,” Sean dutifully repeated. Then, “Pecker Checker, sir, Horsey says, ‘How y’all?’ ”
“Tell Horsey I’m just fine, thank you, and ask him if he
can send a plane to pick up Hawkeye and me and some people I want Boris to meet.”
Sean repeated the message.
“Pecker Checker, sir, Mr. Horsey says to say ‘How y’all’ to Hawkeye, too.”
“Tell him Hawkeye says ‘How y’all’ back,” Trapper said. “What about the airplane?”^
“Is that the Hawkeye who is also known as the ‘Sainted Chancre Mechanic’?”
“One and the same. What about the lousy airplane?”
“Mr. Horsey says he’ll get right on it. He says it may take some time.”
“How long is some time?”
“As much as a couple of hours,” Sean said.
“Tell Horsey thank you and good-bye,” Trapper John said.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Pecker Checker, sir,” Sean said. There was a click in his ear and the conversation was over. Very gingerly, trying not to look at it any more than he had to, he started to hang up the object over which he had been conversing.
“What are you, O’Mulligan, some kind of a pervert?” Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov’s booming bass voice inquired. “I take you into my apartment, I protect you from all those weirdos, I even feel sorry enough for you to bring you a present, and how do you repay me? By laciviously fondling my thing, that’s how!”
“Oh, hi there, Boris,” Sean said. “It rang.”
“That’s a likely story,” Boris said. “With the exception of three people, everyone who has that number is playing poker at the Legion. And of the three exceptions, one is Hot Lips, who for some reason won’t use the number, and the other two are for some mysterious reason piqued with me. ... I’d hate to tell you what they told me to do earlier today. Obviously they haven’t called.”
“It was the Pecker Checker who called, Boris,” Sean said. “Himself.”
“He did? Did he call to apologize for saying that to me?”
“No, he called to say he and the Sainted Chancre Mechanic have changed their minds. Horsey’s sending an airplane to pick them up.”
“Is that so? You’re not just making this all up because I found you playing with that cast-from-life objet d’art, are you?”
“Cross my heart!” Sean said. “I really hated to pick it up, to tell the truth.”
“It makes me a little uneasy myself,” Boris said. “But the girls seem to think it’s charming. More than one has tried to make off with it, and the President’s wife has been trying to get me to give it to the Louvre.”
“It is a little larger than life, isn’t it?” Sean said.
“Not at all,” Boris said, indignantly. “If anything, it’s a bit smaller than life.”
“Well, it’s of museum quality, that’s for sure.”
“Thank you,” Boris said modestly. “Well, Sean, I believe you. And you can have your present, after all.” He paused and then called over his shoulder, “Monique, Antoinette, Jacqueline, come in here so that poor Sean can see what I brought him to pass away the idle hours!”
“Brother John,” said Brother Born-Again Bob Roberts to J. F. X. McIntyre, M.D., F.A.C.S, in the living room of B. F. Pierce, M.D., 'F.A.C.S, in the quaint and picturesque hamlet of Spruce Harbor, Maine, U.S.A., “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“My pleasure,” Trapper John replied.
“We are both looking forward,” Hawkeye said, “to listening to your little Brunhilde and our little Boris sing together.”
“And your friend, Colonel de la Chevaux, is really going to send an airplane right away?”
“That’s right,” Hawkeye said. “And soon after that, we will all be privileged to hear Boris and Brunhilde sing together. I can hardly wait to hear Boris come in on the second stanza of ‘Washed in the Blood of the Lamb.’ ”
“And I myself,” Trapper John replied, “am beside myself with impatience to see his face when he sees what we have brought him for the all-around enrichment of the world’s music.” He took Brunhilde’s color photograph from her father and looked down at it with a wide smile on his face. “I knew that the time would eventually come, Brother Bob, when I could do to Boris what yea, verily, he has so often done to me.”
“We’d better call Brunhilde right away,” Brother Born-Again Bob said, “and get her right down here.”
“Help yourself,” Hawkeye said, handing him the telephone.
Moments later, sixty-five miles away in the dormitory set aside for the gentle sex of the When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder Bible Seminary and Junior College, the telephone rang in Room 219, assigned to Ms. Bobby-Sue (a/k/a Brunhilde) Roberts. In the flesh, Brunhilde looked, it must be reported, at least as bad and, if possible, worse than the photograph of herself at which Drs. Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John McIntyre had been looking.
