Say what
you like about our dictator, but the man knows how to
create jobs. Of course, most of them involve working
for him. Our nation, alas, is devoid of petroleum, natural
gas, or precious, or even semi-precious, metals, at
least in commercially viable quantities. Our central-European
climate precludes our becoming a banana republic, and
the mountainous terrain means we cannot grow enough
grain to feed our own small population (13 million,
as of the most recent census, 1988-1991).
Of course,
that leaves —or could leave— tourism. Picture us as
the “little Switzerland of the Carpathians,” a mountain
range that already features over 400 ski resorts. But
two factors have kept us from attracting more than a
trickle of tourists. First, our “mountains” are low,
bald hills that look like potatoes. Skiing down one
(assuming you were not totalled on one of the potato’s
eyes) would take only moments. Second, corruption. Since
the Dictator and his cronies skim upwards of 80% from
all contracts, there is not enough left to fund ski
resorts. For the same reason, we have few factories:
two automobile plants that assemble prestige imports
for the elite, and a single cheese manufacturing facility.
Since the employed 10% of our population are mostly
herders of sheep and goats, you might think we would
have a thriving dairy-product industry. Think again!
Some wag has dubbed our national cheese, “La vache
qui pleure.”
The reason
I have so much insider knowledge is that, while I come
from an impoverished family, until recently I had a
job that put me in close proximity to the seat of power.
Very close: in fact, my job required me to sit on the
Dictator’s lap.
“How did
that come about?” you ask.
Well, you
could say it ran in the family. I was the youngest of
ten children. My parents made a “living” as scavengers
at the huge dump outside the capital. Of course, the
children also pitched in, until they became old enough
to consider further career options.
For my
three sisters, the only escape from scavenging was to
sell their marketable assets —their bodies. Of my six
brothers, as they reached adulthood, three remained
on the parental “payroll.” As for the other three, all
of whom grew up to be tall, well-muscled fellows, they
were recruited into the Dictator’s security detail;
that is, they became the personal bodyguards of him
and his family. In other words, if anyone tried to blow
up the Presidential limousine, my brothers were the
first line of defence; in other words, they were cannon
fodder. Somehow, though, they survived these dangerous
jobs long enough to become trusted employees.
Just before
I reached my twelfth birthday, a member of the Dictator’s
inner circle had a bright idea. Before I explain the
idea, I think it will be good strategy to tell you a
bit about the man, himself, and about the circumstances
that gave rise to his idea. My second-oldest brother,
the only family member to have graduated from secondary
school, and one of the Dictator’s bodyguards, told me
the following:
Two decades
ago, for instance, when the Dictator declared himself
President-for-Life, it was the MOI who wrote the infamous
“white paper” justifying the declaration. The gist of
the paper was that our poor little nation could no longer
afford democracy, with its inherent instabilities, that
we had to put development first. Of course, it was the
charismatic Dictator, not the Minister, who delivered
the televised preview of the white paper.
In the
two decades since, our “development first” policy has
rendered us, in the face of stiff competition, one of
the poorest countries on Earth. If the Dictator allowed
such things to exist, my smart brother declared, polls
would show that his approval rating had fallen to a
negative number.
The immediate
spark for the MOI’s brainstorm was the growth of a samizdat
press among the nation’s students and intellectuals.
Not that there was civic disruption, or anything. The
rebels understood only too well that such would not
have been met with water cannon or rubber bullets. But
broadsheets circulating around the country so cleverly
ridiculed the Dictator that he was in danger of becoming
a laughing stock. Already, there were comparisons with
Chaplin’s Great Dictator, Groucho Marx’s Rufus T. Firefly
and Donald Trump.
One day,
the MOI declared (according to my brother, who was on
duty at the time), “It is time, Excellency, for us to
fight fire with fire, or in this case, laughter with
laughter.”
The Dictator
reacted with a Mussolini-like shrug. “But how, Minister,
are we to achieve this goal?”
“By means
of oblique self-promotion, Excellency.” And he laid
out the details of the scheme.
This brings
me back to my starting point. It was the MOI’s inspiration,
and his persuasive powers, that got me my job — a very
good one, at that. Two days later, I was officially
proclaimed the Dictator’s Dummy. A week after that,
I made my first public appearance.
