MASH 14 MASH goes to Moscow

by Richard Hooker+William Butterworth

  Boris jumped to his feet and dashed offstage.

  “Maestro!” the manager said. “The curtain calls!”

  “Isn’t it enough that I sang?” Boris asked. “How much can you ask of one man, even a magnificent artist like me? I’ve given all that I intend to give of myself. I have no intention of standing out there for the next forty-five minutes or an hour while they shout themselves hoarse. Besides, I must rush to meet some of the few people in the world who love me for myself, who don’t even ask me to sing!”

  He went directly to the stage door, without stopping at his dressing room. A platoon of gendarmes from the VIP and Dignitary Protection Section locked arms and forced their way through the crowds outside.

  Boris strode between the lines of policemen, blowing kisses to his fans, and crawled into the back seat of a waiting Cadillac limousine. Prince was already there and, as Boris slumped back on the seat, reached over and kissed his idol wetly and lovingly on the face.

  “Goddamnit!” Boris bellowed. “Hassan, Prince has been rooting in the garbage again! His breath would stop a clock!”

  “Maestro,” His Royal Highness replied from behind the safety of the glass window separating the limousine seats, “I personally took Prince to lunch at the Cafe de la Paix while you were being dressed. He had a nice little standing rib of beef.”

  Prince, Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov’s best friend in all the world, sensed that something was amiss. He stopped trying to kiss his best friend in all the world, and instead laid down on the velour upholstery, placing his head in Boris’s lap and making pathetic little moaning noises in his throat.

  “I wonder if they make something for dogs with bad breath?” Boris mused, and then added, “Hassan, find out, and if they do get Prince some.”

  “I’ll get him some, but you’ll have to make him take it,” Hassan said. There was little love lost between His Royal Highness and Prince, who was a Scottish wolfhound.* Hassan wasn’t sure whether Prince regarded him as a competitor for the maestro’s affection or as a potential meal, but whatever the reason, he didn’t like the animal and was more than a little afraid of him.

  (* Dog lovers and others are referred to M*A*S*H Goes to Vienna in which the touching tale of how the Dowager Duchess of Folkestone presented her friend Korsky-Rimsakov with Prince is related in what has been described as revolting detail.)

  There was some justification for His Royal Highness’s concern. Scottish wolfhounds, generally regarded as a vicious variant of the Irish wolfhound* generally stand four feet high at the shoulder and weigh in the neighborhood of 300 pounds. Prince was even larger.

  (* Two parts wolf to one part Great Dane in the Scottish subspecies as opposed to equal parts of wolf and dane in the Irish.)

  There came the sound of sirens. These were mounted on motorcycles of the VIP escort detachment of the Gendarmerie Nationale assigned to accompany His Royal Highness wherever he went in France. Not only are the French sticklers for the fine points of diplomatic protocol, but the sheikhdom of Hussid is the source of 38 percent of the petroleum needs of La Belle France, and the French are well aware of it.

  As His Excellency the President of the French Republic put it to His Excellency the Foreign Minister of the French Republic, “Antoine, whatever that little Arab wants, he gets, capisce?”

  The sirens cleared a path through the horde (mostly middle-aged women) of the maestro’s fans who had mobbed the stage entrance in the hope of catching a glimpse of their idol, and the convoy began to move out. First the motorcycles, then a jeep full of gendarmes, then two black Citroën sedans filled with His Royal Highness’s personal bodyguard (attired in Arabian clothes and carrying silver-plated submachine guns), then the limousine itself. Following the limousine was another Citroën, another jeep, and two more motorcycles.

  Gathering speed, with lights flashing and sirens screaming, the convoy crossed the Rue de la Paix at the Place de l’Opéra, raced down toward the Place Vendôme, past the Hôtel Ritz, turned right onto Rue de Castiglione at the Tuileries Gardens, then skidded through the Place de la Concorde and up the Champs-Elysées. At Rue Pierre Charron, it turned left. Halfway down the block, it screeched to a halt.

