Farewell the Dragon - Up on the Roof

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Up on the Roof

The sun and the vodka had their way with me when I returned to my apartment from the pool and I fell into a coma on the couch. I must have set some kind of alarm in my brain because I opened my eyes suddenly with a fear that I was late for something. It was almost 10:30 PM. I missed dinner.

Did I have a date to eat with the Long Island girls? I couldn't remember. I had been dreaming about the one with the long frizzy hair, Margie, and felt like I had missed an opportunity at the pool early. I stood in the bathroom, rubbed my face with a washcloth, and then rode my bike back to the Youyi. It was just about 11 PM, and the sky was clear with a bright crescent moon.

I walked up the three flights of stairs, poorly lit, all brown stained wood, and came out into the open sky and drunken laughter. It was a full house. The rooftop bar is a big space and when you open the door and come out onto the roof, the noise level suddenly rises. Of course when I stepped into the place it went up even higher.

The scene that unfolded was like a tableau in a passion play. Nearest the door, Zhou and Chen were holding court with Jorge, an Argentine long-haired chain smoker, and Harold, a fat English homosexual, who gave me a quick, but deep look. They were all half-listening to my so-called double Rennie, who was talking to Harold very closely and very seriously. Neither Chen nor Jorge spoke English too well, but both were nodding gravely while Zhou was staring at Rennie as he talked to Harold and she took her eyes off of him, just for a second, gave me a little smile and a tiny half-wave with her fingers, then turned back to Rennie who was going on and on oblivious to whether Harold was listening or not.

How did he get "The Job"? Rennie is Peter O'Toole's stand-in on the big movie they are making about the last Qing Emperor over at the Forbidden City. He's making tons of money he doesn't need, and to top it off he spends his evenings with Zhou. I wanted to ask him about his ex-fiancée, my boss's niece, but I had to be nice because I owed him my job. He had never mentioned the favor he gave me, even obliquely. In fact he had been nice to me. In fact, as far as I could tell, he was nice to everyone. But still, I couldn't stand him, and every time I heard him open his mouth I wanted to strangle him because he was so unaware of his own stupidity. And now that I think of it, he was probably the reason why I didn't like coming over here to the Youyi in the first place.

The General's daughter, Chen, simply stared at me with a catbird grin. I addressed her in Chinese and put my hand on their table as if to bless it and tilted my head, kind of like Ronald Reagan does, as if to say I'm not ignoring you even though I am walking away. I started to look around again when…

"Have some drink!" Boris was standing right in front of me holding out a small glass like you find in cheap motel bathrooms, half filled with something as clear as water and no ice. I drank it in a quick gulp. The men at his table all stood and cheered like I just won the Soviet Clean and Jerk championship. Dagmar rolled her eyes. Boris ushered me to a chair and I couldn't give them the Gipper brush-off because it would look like I was mad at Dagmar, and I'd be damned if I was going to let her know I gave a shit…

"We think you are the best American!" Yevgeny was standing unsteadily. I was toasted as the "Best American" all around. I drank again with good cheer. Dagmar gave me a glassy-eyed look that said, "Please break into the castle and save me." It was strange to be the sober one, but I quickly began to fix that problem.

"You know," said Boris, "we will be friends soon." He stopped and looked around for approval then went on, "The Muslim!" He spat, but it ran down his chin. This got everyone laughing for probably a minute. Boris wiped himself off, took another drink and continued…"You will be sorry you give them rockets in Afghanistan." He looked deep into my eyes and shared a "Slavic Moment of Transcendence" with me, something deep and profound and based completely on vodka. I did my little Gipper head tilt. As I sat down, I saw the two traveling American girls from Long Island, sitting with Ibrahim and a couple of his Arab buddies. I waved.

"Nathan – you don't travel?" Boris was a big guy, handsome in a Russian way, with pretty good English. I had another shot of vodka. The Russians don't let you get to know them. They always traveled in threes. If two of them were together it looked conspiratorial and one Russian walking alone was probably an escaped lunatic. But sitting publicly at a table with three or four Russians, drinking vodka was OK. Even in Stalin's time Americans had done that.

"I'm working for a Canadian company. I had business, so I stayed in town."

"Who assigned you to that?" asked a little guy with a squashed face and a blond flattop.

"No one needs to assign, Demetri – it is free enterprise," said Yevgeny, his Clark Gable mustache and slicked black hair groomed straight back. He smiled at me, sad eyed and ironically as though I were complicit in something that only he and I were aware of. Dagmar sat next to him, drinking quickly and pouring herself another.

"Yes," I said. "Hired. Fired, that's how it works. It's just a job."

"Just a job," repeated Yevgeny and for some reason it was funny to everybody at the table. Dagmar made a face, stood up and excused herself with a forced smile and walked over to sit with Erika, at a table with Sandor and Monique the French girl. Yevgeny's face reddened. He pushed the chair that Dagmar had been sitting in out to the middle of the floor and scooted in next to Demetri the Flattop. Yevgeny was an 105amazing diver, and his body was sculpted like a Greek statue, but now he looked cramped and twisted, as he took a cigarette without asking from Flattop's package and waited for his comrade to fumble and find a lighter. "Look around, Nathan – tell me – who are the spies here?"

"You mean other than you guys?"

Guffawing and nervous mumbling rippled down the table. "Really. You all work for the state, right?"

I had their serious attention now. "Yes," said Boris.

"Aren't you supposed to report what you know?"

"You've lived here how long now?" asked Yevgeny. He started coughing and it turned into a small fit.

"You sound like Myshkin's consumptive friend Ippolit," I said, name dropping characters from Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. This got them all to smile. "I've lived here a little more than two years," I said.

"Are all of the Chinese spies?" he asked.

"All of the Russians aren't spies in Moscow. But you are in Beijing. That is different," I said.

"And you…?"

"Yes, but I don't work for the United States. I'm…" I stopped, not sure what I wanted to say. Oddly, no one pushed me to finish, they were looking out at their own thoughts.

"Who else is a spy?" asked Boris after a second.

"Well, Sandor. Probably. Maybe," I said, for some reason. I wish I hadn't.

"Yes. Definitely," said Yevgeny. "Hungarians. And Jewish, yes? The question is – for which side?"

"His father was a very important ally," said Demetri the Slavic Flattop, "he supported the anti-imperialist faction during…"

"Yes of course," said Boris. "But what about from your side?"

"My side?" I asked, feigning surprise. I smiled but Boris kept looking and waiting. "Well, perhaps…?" I said nodding at Rennie, my double. They looked at me with silent puzzlement. They obviously knew he was an idiot too.

"What about the fat English?" said Slavic Flattop.

"Harold? Don't you guys own the British Secret Service? MI6? You should ask Kim Philby."

The laughter at the table drowned out everything else. They toasted me and Philby.

"Nate, my friend!" A pair of lumpy, hairy hands wrapped around my shoulders from behind. The hands' owner spun me around, looked me in the eye, then hugged me.

When I met Ibrahim, it had been strange and auspicious. It was at the Baiyun Hotel in Guangzhou during Spring Festival the year before last. I was with my parents, who had brought Molly to China, which is another story completely. Mom and Molly were in the room and Dad and I were having drinks in the bar. I went to take a piss and this fat bearded Arab in a polo shirt and dress slacks came up and stood next to me. He began staring at me until I looked at him, then he turned away. I finished up and was washing my hands and I noticed he was holding his hands next to the stream of water but not in it. I looked up from his hands and he was staring at me again.

