Freddy and Fredericka

by Mark Helprin

  “Let me finish. He drops in on the Pope and has ridden on space ships. The Dalai Lama brings him moon rocks from Nixon. What else?” He began to flip pages. “Speaks for the reaccession of the North American Colonies for the British Empire . . . rebuts history (self-supplied) of Tourette’s Syndrome by blaming a dog named after a Chinese nutritionist who died of starvation . . . claims to be a dentist by the name of ‘Lachpoof Bachquaquinnik Dess Moofoomooach,’ and to have carried his diplomas and professional certifications in his rectum.”

  “They were parachuted in,” Dr Rufus added.

  “Dr Rufus,” the physician-in-charge said, most seriously and conclusively. “You can’t go native in this profession, you simply can’t. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This patient is totally insane. He’s not ill, he’s just crazy. That’s the diagnosis. They’ll probably have to live in the cottage, milking cows, for the rest of their lives.”

  “Dr Whippy?”

  “Yes, Dr Rufus?”

  “They claim that Dewey Knott is going to get them out by insisting that the governor pardon them.”

  “Naturally. And if not the governor, the Pope; and if not the Pope, Charlemagne. Aren’t you on to that one, Dr Rufus? If a patient told you that Napoleon was his wife’s divorce lawyer, as a patient recently told me, would you believe it?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “What do you mean, ‘not necessarily’?”

  “I think it’s strange.”

  “What’s strange?”

  “All those limousines and motorcycle police.”

  “What limousines and motorcycle police?” Dr Whippy asked.

  “In the parking lot. I saw them through Miss Durkstein’s window as I was coming in.”

  The silence was broken by the click of the soundproofed door as it noiselessly glided open on its heavy hinges. “Miss Durkstein,” said Dr Whippy.

  “Dr Whippy,” announced a breathless Miss Durkstein, “the governor is here.”

  “The governor of what?”

  “California.”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “It’s about two patients,” Miss Durkstein said. “He has papers for you to sign.”

  THREE DAYS BEFORE the convention and sixty points behind Self in most of the polls—eighty in others—Dewey Knott was in despair. Nonetheless, he manfully practised his acceptance speech, a document that had sprung from the head of a manic and resurgent Mushrom, who believed that Dewey Knott was going to be president, and that history would record not only Lincoln and Herndon, Wilson and House, and Roosevelt and Hopkins, but Knott and Mushrom. And if not Knott and Mushrom, then Mushrom at the UN, Mushrom at Defense, Mushrom at State, Mushrom, perhaps, Poet Laureate. The best part of any of these opportunities would be not the job itself but the elegant and beautiful women, who would hang on his every word.

  He had pulled out all the stops in the speechwriter’s art and thrown in every policy plum that came his way. Dewey Knott had pledged to give each American a dollar, but after deducting postage and taxes it worked out to sixty-nine cents. Hence, Mushrom’s line, that Dewey practised at the lectern in his quarters high above San Francisco and the bay: “I pledge, on my sacred honour, for the sake of the dead of Antietam, Iwo Jima, and Bunker Hill, to give every American, woman or man, old or young, living or dead, sixty-nine cents.”

  “Do you think that will play?” Dewey had asked Mushrom.

  And Mushrom had replied, eyes burning with sexual frenzy, “Senator, we’re going to win on that. I feel it in my bones.”

  “What about this line?” Dewey asked Mushrom, as the fog obscured the bay and carpeted the ground below them so that it seemed as if they were two angels in conversation after death.

  “What line?”

  “ ‘The glory of the flag,’ ” Dewey read, “ ‘the mackerel seas, the purple plains garlanded with wildflowers, and the forest floors spotted with the noble and brilliant mushroom.’ There’s something odd about that.”

  “There is?”

  “It . . . it just seems . . . funny. I mean strange, somehow.”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t put my finger on it.”

  “It may not be the most effective line for the convention,” Mushrom said, “but it’ll be absolutely magnificent on TV.”

  “Idoh know. Could you change it a little?”

  Mushrom bristled, for this was his greatest speech. “How?” he said, which, in the language of the Washington speechwriter, means no.