  The gendarmes and His Royal Highness’s personal bodyguard leaped from their vehicles and set up a protective shield. Traffic was blocked in both directions, and pedestrians were politely but firmly hustled out of the way. Finally, the officer in charge of the Gendarmerie and Lieutenant Ali Mohammed, detached from his Second Royal Hussid Cavalry to serve as officer-in-charge of His Royal Highness’s bodyguard, were satisfied. No deranged person could assault His Royal Highness. More important (since this was the more difficult to prevent), no fan of Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov could get past the guards to shower love and affection on the singer. (While love and affection is normally a good thing and to be desired, it was not so in the case of Mr. Korsky-Rimsakov. The last time his fans had gotten to him personally, after a performance at London’s Covent Garden, a contact lasting no more than thirty seconds, the singer had been left standing in his jockey shorts and one sock.)

  A signal was made to the Cadillac. His Royal Highness and the maestro quickly got out of the car and walked rapidly across the sidewalk to enter a large, rather staid building.

  They walked directly to an elevator which a member of the Gendarmerie had commandeered for their use. They rose to the top floor and then marched down a corridor to a steel-doored room which bore a printed sign: Band Equipment Storage. No Admission by the Order of the Post Commander, Paris Post Number One, The American Legion.

  Prince Hassan, who had to run to do it, got to the door first. He put a key in the lock and pushed the door open.

  Four men were gathered around a six-sided table. The table was covered with an army blanket. On the table were stacks of chips and playing cards. The four men looked up as the singer entered.

  “I asked you guys to wait until I got here,” Maestro Korsky-Rimsakov said, hurt in every tremulous syllable.

  “And I told you we wouldn’t,” Colonel Jean-Pierre de la Chevaux replied. Colonel de la Chevaux, who was chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Chevaux Petroleum International, and who had come to Paris directly from Lagos, Nigeria, was not noted for his tact. ‘‘Sit down and shut up, Boris.”

  “Not to worry, Old Bean, we will have plenty of time to part you from your money.” The speaker here was Mr. Angus MacKenzie, V.C., general manager of East Anglia Breweries, Ltd., and consort to Her Grace the Dowager Duchess of Folkestone.

  “But I asked," Boris said. “I thought you guys would wait, if I asked. You know how much this means to me.”

  “For God’s sake, Boris, if you start to cry, I’m going home!” said T. (for Theosophilis) Mullins Yancey, M.D., Ph.D., the chief of staff of the Yancey Clinic of Manhattan, Kansas.

  “Up yours,” the fourth poker player said. He was His Most Islamic Majesty, Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug. His Majesty’s English, which he had learned through his association with the maestro, was rather limited. He knew but five other English phrases, each of them more scatological than the one he had used.

  “It’s a terrible thing if you can’t ask your best friends in all the world to hold off the game a lousy thirty minutes,” Boris said, sitting down. “You know I couldn’t deprive all those people of the last scene. They live for the moment when I stab my sister.”

  “Will you shut up and play cards?” Colonel de la Chevaux said sharply.

  “Et tu, Horsey?” Boris asked, deeply hurt. But he began to count the stack of chips that had been set before him.

  Five minutes later, while Dr. Yancey was deciding whether the two aces he had back to back were worth a bet of a quarter, His Most Islamic Majesty, Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug turned to the singer and asked him a question. He asked it in Abzugian, a language consisting mainly of snorts, wheezes, and grunts, with a belchlike sound for emphasis. It does not readily translate into English, but the essence of His Majesty’s q
uestion was, “How did you make out on the phone?”

  In fluent Abzugian snorts, wheezes, and grunts, with several spectacular belchlike sounds, the singer replied that he had suggested to the tenacious SOB that he attempt a physiologically impossible act of self-impregnation.

  “You said that to the Sainted Chancre Mechanic?”* His Majesty replied, aghast.

  (* The reference here was to B. F. Pierce, M.D., F.A.C.S., chief of surgery of the Spruce Harbor, Maine,. Medical Center.)

  “No, stupid, to the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet,” the maestro replied. “I wouldn’t say anything like that to the Sainted Chancre Mechanic.”

  “What I wanted to know, El Noil Snoil,” His Majesty responded, “was whether or not the Sainted Chancre Mechanic and my beloved friend, El Pecker Checker,* would be joining us.”

