MASH 14 MASH goes to Moscow

by Richard Hooker+William Butterworth

  “Forgive you for what?” His Royal Highness said, blushing furiously.

  “For not instantly recognizing the man who not only is privileged to be the maestro’s most faithful friend, but who has spared the maestro so many of the pains of life!”

  “You may consider yourself forgiven,” the prince said. “I will personally take this lovely child and fellow opera lover to Boris’s dressing room.”

  “I think I should warn you, Hassan,” Hawkeye said, “that Bobby-Sue/Brunhilde holds a Black Belt in karate.”

  “Dr. Pierce,” Bobby-Sue/Brunhilde said, rather sharply, “you are not suggesting, I hope, that it would even enter His Highness’s mind that he is of the opposite gender? Shame on you! We’re opera lovers and above that sort of thing, aren’t we, Your Highness?”

  “Absolutely,” His Royal Highness replied.

  “Trapper John will go with you,” the archbishop said. “He’s an opera lover himself.”

  “Make sure she doesn’t get too good a look at Boris’s etchings,” Hawkeye said.

  “Hawkeye and I will go to Boris’s apartment and see if we can’t get to the bottom of this,” the archbishop said.

  “I think we’d better take him with us,” Hawkeye said, nodding toward Brother Born-Again Bob, who was, a smile of utter contentment on his face, snoring loudly in his seat.

  “I hate to disturb him,” Dago Red said. “He looks so ... peaceful.”

  “If we’re going to set things right between Boris and El Teetho,” Hawkeye said, “we’re going to have to have somebody whisper the right things in his ear. No disrespect, Dago Red, but I think Our Noble Leader will be more likely to be sympathetic to a total-abstinence clergyperson named Born-Again Bob than he is to an archbishop from Rome named Dago Red.”

  “You may have a point,” the archbishop said. He walked to the seat where Brother Born-Again Bob was resting and, with surprising agility for someone of his slight build and years, quickly knelt and arranged Brother Born-Again Bob over his shoulders in the fireman’s carry. “Let’s get this show on the road!” he ordered.

  As this was taking place, a long-wheelbase Rolls-Royce, bearing both the CD (for Corps Diplomatique) insignia of the Diplomatic Corps and a large silk and gold-thread hammer and sickle flag on the right front fender, rolled majestically around the Arc de Triomphe de 1Étoile and turned down the Avenue de la Grande Armée.

  It carried both the official ambassador of the Russian peasants and workers to the oppressed workers of France and his immediate superior, who was cleverly disguised as the chauffeur.

  “To tell you the truth, comrade, off the record, of course,” the ambassador said to the chauffeur, “I’m just a trifle worried.”

  “Why is that, comrade?”

  “The last time I paid an official visit to Maestro Korsky-Rimsakov,-vis-à-vis his returning to Moscow to perform at the Bolshoi, he was rather rude.”

  “Oh?”

  “Specifically, he said that if he ever saw my ugly face again he’d make me eat my top hat.”

  “You have your orders, comrade,” the chauffeur said. “We must all be prepared to make sacrifices for the cause.”

  “My thinking exactly, comrade,” the ambassador said. “How about you going to give him the visa?”

  “Not on your life,” the chauffeur said. “My orders are to remain under cover until the revolution starts and the French workers and peasants take to the barricades.”

  “Then you’d better get ready to come out from under the covers,” the ambassador said. “Look up the street!”

  “I see it—so what?” the chauffeur said.

  “If that isn’t a revolution in progress, with workers and peasants at the barricades rising up in righteous rebellion against the oppressive forces of capitalistic imperialism, I don’t know what it is.”

  “Talk about stupid!” the chauffeur said. “Talk about jumping to the wrong conclusion! No wonder you’re only the ambassador!”

  “I don’t quite understand, Comrade Chauffeur,” the ambassador protested.

  “That riot in the streets up ahead is nothing more than Den #707 of the Shur-lee Strydent Fan Club,” the chauffeur said. “You can tell by the flags, the ones they’re beating the gendarmes with. It says what they are right on the flags.”

  “But they are rioting,” the ambassador said.

  “What they’re doing, comrade,” Comrade Chauffeur said patiently (if a trifle condescendingly), “is simply practicing.”

  “Practicing for what?”

  “The arrival of their idol,” the chauffeur replied. “The Strydent person has just landed at Orly. I heard it on the radio.”

  “And she’s coming here? Perhaps we can kill two birds with one stone, as they say.”