  “Maybe,” said Dewey, “you could take out the word plains. A lotta people won’t know what that means.”

  “What about prairies?”

  Dewey shook his head. “Too French.”

  “Fields!” Mushrom said in a burst of inspiration.

  “That’s good. That’ll work. Now, what about this; I don’t understand this: ‘Tell them on the sea and tell them on the land, tell them in Singapore and tell them in Japan, that America is not in decline, no it’s not, it’s on the rise, it’s going up, like a monkey on the tree, grasping for the nut.’ ”

  “That shows,” Mushrom said, “that we’re on the upswing.”

  “Like a monkey reaching for a nut?”

  “How about Ourangatang?”

  “Orang-utan,” said Dewey. It was, painfully learned, one of the few things that he actually knew.

  “Ourangatang,” Mushrom replied. He was, after all, the wordsmith.

  “Orang-utan.”

  “Tang.”

  “Tan.”

  “Tang.”

  “Tang,” Dewey said, wily fox.

  “Orang-utan.”

  “Stop there!” said Dewey. “Put it in.” Mushrom did, but spelled it his way, and gave it to Dewey to read.

  Dewey’s lips moved as he read. Then he said, “A ourangatang?”

  “Well, you don’t want to have two.”

  “Why don’t you just cut out the ourangatangs?”

  “I can’t.”

  “I don’t want to get up there and talk about ourangatangs.”

  “We can’t use monkeys again.”

  “Table it,” said Dewey.

  He grasped the text of the speech, all fifty single-spaced pages of it, which would take three hours to deliver, and walked out onto the terrace. They were thirty storeys above the top of a massive hill. Everything below was a blinding white and everything else a deep bright blue. The sun was strong and the air cool. “I feel like I’m insane,” Dewey said to the sky. “I can’t take it. We’re going down. God help us.”

  Then Finney tapped him on the shoulder. Finney looked ecstatic. “How many points are we behind?” Dewey asked, hoping that it might be only fifty.

  “Still sixty, Senator, but we’ve found Moofoomooach. You were right. It’s a miracle. What a genius you are to have sensed his whereabouts. He was in an insane asylum in central California. And he’s on his way here, now, with Mrs Moofoomooach.”

  “Yes, but is he crazy?”

  “Who isn’t?” Finney asked.

  “We’ve got only three days. How can a crazy person write a three-hour acceptance speech in three days?”

  “Senator, only a crazy person could write a three-hour acceptance speech in three days, and it doesn’t have to be three hours. It should be forty minutes. Don’t worry, we’ve got seven days to the speech itself.”

  “What’s he gonna want? He has us over a barrel.”

  “An ambassadorship, probably. He’s just a dentist.”

  “I don’t think so. Remember, he’s crazy, and he knows about all that foreign stuff.”

  “Maybe secretary of state,” said Finney.

  “It doesn’t matter. We’re going to lose anyway.”

  “No,” said Finney. “Moofoomooach is here. We’re going to win.”

  WHILE FREDDY and Fredericka sped north in the governor’s limousine, as silent as two horses staring at the moon, Dewey Knott received Mushrom in the spectacular triplex
on Russian Hill. Finney, who, like Dewey, was giddy with the view, called the place “Earthquake Ranch.” Mushrom was used to being summoned, but this was different. Now he and the candidate sat on teak garden benches on the terrace in the bright afternoon sunlight, as if they were equals.

  “Campbell?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “We’ve been in this together a long time, haven’t we?”

  “Yes, Senator.”

  “You know exactly how I think, don’t you?”

  “I do.”

  “My words have been your words. My policy has been your policy.”

  Mushrom nodded.

  “Campbell, we have reached the double point.”

  “The double point, Senator?”

  “That’s the point, Campbell, where the presidential candidate sheaves off a double, someone who, if the candidate is assassinated or is rendered more incomprehensible, can fill in for him. It’s so secret that only presidents know about it, and they tell their opponents only on the eve of the nominating conventions.”

  “Gosh,” said Mushrom.

