by Philip Roth
“Do you think then that the assassin was an enemy of democracy as well as a madman?”
“I do. And as I said, a practical joker. Fortunately, we happen to have a complete file on all madmen who are enemies of democracy and practical jokers, and they’re under constant surveillance. So I don’t think there’s going to be any trouble finding our man, or madman. And even if we don’t find him, we’ve got the Boy Scouts from Boston who confessed to this thing in reserve, so I’d say, on the whole, we’re in much better shape than we were last time, and are really just waiting a go-ahead from the White House …”
“We are privileged to have with us in the studio one of the most distinguished members of the House of Representatives, a leading Republican statesman, and a friend and confidant to the late President. Congressman Fraud, this is a sorrowful day in our nation’s history.”
“Oh, it’s a day that will live in infamy, there’s no doubt about that in my mind. I am, in fact, introducing a bill into Congress to have it declared a day that will live in infamy and celebrated as such in coming years. What you’ve got here, as Chief Heehaw at the FBI was saying, is a real lack of respect for the office of the Presidency. What you’ve got here in this assassin is a very disrespectful person, and, I would agree, probably a madman to boot.”
“Do you have any idea, Congressman, why the White House continues at this late hour to refuse to confirm the story of the assassination?”
“I think it goes without saying that we’re in a sensitive area here, and consequently they want to move cautiously on this whole thing. I think they want, first off, to gauge the public reaction here at home, and then of course there is the reaction around the world to consider. On the one hand you’ve got our allies who depend upon us for support, and on the other hand you’ve got our enemies who are always on the lookout for some chink in our armor, and if you keep all that in mind, then I think you have to agree that in the long run it is probably in the interest of our integrity and our credibility to cover this whole thing up. I would think that some such reasoning as that is going on behind the scenes at the White House right now.”
“Has the First Lady been notified?”
“Oh, of course.”
“What was her reaction?”
“Well, she was understandably quite overcome in the first moment. But, as you know, she is a very decorous woman, even in moments of great emotion. Consequently, her immediate reaction was to note that the manner in which the assassin went about the assassination was in extremely bad taste. The baggie aside for the moment, she thinks that at the very least the President should have been slain in a shirt and a tie and a jacket, like John F. Charisma. She says there was a suit fresh from the dry cleaners in the closet at the hospital, and that it really shows that the assassin was a person of very poor breeding to have failed to recognize how important it is for the President, of all people, to be neatly and appropriately garbed at all times. She said she just had to wonder about the upbringing of a person who would forget something like that. She said she didn’t want to blame the assassin’s family, until she knew all the facts, but it was clear she felt there probably could have been a wee bit more attention given to good grooming in his house when the assassin was growing up.”
“Congressman Fraud, there has been some speculation that the President’s assassination is a reprisal for the destruction yesterday of the city of Copenhagen. What do you think of that idea?”
“Not very much.”
“Can you explain?”
“Well, it just doesn’t make any sense. The President himself went on television, after all, and explained to the American people the situation in Denmark and why we might have to destroy Copenhagen. Now he didn’t have to do that, you know—but he did, because he wanted the people to have all the facts. So I just don’t see how you can fault him there. And, I must say, in praise of this great country, that except for a few elderly people out there in Wisconsin—and they of course turned out to be of Danish extraction, and obviously didn’t have any objectivity on this matter at all—but except for those few irresponsible demonstrators out there shouting dirty words in Danish, the overwhelming majority of the people of this country have taken the destruction of Copenhagen with the wonderful equanimity and solidarity we have come to expect of them in matters like this. No, I just can’t see where somebody is going to assassinate the President for a sound policy decision such as this one, and that even goes for a madman. No, he had the mandate of the people here, lunatics included.”
“And the mandate of the Congress as well?”
“Well, of course, as you know, there are unfortunately a very few Congressmen and Senators—I guess you could call them headline seekers—who will go so far as to try to make political hay out of the bombing of a little God-forsaken village out in the middle of nowhere, some crossroads nobody has ever heard of before and surely after the bombing will never hear of again—so I leave it to you to imagine what such politicians are going to do with the nuclear destruction of a place like Copenhagen. In their behalf, however, let me say that even they would not be so reckless as to assassinate the President because of a difference of opinion over something like bombing sites. I mean, nobody’s perfect. One President chooses this target, one President chooses that target, but fortunately we have in this country a political system that can accommodate itself to that kind of disagreement, without recourse to assassination. And by and large I think you can say that in the end the mistakes in judgment and so on shake themselves out, and we pretty much destroy the places that need destroying. It seems to me, in fact, that as regards the destruction of Copenhagen, you’ll find that even among the President’s staunchest critics in the Senate, there was a sense that a decision of that magnitude simply couldn’t have been arrived at lightly or arbitrarily. I think most of the truly responsible members of the Congress feel as I do, that having made a strong show of strength such as this in Scandinavia now, we are not going to get ourselves bogged down there later the way we did in Southeast Asia.”
“So you see no connection between the ‘Something Is Rotten in Denmark’ speech and the assassination?”