"Is something wrong?"

"No! Nothing…" Then, "Yes, yes! Something is wrong."

He took a deep breath and smiled. "I'm sorry. My girlfriend stole my money." He pulled his wallet out and showed me it was empty. "She is Japanese," he added meaningfully. "We were staying here and this morning I wake up and – it is gone. She is gone." He smiled again. "I thought, no problem, I have a friend in Guangzhou, but, it's just…"

"Just what?" Something put me at ease. His smile, I don't know – but I believed him. Japanese girlfriend? Nobody would make that up. Normally I'm pretty standoffish, but this time something about him made me stay to see what he wanted.

"My friend doesn't answer the phone."

I invited him for a drink – easy to do, my Dad was paying. I always got on better with Dad if we had a third person around and we had a great two hours trading stories. Ibrahim was PLO and had been in Lebanon in 1982. In spite of the horrors of the war, he told funny stories about pretending to be Israeli, using captured papers and speaking bad Hebrew while sneaking his little unit in good order through the Israeli lines that had beaten him to Beirut. My Dad told funny stories about Vietnam and World War II, about stumbling drunk off of a floating bar in the middle of the Mekong River just as it blew up behind him, or shooting at a cousin in the Luftwaffe. I had never been in a war, so I

told what I thought was a funny story about trashing a cop car in front of the ROTC building on my college campus in 1970 right after Kent State.

My Dad gave Ibrahim thirty dollars to buy a train ticket to Chengdu and I left him my address in Louyang. When I got back to Louyang the money was waiting for me (I never did get around to sending back it to Dad), along with a beautiful tiny jade statue of Buddha for Molly, even though Ibrahim hadn't met her and obviously wasn't a Buddhist himself. I wrote him, thank you for the Buddha, etc., but we lost touch after that. Then we both showed up in Beijing last year and here we were.

"We waited for you…" said Judy, pushing between Ibrahim and me.

"Was I supposed to meet you?"

"Yes!" She put her arm through mine to make sure I didn't get away. "We were in the dining room downstairs when Rashid and Nasser and Ibrahim sat at our table…" Judy moved close to my ear so she didn't need to shout. "Well, one thing led to another and…then when we saw you come in, Ibrahim said 'That is my friend!' and we said, 'He's our friend too!' Isn't that funny?"

I agreed it was funny and Judy then leaned even closer and whispered to me – she smelled of perfume and Cuban rum - "Look at Margie." She dragged me arm in arm to their table and Margie was forehead to forehead with a startling-looking young man – that was the first time I had ever met or even seen Rashid. He looked up at me as we got to the table and his eyes looked like sapphires, bluer than any eyes I had ever seen. His hair was golden, not blond, not red, but golden. The more I looked at him the more I realized I was staring. His eyes looked way too blue for his face, way too blue for anyone's face, so blue that they looked completely stoned yet behind those eyes was intentness and clarity that was the opposite of stoned, almost unworldly.

Rashid looked at Ibrahim and asked him something in Arabic.

Margie couldn't take her eyes off of him. "His name is Rashid," she said. "His friend is Nasser…" As if on cue, a very tall, taller than me, very Arab-looking young man with close-cropped hair, wearing an Izod knockoff golf shirt, stood glaring nervously at me.

"Nate, let me introduce you to my friend, this is Nasser." Ibrahim said something in Arabic and Nasser smiled. He suddenly looked like a teenager with an innocent disarming smile. We shook hands and Ibrahim said something else to jewel-eyed Rashid. He looked away from Margie only long enough to smile and nod at me. Rashid spoke no English, but he did speak Margie's high school French, so they got by with whispers and giggles.

"Circassians were favorites of the Turks for their beauty," said Ibrahim to us in English. He struggled not to laugh. "You saw the film Lawrence of Arabia?"

"With Peter O'Toole," said Judy. "I've seen it three times."

"Remember when the Turk Colonel did that to Lawrence." Ibrahim made a face of painful disgust. "Lawrence was pretending to be Circassian – when the Turk did it." More rapid-fire Arabic from Nasser and Rashid leaned over and punched Nasser in the chest so hard it knocked him to the floor. Nasser lay next to the table laughing hysterically and even Ibrahim could not stop. Even Rashid started laughing now. He stood up and shouted above the din on the rooftop –

"P'tar Oh Tooo! - P'tar Oh Tooo!" Everyone turned and Ibrahim and Nasser laughed uncontrollably, contagiously, and soon we were all laughing although I wasn't sure at what.

"I work with Peter O'Toole every day. What is so funny?" My double, Rennie, spoke up loudly, as if he were demanding satisfaction from a gentleman, but was ignored. He walked over to our table with trepidation.

"Peter is a great guy you know. I bet I could get him to come over and drink with us. He stays downtown mostly, but I know he would really like it here."

Ibrahim nodded diplomatically. He shot me a look that said, "What the fuck is wrong with this guy?"

Rashid said something in Arabic. "He wants to know if O'Toole enjoyed being a Circassian." Now everybody was bending over laughing. Rennie still didn't get it, which was now what was so funny.

"Rennie is Peter O'Toole's stand-in. They are making a movie about Puyi, who was the Last Emperor of China," Zhou said quietly in Chinese. She stopped the laughing, even though only about half of us understood what she said.

Ibrahim looked at Rennie and then at me.

"You two should go stand in front of a mirror so you don't get confused as to which is which!" Ibrahim spoke in Chinese with a pure Beijing accent.

"Americans and Europeans all look like eggs in a basket," said Rashid.

"Eggs are eggs," said Ibrahim. "They rot, they are white, brown, big or small and can have any kind of animal inside – an eagle or a snake!" Both Rashid and Ibrahim's Chinese was indistinguishable from that of a native speaker.

"East meets West," said Rennie, suddenly seeming to understand the joke. "It's always an interesting story." He nodded and laughed and put his hand on my shoulder like a good sport. He of course had not understood a word of what was said. I smiled tightly and excused myself. I walked over to the deserted west side of the bar. I looked over the parapet and out into the night. Nothing was out of place. I traced Orion's belt to the Little Dipper. It was all familiar. I am getting older. The same sky, the same stars. Even on the other side of the world.

Then an obviously Japanese woman walked in wearing a short, shiny, tight, plastic blue skirt. She looked like she just got back from a David Bowie concert, with Twiggy-style short hair, blue lipstick, and plastic boots up to her thighs. Dagmar stood up, hugged her and guided her to the Russian table. She stopped and turned and looked at Ibrahim. It was a face-off at the DMZ.

"Mikku!" Ibrahim's voice went up an octave and he looked as if he had just been shot. She looked at him with no change in expression and then turned back to Dagmar and laughed, much too quickly to have been told a joke. Dagmar spoke to her a bit loudly, showing off her drunken Japanese.

"Mikku!" Ibrahim was almost pleading. She turned to him again and looked at him as if she were waiting for something that she could take or leave. Ibrahim went to her.

"Let's join the tables," said Dagmar.

"Yes…" Ibrahim said although he didn't take his eyes off of Mikku. "Yes. This is China. We are all from the same country anyway." He touched her elbow and she pulled away, but went with him anyway.

"Waiguo," I said, getting a big laugh even from Rennie. Two Chinese girlfriends and over a year in Beijing, and Rennie still could not speak much beyond "Ni hao." But even he knew "waiguo" (外国) can mean something foreign or foreign country. How long had it been since we'd been home to the

green hills of Waiguo! In China, we were all compatriots. "Everyone! From now on!" I pulled out a $100 bill – an enormous sum - "We drink until it is gone!"

