Farewell to Follies

By Xingu Fawcett

Themes of Farewell to Follies (FTF)

Nature, in the form of beautiful landscapes and wholesome surroundings, is a constant presence in FTFs short fiction. It is often the only thing in the text, animate or inanimate, that is described in a positive or laudatory fashion. FTF characters are great believes in the power of nature, both in terms of its beauty and its challenges, to improve ones quality of life. Tok Pisin

Also a near-constant presence in FTFs stories is the theme of death, either in the form of death itself, the knowledge of the inevitability of death, or the futility of fleeing death. Clearly evocative of death are the stories in which FTF describes actual deaths. Terminate with Extreme Prejudic.

Also known as heroic fatalism, this attitude was a FTF favorite. Fatalistic heroism derives from the belief that death is certain to come and that resisting it is futile; one may as well face death with stoicism and resignation. This belief and its accompanying stoic behavior patterns appear in several short stories. Lord Clives Last Biryani Supper

Disillusionment and the depression that results from it are recurrent themes in FTFs short stories. FTF himself suffered from feelings of disillusionment and dislocation following his harrowing experiences during Americas Long Wars. Goodbye Kabul

FTF, it is often noted, was enamored of a particular notion of masculinity. FTFs heroes are often outdoorsmen or hunters who are stoic, taciturn, and averse to showing emotion. Real men, according to FTF, are physically courageous and confident, and keep doubts and insecurities to themselves. Beso, Tango y Amor

Many of FTFs characters have ambivalent feelings toward each other; in FTFs universe, people are not wholly good or bad. Bal Masque

Animals in the FTF canon, whether they are game, pets, or wild, sometimes serve as symbols for their human hunters, caretakers or observers. Lizards of Formentera

Fragments of dreams and memories - want to have fantasy encounters and casual togetherness? Whether single or in a permanent relationship, or something in between, with FTF stories you can live out your passionate uninhibited fantasies discretely.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984541970

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Farewell to Follies

XINGU FAWCETT

Copyright © 2018 by Xingu Fawcett.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2018908555

ISBN:              Hardcover                    978-1-9845-4196-3

                         Softcover                      978-1-9845-4195-6

                        eBook                            978-1-9845-4197-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 09/13/2018

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CONTENTS

Preface

JOB INTERVIEW

COUP DE FOUDRE

THE LIZARDS OF FORMENTERA

HAMBURGER WAR

QUEEN OF THE NILE

BESO, TANGO, Y AMOR

A SUMMER IN PROVENCE

QUIETLY FLOWS THE RIO FUTALEUFU

THE LAST BIRYANI SUPPER

TERMINATE WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE

CHRISTMAS IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC

SUFFERING AND SMILING

BAL MASQUÉ

LA FIESTA DE SAN FERMIN

TOK PISIN

GOODBYE KABUL

REAR ENTRY SAMBA

VOYEUR IN SAN CRISTOBAL

HELLO LAS VEGAS!

BLOODBATH AT CATHEDRAL SQUARE

L’AMOUR FOU

Author Bio

PREFACE

Farewell to Follies - Fragments of Memories

Originally, I wanted to title this book, "With My Best Memory, a Collection of Portraits: Avec mon meilleur souvenir, un recueil de portraits."

"Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing?

Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago?

Where have all the flowers gone?"

—sung by Pete Seeger

And yet I have invented Farewell to Follies in its entirety—it is not memory that dominates my stories. To say that my stories are autobiographical is an overly facile liquidation, a hasty classification. It seems to me that I have invented almost everything—childhood, youth, character, nostalgias, dreams, memories—for the pleasure of being able to recount them.

The characters in the fragments of my dreams—Olga, Colonel Momeen, Gabrielle, Lola, Donatella, Alois, Lord Clive, Brigitta, María de Fátima, General Cassius Longinus, Marie-Hélène, Lili, Mimi, Eric, Grneral Himmat Singh, Lord Robert Clive, the Ghost of Omichaund—and other characters from the stories follow the clown, Cario, in Ruggero Leoncavallo’s opera Pagliacci in a tumultuous cavalcade.

Will they ever return?

I imagined many of my memory fragments. These fragments of my memories were documented over a period. The collection of fragments was assembled in Ibiza, Formentera, and the islets surrounding the Balearic Islands, Spain.

In some stories, there is an effort to show a world without love, characters full of selfishness, people exploiting one another—yet in the midst of it all, there is always a little creature who wants to give love and who lives for love.

I invented memorable characters in these short stories and tales by drawing on real people—parents, friends, lovers, milonga dance partners, carnival queens, samba kings, operatic clowns, cannibals as sleeping and eating companions, military coup plotters, and fellow writers, among others. I also draw on real places and events to create settings and engaging plots.

