MASH 09 MASH goes to Vienna

by Richard Hooker+William Butterworth

  “What do you mean, Arabs?”

  “Arabs, like in Arabia. You know, they wear robes, and they got all the oil.”

  “Go on.”

  “A little fat Arab is out in front, and behind him the other ones. The other ones have got a couple of dogs on leashes. And then Miss Worthington wanted to know what was going on.”

  “I thought you said they put a screen in front of the door? How could she see what was going on?”

  “I screamed, Jaws,” Taylor P. Jambon said. “You wouldn’t believe these dogs. Black as night. White teeth. Yellow eyes. They tried to eat me. I was afraid for my very life.”

  “O.K. I’ve got the picture. There you are in the hospital corridor. Ferocious dogs are trying to eat you, and you’re screaming. Then what?”

  “Well, when they heard me screaming ... and then, too, I suppose they heard the fire extinguisher ... it made a hell of a racket.”

  “The fire extinguisher made a hell of a racket? What fire extinguisher?"

  “The one on the wall. I tried to climb up on it, and it broke off.”

  “Go on, Taylor P.,” Senator Fisch said. His effort to keep control was evident in every somewhat sibilant syllable.

  “Well, a couple of doctors came running. I’d hate to be their patients, I’ll tell you that.”

  “Explain yourself,” the senator said.

  “Perverse sense of humor. Instead of coming to my aid, instead of offering succor to a fellow human about to be torn limb from limb by the most awful-looking, ferocious, evil-smelling dogs I have ever seen, they had hysterics.”

  “Hysterics?”

  “Two of them. And a nurse. They had to hold each other up to keep from falling down, such was the level of their perverse delight in my tragic situation.

  “And?”

  “And then Miss Worthington called out, to see what was going on.”

  “And?”

  “And one of the doctors ... can you believe he doesn’t even call himself doctor?”

  “What does he call himself, Taylor P.?” the senator replied, resigned to the obvious fact that Taylor P. Jambon (as, indeed, he should have known from watching his cooking demonstrations on television) was going to reach the point only after having tangentially bounced off all available walls.

  “One of them called himself ‘Hawkeye,’ and the other called himself ‘Trapper John,’” Taylor P. Jambon reported. “Now I ask you, Jaws, what can you expect from a couple of supposed doctors who run around calling themselves vulgar names?”

  “Then what, Taylor P.?”

  “The one called ‘Hawkeye’ called out to Miss Worthington ‘not to worry,’ that it was just ... so help me God, Jaws, these are his exact words ... ‘a couple of playful puppies’ who had scared someone. A couple of puppies, indeed! They looked like black polar bears, that’s what they looked like.”

  “And then?” the senator pursued patiently.

  “The one called ‘Trapper John’ shouted that ‘Hassan had brought them.’ Hassan was, I decided, the fat little Arab. So then, Miss Worthington called back, ‘Isn’t that dear Boris’ little friend?’, and Hawkeye called back, ‘Yes, it is,’ and she called out, ‘Is he there?’, and Trapper John said, ‘No, he isn’t, so don’t try coming out here with your leg in a cast.’ And she said, ‘Well, where is he?’, and the fat little Arab said, ‘He’s in Paris, getting ready to go to Vienna.’ You got all that, Jaws?”

  “I think so,” the senator replied. “This all took place before Miss Worthington insisted on going to Vienna, Austria, to shoot the commercials?”

  “Right. Interesting coincidence, isn’t it?”

  “Coincidence, hell. The old bag has got the hots for this Boris, whoever he is. You ever hear of an Arab named Boris?”

  “No, I can’t say that I have,” Taylor P. Jambon replied, after some thought.

  “You don’t suppose we could find him and bring him here? That would be a lot cheaper than buying everybody on a camera crew, plus Miss Worthington, a ticket back and forth to Vienna.”

  “Actually, Senator,” Taylor P. Jambon said. “I wasn’t thinking of buying a ticket.”

  “What were you thinking about?”

  “Think hard, Jaws. Isn’t there some government function in Vienna that’s absolutely crying for your contribution to it, some function you can go to, taking a camera crew and Miss Worthington along as staff?”

