by Mark Helprin
“What about that nut,” Dewey said on Meet the Press, “who wants the Indians and everyone else to switch places? We’d go to reservations and they’d get the rest. We can’t do that,” he said passionately. “For one thing, I have a condo at Chimp Creek, and I’m not going to trade it for a hut in the goddamn Everglades.”
Most of the time, Dewey read the mail in the “approve” piles, preferring them, he told himself, because they were near the lavatory and the water cooler, especially the “worshipful” stack. Here were what the teenagers who sorted it called NAROMUCs, for Nauseatingly Ardent Recapitulations of Mushrom’s Unbearable Crap. They were all more or less the same: “Senator Knott, you are a man of steel who will fight for the American way and lead us into a brighter tomorrow. I was born in 1897 and I’ve never voted in an election, but I’ll vote for you because you’ll bring a new dawn to this great country of ours, from the wheat fields of Iowa to the newsrooms of metropolitan dailies in Gotham City.”
After several hours of inflating himself on this, he would read a letter or two from the “disapprove” piles—“Go ahead, schmuck, let’s see you leap a tall building at a single bound”—and move on to the pile marked “Various Flavors of Nut.” After reading several hundred NAROMUCs he was sufficiently pumped up to wade into the nuts, who, even if they were threatening, were always interesting if only because they never recapitulated Mushrom. Strangely, many of these letters were written in handwriting just like Dot’s, and were posted from 20002, the zip code that included the Knotts’ own ultra-refrigerated town house, and which Dewey referred to habitually as “Two thousand and two,” which shunted his mail to Fort Davis, 20020. The letters in handwriting like Dot’s were always the most savage and eerie. Whoever wrote them seemed to be clairvoyant, in that whoever wrote them seemed to know amazing personal details about Dewey that no one was supposed to know, that no one could know, such as the fact that Dewey liked to eat the waxed rind of cheeses and would throw away the cheese itself. How this person, or persons, knew this was an utter mystery. Dewey never showed these letters to Dot, for fear of upsetting her.
One night when Dot was asleep in the town house, curled under six blankets in the twelve-degree air, Washington was in the duck press of August heat. People who slept on the street lay splayed like curing hides. There were no breezes. Had war had to be declared, Congress could not have done it. Every member was on an important fact-finding tour in the Canadian Rockies, the Swiss Alps, the Stockholm Archipelago, or the Maine Coast. That’s all right, Dewey thought, I’m the leader. That’s why I’m here, and that’s why I am the leader. And then he swallowed hard be-cause he remembered that he no longer was the leader. He wasn’t even a senator, even if they kept calling him that. Why did he do it? Why did he resign? He had jumped in the polls, but had fallen right back. He hated that Moofoomooach guy, but, on the other hand, look what this Moofoomooach guy had done for him. If the son of a bitch had only stuck around, Dewey wouldn’t have had to give a thought to Congress except as a place to pass the bills he proposed.
“Damn that Moofoomooach,” he growled in the deserted room as he leafed through the nut pile. “Eff ewe see kay him. I don’t need him. To hell with him.” He glanced at a letter in a hand like Dot’s, and saw that it was a protest of the relatively low limits on Dewey’s credit cards. Why would anyone care? People were so crazy. He flipped it into the “cold” pile. Another few minutes, and he would have to sneak back upstairs, go through the secret door, deflate his air mattress, shave, and dazzle the hacks with yet another four a.m. press conference. Ten days to the convention. He read one more letter, from a witch in Rhode Island, and flipped it over.
There before him, on the “hot” pile, was a postcard in an uncharacteristically elegant hand. It must have been from a disturbed person, because the return address was N Ward, California State Hospital for the Criminally Insane at Loma Poya.
“Uh-oh,” said Dewey. The message was short. He read it out loud, as haltingly as a second grader in a school play: “ ‘If you want to win, I know what to do, and you know it.’ ”
The signature was bold and almost illegible—did mental patients possess fountain pens? Weren’t they too much like knives? It read, “Cordially, L. B. D. Moofoomooach, DDS.” Dewey stuffed the postcard in his jacket pocket and bolted from the room.
