Pussy

by Howard Jacobson

  ‘Rip the electromagnetic waves out then. They’re brain-cancer-forming, anyway.’

  ‘There’s no proof of that.’

  ‘Our son’s the proof of that.’

  ‘I have a better idea. He’s eighteen. You know what he needs …’

  ‘Renzo, he might as well be eight.’

  ‘You still know what he needs …’

  The Grand Duchess turned her face away.

  Later that very evening Prince Fracassus was sitting with his father in the latter’s favourite gentlemen’s club. No one asked questions about Fracassus’s age.

  If the evening saw Fracassus bobbing on uncharted waters, the morning saw him landed on a tropic isle.

  He was used to waking with an erection and attributed it to the hours he’d just passed in his own company. But this morning he awoke to an unaccustomed sensation: when he looked at his erection he thought of someone else.

  Great boner, he tweeted. Must be love.

  CHAPTER 14

  When my love swears that she is made of truth …

  ‘After all that talk about prostitutes,’ Professor Probrius laughed, ‘you’d think he’d know how to find one.’

  Dr Cobalt gently demurred. ‘You could say that’s to his credit.’

  ‘The Grand Duke is said to be distraught.’

  ‘Why distraught? You can’t be telling me he had his heart set on his son settling down with a prostitute.’

  ‘I don’t know about “settling down”. But whatever he had his heart set on, Fracassus has apparently broken it now.’

  ‘But not his mother’s, I suspect.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Most mothers aren’t troubled by their sons enjoying the company of women of easy virtue. They keep the channels of affection free for them. It’s feminists they’re frightened of.’

  ‘Do we know she’s a feminist?’

  ‘That’s the rumour. And a graduate into the bargain. Dark-haired, too. And wears trousers. A dark-haired feminist graduate with trousers and her own views. It couldn’t be worse.’

  The furore – for no other word could do justice to the amazement and conjecture that spread from the basement of the Palace to the 200th floor – had a simple explanation. After a conversation lasting no more than fifteen minutes, Fracassus had asked the coat-check girl at his father’s club to marry him.

  Prior to that, Fracassus had looked pleased enough with the company his father had found for him. Tactfully making his excuses, the Grand Duke had slid away, leaving his son in the company of women who gave a new meaning to the word classy. Tall, tanned, teetering, lustrous-lipped, generously implanted, and smelling of the best department stores, they entwined themselves around the Prince, who sat on a swing seat at the bar, swivelling to greet every new addition. They petted him. They blew in his ears, two at a time. Like butterflies skimming a flower, they brushed his lips with theirs, each passing on the nectar the others had collected. Looking for a way of describing how his mouth felt, Fracassus hit upon the image of a jam sandwich. He closed his eyes and swung his seat. Singly or in any combination his young manhood could devise, the women exhaled promise. Dr Cobalt had given him the words to describe their profession; now he had the plethorous Platonic reality of which the words were but shadows.

  So why wasn’t he as carried away by the women as his father had every reason to suppose he would be?

  They reminded him of his mother.

  That was not a reason to give up on them altogether. Fracassus was not a boat burner. On many an evening watching slave girls dropping grapes down Nero’s throat he had succeeded in dispelling his mother’s likeness. It was a matter of narrowing his eyes and letting the blue flicker send him half to sleep. And anyway, in Nero’s world mothers and hookers freely swapped roles. So when he rose to go to the men’s room it wasn’t with the definite intention of not returning. But he had not counted on meeting the girl who took the coats. Rounded where the women he had left behind were willowed, dumpy where they were attenuated, to all intents and purposes blind in that she hid behind owlish spectacles where the girls at the bar had shooting stars for eyes, and wearing trousers instead of a snow-fairy dress – it must be remembered that Fracassus had never in his life seen a woman wearing trousers before – she struck him with the sort of force that persuades some men to give their lives to God. That she did not in any way remind him of his mother was, of course, part of it; but it was her voice and confidence that overwhelmed him. She had the assurance to be frumpy. She had the self-possession to be bossy. Her voice, unlike that of any woman he had ever met, including Dr Cobalt, was not modulated to please. You could take her or you could leave her. Fracassus had been waited on hand and foot, but here was someone not in the slightest bit overwhelmed by his rank or apologetic about her own. It was either punch her in the face or fall in love.