Dagmar jumped up, ignoring the Russian edginess to my suggestion. "Here! Give it to me." She came over and relieved me of the money. "I'll negotiate. We need food too, right? Erika, come and help." Erika, smoking cigarettes with Sandor, the Argentine longhair, Monique and Harold, had been trying to settle the Falklands War peace treaty, without success, so she joined Dagmar.

I suddenly recognized Mikku. She was the mousy Japanese school "girl" who always wore pigtails, usually with a pleated skirt and white knee socks and who studied by herself in the courtyard at my Institute.

"So," said Boris to Nasser, "You are Arab – from where?"

"I was born in Bethlehem."

"Of course you were!" Now everyone was laughing.

"It's true – just like the Christ. And like him, I am sure the Israelis will kill me eventually."

"No!" shouted Judy authoritatively, leaning over and kissing him. "It was the Romans."

"You see? They won't kill you right away! First they torture you," said Yevgeny. Boris stood on his chair with his arms out, hanging his neck slack. Most of the other Russians looked mortified at Boris's mock crucifixion, but the rest of us were laughing our asses off. Judy climbed on Bethlehem-born Nasser's lap, and straddled his waist. Nasser really did look like he was being tortured and everyone was in hysterics laughing.

"No," he said suddenly picking up Judy as if she were a loaf of bread, and standing up. "First I go to Afghanistan and kill all the Russians for Allah!"

Silence. "No, no," said Ibrahim, "the Russians are our brothers. To Kalashnikov!" He stood up and toasted. The Russians held up their glasses. Mine stayed on the table.

"Let's stop killing," said Judy, grabbing Ibrahim and pulling him back into his seat. "Don't you all understand how rare this is? This could be like a Peace Conference! We could settle it! We all could settle everything here tonight!" Judy looked at Margie, who rolled her eyes and went back to kissing Rashid. "In America this would be big news." Judy turned back at us. "Everybody is here. I've never met a Palestinian before. Why can't we change things?

How do we stop the fighting? All of it?" She turned to Nasser and now straddled his lap again, and kissed him long and full on the lips to the cheers of everybody. "You and me! We'll make Peace!"

"To peace!" I toasted, holding up my glass. Everyone lifted their glasses.

"Is that what it's called in America?" said Yevgeny, with a stage-whisper. "If you really want peace, then stop giving the religious crazies the Stingers," he said. "It will come back to haunt you."

"My mother, God rest her great soul, was a Maronite Christian," said Ibrahim. "She married my father, Mohmet Abdullah. He was Sunni and I was raised in a Shiite village after the Israelis took my grandfather's orchard outside Jaffa. That orchard is my religion."

"What if we became one people? We know what happened wasn't fair," Margie said. "But in 1945…it was desperate for so many…"

"…But maybe," said Judy, "maybe we can…"

The thought hung out there. I thought to myself, maybe you can fuck for peace. I had the feeling that this had all been played out long before, and maybe before that. It didn't work then either.

"The problem is it's a sex thing – a male-female thing. Isn't it just tribes – my tribe and your tribe – keeping women under control?" asked Judy, pulling away from Nasser.

"That's the problem. Sexual envy. Men will die rather than lose that control," said Margie.

Ibrahim said, "It is more than that. Even though Sharon killed thousands of us in Lebanon, I do understand him."

"He's a mass murderer," said Margie.

"No, he's a soldier. He was born on the land and can't go back to America. I know that we will win eventually, and so does Sharon. He is just trying to claim as much as he can. I don't think the sex interests him. He is too fat."

Mikku patted Ibrahim's stomach lovingly.

He looked at Judy and Margie, "You don't need to be afraid of it when we win. During the Crusades, the Arab who finally captured Jerusalem was Saladin."

"He was a Kurd," said Nasser, kissing Judy.

"Yes, yes, Kurd. He killed no one, well, he killed some but not for sport. He destroyed no churches, let the Crusaders who had farms keep the farms. Moses Maimonides, the greatest Jew of his time, was his physician. He preferred to live under the Muslim rather than live in Europe with the Christians. Jews were always safe in the Muslim world until…"

"So you think that sex is the answer to the problem between cultures," asked Chen, interrupting Ibrahim, in Chinese. I translated for Judy and Margie.

"Yes," said Judy.

"We Chinese have always thought so too," said Zhou in English. "We had a policy called 'huanqin'(换亲) which is exchanging daughters for marriage. The Princess was sent to the wild men. How do you say, Xiongnu?"

"The Huns, the barbarians…"

"Yes," added Zhou, "and the Huns would send their Princess to China. In order to keep the peace, the Chinese Princess had to go. It was terrible. She lived in the round tent and wrote many beautiful poems about the difficulty."

Everyone was quiet. "But now it is different. To go live in a foreign land as a bride is not bad." She looked down and reached across the table to put some food on my double's plate.

"Communism succeeded in some places, Vietnam perhaps, Cuba definitely, because of sex," said Harold.

"Why?" asked Dagmar. She looked at Yevgeny impassively.

"Because Americans or French could come in and buy girls cheaply," said Harold. "If I had seen my little sister have to go off with some fat American for a few dollars, I would have joined Castro. Besides, he was actually pretty cute back then."

"What if the American wasn't fat?" asked Chen.

"You would have joined Castro, because his cause was the correct one," said Boris.

"Yes – of course," agreed Rennie, looking at me, nodding seriously, as if he knew that I understood.

"No, my Russian friend," said Sandor. "Communism is dead, or will end very soon. It is almost gone here in China. The 'dictatorship of the Proletariat' will of course continue, but the Capitalists will take over." He stopped to take a

drink and looked a long time at Erika. Boris just stared at Sandor.

"I see it on the movie set," said Rennie. At that moment I understood why I disliked him so much. "Everybody from the West is highly paid, and they live separate, but the girls…" he stopped.

Zhou stared off with a blank look. He looked at her and it was the first time it seemed as if he might have a hint of self-awareness, but it quickly passed. "…Men from the West can be big stars here," he held his hands up as if to demonstrate his point.

Wow, I thought. Of course, he is right.

“But then I am rich," he continued. "My family is anyway. I could have any girl I wanted. But here, I'm not just a rich boy, because Socialism makes us all equal. Here I am myself. And I feel free because of it." Rennie looked around, then at Zhou, who appeared vaguely unsettled. Flattop toasted his drink to him, while laughing. Everyone else tried to avoid looking at each other.

Ibrahim laughed. "Free – yes – free to find a mate! That is as old as life. Male wolves are kicked out of their pack and leave to find female wolves. Chasing a mate is what we all have to do – it is as free as we'll ever be – and then we find them and we lose everything – most of all our freedom! That's the way it is supposed to be – to spread seeds around. Peasants have always known that. Royalty stays in the family and look what happens to them – hemophilia, insanity…"

"Prince Charles," said Harold.

"No," said Dagmar. "Sex outside your class or tribe ends up being exploitative. Women are still property, in fact they are the only valuable property still allowed everywhere. Love is not a bargain, is it? We still are no different than wolves or barbarians. Most of the time, it's just rape." Dagmar looked harshly now at Yevgeny.

Rennie excused himself saying that he had to be on the set early. He came over and offered me seventy dollars to help pay for the food and booze, which I quickly took. He pulled Zhou away for a private talk. I went for a piss and Dagmar followed me down and threw herself around me, clearly drunker than she looked. "So what shall we do?"

