MASH 14 MASH goes to Moscow

by Richard Hooker+William Butterworth

  “Has she really?” Trapper John said.

  “Sister Lucinda’s been telling me what a man of culture you really are,” Brother Bob said.

  “Did you smell her breath, by any chance?” Hawkeye asked.

  “Watch it, Hawkeye,” Trapper John said.

  “Specifically, that you are not only a classical music fan, but that you saved the life of the world’s greatest opera singer during the Korean War,” Brother Bob went on.

  “That was Doctor Pierce who did that, Brother Bob,” Trapper John said, quickly.

  “Oh, no it wasn’t,” Hawkeye said. “Don’t be over-modest, Doctor. The credit, or the blame, depending on how you look at it, is all yours.”

  “Do you know what Boris did to me today?” Trapper John said to Hawkeye. “He sent me another set of his complete recorded works. Sixty-seven long-playing records. Air Freight from Paris. Collect. And my receptionist paid for them!”

  “That’s what you get for saving his life,” Hawkeye said.*

  (* Maestro Korsky-Rimsakov answered his country’s call and followed the flag to Korea during the unpleasantness there. Under the nom de guerre “Bob Alexander” he served as PFC and Browning Automatic Rifleman under Colonel (then Sergeant) J. P. de la Chevaux in the 223rd Infantry on Heartbreak Ridge. Grievously (no fooling) wounded while carrying platoon Sergeant Chevaux (who alone knew where the booze was hidden) off the battlefield, he was taken to the 4077th M*A*S*H, where he was operated upon by Drs. Pierce and McIntyre (then Captains, U.S. Army Medical Corps) and nursed back to health by then Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan, Nurse Corps, U.S.A. So began their lifelong long association. Readers with a burning desire to learn more of field medical procedures are directed to M*A*S*H and all its many sequels.)

  “It makes me regret I ever took that Hippocratic Oath,” Trapper said. “You know the major trouble with him, Hawkeye? You never can get back at him. That’s what burns me up!”

  “By an interesting coincidence,” Brother Born-Again Bob said, “my beloved daughter, Brunhilde, wants to be an opera singer.”

  “Brunhilde?” Hawkeye asked.

  “She used to be Bobby-Sue, but she felt that Brunhilde sounded more like an opera singer. She’s very serious about it,” Born-Again Bob said. “She even gave up being a cheerleader at When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder I’ll be There Bible Seminary and Junior College,” Brother Bob said.

  “Is that so?” Hawkeye said.

  “By another interesting coincidence,” Born-Again Bob boomed on, “I just happen to have a little picture of our Precious Little Bobby-Sue ... I mean Brunhilde ... with me. Would you like to see it?”

  “I wouldn’t miss an opportunity like that for the world,” Hawkeye said.

  Born-Again Bob produced, from the Family Heirloom Size (11 by 14 inches) Bible that he customarily carried under his arm (he sold Bibles, as sort of a sideline, and he liked to have one handy so that he could show folks all the features they were getting for only $31.95, payable in E-Z Monthly Payments) an 8- by 10-inch color photograph of his only offspring. It was the face only, and Bobby-Sue/Brunhilde was smiling at the camera. She had apparently made a futile attempt to part her mouse-brown hair in the middle. She had what appeared to be a wart between her eyes, one on each side of her nostrils, and a jumbo-size wart on her chin. She was wearing thick-lensed eyeglasses which distorted her eyes, and her grin revealed that what teeth she had left were sort of an off-green color.

  “No mistaking her,” Trapper John said. “She looks just like her father.”

  “I think so,” Brother Born-Again Bob said, beaming. “And she wants to be an opera singer?”

  “That’s right,” Born-Again Bob said. “She tells me that the world’s greatest opera singer is Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov, and that she dreams of studying at his side.”

  “Isn’t that interesting?” Hawkeye said. “And you were just saying, Dr. McIntyre, how much you regretted not being able to do for Boris the same sort of thing he does for you.”

