MASH 09 MASH goes to Vienna

by Richard Hooker+William Butterworth

  “What I’m saying, Senator, is that Taylor P. Jambon was talking about the Australians, not the Austrians.”

  “There’s a difference?” Senator Cacciatore asked. Geography was not one of his strong points.

  “Oh, yes, sir,” Senator Fisch said.

  “Like what?”

  “Australians, the ones who are so beastly to the dear little kangaroos, wear Smokey the Bear hats pinned up on the side. They’re sort of English. Austrians, on the other hand, wear funny little hats with a brush on the side and short leather pants.”

  “You don’t say?” Senator Cacciatore replied, absolutely fascinated.

  “The Austria I’m talking about, Senator, is the one with the beer and Johann Strauss.”

  “ ‘The Blue Danube?’ ” Senator Cacciatore replied.

  “Right, Senator. ‘The Blue Danube’ and Weiner schnitzel. That Austria.”

  “Well, why didn’t you come right out and say so?” Senator Cacciatore said somewhat sharply. “I’m a busy man, Fisch, I’ve got better things to do than sit around all day making idle chatter with you.”

  “And what we want to do in Austria, Senator,” Senator Fisch went on, having just been struck with the first original idea he’d had since junior high school, “is make television appeals for poor and abused animals. Pups and pussies and kangaroos.”

  “You got to go to Austria to do that? They don’t make commercials in New York no more?” He paused, and Senator Fisch opened his mouth to reply, but before the words could get past his magnificent choppers Senator Cacciatore had an additional thought. “Tell you what I’m going to do, Fisch,” he said. “I’m going to have a word with one of the boys, and you can make your commercials right here in the Senate’s TV studio. It’s for a good cause, so there will be no charge.”

  “Well, that’s very kind of you, Senator, and I certainly appreciate it, but...”

  “But what? Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. The way they got it fixed, it looks like you’re in an office in sight of the Capitol Building. It’s a picture on the wall, of course, but the dummies watching the tube don’t know that. And what could be more inspiring?”

  “Miss Patience Throckbottom Worthington is involved, Senator,” Fisch said.

  “Miss Patience Throckbottom Worthington ... the actress ... that Patience Throckbottom Worthington?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “She is one of my favorite stars of stage, screen and television,” the senator said. “A lady of the old school. They don’t make them like that no more.”

  “No, sir, they don’t,” Senator Fisch agreed. “Well, when Mr. Jambon approached Miss Worthington asking her to make our television appeals for APPLE ...”

  “Taylor P. Jambon himself asked Patience Throckbottom Worthington herself?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Maybe I’ve misjudged you, my boy,” Senator Cacciatore said. “Anyone who walks in here with a case of five- ninety-eight-a-bottle Chianti and who knows both Taylor P. Jambon and Patience Throckbottom Worthington can’t be as dumb as you look. Was your mother maybe Italian, Fisch?”

  “No, sir,” Fisch said. “I’m sorry she was not.”

  “Maybe somebody’s got a little secret, way back, you know what I mean?”

  “As I was saying, Senator …”

  “Maybe your grandmother went for a ride on a gondola in Venice,” the senator went on. “You know how it goes. A bottle of wine, the moon. Those thing happen. We Italians are irresistible, you know.”

  “Miss Worthington graciously offered to make our television appeals for us,” Fisch said.

  “You can tell by just looking at her what a sweet, kind, gracious lady she is. There’s Italian blood in her, I’ll bet my life on it.”

  “I’m sure there is,” Fisch said. “But there’s just one teensy-weensy problem.”

  “Like what?”

  “Miss Worthington says that to get the right feel in the commercials, she has to make them in Vienna.”

  “Rome, I’d understand. Venice would speak for itself. Maybe even Naples. But Vienna?”

  “They’re sad commercials, Senator.”

  “Got you!” Senator Cacciatore said. “I should have thought of that.”

  “So our little problem is how to get Miss Worthington and a camera crew to Vienna. At as little expense to APPLE as possible, of course.”

  “Naturally,” Senator Cacciatore said and paused thoughtfully.

  “I hoped that you could find it in your heart to help us, Senator,” Fisch went on. “Help us and the poor kangaroos.”