"We still haven't finished the vodka," I said.

“Of course – we are Germans – we can never waste anything!"

I noticed I was suddenly a German in her eyes. My immigrant grandfather is smiling, somewhere. Zhou came up behind her and innocently interrupted us with a little two-fingered wave for me to come over to her. I nodded to Dagmar and then walked over to Zhou.

"I need someone to see me home. Rennie is angry at me and I don't want to see him anymore tonight."

"OK." As I left, Dagmar smiled at me with a shrug – no anger and no hurt look. She was pretty drunk.

"Can you get home?" I asked her. "Zhou lives on the other side of the Zoo and it's pretty late."

"Boris is getting a taxi for us all – I was just hoping you could come and pay for it!" She held out the change (about sixty dollars) from the $100 I had given her earlier. I took it.

"Well, send me a bill."

"Oh – you will get a bill!"

My bike, a well-oiled, fat-tired, solid machine, pedaled easily. Zhou rode on the handlebars, fearlessly, expertly. The night was beautiful as we rode away from the hotel.

Recently I had been taking my bike to an old street tinker who oiled and adjusted it. He worked off of a blanket where his well-used tools were laid out clean and straight. He never set up in the same place, and he fit his shelter and tools on his bike with intricately designed baskets and bars. The tune-up cost me fifty mao, half a yuan, about a nickel in dollar value. I paid him twice that, a whole kuai, and refused the change. I remember the old street vendor gave me a smile that promised something extra for the tip.

The night air was cool and the crescent moon was suddenly very close. I leaned back and my well-oiled machine took off for the stars and soared above the earth. My bike handled perfectly, banking from one side to another, seeming to lose all attachment to gravity as we flew into and then out of a cloud bank. I looked down and could see the Great Wall at Badaling to the north and the Forbidden City to the southeast. We dropped down to flying at treetop level and Zhou relaxed and leaned back on my handlebars and I stood and pedaled hard, and we were riding fast, almost cheek to cheek; the thick-framed, fat-tired bike was a magic carpet, sailing us through all time and space with ease.

The night had cooled off after the hot day and I knew she wasn't thinking about Rennie. I made her laugh somehow as we breezed down The Western Gate Road and past the Beijing Zoo.

The moon was still bright, bright in the clear open sky, and a little breeze picked up, making the temperature so comfortable that it seemed like a crime to go inside even for sleep. We turned at a little hutong (胡同) and went down a construction road past a half-finished apartment complex. Just beyond that there was an old wall that looked to be half torn down. The wall was hundreds of years old and would soon be bulldozed. Time stood still and we stood at the edge of her hutong village, next to that crumbling wall. We kissed, just kissed. It was so nice in the summer breeze under the splintered moon. I said good night and rode home.

Review of "Empire of the Czar – A Journey through Eternal Russia" by Marquis de Custine

 

 

This review was first published on Amazon May 11, 2014

In the used book-sale bin in the library of ________, (here I  follow Custine's custom of blanking out proper names of towns and people, to throw off the Czar's Imperial censors) a town skirting the southern environs of the North Western City of _______, the main metropolis of Oregon, (which at the time Custine was writing was still claimed by Russia), this author found a hardbound edition of the here reviewed work, published by Doubleday, a reproduction of the original Longman edition of 1843,  for only two dollars!  What a find! With a foreword by Daniel Boorstin and an introduction by George Kennan, this classic is  now in my meager library, and I feel like a very lucky thief .

In any event, this town library, which recently removed its copy of this author's only published novel from its shelves, (and from the library records!) obviously an act of spite by one of its employees, undoubtedly a neighbor who has taken a dislike to the author for reasons unknown (perhaps I failed to compliment her new porch furniture fulsomely enough!) – in any event – the author is revenged by getting such a book from the same library for only two dollars!  The foreword and introduction alone are worth the price as they lay out the historical importance of Custin's work.

The above paragraphs are a poor attempt to mimic Custin's ornate, self-absorbed, egotistical,  over-the-top style, which breathlessly falls on whatever comes to his mind and follows it like a pack of hounds chasing five different foxes. Custin repeats himself, contradicts himself, embarrasses himself, is constantly generalizing from the scantiest evidence, stays within his own set of limited interests, brushing aside things to which a better observer (like de Tocqueville, his almost exact counterpart writing about “Democracy in America” at almost the exact same time) would have devoted many pages. And yet – he produced an amazing masterpiece of historical observation, one which lays out much of what explains the history of the following century.

 Custine is 'The Marquis de Custine'.  He is the grandson of a famous and successful general, the son of a fatally brave man.  His mother was  a woman who would survive the fall from membership in the highest level of French aristocracy to public debasement and pauper-hood, suffering her husband's and father-in-law's heads falling at Robespierre's  guillotine during the Terror, herself barely escaping the same fate.  She lived on to raise her son and revive a salon that was the envy of Paris during Napoleon’s reign.

Custine's story, if he had never written 'Empire...' would still be important.  He was a close friend of Balzac, his mother was the model for Madame de Staël most famous novel, Delphine (His mother's real name).  He was Tallyrand's principal aide at The Congress of Vienna.  He lost his wife and infant son in childbirth leaving him desolate. Later, after nearly being beaten to death by a group of sailors, he was denounced as 'The most notorious homosexual in Paris”.  All this before he wrote his masterpiece.

The age in which he lived was especially fruitful for French writers. With Napoleon defeated, and French continental imperial ambitions closed for good, the inflamed French intellectuals sought answers.  Stendal, perhaps the the greatest unknown writer of all time, wrote wonderful historical novels, and, along with Balzac, invented realism.  The fall of Napoleon taught them something of perspective, (a view point Americans have never, even up to now, obtained.)  France had reached for the Golden Ring and had been kicked to the curb at Waterloo. They began to think – if not France, then who?  The two, embryonic, primitive powers – the United States and Russia – were grossly under-studied and two dispossessed French aristocrats set out to travel to and find out what was going on in the two undeveloped giants.

De Tocqueville we know about – Democracy in America is taught in most high school surveys of American history (at least it used to be). It is a classic study of national manners,  the first (and perhaps as often happens with the first – the finest) sociology text.

Custine went East.  His observations, not nearly as systematic and well sourced, are more artful and dependent on genius rather than method.  The setting is Russia in the late 1830s. His observations are stunning n their perceptiveness and foreshadowing of what modern readers know will come to Russia.  You can open the book at random as often as you like and you will be amazed at what he writes. There is no plot so this is a perfectly acceptable way to read it.

Custine's book is in large part the source for George Kennan's policy of post-war 'Containment'.   Kennan, who worked in the American Embassy in Moscow through much of the second world war and its aftermath, saw Russia for what it was.  Russia under Stalin, as horrible as that was, was not that different than the Russia under Nicholas I in the previous century. Russian Communism was not the dark, conspiratorial plot to undermine American purity of Essence, but merely Russia as Russia always was, imperialistic and paranoid. The secret police, the lack of an informed middle class, the extensive 'gulag' like prison system, the xenophobic paranoia and the overweening self regard Russian have for their own country, combined with a deep self doubt about same, all are on display in Custine's travelogue.  But Custine also shows the inward attitude toward life that Russians have and their adoration of poetry and literature, and how that would lead to the greatest blooming of literary output ever known in the years that follow. (Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Turgenov, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov...)