“No, no. Frankly I can’t believe that the murder of the President has to do with anything he has ever said or done, including his courageous remarks in behalf of the unborn and the sanctity of human life. No, this is one of those wild, crazy acts, just as the FBI describes it—the work of a madman, and, as the First Lady suggests, a pretty ill-mannered madman, at that. It seems to me that any attempt to find some rational political motive in anything so bizarre and boorish as stuffing the President of the United States unclothed into a water-filled baggie in the fetal position is so much wasted effort. It’s an act of violence and disrespect, utterly without rhyme or reason, and cannot but arouse the righteous indignation of reasonable and sensible men everywhere.”
“—the hairy, the half-cocked if you know what I mean, the hammer-and-sickle supporters, the hard-core pornographers, the hedonists, the Hell’s Angels, those whom God won’t help because they won’t help themselves, the hermaphrodites, the highbrows, the hijackers, the hippies, the Hisses, the homos, the hoodlums of all races, the heroin pushers, the hypocrites—”
“Yes, the tribute has begun, the tribute to the man they loved more than they knew. By trains they come, by busses, by cars, by planes, by wheelchairs, by feet. Come some on canes and crutches, and some on artificial limbs. But come undaunted they do, like pilgrims of yesteryear and yore, to honor pay to him they loved more than they knew. Reaped by the Grim Reaper before his reaping was due, he brings us together at last, as he promised he one day would do. And doing it he is. For in they come, the ordinary people, his people, barbers and butchers and brokers and barkers, tycoons and taxidermists and the taciturn who till the land. It is, I daresay, a demonstration the likes of which he who has been grimly reaped by the Grim Reaper did not, alas, survive to witness. No, during his brief residence on this planet Earth, and his three years in the Wh
ite House, they demonstrated not to honor him but to humiliate him, not to pay him homage and respect but to shout their obscenities at, and display their disrespect toward, him. Rut these are not the obscenity-shouters and the disrespect-displayers gathering here tonight along the banks of the Potomac—banks as old as the Republic itself—and beneath the cherry blossoms he so loved, and in the brooding grandeur of this the city which embodies that which he who has been untimely reaped would have himself willingly laid down his life for, had of him it been asked instead of cruelly being stolen in the night from him by an ill-mannered madman with a baggie. Yet madmen there have been and madmen there will be, and still this nation has endured. And, I daresay, endure it will, while the madmen pass through these corridors of power and halls of justice and closets of virtue and dumbwaiters of dignity and cellars of idealism, leaving us in the end, if not stronger, wiser; and if not wiser, stronger; and if, alas, not either, both. This is Erect Severehead with a cogent news analysis from the nation’s capital.”
“This is Brad Bathos. I’m down here in the streets of Washington now, and it is a moving and heart-rending sight I see. Ever since the news first broke that the President had been found dead in a baggie at Walter Reed Hospital, the people of this great country, his people, have been pouring into the capital from all over the nation. Thousands upon thousands simply standing here in the streets surrounding the White House, with heads bowed, visibly shaken and moved. Many are crying openly, not a few of them grown men. Here is a man seated on the curbstone holding his head in his hands and quietly sobbing. I’m going to ask him if he will tell us where he comes from.”
“I come from here, I come from Washington.”
“You’re sitting on the curbstone quietly sobbing into your hands. Can you tell us why? Can you put it into words?”
“Guilt.”
“You mean you feel a personal sense of guilt?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I did it.”
“You did it? You killed the President?”
“Yes.”
“Well, look, this is important—have you told the police?”
“I’ve told everyone. The police. The FBI. I even tried to call Pitter Dixon to tell her. But all they kept saying was that it was kind of me to think of them at a time like this and Mrs. Dixon appreciated my sympathy and thought it was in very good taste, and then they hung up. Meanwhile, I should be arrested. I should be in the papers—my picture, and a big headline, DIXON’S MURDERER. But nobody will believe me. Here, here’s the notebooks where I’ve been planning it for months. Here are tape recordings of my own telephone conversations with friends. Here, look at this: a signed confession! And I wasn’t even under duress when I wrote it. I was in a hammock. I was fully aware of my constitutional rights. My lawyer was with me, as a matter of fact. We were having a drink. Here—just read it, I give all my reasons and everything.”
“Sir, interesting as your story is, we have to move on. We must move on through this immense crowd … Here’s a young attractive woman holding a sleeping infant in her arms. She is just standing on the sidewalk gazing blankly at the White House. Heaven only knows how much anguish is concealed in that gaze. Madam, will you tell the television audience what you’re thinking about as you look at the White House?”
“He’s dead.”
“You appear to be in a state of shock.”
“I know. I didn’t think I could do it.”
“Do what?”
“Kill. Murder. He said, ‘Let me make one thing perfectly—’ and before he could say ‘clear,’ I had him in the baggie. You should have seen the look on his face when I turned the little twister seal.”
“The look on the President’s face when you—?”
“Yes. I’ve never seen such rage in my life. I’ve never seen such anger and fury. But then he realized I was staring at him through the baggie, and suddenly he looked just the way he does on television, all seriousness and responsibility, and he opened his mouth, I guess to say ‘clear,’ and that was it. I think he thought the whole thing was being televised.”
