MASH 14 MASH goes to Moscow (6 page)

He appeared. Every female in the house exhaled. There was a faint smattering of applause, which quickly turned into a thunderous roar.

Don Carlo—that is to say, Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov—turned to face the audience. He raised his arms wide, high above his head.

“
Mes
enfants
!”
he said, which wasn’t in the script.

Here and there women dropped to the floor in a semi-catatonic state. Those who hadn’t swooned rose to their feet, cheering, whistling, screaming his name. From the box closest to the stage, two dozen long-stemmed roses floated downward. Moments later, the first hotel key came sailing through the air, immediately followed by others, and then a black lacy garment, size 38-C, floated onto the stage, immediately followed by a pair of shocking pink panties and a rather formidable foundation garment.

The maestro shook his finger.

“Control yourself, girls,” he called.

Ushers rushed down aisles, restoring order. Boris waited patiently until this had been done and then stepped away from the footlights and began to sing.

Approximately two hours later, Boris (that is to say, in his role as Don Carlo) stabbed his sister. Normally this sad and tragic event takes place, as they say, offstage. Since this was a
matinee
magnifique
it took place on stage. It also took place to accompaniment from the audience.

“Sock it to her, Cher Boris!”

“Off with her head!”

“Slit her throat!”
_

“It’s all her fault!”

Boris raised his hand to acknowledge the cheers and applause. The curtain fell.

Boris jumped to his feet and dashed offstage.

“Maestro!” the manager said. “The curtain calls!”

“Isn’t it enough that I sang?” Boris asked. “How much can you ask of one man, even a magnificent artist like me? I’ve given all that I intend to give of myself. I have no intention of standing out there for the next forty-five minutes or an hour while they shout themselves hoarse. Besides, I must rush to meet some of the few people in the world who love me for myself, who don’t even
ask
me to sing!”

He went directly to the stage door, without stopping at his dressing room. A platoon of gendarmes from the VIP and Dignitary Protection Section locked arms and forced their way through the crowds outside.

Boris strode between the lines of policemen, blowing kisses to his fans, and crawled into the back seat of a waiting Cadillac limousine. Prince was already there and, as Boris slumped back on the seat, reached over and kissed his idol wetly and lovingly on the face.

“
Goddamnit
!” Boris bellowed. “Hassan, Prince has been rooting in the garbage again! His breath would stop a clock!”

“Maestro,” His Royal Highness replied from behind the safety of the glass window separating the limousine seats, “I personally took Prince to lunch at the Cafe de la
Paix
while you were being dressed. He had a nice little standing rib of beef.”

Prince, Boris Alexandrovich
Korsky-Rimsakov’s
best friend in all the world, sensed that something was amiss. He stopped trying to kiss
his
best friend in all the world, and instead laid down on the velour upholstery, placing his head in Boris’s lap and making pathetic little moaning noises in his throat.

“I wonder if they make something for dogs with bad breath?” Boris mused, and then added, “Hassan, find out, and if they do get Prince some.”

“I’ll get him some, but you’ll have to make him take it,” Hassan said. There was little love lost between His Royal Highness and Prince, who was a Scottish wolfhound.* Hassan wasn’t sure whether Prince regarded him as a competitor for the maestro’s affection or as a potential meal, but whatever the reason, he didn’t like the animal and was more than a little afraid of him.

(* Dog lovers and others are referred to
M*A*S*H Goes to Vienna
in which the touching tale of how the Dowager Duchess of
Folkestone
presented her friend Korsky-Rimsakov with Prince is related in what has been described as revolting detail.)

There was some justification for His Royal Highness’s concern. Scottish wolfhounds, generally regarded as a vicious variant of the Irish wolfhound* generally stand four feet high at the shoulder and weigh in the neighborhood of 300 pounds. Prince was even larger.

(* Two parts wolf to one part Great Dane in the Scottish subspecies as opposed to equal parts of wolf and
dane
in the Irish.)

There came the sound of sirens. These were mounted on motorcycles of the VIP escort detachment of the Gendarmerie
Nationale
assigned to accompany His Royal Highness wherever he went in France. Not only are the French sticklers for the fine points of diplomatic protocol, but the sheikhdom of
Hussid
is the source of 38 percent of the petroleum needs of La Belle France, and the French are well aware of it.

As His Excellency the President of the French Republic put it to His Excellency the Foreign Minister of the French Republic, “Antoine, whatever that little Arab wants, he gets,
capisce
?”

The sirens cleared a path through the horde (mostly middle-aged women) of the maestro’s fans who had mobbed the stage entrance in the hope of catching a glimpse of their idol, and the convoy began to move out. First the motorcycles, then a jeep full of gendarmes, then two black Citroën sedans filled with His Royal Highness’s personal bodyguard (attired in Arabian clothes and carrying silver-plated submachine guns), then the limousine itself. Following the limousine was another Citroën, another jeep, and two more motorcycles.

Gathering speed, with lights flashing and sirens screaming, the convoy crossed the Rue de la
Paix
at the Place de
l’Opéra
, raced down toward the Place
Vendôme
, past the
Hôtel
Ritz, turned right onto Rue de Castiglione at the
Tuileries
Gardens, then skidded through the Place de la Concorde and up the Champs-Elysées. At Rue Pierre
Charron
, it turned left. Halfway down the block, it screeched to a halt.