  “I don’t know,” the senator replied. “But that’s a good thought.”

  “I thought so.”

  “I’ll have a little chat with C.C.,” the senator replied, “and get back to you.”

  “Call me at the Spruce Harbor Inn,” Taylor P. Jambon said.

  Fifteen minutes later, Senator J. Ellwood “Jaws” Fisch called upon Senator Christopher Columbus “C.C.” Cacciatore (Ethnic-Democrat, N.J.) at the latter’s office.

  Senator Cacciatore was a distinguished-appearing solon who peered solemnly at the world through thick rimmed, heavily corrective spectacles perched low on his nose. His nose was slightly bulbous and of a red tinge, a tribute to the Italian-type Chianti wine of which the senator was quite fond and without a glass of which he was seldom found. He was also fond of pasta in all its various sizes and shapes, which fondness was reflected in his rather ample midsection.

  A horseshoe-shaped tuft of snow-white hair circled his head above the ears. The top of his rather large and oddly shaped head, however, was as devoid of hair, to coin a phrase, as cue ball. All in all, his general appearance was of a friendly elder relative, say a Godfather.

  Senator Cacciatore’s office, in the new Senate Office Building, reflected the prestige in which he was held by his fellow members of what has been laughingly called “the most exclusive club in the world.” A grateful nation, acting through their elected representatives, had seen fit to provide the senator with a suite of offices paneled in the best walnut available and carpeted with the finest product of the weaver’s art. His reception room, roughly the size of a handball court and staffed with six receptionists, each behind a solid mahogany desk, opened into his outer (or official) office, which was roughly the size of a basketball court.

  Perhaps stung by the accusation that his outer office bore an unfortunate similarity to that of Benito Mussolini * (it was a three-minute walk from the door to Senator Cacciatore’s Roman-style desk), the senator had fallen into the custom of conducting business in his inner (or private) office. A mini-suite, barely forty feet by fifty feet, the private office consisted of still another receptionist’s area, a sauna bath, a completely equipped kitchen, a combination dining room and “lounge,” and, of course, a little hideaway complete with desk for the senator himself.

  (* The senator, of course, on one hand, as a responsible solon, recognized Benito Mussolini to be a fascist tyrant. On the other hand, however, Signore Mussolini had been Italian and thus obviously couldn’t have been all bad.)

  Senator Cacciatore’s value to the Senate had little or nothing to do with his knowledge of international affairs, financial matters, the United States Constitution or national defense. There was more than a germ of truth in the allegation made by the senator’s critics that his knowledge of these areas could be written inside a small match-book with a large crayon.

  The senator’s value to the Senate, the key to the high regard with which he was held by his fellows, and, indeed, to the unquestioned fact that he was one of the most powerful members of the Senate, was based on his duties within the Senate.

  Senator Cacciatore chaired the Senate Committee on Internal Operations. This somewhat euphemistically described committee was the one charged with such things as assigning office space (senators regarded the location and size of their offices as a most important matter of status) and office staff spaces (each civil servant working for a senator occupies, in the quaint cant of the Senate, a “space.” A senator provided with fourteen “spaces,” in other words, is authorized fourteen civil servant flunkies of varying degree and rate of compe
nsation). The Senate Committee on Internal Operations was charged, moreover, with “reviewing” senators’ expense vouchers to make sure that the expenditures were made in the public interest.

  Senators who had been unwise enough to cross Senator Cacciatore had quickly learned that this meant, for example, that they could expect to pay for the expense of going home to mend political fences themselves. Those who enjoyed Senator Cacciatore’s favor, on the other hand, could turn in their expense vouchers in the sure knowledge that a check from the U.S. Treasury would soon arrive to compensate them for money spent, no matter with what gay abandon, while they were about the nation’s business.

  Another of Senator Cacciatore’s functions was overall supervision of Senate ad hoc committees. After a number of irresponsible journalists, whose yellow journalism threatened the very fiber of the democratic system, had written at some length about what they called “criminal abuses” in the “junketing* outrage,” Senator Cacciatore, calling a press conference, had announced that junkets would be, henceforth and forevermore, a thing of the past.