  “I thought you were asking about the Russians,” the singer replied.

  (The reference here is to J. F. X. McIntyre M.D., F.A.C.S., Dr. Pierce’s professional associate and long-time friend.)

  “Did you talk to Hawkeye and Trapper John or not?” Colonel de la Chevaux asked, also in Abzugian. He, too, was referring to Drs. Pierce and McIntyre. Dr. Pierce was known to everyone but his wife and mother as “Hawkeye.” His father, a great fan of James Fenimore Cooper, had wished to name his firstborn after the Last Mohican. Although he had been dissuaded by his wife, he had never called the child by his given name, and neither had anyone else. Dr. McIntyre had come to be called “Trapper John” following an incident in his college days. He had been discovered en flagrant, as they say, with a co-ed in the gentlemen’s rest facility aboard a Boston & Maine passenger coach. The lady, fearful for her good name, had denied that she had gone willingly with him (which was the case) and loudly proclaimed that she had been trapped. The appellation stuck.

  “Yeah, sure,” the singer replied, somewhat lamely.

  “And what did he say?”

  “What did who say?”

  “Either Hawkeye or Trapper John?”

  The singer responded that Trapper John had told him to attempt a biologically impossible act of self-impregnation.

  “Will you guys knock off with that funny language?” Dr. T. Mullins Yancey said. “It makes me sick to my stomach.”

  “Boris said that when he asked Trapper John to come over for a couple of days, Trapper told him to ... ” (Colonel de la Chevaux told Dr. Yancey what Trapper John had told Boris to do.)

  “Well,” Dr. Yancey said, “I guess that puts to rest once and for all the scurrilous allegation that the trouble with we who practice the healing arts is that you never know what we mean.”

  “Is that all he said?” Colonel de la Chevaux asked.

  “No,” Boris replied. “He said that if he and Hawkeye never see any of us again, it will be too soon. If I didn’t know better, I might get the idea that he doesn’t hunger for our company as much as we all hunger for theirs. There must have been some medical disaster which required their full attention.”

  “Did you ask them when we can get together?” His Royal Highness asked.

  “Trapper said the day after they harvest oranges on the North Pole,” Boris replied, speaking Abzugian, of course.

  “If you don’t stop making those obscene noises, Boris,” Dr. Yancey shouted, “I will turn you, surgically, into a soprano!”

  “Ah, Doc,” Boris said, beaming at him, “you just don’t know how good it makes me feel just to be with you guys, who love me for myself and not just for my God-given genius and talent!”

  “Shut up and play cards,” Dr. Yancey said in almost a whimper. “Just shut up and play cards!”

  Chapter Four

  “You busy, Jim -Boy?” the appointments secretary asked, sticking his head into the Oval Office.

  “Jest settin’ here, whittlin’ and rockin’,” the occupant of that office said. “Something for you, Lester?”

  “That Russian fella’s out here, Jim-Boy,” the appointments secretary said. “Says he’s got to talk to you.”

  “Which Russian fella would that be, Lester? There’s a mess of ’em, you know.”

  “The one with the blue-dyed hair, Jim-Boy—that one. The head Russian.”

  “He trying to borrow money again, Lester? That what he’s after?”

  “I ast him that, Jim-Boy, and he swears he won’t ask for a dime.”

  “They always say that,” Jim-Boy said. “Then, before you know it, they’re into your pockets.”

  “Shall I run him off?”

  “Better not,” Jim-Boy said. “Send for What’s-his-name, the Secretary of State. I promised him I wouldn’t say nothin’ to the Russians without him being in the same room.”

  “This fella says he wants to see you alone, Jim-Boy.”

  “Just send for What’s-his-name, Lester. You’re not supposed to argue with me. I’m the head man around here. You jest can’t seem to remember that.”

  “Sometimes I wonder, Jim-Boy, if this was such a good idea. It’s not what I thought it would be.”

  “You had this part confused with Congress, Lester. I told you and I told you, if you wanted to fool around, you had to run for Congress. You should have known that you couldn’t fool around, not with the little woman living right here in the same building. Now, are you going to call What’s-his-name and tell him to hustle right over, or am I going to have to do it myself?”