  Status seemed nothing to her. He was a prince and she was a cloakroom attendant. So what? The job she was doing just happened to be the job she was doing. She wasn’t defined by taking coats. What was his excuse?

  Fracassus asked her to leave the coats – he’d buy everyone a new one – and join him at the bar. He was surprised by his own temerity. She frightened him, but made him comfortable at the same time. It was not permissible, she said in the most matter-of-fact way, for a person not a prostitute to join a club member at the bar. But if he wanted to wait for her she knew a little place she could take him to later. No red velvet. No crystal glasses. No tarts. ‘Will other women there be wearing trousers?’ he asked. She thought it likely. ‘Then I’ll wait for you,’ he said.

  Her name was Sojjourner, she told him. With a double j.

  The reason she wasn’t defined by taking coats, she explained over coffee in a paper cup and a cheeseburger on a plastic plate, was that she did it only to finance her studies. Fracassus looked deep into her owl-eyes and saw bookshelves. ‘Have you ever finished a whole book?’ he asked. She laughed inordinately, throwing back her head and rolling her whole person. ‘A few,’ she said. ‘I’m even writing one.’

  A great fear swept across the open plains of the Prince’s mind. Should he ask what her book was about? What if she told him?

  Did it matter? He had got to this age well enough, never understanding anyone’s answer to a question. These things evened themselves out. She would never understand his world. They could not understand each other together. He saw their future: he watching a beauty pageant on television, she sitting on his knee and writing her book. Children? Yes, if he concentrated hard enough. He saw a young Fracassus watching a beauty pageant on television. And a small Sojjourner, dressed like her grandmother the Grand Duchess, winning Young Miss Urbs-Ludus.

  ‘You’ve gone somewhere,’ the real Sojjourner said.

  ‘I was thinking.’

  ‘About the women waiting for you at the bar?’

  Fracassus looked away. ‘They’re not my type,’ he said. ‘They don’t read books.’

  ‘Can you be sure of that? How do you know they’re not financing their studies like me? It’s hard for a woman to get a grant. Prostitution is just one of the ways women get by in a man’s world. From a feminist perspective, prostitution in such a case can be a valid choice and is to be differentiated from coerced sex-working, which is not to deny that it reinforces a negative stereotype of women in a way that harms both sexes.’

  Fracassus wondered if he was going to faint. Not even Yoni Cobalt could put together so many letters without breathing.

  ‘Is that what you’re writing about?’ he asked.

  ‘No. The subject of my book is the constitution of the Republics with special reference to Urbs-Ludus. Its working title is Somnolence and Corruption: A Warning to the Comatose. Prostitution will come into it.’

  Never having seen anyone like her before, and not knowing what else to do, Fracassus made to kiss her. She pulled back, raised a little finger, wagged it at him and, in the loudest voice he’d ever heard not issuing from a loudhailer, said, ‘
Too soon.’

  Fracassus apologised and put his hand between her legs instead.

  ‘Too soon even for that,’ she laughed.

  ‘When then?’ Fracassus asked.

  ‘I have a degree and a book to finish,’ she replied. ‘I have criminal lawyers to expose. I have women’s health and job prospects to improve. I have children to save. I have the comatose to rouse. I have a mark to make.’

  ‘I’ll wait for you,’ Fracassus said for the second time that night.

  CHAPTER 15

  … I do believe her though I know she lies

  ‘She’s called Sojjourner with two js,’ he told his father.

  ‘Sojjourner with two js? Am I supposed to be impressed? I suggest you think again with three ns.’

  ‘Why ns?’ the Grand Duchess asked.

  ‘No, no, no and no.’

  ‘That’s four ns,’ Fracassus said.

  ‘You’d better not cheek your father,’ the Grand Duchess warned. ‘He’s very upset about this. And so am I.’

  ‘I love her.’

  ‘Love her!’ the Grand Duke exploded. ‘What can you know about love. You’re a child.’

