by Mark Helprin
As soon as the shot resounded and Dewey went down, the chief of the Secret Service detail screamed, “Rafter one, fire! Fire!” and the sniper amid the balloons carried out the order. Whereas Dewey had taken the bullet straight on, and it had exited from his back and hit a choir girl in the hand, the bullet that hit Mushrom shattered his right arm, passed through his right lung and his liver, shattered his hip, and dug into the floor.
The two men fell into one another. Dewey’s hands grabbed Mushrom’s arm and shoulder, and then he pulled them back to grip his own wound. By now, thirty people were around them, Dot screaming, Freddy resolute, Fredericka angry, and Finney stunned. Medics crashed through the crowd carrying a worn yellow board with straps the colour of life preservers.
“I went to New Guinea,” Mushrom said. “You have no idea what’s in the jungle of New Guinea. How could you have hated me and kept me by your side for twenty-five years? I loved you like a son. How could you have hated me?” He died.
Dewey, who didn’t know that he himself was dying, said to no avail, “I don’t hate you, Campbell. The point is, you aren’t my son, so every time you tried to be my son I didn’t like it. But now, I think that something has happened to me, and I don’t know what it is, but I feel better.” By this time, Dot had taken him into her arms. “Hello, Dot,” he said, smiling, and then closed his eyes forever.
SELF DECLARED a national emergency (known inevitably as a Self-declared national emergency), mainly out of panic that Draff would be propelled into office as a tribute to the slain Dewey. He prayed vigorously that his running mate, the concussion-voiced, insufferable Vice President Boar, a spritely lummox whose diction was simultaneously so thick and so choked with enthusiasm that he spoke in horrible wads, would die at least a week before the election. The last thing Self’s chief of staff heard before the president closeted himself with his vicious, viscous, and vacuous political advisers to work on the strategy of his funeral oration for Dewey, was, “Get me a list of capital cities with dangerous airports and heads of state who are deathly ill.”
The convention had been adjourned until the next night, when, in emergency session, it would choose a new nominee. Having voted for Dewey already, as they were bound, the delegates were now unbound and free to vote as they wished. Draff didn’t sleep. He granted twenty interviews and for the rest of the time the phone never left his face. Red and sore of ear, he spoke to every delegation and to the big ones two, three, and four times. All his staff and operatives worked as if shoring up a levy. With television cameras trailing, he paid a saccharine visit to Dot, now a destroyed woman whose hands shook and who was unable to speak.
At four o’clock in the morning, after he had tried to comfort Dot and hundreds of shell-shocked staffers, Finney went to visit Mr and Mrs Moofoomooach. They were in their suite, very subdued, sitting across from one another in a pool of light from a table lamp. Otherwise the room was dark, and the lights of Oakland twinkled like a brazier.
Finney sat down. “Buck tried to retrieve the disk from the prompter, but it was gone,” he said.
“I know,” said Freddy. “I took it.”
“We need it, for history.”
“I destroyed it. What Dewey said was transcribed. The rest is immaterial.”
“You can’t do that.”
“I’ve already done it.”
“It’s a crime.”
“No, it isn’t,” Freddy asserted.
“It was his speech,” Finney said.
“No, it wasn’t, it was my speech. I wrote it, and therefore it was mine. It was mine by reason of copyright, and even had it not been copyrighted it was mine by law, and even had it not been mine by law it was mine be-cause I wrote it. And because it was mine, I took it. And after I took it, I destroyed it.”
“What for?”
“Why not?”
“What if Draff wants to use it?”
“Well now you know why I destroyed it.”
“You were paid to write that speech!”
“Was I?”
Finney remembered that Freddy had not been paid a thing. “Dewey’s up in the polls,” he said. “He’s got almost a hundred percent approval. Can you imagine that? He would have loved it. Dot won’t let go of the printout.”
“We’re going home,” Freddy announced, “tomorrow morning.”
“You’re going to stay,” Finney told him authoritatively, “because as someone closely identified with Dewey it would be unconscionable for you simply to disappear.”