Thank you to the team at ProofreadingPal for their diligent efforts to proofread and edit this manuscript, especially Kate.

—Xingu Fawcett

JOB INTERVIEW

I am a Sukhoi 27 fighter pilot, a deserter from the Soviet Air Force. I have f lown Hercules transports and Bell helicopters. I fought f ires, explosions, and blowouts on offshore oilrigs in the Gulf of Mexico. I rescued a drowning crew from a sinking tanker near the Azores Islands and smuggled blood diamonds from Sierra Leone, said Olga.

What about your husband and family? I enquired. I had invited Olga for an in-depth job interview in Rome for the position of pilot.

I am married, but it is not serious, she said, unconsciously twisting her baguette-diamond wedding band slowly. I made a mistake. I got married and two years later he left me. He left me like husbands always leave in bad novels—abruptly, with a trail of lies that are impossible to believe. For weeks and then months I could barely eat or sleep or work. But enough about that. All that matters is that I am a good shot. I can kill a man from thirty feet away, she told me.

Are you qualified for my line of business—gun-running? I asked.

Absolutely! she responded instantly. I can land a fully loaded Hercules on an unlit dirt airstrip at night, shoot and kill armed bandits hiding behind bushes, and strangle a Lebanese swindler in a nightclub with my bra straps.

I was stunned.

Have you seen the sights of Rome? I enquired.

I want to discover the magic of a Roman evening, she said as she wistfully waded into Fontana del Tritone at Piazza Barberini, wearing a very revealing black cocktail dress. She daringly posed riding on the dolphins. It was late evening.

Let’s swing into the Rugantino nightclub, Olga suggested.

In the nightclub, a Caribbean band struck up smooth socas, hot merengues, fast-moving rumbas, and finally the energetic Jamaican Jump Up, bringing everyone to their feet.

I asked her, Shall we dance?

Without hesitation, Olga sashayed with me to the dance f loor and we joined in the frenzy.

The dance f loor was a sea of gorgeous, statuesque men and women in all shades of f lesh; there were girls with spangled faces, lycra-clad buttocks, and glowing hot lips. When the rumba played, it set the bodies of the most agile women in Rome on fire. The Rugantino was in the throes of ecstasy.

The music blew away, sometimes cool and languid and sometimes hot and sassy, as Olga danced with abandon under the starry skies. Her heart longed for the night to evade the dawn so that this party with its apotheosis of gyrating f lesh, the happiness of those liberated hips, could continue.

Olga was glistening with tiny droplets of perspiration as she whispered into my ear, It is a full-moon night, cruel and dangerous like a seduction. And I want to be bad!

I was left speechless by her aspirated whispers as she explained, in detail, her explicit ideas on being bad.

We grabbed a seat in the back corner at a small, intimate table and ordered Bollinger champagne, salmon caviar, and blini pancakes.

Is that a Soviet Makarov 9mm automatic in your bra holster? Yes. Why?

You are full of surprises, Olga, I replied.

So are you. You are a sinful dancer, she said as her eyes penetrated mine.

Do you always arm yourself for a rendezvous?

Occasionally. I seem to be accident-prone.

I’ll take that gun from you, if you don’t mind, I said, reaching for her bosom.

You’re very sure of yourself, aren’t you? Suppose I was to kill you for a thrill, she teased.

I can think of something more sociable to do.

I will sing with the band, then, she said as she stood and walked to the stage.

When luscious Olga walked out on the stage to sing, pandemonium broke loose. The men stood up and applauded, cheering and whistling as they feasted their wolfish eyes on the stunning Russian beauty. Her very revealing dress, which looked almost sprayed on, didn’t exactly sedate the excited nighthawks.

She sang her lines, but the crowd was not listening. The men were appreciating her other attributes instead. With her buxom curves and blonde hair, Olga stopped the show.

At first, she mimicked an orgiastic strip that might have been performed by a Turkish belly dancer. What had been a rather sedate party had suddenly taken a bohemian and explosive turn when she cast off her shoes to dance. As Olga undulated sensuously to a sizzling rumba, a riot broke out. The men jostled and clapped and let off howling wolf-whistles as they fed their carnal desires on a shared vision of the consumption of this formidable body. She slowly unsheathed the deadly Makarov machine pistol concealed in her bra. The men were delirious.

Olga took several immodest steps further and, as the women in the crowd mostly withdrew, she contorted to the jazz band’s rendition of Stormy Weather. The saxophonist blew hot solo sections while Olga sang the cool romantic lyrics. In front of an audience that included several well-known young members of the Italian nobility and a scattering of papal princes, she planted her full, bright red lips on the shining bald pate of the aristocratic Cardinal Prince of the Holy Church.