“And—well, was your baby with you, when you allegedly—?”
“Oh yes, yes. Of course, she’s too young to remember exactly what happened. But I want her to be able to grow up to say, ‘I was there when my mother murdered Dixon.’ Imagine it—my little girl is going to grow up in a world where she’ll never have to hear anybody say he’s going to make something perfectly clear ever again! Or, ‘Let’s make no mistake about it!’ Or, I’m a Quaker and that’s why I hate war so much—’ Never never never never. And I did it. I actually did it. I tell you, I still can’t believe it. I drowned him. In cold water. Me.”
“And you, young man, let’s move on to you. You’re just walking up and down here outside the White House, very much as though you’ve lost something. You seem confused and bewildered. Can you tell us, in a few words, what it is you’re searching for?”
“A cop. A policeman.”
“Why?”
“I want to turn myself in.”
“This is Brad Bathos, from the streets of Washington, where the mourners have come to gather, to pray, to weep, to lament, and to hope. Back to Erect Severe-head.”
“Erect, we’re up here on top of the Washington Monument with the Chief of the Washington Police Force. Chief Shackles, how many people would you say are down there right now?”
“Oh, just around the monument alone we’ve got about twenty-five or thirty thousand; and I’d say there are twice that many over by the White House. And of course more are pouring in every hour.”
“Can you describe these people? Are they the usual sort of demonstrators you get here in Washington?”
“Oh no, no. These people don’t want to disrupt anything. I would say they are actually bending over backwards to cooperate with the authorities. So far, at any rate.”
“What do you mean by so far?”
“Well, we haven’t yet had to make any arrests. We’re under orders from the White House not to arrest anyone under any conditions. As you can imagine, this is putting something of a strain on my men, particularly as just about everybody down here seems to have come for the purpose of getting himself arrested. I mean I’ve never seen anything like it. A lot of them are down on their knees begging to be taken in, and just about every Tom, Dick and Harry seems to have documents or photographs or fingerprints, proving that he is the one who killed the President. Of course, none of it is worth the paper it’s written on. Some of it’s kind of laughable, in fact, it’s so unprofessional and obviously a slapdash last-minute job. But still and all, you got to give them credit for their fortitude. They grab hold of my men just like they had the goods on themselves, and actually try to handcuff themselves to the officer with their own handcuffs and get carted off to prison that way. We can’t park a squad car anywhere, without half a dozen of them jumping into the back seat, and screaming, ‘Take me to J. Edgar Heehaw—and step on it.’ Now you can’t arrest anybody without taking the proper procedural steps, but go try to explain that to a crowd like this. We’re sort of humoring them, however, the best we can, and the ones who just won’t quit, we tell them to wait right where they are and we’ll round them up later. What we’re hoping for is a good thunderstorm during the night, that’ll sort of break the back of the whole thing. Maybe if they stand around long enough in the rain they’ll get the idea that nobody is going to arrest them no matter how much evidence they produce, and they’ll go home.”
“But, Chief Shackles, suppose the rain doesn’t come—suppose they are still jamming the streets in the morning. What about the workers trying to get to government offices—?”
“Well, they’ll just have to suffer a little inconvenience, I’m afraid. Because I am not subjecting my men to the charge of false arrest just so somebody can get to his office in time for the morning coffee break. And then there are these orders from the White House.”
“Your assumption then i
s that all these people here are innocent, each and every one?”
“Absolutely. If they were guilty, they would be resisting arrest. They would be running away and so on. They would be screaming about their lawyers and their rights. I mean, that’s how you can tell they’re guilty in the first place. But all these people are saying is, ‘I did it, take me in.’ What sort of law enforcement officer is going to arrest a person for something like that?”
“This is Brad Bathos. Violence has erupted here on Pennsylvania Avenue, directly outside the White House gates where upwards of thirty thousand mourners have already gathered to bid farewell to a fallen leader. Even as Police Chief Shackles was praising this crowd for their obedience to authority and respect for the law, a free-for-all broke out among a group of fifteen men in business suits. Though police intervention was necessary, no arrests were made. I have here beside me one of the gentlemen who was involved in the violent episode, and by all appearances he is still rather upset. Sir, how did the violence begin?”
“Well, I was just standing here, minding my own business, trying to confess to an officer about murdering the President, when along comes this very fancy guy in a limousine and wearing a flower in his buttonhole, and he just steps in between me and the officers and he says he did it. And then the chauffeur gets out of the car and he starts pushing me back and saying let his boss do the talking, his boss really did it and he was a very busy man and so on and so forth and who did I think I was, acting so high and mighty. So then some colored guy comes up—and I don’t have anything against colored guys, you know—but this one was real uppity and he starts saying we’re both full of it, he did it, and the chauffeur tells him to get at the end of the line and wait his turn, and that really starts the thing going, and the next thing you know there are fifteen guys all swinging at one another, claiming they all did it, too. Well, if it wasn’t for the officer, I’m not kidding, somebody might have gotten hurt. It could have been awful.”