Despite a certain suspicion that so small an automobile could be carrying anyone of real importance, the Gendarmerie on the scene decided to give the benefit of the doubt to the flag of Hussid. After all, if the Hussids were piqued with the French, there would be an instant decline, in the amount of 38 percent, of the petroleum available to la Belle France. The gendarmes cleared a path for the convoy.
The first man out of the car was the archbishop. He looked up as Boris slid down the knotted rope from the balcony.
“I’ll be damned,” Boris said. “Dago Red!”
“You probably will,” the archbishop agreed. “What’s going on here?”
“It’s a long story,” Boris said, as he disappeared through the hatch of the personnel carrier. “And I just don’t have the time to tell it right now. I’m on my way to preserve the good name of one of the great opera stars of all time.”
Another man slid down the rope, a face the archbishop seemed to recall having seen somewhere.
“And a good day to you, Father,” he said in an unmistakable Irish brogue as he entered the personnel carrier through the hatch on top.
And then Horsey appeared and slid down the rope.
“And how are you today, Your Eminence?” he asked, just before he disappeared inside the personnel carrier and the hatch clanged shut after him. Belching blue smoke, its siren screaming, its tracks tearing up the pavement, the armored personnel carrier set forth up the Boulevard de la Grand Armee toward the Arc de Triomphe de L’Etoile.
The archbishop jumped back in the car. “Follow that tank!” he ordered.
Traffic around the edifice known as the Arc de Triomphe, which sits on sort of a hill at the top of the Avenue de la Champs-Elysees, flows in a counterclockwise direction. As the armored personnel carrier, the motorcycle outriders, the Citroëns carrying the bodyguard, and the Cadillac Seville moved, so to speak, from noon till nine, a 1948 Cadillac flower car (a hearselike vehicle used normally to carry floral tributes to the late lamented from the funeral home to the cemetery) moved, so to speak, from six o’clock toward three o’clock. It was all that Hertz could come up with on such short notice in response to Mr. Wesley St. James’s demand for the most suitable vehicle they had to transport the superstar’s superstar. The French are well known for the ingenuity and imagination they can display once they hear the magic words “price is no object.” The vehicle in question was ordered to Orly while it was en route from a funeral home to a cemetery. There was a small problem at the beginning, when some cars in the funeral cortege simply kept following the flower car when it made an abrupt right turn off the Boulevard de Sainte Michele, but the driver, rising to the challenge, managed to shake most of them before he got to Orly by running stop lights and going the wrong way down one-way streets.
No more than half a dozen cars still followed the flower car when it pulled up before Air Force One, and Ms. Strydent, far from thinking that anything was out of place, naturally presumed that the flowers were intended for her and that the people in the cars following were simply members of her fan club. It was well known, of course, that the French cried at the drop of a hat.
She climbed into the flower car with Mr. St. James and they set out for the Boulevard de la Grande Armee and her darling Seanikins. As they moved through town, she became aware that she had been recognized. People were staring at her.
“Start handing me flowers,” she ordered Wesley St. James. “I can’t let my adoring public down!” Wesley St. James immediately began disassembling the floral tributes.
Alternately throwing kisses, forget-me-nots, and lilies of the valley to the hordes of fans, she was so caught up in what she interpreted to be the adoration of her fans that she didn’t even notice the armored personnel carrier going the other way around the Arc de Triomphe.
Suddenly, the flower car skidded to a halt.
“What are we stopping for?” Ms. Strydent demanded somewhat sharply.
“This is the Royal Abzugian Embassy,” the chauffeur said. A gendarme rushed up.
“What’s going on here?”
“I am Shur-lee Strydent herself!” Ms. Strydent announced. “I am here to see His Excellency El Noil Snoil the Magnificent!”
“He just left,” the gendarme said.
“Hey, Abdullah,” an unmistakably American voice called out. “You want to see something funny? Get a load of the ugly broad in the flower car!”
Ms. Strydent looked up and saw Dr. T. Mullins Yancey on the balcony.
“Yoo-hoo,” she called. “Funny little man with freckles! I’m looking for Sean O’Casey O’Mulligan.”