  “You’re supposed to give her a visa, Comrade Ambassador. Nobody said anything about killing anyone. And that would be in my department anyway, not yours.”

  “A figure of speech, Comrade Chauffeur,” the ambassador said. “Nothing more. I wouldn’t dream of usurping your privileges.”

  “Don’t let it happen again, comrade,” the chauffeur said.

  A gendarme stepped in front of the limousine, blowing his whistle, and waving his white baton.

  “Stop!” he said. “In the name of La Belle France!”

  The chauffeur lowered the window.

  “This is the official Rolls-Royce limousine of the workers’ and peasants’ ambassador to the oppressed workers of French capitalism,” he announced. “What do you mean, ‘Stop’?”

  “I wouldn’t want that you should get the paint scratched,” the gendarme replied. “Which is what’s going to happen if you persist in driving past the maestro’s apartment.”

  “We are on our way to see Comrade Korsky-Rimsakov,” the chauffeur said. “On official workers’ and peasants’ business.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “I wouldn’t kid about something like that,” the chauffeur said. “Now get out of the way!”

  “I’ll do better than that,” the gendarme said. He gracefully swung his hips, which caused the famous gendarmes’ cape to move away from his ample hips. He reached down and took from his belt a device known in France as a “systeme radiotelephonique pour les communications”* (*It would be known In America as a walkie-talkie.) and spoke to it: “Antoine, Antoine, here is Gaston, Gaston.”

  “Alio, Gaston, here is Antoine,” the walkie-talkie replied.

  “Antoine, I have here the Russian ambassador. He wishes to see the maestro.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “Antoine, I kid not. Would you be good enough to relay the information to the maestro?”

  “With the greatest of pleasure, Gaston,” Antoine said. “Stand by.”

  Gaston turned to the chauffeur and announced. “Lieutenant Antoine de la Foret is liaison officer between the Gendarmerie Nationale and the maestro,” he said. “He is at this moment in the maestro’s apartment, relaying to the maestro the information that you and the ambassador wish to see the maestro.”

  “That’s better,” the chauffeur snapped. “You’re not dealing with any of your own oppressed workers, you know.”

  “Gaston, Gaston, here is Antoine, Antoine!” the walkie-talkie said.

  “Here is Gaston, Antoine.”

  “The maestro says that if you’re really sure it is the Russian ambassador, you are to ask him if he has come to talk about the maestro performing at the Bolshoi.”

  “Tell him we are, we are!” the ambassador said. He and the chauffeur looked at each other and beamed as Gaston relayed this information to Antoine.

  “Gaston, the maestro says he would consider it a great personal favor if you would escort the ambassador and anyone with him through the riot and into the front yard,” the walkie-talkie said.

  “Tell the maestro that his every wish is my command,” Gaston replied. He blew his little whistle again, three short blasts, and a squad of gendarmes in hard hats, face masks, and other battle gear came t
rotting up. “If you will be so good as to follow me, Monsieur L’Ambassadeur,” he said, opening the rear door with a little bow.

  “Wait for me!” the chauffeur shouted, getting quickly out from behind the wheel. A flying wedge was formed, with the ambassador and the chauffeur in the middle, and, at the trot, the group made its way through the lines of Shur-lee Strydent fans being held at bay by other gendarmes and members of the Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug’s Royal Bodyguard.

  The ambassador’s silk top hat was knocked from his head by one especially zealous member of Den #707 of the Shur-lee Strydent Fan Club, and he stepped on it, but with that exception no further damage was caused, and in a matter of moments they were inside the fence outside the maestro’s apartment building.

  “Antoine,” the Gendarme said, “here is Gaston. We are in the front yard. Please inform the maestro.”

  “Gaston,” the walkie-talkie replied. “The maestro asks if you are absolutely sure that the man in the Ted Lewis top hat is really the ambassador, and if the ugly man with him is also a member of the Soviet delegation wishing to call upon him.”

  “Antoine, please tell the maestro he has my personal assurance,” Gaston replied.

  “In that case, Gaston, the maestro asks that you and the other gendarmes step away from the Soviet delegation so that the maestro can come on the balcony and see for himself.”

  The gendarmes quickly moved fifteen to twenty feet away from the ambassador and his chauffeur. The ambassador and the chauffeur raised their faces expectantly upward toward the balcony.

  “Comrade Chauffeur,” the ambassador said. “That doesn’t look like Comrade Korsky-Rimsakov!”