  “Finney has an envelope. He knows that if I’m assassinated or become more incomprehensible, he’s to open it. Inside are my greetings to the anchorpeople and a message to the American voter urging him to cast his ballot for my successor. No one has ever asked what happens if the nominee gets assassinated or more incomprehensible before the election. This is what happens.”

  “Gosh,” said Mushrom. “It’s Mrs Knott, isn’t it?”

  “No, Campbell. Dot’s a fine woman and I love her, but she’s too nervous. She’s a . . . what do you call someone who sleeps with clenched fists? It’s because, very early on, she took on the business world and conquered it, out of principle, but it wasn’t in her nature, and she didn’t really want to do it. She had to wear suits and stuff, and work in an office. She told me that every minute of it was torture, and that she just wanted to be outside, taking care of her garden. So did I, Campbell. That’s why we’re sitting on this bench. It’s why I work outside whenever I can, and hold staff meetings in Rock Creek Park. No, it can’t be Dot.”

  “It’s Governor Draff.”

  “Draff is an idiot. I need North Dakota, but the country doesn’t need a Draff in the White House, which is why I chose him to be my running mate. Besides, his neck’s too long, he’d never fit on a stamp.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Campbell, it has to be someone just like me, someone who almost is me, someone who can hit the ground running, fully versed in everything I’ve done and all that I believe in.”

  Mushrom began to whiten, but he dared not say a thing. He couldn’t believe it.

  “Yes, Campbell, you. You are my designated successor.” “Oh God,” said Mushrom.

  “That means,” Dewey told him, “that you must be protected. If I go, you must live. We’ve got to be in different places.”

  “Different places. I’ll stay in Washington, except when you’re there. And when you are, I’ll be in San Francisco, Boston, Palm Beach. How about Paris or London?”

  “Campbell.”

  “Senator?”

  “No.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Campbell, Borneo. You’ve got to make your way into the mountains, find a savage tribe, and become one of them.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why?” Mushrom asked, every nerve tingling at what he thought was the prospect of becoming the president of the United States.

  “Because it’s a place where assassins would not look. No one would know you. You’d be hidden there.”

  “Aren’t there headhunters or something there, cannibals?”

  “That’s just a myth.”

  “Borneo,” said Mushrom, his eyes swimming.

  “Finney will give you the plane tickets. Do you have a valid passport?”

  “Yes.”

  “When you get to the jungle, throw it away.”

  “How will I get back?”

  “Campbell, the greatest power on earth, in need of a leader, will send its armadas to fetch you. And if nothing happens to me, or if I lose, find a consulate and tell them to give me a call.”

  Mushrom was about to ask if he would have time to buy camping equipment, but he didn’t have time even to change his clothes.

  “Go, and God bless you. And God bless America,” said Dewey.

  As Mushrom left, feet hardly touching the ground, he said to himself, “Like a mighty oak risen from the forest floor, from low and dark obscurity, the rounded mushroom rises in rains of adversity and risk, ready to sacrifice for—no, ready to give all for—freedom and the way of—no, the American way . . . no. . . .”

  Dewey closed his eyes and breathed deeply. When Finney came in, having given the airline tickets to a now extraordinarily arrogant Mushrom, Dewey said, “He’s gone. For the first time in decades, I’m on my own. I can say what I want in my own words, not someone else’s. I feel completely different, like another person. I’m independent, self-sufficient, an entirely new man. Where’s Moofoomooach?”

  TO SHOW THAT H E was presidential, Dewey had to break off from worrying that he didn’t have an acceptance speech, and meet the president of Korea as he passed through San Francisco. “There’s one issue I want to get clear with you,” Dewey told the shocked visitor both impolitely and majestically. “Every time Dot or I go into one of those Korean salad bars and gourmet markets, which we do a lot because Dot never learned to cook, we’re treated like dirt, the scum of the earth. The proprietors and employees are offended by our existence, they’re rude, they insult us, and they act as if we’re bandits and shoplifters.”

  “Senator, I. . . .”

