It was nice to know that they, the people, had the power to decide who would become Nicole’s husband, each four years; in a sense it gave to the electorate supreme power, even above Nicole herself. For instance, this latest man, Rudolf Kalbfleisch. Relations between this der Alte and the First Lady were quite cool, indicating that she did not like this most recent choice very much. But of course being a lady she would never let on.
When did the position of First Lady begin to assume stature greater than that of President? The text inquired. In other words, when did our society become matriarchal, Ian Duncan said to himself. Around about 1990; I know the answer to that. There were glimmerings before that — the change came gradually. Each year der Alte became more obscure, the First Lady became better known, more liked, by the public which brought it about. Was it a need for mother, wife, mistress, or perhaps all three? Anyhow they got what they wanted; they got Nicole and she is certainly all three and more besides.
In the corner of his living room the television set said taaaaanggg, indicating that it was about to come on. With a sigh, Duncan closed the official relpol textbook and turned his attention to the screen. A special, dealing with activities at the White House, he speculated. Another tour, perhaps, or a thorough scrutiny (in massively-detailed depth) about a new hobby or passion of Nicole’s. Has she taken up collecting bone-china cups? If so, we will have to view each and every damn cup.
Sure enough, the round, heavy, wattled features of Maxwell W. Jamison, the White House News Secretary, appeared on the screen. ‘Evening, people of this land of ours,’ he said solemnly. ‘Have you ever wondered what it would be like to descend to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean? Nicole has, and to answer that question she has assembled here in the Tulip Room of the White House three of the world’s foremost oceanographers. Tonight she will ask them for their stories, and you will hear them too, as they were taped live, just a short while ago through the facilities of the Unified Triadic Network’s Public Affairs Bureau.’
And now to the White House, Duncan said to himself. At least vicariously. We who can’t find our way there, who have not talents which might interest the First Lady even for one evening: we get to see in anyhow, through the carefully-regulated window of our television set.
Tonight he did not really want to watch, but it seemed expedient to do so; there might be a surprise quiz on the programme, at the end. And a good grade on a surprise quiz might well offset the bad grade he had surely made on the recent relpol test, now being corrected by his neighbour, Mr Edgar Stone.
On the screen bloomed now the lovely tranquil features, the pale skin and dark, intelligent eyes, the wise and yet pert face of the woman who had come to monopolize their attention, on whom an entire nation, almost an entire planet, dwelt obsessively. At the sight of her, Ian Duncan felt sick with fear. He had failed her; his rotten test results were somehow known to her and although she would say nothing, the disappointment was there.
‘Good evening,’ Nicole said in her soft, slightly husky voice.
‘It’s this way,’ Duncan found himself mumbling. ‘I don’t have a head for abstractions; I mean, all this religio-political philosophy — it makes no sense to me. Couldn’t I just concentrate on concrete reality? I ought to be baking bricks or turning out shoes.’ I ought to be on Mars, he thought, on the frontier.
I’m flunking out here; at thirty-five I’m washed up, and she knows it.
Let me go Nicole, he thought in desperation. Don’t give me any more tests, because I don’t have a chance of passing them. Even this programme about the ocean’s bottom; by the time it’s over I’ll have forgotten all the data. I’m no use to the Democratic-Republican Party.
He thought about his former buddy Al, then. Al could help me. Al worked for Loony Luke, at one of his Jalopy Jungles peddling the little tin and cardboard ships that even defeated People could afford, ships that could, if luck was with them, successfully make a one-way trip to Mars. Al, he said to himself, could get me a jalopy wholesale.