The gendarmes and His Royal Highness’s personal bodyguard leaped from their vehicles and set up a protective shield. Traffic was blocked in both directions, and pedestrians were politely but firmly hustled out of the way. Finally, the officer in charge of the Gendarmerie and Lieutenant Ali Mohammed, detached from his Second Royal
Hussid
Cavalry to serve as officer-in-charge of His Royal Highness’s bodyguard, were satisfied. No deranged person could assault His Royal Highness. More important (since this was the more difficult to prevent), no fan of Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov could get past the guards to shower love and affection on the singer. (While love and affection is normally a good thing and to be desired, it was not so in the case of Mr. Korsky-Rimsakov. The last time his fans had gotten to him personally, after a performance at London’s Covent Garden, a contact lasting no more than thirty seconds, the singer had been left standing in his jockey shorts and one sock.)

A signal was made to the Cadillac. His Royal Highness and the maestro quickly got out of the car and walked rapidly across the sidewalk to enter a large, rather staid building.

They walked directly to an elevator which a member of the Gendarmerie had commandeered for their use. They rose to the top floor and then marched down a corridor to a steel-
doored
room which bore a printed sign:
Band Equipment Storage. No Admission by the Order of the Post Commander, Paris Post Number One, The American Legion.

Prince Hassan, who had to run to do it, got to the door first. He put a key in the lock and pushed the door open.

Four men were gathered around a six-sided table. The table was covered with an army blanket. On the table were stacks of chips and playing cards. The four men looked up as the singer entered.

“I asked you guys to wait until I got here,” Maestro Korsky-Rimsakov said, hurt in every tremulous syllable.

“And I told you we wouldn’t,” Colonel Jean-Pierre de la Chevaux replied. Colonel de la Chevaux, who was chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Chevaux Petroleum International, and who had come to Paris directly from Lagos, Nigeria, was not noted for his tact. ‘‘Sit down and shut up, Boris.”

“Not to worry, Old Bean, we will have plenty of time to part you from your money.” The speaker here was Mr. Angus
MacKenzie
, V.C., general manager of East Anglia Breweries, Ltd., and consort to Her Grace the Dowager Duchess of
Folkestone
.

“But I
asked,”
Boris said. “I thought you guys would wait, if I asked. You know how much this means to me.”

“For God’s sake, Boris, if you start to cry, I’m going home!” said T. (for
Theosophilis
) Mullins Yancey, M.D., Ph.D., the chief of staff of the Yancey Clinic of Manhattan, Kansas.

“Up yours,” the fourth poker player said. He was His Most Islamic Majesty, Sheikh Abdullah
ben
Abzug. His Majesty’s English, which he had learned through his association with the maestro, was rather limited. He knew but five other English phrases, each of them more scatological than the one he had used.

“It’s a terrible thing if you can’t ask your best friends in all the world to hold off the game a lousy thirty minutes,” Boris said, sitting down. “You know I couldn’t deprive all those people of the last scene. They
live
for the moment when I stab my sister.”

“Will you shut up and play cards?” Colonel de la Chevaux said sharply.

“Et
tu
,
Horsey?” Boris asked, deeply hurt. But he began to count the stack of chips that had been set before him.

Five minutes later, while Dr. Yancey was deciding whether the two aces he had back to back were worth a bet of a quarter, His Most Islamic Majesty, Sheikh Abdullah
ben
Abzug turned to the singer and asked him a question. He asked it in
Abzugian
, a language consisting mainly of snorts, wheezes, and grunts, with a
belchlike
sound for emphasis. It does not readily translate into English, but the essence of His Majesty’s question was, “How did you make out on the phone?”

In fluent
Abzugian
snorts, wheezes, and grunts, with several spectacular
belchlike
sounds, the singer replied that he had suggested to the tenacious SOB that he attempt a physiologically impossible act of self-impregnation.

“You said
that
to the Sainted Chancre Mechanic?”* His Majesty replied, aghast.

(* The reference here was to B. F. Pierce, M.D., F.A.C.S., chief of surgery of the Spruce Harbor, Maine,. Medical Center.)

“No, stupid, to the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet,” the maestro replied. “I wouldn’t say anything like that to the Sainted Chancre Mechanic.”

“What I wanted to know, El
Noil
Snoil
,” His Majesty responded, “was whether or not the Sainted Chancre Mechanic and my beloved friend, El Pecker Checker,* would be joining us.”

“I thought you were asking about the Russians,” the singer replied.

(The reference here is to J. F. X. McIntyre M.D., F.A.C.S., Dr. Pierce’s professional associate and long-time friend.)

“Did you talk to Hawkeye and Trapper John or not?” Colonel de la Chevaux asked, also in
Abzugian
. He, too, was referring to Drs. Pierce and McIntyre. Dr. Pierce was known to everyone but his wife and mother as “Hawkeye.” His father, a great fan of James
Fenimore
Cooper, had wished to name his firstborn after the Last Mohican. Although he had been dissuaded by his wife, he had never called the child by his given name, and neither had anyone else. Dr. McIntyre had come to be called “Trapper John” following an incident in his college days. He had been discovered
en flagrant,
as they say, with a co-ed in the gentlemen’s rest facility aboard a Boston & Maine passenger coach. The lady, fearful for her good name, had denied that she had gone willingly with him (which was the case) and loudly proclaimed that she had been trapped. The appellation stuck.