LOMA POYA was one of those quiet little California towns where the sidewalks are littered with parchment-coloured bamboo and palm detritus that when it rots smells like dead mangoes. The surrounding hills blazed in the sun like Achilles’ shield, until the fog came up the valley from the Pacific, almost as chilled, white, and wet as the foam atop a wave. A powerful little river ran through the valley, watering immense stands of fragrant eucalyptus trees with mountain snow melt from the Sierra Nevada. The water was almost as cold as the glass mugs that the high-end Mexican restaurant kept in the freezer, into which chilled beer was poured in anticipation of meals with the red heat of hell. In Loma Poya, little purple Volkswagens with short surfboards on their roof racks were parked along streets of ill-kempt wooden houses with dry frizzy gardens, in which lived razor-clam-thin white boys between the ages of eighteen and twenty-seven, who wore long shorts, Hawaiian shirts, no socks, and went around in a trance on skateboards. In Loma Poya, the sheriff and his three deputies collectively weighed 1,078 pounds. In Loma Poya, the breezes blew, the climate was perfect, the air fragrant, the evenings quiet. And in Loma Poya, there was a huge mental hospital for the criminally insane, that sat upon a rise outside of town, set in a foil of flammable golden grasses and surrounded by a devil’s necklace of silvery barbed wire so thick and heavy that it looked like a stormy Pacific with incoming rollers of glittering Slinkys.
At the stroke of eight in the morning of the first Monday in August, Dr C. Cervin Rufus drove his Porsche through the gates of Loma Poya HFCS, sticking his head out the window like a turtle so as to make full eye contact with the guard, who waved him through. Parking in his spot, he left the car and guided a fancy coffee drink through the air like Peter Pan, level and smooth even as he took the steps. Dr C. Cervin Rufus was totally unclassifiable. He was the son of a Finnish-speaking Romanian diplomat and a Bengali Jewish woman who had been raised in New Zealand. After a childhood in Egypt, Holland, and Japan, he matriculated at the Sorbonne and went on to the University of Texas Medical School before taking up a psychiatric residency in a Louisiana hospital that treated mainly Cajuns. His absolutely indecipherable accent was utterly charming—you was yow, and business was boosy-ness—he was a wee bit less than five feet tall, with sparkling green eyes and a chocolate complexion that contrasted strikingly with his flaming red hair. He was fluent in many languages but native in none, his hobby was bass fishing, he knew Sanskrit, loved ballroom dancing, was a self-described “night-crawler socialist,” carried two dozen tea bags that he sniffed to cure frequent attacks of anxiety and panic, was prone to uncontrollable giggling, preferred German food, took at least six baths a day, and was looking for a wife just like himself.
Trying to saunter into the nurses’ station on Ward N with the bored and authoritative air of his peers—something he simply could not do—he cut quite a figure. “Hello, Dr Rufus. How are you this morning?” asked a nurse who seemed twice his height.
“I’m fine, nurse,” he told her, beaming at her golden tresses at almost a forty-five-degree angle. “I had some great German food last night, and went to the livestock show.”
She eyed him incredulously. “I didn’t know there was a German restaurant in Loma Poya.”
“I drove down to Palo Cerrito.”
“Oh.”
“Any new ones?”
“Yeah,” the nurse said. “Two. A married couple. I’ve never heard of that before, but why not?”
“Associative dementia?”
“No, they’re young. Here are their records.”
Dr Rufus read intently. Then he closed one folder and picked up another, Fredericka’s. There was little to go on. The nurse
glided back, in her hands a revoltingly pink tray upon which were white cups with individual doses of psychoactive drugs. “Do you want to see them both at once?”
Dr Rufus looked up. “No,” he said. “I’m like a squirrel. One nut at a time.”
“I’ll summon the orderlies.”
Dr Rufus shook his head from side to side. “No need. His violence was triggered by a discrete event.”
“What was that? I haven’t read the chart.”
