by Mark Helprin
“It seems that we’re going quite fast,” Fredericka said.
“That’s just the wind. The speedometer must be broken. What I’ll do, taking a leaf from the theory of relativity, is to keep them in my mirror at a constant size, or make them shrink. Then we’ll know we’re going ninety or ninety-five.”
By increasing his speed to keep the police car the same size in his mirror, he led the troopers to increase their speed to 165, beyond which they could not go faster. They breathed tensely and dared not call for a roadblock. A hundred people might be killed. Shooting past other cars on the road, they hoped for the best.
Freddy could no longer hear Fredericka, or himself for that matter, and though the speedometer hovered near 165, he did not credit it. In his judgement, the sensation of great velocity came from speeding through open air. Drivers he passed, cruising at sixty-five, could hardly comprehend another sort of vehicle whistling past them a hundred miles per hour faster.
As Freddy and Fredericka raced down the passing lane somewhere south of Hightstown, a huge lorry ahead suddenly veered left. They had to move right so quickly that they were forced into a roller-coaster-like manoeuvre that made Fredericka pound on Freddy’s back and scream for him to slow down. As he, too, had been startled, he did, and they both exhaled in relief upon decelerating to eighty, which seemed so slow that it was as if they could jump on and off. “I’ll let that bloody ambulance pass us,” Freddy announced, but when it came up behind them it began to demand over its loudspeaker that they pull to the side of the road.
“It isn’t an ambulance, Freddy.”
“We can’t pull over,” Freddy said. “We have no accessible documents.”
Pulling up on the left, the troopers motioned for them to stop. When they saw what they had been chasing, their hair stood on end.
“There’s only one thing I can do,” Freddy told Fredericka, after he had given the troopers a royal wave and a gracious smile. “We must find a forest.”
“What if they shoot us? They do that in America, you know.”
“They won’t if you smile and wave.”
Until they reached the next exit, Freddy and Fredericka waved and smiled at the troopers, rolled their eyes, and scratched their heads. The troopers couldn’t even speak. At the first exit, Freddy veered right just before the smash barrier and accelerated up the ramp, while the police car had to come to a stop, back up, and resume. By this time the motorcycle had run through the tollgate, triggering alarms that summoned additional police.
“All we need now,” Freddy said as they raced down a country road, “are trees that we can pass through and they cannot. There.”
Ahead was a pool of undeveloped blackness where the road passed through a pine forest. They left the pavement, thudded across a ditch, and moved between the trees, with Freddy taking many branches in the face. But no car could follow, and he was strong enough to push on, sometimes taking roads to increase his lead, but going mostly overland. They travelled through the night until, far from where they had started, the motorcycle ran out of petrol, and they abandoned it in bushes at the edge of a field. Walking on in what remained of the moonlight, they got to a quiet glade that was narrow and well protected, and there they lay on the pine needles and soon were able to sleep. Various insects crawled into their garments, and mosquitoes bit them, but the air was fragrant and warm and the floor was soft. They had reclined on their backs because of the parachute balls on their stomachs. After Freddy had fallen asleep, Fredericka had looked at the last of the moon through the trees and said, “How lovely it is here. I must be mad.”
The next morning, Freddy was awakened by a golden bug flying in circles above his nose. It sounded like a cheap alarm clock ringing in another room, which reminded him of his public school days, and then it stung him. Despite the throbbing pain, he didn’t care. In fact, he hardly noticed. This was now the way things were going to be, and he was determined to make the best of it. “Quelle jour magnifique!” he said when he turned his eyes to a deep blue sky framed by virgin evergreen boughs swaying in a cool wind. A front had pushed down from the Commonwealth to bless the royals’ first incognito North American daylight, and, like an obsequious ambassador, it had followed them from a rare and spectacularly clear summer evening in New York to perfect Danish summer weather in a copse of Lakehurst Pines not far from Philadelphia.
“Freddy, I’m hungry,” Fredericka told him when she awakened. “Don’t you know any tricks about making omelettes in the wilderness?”