  “Stand up, Fisch,” Senator Cacciatore said sternly. Senator Fisch assumed a position which will be remembered by those who have worn their country’s uniform at “attention.” That is to say, he stood as erect as possible, held his hands at his sides, his thumbs lined up with the seams in his trousers, and stared straight ahead. So standing, he looked directly above Senator Cacciatore (who stood, of course, only five-foot-five in his Earth shoes) and into the face of King Victor Emmanuel of Italy, whose photograph hung on the senator’s wall beside that of Senator Edward M. Kennedy.

  “Your country calls, Senator,” Senator Cacciatore said, solemnly. “From this moment forward, you are chairman of the Senate Ad Hoc Committee to Investigate the Mistreatment of Kangaroos and Other Innocent Beasts.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “On your way out, Fisch, tell the girl to fix things with the air force.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Tell her to tell the air force and the State Department that Senator Christopher Columbus Cacciatore himself is personally interested in your ad hoc committee.”

  “You’re a great and compassionate man, Senator,” Senator Fisch said, sort of choked up.

  “Yeah, I know,” Senator Cacciatore said. In a sudden burst of emotion, he stood on his tiptoes, grabbed Senator Fisch by the shoulders, and kissed him on each cheek. “You get a chance sometime, kid,” he said, “ask your grandmother if she’s ever been to Italy.”

  Senator Fisch returned to his office, poured himself a stiff drink, and then telephoned the good news to Mr. Taylor P. Jambon at the Spruce Harbor Inn.

  Taylor P. Jambon was delighted with the news about the air force jet which had been placed at their disposal and with what he called the “unexpected bonus.”

  “What unexpected bonus is that, Taylor?”

  “The kangaroos, dummy,” Taylor P. replied. “Boy, I wonder why I didn’t think of them for the APPLE campaign? I did a splendid appeal for them on my television show, ‘Glorious Gluttony.’ ”

  “Taylor, I don’t think there’s many homeless, friendless kangaroos in America.”

  “I know that, Jaws, and you know that, but the suckers won’t know that. I’ll be in touch.”

  No sooner had Senator Fisch replaced his telephone in its cradle than it rang again. He pushed the intercom button and had a word with his secretary. “Inez, I told you, no calls. I’m meditating.”

  “It’s Senator Cacciatore, Senator. He said it’s urgent.”

  “Put him through! Put him through!” Senator Fisch said. He had a sudden sinking feeling that something had gone wrong, that perhaps Senator Cacciatore had changed his mind.

  “Good afternoon, Senator,” Senator Fisch said into his telephone, oozing charm. “How good of you to call me!”

  “That’s not all, Fisch,” Senator Cacciatore said. “Boy, have I got good news for you!”

  “Oh, really?”

  “What would you say if I told you that the official U.S. Senate Ad Hoc Committee to Investigate the Mistreatment of Kangaroos and Other Innocent Beasts has a new Chairman?”

  “I’m sure, Senator, that if you have appointed a new chairman, you had your reasons.”

  “I myself, Senator Christopher Columbus Cacciatore, have assumed the helm and will guide the committee wherever in the wild world, specifically to Vienna, our duty takes us.”

  “Splendid!” said Senaor Fisch loyal
ly but without much evident enthusiasm.

  “You want to know why?” Senator Cacciatore said.

  “If you could tell me without compromising our national security,” Fisch replied.

  “I called Mrs. Cacciatore, Fisch. I wanted to tell her that I’d been in a position to help both the abused kangaroos and Miss Patience Throckbottom Worthington.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “Mrs. Cacciatore shares my belief that Miss Worthington is a saint. She never misses one of her TV programs.”

  “I see.”

  “So I figured she’d want to know, you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So then I told her how I was able to be of service. The air force jet to Vienna, I mean. And you know what, Fisch ... talk about casting bread on the waters …”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Guess who’s going to sing in Vienna, Fisch?”

  “I really have no idea,” the senator replied.

  “I’ll give you a little hint. There was a special bulletin of the Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov Fan Club.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not much help, Senator,” Fisch said.

  “You do know, Fisch, don’t you, who Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov is?”

  “Certainly!” Fisch said firmly. Actually he had no idea at all, his musical tastes leaning toward Alice Cooper and Mel Tormé.

  “Then guess who’s going to give a special performance magnifique at the Vienna Opera?”