“The nation grieves,” Fredericka said, “or at least it says it does. What does it care about us?”
“Popeel,” Finney said to disabuse her, “the nation doesn’t grieve. The nation just likes to watch.”
“But the people in the long queues, they’re so upset, they’re so moved, they. . . .”
“Where did you see these people, Popeel?”
“On the telly.”
Finney nodded his head. “They come to the television cameras like moths to light. They like to watch, and they like to be watched.”
“I find that unjustifiably cynical,” Freddy said.
“Oh, really? What about those idiots in England who look like you, my distant relatives?”
“Frederick and Fredericka?”
“Yes.”
“What about them?”
“Do you think they could survive a day without publicity? They have actually become publicity and aren’t any longer human. People like to watch them, and they like to be watched. That’s all there is.”
“What if it were not so?” Freddy asked. “What if you were wrong and, in fact, they did not at all like to be watched, and had been alone and anonymous for more than a year whilst, in a charade, the public were made to think they were doing all the expensive things the public so envies, and insists they do for its own gratification and so as to be an anvil to strike in frustration as they object?”
“That’s a dream,” said Finney. “I know aristo-trash like that well enough, and you, what would you know? You’re dentists, you don’t know them at all. I assure you that they would rather die than trade places with people like you.” Finney was uncomfortable with their reaction. “Why are you laughing? Dewey’s dead. Be at the convention tomorrow at six. Out of decency.”
“We always have tried,” Freddy assured him, “to be decent.”
That night, or in what was left of it, Freddy and Fredericka sat in bed looking out at the lights of Oakland. Fredericka was upset because she was not upset. The sheet lay across her breast like a gown. “Why am I so unmoved?” she asked.
“Because we’ve always run the same risks. In that sense, he was just like us. It may be our turn next. Despite what you may see in the cinema, when their comrades are killed soldiers don’t go weeping around on the battlefield. Why should we be grieving when we’re lucky enough still to be alive? He would understand perfectly.”
“What do you think will happen at the convention tomorrow?” she asked.
“They’ll choose a nominee. It won’t be dramatic because it’s almost certain to be Giraffe. We’ll just sit there for eight hours, like mannequins, and then, when it’s over, we’ll go home. I miss England, and shall never be the king of this country.”
Through a bittersweet smile, Fredericka said, “I miss England, too, very much.”
AFTER DEWEY’S DEATH the bands were silenced and the only music was the ocean-like sound of thousands of voices, thousands of shuffling papers, thousands of shifting feet, and the rush of air in the massive ventilation system. The press speculated, reported its speculations, and then analysed them as if they were fact. According to them, with Dewey gone, Draff had it sewn up. Correspondents from other countries, who did not even understand the language, repeated as fact the conjectures of their American counterparts in the fantastical glass booths that floated brightly above the mere people on the floor. The whole world was waiting for Draff to seize the nomination, and the whole world was sure that he would.
&n
bsp; A chaplain said a prayer, another said another, and another said another. The effect of these on Freddy was walloping, as always. Even prayer in stilted recitation aligned every force within him in what Fredericka thought to have been not a cure for Freddy’s madness but its enlargement. When she had seen his expression change as the awkward clerics prayed, she had lifted her head. What would he do? What outrageous thing would he say?
Dacheekan walked across the platform, pausing carefully near the floral arrangement at the spot where Dewey had fallen. But when he stepped up to the lectern he was joyful and fleet of foot. Though Freddy didn’t like that, it was inevitable. Draff was Dacheekan’s man, and Dacheekan was about to call for his nomination.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, his undistinguished, flat voice amplified into nearly booming thunder, “let us bow our heads and pray for the soul of Dewey Knott, and for our country.”
“We just did that, three times!” screamed someone about forty rows from the stage. Dacheekan looked out, but only with an instant, cat-like movement of the eyes, head still bowed, hands clasped. There was a murmur, and it unsettled him. Within the murmur, someone shouted, closer now, “Get on with it!” People were upset. But everything was taken care of. Draff had spoken to each of the delegations, and Dacheekan had gone to each one to verify, promise, and threaten. Fifty states would announce for Draff.