“Nothing about omelettes as long as we have no eggs, but we could bathe in a stream and breakfast on crickets, grubs, and raw frog. We might find some berries and edible roots, and we could chew balls of resin.”
After a moment of paralysis, Fredericka said, “Let’s push on to the Four Seasons in Philadelphia.”
“Yes, let’s. And after that we can go to Washington. Why not a coup?”
“A coup?” she asked. “How do I look?”
Her leather flight cap was so stuffed with her thick golden hair that it seemed as if her skull had swollen or she was from a different galaxy. Her nose and cheeks were bright red from windburn and abrasion, she was missing her two upper front teeth, and scores of little evergreen sprigs had tangled in her peculiar clothing, which, like Fredericka herself, was filthy dirty and covered with smudges, mud, and tar.
“Apart from the impression you create of being the sister of the Michelin rubber boy,” Freddy said, “you look splendid.” He wanted to keep up her morale.
“Do I really?” She began to glow through the smudges.
“You look outdoorsy, but feminine; rugged, but sexy.”
“I don’t look strange?” she asked, placing a finger in the vacant space where two huge Chiclet teeth had been.
“No, not at all. The unfortunate accident involving the teeth—which shall be fixed—makes you rather fetching, actually. How do I look?” He smiled broadly, the gap in his teeth as black as an architect’s clothes.
“You look, you look . . . very masculine I would say. Tough. More than that. Warlike.”
“Really?”
“Definitely.”
“Which war?”
“The one you just wrote about.”
“Eighteen twelve?”
“No, the other one, where everyone killed each other.”
“That doesn’t really narrow it down.”
“The one that lasted forty years.”
“Forty years,” Freddy said, wondering. “Do you mean the Thirty Years’ War?”
“Yes. I thought the costumes in that war were very sexy.”
“Indeed, why should we be the slaves of fashion?” Freddy asked. “For centuries the pantaloon has been strongly associated with hardened soldiers and men with very long pikes. Why should I be reticent about my mode of dress, especially when it is we, after all, who are the arbiters of fashion.”
“You’re right,” she said, “but isn’t it artichokes of fashion?”
“That’s the feminine. I am an arbiter. You are an artichoke.”
“What’s the other one you told me?”
“Which one?”
“You know.”
“Obtuse?”
“Yes.”
“A man is obtuse,” he said, “but a woman . . . is a Watusi.”
“I must confess that I think I used it to great effect, even if you won’t like it.”
“What do you mean?” Freddy asked, shooing away another golden bug.
“I shouldn’t tell you this, but before we left I taped an interview with Brian Kidney of the BBC.”
“Why? You weren’t supposed to. When?”
“We were shopping in the same store, and he’s always been so nice to me. That afternoon, I let him come ’round for an interview. Don’t worry. It’s good. It even makes things seem normal, as if we were still there. They’ll show it next month.”
“You shouldn’t have done it.”
“No, I was really very good. I wore a r
avishing framboise-and-crème-coloured Dimitri Rashpagin. And I made the distinction just as you told me to. Brian Kidney asked my view of the queen’s personality, and I was very high-blown. I said that in every respect you can understand her if you understand that she is actually a Watusi. He said, ‘Do you mean, literally, that she is a Watusi?’ And I said, ‘Of course. Look it up. Freddy is the one who opened my eyes to this.’ And he said, ‘Freddy says that his mother is a Watusi?’ And I told him that that’s what you had told me on a number of occasions. Didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Freddy. “I did.”
“You seem distressed,” Fredericka said. “You mustn’t be. This is a new situation.”
“You’re right,” said Freddy. “The first thing we must do is find a bank, buy dollars, and get to the Four Seasons. There we shall wash, shave, eat, brush, rinse, sleep, and get new clothes. The next day, chez le dentiste. Then, properly dressed, coiffed, accessorized, rested, and repaired, we shall make our way to Washington.”
“The embassy?”
“We can’t go to the embassy, but my good friend Edmund St John du Plafond—Plaffy—is now a first secretary there. Do you remember when I flew over quietly to play polo in Virginia?”
“Yes.”