  “So I was,” Trapper John said. “Brother Born-Again, you have my word on it. We will get your daughter, and, I hope, you too, as well as Weeping Wilma, together with Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov just as soon as humanly possible.”

  “The only problem,” Hawkeye said, “is how do we get them all to Paris?”

  “Brother Born-Again,” Trapper said, “why don’t you go tell Weeping Wilma the good news while Dr. Pierce and I put our heads together?”

  The door closed on Born-Again Bob. There came faintly through the door the sound of laughter and a curious gurgling sound as if someone were drinking from a bottle.

  When they finally came out of the study, they confessed that they hadn’t quite solved the transportation problem yet, but from their warm smiles, and the glow on their faces, Brother Born-Again Bob sensed that the problem was not going to be insurmountable. Under the circumstances, he refrained from commenting that his sniffer, which seldom erred, had again detected the aroma of distilled spirits.

  Chapter Six

  “Jim-Boy,” the appointments secretary said, sticking his head into the Oval Office, “the little Chinaman is here.”

  “If I told you once, Lester, I’ve told you a hundred times,” Jim-Boy said, without smiling, “you’re not supposed to go around calling U.S. Senators ‘little Chinamen.’ Besides, he’s not a little Chinaman, he’s a little Jap. Send him in.”

  The Honorable George H. Kamikaze, junior (and just elected) senator from the Great State of California,* entered the Oval Office with all the enthusiasm of a Prince of the Church entering a massage parlor on New York’s West 42nd Street. He looked, in other words, as if he wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see the heavens open and a bolt of lightning head right for him.

  (* Senator Kamikaze defeated the incumbent, Senator J. Ellwood “Jaws” Fisch in an upset. Senator Fisch made the tactical campaign error of calling in all his friends in politics and the arts from all over the country to speak in his behalf. Senator Kamikaze’s successful (some said brilliant) counterstrategy was to say nothing at all, spending all of his limited campaign funds to rent billboards on which the phrase “By Their Friends, Ye Shall Know Them” was printed in large letters. It was sufficient to see Senator Fisch defeated by such a lopsided vote that the phrase “humiliating defeat” was a gross understatement.)

  “How are you, Senator?” Jim-Boy said. “Come in and set a spell. Have a boiled peanut?”

  “Your emissary, sir,” Senator Kamikaze said, “led me to believe I was summoned to render such assistance as I might be capable of providing in a matter of great importance to the republic.”

  “What did he say, Cy-Boy?” Jim-Boy asked. “All I understood was that part about Republicans, and you know we don’t use language like that in here.”

  “He said Lester told him it was important,” the Secretary of State said.

  “It is, Senator, it is,” Jim-Boy said. “But watch your language.”

  “Language, sir, was my profession before I agreed, as my clear patriotic duty, to assume the less important duties I am now endeavoring to perform.”

  “What did he say, Cy-Boy?”

  “He said he used to be an English teacher,” the Secretary of State said.

  “I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for schoolteachers,” Jim-Boy said. “Sit down, Senator. Take off that plaid beret.”

  “My headgear, sir, is a tam-o’-shanter, not a beret. A beret is a rather common means of covering the head in France. A tam-o’-shanter, on the other hand, is essentially Anglo-Saxon, specifically, Scottish, in origin. Moreover, a tam-o’-shanter has a tassel and a beret does not. I trust that I have detailed the most obvious differences between the two with sufficient clarity?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Jim-Boy said. “You know the Secretary of State, Senator? And the Admiral?”

  “I have that somewhat dubious privilege,” Senator Kamikaze replied.

  “We’ve been sitting around talking
about that speech you made, Senator,” Jim-Boy said.

  “To which speech do you refer?”

  “The one where you said that you regard my election as the greatest threat to our form of government in the history of the republic,” Jim-Boy said.

  “I am delighted that it has been brought to your attention,” Senator Kamikaze said. “And I should welcome the opportunity to convince you of the validity of my objective conclusion.”

  “What did he say, Cy?” Jim-Boy asked.

