by Philip Roth
“And you honestly think that this Boy Scout knife will clear up such doubt and incredulity?”
“Why? Don’t you?”
“Well, it’s not for me to say. I’m just an objective reporter.”
“No, no, go ahead, say. What do you think? Just because you’re objective doesn’t necessarily make you a fool. You don’t find the Boy Scout knife convincing? Is that it?”
“But what I think isn’t at issue—either this is or is not the murder weapon.”
“In other words, you’re implying that it does seem to you far-fetched. Good enough. What would you think of this, then?”
“That?”
“Yes, sir—a Louisville Slugger. Curt Flood’s very own baseball bat. Let me show you on this model here of the President’s head the kind of damage you can do with one of these things. Remember, before, when I said ‘bludgeoned’? Well, watch this.”
To the White House now, for an important announcement by the President’s Bilge Secretary.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to make the following announcement concerning the President’s health. At midnight last night the President entered Walter Reed Army Hospital for minor surgery involving the surgical removal of the sweat glands from his upper lip.”
“Can you spell that, Blurb?”
“Lip. L-i-p.”
“And the first word?”
“Upper. U-p-p-e-r … Now as you know, the President has always wanted to do everything he could to gain the trust and the confidence and, if it was within the realm of possibility, the affection of the American people. It was his belief that if he could stop sweating so much along his upper lip when he addressed the nation, the great majority of the American people would come to believe he was an honest man, speaking the truth, and maybe even like him a little better. Now this is not to say that people who sweat along the upper lip are necessarily liars and/or unlikable. Many people who sweat profusely along the upper lip are outstanding citizens in their communities and sweat the way they do because of the many civic duties they are called upon to perform. Then too there are a lot of good, hard-working ordinary citizens who simply sweat along the upper lip as a matter of course … That is really all I have to say to you at this hour, ladies and gentlemen. I wouldn’t have bothered to call you together like this, had it not been for the continuing rumors that it was the President’s ‘hip’ that had required surgery. There is absolutely no truth to that whatsoever, and I wanted you to be the first to know. I hope by tomorrow in fact to have available for you x-ray photos of the President’s hip that will make it absolutely clear that it is in perfect condition.”
“Which hip will that be, Blurb?”
“The left hip.”
“What about the right one?”
“We’ll try to get those to you within the week. I assure you that we’re working to clear this thing up just as fast as we can. We don’t want the people in this country to go around thinking the President has something wrong with his hips any more than you do.”
“What about the reports that he’s dead, Blurb?”
“I have nothing to say about that at this time.”
“But Secretary Lard was seen weeping as he left Walter Reed today. Surely that suggests that President Dixon is dead.”
“Not necessarily. It could just as well mean that he’s alive. I’m not going to speculate either way, gentlemen, in a matter this serious.”
“What about reports that he’s been murdered by a Boy Scout gone berserk?”
“We’re looking into that, and if there’s any truth at all to that story, I assure you, we’ll be in touch with you about it.”
“Can you say anything definite about his condition at all?”
“He’s resting comfortably.”
“Are the sweat glands out? And if so, can we see them?”
“No comment. Moreover, it would really be up to the First Lady anyway, whether she wanted the President’s sweat glands to be made available for photographs and so on. I think she might want to keep something as personal as those glands just for the immediate family, and maybe eventually build a Trick E. Dixon Library at Prissier in which to house them.”
“Can you tell us how big they are, Blurb?”
“Well, I would imagine that given the sheer amount of sweating he used to do, they were pretty good-sized. But I’m only guessing. I haven’t seen them.”
“Blurb, is there any truth to the report that while at Walter Reed he was also going to have surgery done to prevent his eyes from shifting?”
“No comment.”
“Does that means they were gouged out?”
“No comment.”
“Will the eyes be in the Trick E. Dixon Library at Prissier too, Blurb?”
“Once again, that would be entirely up to the First Lady.”
“Blurb, what about his gestures? He’s been criticized for a certain unnaturalness, or falseness, in his gestures. They don’t always seem tied in to what he’s saying. If he’s still alive, are there any plans for him to have that fixed too? And if so, how? Can they sort of get him synchronized in that department?”
“Gentlemen, I’m sure the doctors are going to do everything they can to make him appear as honest as possible.”
“One last question, Blurb. If he’s dead, that would make Mr. What’s-his-name the President. Is there any truth to the rumor that you people are postponing the announcement of Dixon’s death because you’re looking for a last-minute replacement for What’s-his-name? Is that why Mr. What’s-his-name himself keeps denying so vehemently the reports that the President is dead—for fear of being dumped?”
“Gentlemen, I think you know as well as I do that the Vice President is not the kind of man who would want to be President of the United States if he felt there was any doubt as to his qualifications for the office. That’s not even a question I will take seriously.”
