THE CHILD WHO NEVER GREW TO BE A MAN, but did it make it to be President

Illustrations to Pussy by Chris Riddell

Just for the hell of it, here’s an extract from my novel Pussy, published in 2017 to mark the accession of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States.

I have previously - and in a nostalgic spirit - posted an extract from Pussy. Today is different. Today I post by way of supplication to the Gods - Please, I beg you, not again!

In this extract from the fable, one of Prince Fracassus’s tutors tries in vain to enlarge her pupil’s vocabulary. Who’s Prince Fracassus? I think that will become obvious as you read….

Dr Cobalt slept badly as a rule, but on the night following her ingenious submission to the Grand Duke and Duchess that their son was brilliant by virtue of all that made him stupid, she didn't sleep at all. 

The night was hot - that had something to do with it.  There were mosquitoes in January, a month in which, once upon a time, it would have snowed.  And her basement apartment in Origen Lower Mansions, which abutted the Great North Wall of the City, was stuffy and noisy.   The air conditioning, which the management refused to service because there was no need of air-conditioning in winter, spluttered and wheezed.  

There was a low-level of continuous noise, too, from small protest groups camped outside the Mansions, voicing their entitlements, though it wasn't always clear what they felt entitled to.  Somewhere to live, seemed to be the sum of it.  ‘Whatever they could lay their hands on,’ journalists unsympathetic to the disadvantaged wrote.  Promote rights instead of duties and this was the result. 

But it wasn't the mosquitoes or the sound of people exercising their entitlement to feel entitled that kept her awake.  It was guilt.  She believed she'd failed in her pedagogic duties, failed the boy, failed his parents, and failed her sex.  The words prostitute and whore had continued to make appearances in his conversation.  Otherwise wordless, he seemed to want to say these words simply for the sake of saying them, as though transfixed by their unholy music.  Shouldn't she, for his sake and, even more, for women's, tackle him on this?

         'You can put your computer away, Your Highness,' she told him one morning soon after her sleepless night, 'and your play-pad and your play- phones.  Today we are going to have a game of synonyms.'

         'How do you play that?'

         'I'm going to give you a word and you're going to give me another word that means the same.  So if I say lesson...'

         'I say boring.'

         'Well, that's more what you think of a lesson than another word for lesson.  But let's continue.  So, if I say teacher . . .'

         'I say failure.'

‘If I say people…’

‘I say garbage.’

         If he were a man I'd throw burning tea into his face, Dr Cobalt thought.  But she had to go on.  Bait the line.  Flick the rod.  Reel him in.  'Ok, so now let's try woman.'

         'Ah no, not woman,' he boomed.  He knew the loudness of his voice irritated Dr Cobalt.   Some mornings she had to get up in the middle of a lesson to take a pill.  He gave her migraines.  Though he liked looking up Dr Cobalt's skirt he didn't much like the rest of her.  Behind her back he mimicked the way she put her hands over her ears and closed her eyes when his volume was too high.  Once he'd seen a film on television in which a black servant, wanting to escape a telling-off, had run out of the kitchen with her apron over her head.  He combined Dr Cobalt and the black servant in a routine that would have made him split his sides had he been capable of even callous merriment.  'Oh, lordy, lordy,' he imagined Dr Cobalt cry, lifting her skirts and covering her face.  'Oh, lordy, lordy.'

         Fracassus wished he had a friend to share this with.  A girlfriend, preferably taller than him, with custard yellow hair waterfalling down her back and false breasts, who would run around the room with him, mimicking Dr Cobalt, with her skirts over her head.

         'I'm waiting,' Dr Cobalt continued.  'Woman...'

         He pushed his jaw out, something else he knew she found distasteful.  It was surprising, even to himself, how much he knew about Dr Cobalt's like and dislikes.  He'd watched men on television panel shows expertly pressing women's buttons.  It wasn't hard.  You just had to know which faces to pull while they were speaking.  'Girl,' he said.

         'Anything else?'

         'Lordy, lordy.'

         'Lordy, lordy?'

         'Lordy lordy, Miss Scarlet.'

         'You've lost me there.  Explain.'

         'Can't.'

         'Why is it amusing you?'

         'You remind me, that's all?'

         'I remind you of whom?'