  Senator Fisch thought long and hard. The only Italianate singer he could think of was Frank Sinatra, and he didn’t think Old Blue Eyes was big in the opera department. It was a time, the senator realized, when silence was the better part of valor. He sat there silently.

  “The Maestro himself!” Senator Cacciatore said. “That’s who!”

  “Splendid!” Fisch said. “Smashing!”

  “So I figured, what the hell, Fisch, all work and no play makes the senator a dull boy, you know? Combine a little pleasure with business, right?”

  “Absolutely, Senator,” Senator Fisch replied. “You took the words right out of my mouth.”

  “Mrs. Cacciatore and me will see you in Vienna, Fisch,” Senator Cacciatore said. “Ciao, bambino."

  The line went dead.

  Chapter Nine

  Midshipman His Grace Hugh Percival, the Duke of Folkestone arrived at Spruce Harbor, Maine, in what the navy chose to refer to as a POV. POV stand for privately owned vehicle, and the POV in question was the Volkswagen bug owned by Lieutenant (j.g.) Joanne Pauline Jones, U.S.N.

  There were two signs making reference to His Grace’s presence in the quaint and bucolic seaport village. An oilcloth affair, of the kind used by politicians, strung between telephone poles carried the simple message “WELCOME HOME, WOODY!”

  While a patient at the Spruce Harbor Medical Center, Woody Woodburn-Haverstraw had made a lot of friends, the most notable of whom of course was Miss Beverly Chambers, a student nurse at the institution.

  And on the sign before the Finest Kind Medical Clinic & Fish Market, one of those with movable letters and normally used to advertise such things as fresh clams and cut-rate tonsilectomies, the proprietors of that establishment, Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John McIntyre, had done what they thought should be done to make Woody’s escort officer feel welcome.

  Woody had often spoken of Lieutenant Jones to the two healers, and they, unabashed and even rather belligerent male chauvinists, had simply presumed that Lieutenant Jones was of the male persuasion. Thus the Finest Kind Medical Clinic & Fish Market’s sign, a twenty-by- thirty-foot affair, surrounded by flashing lights of many colors, read

  FINEST KIND MEDICAL CLINIC & FISH MARKET

  WELCOMES

  LT. (j.g.) JOHN PAUL JONES

  FATHER OF THE U.S. NAVY

  “Oh, I say, Joanne, look at that!” Woody said. He was a tall, rather thin, blondheaded young man. “Hawkeye and Trapper John have got rather the wrong idea about you, haven’t they?”

  “Who are Hawkeye and Trapper John?” Lieutenant (j.g.) Joanne Pauline Jones, U.S.N., asked. She was not very pleased with the sign.

  “You’ll like them,” Woody said. “They’re really my best friends in all the world.”

  Although fiery tongs could have not ripped the admission from her lips, Lieutenant (j.g.) Jones was as vulnerable to curiosity as any other member of her sex.

  “What does that mean? Medical Clinic and Fish Market?”

  “Why, just what it says. They sell fish, rather good fish, too, as you will find out, and they treat people.”

  “They are doctors, these people?”

  “Finest kind,” Woody said.

  “What’s their relationship with the chief of surgery of the Spruce Harbor Medical Center?” That distinguished luminary, according to Lieutenant (j.g.) Jones’s travel orders, was Woody’s official sponsor.

  “Rather good, I would say,” Woody replied, making his little joke. “Much mutual admiration, that sort of thing.” It was English humor, and as such sailed right over Lieutenant (j.g.) Jones’s pretty little head.

  “Make the next right,” Woody ordered, “and you’ll see the Spruce Harbor Medical Center. When I spoke with Dr. Pierce, he said to park where it says ‘reserved for the Internal Revenue Service.’ ”

  “He said what?”

  “That’s his private parking place,” Woody explained. “When he put his own name up, other people were always stealing his place. But with the IRS sign up, nobody dares.”

  As it happened, when the Volkswagen bug rolled up to the Spruce Harbor Medical Center, the chief of surgery was in conference with Richard J. Wilson, M.D., in the former’s office. Dr. John Francis Xavier McIntyre and Esther Flanagan, R.N., normally co-conferees at this time of day, were still on duty.