  “That’s because it isn’t Comrade Korsky-Rimsakov, stupid,” the chauffeur replied. “That’s his good friend, the well-known Arab oppressor of the people, Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug.”

  “There he is!” the ambassador said excitedly. “I recognize him now!”

  Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov appeared on the platform and peered downward, grinning broadly. Behind him appeared Colonel Jean-Pierre de la Chevaux, Dr. T. Mullins Yancey, and the familiar face of Sean O’Casey O’Mulligan.

  “Hi, there, Comrade Korsky-Rimsakov!” the ambassador called cheerfully.

  “Greetings from the Soviet Secret Police!” the chauffeur, caught up in the excitement of the moment, called.

  “One, Two, Three, heave!” Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov called.

  FROM THE COMRADE AMBASSADOR TO FRANCE

  EMBASSY OF THE USSR

  PARIS, FRANCE

  TO THE COMRADE COMMISSAR OF FOREIGN RELATIONS

  THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW, USSR

  INFORMATION COPIES TO

  THE COMRADE COMMISSAR OF THE SECRET POLICE THE COMRADE SUPREME CHAIRMAN OF THE SUPREME SOVIET

  IN COMPLIANCE WITH YOUR TELETYPE MESSAGE REGARDING GRANTING A VISA TO VISIT OUR BELOVED MOTHERLAND TO THE SINGER B. A. KORSKY- RIMSAKOV, THE UNDERSIGNED ACCOMPANIED BY HIS CHAUFFEUR WENT TO THE RESIDENCE OF COMRADE B. A. KORSKY-RIMSAKOV.

  WHILE STANDING IN THE FRONT YARD OF SAID RESIDENCE, AND IN FULL VIEW OF DEN #707, SHUR-LEE STRYDENT FAN CLUB, CITIZEN KORSKY-RIMSAKOV, AIDED AND ABETTED BY THREE OF HIS IMPERIALIST, CAPITALIST GANGSTER ASSOCIATES, THREW TWO BUCKETS OF DIRTY DISHWATER, ONE BUCKET OF GARBAGE, AND ONE BAG OF VACUUM CLEANER DIRT DOWN UPON THE UNDERSIGNED AND HIS CHAUFFEUR.

  CITIZEN KORSKY-RIMSAKOV ALSO SHOUTED CERTAIN SCURRILOUS ALLEGATIONS VIS-A-VIS THE LEGITIMACY OF THE COMRADE SUPREME CHAIRMAN OF THE SUPREME SOVIET AND THE UNDERSIGNED, THE EXACT WORDING OF WHICH THE UNDERSIGNED IS RELUCTANT TO REPORT VERBATIM.

  IN VIEW OF THE FOREGOING, THE UNDERSIGNED FEELS THAT CITIZEN KORSKY-RIMSAKOV MAY NOT BE WILLING TO COME TO MOSCOW AT THIS TIME.

  PLEASE ADVISE.

  KIRIL M. LOBOBSKY, JR.,

  THE COMRADE AMBASSADOR OF THE WORKERS AND PEASANTS TO FRANCE

  FROM THE SUPREME CHAIRMAN OF THE SUPREME - SOVIET

  THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW, USSR

  TO THE COMRADE, AMBASSADOR OF THE WORKERS AND PEASANTS

  EMBASSY OF THE USSR

  PARIS, FRANCE

  IN REPLY TO YOUR MOST RECENT TELETYPE VIS-A- VIS GRANTING A VISA TO B. A. KORSKY-RLMSAKOV:

  AS THE RESULT OF A SPECIAL MEETING OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE SUPREME SOVIET, IT WAS DECIDED TO OFFER YOU AND THE OFFICIAL AMBASSADORIAL CHAUFFEUR TWO OPTIONAL COURSES OF ACTION:

  (a) PROCEED DIRECTLY TO MOSCOW VIA FIRST AIR

  TRANSPORT. IT IS SUGGESTED THAT YOU MIGHT FIND IT USEFUL TO ACQUIRE AS MUCH WARM CLOTHING AS POSSIBLE, SO THAT YOU AND THE AMBASSADORIAL CHAUFFEUR WILL BE COMFORTABLE SHOVELING ICE AND SNOW IN ITA-BURSK, SIBERIA, FOR THE NEXT TEN YEARS, OR

  (b) REPLY WITHIN TWELVE HOURS THAT COMRADE KORSKY-RIMSAKOV IS ON HIS WAY TO OUR BELOVED HOMELAND.