  “I’m not finished yet. What I want you to do is to get the word out. You tell those people to lighten up, to be nice to their customers, to behave like human beings. I don’t want to be looked at like Jack the Ripper just because I ask where the tops are for the chocolate pudding containers. And I’ll tell you what I’m going to do if you don’t. I’m going to withdraw every goddamn last American soldier from Korea, and, believe me, they won’t mind. I’ll fold up the fucking nuclear umbrella, order the navy to stay east of Japan, and for all I care you can spend the rest of your life scraping Kim Jong Il’s garbage cans. Is that clear? I mean, is it clear? It better fucking well be clear. That’s it. Meeting’s over. Let’s go.”

  Dewey and his entourage stormed out and raced back to Earthquake Ranch in an atmosphere of splendid excitement made more so by the cavalcade of motorcycles and limousines half a mile long, sirens blaring, moving like a black roller coaster up and down San Francisco’s hills. Dewey charged into his suite with the same firm velocity that he had had as he stormed out of the meeting. Floods of resolution and authority radiated from him, shutting the mouths and widening the eyes of his staff, Finney included. He was behaving like a determined, resolute, confident, surprising, and energetic leader. It was as if he had had whatever it is that is the opposite of a lobotomy.

  Sweeping into the capacious living room high over all the lights of the world arrayed around the night-black bay, he brightened as he saw Freddy and Fredericka sitting on a couch. They were dressed in California casual white muslin, she was as beautiful as ever, more than the match for any model, princess, or movie star, and he looked, in white, reassuringly dental. They also looked quite tranquil.

  “Moofoomooach!” Dewey said, voice thundering. “Desi! Popeel! Thank God we found you. Where the hell were you? It doesn’t matter: you’re here now. It’s a new game, a game we can win. And let me get right to the point without being coy. If you stick by me and give me those miraculous speeches. . . .”

  “Senator,” Finney interrupted, “I think you should. . . .”

  “Shut up, Finney. I’m in the middle of this.” He turned his attention back to the royal couple. “Stay by my side, be brilliant, hit ’em with all that think-tank stuff and air-you-dition, and—let’s not beat about the bush—you do what
I think you can do, God, what the whole world knows you can do, and I’ll give you the United Nations, with cabinet rank.”

  Silence captured the room as if with a heavily weighted net. Dewey breathed and waited. His eyes darted. “Okay,” he said, “that was my first offer. I’m ready to offer you the post of national security adviser to the president. That’s it, you can head up the NSC.”

  “Senator,” Finney said.

  “Not now, Finney.” Freddy and Fredericka appeared to Dewey to have flawless poker faces. Obviously, he had not gone far enough. They were good, really good. “I surrender,” he said, raising his hands. “I’ll give you state. You can be my secretary of state.” He wiped the sweat from his brow.

  “Senator!”

  “Finney, do I have to send you out of the room?” And then, turning to Freddy as quickly as someone who has had four expressos, “We’ve gotta paralyse the intellectuals—you can do that—and the news media. Like we did the last time. And we’ve gotta get the base roaring. I want you to throw them ten thousand tons of red and bloody meat. You know: battles, George Washington, sacrifice, submarines, distant trumpets. Make ’em feel that if they died during your speech—my speech—it would be worth it. But don’t forget women. That means those horrible grocery lists that we’re so bad at: education, food purity, safety, day care, all that crap that I can’t even bear to think about. Makes my flesh crawl. Puts me to sleep. Body stuff. Sex. Self-concern. Feelings. What does that have to do with statesmanship? What’s going on? If you can’t do it,” he said, “maybe she can.” He pointed to Fredericka, whose eyes were like brilliant and unmoving gems in a case at the Natural History Museum.

  “She can do the women stuff. And farmers. You’ve been out there. I don’t know what you’ve seen, but maybe you know how hard farmers work. It’s not much of a vote, though it is where I came from, and the people in cities remember in their blood what it was like to be on the land.

  “And talk about the sea. I loved it when you talked about the sea. Even the liberals did. Tell the truth. You can get to people’s hearts if you tell the truth. You can get to your own heart if you tell the truth. I’ve been a politician all my life and I can’t do that. I wish I could, but I can’t, and you can. Tell the truth, and after it’s over, after we win, I won’t throw you away like Mushrom. You’ll have a shot at the presidency itself. Martin Van Buren was secretary of state. Jefferson was secretary of state.”