“Do it!” came from far back in the hall, where, from the dais, people’s faces seemed as small as the erasers on the ends of pencils. One after another of these admonitions, freighted with emotion, floated bodilessly in the open space above everyone’s heads, the same open space to which, inexplicably to some, the candidates always addressed their appeals.
“Very well,” Dacheekan said. “Tonight, I have the honour to nominate, as the Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States, the former vice-presidential nominee, the governor of the great state of North Dakota, and a man beloved of Dewey Knott—Elwood . . . Lucky . . . Draff !”
A cheer went up, briefly, from the North Dakota delegation. Dacheekan shifted from foot to foot, about to call the roll. He never had the chance. From way in the back, from underneath the balconies, where the least important people were stashed, a strange and insistent chant emerged. At first it was as gentle as ripples in a pond, but by the time it found its way to the open sea at the centre and to the mass of souls who soon came to their feet beneath the empty space the candidates addressed, it was thundering.
Trying to stem it, Dacheekan used his privileged amplification to no avail, for twenty-five thousand voices swept the amplification away like a hurricane bearing down upon a smoke ring. Almost as if by magic, the chant, which now shook the country and the world, divided in two, and, as perfectly timed as a choir of tree frogs, alternated from both sides of the hall. “Moofoomooach!” rose from one side, like cannon fire. It was answered, as if by a tidal wave, with “White! Eagle!”
The air felt like spring. Between the great eruptions of “Moofoomooach!” and “White! Eagle!” it was as if a spark had cleansed and cooled the static atmosphere. The more the delegates shouted “Moofoomooach!, White! Eagle!, Moofoomooach!, White! Eagle!” the more ecstatic they became.
Freddy leaned over to Fredericka, who leaned into him the way only someone who loves someone can, and he said to her, “You know, this may be a little too moi, but I feel now, even in August, that wonderful feeling when on the first good night in late spring I open the windows at St James’s and the warm night air billows in, carrying the scent of flowers that have just bloomed in the parks. I hope it’s not just because they’re chanting my name.”
“No,” she said. “I feel it, too.”
“You’re Mrs Moofoomooach.”
“Everyone in the hall feels it, Freddy. It’s not because they want to hear you. They don’t know you. You’re not important. But, once, they heard you speak the truth. That’s all they want.”
“The truth?”
“Yes. It makes a lot of trouble, Freddy, but it’s worth the trouble. How you know what is in their hearts, I don’t know, but you do. Go.”
Freddy turned to the vast assemblage and suddenly stood tall in the way he was accustomed to standing on balconies and reviewing platforms and in cathedrals. He felt as straight of back and confident of his position as if he were wearing his naval uniform clustered with the signs and symbols of legendary battles and the work of men who had bravely given their lives. Never had he risen before such a powerful audience, and, knowing restraint, he let the space between it and him fill with the ricochets of invisible urgency that made it go wild. The frenzy was unprecedented, and yet he disciplined it with almost imperceptible changes in expression that swept slowly across his face. By the inlet of his breath and the minute widening of his eyes he told them that no matter how much they cheered, he was firmly rooted where he stood and his feet would never leave the ground. He knew power and never, never would he allow it to run away with him. Always and forever, it would be disciplined, and with this discipline it would become both more concentrated and more precise. They sensed this merely from the way he stood. His dignity, not even the smallest part of which was false, was clear to them, and they gave him their trust.
Slowly and gracefully, he walked to the lectern. Unlike his predecessor there he did not leap up, but, rather, hesitated before he took a firm step, and then he was where destiny had put him. He let the cheering continue, and, as it did, made ready to speak, with no idea whatsoever what he would say.
He lifted his left hand and angled his head down almost microscopically, and the great noise, that had been like the noise of a storm, subsided. Never had anyone seen in recent or long memory such a stupendous racket so quickly stilled. The only thing like it was when in miraculous contrast the eye of a hurricane empties the world of sound and fury in a second or two, and shows heaven to anyone lucky enough to be within its lake of translucent blue air.