“Evidently,” Dr Rufus told her, like the narrator in a Sherlock Holmes movie, “he attacked—they attacked—a souvenir shop in San Francisco, and did a great deal of damage to people and property. The proximate cause is reported to have been his—and then her—reaction to a poster depicting the queen of England in a compromising position with Boutros Boutros-Ghali. The subject claimed to the officers, who just barely subdued him, that she is his mother.”
“Probably drugs,” said the nurse.
“I don’t think so,” Dr Rufus opined. “We’re not faced with standard hallucinations like bats or gargoyles. I suppose it could be drugs, but I would guess not.”
“What about the woman who claimed she was Calvin Coolidge in drag?”
“She looked just like him. I discharged her.”
After the nurse left, Dr Rufus finished his coffee and thought about the patient. Then he walked down the hall, unlocked a door, and stepped bravely into Freddy’s room.
A FRUIT FLY had landed on Freddy’s nose, a baby fruit fly that even he could not see unless he crossed his eyes, which he did. Because he was in a straitjacket, he had no influence upon the fly, and had to content himself with the exaggerated movements of his muscles and joints, and simple verbal abuse. He was so vigorously engaged in this that he had failed to notice the doctor’s entrance, and, because the fly was nearly invisible, to Dr Rufus it appeared that Freddy was making faces and talking to himself.
“Hello, I’m Dr Rufus,” Dr Rufus said.
Freddy had not heard, and his apparent reply was, “Away, mouse turd!”
Dr Rufus made notes. As he was doing so, the fly flew away and Freddy said, “Thank God you’re gone!”
“I’m not gone, and I’m not a mouse turd,” Dr Rufus said firmly but without hostility.
Freddy, who in the midst of his passion had not been aware of how he had addressed the fruit fly, replied, “What is that? The bloody Declaration of Independence?”
“I just want to make sure that we start off with mutual respect. I’ll respect you, if you’ll respect me.”
“Fair enough,” said Freddy, “assuming that you earn my respect.”
“And that you earn mine,” Dr Rufus replied. “Do you want to hurt people?”
“No, fruit flies.”
“Is that a verb?”
Freddy liked this. “A noun,” he answered.
“Do you want to hurt yourself?”
“No.”
“Am I a fruit fly?” asked Dr Rufus, cleverly.
“You tell me,” Freddy instructed.
“Am I?”
“Obviously not.” Freddy looked him over. “What are you?”
“It’s too complicated to explain, and I’d prefer to talk about you.”
“Unfortunately, most people do.”
“If I remove the jacket, will you remain calm and behave in a civilised fashion?”
“Given that I’m in a straitjacket,” Freddy asked, “and that I’m three times your size, why would you believe me? Why would you take the risk?”
“I find trust self-encouraging,” Freddy was told, “and, that life is full of risks, is to me like mother-of-pearl.”
“What’s the pearl?” Freddy asked.
“Courage,” said the little fellow, undoing the straps.
Freddy was delighted by this, and even more so by his freedom from restraint. He stretched, and breathed in relief.
Dr Rufus relaxed into a chair. This was the moment of truth. What he would say next might reignite the patient into a frenzy. It might even mean the death of C. Cervin Rufus. But he lived for such moments, which were to him like the seconds in which a high diver looks down to where he will strike the water. “So,” he said, “what happened up in San Francisco that brought you here?”
To Dr Rufus’s relief, Freddy answered with judicious equanimity. “My wife and I were on Market Street, having just arrived in town and walked from the Golden Gate, when we saw in the window of a souvenir shop a faked photograph of my mother in flagrante delicto with Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Outrageous. When I went into the shop and requested politely that the photograph be removed from display, the shopkeeper went mad. He swore at me, foamed, spat, and threatened me with a cudgel that looked like a rounded cricket bat. I refused to back down, and went to the window to remove the libel. Had I a choice? He came after me with his bat, I disarmed him, his cousins appeared with other bats, and a mêlée ensued, during which one of them attacked my wife. I was only breaking their arms, but she grew rather more angry. I’m afraid that, after she began to wield the cudgel, a great deal of damage was done both to the establishment and its proprietors.”
“I see,” said Dr Rufus. “You know, they would not have sent you down here—it might have been a matter of self-defence, or a tort question solely—but for one thing.”
