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The Governor takes the permit and shoves it into his coat pocket: "Well," he says with a tight smile, "so you've decided to let us stay another year have you? Very good of you. And everyone is happy about it?... Is there anyone who isn't happy about it?" Soldiers in jeeps sweep mounted machine-guns back and forth across the crowd with a slow, searching move- ment. "Everybody happy. Well that's fine." He turns jovi- ally to the prostrate President. "I'll keep your papers in case I get caught short. Haw Haw Haw." His loud, metallic laugh rings out across the dump, and the crowd laughs with him under the searching guns. The forms of democracy are scrupulously enforced on the Island. There is a Senate and a Congress who carry on endless sessions discussing garbage disposal and outhouse inspection, the only two questions over which they have jurisdiction. For a brief period in the mid-nineteenth century, they had been allowed to con- trol the dept. of Baboon Maintenance but this privilege had been withdrawn owing to absenteeism in the Senate. The purple-assed Tripoli baboons had been brought to the Island by pirates in the 17th century. There was a legend that when the baboons left the Island it would fall. To whom or in what way is not specified, and it is a capital offense to kill a baboon, though the noxious behaviour of these animals harries the citizens almost beyond endurance. Occasionally someone goes berserk, kills several baboons and himself. The post of President is always forced on some par- ticularly noxious and unpopular citizen. To be elected President is the greatest misfortune and disgrace that can befall an Islander. The humiliations and ignominy are such that few Presidents live out their full term of office, usually dying of a broken spirit after a year or two. The Expeditor had once been President and served the full five years of his term. Subsequently he changed his name and underwent plastic surgery, to blot out, as far as possible, the memory of his disgrace. "Yes of course... we'll pay you," Marvie was saying to the Expeditor. "But take it easy. It may be a little while yet...." "Take it easy? A little while!... Listen." "Yes I know it all. The finance company is repossess- ing your wife's artificial kidney.... They are evicting your grandmother from her iron lung." "That's in rather bad taste, old boy.... Frankly I wish I had never involved myself in this uh matter. |