 He describes seeing a man beat to death for a trifle with no more regard paid to it by the Russians he is travelling with than if an insect were swatted.   Custine was horribly prejudiced and has little positive to say about Russia. He wrote “their only primitive facility is the aptitude to reproduce the inventions of foreigners.” or “In Russia the government interferes with everything and vivifies nothing .. death hovers over  all heads and strikes capriciously when it pleases.” or   “The Russian mother ought to weep more at the birth than at the deaths of their children.”  He writes of the construction of St Petersburg by the supposedly enlightened Peter the Great and of the hundreds of thousand peasant lives that were callously sacrificed in its building.

He writes, “The Russian Government is an absolute monarchy moderated by assassination.”  “Are you ignorant of what is now passing on the Volga...whole populations are being transported.”   He explains why Russian writers are so inspired - “The only poets really unhappy are those condemned to languish under a system of publicity.  When all the world may say what they please, the poet must hold his peace.  Poetry is a mystery which servers to express more than words: it can not subsist among a people who have lost the modesty of thought.  Vision, allegory apologue are the truth of poetry.  In a country where publicity pervades everything, this truth is destroyed by reality, which is always course and repulsive...”  Boy is that ever true.

He describes the entire country as a 'Potemkin village' – "Interesting exterior architecture devoid of internal conveniences.” He says it is an “unhappy land where every stranger appears as a savior in the eyes of the herd of oppressed beings.”

 The book is a constant unending source of pithy observations and full of over the top generalizations mixed together with no observable organizing principle other than the sequence of his journey.  At 600 plus pages this will begin to tire the reader.  But I don't think it will deter the reader because if you have an interest in the subject you can't wait to read what is next.  In pacing, it is almost like a non-stop Joan Rivers monologue, when she is at her best.

Custine knows he is all over the map.  He says, “that he is fearlessly following the truth  and that if the experience of the day has falsified the conclusions of the previous day, I don't fear to show it.”  Of course that is life, because nothing follows a pattern forever.

As to his predictions – well here is Custine predicting the future political events
“If ever they should succeed in creating a REAL revolution among the Russian people, massacre would be performed with the regularity that marks the evolutions of a regiment.  Villages would change into barracks and organized murder would stalk forth armed from the cottages, form in line, and advance in order.  In short the Russians would prepare for pillage from Smolensk to Irkutsk as they march in parade in Petersburg.”

His language is rich, he does not scrimp or hide what he  saw nor does he disguise what that made him feel.  It is a powerful piece of literature and required reading for any foreigner  who wishes to say he understands Russia.  I'll let Daniel Boorstin have the last word on why this is an important book.  “He somehow sensed features of Russian life and institutions that reached back for millennia before his time and would extend forward for more than a century.... we are constantly amazed that the breadth of his insight could so far exceed the scope of his observations.  And we are tantalized by the thought that though some of his facts may be inaccurate, or exaggerated or maliciously distorted, still many of his conclusions survive at the distance of time.”

Drunk with Father

  By 9 am the rays of the glaring sun bounced like a thousand Tinker-bells off the crusty snow, shooting light around Ed's bedroom in a suburban colonial that stood alone on a little rise that overlooked a white pristine field that in warmer weather was otherwise clumpy with piled leaves and half up-rooted shrubs. Ed felt a hand shaking his shoulder and slowly woke in the hard, short bed of his childhood.

  “Come on, get up, the day's half over!” Ed's father stood over him, next to the antique wooden bed, wearing an unzipped winter jacket, and a look of unenthusiastic impatience. Something wasn't right.

  “All right – give me a minute...”, Ed said. “What's going on..?”

  “Come on, get up. Let's go to the Post Office.”

  “What?”

  “They're not delivering the mail today – roads are too icy. Let's go get the mail. Come on – I'll be downstairs.”

  Christmas time in the suburbs. Home from college – December 1969. Ed had a low draft number (53) and a low 2.0 GPA for his first college semester that was only saved by a 'B' in Speech & Communications. Vietnam loomed and hard classes were coming. Ed was needlessly worried about real sergeants getting him up even earlier, because he didn't yet know that his spring semester grades would be saved by Richard Nixon's invasion of Cambodia and the subsequent disturbances on Ed's campus that would turn all of his classes into 'pass' with no professors willing to 'no-pass' students in the midst of their vociferous and property defiling protests that sometimes included denouncing tools of the Capitalists war-mongers employed by the University. In the coming spring, Ed would be too busy getting high and occupying the University’s administration building to finish any of his assignments, much less be able to pass any finals which thankfully would be waived.

  But this morning he had other concerns. Post Office? He lay in bed and heard his little sisters, newly introduced to puberty, slamming doors and yelling at each other for violating some time duration allowed to be in the bathroom. He smelled bacon.

  He sat up on the side of the bed. The night before he had maneuvered his family station wagon home through a blizzard, navigating the narrow, winding North Jersey roads, back from the bar that served 18 year-olds in Suffern NY. He had driven home drunk, stoned and horny, once bouncing off a snow drift right back into the middle of the road, after having convinced a former high school classmate who went to an expensive woman's college to get high with him in his car outside the bar, but but she couldn't or wouldn't …

  “Dad! Mom! Laura won't get out of the bathroom!”

  Ed got up slowly and put on his pants.

  “Laura! Let's your sister use the bathroom before she floods the floor! Hey Ed – what's keeping you?”, his father yelled from downstairs.

  “Shit,” Ed said softly aloud. He grabbed a sweatshirt and a pair of socks and went out of his room.

  “Get the fuck out Laura, I need to piss,” he pushed his littlest sister out of the way and banged on the bathroom door.

  “Don't use that fucking language in front of your sisters. Use the one down stairs,” his father yelled.

As he turned his littlest sister pushed him with a sneer. He didn't look at her as he walked down the stairs. He went into the family room and sat down to put on his socks and shoes. His father came in and stood watching him. He looked at his father and saw he was smiling slightly. Something was up, and Ed didn't think it was good.

  His shoes on, he walked toward the kitchen.

  “Get your jacket,” his father said. Ed looked at him with narrowed eyes and grabbed his jacket off a chair where he had thrown it the night before and continued toward the kitchen.

  The counter was covered with the fixings of a huge breakfast. Buttered toast, scrambled eggs, lots of bacon, grits, jam, honey, a small bowl of melted butter, waffles warming in the oven that his mother was pulling out as he walked in. “Sit down Ed, let me get you a plate.”

  “No – we'll be right back – we got to go Dottie -”

  “But...” both his mother and Ed said 'but' together and then looked at each other. Ed looked in the sink and saw his father's plate, crusty with bacon fat and jam sitting on top of soaking pans.

  “Well let me -” Ed reached for a sweet roll but was blocked by his father.

  “Bill! Let him sit down and ...”

  “Dottie he can eat when we get back – I heard that the stores might be shut down later today...its going to snow again they are saying – put your coat on – lets go...”

  Ed looked at the still hot food laying on the counter and knew it would not be near as worth eating when they got back. He looked at his mother who shrugged – she tried one more time – “Bill let him sit down...”

  “Come on Ed – lets go!”

  Ed grabbed a piece of bacon and headed out the back door to his father car.

  His father was gabbier than usual and unusual for him, wasn't saying much as he said it. Ed had heard most of it before. He was telling a sea story about him and his second assistant Engineer – His father was a chief Engineer on a merchant ship and his best friend worked for him and they had spent most of the late sixties in the Far East, India mostly, but sometimes taking ammo to Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam. This time he was telling a story about Al, his second assistant, finding the woman who he had been sending money to in Madras working in the same whorehouse where he had met her. Al was devastated but before the evening was over he had forgiven her and as far as his father knew he was still sending money to her.