  (* A junket, for the politically naive, is a journey undertaken at the taxpayers' expense by congressmen when they have nothing else to do and generally means a trip to places like Paris, France, or the island of Bali, often accompanied by members (generally female) of the congressman's staff. The best “junkets" (such as those to Paris) go to those solons whom the voters have not seen fit to return to office. They are known, to the cognoscenti, as “lame-duck consolation junkets.”)

  “Junketing,” he said, “is now dead. I ask you to join with me in closing the door on it forever and looking only to the future.”

  A Senate ad hoc committee, of course, was a horse of a different color. Who (even Howard K. Smith) would dare question the constitutional right of the Senate to form ad hoc committees? And who (even William F. Buckley) would dare question the right of an official ad hoc committee of the United States Senate to journey, say, to Tokyo, Japan, to study at firsthand the working conditions of geisha girls?

  It was with this business of forming ad hoc committees in mind that Senator J. Ellwood “Jaws” Fisch appeared, literally hat in hand, at the offices of Christopher Columbus Cacciatore.

  “Get to the point, Fisch,” Senator Cacciatore said, once Senator Fisch had been ushered into his inner office and the door was discreetly closed. “What’s in the box?”

  “I just happened, Senator, to come across a few bottles of extra-special Chianti while passing through a liquor store, and I thought you might be gracious enough to accept them as a small token of my admiration and esteem.”

  The senator pried the crate open, pulled out a raffia- wrapped bottle of the very best quality Chianti, examined it critically, and then reached up and pinched Senator Fisch on the cheek.

  “You’re a good boy, Fisch,” he said. “Not too bright, but your heart is in the right place.”

  “I’m glad you’re pleased,” Senator Fisch said.

  “Now, Fisch, what can Christopher Columbus Cacciatore do for you?”

  “Certainly, Senator, you’re not suggesting that there is any connection between a few bottles of wine between old friends ...”

  “Old acquaintances, Fisch. Maybe fellow public servants. But don’t presume. We’re not old friends.”

  “No offense intended,” Fisch said.

  “It didn’t happen,” Senator Cacciatore replied. “Now, Fisch, what can I do for you?”

  “I want to go to Austria,” Fisch blurted, “and take a couple of people with me.”

  "Austria?” Senator Cacciatore asked. “Austria?”

  “Yes, sir,” Senator Fisch said.

  “Absolutely out of the question. Positively no,” Senator Cacciatore said. “And I think I should tell you, Fisch, for your own information, that you’ve got one hell of a nerve coming in here and asking me, Senator Christopher Columbus Cacciatore himself, something like that. If you’re smart, young man, you’ll be pretty careful with your expense vouchers in the future.”

  Chapter Eight

  Senator J. Ellwood “Jaws” Fisch stared at Senator Christopher Columbus Cacciatore with shock and horror and some confusion in his eyes. He had obviously angered the beloved chairman of the Senate Committee on Internal Operations. How, he had no idea. But he had. That was a frightening prospect. Those who angered Senator Cacciatore were likely to find themselves conducting their Senate business out of offices located in the basement of the Department of Interior, rather than in the Senate Office Building, and typing their own letters on portable typewriters, rather than having them typed on the latest IBM electrics by highly paid secretaries.

  “Senator,” Fisch said, “there must be some misunderstanding!”

  “There’s no misunderstanding, Senator,” Senator Cacciatore said, with icy, menacing courtesy. “You’re not trying to tell me I’m losing my hearing, are you?”

  “No, sir, of course not, Senator Cacciatore.”

  “With my own two ears, Fisch,” Senator Cacciatore said, “I heard you say that you wanted to go to Austria. You did say you wanted to go to Austria, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, sir, I said that,” Senator Fisch admitted.

  “Well, there you have it!” Senator Cacciatore said. “Now get out of here, before I forget that I’m a U.S. Senator and let you have a good one in the chops.”