“You’re out of luck,” Dr. Yancey called down. “He just left.”
“You don’t happen to know where Darling Seanikins went, do you, funny little man with freckles?”
“Hey, are you Shur-lee Strydent?” Dr. Yancey inquired.
“Who else could I possibly be?” she replied modestly.
“Who else indeed?” Dr. Yancey said. “I hope this won’t ruin your whole day, lady, but I had the feeling he left because he didn’t want to see you.”
“Oh, my,” Shur-lee said. “Darling Seanikins just couldn’t bring himself to believe that I was really coming. Tell me, Freckles, what about some singer named Korsky-Borsky or something like that?”
“What about him?”
“I have graciously agreed to permit him to appear with me in Moscow,” she said. “Is he there?”
“Boris regrets a previous engagement,” Dr. Yancey said. “He won’t be going to Moscow.”
“Well, I can understand that,” she said. “No one in their right mind wants to be in a position where their talent might be compared to mine. Be a darling little man, Freckles, and tell Darling Seanikins that I’ll drop by again on my way home from my triumphal tour of Russia.”
“My pleasure,” Dr. Yancey said.
“Back to the airport, chauffeur,” Ms. Strydent ordered. “And drive slowly this time, so that my fans can get a good look at me!”
By the time this had taken place, the armored personnel carrier had traveled down the full length of the Champs-Elysees, sent cars and pedestrians scattering as it passed through the Place de la Concorde, narrowly missed the Battle of Waterloo Monument in the Place Vendome, and finally skidded to a halt by the stage door of the Paris Opera.
Senator George H. Kamikaze had arrived moments before and been shown to the dressing room of Maestro Korsky-Rimsakov by one of the guards. He had just raised a glass of Fenstermacher’s finest old Milwaukee pale pilsner to his lips when Boris strode into the room.
“Senator Kamikaze, I presume?” he said. “I can tell by that ridiculous hat.”
“Maestro Korsky-Rimsakov, I presume?” the senator said. “I can tell by the whiskey breath by which you are preceded by a good ten yards.”
“Hark!” Boris said, suddenly sharply, cocking his head to one side.
A woman’s singing voice could now be heard: “For love, like tender flowers, is swiftly dead and gone. My friends, embrace this alluring occasion. Let’s revel and laugh until dawn!”
“You’ve deceived me, you miserable Machiavellian Oriental!” Boris said. He picked the senator up. “You didn’t tell me that my beloved baby sister was with you!”
“Put me down before I turn you into the fattest soprano in the world,” the senator said. “Your sister is in San Francisco!”
“Are you trying to tell me, you sawed-off refugee from a sukiyaki joint, that I, the world’s greatest male opera singer, cannot tell the voice of the world’s greatest female opera singer, who just happens to be my beloved baby sister, when I hear it?”
“If he won’t,” Trapper John said, “I will, Old Bull Bellow. Now put the senator down before he loses his Oriental patience and makes good his threat about turning you into a soprano.”
“Silence!” Boris said. “While that great artist, my baby sister, is singing!” He listened, enraptured, to the singing. Bobby-Sue, unaware that anyone at all was listening to
her, had started to sing from the end of Act Three.
“Come here beside me and listen, Beloved Alfredo! Dearest, on this medallion, you see a past resemblance to keep as a remembrance of her who loved you so.”*
(* All of this, of course, was sung in Italian, the way Giuseppe Verdi wrote it. It has been translated in deference to that minuscule portion of readers who are neither fluent in Italian, nor, believe it or not, opera lovers.)
“By God!” Boris said fervently. “I’ve heard her sing that a hundred times. But never like that! She’s apparently getting better with middle age!” He put Senator Kamikaze down, put his hand on his chest, took a deep breath, and began to sing Alfredo’s reply to Violetta, in Violetta’s death-bed scene.
“You must not die, but live for me. No, you shall live believing Almighty God would never make me sustain such anguish, such hopeless grieving.”
As he was singing, Archbishop Mulcahy and Hawkeye came in, carrying the Reverend Born-Again Bob between them. The archbishop, who, of course, spoke Italian and was an opera lover, was instantly on the alert.