  ‘If I’m such a child, why did you take me to your club?’

  ‘In the mistaken hope you’d grow up. You don’t know this woman. You’ve spent ten minutes in her company.’

  ‘Sometimes ten minutes are all you need.’

  ‘You’re right, and it only took us ten minutes to find out who she is.’

  ‘I know who she is.’

  ‘Oh you do, do you? And do you know she is a Rational Progressivist of the School of Condorcet?’

  Whereupon, taking turns, the Grand Duke and Duchess led their wayward son on a grand historical tour of Rational Progressiveness, starting with the populares of ancient Rome – not favourites with his beloved Nero if they were not much mistaken – through Rousseau, Diderot, Kant, Hegel, pausing for support at Nietzsche’s attack on Hebrew Socialism – and ending up, via Marx and Lenin, with the brutal charismatic revolutionism of Castroism, the murderous, killing-them-softly quietism of Corbynism, and the blood-soaked rice fields of Pol Pot. We bet, they said, that she never told you any of that.

  ‘She told me she wanted women to earn the same as men,’ Fracassus said.

  The Grand Duke sighed. ‘Ah yes, that old toxic chestnut – equal pay for women. Sounds innocent, doesn’t it. But nothing ever stops at what it starts with, Fracassus. First equal pay, then paid time off for period pains, then five years’ maternity leave, then nursery provision, then another five years for post-partum depression, then leave with an ascending scale of bonuses for up to twelve migraines a years, and the next thing we know the Anarcho-Syndicalists are on our backs demanding legislation to make croupiers wear flat shoes and hostesses wear trousers. And that I’m damned sure she never told you, or you wouldn’t be standing here like a bitch in heat.’

  ‘Renzo!’ the Grand Duchess cried.

  ‘What? I never mentioned his brother.’

  ‘Renzo!!’

  There being no more to be said on the subject of the Prince’s brother, the couple fell silent, until the Grand Duchess felt able to start again on Fracassus. ‘What we want you to understand before it’s too late,’ she said, ‘is that you’ll never be happy with her. At the first argument she’ll call you a dirty capitalist.’

  ‘Why would she call me that?’

  ‘Because it’s what you are,’ the Grand Duke said. ‘In her eyes.’

  ‘She’s a Metropolitan Liberal Elitist, darling,’ his mother said. ‘I know it hurts.’

  ‘So what are we?’

  ‘Scum,’ the Grand Duke said. ‘In her eyes.’

  ‘Enemies of the People,’ his mother added.

  Fracassus rubbed his face. ‘Caleb doesn’t think we’re enemies of the people and he’s the leader of the Ordinary People’s Party.’

  ‘This is where it gets complicated,’ the Grand Duke said. ‘There’s a war going on out there for the soul of the people. Caleb appeals to them but doesn’t like them. Elitists work for them but don’t appeal to them. Meanwhile we’re the only ones the ordinary people really like. We’re self-made – well, at least I am. We like tall buildings. We like tall wives. So do the ordinary people. It’s only the Metropolitan Elite who hate us. And you have to go and find yourself one. Sojjourner with a double j, my eye. Couldn’t you see that for yourself, you foolish boy? There is no double j in Sojourner. There is no Sojjourner. She invents her name and changes the spelling of it because that’s what her class does.’

  ‘She minds coats.’

  The Grand Duchess found a laugh of the deepest irony. ‘Ha – she minds coats. She told you that? She minds coats because minding coats makes her look like an ordinary working woman. Do you want to know the truth – you’ll thank me for this one day – her family manufactures coats. Mink coats. Sable. Chinchilla. They’ll make a coat out of you once you fall into their clutches.’

  ‘I don’t care. She loves me.’ Fracassus no sooner said it than even he knew it sounded wrong.

  The Grand Duke shook his head as though he wanted never to see the world stationary again. ‘When I think who you could have had last night,’ he said at last.

  The Grand Duchess looked away.

  ‘They were students working as prostitutes,’ Fracassus said. ‘It’s the only way they can afford to study the constitution.’