“Good evening. This is Erect Severehead with a cogent news analysis from the nation’s capital … A hushed hush pervades the corridors of power. Great men whisper whispers while a stunned capital awaits. Even the cherry blossoms along the Potomac seem to sense the magnitude. And magnitude there is. Yet magnitude there has been before, and the nation has survived. A mood of cautious optimism surged forward just at dusk. Then set the age-old sun behind these edifices of reason, and gloom once more descended. Yet gloom there has been, and in the end the nation has survived. For the principles are everlasting, though the men be mortal. And it is that very mortality that the men in the corridors of power. For no one dares to play politics with the momentousness of a tragedy of such scope, or the scope of a tragedy of such momentousness. If tragedy it be. Yet tragedies there have been, and the nation founded upon hope and trust in man and the deity, has continued to survive. Still, in this worried capital tonight, men watch and men wait. So too do women and children in this worried capital tonight watch and wait. This is Erect Severehead from Washington, D.C.”
“—the flag-burners, the faggots, the fairies, the filth peddlers, the Fabian Socialists of yore, the fair-weather friends, the fairies, the faithless, the flesh-show operators—”
We interrupt the Vice President’s address to the National Primates Association to bring you the following bulletin. A troop of Boy Scouts from Boston, Massachusetts, the home state of Senator Edward Charisma, has confessed to the murder of the President of the United States. The FBI has declined to give their names until such time as the President’s murder has been announced by the White House. The Boy Scouts are being held without bail, and according to the FBI the case is, quote cinched unquote. The murder weapon, which at first was believed to be the very knife that the President had exhibited on television during his famous “Something Is Rotten in Denmark” speech, is now identified as a Louisville Slugger baseball bat, formerly the property of Washington Senator center fielder Curt Flood. We return you to Vice President What’s-his-name at the Primates convention:
“—the flotsam and jetsam of the u
niversities, the fairies, the folk singers, the fairies, the freaks, the fairies, the free-loaders on welfare, the fairies, the free-speechers with their favorite four-letter word, the fairies—”
We switch you to our correspondent at Walter Reed Army Hospital.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this terrible news has just come to us from a highly reliable source within the hospital. The President of the United States was assassinated sometime in the early hours of the morning. The cause of death was drowning. He was found at seven A.M., unclothed and bent into the fetal position, inside a large transparent baggie filled with a clear fluid presumed to be water, and tied shut at the top. The baggie containing the body of the President was found on the floor of the hospital delivery room. How he was removed from his own room, where he was awaiting surgery on his upper lip, and forced or enticed into a baggie is not known at this time. There would seem to be little doubt, however, that the manner in which he has been murdered is directly related to the controversial remarks he made at San Dementia on April 3, in which he came out four-square for ‘the rights of the unborn.’
“Right now, hospital officials seem to believe that the President left his bed voluntarily to accompany his assailant to the delivery room, perhaps in the belief that he was to be photographed there beside the stomach of a woman in labor. The recent Scout uprising, and yesterday’s nuclear bombing of Copenhagen, seemed to those of us here in Washington to have taken something of an edge off his campaign in behalf of the unborn, and it way well be that he had decided to seize upon this fortuitous circumstance to revitalize interest in his program. Doubtless, with the destruction of Copenhagen and the occupation of Denmark successfully accomplished, he was anxious to return to what he considered our most pressing domestic problem. Rumor has it that he intended, in his next major address, to use his new upper lip to outline his belief in ‘the sanctity of human life, including the life of the yet unborn.’
“Rut now there will be no speech on the sanctity of human life with the new lip he would have been so proud of. A cruel assassin with a macabre sense of humor has seen to that. The man who believed in the unborn is dead, his unclothed body found stuffed in the fetal position inside a water-filled baggie on the floor of the delivery room here at Walter Reed Hospital. This is Roger Rising-to-the-Occasion at Walter Reed.”
Quickly now to the White House, and the latest bulletin from the Bilge Secretary.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I have a few more facts for you now about the President’s hip, including the x-ray I promised earlier. This gentleman in white that you see beside me in his surgical gloves, gown and mask is probably the foremost authority on the left hip in the world. Doctor, will you comment on this x-ray of the President’s left hip for the members of the press. I’ll hold it for you so you don’t dirty your gloves.”
“Thank you, Blurb. Ladies and gentlemen, there is just no doubt about it in my mind. This is a left hip.”
“Thank you, Doctor. Any questions?”
“Blurb, the report from Walter Reed is that the President has been assassinated. Stuffed naked into a baggie and drowned.”
“Gentlemen, let’s try to keep to the subject. The doctor here has flown in from Minnesota right in the middle of an operation on a left hip, to verify this x-ray for you. I don’t think we want to keep him longer than we have to. Yes?”
“Doctor, can you be absolutely sure that the left hip is the President’s?”
“Of course I can.”
“How, sir?”
“Because that’s what the Bilge Secretary said it was. Why would he give me a picture of a hip and say it was the President’s if it wasn’t?”
(Laughter from the Press Corps)
“—the gadflies, the go-go girls, the geldings, the gibbons, the gonadless, the gonorrhea-carriers—”
We interrupt the Vice President’s address to the National Association for the Advancement of Color Slides to switch you to our correspondents around the country.
