Keep The Giraffe Burning (23 page)

0
TH:
C. L. Dodgson, another unbirthday. Author of ‘What the Tortoise Said to Achilles’ (
Mind
, December 1894). What the tortoise does say would take an infinite number of pages to record, though this difficulty might be overcome by removing the ink from earlier pages and re-using them, in an endless cycle …

25
TH:
Dodgson lies awake at night compounding his ‘Pillow Problems’, vain exercises in infinity to help pass the invalid hours. Proust has been watching the steak of light beneath his bedroom door, unable to decide whether it is midnight gaslight or dawn. Zeno turns in restless sleep, in his nightmare running slowly, dragging old tortoise feet through mud to escape the arrow that comes ever infinitesimally closer without striking. Huckleberry Finn lands on the shores of sleep safely, after his moment of drifting awake, seeing unfamiliar points of light; he may remember a single star, but the wrong one: It exploded into nothing 4,320,000,000 years before the Earth was born, and nothing remains but its false light. Aeschylus at breakfast tells his wife his dream: ‘It was raining tortoises and …’ And Manilius squats watching the horizon at dawn in an act of faith.

1. Washington Crossing the Yangtze

His predecessor had kept tape recorders running in every room, catching his ‘thoughts’ as he paced. But then his predecessor, Rogers, had always been a flamboyant action-man leader, the first Secret Service agent to be elevated to the position he guarded with his profile. His career spanned a few headlines:

GBM SAVED FROM SHOOTING

HERO BODYGUARD TO RUN FOR SENATE

SEN. ROGERS WILL RUN

ROGERS WINS!

ROGERS ASSASSINATED

Before the assassin could confess, the police station at which he was held blew up, along with a fair piece of Mason City surrounding it. The FBI found the cause to be a gas leak of an unusual type. On succeeding to the office of Great Seal, our man promoted the investigating agent, K. Homer Bissell, to bureau chief.

Our man kept his thoughts on specially printed forms:

There were also memoranda, agenda, briefs and résumés always stacked on top of the elegant polished
^*
desk. The Great Seal liked to be well supplied with business at hand. It enabled him to expedite and finalize things with obvious efficiency at any time, ready to deal with work and get it out of the way before he relaxed, working hard to play even harder, making his guiding principle Throughput.

MEMO: From the President

I do not tolerate noisy press conferences. If possible, the next press conference should be arranged to maximize silence.

I, the state, further do not like science fiction cops. If it is really necessary for them to wear those helmets, plastic visors, tunics, gauntlets and jump boots, will they please keep out of my sight.

‘I can see how this is going to build up into something,’ Filcup warns. ‘Remember when he didn’t like certain news analysts? My God, remember when he didn’t like brown eggs?’

Karl Wax brought up the subject of uniforms at the Tuesday meeting of Special Advisers. His ‘birthday cake’ suggestion was voted down (‘We have to make a pleasing offering to the President, but this is ridiculous. Anyway, a naked guard is just the kind of thing that could backfire. We all know how He feels about nakedness’) and Dan Foyle gained the upper hand with ‘a uniform of evening clothes, slightly modified in some distinctive manner – anyone who’s seen Turhan Bey and Susanna Foster in
The Climax
will know what I mean. This has been a long and bloody war – though not pointless or without compensations – and He sorely needs a little formal relaxation.’

Agenda for Wednesday

Commission stamps to commemorate Walt Disney, Louisa May Alcott, Ty Cobb; provisionally Billy Mitchell, Ralph Nader. Check figs on Indochina: Gen. H. claims 2,250 megatons reqd for reconditioning, Op. Orpheus. Check position on Tanzania vis-à-vis South African bloc. Could recredit our reputation in Brazil, renew Arab franchise.

Presentation of award from Mothers of American Insurrection (blue suit). Read speech of Q’s for decontamination efforts, constitutional loopholes. Lunch with leading blacks. Press conference on Martha’s blood clot.
Important
: p.m. conference with Bissell, psychologists, police reps on physical/mental reconciliation of disaffiliatees, dealing with
radical element
.

While Tichner and Groeb arrange his urgent memos, he runs over the morning mail résumé, made up as a composite letter:

Dear Mr President:

While 47% of me would like to congratulate you on your courageous stand on the Chile question, 21% of me also wonders if you’ve lived up to our expectations regarding … and though 17% of me disagrees, a massive 36% thinks you handled the Moral Pollution bill wisely, and for the rest, I can’t make up my mind.

Sincere good wishes,
Your friend,
J.Q. Public

Suggested Uniforms for White House Police

Brocade, knee breeks and periwigs

Minutemen, ‘dressed for Sunday’

Student Prince

Uncle Sam

Henry Clay gaiters, panamas

Christy’s Minstrels

Custer’s cavalry

Commodore Perry

Rough Riders

The Climax

Mysterious Island

Dickensian ragamuffins (struck off, replaced by ‘Leopard tuxes and light-up bow ties’)

Texas A & M

Diamond Horseshoe

Each Night I Die

Zoot blues

Nice neat business

The GS follows no suggestions, however. For a time, while he reads a digested condensation of the life of FDR, the palace guards are persuaded to imitate that eminence. Bang seven-thirty every morning the guardroom doors slide back and out rolls a parade of large-jawed men in gleaming wheelchairs, champing their cigarette holders and assuring the President that he has nothing to fear but fear itself. And even that phase is preferable, they all agree, to his Peter Stuyvesant period.