On the TV screen, Nicole was saying, ‘And really, it is a world of much enchantment, with luminous entities far surpassing in variety and in sheer delightful wonder anything found on other planets. Scientists compute that there are more forms of life in the ocean — ‘
Her face faded, and a sequence showing unnatural, grotesque fish took its place. This is part of the deliberate propaganda line, Duncan realized. An effort to take our minds off Mars and the idea of getting away from the Party — and from her. On the screen a bulbous-eyed fish gaped at him, and his attention, despite himself, was captured. Jeez, he thought, it is a weird world down there. Nicole, he thought, you’ve got me trapped. If only Al and I had succeeded; we might be performing right now for you, and we’d be happy. While you interviewed world-famous oceanographers Al and I would be discreetly playing in the background, perhaps one of the Bach ‘Two Part Inventions’.
Going to the closet of his apartment, Ian Duncan bent down and carefully lifted a cloth-wrapped object into the light. We had so much youthful faith in this, he recalled.
Tenderly, he unwrapped the jug; then, taking a deep breath, he blew a couple of hollow notes on it. Duncan & Miller and Their Two-man Jug Band, he and Al Miller had been, playing their own arrangement for two jugs of Bach and Mozart and Stravinsky. But the White House talent scout — the skunk. He had never even given them a fair audition. It had been done, he told them. Jesse Pigg, the fabulous jug-artist from Alabama, had got to the White House first, entertaining and delighting the dozen and one members of the Thibodeaux family gathered there with his version of ‘Derby Ram’ and ‘John Henry’ and the like.
‘But,’ Ian Duncan had protested, ‘this is classical jug. We play late Beethoven sonatas.’
‘We’ll call you,’ the talent scout had said briskly. ‘If Nicky shows an interest at any time in the future.’
Nicky! He had blanched. Imagine being that intimate to the First Family. He and Al, mumbling pointlessly, had retired from the stage and their jugs, making way for the next act, a group of dogs dressed up in Elizabethan costumes portraying characters from Hamlet.
The dogs had not made it, either, but that was little consolation.
‘I am told,’ Nicole was saying, ‘that there is so little light in the ocean depths that, well, observe this strange fellow.’ A fish, sporting a glowing lantern before him, swam across the TV screen.
Startling him, there came a knock on the apartment door.
With caution, LAN Duncan answered it. He found his neighbour Mr Stone standing there, looking nervous.
‘You weren’t at All Souls?’ Edgar Stone said. ‘Won’t they check and find out?’ He held in his hands Ian Duncan’s corrected test.
Duncan said, ‘Tell me how I did.’ He prepared himself.
Entering the apartment, Stone shut the door after him. He glanced at the TV set, saw Nicole seated with the oceanographers, listened for a moment to her, then abruptly said in a hoarse voice, ‘You did fine.’ He held out the test.
‘I passed?’
Duncan could not believe it. He accepted the papers, examining them with incredulity. And then he understood what had happened.
Stone had conspired to see that he passed. He had falsified the score, probably out of humanitarian motives. Duncan raised his head and they looked at each other, neither speaking. This is terrible, Duncan thought. What’ll I do now? His reaction amazed him, but there it was.
I wanted to fail, he realized. Why? So I can get out of here, so I would have an excuse to give up all this, my apartment and my job, say fork it and go. Emigrate with nothing more than the shirt on my back, in a jalopy that falls to pieces the moment it comes to rest in the Martian wilderness.
‘Thanks,’ he said glumly.
In a rapid voice, Stone said, ‘Y-you can do the same for me sometime.’
‘Oh yeah, be happy to,’ Duncan said.
Scuttling back out of the apartment, Stone left him alone with the TV set, his jug and the falsely corrected test papers, and his thoughts.
3
One would have to go back to the year 1994, the year that West Germany entered the Union as the fifty-third of the United States, to understand why Vince Strikerock, an American citizen and an inhabitant of The Abraham Lincoln Apartments, was listening to der Alte on the television set while he shaved, the next morning. There was something about this particular der Alte, President Rudi Kalbfleisch, which always irritated him, and it would be a great thing when Kalbfleisch, in two more years, reached the end of his term and had, by law, to retire. It was always a great thing, a good day, when the law got one of them out of office; Vince always found it worth celebrating.