‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with respecting any man so long as he is worthy of it.’
‘And you think Spravchik isn’t? Is that because he drinks?’
‘Not just that. The man has an appalling human rights record.’
‘Because he arm-wrestles bears?’
‘No, I wouldn’t call arm-wrestling a bear a violation of human rights. Though it might violate animal rights.’
‘What if the bear wins?’
‘Good for the bear, but the gay and lesbian people he imprisons and the women he flogs for having abortions won’t be consoled by that.’
Fracassus allowed his mouth to fall open. There was an unwritten code at the Palace as to what did and did not constitute appropriate conversation between a Prince and his tutor. There were grey areas but abortions weren’t one of them. As for any sexualities other than heterosexuality, no mention was permitted of these either after Jago’s dereliction. Had foreign travel caused Dr Cobalt to forget herself?
She asked herself the same question. ‘I apologize if I have offended you, Your Highness,’ she said. ‘I thought you were asking my opinion.’
‘I asked you to recommend a book on heroism.’
‘You are right to correct me. That was indeed what you asked. You might, in that case, like Bear Grylls’ Spirit of the Jungle.’
Fracassus shook his head in frustration. ‘No, no, not a story,’ he said. Spirit of the Jungle sounded like the stuff his mother had tried to force on him. Spirits, fairies, fantastic beasts. What would Spravchik think of him reading a book about animals you couldn’t wrestle because they weren’t really there? ‘I want something more… I don’t know the word… more true, not made up, more something like an atlas or a Bible.’
‘I will think about it,’ Dr Cobalt said. Later that day she arranged for Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Thomas Carlyle’s On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History to be delivered to the Prince’s kindle and waited for what he would have to say to her about them.
In the meantime she wondered if she’d gone too far and would be recalled to Urbs-Ludus. She told Kolskeggur what she’d done.
‘You brought up the matter of Spravchik’s violations of human rights with the Prince?’
She screwed her eyes up. ‘Have I been a fool?’
‘What did Fracassus think?’
‘Fracassus doesn’t think. He looked ill-pleased.’
‘By you, or by Spravchik’s violations?’
‘I very much doubt the latter. He has grown up in a jungle of human rights violations.’
‘Tut, tut.’
‘Are you tutting me or the Grand Duke?’
He kissed her forehead. A fatherly kiss. ‘I’ll tell you what I think,’ he said. ‘Whenever I heard people talking about human rights in my university I wanted to reach for my shotgun.’
‘Kolskeggur!’
‘That wasn’t because I wanted anything less for the despised and underprivileged than they did. I just described my outrage differently.’
‘Thereby making it about yourself.’
‘No, the very opposite.’
‘Are you saying I was making Spravchik’s crimes about me?’
‘That depends on what exactly you said and how you said it. But if you flew the flag of your emotions and showed your pain, then yes.’
‘Human rights are a flag to you?’
‘Well they will be to Fracassus. The very phrase affects members of his class the way a spade affects a garden worm. They might not be able to describe the weapon but they know they’re under attack from it.’
‘Silence is a recipe for defeatism.’
‘Well whatever war you’re fighting you already aren’t winning. Listen to what’s in the wind. May I speak my mind?’
‘Well it would appear I have spoken mine.’
Professor Probrius took a breath. Never a good sign if you were the interlocutor. ‘Every time you champion a special interest group you alienate those who fall outside it. That does make them illiberal. I don’t say be silent but I do say clean up your language. Change your precious cast of victims. Don’t make an enemy of anyone who doesn’t feel the hurt you do. Or just don’t give a damn.’
Dr Cobalt didn’t know why she suddenly felt peeved, but she did. ‘Do you know what,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you talk to the little prick your way and I’ll talk to him mine.’
Professor Probrius put up a hand of peace. Her way worked perfectly nicely for him. She might as well have been loading Fracassus up with sticks of dynamite. He didn’t want any harm to come to her. He hoped that if he listened to the wind he would know when the explosion was coming and would be able to whisk her away from it. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t looking forward to the bang.
Fracassus said nothing further to Dr Cobalt that day. She couldn’t tell what mood he was in with her. But he did leave his Kindle lying about – perhaps deliberately – and she noticed what he he was reading on it. Bear Grylls’ The Spirit of the Jungle.
CHAPTER XIX
The spirit of the jungle
The party remained in the country of the Numa for several months, though there was no further trip to the mountains. Fracassus continued to receive tickets for Spravchik’s television show and attended it religiously. On one evening the warm-up man’s role was taken by Spravchik himself. ‘Tonight you’ll have to put up with me in all capacities,’ he told the crowd who shouted and called his name. He must have been aware of Fracassus’s presence because he translated some of his funny stories into a form Fracassus could understand.
Between anecdotes he talked about the deviancy that was eating the heart out his country the way mice gnaw at a harvest. Homosexuality, he said, was against the will of god, whichever god you believed in. The Numa people, for example, before whose ancient wisdom he stood in awe, would throw any child showing homoerotic inclinations off the mountain. They could detect these inclinations in the first six months of the child’s life. And the moment they did – he made a motion suggestive of spading dirt into an empty grave – it was over the side with them. There was no hatred in this; it was all kindness. They couldn’t bear the thought of homosexual children going through life scarred by their unnaturalness.
‘Spravchik!’ the studio audience cried.
He had one more thing to say. For himself, he would rather have cancer than a lesbian for a daughter.
Spravchik! Spravchik!
Did he fling a smile – suggestive of spading dirt into an empty grave – at Fracassus?
Fracassus knew what he would tell Dr Cobalt should the subject of Spravchik’s violations of human rights crop up again. He would tell her that Spravchik was motivated by kindness not cruelty. He would tell her the minister was joking. And he would tell her to remember her place.
Some of the tweets Fracassus composed in the time he was Spravchik’s guest throw light on his feelings for the man—
May 4th
Great meeting with Vozzek Spravchik, television host extraordinary and Culture Secretary of this great country.
May 6th
Journey to mountains with Vozzek. Great view. The Numa present me with bead necklace. Lovely people.
May 6th
Vozzek says country can’t afford to go on looking after Numa people who drink too much. Sad.
May 9
Wrestle with Vozzek Spravchik Minister of Home Affairs and ‘Whistleblower’ host. I let him win.
May 11th