After the mail, his condensed news digest:

Wednesday, February 12
^th

PRESIDENT SIGNS CONTROVERSIAL DUCK BILL.

Conservation leaders praise forward-thinking leader. President disclaims, says only small step forward, but ‘little strokes fell great oaks’.

President To Announce New Peace Plan

President’s Wife Feared Ill

Cabinet Changes?

He was vaguely aware that the real press hardly ever mentioned him; these items had been gleaned from the
Rood City Post
, the
Oslo
(Nevada)
Times
and the
Budget Junction O’erseer
. He knew the press laughed at him for his sincerity, for his supposed vanity, for the way he conducted the war. They crucified him if he looked solemn, and when he smiled there were unkind remarks about his woodenness. The press! What did they know? Let them go on calling him an unsaleable commodity, a snap, an empty suit. They would one day look the ape!

Not a Gem

During morning coffee, he felt like a visit to the Reagan Room, but curbed it (P
RESIDENT MASTERS OWN CONDITION
). There was still the award ceremony (The confounded press! More pix with eyes closed, mouth open) and the luncheon with its precarious handshakes. And first of all there was Operation Orpheus and fat, freckled General Hare.

‘We call it Orpheus, sir, because there’s no turning back. We thought of calling it Operation Lot, but people might get it confused with Operation Sandlot, our talent-recruiting program, and with Operation Big Sandy. Operation Sodom was even worse. So we –’

‘Get to the point, Hare. Where do you get this figure of 2,250 megatons?’

The general set down his coffee cup carelessly, so that the cookie fell from its saucer perch. Disorder. Reagan Room. Operation. Or Free Us. The music of the nukebox means a dance with China. I’d like to get you. On a slow boat. China, angina, regina, vagina.

‘Let’s see now.’ General Hare jotted figures on the edge of a soggy paper napkin. ‘We have North Zone, South Zone, Countries Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog …’

Slow bull to china.

‘That makes 1,939,424 square kilometers, and that comes out to only 749 megatons. Allowing a 300 percent margin for error, we get 2,250 megatons, say 150 warheads. We wouldn’t hardly miss it?’

‘Haha! Oh, excuse me, general, I just thought of something. What kind of – ha – boat would a slow boat to China be? Eh? Eh?’

‘I don’t exactly get you, sir. You mean –?’

‘It’s a riddle, man! Just tell me the answer to that, and I may give you the green light on one of these operations.’

‘Mr President! I –’

‘Give up? Give up?’

There was some argument about whether the general had actually given up before the President told him the answer. To placate him, it finally became necessary to okay Operation Big Sandy, both phases.

A Lexicon of Governmental Report Terms

alienatee
: person not sympathetic to the government

bugs
: demonstrators (hence swatting a swarm: riot control)

dealienation
: brainwashing

decontamination
: shock therapy used in dealienation

disaffiliate
: anarchist

maverick
: businessman who defects to radical side

opinion
analyst
: police agent

rationalizing an increment
: stopping a demonstration

reconciliation
: interrogation with extreme force

rodeo
: suspect roundup and intensive reconciliation

social therapist
: interrogator

technicality
: prisoner.

Souplines

The President has a rich dream life. It soaks through his skin like a rich soup and arranges the wrinkles in his ‘sober’ business suit. Examination of the seat of the President’s business pants reveals inmost desires, claims psychologist. A relief map of Indochina, perhaps.

His dreams boil up in projects, plans, operations, advisory committee schemes. His dreaming eye is on the donut, says aide. Operation Big Sandy, for instance. It may seem crazy to wall off Mexico (phase one), but there you are. ‘It’s so crazy,’ says General Hare, ‘it
just might work
. Or not.’

The lunch with leading blacks goes even worse than he’d feared. The press conference is cancelled and he disappears for half an hour into the Reagan Room. Later, before he goes to meet concerned psychologists and policemen, he checks his chin for lines of sin.

Major Operation

Operation Big Sandy was born on the littered conference table of the Great Seal’s team of ‘creative’ advisers. Karl and Dan were cuffing and folding maps to rearrange the world. Filcup sought truth in the depths of black coffee.

‘A door-to-door instant welfare program? Let me call it Streetheart.’

‘A national idea bank –’

‘Yes, but unemployment.’

‘Unemployment, sure, but social security deficits.’

Filcup held up an atlas. ‘Think of the United States as a sheep or cow, marked into cuts of meat.’

‘The United Steaks?’

‘Don’t laugh, it’s the body politic. About to be invaded by hostile germs, coming up the anus from Mexico –’

‘Now just hold on a minute!’ Texas Dan Foyle demanded that Filcup apologize.

‘What we need is antiseptic. Make the Rio Grande radioactive. Build a wall,’ he continued.

‘A wall to write on!’ Karl said. ‘A challenge for our painters.’

‘Sell off advertising space.’

Dan cracked his knuckles wit unrestrained excitement. ‘This could be great for the old folks. Give them something to look at, a new interest in life. You realize that there are over a hundred retirement ranches in that area, and that more than half our retired folks live within a hundred miles of Mexico.’