“He let me use his digs. The embassy may have been alerted, but even if he’s in on it, he’ll help. I was always generous with him. I’m sure he’ll set us up with whatever we need, and then we can look to the conquest.”
“Wouldn’t that be cheating?”
“Not at all. It would be cheating if we used a credit card, obtained a loan, commandeered the embassy, or announced ourselves to the press—assuming that the press would believe us. This isn’t cheating any more than was taping the hundred-pound notes into the parachute.”
“Which was cheating.”
“Shall I just bury them, then?”
“No.”
“I thought not. How can the two of us alone conquer this immense country unless we’re flexible?”
After wandering around the forest for a while they broke out into a subdivision shining in the now strong sun. Beyond dozens of one-and-a-half-storey houses scattered about the fields like giant pencil sharpeners was the silver-blue skyline of Philadelphia, as glossy and cool as a glacier. They were much cheered by this, and despite their discomfort and no shoes, they walked a good pace.
“Shoes,” said Fredericka, looking at her bloody feet. “My palace for a flip-flop.”
“You shall have better,” Freddy proclaimed. “Press on. Where there is a housing estate there is a shopping centre, and where there is a shopping centre there is commerce, and where there is commerce one can exchange currencies.”
After half an hour of walking, now on sidewalks, during which many a mother grabbed her baby, they came to a strip mall. Proud of his predictive ability, Freddy read the roll: “You see,” he said in the same tone his father used when describing an animal he had just killed—The Vladimir Ibex must be shot between cheek and ear—“Vinton’s Tropical Fish; Mattress World; Napoli Pizza; Tapeworm Video; Mr G’s Lavender Tux; Samos Travel; Schoenbaum, Pakistan, and Graziella, Attorneys-at-Law; Mary Ann’s Paints; Sub-Total Aquatic Fitness; and . . . the Bank of Cherry Hill.”
They strode up to the Bank of Cherry Hill like conquerors. “Where’s the door?” Fredericka asked, as only a machine and a car lane faced the street.
“It is a detached structure,” Freddy said. “The door must be on the other side.”
They walked around the bank like pilgrims at the Kaaba. On each of the building’s sides was an automatic teller machine that whenever they passed was supposed to say, “Welcome to the Bank of Cherry Hill,” but said, rather, “ . . . ank of Cher . . . ank of Cher . . . ank of Cher. . . .”
“What does ‘ank of Cher’ mean?” Fredericka asked.
“Where are the people?” Freddy added. “Where is the door? Where is the room?”
They walked on, cutting across the back of a decaying shopping centre, where weeds, broken glass, and sheet-metal refuse littered the asphalt. They had seen from afar the signs, windows, and door of the Utz Bank of New Jersey. Utz, Freddy informed Fredericka, was an ancient German banking house with longstanding connection to the Hanseatic League and the Fuggers.
“The who?” Fredericka asked.
“The Fuggers. I’m sure that the Utzs are actually Fuggers. Perhaps in America they didn’t want to call themselves Fuggers.”
“I should think not,” said Fredericka.
“In Germany it’s Steinweg, but, in America, Steinway. Should we need some leverage in this transaction, we have it, because in my economics tutorial I wrote a monograph on Hartmut Utz. When he extended his operations to Silesia, he changed his name to Fugger. All the Fuggers, therefore, are Utzs, so, conversely, the Utzs must be Fuggers. This may prove useful in charming them.”
“All I want is to be clean, to have a clean bed, to bandage my feet, to eat, to wash. . . .” Fredericka said, limping up the few steps of the bank.
“Don’t worry,” said Freddy. “We’ve made it.”
HAVING FORGOTTEN ENTIRELY their strange appearance, they entered the bank as if nothing were amiss, and all movement ceased. Tellers, officers, and customers became as still as suddenly discovered deer who believe that lack of motion creates invisibility, as sometimes it does.
Near the door was a silver punch bowl half full of M&Ms. When they saw it, Fredericka shrieked, “Look, Freddy! Sweets!”
“Yes,” Freddy answered, just as excited as she. “I know those! They have chocolate inside. The president eats them,” he screamed, shovelling them into his mouth as Fredericka did the same for herself. “They’re called W&Ws!”