  Ed had met Al and had thought he was a cool guy, but after listening to his father he altered his opinion somewhat, although he wasn't sure his father was telling the truth. He seemed to remember the story had been different the first time he heard it, but he couldn't remember how. He actually was not unhappy to be talking to his father in the cold, sober light of that winter morning because the last time they had said more than two words was last week about two days after he had arrived home from college. It had started in the afternoon, watching a minor bowl game on TV, drinking and talking, then continued into the evening, just the two of them finally, his mother warning them as she went up to bed, “Don't drink too much...”

  Ed was 19 and taller than his father and probably heavier too – he had quit his college cross country team in October and hadn't worked out at all since. His Dad had a little gut for the first time that Ed ever remembered, a product of his 'easy' job on the ship. That evening was the first time his father had ever seemed old to Jim, as they went drink for drink, killing one, then two bottles of scotch, then part of a third before Johnny Carson came on. It was then his Dad got – a way he had never seen him, talking of his love for his mother, his love for Ed and the girls, his unworthiness to have any of it, the house, a family, a job with respect, none of it he deserved or at least that is what he said, through tears and sobs. Ed tried to comfort him and reassure him, but this was something deeper than he had ever experienced and he didn't have enough of whatever he needed to pull his father back. He couldn't stand properly and Ed had helped him up and steadied him as they climbed the stairs and he knocked on his mother's door and let him into the master bedroom and Ed – also drunk but strangely clear headed perhaps because he hadn't mixed pot with the booze as he normally did, went into his own childhood room and read until he fell asleep.

  They got to the Post Office but it was closed. Ed remembered that it normally opened at noon on a Saturday – he only now realized it was Saturday.

  “Oh damn,” his father mildly said. Ed looked at him. “Its closed.”

  “Yeah – its Saturday. It opens at noon I think.”

  “Well while we're down here – lets stop off at the AB&G.”

  “You mean in Allendale?”

  “Yeah – its the closest bar.” Ed was pretty sure that was true – and anyway he was sure his father would have figured that logistical detail out long ago.

  Ed's father continued his story about Al, laughing at his adventures, which were really Dad's adventures, because they cruised the ports of South Asia together, like Conrad's Lord Jim, as depicted by Abbott and Costello, or Bob and Bing, looking for fun away from the usual sailor hangouts, often ending up meeting other western Expats getting invited to parties at embassies, fucking the wives of diplomats in cloakrooms, filling up on free booze and whores ovaries, before returning to the ship, happy to be carefree sailors, but its not a life for you Ed, his father said, still, if you want to go after college – after you finish your degree, maybe we can ship together, I know some people who owe me favors, he said, I can get you on – but you have to get through school first...

  The AB&G was just opening when they got there. Ed wasn't 21 yet, which was the NJ drinking age, but they both sat at the bar and picked up the menu. Ed was thinking food.

“What are you drinking?” Ed knew the barkeep and knew he knew him. Ed had gone to high school in Allendale and had made his mark and was known, so he knew the question contained a healthy share of amnesia about just how recently Ed had been in high school.

  “I'll have a beer.”

  “A beer?” His father made a face like he had just stepped in dog shit. “How can you drink beer this early? I'll have a scotch on the rocks.” He looked at Ed.

  “Same,” said Ed. He looked at his father and knew what was coming.

  Ed counted to seven and after that he had no memory. He remembered coming into the kitchen and hearing his mother yelling and threatening his father, who was too drunk to pay attention, even though he had managed to drive back. It was about noon.

  Ed and his father would drink together again, but never like that. It was never mentioned again and it marked the end of something and the beginning of something else.  

On James Madison and Federalist Paper #46

Feb 26 2014

ON JAMES MADISON AND FEDERALIST PAPER #46
Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger.
I think Abraham Lincoln and US Grant made that observation obsolete 150 years ago. I would say it is more obsolete today
But - that aside - should the militia be regulated, but personal armaments not be? Should any citizen have a constitutional right to own any weapon he/she can afford? Does local government have no legal remedy to keep dangerous arms out of its jurisdictions? Is that the true intent of those 'founders' who we know disagreed with each other as much as they agreed? Because it doesn't make sense to me that the awkwardly worded second amendment was intended to sanction every home and hearth to be a potential armory. If that was their intent then it was based on a misunderstanding of the functional military capabilities of privately owned weapons.
Many people revere the Federalist's papers. They serve as a model for civilized political debate - it was a lively set of conversations among an unusually bright and well intended group of men as they tried to build a government. But they were no more authoritative than any editorial you read today.
If you put yourself into the 1790s, Madison's supposition makes some sense particularly in North America. A group of men marching with muskets could possibly stand up to regular army - although I would estimate that by Austerlitz, about 20 years after the Constitution's ratification, Napoleon had shown that fact to no longer be true. Military professionals quickly learned the lessons required to enable a modern force to roll over well armed but poorly lead citizens with advanced planning and tight precision. The late 18th century was the last time one man (like Jefferson or Hume or Liebnitz or Franklin) could know most of what was known - science, mathematics, philosophy, economics, history etc. (If you knew Adam Smith you knew Economics, Newton you knew math and physics, Gibbon late Roman history, etc). These authorities were soon to be annotated and revised to make total mastery of all knowledge impossible for any individual - bureaucracies were now required.
General staffs the world over applied the new knowledge that exploded in the 19th century to the task of killing large numbers of people efficiently and controlling those that remain.
Specialization destroyed Madison's theory of citizen soldier as a real threat to perceived tyranny.

Progressives Should Oppose the Chavistas

Feb 28 2014
I fell in love with Venezuela when I read 'Green Mansions' as a kid and my visit for business in 2012 reinforced that love. The people I met were generous, open, uncluttered by phoniness and extremely desirous to get opportunity to succeed.

It is a beautiful country. From the valley floor in Caracas you can take a tram to the top of the highest mountain that over looks the city, and from the tram you can hear the monkeys in the trees just below chattering. Its jungles to the south, near Brazil, hold the Yanomamo, maybe, (in the 1960s) the last true primitive people. The Caracas valley sits in the perfect balance between the briskness of the mountains and the warmth of the equator. The city was founded in 1567. 


In the election of October 2012, about 49% of the people voted for the opposition candidate, (plus or minus – the totals were disputed) Henrique Capriles Radonski, a center-left progressive economist former mayor of a suburb of Caracas. He vowed to pursue market friendly economic policies combined with income re-distribution. He is committed to the fair play that is required for democracy and that differentiates him from the Chavistas.

The best rebuttal to the protesters against the Chavistas and those like me who support those protesters is that Radonski lost the election, therefore the results should be respected. However – when human rights are severely violated, property is seized without legal authority, or by authority that is so rigged as to make it illegitimate in the eyes of reason, then it is not unreasonable to take to the streets and demand reform. 

Maduro is committed to 'a road' (as in 'the Socialist Road') not a plan. As a former bus driver I suppose that is natural for him. The policies of the Chavistas are more slogans than practical proposals to solve the country's problems. Rodonski would have had access to the kind of left-center administrative talent that could actually make a positive economic difference to Venezuela's impoverished  communities – which are to be clear incredibly poor and primitive. The slums built on muddy hills overlooking Caracas go on seemingly forever, with no services, physical or otherwise. 