  FOR THE WORKERS AND PEASANTS THE SUPREME CHAIRMAN, HIMSELF

  Chapter Fourteen

  The ambassador of the United States of America to the French Republic climbed out, with some difficulty, from the rear seat of the official ambassadorial limousine, a Chevrolet Chevette with the glass door and deluxe vinyl hubcaps options, and marched, with as much dignity as he could muster under the circumstances, toward the stairs leading upward to the great silver bird with the twelve-foot unshelled peanut on its tail.

  He was dressed, according to the new ambiance, not in the black morning coat and gray-striped trousers one normally expects ambassadors to wear when about the President’s business, but instead somewhat more casually. He was wearing a pair of well-faded blue jeans, a pair of French, Shriner & Urner “Georgia” model clodhoppers, rough side out, and a gray sweat shirt emblazoned with an admonition to “Keep Georgia Green! Eat More Peanuts!”

  This sort of dress wasn’t exactly what he had had in mind when he’d come to an understanding with one of the President’s closest advisers, one Fernwood T. Pluckett, who had taken a leave of absence from his successful used cotton gin business to help with the campaign.

  Pluckett had told him the Paris embassy was “up for grabs,” and as one businessman to another they had both understood that the successful grabee was more than likely going to be the one who made the most generous contribution to the campaign.

  The man who was now the ambassador had, purely in the interest of seeing the country saved from the Republicans, made a generous contribution to the campaign coffers, and, sure enough, shortly after Inauguration Day, he had been asked whether he would like to go to Paris.

  He replied in the affirmative, frankly regarding the appointment as a fitting reward for a man who had turned one rather grubby drugstore into a glistening chain of same, by dint of hard work, nose to the grindstone, and having married the somewhat ugly daughter of a shopping mall czar. His wife, who liked to think of herself as Madame Ambassador-Designate, had had an all-too-brief moment of triumph in Chicopee Falls, Wyoming, amongst her peers and then they had come to Paris, not as they had anticipated, by a special flight of one of those great silver birds with THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA painted along the fuselage, but as standby (and it turned out, stand-up) passengers aboard a special economy charter flight of Whiz-Bang Airways, their fellow passengers being a delegation of Portland, Oregon, plumbers en route to an international convention in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

  He had been right on the edge of submitting his resignation, but had not done so only because he had begun to suspect this is what the man he had come to think of as The Teeth in the White House had wanted all along. The moment he resigned, The Teeth in the White House could appoint another of his Georgia cronies to the position.

  What he had been ordered to do now, however, was, as he confided to Madame Ambassador over breakfast in the Rue de Castiglione McDonald’s (the embassy kitchen had been closed as an economy measure; employees were given McDonald’s Happy Clown Meal Tickets in lieu of embassy rations), likely to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

  He had been ordered, by teletype, to not only meet Air Force One (which was obviously Teeth in the White House’s means of rubbing
salt in the wound), but to do so bearing a bouquet of red roses for a person the ambassador loathed and despised.

  But until he actually got to the top of the stairs and saw Miss Shur-lee Strydent (actually until she put out her bony fingers for him to kiss), he had talked himself into thinking that he would play it as a good soldier, obeying without question the orders of his Commander-in-Chief. “Welcome to France!” he had said bravely.

  “Oh, you darling little pudgy little man,” Ms. Strydent had said. “Are those somewhat ratty-looking roses for me?” She had then extended her hand to be kissed and that had been too much.

  “No,” the ambassador, suddenly losing control, had replied. “They’re not.”

  “Then who are they for?” Ms. Strydent had demanded to know, somewhat warily.

  “For whomever this is,” the ambassador said, thrusting the roses into the arms of Senator George H. Kamikaze.

  “Actually,” the senator replied, “I am Senator George H. Kamikaze.”

  “You’re kidding!” the ambassador said.

  “That’s once,” the senator said. “Say it twice more and you get to eat the roses!”

  “And he’s not kidding, either, chubby,” Wesley St. James said. “I can’t wait to get back home so I can tell our Beloved Leader what this guy did to me.”

  “You don’t say,” the ambassador said.

  “I do, too, say,” Wesley St. James said. “He pulled Jujitsu on me, threw me to the floor, and made me eat my toupee. That sort of thing just isn’t done to the King of Daytime Drama. You just wait till I tell Jimmy. He’ll fix your wagon!”