The Loo Sanction

The young USIS man blushed and tried to fake his way through, raising his voice to the verge of falsetto. 'What we really wanted to know was... ah... are there any more questions?'

'Yeah, I got a question!' shouted a black from the middle of the group. 'How come all this Watergate shit didn't come out until after Nixon got his ass reelected?'

Another American stood up. 'Tell him that if he grants us amnesty and lets us come home, we won't tell anyone about the garbage he's made of the American image abroad.'

fforbes-Ffitch took this opportunity to say that none of this had anything to do with him. 'I'm English,' he told two nearby people who didn't care.

By then Jonathan had walked up the side aisle and had joined the flustered USIS man. He put his arm around the lad's shoulder and confided in a low voice, 'Get in there, kid. You can handle them. After all, you're a government-trained communicator.' He winked and walked on.

'Well,' said the USIS man to the audience, 'if there are no further questions for Dr. Hemlock, then I ask —'

The hoots and boos drowned him out, and the audience began to break up, chattering among themselves and laughing.

Jonathan made his way to a display room off the foyer. On exhibition were a lot of clumsy ceramics done by star students and faculty of a well-known California school of design, and brought there to show the Swedes what our young artists could do. One of the pieces had a title calculated to suggest creative angst and personal despair. It was called 'The Pot I Broke,' and that's what it was. Next to it was a particularly pungent social statement in the form of a beer mug featuring Uncle Sam with black features and bearing the cursive legend 'Don't drink from me.' But the star piece of the collection was a long cylinder of red tile that had drooped over during the baking, and had subsequently been titled 'Reluctant Erection.'

Jonathan took a deep breath and leaned his head against the burlap-covered wall. Too much. Too much hooch. He had been drinking for weeks. Weeks and weeks and weeks.

'Is it so bad as that?' asked one of the Swedish girls who had been looking around for him and was standing at the door.

Jonathan pushed himself off the wall and sucked in a big breath to steady the world. 'No, it's great stuff. That's our subtle way to win you over. Dazzle you with our young art. A nation that can produce this stuff can't be all bad.'

The girl laughed. 'At least it shows your young people have a sense of humor.'

'Don't I wish. Every time I see a piece of young crap, I try to forgive the artist by assuming it's a put-on— camp—but it won't wash. I'm afraid they're serious. Trivial, of course, and tedious... but serious. I assume there's a party somewhere?'

She laughed. 'They're waiting for you.'

'Wonderful.' He went into the foyer and joined a group of young Swedes exuding energy and good spirits. They invited him to come along with them to dinner, then off on a crawl of bars and parties, as they had done every night. They were attractive youngsters: physically strong, clear-minded, healthy. He had often reflected on how life-embracing the Swedes were on average, forgetting the traveler's adage that the most attractive people in the world are those one first sees after leaving England.

Outside the cold was jagged and the wind penetrating. While the young people waited, blowing into their hands, Jonathan said a very formal good night to the green-coated Beraknings Aktiebolag guard who patrolled the American Culture Center in response to repeated bomb threats. He felt sorry for the poor devil, stiff-faced and tearing in the numbing cold. He even offered to stand his watch for him.

A bar. Then another bar. Then someone's house. There was a heated discussion and a fight. Another bar— which closed on them. Someone had a wonderful idea and telephoned someone who was not home. Jonathan crowded with the four remaining students into a little car, and they drove back to the Gamla Stan to return him to his hotel on Lilla Nygatan, for he had been drinking heavily and had become embarrassingly antisocial.

They dropped him off on the edge of the medieval island, which is closed to private vehicles. Someone asked if he was sure he could find his way, and he told them to drive on—in fact, go to hell. When the red taillights of the car had disappeared into the swirling snow, he turned to find that a Swedish girl had gotten out with him. So. The party was still on! He put his arm around her—girls feel good in thick fur coats, like teddy bears—and they trudged around looking for an open bar or a cave. They found one, an 'inne stallet for visor, jazz och folkmusik,' and they sat drinking whiskey and shouting their conversation against blaring music until the place closed.

They walked unsteadily through deserted narrow streets, holding on to one another, the snow deep on the cobblestones and still falling in large indolent flakes that glittered and spiraled around the gas lamps. Jonathan said he didn't much care for Christmas cards. She didn't understand. So he repeated it, and she still didn't get it, so he said forget it.

A little later he fell.

They were passing through the narrow arched alley of Yxsmedsgrand when he slipped on the ice and fell into a bank of snow. He struggled to get up, and slipped again.

She laughed gaily and offered to help him.

'No! I'm all right. In fact, I'm very comfortable here. I think I'll stay the night. Say, what happened to my overcoat?'

'You must have left it at the party.'

'No, that was my youth I left at the party. How do you like that for a bitterer-than-thou tragic romantic riposte? Don't be swayed, honey. It's all hokum designed to get you into bed. You're sure you don't have my overcoat?'

'Come on. We'll go to your hotel.' She laughed good-naturedly and helped him up. 'Does it embarrass you to do something like that? To slip and fall when you are with a girl?'

'Yes, it does. But that is because I am a male chauvinist swine.'

'Pig.'

'Pig, then. What are you?'

'I'm an art student. I've read all your books.'

'Have you? And now you're going to hop into bed with me. Proof of the adage that success has balls. OK. Let's get to it. Dawn is coming with a red rag among its shoulder blades.'

'Pardon?'

'Shakespeare. A modest paraphrase.'

There was a great rectangular weight in his forehead, and he tried to bang it away with the back of his fist. 'How old are you, honey?'

'Nineteen. How old are you?'

He looked up at her slowly as the drink drained from his head. He was not well; but he was cold sober. 'What was that?'

She laughed. 'I said, how old are you?' The last vowel had a curl to it—a Scandinavian curl, but not unlike an Irish curl.

He looked at her very closely, glancing from eye to eye. She was a pretty enough little girl, but they were the wrong eyes. Not bottle green.

'What's wrong?' she asked. 'Are you sick?'

'I'm worse off than that. I'm sober. Say... look. Here's the key to my hotel. The address is on it. You stay there tonight. It's all right. It's comfortable.'

'Don't you like me?'

He laughed dryly. 'I think you're just great, honey. The hope of the future. Bye-bye.'

'Where are you going?'

'For a walk.'

The sun rose brilliant and cold over the placid water of Riddarfjarden, a crisp yellow sun that gave light without warmth. A single tugboat dragged a wake of glittering, eye-aching silver through the thick black green water, its chug-a-da the only sound in the windless chill. Jonathan's eyes, teared by the cold and squinting against