  “I’m getting right on it,” the appointments secretary said. “What do I do with the Russian until Ol’ Cy can get over here?”

  “Give him a copy of Playboy to read,” Jim-Boy said. “Make sure it’s a complete one, with the centerfold. We had that delegation of Baptist preachers in here yesterday, and you know they can’t be trusted to leave the centerfolds alone.”

  Ten minutes later, the Secretary of State arrived at the Oval Office.

  “You sent for me, sir?”

  “Hope I didn’t interrupt anything important, ol’ buddy,” Jim-Boy said. “But just as soon as you get under the desk, I’m going to let that Russian fella with the blue-dyed hair in.”

  “You are referring to the Russian ambassador, sir?”

  “You got it, Cy,” Jim-Boy said. “I gave you my word that I wouldn’t talk to them unless you were in the same room. When I give my word, I take it very serious—you know that.”

  “But why do I have to get under the desk?”

  “So he won’t see you,” Jim-Boy said. “He said he wanted to see me alone. Now, if I start saying the wrong thing, Hy ... ”

  “That’s Cy, sir.”

  “Whatever. If I start saying the wrong thing, Cy-Boy, you just give me a little tug on my pants leg. O.K.?”

  “I am at your disposal, sir.”

  “Keep that in mind, Cy-Boy. There’s a lot of people around here who’d like to have your job, you know. You’re one of the lucky few who got to keep a limousine, you know,” Jim-Boy said. “Most everybody else’s driving themselves around town.”

  “I’m aware of that, sir,” Cy said.

  “Well, get under the desk, then, and let’s see what this fella wants.”

  The Secretary of State got down on all fours and crawled under the massive, gleaming desk.

  “Watch out for the spittoon, Cy,” Jim-Boy called.

  “I wish you’d said that thirty seconds sooner,” Cy said under his breath.

  Jim-Boy pushed a button on his multibuttoned intercom.

  “Send in the Russian,” he said.

  “Send in who?”

  “The Russian. The one with the blue hair. The one you just told me is out there.”

  “Excuse me, sir, you have the Office of the Presidential Assistant for Female Affairs. There’s no Russian here.”

  “Oops. Wrong button. Sorry about that.” He bent over the multibuttoned intercom, found the right button, pushed it, and repeated the order to send the Russian in. Then he sat down in his rocking chair again.

  “Sir,” the appointments secretary said, “the ambassador of the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics.”

  “I bring the warmest greetings of not only the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet,” the Russian ambassador said, “but of the millions of peace-loving workers and peasants as well.”

  “Come on in, sit down, and have a boiled peanut,” Jim- Boy said, waving the Russian ambassador into another rocking chair and extending to him a bowl of boiled peanuts.

  “Thank you so much,” the Russian ambassador said.

  “Grow them myself,” Jim-Boy said. “And I don’t even send the General Services Administration a bill for them.”

  The Russian ambassador put several of the boiled peanuts in his mouth. Despite long years of training and experience at eating what are politely called “ethnic” dishes at various diplomatic functions, he was unable to keep from making a face.

  “Something wrong with the peanuts?” Jim-Boy asked.

  “They are a new taste to me, sir,” the Russian ambassador said.

  “You’re probably used to the Yankee kind,” Jim-Boy explained. “They roast theirs. We boil ours. I asked Senator Kamikaze ... you know who I mean?”

  “Yes, of course, the Japanese-American educator-statesman from California.”

  “That’s the fella,” Jim-Boy said. “I asked him what he thought and he said they tasted like soap. But then, he’s a Republican, and they’re all a little sore about how the election turned out.”

  “The Chairman of the Supreme Soviet and the millions of peace-loving Russian workers and peasants rejoiced in your election, sir,” the Russian ambassador said.

  “Old Lester did tell you, didn’t he, that I’m not going to loan you any more money?”

  “The gentleman you mention, sir, did make a statement along those lines,” the ambassador said.

  “Just so we understand each other,” Jim-Boy said. “Now, what can I do for you?”