“Is that Bobby-Sue?” he asked of Trapper John.
“Prelate of the Church or not, Dago Red,” Boris hissed fiercely, “shut your fat mouth while two great artists are singing, even if only to each other!”
From the dressing room, Bobby-Sue/Violetta replied to Boris/Alfredo: “Someday you’ll learn to love again! One who will give her heart to you!”
As she sang, Boris ran into his dressing room.
“I was afraid of that!” the archbishop said. “She’s probably using the bed under that mirror on the ceiling as her death bed!” He let go of Brother Born-Again Bob’s feet and dashed to the door. Hawkeye let the other end down and rushed after him.
Bobby-Sue finished her aria, and Boris started his: “God will not part us now, so close to happiness. Death must not thus tear you away from me!”
The archbishop’s worst fears were realized. Bobby-Sue was indeed using Boris’s bed under the mirror on the ceiling as her death bed, and as the last syllables of Alfredo’s aria died away, after rattling all the crystal chandeliers in the building, he flung himself on the bed, on top of her, and wept as if heartbroken.
“All right!” the archbishop snapped. “That’s enough of that! Get off the bed, Boris!”
Boris raised his head from where it had been resting on Bobby-Sue’s splendiferous breastworks and looked at the prelate with curiosity.
“Something for you, Dago Red?” he asked.
“You heard me! Get off that sweet, innocent, and, if I may say so, superbly stacked young woman!”
“That’s the trouble with you clergypersons,” Boris said. “All you think about is sex, sex, sex! When I’ll have you know, Dago Red, that this superb artist on whose bosom I have just rested my head is an opera singer, and we have other things on our minds, don’t we, my dear, than sex, sex, sex!”
“Maestro,” Bobby-Sue asked timidly, “you mean you approve of my singing?”
“Approve of it? Approve of it? My dear, you are worthy of me, that’s how much I approve of it!”
“Oh, Maestro! How happy you’ve made me!”
“You don’t have to call me maestro,” Boris said. “You may call me ‘Boris,’ as one great artist to another. And what is your name, my little nightingale?”
“Bobby-Sue,” Bobby-Sue said.
Boris looked at her for a moment. “Not anymore, it isn’t,” he said. “From this moment onward, you are Brunhilde Whatever-you-said-your-last-name-was.”
Boris bounded over to Senator Kamikaze, picked him off the floor, and kissed him wetly in the middle of his forehead.
“Can you ever forgive me? I should have known that if my beloved baby sister sent you to see me, it was to carry a gift! And what a gift!”
“There is one little thing you can do for me,” the senator said. “In addition to putting me down.”
“Name it!” Boris said. “Anyone who has made such a contribution to grand opera as you have, putting Brunhilde What’s-her-name together with me can have anything it is in the power of Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov to grant!”
(The others, of course, were well aware that the senator had had absolutely nothing to do with bringing Bobby-Sue to Paris, but this was another of those times when correcting the maestro seemed to be ill-advised.)
“How would you like to go to Russia and sing?” the senator said.
“Not on your life,” Boris said immediately. “God, the moment you think that perhaps there is one politician whose soul is not as corrupt as the others’, they slap you in the face with an indecent proposal like that!”
“The President of the United States wants you to do it as a special favor to him,” Senator Kamikaze said.
“You see? You see? He shamelessly admits it!” Boris said.
“Boris,” Brunhilde said.
“Yes, my dear?”
“I saw in Opera News that the Leningrad Opera is doing La Traviata tonight.”
“And?”
“I thought perhaps you might wish to sing Alfredo against another Violetta, so that you would have a better chance to judge my voice.”
“That is absolutely unnecessary,” the maestro said firmly. “I have already judged your remarkable talents. But you may have something. Leningrad is doing La Traviata, you say?”
“Yes, they are.”
“Hassan, get on the phone to the Russian Embassy and tell them I will sing Alfredo tonight. To Brunhilde’s Violetta, of course.”
“But, Boris, I’m not prepared!” Bobby-Sue/Brunhilde said.
