The Adventures of Ibn Opcit

Scene 3. Table Talk

78 Scene 3. Table Talk Still the Inaugural Lunch, Nakumbo is back with his guests. Veep Mr. President, I wonder if now we might have that talk? Idi Miss Ish! Fellows! Please withdraw yourselves. (Winks at Ish.) Affairs of State, you know. (Ibn and Ish retire behind a screen, where they continue to listen.) Veep General Nakumbo, allow me to come to the point. I bear the burden of my President’s concerns . . . Idi But tell me, how is your President? We haven’t met but I’ve read his biography, Tales of the Optical Child. Veep Bill Clapper? The man is not to be believed. Most men in his position would be coasting to their place in history by now. He should be working on his memoirs (Scrapes and Near Misses). But Bill Clapper wants the more, the most from life. “Less is more,” he likes to say, “but more is mucho.” Long after hours I’ve seen him in his Ovary Office, hands clasped behind, brooding on his greatness. He is haunted by the fear his Presidency will be remembered as the Clapper Dormancy. He compares himself to other presidents: “Sometimes they do well, sometimes they do not cop even enough magnificence to make a mark.” He complains the times have not afforded him 79 occasion to show his greatness. “Everybody’s busy,” he frets, “the rich becoming famous, the famous rich. This could be as bad as the British Empire with its long oods of stability: While the sun can’t figure where to set, they see how green the lawn can get, how small the dollhouses can make.” I ask him, “Is it not enough to be seen to serve the people from bended knee? Through a semblance of caring, through great shows of attention, to go down in history as a friend of the forlorn?” Idi Forgive my candor, but your man appears to be as self-infatuated as a knot. Veep Oh, you don’t find an ego like that every day. It’s part of our cultural heritage. If this were Japan it would be a Living National Treasure. But you know politicians. They apportion their rations of selfishness into like-appearing rations of selflessness. Idi I know about the politicians in your country: The only people who want those jobs are those who should not be allowed to have them. Here in Africa it’s more of a calling. Veep We are all of us angling for destiny, but sometimes the opportunity is the motive. For a time he played the forgotten Beauregard, sat around in positions of needful neglect counting the days of his incumbency. One night he lugged his heavy body to bed. An hour later he came running down. 80 “I had a dream!” the President proclaimed. “A crowd in demonstration, shouting and waving signs, all of which were blank!” He broke into a sweat. “How do we use this office to pull things, aright or awry? It must be simple, it must be hard to disagree with. It must show cleverness and character.” His testicles, those small oracles that never fail him, were talking now. “It’s time,” he smiled, “to play the twinkle game.” He dove into books, he read up a storm in search of ideas: The History of the Twenty-One Gun Salute. The Value of Impulsive Punishment. Bombings Aimed at Negligible Times. The Politician as Lower Life Form: The Art of Staying Alive. There was a sprouting of nomenclature. The machinery of hokum moved into high gear. In and out he worked the clutches of power in a power appliqué. He checked with the boys at State (the Yes . . . Well . . . Maybe . . . But bunch). To every hindrance he declared, “I don’t give a global, globular dammit.” (He can be as organizing as a belt when it finds its buckle.) He convened his Cabinet. He belabored his Secretary of State Ercott Nonothingnot, for a list of Legacy Initiatives: Item: To protect the planet from Ainu attack. His Secretary of Labor Denise Maltfalcon for a list of Policy Initiatives: Item: To decry the slow extinction of calligraphy. His Secretary of Culture Arbuthnot Yo Yuppynot: Item: To create a national war poetry. “It’s an expensive matter to generate war poetry,” he mused. “Sending off a generation of 20-year-olds . . . and what have you got then? A return on investment that’s slow and...