“I see.”
“However you want to handle people is all right with me. That’s your responsibility.”
This abrupt abdication of Frank from all human affairs shocked and angered me, and I said to him, meaning to be satirical, “You mind telling me what, in a purely technical way, is planned for this day of days?”
I got a strictly technical reply. “Repair the power plant and stage an air show.”
“Good! So one of my first triumphs as President will be to restore electricity to my people.”
Frank didn’t see anything funny in that. He gave me a salute. “I’ll try, sir. I’ll do my best for you, sir. I can’t guarantee how long it’ll be before we get juice back.”
“That’s what I want—a juicy country.”
“I’ll do my best, sir.” Frank saluted me again.
“And the air show?” I asked. “What’s that?”
I got another wooden reply. “At one o’clock this afternoon, sir, six planes of the San Lorenzan Air Force will fly past the palace here and shoot at targets in the water. It’s part of the celebration of the Day of the Hundred Martyrs to Democracy. The American Ambassador also plans to throw a wreath into the sea.”
So I decided, tentatively, that I would have Frank announce my apotheosis immediately following the wreath ceremony and the air show.
“What do you think of that?” I said to Frank.
“You’re the boss, sir.”
“I think I’d better have a speech ready,” I said. “And there should be some sort of swearing-in, to make it look dignified, official.”
“You’re the boss, sir.” Each time he said those words they seemed to come from farther away, as though Frank were descending the rungs of a ladder into a deep shaft, while I was obliged to remain above.
And I realized with chagrin that my agreeing to be boss had freed Frank to do what he wanted to do more than anything else, to do what his father had done: to receive honors and creature comforts while escaping human responsibilities. He was accomplishing this by going down a spiritual oubliette.
Like My Predecesors, I Outlaw Bokonon 101
So I wrote my speech in a round, bare room at the foot of a tower. There was a table and a chair. And the speech I wrote was round and bare and sparsely furnished, too.
It was hopeful. It was humble.
And I found it impossible not to lean on God. I had never needed such support before, and so had never believed that such support was available.
Now, I found that I had to believe in it—and I did.
In addition, I would need the help of people. I called for a list of the guests who were to be at the ceremonies and found that Julian Castle and his son had not been invited. I sent messengers to invite them at once, since they knew more about my people than anyone, with the exception of Bokonon.
As for Bokonon:
I pondered asking him to join my government, thus bringing about a sort of millennium for my people. And I thought of ordering that the awful hook outside the palace gate be taken down at once, amidst great rejoicing.
But then I understood that a millennium would have to offer something more than a holy man in a position of power, that there would have to be plenty of good things for all to eat, too, and nice places to live for all, and good schools and good health and good times for all, and work for all who wanted it—things Bokonon and I were in no position to provide.
So good and evil had to remain separate; good in the jungle, and evil in the palace. Whatever entertainment there was in that was about all we had to give the people.
There was a knock on my door. A servant told me the guests had begun to arrive.
So I put my speech in my pocket and I mounted the spiral staircase in my tower. I arrived at the uppermost battlement of my castle, and I looked out at my guests, my servants, my cliff, and my lukewarm sea.
Enemies of Freedom 102
When I think of all those people on my uppermost battlement, I think of Bokonon’s “hundred-and-nineteenth Calypso,” wherein he invites us to sing along with him:
“Where’s my good old gang done gone?”
I heard a sad man say.
I whispered in that sad man’s ear,
“Your gang’s done gone away.”
Present were Ambassador Horlick Minton and his lady; H. Lowe Crosby, the bicycle manufacturer, and his Hazel; Dr. Julian Castle, humanitarian and philanthropist, and his son Philip, author and innkeeper; little Newton Hoenikker, the picture painter, and his musical sister, Mrs. Harrison C. Conners; my heavenly Mona; Major General Franklin Hoenikker; and twenty assorted San Lorenzo bureaucrats and military men.
Dead—almost all dead now.
As Bokonon tells us, “It is never a mistake to say goodbye.”
There was a buffet on my battlements, a buffet burdened with native delicacies: roasted warblers in little overcoats made of their own blue-green feathers; lavender land crabs taken from their shells, minced, fried in coconut oil, and returned to their shells; fingerling barracuda stuffed with banana paste; and, on unleavened, unseasoned cornmeal wafers, bite-sized cubes of boiled albatross.
The albatross, I was told, had been shot from the very bartizan in which the buffet stood. There were two beverages offered, both un-iced: Pepsi-Cola and native rum. The Pepsi-Cola was served in plastic Pilseners. The rum was served in coconut shells. I was unable to identify the sweet bouquet of the rum, though it somehow reminded me of early adolescence.
Frank was able to name the bouquet for me. “Acetone.”
“Acetone?”
“Used in model-airplane cement.”
I did not drink the rum.
Ambassador Minton did a lot of ambassadorial, gourmand saluting with his coconut, pretending to love all men and all the beverages that sustained them. But I did not see him drink. He had with him, incidentally, a piece of luggage of a sort I had never seen before. It looked like a French horn case, and proved to contain the memorial wreath that was to be cast into the sea.
The only person I saw drink the rum was H. Lowe Crosby, who plainly had no sense of smell. He was having a good time, drinking acetone from his coconut, sitting on a cannon, blocking the touchhole with his big behind. He was looking out to sea through a huge pair of Japanese binoculars. He was looking at targets mounted on bobbing floats anchored offshore.
The targets were cardboard cutouts shaped like men.
They were to be fired upon and bombed in a demonstration of might by the six planes of the San Lorenzan Air Force.
Each target was a caricature of some real person, and the name of that person was painted on the targets’ back and front.
I asked who the caricaturist was and learned that he was Dr. Vox Humana, the Christian minister. He was at my elbow.
“I didn’t know you were talented in that direction, too.”
“Oh, yes. When I was a young man, I had a very hard time deciding what to be.”
“I think the choice you made was the right one.”
“I prayed for guidance from Above.”
“You got it.”
H. Lowe Crosby handed his binoculars to his wife. “There’s old Joe Stalin, closest in, and old Fidel Castro’s anchored right next to him.”
“And there’s old Hitler,” chuckled Hazel, delighted. “And there’s old Mussolini and some old Jap.”
“And there’s old Karl Marx.”
“And there’s old Kaiser Bill, spiked hat and all,” cooed Hazel. “I never expected to see him again.”
“And there’s old Mao. You see old Mao?”
“Isn’t he gonna get it?” asked Hazel. “Isn’t he gonna get the surprise of his life? This sure is a cute idea.”
“They got practically every enemy that freedom, ever had out there,” H. Lowe Crosby declared.
A Medical Opinion on the 103
Effects of a Writers’ Strike
None of the guests knew yet that I was to be President. None knew how close to death “Papa” was. Frank gave out the official word that “Papa” was resting comfortably, that “Papa” sent his best wishes to all.
The order of events, as announced by Frank, was that Ambassador Minton would throw his wreath into the sea, in honor of the Hundred Martyrs; and then the airplanes would shoot the targets in the sea; and then he, Frank, would say a few words.
He did not tell the company that, following his speech, there would be a speech by me.
So I was treated as nothing more than a visiting journalist, and I engaged in harmless granfalloonery here and there.
“Hello, Mom,” I said to Hazel Crosby.
“Why, if it isn’t my boy!” Hazel gave me a perfumed hug, and she told everybody, “This boy’s a Hoosier!”
The Castles, father and son, stood separate from the rest of the company. Long unwelcome at “Papa’s” palace, they were curious as to why they had now been invited there.