My debut
took place at a huge, government-sponsored rally. (Those
were the only rallies.) The event was held on a Sunday
morning in May, on the grounds of the government compound,
a sprawling complex of buildings, gardens, and parks
in the heart of our capital.
Facing
the handpicked crowd, with my back to the sun (which
was, therefore, in their eyes), I was perched on the
Dictator’s lap, nervously getting ready to deliver my
maiden speech. Before recounting what transpired, I
should backtrack a bit, to explain how this odd scenario
came about.
As I mentioned,
the MOI’s idea had been conceived as a way to stem the
mounting tide of jokes that threatened to inundate the
regime. The method behind the Minister’s idea was propaganda
wrapped in self-denigrating humor, a sort of homeopathic
remedy. The most disarming possible figure they could
find would trumpet the Dictator’s achievements in the
most disarming possible manner. This spokesperson should
be someone who could be unassailably represented as
the voice of the people.
Drawing
on the Dictator’s well-known love of retro TV kiddie
shows, the centerpiece of the MOI’s plan was to create
something analogous to Howdy Doody, Señor Wences’ Johnny,
Edgar Bergen’s Charlie McCarthy, and other puppet luminaries
from the late 1940’s and ’50’s. This figure would perch
on the Dictator’s lap and deliver pre-scripted speeches.
But, of course, the dummy’s voice would be that of his
Master.
The MOI
also happened to know a little secret. When the Dictator
was a boy, his father had been a high-level apparatchik
in our then-socialist republic. Apparently, during one
of the USSR’s annual conferences, Stalin had invited
the family to spend an afternoon at his Black Sea dacha.
As rumor had it, he had been so taken with little ——
that he had dandled the boy on his knee.
One recent
samizdat release scurrilously asserted that there was
a contemporary analogue to that touching scene from
a half-century ago: the Dictator had grown up to be
Vladimir Putin’s puppet. (True, perhaps, but where else
were we going to get cheap oil and gas to see us through
our harsh winters?)
“Why me?”
you ask. Well, that day, when the MOI had completed
his pitch, my second eldest brother, who was, as usual,
on guard duty, piped up. “Excuse, Excellencies,” he
cried, “but I have the perfect candidate for you: ——-,
my eleven year-old brother. He is small enough that
he can perch on His Excellency’s lap for at least one
hour without seriously discommoding His Excellency.
Not only is —— the picture of innocence, but he is a
masterful elocutionist. (The requisite verbal skills
ran in our family. Witness this brother’s powers of
persuasion. Even that inarticulate brute, my father,
could match insults with the nation’s leading beer swillers!)
My fraternal
advocate advanced yet another qualifying attribute:
my cuteness. “I think you are aware that our family
owns the license for refuse collection from Sector E-14,”
he said. “—— has participated in this collection for
five years, since he was six years old.” My brother,
normally a stoic, stone-faced fellow, could not suppress
the impish grin which accompanied his punchline. “If
I may be permitted a small joke, Excellencies, ——- is
every inch a Boy of the People.” To prove his point,
he produced a series of polaroid snapshots of the adorable,
freckled nominee at work in the dump.
Of course,
there were other plausible candidates —a cute shepherdess,
a winsome street vendor, and so on— but the choice fell
on me. In another world, my brother might have been
a multi-millionaire used car salesman.
The next
question was, “How?” How, that is, was I to deliver
the Dictator’s speeches? The Minister of Technology
(MOT) proposed that they be pre-recorded, and that I
could lip-synch them. But the MOI scoffed at his rival’s
suggestion.
“Impossible!”
he cried. “Those things never work. Imagine the crowd’s
reaction if there was a time lag between his Excellency’s
recorded words and the boy’s mouthing them. Remember
what happened during the National Football Cup finals
last year?” He was referring to the glitch that caused
the Presidential team’s winning goal to be announced
a full ten seconds before the shot was launched. That
audio-visual screw-up had not been the MOT’s finest
hour.
The MOT
made one or two weak protestations—“What about human
error? Suppose the boy forgets his lines?”— but my brother
trashed that argument with examples of my phenomenal
memory, such as the fact that I kept a running mental
tally of every item collected in the family’s day-to-day
scavenging, going back years. He also cited my uncanny
talent for mimicry, citing a long string of examples,
including family members, goats, and two well-known
exiled dissidents.