“If I say you’re prepared, you’re prepared,” he said. “And besides, a smashing triumph in Russia will do wonders for your career.”
As Prince Hassan reached for the telephone to call the Russian Embassy, the instrument rang. The prince answered it and then handed it to Senator Kamikaze.
“For you, Senator,” he said.
“No kidding?” the senator said. “Senator Kamikaze here.”
The familiar piercing voice filled the room.
“You have exactly ninety seconds to get here before I leave for Moscow,” Ms. Shur-lee Strydent announced.
“You mean you’d leave without me?” the senator asked.
“You better believe it,” Ms. Strydent said.
“Vaya con Dios,” the senator replied.
“How dare you use language like that on me!” Ms. Strydent replied. “You just wait till I tell our Beloved Leader what you said! He’ll fix you, you dirty old Republican!” And with that she hung up.
“Senator,” Boris said. “Perhaps I have misjudged you after all.”
“If we are going to Leningrad, Maestro, it would well behoove us to commence the journey,” the senator replied.
Four days later, the ambassador of the workers and peasants of the U.S.S.R. to the oppressed workers, peasants, and farmers of the USA gave his mouth a final blast of Breath-B-Gone (he had had a little snort to give him courage to face the Washington traffic) and climbed out of his Rolls-Royce under the west portico of a large white building on Pennsylvania Avenue.
The chief of protocol greeted him. He slapped him playfully on the back, pumped his hand, and said, “How y’all today? Looks like we might get a little rain, don’t it?”
“I believe that I am expected,” the ambassador said.
“You sure are,” the chief of protocol said. “Jim-Boy’s right inside waiting for you.”
The ambassador was carrying a large pot. The chief of Protocol lifted the lid. “No offense, of course, but you understand. We just can’t have anybody blowing up our Beloved Leader, can we?” He sniffed at the contents. “Jesus, what the hell is that stuff?”
“It is a present to your Beloved Leader from the wife of our Beloved Leader,” the ambassador said. “It was flown in this morning.”
“Well, that’s right nice of her, I’m sure,” the chief of protocol said, “worrying about whether the President’s pigs are getting e
nough to eat.”
“That’s borscht, you moron!”
“Whatever you say, Mr. Ambassador. I got strict orders from Jim-Boy hisself not to let you guys get under my skin. But I will tell you this—anybody carrying a bucket of that stuff around on purpose is in no position to be calling anybody else a moron.”
“Can we go in now?”
“Right this way,” the chief of protocol said.
The incumbent, when the ambassador entered the Oval Office, was sitting behind the highly polished desk. He rose to his feet when he saw the ambassador. There was a yelp of pain, seeming to come from under the desk. “Watch the fingers, for God’s sake!”
“Did you say something, Mr. President?”
“Not yet,” Jim-Boy said. “Come on in, Mr. Ambassador. Sit down and have a boiled peanut.” Jim-Boy sniffed. “What the heck is that awful smell?”
“It’s a little present, Jim-Boy, for you,” the chief of protocol said. “From the Chairman’s wife.”
“Oh, really?” Jim-Boy said.
“Permit me to give you this small gift from the Chairman’s wife,” the ambassador said.
“Thanks a lot,” Jim-Boy said. He lifted the lid, sniffed, and made a face. “I must tell you in all honesty, Mr. Ambassador,” he said—“and I never lie, you know, not even to Russians—that this is a surprise.”
“How do you mean?”
“All the reports I’ve been getting tell me that not only did this Korsky-Borsky or whatever guy sing in Russia, but he brought the house down.”
“That is true, Mr. President,” the ambassador said.
“And I also heard that he brought another American singer with him, and that she also brought the house down.”
“That is also true.”
“I just knew you-all would love Shur-lee Strydent,” Jim- Boy said.
“The singer who brought the house down was Brunhilde Roberts,” the ambassador said. “But no matter, your information is correct. With certain minor little exceptions, the performance of Comrade Korsky-Rimsakov and Comrade Roberts was all that we could ask for.”
“Then how come you’ve brought me a bucket of hog swill?”
MASH 14 MASH goes to Moscow Page 18