MASH 14 MASH goes to Moscow (5 page)

“Perfectly, Comrade Chairman,” she said.

“And you, Comrade Commissar of Foreign Relations —you get on a plane and get to the United Nations. Give them a speech, no holds barred, a real spellbinder. You might try banging your shoe on the desk. When Old Khrushchev did that, it worked like a charm!”

“I understand perfectly, Comrade Chairman,” the Commissar of Foreign Relations said.

“And you, Comrade Commissar of the Secret Police—you let it leak right away that we’re really angry, but willing to negotiate. Pass it through the Swedes. They’re always willing to cooperate.”

“I’ll get right on it, Comrade Chairman.”

“Then Old Walnut …” the Chairman began.

“Excuse me, Comrade Chairman,” the Commissar of Foreign Relations said, “that’s Old Peanut.”

“Peanut, Walnut—whatever. Anyway, he’ll ask you down to the White House to see what’s bothering us. Keep him dangling awhile, of course, and then tell him. He’ll be so relieved that he’ll let us have this What’s-his- name for as long as we like, and there will be none of this giving back the Bolshoi Theatre nonsense, either.”

“Comrade Chairman,” the Commissar of Feminine Affairs said, “you’re a genius!”

“I know, I know,” he said, smiling at all of them.

The subject of
the emergency conference of the Supreme Executive Committee of the Supreme Soviet, Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov, dressed in the costume in which he was about to sing the role of Don Carlo in a
matinee
magnifique
*
of Verdi’s
La
forza
del
destino
(The Force of Destiny) at the French National Opera House, set the telephone down in his dressing room and turned to his close companion, His Royal Highness Sheikh Hassan ad
Kayam
.

(* There are two interrelated differences between a
matinee
magnifique
and a
matinee
ordinaire
at the French National Opera, Paris. Whenever Maestro Korsky-Rimsakov sings, the production is considered to be a
matinee
magnifique
.
And whenever there is a
matinee
magnifique
,
there is a 100 percent
matinee
magnifique
surcharge on ticket prices.)

“Say what you like about them, Hassan,” he said. “They’re tenacious! They never give up!”

“Perhaps, Maestro,” His Royal Highness said, “you should consider giving them the priceless gift of your art for just one performance.”

“I can see right through you, you oversexed camel jockey,” the maestro snapped. “You just want another crack at my rejects from the Corps de Ballet. Shame on you!”The arrow struck home. His Royal Highness, who stood five-feet, two inches tall and four feet even around, lowered his head and blushed. Prince Hassan, heir apparent to the throne of the sheikhdom of
Hussid
and currently Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of His Most Islamic Majesty to the Fourth French Republic, had some years before become aware that the female discards of the maestro were of an infinitely higher quality, not to mention variety, than the females he could attract, even though it was common knowledge that his personal income ran to some $30,000 daily.

This is not to say this was the only reason His Royal Highness had become, as some called him, “First Among the Maestro’s Groupies,” although it had a good deal to do with it. His Royal Highness was, in fact, the maestro’s most devoted fan. His admiration of the maestro’s voice was both genuine and knowledgeable. He alone was permitted to criticize the maestro’s performances.*

(* The maestro, as he himself admitted, was incapable of actually singing badly. What HRH Prince Hassan was permitted to judge was whether a performance was up to the maestro’s usual perfection or merely superb.)

What, exactly, Maestro Korsky-Rimsakov saw in His Royal Highness, on the other hand, was rather puzzling. The singer’s detractors suggested, rather unkindly, that His Royal Highness’s insistence on not only picking up all the singer’s bills, but of placing him under the umbrella, so to speak, of his diplomatic privilege, had a good deal to do with it.

Maestro
Korsky-Rimsakov’s
admirers, which group included perhaps 98.5 percent of the female population of France between the ages of fourteen and ninety-four and perhaps as much as 1.3 percent of French men of all ages, countered that there was nothing in La Belle France that the maestro would have to pay for, if only his desires came to the attention of any woman with a checking account, and that so far as taking advantage of Prince Hassan’s diplomatic status, this was pure nonsense with a heavy layer of sour grapes.

It was common knowledge that the maestro possessed dual citizenship as a result of his close friendship with Sheikh Abdullah
ben
Abzug, hereditary Sheikh of Sheikhs of the Islamic Kingdom of Abzug, 15,000 square miles of granite mountains, sandy desert, and subterranean oil and gas deposits in Northern Africa. Mr. Korsky-Rimsakov had not only been granted honorary
Abzugian
citizenship, but had also been ennobled (as Sheikh El
Noil
Snoil
the Magnificent) and (possibly so that he would have equal status in the Arab social world with Prince Hassan) granted
Abzugian
Diplomatic Passport Number One, identifying him as Sheikh Abdullah’s Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the World.*

(* The details of how Sheikh Abdullah and Mr. Korsky-Rimsakov became close friends have been recorded, for students of Arabian Affairs in particular, and for those with prurient interests generally, in
M*A*S*H Goes to Morocco
(Pocket Books, New York).)