First, Morton Momentous in Chicago:
“Here in the Windy City the mood is one of incredulity, of shock, of utter disbelief. So stunned are the people of this great Middle Western metropolis that they seem totally unable to respond to the bulletins from Washington that have come to them over radio and television. And so from the Gold Coast to Skid Row, from the fashionable suburbs of the North to the squalid ghettos of the South, the scene is much the same: people going about their ordinary, everyday affairs as though nothing had happened. Not even the flags have been lowered to half-staff, but continue to flutter high in the breeze, even as they did before the news reached this grief-stricken city of the terrible fate that has befallen our leader. Trick E. Dixon is dead, cruelly and bizarrely murdered, a martyr to the unborn the world round—and it is more than the mind or spirit of Chicago can accept or understand. And so throughout this great city, life, in a manner of speaking, goes on—much as you see it directly behind me here in the world-famous Loop. Shoppers rushing to and fro. The din of traffic continuous. Restaurants jammed. Streetcars and busses packed. Yes, the frantic, mindless scurrying of a big city at the rush hour. It is almost as though the people here in Chicago are afraid to turn for a single second from the ordinary routine of an ordinary day, to face this ghastly tragedy. This is Morton Momentous from a stunned, incredulous Chicago.”
We take you now to Los Angeles and correspondent Peter Pious.
“If the people in the streets of Chicago are incredulous, you can well imagine the mood of the ordinary man in the pool here in Trick E. Dixon’s native state. In Chicago they are simply unable to respond; here it is even more heart-rending. The Californians I have spoken with—or tried to speak with—are like nothing so much as small children who have been confronted with an event far beyond their emotional range of response. All they can do when they learn the tragic news that Trick E. Dixon has been found stuffed in a baggie is giggle. To be sure, there are the proverbial California wisecracks, but by and large it is giggling such as one might hear from perplexed and bewildered children that remains in one’s ears, long after the giggler himself has dived off the high board or driven away in his sports car. For this is Trick E. Dixon’s state and these are Trick E. Dixon’s people. Here he is not just the President, here he is a friend and a neighbor, one of them, a healthy child of the sunlight, of the beaches and the blue Pacific, a man who embodied all the robustness and grandeur of America’s golden state. And now that golden child of the Golden West is gone; and Californians can only giggle to suppress their sobs and hide their tears. Peter Pious in Los Angeles.”
Next, Ike Ironic, in New York City.
“No one ever believed that Trick E. Dixon was beloved in New York City. Yes, he lived here once, in this fashionable Fifth Avenue apartment building directly behind me. But few ever considered him a resident of this city so much as a refugee from Washington, biding his time to return to public office. Nor did New Yorkers seem much impressed when he assumed the powers of the Presidency in 1969. But now he is gone, and all at once the very deep affection, the love, if you will, for their former neighbor, is everywhere apparent. Of course, you have to know New Yorkers to be able to penetrate the outer shell of cynicism and see the love beneath. You had to look, but you saw it today, here in New York: in the seeming boredom and indifference of a bus driver; in the impatience of a salesgirl; in the anger over nothing of a taxi driver; in the weariness of the homebound workers packed into the subway; in the blank gaze of the drunks along the Bowery; in the haughtiness of a dowager refusing to curb her dog on the fashionable Upper East Side. You had to look, but there it was, love for Trick E. Dixon … Only now he is gone, gone before they could, with their boredom and indifference and impatience and anger and exhaustion and blankness and haughtiness, express to him all they felt so deeply in their hearts. Yes, the bitter irony is this: he had to die in a baggie, before New Yorkers could tender him that hard-won love that would have meant so much to him. But then it is a day of bitter ironies. Ike Ironic fr
om grief-stricken and, perhaps, guilt-ridden Fifth Avenue in the city of New York, where he lived like a stranger, but has died like a long-lost son.”
Reports coming in from around the nation confirm those you have just heard from our correspondents in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, reports of people too stunned or heartbroken to be able to respond with the conventional tears or words of sorrow to the news of President’s Dixon’s assassination. No, the ordinary signs of grief are clearly not sufficient to express the emotion that they feel at this hour, and so they pretend for the time being that it simply has not happened; or they giggle with embarrassment and disbelief; or they attempt to hide beneath a gruff exterior, the deep love for a fallen leader that smolders away within.
And what of the madman who perpetrated this deed? For that story, we return you to the headquarters of the FBI in Washington.
“That’s right, we’re pretty sure now it was a madman who perpetrated this deed.”
“And the Scouts? The knife? The Louisville Slugger?”
“Oh, we’re not ruling out any of the hard evidence. I’m talking now about the brains behind the whole thing. More accurately, the lack of brains. You see, that’s really our number one clue—everything else aside, this was a pretty stupid thing to do to the President. There he is, the President, and they do a stupid thing like this. Now if this is somebody’s idea of a practical joke, well, I for one don’t consider it funny. You’re not just stuffing anybody into a baggie, you’re stuffing the President of the United States. What about the dignity of his office? If you have no respect for the man, what about the office? That’s what really gravels me, personally. I mean, what do you think the enemies of democracy would think if they saw the President of the United States all curled up naked like that. Well, I’ll tell you what they’d think: they couldn’t be happier. That’s just the kind of propaganda they love to use to brainwash people and make Communists out of them.”