I don't think anyone who calls themselves a 'progressive' should support the Chavistas. This isn't the 1930s. Politics is not as black and white as it used to seem to be. American (or rather U.S.) indifference is now more of a threat to countries like Venezuela than U.S. imperialism.

 The Chavistas have many similarities to Mussolini's Fascists, in that they use intimidation and thug tactics to remain in power. By not controlling the civil violence (not pursuing justice against murderers) they keep every one else an extreme state of personal stress. There were over 24,000 homicides in Venezuela (pop 30 million) last year. In the U.S. (pop 300 million) there were about 18,000 murders. That level of violence is almost the equivalent to a state of siege. The police are a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chavistas, as are the courts. 

You can not expect people to not respond politically.  The protesters are demonstrating vociferously against that 'state of siege' and against other actions that seriously depress the whole of Venezuela's economy. I think all Progressives should realize that “Fascist Redistribution” is more Fascist than it is socialist. But I know labels such as 'fascist' are misappropriated all the time. At this stage of history all words are loaded and have been used for too long, by too many to not be easy to misuse. But if it acts like a duck etc. I have no problems with 'DoubleThink' on that issue.

dou·ble·think

noun (OXFORD DICTIONARY - from Orwell's "1984")

1. the acceptance of or mental capacity to accept contrary opinions or beliefs at the same time, especially as a result of political indoctrination. 

Post Mandela Expectations

(From a facebook post discussing Nelson Mandela - Dec 9 2013) 

When asked what were the long term affects of the French Revolution, Chinese Communist Premier Zhou Enlai reportedly answered, “It's too soon to tell.” I can only hope that is true for South Africa – that it finds a way to be a healthy, safe, multiracial society. My father was a merchant seaman and he would return from trips around the Cape of Good Hope back to New Jersey in the 1960s with tales of the wonders of Durbin SA. He described the prosperous farms, the beautiful beaches, the nightlife, the hardworking, fun-loving, intelligent people who had built a paradise for themselves, but he would add, parenthetically, “It is going to end badly”. 

It is interesting that Gandhi got his political start in SA and it is not that hard to imagine that if things had been a little different, he might have been the “Father' of SA instead of Mandela. India would have been different then too, maybe .. In any event, it is too bad it took so long for SA to make the adjustments that so clearly needed to be made. And conversely – it is a good thing SA made the changes when did instead of trying to hang on. I think both those statements are true to a degree.

While I don't believe anything is inevitable or per-ordained, (although oddly the predominate Afrikaner religion was Calvinist wasn't it?) there is a streak of it in all of us I think. Lincoln at his Second Inaugural Address said, “ Yet, if God wills that it (the Civil War) continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."” When reading the great Russian novelists of the 19th century and one sees a society that was at once advanced and thoughtful beyond what was occurring in Europe (on one level) and yet supported at its lowest level by the most severe and oppressive cruelty – and then in the 20th century to see it all sweep away like a wealthy beach community in a hurricane – well – one understands the unfeeling 'inevitability' history, and the serious nature of the facebook postings here.

I think that what is being expressed by people all over the world in remembering Mandala is that the transfer of power, the change that had to occur, could have been much worse and Mandela through giving up 27 years of his life and coming out, regardless of his politics, as not a bitter man, that this example is the only one that holds out any hope.

How many Pied-Noirs are left in Algeria? Clearly Afrikaner roots are deeper in SA than were the French in North Africa. And even though things have changed for the worse in SA in some ways, we all got a glance at SA society through the tragedy of Oscar Pistorius and Reeva Steenkamp. The dependence on guns to maintain a privileged life is part of the culture. And clearly some privilege still exists, even if it is very precarious. Of course, to say “privileged” in SA is for Westerners to mean “normal”. The affect on the white population by the changes since the end of apartheid are perhaps worse psychologically than economic. But I am straying into areas I have no right to be in – I am only trying to understand it from a distance. 

Russia and China both went from extreme disparities of wealth and class in the 20th century. In Russia, Dostoevsky saw it coming very clearly in his literature. The disaster when it came was genocidal at least in a class sense. I think what we are seeing in these facebook postings is an attempt to change opinion in the West about SA, in a way that is similar to what occurred here 30-35 years ago when the boycott of SA over apartheid began. It is correct  to make those attempts to educate us about the reality and the declining quality of life that white South African's face, and the dangerous state of affairs there. The most important thing now is to make people understand the situation as it is seen through everyone’s eyes. People, I believe at their core, are good. If they know the truth and can see things from another perspective they will act in the right way. It might take a long time though. In the end nothing is fair but perhaps there is fairness in that too. In spite of all the horror that has occurred I do believe we have no other choice but to believe in prospect of a good ending. Now that Mandela is gone, perhaps we can deal with it more honestly. 

I think we (people who are not from SA) have to support all people's right to live free of intimation regardless of who they are or who their parents were. But ultimately the only thing that means anything is what happens in SA itself. I hope SA can find its own way of dealing with this that doesn't repeat so much of the horror of the last 100 years. 

To make one more small point germane to the society that I do live in and have more authority to speak to – SA is a warning that extremes in inequality have a way of biting back – and it is better to manage them sooner than later. It is easier to change tax rates and health care delivery than it is manage a rebellion.

Why don't Republicans Love George Bailey?

It's a Wonderful Life - the Sequel

FADE INTO CHRISTMAS 1958. Pan over prosperous Bedford Falls – Christmas music fades to funeral durge – pan into well tended grave yard – George Bailey, a little thicker, a touch of gray on the side, lifts his head, puts on his hat and walks alone out of the snow-covered Bedford Falls Cemetery. Behind him, a solitary digger throws dirt into a grave behind a tombstone that simply reads “Potter”. George is startled by an angular young man with tight fitting black suit, close cropped hair and a bow tie who suddenly appears next to him. 
'George!'
'I don't believe we've ..'
'Oh we have a common acquaintance – you surely remember Clarence …'
George is shocked but attempts to hide it. He looks at the young man closely. On second look he doesn't look that young … .. FLASH BACK TO SCENES IN THE BANK show the missing $8000 … 
'Are you..' … George looks up with his eyes to the sky without moving his head.
'No – No!' The man in the dark suit theatrically looked down and then smiles at George and extends his hand. George pulls away in disgust.
'Now listen here Beelzebub or whatever your name is – 
'you can call me Bub if you like..'
I don't want any …'
'But it concerns the missing $8000 – Aren't you a bit curious …?' Bub smiles and wiggles his eyebrows.
'Well – yes – NO! What are you talking about? And what are you doing going around passing yourself off as a colleague of Clarence for?
'Well – we are in the same line – as it were – I was to Potter as Clarence was to you ..'
'Well that doesn't surprise me that flinty old ..'
'Now now – mustn't speak ill now …'
'What about the $8000?'
'Its been invested.'
'In what? Poisoned baby food?'
'In a sense perhaps. Its called a Republican political action committee.'
'Political Action what? – sound like some kind of Nazi or Communist thing ..
'Come with me George. Let me take you on a trip – like Clarence took you on long ago – only lets go 50 years into the future. And see just what your political action committee has become …

BLACK AND WHITE FADES TO COLORIZED FILM. GEORGE AND BUB
float over modern day Washington DC. Bub points here and there and George pulls back in horror. A Headline/News reel Montage appears – War in Iraq – WMD – Cheney's grin turns sinister – Bush reads to children – Torture – Abugrab – heck of a Job Brownie – Stock market crashes -Bush ducks shoe in Bagdad – Sarah winks – Glen Beck harangues fat Tea partiers– 'Kenyan president !' Donald Trump's combover– Mitt holding the cash – Fiscal Cliff..