“Ummh! Ahhh!” Fredericka said, scooping handful after handful from the bowl and eating with tremendous speed.
Barely audible through the crunches and crackling, Freddy went on, but the only phrase that survived was, “He keeps them in a bowl on his golf cart.” The rest, along with his wife’s comments as well, was subsumed in moans of near-sexual pleasure. Though the audience—tellers with money in hand, customers holding cheques and deposit slips, bank officers leaning forward in their chairs—was still immobile, when Freddy picked up the almost empty bowl and, like some sort of very odd Norse celebrant, raised it to his lips, they pulled their heads back, pigeon-style, unbelieving.
Meanwhile, Fredericka had started to drink tea from foam cups. In between drinks she ripped open packets of cream and sugar and emptied them directly into her mouth. Freddy followed suit. When nothing was left on the table but empty wrappers and the silver punch bowl drained of W&Ws, they trotted in a sugar high up to the counter. They had their pick of tellers, as all the customers were leaving the bank. “Hello,” Freddy said to a woman fleeing ahead of her tilted shopping bags. “Delighted to be here, how do you do?” he asked, as if he were opening a highway or consecrating a cathedral. The four tellers behind the counter watched with painful perplexity as the two creatures who had just eaten several pounds of W&Ws struggled with the white balls of cloth tied to their stomachs.
As they had hurtled through the trees, the strings had been caught on the branches and pulled tight beyond redemption. “Drat!” said Freddy, “we’ll have to do a Caesarian.” He stepped toward an officer. “May I impose upon you for some scissors or a sharp knife?”
The woman was so stunned that, though she could not conceive of witnessing the operation Freddy had mentioned, she gave him paper-shears from her desk drawer anyway. “Thank you so much,” Freddy said, and then, as the woman fainted, stabbed the ball and cut into it violently. Presently he removed a pair of parachutist goggles, which he put on his head, and a fistful of hundred-pound notes. Then he went to work on Fredericka. Another pair of goggles emerged, which she put on her head, and more notes, which she gave to him.
With pronounced relief, they stepped up to a teller and greeted her with wide smiles. Where teeth remained, they were chocolatised. “How do you do?” Freddy asked.<
br />
“How do you do?” the teller echoed sceptically. She had very black hair, red lipstick, glasses that were shaped like a butterfly, and she looked like Jack Palance.
“We would like to buy some dollars,” Freddy declared, “with ten thousand pounds sterling.”
“You would like to what?”
“Buy dollars.”
“You would like to ‘buy’ dollars?”
“Yes.”
“You can’t ‘buy’ dollars, sir. Dollars are money. You can’t buy money.”
“Of course you can.”
“No, you can’t. Sir, this is a bank, not a store.”
“No, no, look. I have here,” said Freddy, holding up the money, “ten thousand British pounds.”
“British what?”
“British pounds.”
“Whatever those are, sir, I can’t sell you money.”
“I want to exchange them. What is your rate?”
“Do you have an account with us?”
“No.”
“Do you bank in Cherry Hill?”
“No, I don’t bank in Cherry Hill.”
“Where do you bank?”
“Coutts,” he said, naming the banker to the royal family.
“Where?” she asked.
“Coutts.”
“Are you trying to say something?”
“Coutts!” he shouted. “Coutts! Coutts! Coutts!”
She drew back, convinced that he was mocking her with birdcalls. “Sir, you don’t have to do that. I simply asked what bank you used. Why don’t you speak to Mr Guthwin?”
There was Mr Guthwin, hand extended to usher Freddy and Fredericka politely to the chairs facing his officer’s desk. “Are you related to Gershwin, the Baby King from the Age of Blue?” Freddy asked.
Mr Guthwin, who was very timid, replied in a barely audible mumble, looking down as if in shame, “No, no, no, I’m not, no.”
They sat. Freddy and Fredericka were used to dealing not with tellers but with bank chairmen. And only rarely did they go to a bank. Usually the bank sent a delegation to them. Their statements came bound in leather. Their questions were answered immediately, their requests filled instantly, their expectations met invariably.