Her hair was even more mouse-colored and stringy than the photograph had shown. The warts on her forehead, nose, and chin were even more ugly (the ones on her forehead and chin had long, black whiskers curling outward from them; this had not been evident on the photograph), and in person she seemed to have fewer teeth, and of a more revolting greenish hue, than those she had been proudly displaying in the photo.
And when she snatched the telephone from its cradle and spoke, her voice—raspy, piercing, and harsh—was not the sort of thing one would expect from someone with an ambition to sing, for example, the title role in Madame Butterfly.
“No,” she shrieked at the phone. “I told you before, I’m not going to take Weekly Sacred Harp Sing-Along with Reverend Wattersley with you!”
“Bobby-Sue, this is your daddy!” her caller said, shocked.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Daddy,” Bobby-Sue/Brunhilde said. “I thought it was somebody else.” She was so immensely relieved, since it had turned out to be her father calling, that she had run out of breath before she had been able to finish her intended opening announcement. Dear Daddy would have been disturbed to hear her call someone “an oversexed Bible beater.” Dear Daddy, who was of another generation, would simply be unable to understand what h—l on earth it was for her to be here, surrounded by 269 divinity students of various religious persuasions but who shared a common desire to violate both her and the commandment concerning the most intimate interpersonal relationship without having gone through a wedding ceremony.
She realized that part of it was her fault. She never should have gone out for the When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder cheer-leading squad. Once she had done that (and once was all that she had done it, when the When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder football team, “God’s Chosen Eleven,” had played The Truth and The Whole Truth Full Gospel Seminary, once having been more than enough), her life had never been the same. Seminarians had thereafter spent most of their waking hours trying to get close to her.
“Bobby-Sue, darling,” Brother Born-Again Bob said. “I’ve got some good news for you, honey.”
“Great,” she said. “I can sure use some.” She was a little ashamed of the thought which popped into her mind. She was hoping that Dear Daddy would announce that medical science had come up with a pill, which when taken by the other sex would make them think only of roses and birds and strike s-e-x from their minds once and for all.
“You remember telling Daddy, Bobby-Sue, that your greatest desire in life was to sing the role of that Italian lady, Carmelita ...”
“That’s Spanish lady, Daddy,” Bobby-Sue corrected her father, “and her name is Carmen ...”
“Whatever,” Brother Born-Again Bob said, “with that Mexican fella, Boris Alexander Whatever.”
“He’s Russian, Daddy, and his name is Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov,” Bobby-Sue said. “I remember. But so what?”
“And you remember I told you that if you were a good girl and went up there to When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder, your Daddy would look into it?”
“Yeah, I remember,” she said.
“Well, it’s fixed,” Brother Born-Again Bob said. “What do you think about that?”
“What do you mean it’s fixed?” she asked.
“I mean, just as s
oon as you can get down here to Spruce Harbor, an airplane’s going to fly you right over to Paris, France, to meet him!”
“Daddy, dear, you haven’t let your sacramental grape juice ferment, have you?” Bobby-Sue asked. It wasn’t that she disbelieved her daddy, it was simply that as a rather serious student of the opera she was completely familiar with the reputation of the world’s greatest opera singer, both on stage and off. She had agreed to attend When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder for two reasons. One was to please her daddy, whom she truly loved, and the other was that she realized she needed several years of practice, four or six hours a day, before she could hope to earn a spot in an opera company. She had decided that When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder campus would be a place where she could practice without interruption.
She had, in other words, not paid a bit of attention to her father’s announcement that she would see what he could do about getting her an audition with Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov. He meant well, of course, but what he proposed to do was simply beyond the realm of possibility.
“Bobby-Sue, I mean, Brunhilde, has your daddy ever lied to you?”
“No,” she replied. He hadn’t. He’d told her some pretty farout things, but he had never lied to her.
“Then trust me, Brunhilde,” Brother Born-Again Bob said. “You just pack some clothes in a bag and get down here just as soon as you can.”
She paused before replying. As incredible as it sounded, there was no sense staying here. Between the men’s Bible study class climbing up the fire escape and the When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder astronomy club turning their telescopes on her day and night, she had had hardly any time to practice at all lately.
“I’m leaving right away, Daddy,” she said. “Where should I meet you?”
“At the Spruce Harbor International Airport.”
“That the one that they used to call the Napolitano Crop Dusting Service and Garage before that Boston and Maine Airways DC-3 ran out of gas and landed there?”
MASH 14 MASH goes to Moscow Page 12