  Fisch was twice desperate. Not only were all his senatorial privileges from expense vouchers to office space (not to mention free postage and reduced rates in the senatorial barbershop), in great danger, there was still the business about getting Patience Throckbottom Worthington and a camera crew back and forth to Vienna. Unless he came up with some way to stick the taxpayers for it, he was going to have to pay for it himself, a prospect he found quite painful. Gathering his courage, he straightened his shoulders.

  “What exactly do you have against Austria, Senator?” he asked.

  “You’re asking me, Christopher Columbus Cacciatore, what I have against Austria?”

  “Yes, sir, Senator, that’s what I’m asking.”

  “I’ll tell you,” the senator replied. “And I’m surprised you don’t already know. They shoot kangaroos and make shoes out of them, that’s what I have against Austria.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Senator Fisch replied.

  “Certainly,” Senator Cacciatore said. “I know what it’s like. I get a little gassy myself sometimes.”

  “I mean, sir, I didn’t quite understand that.”

  “What’s to understand? I told you. Those savages run around shooting innocent little kangaroos and make shoes out of them.”

  “Kangaroos?”

  “Yes, kangaroos,” the senator replied, somewhat impatiently. When Fisch still stared at him in visible confusion, he held his hands up under his chin and jumped around the room. “Kangaroos,” he repeated. “Whatsa matter with you, Fisch, you don’t like animals? Maybe it’s all right with you that those lousy Austrians spend all their time shooting down innocent kangaroos?”

  “Senator,” Fisch said, “I’ll have you know that I am a founder and member of the board of APPLE, Inc.”

  “What the hell is Apple Ink?” the senator replied. He stopped bouncing around the room but still held his hands together and under his chin. Truth to tell, he did not look unlike a mature, rather portly kangaroo.

  “Association of Pup and Pussy Lovers in Earnest,” Senator Fisch replied. “Our beloved founder and president is Taylor P. Jambon.”

  “The famous gourmet? That Taylor P. Jambon?”

  “One and the same, sir,” Senator Fisch replied, with quiet pride.

  “You don’t say?” Senator Cacciatore replied. “Isn’t that interesting? Taylor P. Jambon is Mrs. Cacciatore’s next-to-favorite man.”

  “After yourself, of course,” Senator Fisch said smoothly.

  “No, as a matter of fact, after Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov, the world’s greatest opera singer,” the senator replied. “But we’re getting off
the subject. What has all this to do with Austria?”

  “Might I ever so respectfully suggest that you’re just a teensy-weensy, itsy-bitsy mistaken, Senator?”

  “Watch yourself, Fisch. I’ve got a lot of seniority on you, you know.”

  “What I was going to suggest, sir, ever so respectfully, is that you have the wrong country.”

  “Let me tell you something, Fisch,” Senator Cacciatore said. “I get my facts from the same man whose name you keep dropping.”

  “Sir?”

  “Where do you think I heard about the poor kangaroos? And what those lousy Austrians are doing to them? Taylor P. Jambon, that’s who. On his weekly television show, ‘Glorious Gluttony.’ He gives little talks while stirring things. We always listen to his show while we’re waiting for Lawrence Welk. You got to keep up culturally, you know.”

  “What I’m suggesting, Senator ...” Senator Fisch began, but was interrupted.

  “When Mrs. Cacciatore and me heard what Taylor P. Jambon said about what those lousy, cold-blooded Austrians are doing to the innocent kangaroos, Fisch, it broke us up. We just sat there and couldn’t even enjoy the accordion solo on ‘Lawrence Welk.’ I couldn’t even see it, the way I was crying.”

  “I know what they’re doing to the kangaroos is terrible, Senator, but...”

  “But what? You’re not going to stand there and try to excuse it, are you?”

  “Senator, I stand with you in condemnation of what the Australians are doing to the kangaroos.”

  “So why do you want to go there and throw the American taxpayers’ hard-earned money around on a bunch of kangaroo slaughterers?”

  “Senator,” Fisch said, carefully, “I don’t think it’s the Austrians who are being beastly to the kangaroos.”

  “So now you’re calling Taylor P. Jambon, famous gourmet and animal lover, a liar, is that it?”

  “Perhaps it was a little noisy in your TV room, sir,” Fisch said.

  “What sort of an accusation is that?”