He glanced back at Fredericka, whose expression displayed none of the worshipful admiration common to political wives, but only simple pride. This was only an American political convention, after all, and of the party in opposition. She and Freddy had no stake in it whatsoever other than that they had hoped to conquer the country. Not an eye in the house was fixed anywhere but on Freddy or Fredericka. Even the pigeons that had bobbed near the ceiling and fluttered into dark crannies, folding their wings like breaking an umbrella, were totally still.
“How many would-be presidents, and presidents-to-be,” Freddy asked in beautiful voice, “have stood on this figurative spot and begun their speeches with meaningless and formulaic salutations? I am not familiar with such salutations, and, even were I, would not start in with anything but something like a love song to this country that you have hinted I might lead.
“I believe, from knowing each one, that your presidents of late”—Finney cocked his head—“have, unbelievably, failed to know and to consider the interests of the country and its people as a whole. Surely this can lead only to disaster. They may know policy and politics, but these, even to someone educated in them, are in the last analysis not much more than a game. Thus the politicians have transformed the life of a nation into a game they play continuously for their own edification. But games are man-made abstractions as weak as water, with none of the fullness, beauty, and consequence of life.
“Life is not a game, nations are not to be gamed, and people are not to be addressed outside their mortal complexities. You may ask what this means. It means that were I to run for the highest office or the lowest, I would not try to determine what you want and then strain to offer it to you. That is what they do, and well.
“If only the satisfaction of want could satisfy, then satisfaction would come upon the first fulfilment of the first request. But it never does. It merely leads to other needs that lead yet again to others, for in the satisfaction of one desire lies the creation of another. Even were the lies you are told by dishonest men actually true, and even if you did truly
want what you want, the minute you had it your happiness would depart. This I know because I have had every material thing and privilege in the world.
“The model of a president has been that of a man who comes to you like a salesman, and promises things. I think the model of a president should be a man who comes before you and says, ‘This is what I have seen, this is what I believe, this is how I live, and this is what I love.’ Surely you would know such a man better for this than you would know a man possessed of a list crowded with numbers and littered with prostituted oaths.
“When confronted with the creatures from whom these words spill like jellyfish vomited from the mouths of whales, my reaction has always been that, though I would like to be prosperous, this is not what I am. What about the little courage that I have, the honour for which I strive, my attempts at faithfulness? These are what you should address. Why do you not see them? Why do you not sense the heart of your own country? Why do you reflexively pull away from deep waters whenever inadvertently you glide over them?
“I will begin not with a salutation but a testament. In the past year or so my wife and I have slowly made our way across the country, step by step, foot by foot. I sank low and felt with my hands, and touched the ground with my fingers. I could smell even the cold streams as they flooded in spring. I listened to the ice on Lake Michigan, grey-black, at three in the morning as Chicago slept. I stood on a mountainside in West Virginia and watched the blue-green horizon as deer rose and dipped in the brush as if on noiseless swells. We passed Baltimore on the interstate highway one night, and saw a city in a fume of gold and luminous smoke from which rose towers encrusted with sparkling lights.
“In all this time we were not attentive to matters of state, we were washing dishes, cleaning bathrooms, serving food, standing night watch in a fire tower and at the bow of a barge, and this was only part of what we did. We came to know the towns and junctions even if often we passed through them unseen. A few months ago, I stood at night on the open prairie under a clear sky of stars as bright as Bellerophon’s dripping diamonds, and my wife stood with me. Has any candidate come before you to state how sweet the air is on the open prairie? Probably not. But it is. Perhaps you have forgotten. Perhaps you never knew. But it is, and it is there in infinite quantity, free and unclaimed. And if you watch from on high, from across the Hudson at New York, on a summer night, you will see a construction greater than that of any previous age. You need only look upon it from the proper angle and distance to see that you possess wondrous dimensions that daily you ignore, forgetting where you stand in time.