“What is that?”
“In the poster, the woman pictured with Boutros Boutros-Ghali was quite clearly Philippa, the queen of England.”
“Yes,” said Freddy, “Mummy.”
“Then you are the Prince of Wales.”
Freddy did not react to this declaration, as it was to him rather obvious.
“Then you are the Prince of Wales.”
“That’s right,” said Freddy.
“You have a slight resemblance. . . .”
“I bear a slight resemblance,” Freddy corrected.
“But that’s all. Obviously, you are not he.”
Freddy laughed. It sounded insane.
“This morning,” Dr Rufus told him, “I’ll call the British Consulate and check on the whereabouts of the prince, who, I suspect, is comfortably ensconced in Buckingham Palace.”
“I wouldn’t be at Buckingham Palace at this time of year, I’d be at Balmoral. That’s what they’ll say, that I’m at Balmoral. What does the consulate in San Francisco know? All they know is software.”
“I’ll call the embassy, then. I’ll call Buckingham Palace.”
“They’ll say,” Freddy insisted, “that I’m at Balmoral.”
“Why would they say that, when you’re here?”
“It’s arranged that way. MI5 completely cut me off. I tried calling Mummy’s private line, but they changed it. It was part of the plan. I’m stuck here, on my own.”
“The intelligence agencies, then, did this,” said Dr Rufus, leading the witness.
“And the PM, and the Household, and Psnake, and Didgeridoo.”
“Did the CIA do it, too?”
“Probably not. They wouldn’t like the underlying premise.”
“Which is?”
“Recapturing the colonies for the Empire.”
“That was your job?”
“It is my job.”
“Alone?”
“Of course not. Fredericka is with me.”
“Your wife, the Princess of Wales, Fredericka, the one with the. . . .” Dr Rufus trailed off.
“You needn’t be shy,” said Freddy. “She’s shown it off to three quarters of mankind.”
“What?” asked Dr Rufus, not disingenuously but, in fact, shyly.
“Her magnificent bust. Splendid. Young. Overflowing. Firm. Blemishless. Blushing. I took refuge there. I clasped her to me, and it was like being pulled into an airlock on a Russian space ship.”
“Have you been on a space ship?” Dr Rufus asked.
“Oh yes,” said Freddy, who had toured, as no civilian could, both Baikonur and Cape Canaveral, “although not on it, but, rather, in it. And I have a piece of moon rock on my des
k. Nixon gave it to me.”
“Nixon.”
“Yes. Well, not really. He gave it to the Dalai Lama, who brought it to me.”
“You are acquainted with the Dalai Lama?”
“Sure. I taught him how to fly-fish. They have magnificent trout streams in the Himalaya, so I sent him out a full rig of the best equipment. Cost ten thousand pounds, but it was a delight. Capital fellow.”
“What about the Pope?”
“Doesn’t fly-fish.”
“But you know him?”
“Not really, though when I’m in Rome I see him privately. We converse in Latin. Someday I’ll be the head of the C of E, which by that time will be a minority sect amid resurgent paganism, but we’ve been through difficult times before. Because of that, I have to take it more seriously than Mummy, Grandpapa, or any of my predecessors of the last few hundred years.”
“Would your wife be able to replicate these details?”
“Most of them.”
“If you don’t mind, I’ll ask her.”
“You disbelieve me.”
“Yes,” Dr Rufus answered, “though I believe that you think, genuinely and sincerely, that everything you’ve told me is true.”
“It is true,” Freddy said, and then looked down dejectedly at his hospital-gown-covered thighs. “It is true. I failed in the conquest. All I want is to go home, and, perhaps never to be king, live quietly with the pleasures that once I knew, that seemed then so slight and ephemeral, but that would seem to a man who is dead, or like me, to be inexpressibly good. Oh, if I from this death could touch them, or live once again in their light. Every colour, every sight, was like a mountain river in flood, infilling, flowing in impossibly generous volume, rushing to decorate the world with its rapids and lazy mirrored stretches. How lovely. How lucky I was. And how I long for such things.”