  The Grand Duke turned the colour of the atrium at the Nowhere Palace. ‘Studying the constitution! Miss North Pole! The runner-up to Miss Equator! Estrelita the supermodel! Yada-Yada, twice Playgirl of the Year! Mandarina, ex-mistress of three Formula 1 world champions! Need I go on? Why would women of that calibre be studying the constitution? Did you see the extension of their limbs? Did you see their elevation? You had the world to choose from and now you have nothing.’

  ‘It’s a club for hookers, Dad.’

  ‘Wash your mouth out, boy. I met your mother there.’

  Fracassus crept out in the night to revisit his father’s club. Sojjourner? No Sojjourner had ever worked here. Had he made her up?

  He requested that they let him into the cloakroom where he’d first talked to her, fantasy or not. He wanted to sit where she’d sat. Sniff the coats.

  Gradually, one or two of the serving staff admitted they remembered her. He asked them if they knew anything about her being a Metropolitan Elitist. Some said they’d had their suspicions, others shrugged. In a club like this all deviances were respected.

  A couple of prostitutes accosted him on the way in, and three more on the way out. He didn’t have the heart for it, he told them. He’d lost his to a classy lady. So weren’t they classy enough for him? He looked them up and down. They went a long way up. Yes, they were. But classy in a different way. He said he knew they needed money to continue their studies and offered them jobs at his new casino. They wondered when they’d be able to start. First I’ve got to build it, he told them. To ease their disappointment he made a grab at each of them in turn. He knew they wouldn’t do him for assault. They wanted a job at his casino too much.

  He resorted to Twitter. Met a bitch called two js. Great piece of ass with two as. Moved on her, not close.

  But no tweet came back.

  Aware that his son was not going to take silence for an answer and was preparing a Twitter blitz on Sojjourner’s heart, the Grand Duke finally did what his wife had been asking him to do for years, and pulled the plug.

  The building went out with a sigh.

  ‘Listen to the silence,’ the Grand Duchess exclaimed. ‘Isn’t it beautiful? No more bleeps and pings, no more chimes and quacks. No more clicks. No more hums. No more flashing blue lights that made our Palace resemble a police station.’

  Fracassus grew irate. He raged up and down the building trying to get animation out of a television. He put his fist through one, but that didn’t wake it. His phone was dead. Every keyboard unresponsive. He could neither receive a syllable nor send one.
>
  This is a living hell, he thought.

  But it gave him new entitlements.

  He slipped out of the Palace in the middle of the day and visited the coffee shops he’d been barred from entering. There, his smartphone worked again. There, dunking ginger biscuits into frappucino, he tweeted again of the agonies of unrequited love. You’ll be sorry.

  If she was, she didn’t say so.

  Fuck, nigger, cunt, he was about to tweet, but the broadband dropped out at just that moment.

  He went into a decline. He lost weight. He stopped totting up how much property he owned and how much he was worth. He stopped tweeting. I am stopping tweeting, he tweeted. He made a nuisance of himself with women in the Palace who found it difficult to rebuff him. He groped secretaries and grabbed cleaning staff. Some of them remembered he’d done the same to them when he was an infant. Same stubby little fingers. The Palace sommelier asked him what he had against intercourse – not that she was offering. He said he didn’t think that he would like it. She told him she didn’t think she liked being grabbed between the legs. Yeah you do, he said. Every woman likes being grabbed between the legs. She visited a lawyer who advised her to let sleeping dogs lie.

  Dr Cobalt, now teaching the Prince the principles of governance, swore she saw a tear running down his cheek when she mentioned Foucault. A dry tear, if there were such a thing.

  ‘I think there is,’ Professor Probrius opined. He believed he’d read an ancient treatise somewhere on the constituent parts of tears. A tear of grief was wet and warm. A tear of compassion was wet and light. A tear of pique was dry and heavy and had no temperature.

  ‘You’re an unforgiving critic,’ Dr Cobalt said.

  ‘I’m hopeful, that’s all. Pique is a quality not to be underestimated in the making of fools and tyrants.’

  ‘And which do you think he will be?’

  ‘The mistake is to think it has to be one or the other.’

  There is a time-honoured method among the rich for dealing with a lovesick young man and healing his broken heart. You send him away.