  “He said he meant every word of it,” the Secretary of State translated.

  “But in the same speech, Senator,” Jim-Boy went on, “you also said that you would put your personal loathing behind you and do whatever you could to get the country through what you said was certain to be the worst four years it has ever experienced. You said that, didn’t you?”

  “That is a rough synopsis of my comments, yes,” Senator Kamikaze replied.

  “What did he say, Cy?”

  “He said he said that,” the Secretary of State replied.

  “In that case, Senator, welcome to the team!”

  “Let us not leap to a premature conclusion,” the senator replied. “What, exactly, is the nature of the national crisis, toward the solution of which you seek my advice and/or practical assistance?”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said what do you want from him and why,” the Secretary of State translated.

  “Senator,” Jim-Boy said dramatically, “your country needs you!”

  “Yes, I know,” the senator said. “But what does that have to do with you and me?”

  “Tell me, Senator, does the name Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov mean anything to you?”

  “He is the world’s greatest opera singer,” the senator said. “I have been privileged to hear him sing on many occasions.”

  “See? I told you he was the kind of guy who would know,” Jim-Boy said to the Admiral and the Secretary. He turned back to the senator. “The Russian ambassador was just in here to see me, Senator. He wants to make a little deal.”

  “I hope you didn’t loan him any additional funds,” the senator replied.

  “Not a dime,” Jim-Boy said proudly. “Not a lousy dime. What he wants is for us to send this singer to Moscow. If we do, he’ll stop moving his armored divisions around Poland and East Germany, and, to sweeten the pot, he’ll even get What’s-his-name to stop banging his shoe on his desk at the UN and to stop calling me all those nasty names.”

  “To reiterate, what has this got to do with you and me?”

  “Well, when the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet himself, personally, called this guy and asked him to come to Moscow, he told him ... well, you wouldn’t believe what he told him.”

  “I think it would be best if I had all the details,” the senator said. Jim-Boy told him. “My sentiments exactly,” the senator said. “Even if it is, if I remember my undergraduate work in the procreation of the species Homo sapiens, an anatomical impossibility.”

  “The Secretary and the Admiral have been going through their files, Senator, and have come up with the information that only four people in the world can make this singer do something he doesn’t want to do.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Indeed. The first was His Eminence, John Joseph Mulcahy, titular archbishop of Swengchan,* presently assigned to the personal staff of the Pope. We just this minute got off the phone talking to the Archbishop.”

  (* Archbishop Mulcahy served during the Korean War as a Chaplain (Captain) and was assigned to the 4077th M*A*S*H. He offered both spiritual and spirituous comfort to Maestro Korsky-Rimsakov during the period the singer was hospitalized.)

  “I gather he was unable, or, more likely, unwilling to come to your assistance?”

  “He said there was no way he was going to Moscow,” Jim-Boy said. “The next name on the list is that of the singer’s sister, Madame Kristina Korsky-Rimsakov O’Reilly* of the San Francisco Opera.”

  (* Madame Kristina Korsky-Rimsakov was married to J. Robespierre O’Reilly, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Mother O’Reilly’s Irish Stew Parlors, International. The details of their courtship and marriage have been recorded, in rather lurid detail, in M*A*S*H Goes to Las Vegas. (Pocket Books, New York.))

  “Ah, yes,” the senator said.

  “You know the lady?”

  “I have that great privilege,” the senator replied.

  “Great,” Jim-Boy said. “How about you calling her and asking her for me?”

  “Might I inquire why you do not choose to telephone her yourself?”

  “I tried to,” Jim-Boy confessed. “I got her husband, Robespierre, on the line, and he said he never lets his wife talk to Democrats.”

  “I could have told you that,” the senator said.

  “Are you going to help us or not, Senator?”

  “Hand me the telephone,” the senator replied. He began to dial a number.

  “You know the number?” Jim-Boy asked, surprised.