  In theory, Dr. McIntyre was delivering himself a lecture on some fine points of technique required of nurses functioning in the operating room to a class of student nurses (among whom, incidentally, was Miss Beverly Chambers), and so the records of the Spruce Harbor Nursing School would indicate.

  In practice, however, what really happened was that as soon as Dr. McIntyre (or Dr. Pierce, in his turn) opened his mouth, Nurse Flanagan would interrupt:

  “What the doctor really means to say, girls,” she would begin, which was the cue for the physician-lecturer to sit down and assume a look of studied agreement while Nurse Flanagan delivered the lecture. He could tell when the lecture was over, because then Nurse Flanagan would turn to him and deliver her tag line.

  “We’re all grateful to you, Doctor, for giving us of your valuable time and wide experience, and we hope that you will soon again find the time to spare from your many activities to be with us again.”

  She would then place her hands before her and make a clapping gesture, which was the cue for the girls to applaud politely.

  It was an important, perhaps indispensable, facet of the practice of medicine, but Hawkeye Pierce was just as happy that it was Trapper John’s turn to “lecture” and he could sit in his office, martini in hand, peering through the lens of a telescope at his unsuspecting fellow Spruce Harborians.

  He swung the telescope from anatomical study (a couple on a sailboat were exchanging some rather enthusiastic physical manifestations of mutual respect and admiration to the mistaken belief that being in the middle of Spruce Harbor afforded them unbroken privacy) and turned it to what in the army would be known as terrain reconnaissance.

  “Hark!” he cried to Dr. Wilson. “A navy bug with Annapolis tags!”

  “Excuse me, Doctor?” Doctor Wilson asked.

  “Doctor,” Hawkeye said, “please present my compliments to Nurse Flanagan. Tell her that Miss Chambers is needed in the Internal Revenue Service parking lot immediately in the interest of hands-across-the-sea.”

  “Student Nurse Chambers is needed immediately in the interest of hands-across-the-sea,” Dr. Wilson repeated. The one thing he had learned here was never to question th
e chief of surgery. The answers he got when he did so only served to deepen his confusion.

  “Or perhaps, under the table,” Dr. Pierce said. “Be quick about it, Wilson!” He stepped to the French doors leading from his office, opened them, and then turned. “Come along, Alfred,” he said.

  Alfred, who had been lying, minding his own business, in the corner of the office, raised his head, cocked it, and looked at his master with mild interest.

  “I’m sorry to wake you, Old Top,” Hawkeye said in a quite credible mimicry of the peculiar speech pattern of the English aristocrat, “but a countryman of yours has just arrived, and I do think you should pop outside and say hello to him.”

  Alfred rose, slowly and with great dignity, to his feet and, swinging his already monstrous tail from side to side, followed Hawkeye out of his office and onto the lawn.

  It had been love at first sight between the dog and Dr. Pierce. They had met in the hospital corridor some time before, when the animals had been delivered by His Royal Highness Prince Hassan ad Kayam. He had smiled once or twice at Dr. Pierce’s legs and then immediately lay down at his feet. He had shown no interest whatever in the activities of his brothers, who were playfully trying to get Mr. Taylor P. Jambon down from his perch on a wall-mounted fire extinguisher.

  Mr. T. Alfred Crumley, administrator of the Spruce Harbor Medical Center, had, of course, come running when word had reached him that three black bears were on the premises, apparently determined to eat Mr. Taylor P. Jambon.

  By the time he got to the scene, however, Nurse Flanagan and Dr. Trapper John had, not without great effort, managed to remove their new canine companions from the premises. The so-far unnamed Scottish wolfhound who had sniffed Dr. Pierce, however, refused to leave. He just went limp. Dr. Pierce tried twice and failed to move him by brute strength. It was like trying to pick up a one-hundred-fifty-pound wet noodle, and it quickly became apparent to Dr. Pierce that the only way they were going to be able to get the animal out of the hospital against his wishes was to roll him onto a stretcher, something, considering the dignity of the healing profession generally, he was unwilling to do.

  As soon as Mr. Taylor P. Jambon had been calmed down (he had been on the edge of hysteria and had only recovered control of himself when Dr. Pierce had loudly announced that what he obviously needed was an enema), Mr. T. Alfred Crumley had turned to the dog.