The simple truth was that Boris liked Hassan. It was, as he often pointed out, a sad and lonely life he had as the world’s greatest (and highest paid) opera singer.

“Like anyone else,” he said, “I need a friend who selflessly loves me for myself. Furthermore, for every dollar I have made, enriching the world with my incomparable art, there have been two sneaky sons of [expletive deleted]s trying to con me out of it.”

Prince Hassan (and, practically, Prince Hassan’s fourteen-man personal bodyguard) spared no effort to, as Boris thought of it, “keep the riffraff out of my boudoir.” And Hassan was always on hand to sustain the maestro through the strain which came to him before a performance, to lead the applause during the performance, and to be on hand in the dressing room afterward with effusive praise and what they thought of as a “bird and
a
bottle.”

The bottle (more often, bottles) was a jeroboam of Piper
Heidsieck
’69 champagne and the birds, generally speaking, were the Baroness d’Iberville and Esmerelda
Hoffenburg
, the ballerina, either singly or, so to speak, in tandem. There were, the ladies knew, two ways to a man’s heart, and between them the Baroness (who made, the maestro said, the world’s best
blini
,
Russian blintzes) and Esmerelda (who was something of a contortionist) knew both of them. They had been wise enough to work out between them a sort of roster system and never competed, between themselves, for the maestro’s affections. Not only was there generally enough of what Sheikh Abdullah
ben
Abzug thought of as El
Noil
Snoil’s
“other art” for both of them, but they had learned that if there was one thing the maestro couldn’t stand, it was women fighting over his attention.

This system generally worked out well, although there had once been a rather noisy incident when the maestro had sung the title role in the
II
moro
di
Venezia
at the Sydney, Australia, opera house. The very efficient opera house security force had taken literally the instruction that no one would be admitted to the singer’s dressing room following the performance until he had had an opportunity to avail himself of the traditional bird and bottle.

The maestro had gone to his dressing room to find only a roast turkey* and a bottle of
Manischewitz
’ finest Concord, both sent Air Express, cost be damned, from New York, in a sincere if misguided attempt to give him what he wanted. Before he got what he really wanted, Australian opera aficionados received not only confirmation of the most fascinating stories they had heard whispered around about the maestro, but were treated to the spectacle of their general manager being thrown fifty feet into the harbor.

(* Turkeys are not indigenous to Australia. On the other hand, kangaroos are not very common in Upper New York State either, proving once again Maestro
Korsky-Rimsakov’s
oft-stated theorem that the world is a strange place indeed, no matter how you look at it.)

A respectful knock came at the Maestro
Korsky-Rimsakov’s
door.

“Maestro,” the general manager of the Paris Opera called. “May I have your permission to begin Act Two?”

“You may,” the maestro graciously replied. He walked to the full-length mirror and examined himself carefully. He stood six feet, five inches tall and weighed 280 pounds. Confounding dieticians, who generally frown on large amounts of alcohol and even larger amounts of food, there was not an ounce of fat on him. His dark, rich beard was all his. His teeth were large, healthy, and pearly white.

“Magnificent,” the maestro said, evaluating his appearance. “That’s the only word that fits—magnificent!” He turned and spoke to His Royal Highness. “Have everything in readiness, Hassan. You know how little I get in return for enriching the drab lives of all those people out there.”

“Everything will be in readiness, Maestro,” His Royal Highness replied.

“And you know how seldom I get a chance to really enjoy myself in the company of those I love.”

“I know, Maestro,” His Royal Highness said.

Maestro Korsky-Rimsakov was not, on this occasion, speaking of a bird and bottle.

“I’m ready, Hassan,” he said, and strode purposefully to the door. Hassan opened it for him. The two gendarmes stationed outside his door came to attention.* The maestro nodded graciously to them and marched toward the stage.

(* Maestro Korsky-Rimsakov was in 1972 declared
“A
National Treasure of La Belle France” by the French Chamber of Deputies, partly because the revenue from
matinees
magnifiques
is acknowledged to be the sole reason the French National Opera Company has not gone bankrupt, and partly because the wife of the presiding officer of the Chamber of Deputies threatened to shut off husbandly privilege unless “some suitable honor” was paid to her “Cher Boris.” In any event, his status as a National Treasure was made official, and as such, like the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre Museum, and the
Folies
Bergfcres
, he was placed under the twenty-four-hour protection of the Gendarmerie
Nationale
.)

Act Two of
La
forza
del
destino
,
as the highbrow readers of a cultural tome such as this are fully aware, takes place in an inn in the village of
Homachuelos
. The script calls for Don Carlo, disguised as a student, to enter and take his place among the mule drivers and other peasants at dinner.

A hush fell over the audience as the curtain rose to show the peasants milling around. Then there was a sound like a vacuum cleaner gone mad as every female in the audience drew in a lungful of breath and turned her eyes to stage right, where Don Carlo would appear.