During
a subsequent session, I proved my brother’s points,
amazing the assembled luminaries with a word-perfect
recital (from memory) of the country’s telephone directory
(albeit a slim volume), and reeling off verbatim (also
from memory) the Dictator’s 2002 speech announcing his
lifetime tenure.
Of course,
the clincher came from the lips of the Ruler, himself.
”That was uncanny,” he said. “I was certain I was listening
to myself. There is no-one,” he declared, “whom I would
rather have sitting on my lap than young ——-. ”
I must
admit this remark gave me pause. I had heard about His
Excellency’s having debauched thousands of young girls
(including at least two of my sisters). In panic, I
thought, “Uh, oh! Boys, too?” But I had no solid evidence.
Besides, a job was a job.
A great
deal of preparation preceded my debut: speeches were
written, memorized, and rehearsed; costumes measured,
sewn, and tried on; makeup, coiffure, etc. And that
was just the half of it. I heard dark samizdat hints
to the effect that no scintilla of security preparations
was to be left to chance. (By now, the blimp that exploded
over the Super Bowl, in the banned book and film, Black
Sunday, was kid stuff.) Just the precautions against
drones and radio-and computer-operated explosive devices
occupied thousands of man hours. And the cost of all
these preparations? I mean, even my salary was to be
a whopping $53 per week, in a country where 99% of the
population never saw that much money in their lifetime.
At last,
the big day arrived. They wheeled out the portable stage,
and did a final sound check of the mics and giant speakers.
Show time! For maximum theatrical effect, I entered
first, through a slit in the black velvet backdrop at
the rear of the stage. I was decked out in a jogging
suit in the national colors, red, black and blue. The
only prop on the stage was a straight-backed wooden
chair. My appearance was greeted with a huge, surprised
gasp from the assembled citizenry, who had been told
only that they must appear at yet another rally.
For a few
seconds, I stood beside the chair, beaming out at the
crowd. Then, to the strains of our national anthem,
the Dictator, clad in a simple soldier’s tunic, came
through the opening in the backdrop, strode across the
stage, sat down, and beckoned me to take my position
on his lap. (He had eschewed wearing medals after a
dress rehearsal during which his “Supreme Hero of the
Nation” ribbon had jabbed me in the back.)
As soon
as I had climbed to my perch on his lap, the Dictator
reached around to implant a chaste kiss on my brow.
On schedule, the crowd went wild! I could feel the Dictator’s
body heat through the heavy woollen serge of his uniform.
I cleared my throat and began to speak.
But what
was this! Instead of the oft-rehearsed opening platitudes,
all that issued from my mouth was a tiny squeak. Some
in the crowd showed signs of restiveness, but no one
laughed —yet. I tried again. Another squeak. This time,
I could feel the Dictator’s body tense. Then, something
in me snapped. You could say that, at this point, I
went off point — badly.
Instead
of the pre-programmed opening salutation, “My fellow
citizens of this our great nation,” out came, “You poor,
suffering slobs!” The words that were supposed to follow,
“We have gathered here today to celebrate our beloved
leader’s sterling record of achievement,” were replaced
by, “We have been herded here today to bleat like sheep,
in protest of four decades of abject subjugation.” And
more — much more — of the same.
The clincher
was an allusion to our pro-Russian stance during the
Ukraine invasions of 2014 and 2022. The script said,
“And we are grateful to our Russian benefactors for
providing for our needs during this time of particular
hardship.” What came out was, “And our dictator is grateful
for his continued position on Vladimir Putin’s lap,
a position he first occupied as a stupid boy on the
lap of Putin’s spiritual daddy, Joseph Stalin.”
When I
uttered that final blasphemy, the MOI could stand no
more. Dashing onto the stage from the wings, he gestured
frantically to the security detail (from which my brothers
were conspicuously absent. Had they smelled a rat?)
A dozen uniformed thugs immediately staunched the flow
of seditious verbiage by tackling me, which dislodged
me from my perch. Unfortunately, they also bumped against
the Dictator, causing him, too, to topple from the chair.
A collective
gasp from the crowd gave way to giggles, and then to
waves of derisive laughter. But before I could do, hear,
or see, anything more, a blow from a truncheon turned
the bright day into a moonless, starless night. Several
hours later, when I awakened, I was unemployed.