  “No,” the senator replied drily. “I am simply testing the laws of probability.” The dull buzzing of the phone could be heard throughout the room, and then a voice came on the line. The Admiral reached over and pushed a button on the telephone which broadcast both sides of the conversation throughout the room.

  “The J. Robespierre O’Reilly Residence,” an English accented voice said. “This is Quincy the butler speaking.”

  “Senator George H. Kamikaze speaking,” the senator said. “May I please speak with Madame Korsky-Rimsakov O’Reilly?”

  “I’m terribly sorry, Senator,” the butler replied. “Madame was already feeling rather badly when that horrid man in the White House telephoned. I’m very much afraid that Madame is now really indisposed.”

  “In that case, Quincy, let me speak to Mr. O’Reilly.”

  “I will endeavour to determine, Senator, if the master is available. Would you hold the line a moment, please?”

  The senator took a long black cigar from his pocket, bit off the end, and put the cigar in his mouth.

  “Light his cigar, Admiral,” Jim-Boy ordered. “He’s working for us now.”

  “Hey, George, is that you?” A male voice came over the speakers. “I’ve been trying to get you for an hour.”

  “How are you, Radar*?” the senator said. “You were trying to get me?”

  (* During his military service, prior to forming Mother O’Reilly's Irish Stew Parlors, International, Mr. O’Reilly served as Company Clerk of the 4077th M*A*S*H. His ability to sometimes read minds had earned him the appellation “Radar.” Now, of course, only his intimates and high muckety-mucks of the fast food racket dared to so address him.)

  “I called your office, George,” Radar said, “just as soon as it happened. They told me you were over in the White House. I didn’t believe that for a minute, of course. That’s one of those whatcha-call-’ems ... scurrilous allegations.”

  “What was on your mind, Radar?”

  “You wouldn’t believe who called up here, George. At first I thought it was Boris playing one of his lousy practical jokes. But it was him, all right. I talked to him myself. There’s no mistaking that corn-pone voice.”

  “As a matter of fact, Radar, I am at the White House,” the senator said.

  “I’m really sorry to hear that, George;” Radar O’Reilly said. “Until you told me that, I thought you were different. But now you’re just like the rest of them—once you get elected, he stops being all those rotten things you called him during the campaign and starts being Our Distinguished Leader.”

  “Radar, we must all make sacrifices for our beloved country. Certainly, you know me well enough to know how I loathe and detest being in the same room with him.”

  “Then what are you doing there?”

  “Our country calls us all at one time or another, Radar,” the senator said.

  “I went to Korea,” Radar said. “Now it’s somebody else’s turn.”

>   “At the moment, to be specific, it’s calling Boris.”

  “Boris? Don’t be silly. The only reason he got an honorable discharge the first time was because he had all those medals.*”

  (* During his military service, Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov (a/k/a Bob Alexander) was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and five Purple Hearts, as well as the Korea Order of the Tae-Guk. He was never awarded, however, the Good Conduct Medal, nor was he ever promoted above Private First Class.)

  “They don’t want him to go back in the army, Radar,” the senator said. “They want him to go to Moscow.”

  “There’s no way he’s going to do that willingly,” Radar said. “At least, not unless they give him back Uncle Sergei’s theater and fifty years’ back rent.”

  “I thought perhaps we might prevail upon Kris to intercede in the matter,” the senator said.

  “For a Democrat? You’ve got to be kidding, George.”

  “I am solemnly informed it’s quite important.”

  “You mean he’s not smiling?”

  “When he informed me of this matter, I couldn’t see as much as a bicuspid,” the senator said.

  “Well, then, maybe I better ask Kris,” Radar said. “She was well on the road to recovery before El Teetho called up—then she got sick to her stomach again.”

  “That’s certainly understandable,” the senator said. “But I would be grateful if you would bring the matter up with her.”

  “Hold on, George,” Radar said. “Hey, Kris, are you still throwing up, or can you talk to George? You won’t believe where he’s calling from, and what he wants.”

  “Is that you, George?” A gentle feminine voice came on the line. “Did Robespierre tell you who telephoned here before?”