'Do you see George?'
'Wait a minute. I am a Republican. I like Ike. I'm President of the Bedford Falls Chamber of Commerce for Gosh sakes!. This isn't the Republican Party. We believe in this country – we aren't the kind of people who would push this country in Recession just to make a point!'
'We have to strangle the Socialism! Starve the Beast!'
'Yeah – I saw where you want us to go – Clarence showed me Bedford Falls when you guys take over – Its called Pottersville!'
'But Roosevelt was worse than Stalin. '
'Well my brother got back from the war and went to college on the GI Bill. He's doing good – better than he ever would have done without it And paying taxes too!
'Well – your not a Republican anymore George. Ike was a softy.  We are taking back the country for the kind of people that belong in power – not ..not ..
'Yeah I know what you mean .You and your ilk are the one who aren't Republicans – Lincoln's Republicans anyway – you are something else – nastier – a bunch of greedy bastards – like old man Potter ...'George sniffed 'What is that smell anyway? Is somebody striking matches?'
'Yes – yes that's right George. That's right! Every time a demon farts – a billionaire gets more bling.'

FADE

Trekking through Malacandra - CS Lewis "Out of a Silent Planet"

Original Published on Amazon as a book review
Out of a Silent Planet
I had never read Lewis, (or much of what others have written about him), except for 20 pages of the Screwtape Letters when I was a teenager. I didn't like it then, but I suspect that it was because I didn't have the disciple or desire to read closely written prose, even from the Devil. I have always known Lewis was a colleague of Tolkien, a medievalist, a favorite author of the intellectual Christians. Aside from all that, I didn't have any preconceptions about him when my sister sent me a vintage copy of 'Out of a Silent Planet' (original price 95¢) which she had held onto since her teen years.
Three fourths of the book is physical description. From the English countryside to the space ship he traveled on, the flora, fauna and geology of where ever he was, it was all painted carefully with the full prose arsenal available to Lewis, whose vocabulary was voluminous, yet always apt, and whose style was direct and clear. Malacandra, the planet to which the main character, Ransom is taken, if described by a lesser writer would be depicted as a cartoon, but Lewis's style is so understated, that the story has to be taken seriously in the way the discourse of a sober careful, well educated Englishmen of the twentieth Century is taken. Perhaps that attitude is a cultural prejudice, or social stereotype that maybe does not translate anymore, particularly after exposure to hours of Monty Python . Normally, I prefer the gaudy, overstated, hyperbolic blasphemy of American writers like T. Pynchon, Hunter Thompson or even Tom Wolfe. But Lewis grows on you - if you let him.
Ransom is kidnapped by two English University men, of his own generation and class, one a huckster, Devine and the other a 'mad' professor, Weston. The story is almost too fantastic to take seriously, except for the exact, painstaking language Lewis uses to describe his surroundings while it is happening.
They arrive on Malacandra and Weston, the mad professor - As I said, I have read nothing of what other people have written about 'Out...Planet', - Weston reminds me of a caricature of Robert Heinlein, the science fiction author. Through his fiction we learn that Heinlein believed that man's destiny is in the stars and we are going to have to kill aliens if we want to succeed in that domain. Heinlein was also a very good writer whose descriptions of space travel set the standard for 'hard science fiction' - fiction that stays within the scientifically conceivable, and is explained with the history of the technology usually incorporated into the story - and that style is everything that Lewis' descriptions are not. Ransom is almost oblivious to the technology of the spaceship and how it developed and as a result so is the reader. That is not what Lewis is writing about.
  The other kidnapper, Devine, is there for the gold. He went to college with Ransom and Ransom hated him then.
  Ransom escapes and discovers three main species of intelligent life on Malacandra - spoiler alert - Malacandra is Mars. Ransom doesn't divulge this until much later in the story, but the description said it was Mars on the back cover of the 95¢ book I am reviewing,so I think it is OK to reveal that. This knowledge brings you closer to the exact and consistent manner with which Lewis constructs the book. His account of Mars is at odds with what any 10 grader knows about the barren desert planet fourth out from the sun. In the sixties there was a controversy that supposed the Canals of Mars were engineered. Lewis gradually draws you into a vision of Malacandra as a lush vibrant world. Not great science, but well structured as a story.
As stated, color and vibrancy abound. The book was popular with the 'Acid' cultural of the late sixties, perhaps because the world he describes is definitely over the Rainbow.
  Ransom's  examination of Malacandra is meant to seem systematic and scientific. Back on earth, he is a philologist. He learns the planet's language, (fortunately all four species speak the same language). He makes friends with a beaver-like creature, a Hross. There is also a forest dwelling ghostly, long shanked, long faced humanoid (Sorn) that covers huge distances walking, as well as a a mechanically talented frog-like animal (Pfifltriggi ). They are ruled by Eldils, almost invisible flying beings, among whom include the planet's leader, more like a god, who speaks but isn't seen.
  The story is told with a minimum of drama, and is described in a very flat manner. Lewis is more 'English' that the English. His narrative style seems modeled on HG Wells' manner of story telling. On second thought, I doubt that Weston is modeled after Heinlein. I am not even sure that Lewis was familar with the Science fiction of the 1950s and 1960s. Sci Fi had advanced in realism and even characterization since Wells wrote The Time Machine and War of the Worlds. Out of a Silent Planet was written by someone who either was ignorant of modern (1950's and 60's) Science Fiction or hated it. I suspect it is probably the later, because Lewis was a profound scholar.
  The story had a tragedy and a climax, but they are not depicted the way normal books deal with such things. These denouements are clearly only a vehicle for final conversation between the head Eldil, Oyarsa and Ransom, just before the three earthlings get ready to return home. It gives a cosmology which is not at all congruent with Christianity, but more Buddhist explained with Norse mythic nomenclature. Oyarsa, who is God come down off the mountain, talks about the origins of not only the Malacandria but also earth or as it is called Thulcandra. Oyarse is in contact with the Eldil that 'rules' our planet and describes him as 'bent' which is Ransom's translation of a Malacandraian word which might also mean crazy or unstable. For being a fairy tale, it is internally very consistent, profound theologically, and the further you read into the novel the more you appreciate it.
  Without even 'goggling' "Christianity and "Out of the Silent Planet'" I am sure that I will discover that some people have written that the book is a Christian allegory. That is not based on my knowledge of Lewis, it is based on my knowledge of Christians, a belief I have held off and on throughout my life.
I thought 'the best part' was also the most awkward part, the very end. It is a post script where Lewis the author is chided by the 'real' Ransom for editing out a huge linguistic section of his book, where he describes the Malacandrian Language in detail. Lewis still defined at least 15 or so words. He also says that he had to leave out all manner of more detailed descriptions including how each species has great internal diversity. There are some Hross's with silver fur, black fir, brown fir, and one with a comb on top of the head of the males in another species.I t was a scholarly critic of his own work presented as part of the work itself.
  Lewis 's 'Christian' point I suppose is that all intelligent creatures are united spiritually, that we all come from the same place and will return to the same place. That death is nothing to fear and that perhaps the mechanical/ scientific secrets of the universe are best left alone and that we should unite with nature and maintain ecological harmony. While it seems neo-luddistic, in the manner Tolkien I suppose, (World War I had damaged a lot of people in different ways) I believe that is a good code by which to live.