         He shrugged and dropped a pencil under the table.

         Dr Cobalt knew what that was about.  He was always dropping pencils under the table.  'You can leave it there this time,' she said.  'Keep going.  Another word for woman. . . '

‘Garbage,’

‘You’ve already used garbage,’

        

She waited.  And waited.  Was he playing her?  Had he rumbled her game?  Come on, she thought.  Come to momma.  And at last he did.

         'Prostitute.'

         'Interesting.  I believe I've heard you use that word before.  But it doesn't mean woman does it?  A woman can be a prostitute but not every woman is a prostitute.'

         'Every prostitute is a woman, though.'

         'Well even that's not true.  You can have a male prostitute.'

         'Like a faggot?'

         'Not necessarily.'
         'Like what then?

         'We'll come back to male prostitutes.  Let's stay with women for now.  What other words for prostitute do you know?'

         He thought a long time.  Wherever he is, he is enjoying being there, Dr Cobalt thought.  Finally he came up with whore, then tart, then hooker.

         She looked into the holes that were his eyes.  'You have more words for prostitute than you have for woman,' she told him.  'I want you to ask yourself something.  Why can't you think of a woman without thinking of a prostitute.'

         'You’ve just done a bad thing,' he boomed and pouted all at once.  He poked his finger at her.  Frightening she thought.  One day that finger, coming out of the murk of befuddled hurt, would inspire fear.  Not just in a woman - whichever word he chose for her - but in half the country.

         'Why are you poking your finger at me?'

         'Because it's so unfair.  You asked me.  This is your crooked game.'

         Crooked?  That was a surprise.  Didn't you have to understand the concept of straight before you could understand the concept of crooked?

         He was right, though. She had exceeded her brief.  It wasn't her job to root around in the unruly attic of the little monster's head.  She was a teacher not a priest.  She wasn't paid to catechise him into obscenities.  She should end the lesson now.

         But some imp of perversity wanted its way with her.  She would fill his head with prostitutes until it burst.  'Courtesan.  Strumpet.  Harlot.  Concubine.  Fille de joie.  Hetaira. . . Shall I spell that for you?'

         She stopped, realising how this would look to someone watching the lesson on CCT cameras.  I'm teaching your son some new words for prostitute, Your Highness . . .

           How had this happened?   Dr Cobalt had a degree from each of the country's finest universities.  How had the wordless abortion who would one day be President got her into this? Because he lacked the word for embarrassment he lacked the thing itself. He not only couldn’t spell shame, he couldn’t feel it. But where was hers? She could spell the word for everything. She had no excuse. But it was as though his vacuity acted as a vacuum on her. His very proximity sucked her clean of words. Soon, if she didn’t get away, it would suck out her morality too,

One day, she thought, he will suck out the country’s marrow, leaving it empty of everything but his name.

She slept badly again.  Or maybe she slept too well.  She had a vision that may have been a dream.  Or was it that she dreamed she had a vision?  In it, Fracassus had been elected to the highest position in the land.  He stood on a great stage with his face on television screens hundreds of feet hight behind him.   Crowds cheered his name, breaking it up into syllables - Fra-Cas-Sus. . . Fra-Cas-Sus . . .

He conducted them, while dancing a little jig. His name was the only music he had ever listened to.

Fra-Cas-Sus. . . Fra-Cas-Sus . . .

At last he tried to quiet them.  He had an announcement to make.

'I know a lot of words,' he shouted, waving the notebook Dr Cobalt had advised him to keep his words in.

Fra-Cas-Sus. . . Fra-Cas-Sus . . .

He didn’t want them to stop.  Not ever.  But what was the point of having what Dr Cobalt called a vocabulary if he couldn’t use it?

‘I know the very best words.’ He leaned into the crowd confidentially. ‘It’s remarkable. Experts say they have never heard such words.’

      'Tell us!' the people shouted.

       'Tart. . .Strumpet . . .’

        'More!'

       'Concubine . . . Courtesan . . . Nobody has more words than me. Garbage.’

       Dr Cobalt stirred in her sleep and killed a mosquito that had settled on her face. Its blood ran down into her mouth.

https://www.amazon.com/Pussy-Novel-Howard-Jacobson/dp/1787330206