Oh, Dio! It was the conf luence of love both sacred and profane. Olga was f leeting happiness on earth, and the Cardinal Prince stood tall as eternal happiness in heaven.

I assure you that Olga intended the moist kiss to be an exaltation of both earthly and heavenly love. She was a woman who wanted it all.

Then, accompanied by that red-hot tenor saxophonist, she sang in a husky voice:

Vieni qui e baciami

Come and kiss me

Love me forever

And let forever begin tonight.

Vieni que e baciami

When we’re together

I’m In a dream world

Of sweet delight….

Suddenly, Olga’s shoulder strap slipped, revealing maximum décolletage. A second scrum ensued. There was a mad scramble among the press photographers. The burly bouncers, dressed in black tuxedos with eyes concealed behind sunglasses, smashed a few cameras during the melee. A wild riot swirled through the club.

Before the Italian Carabinieri intervened, paparazzi recorded the scandalous event in a series of explicit images that were printed the next day—complete with strategic black strips to obscure the identity of city fathers and to conceal the nudity. Truth be told, though, the sensational tabloid Oggi may have omitted the black strips.

The publication of these pictures caused an outcry and the magazine was impounded as an obscene publication; the police closed the nightclub.

We were questioned and had our full-face mug shots and fingerprints taken.

However, our jail time was promptly concluded when we paid five hundred euros in fines.

Olga, you’re hired, I told her.

I took her to her home near Fontana de Trevi and as we stood outside the bougainvillea-draped doorway, she invited me in. Please come up for a Russian nightcap, she murmured, planting a moist kiss on my cheek.

I returned to my hotel in the early morning. I made sure I went in the back way and tried to be quiet as a Roman mouse, as I had to be discreet with my indiscretions.

It was a fitting end to a job interview in a hazardous profession.

COUP DE FOUDRE

The year is 2017. The United States has suffered not only defeats in the High-Tech War of 2007 and the Second Gulf War of 2010, but also an ultimately failed military coup in 2012. That coup, engineered by a highly politicized officer corps that blamed these bloody losses on ‘incompetent’ civilian leaders, was initially welcomed by a public exasperated with elected government. Only a few years of repressive military rule passed, however, before the countercoup in 2015. The chastened electorate placed the thoroughly disgraced armed forces under draconian civilian control, noted the Senate Majority Leader at a National Press Club event that same year.

A recent Department of Defense instruction alters the US code applying to the military’s involvement in domestic law enforcement by allowing US troops to quell civil disturbances domestically without any presidential authorization, greasing the skids for a de facto military coup in America, along with the wholesale abolition of Posse Comitatus.

What would happen in the minutes and hours after a coup in America?

The government won’t be taken over by the military, but here’s what it would look like if it did.

The US government is never going to be overthrown, right? Americans don’t even think about forcibly removing the president from office the way the leaders of some other countries have been deposed over the years. Well, don’t be so sure—some bankers did talk about removing FDR at the height of the Great Depression; the same whispers emerge in the wake of every financial meltdown, cyber shutdown, etc., but those plots have never gotten very far.

Imagine America as a nation where the new president, a notoriously temperamental and dishonest oligarch, has just won a squeaker of a victory after an election that amounted to a year and a half of bitter struggle experienced by the entire country. This president faces fights from a media he loathes and regularly attacks, his government’s own intelligence agencies, a mass protest movement, an opposition that questions his legitimacy, and members of his own party who strongly disagree with him on some issues.

Meanwhile, this president has broken precedent by appointing several former generals to help run the government. One of these generals is almost universally supported by the same media outlets that oppose the new president. Add this all up—the unpopularity, the unrest, the generals, and the feuding with the supposed Deep State—and if this were any other country, you’d ask if there was a coup on its way.

What are the chances that the term of the president of the United States (POTUS)—the Rex Imperator Maximus—could be brought to a halt by a military uprising? At first glance, it seems like a strange question, and the idea of a military coup in a developed and seemingly stable Western democracy feels far-fetched. But then again, memories are short. In May 1958, France faced a military revolt in Algeria that threatened to spread to the French mainland. Without it, General Charles de Gaulle would never have been president, and the Fifth Republic would never have been born. Coup d’etat d’Alger was a failed coup intended to press the French president to not abandon French Algeria, along with the French people and pro-French Arabs living there.

Imagine America shaken by a violent modern cyber coup—not a Pakistani, Thai, Greek, or Nigerian meltdown, but a coup within the American ranks, hatched by officers trained at West Point, Harvard Law School, and Stanford’s Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace.

~~~~

A uniformed man walked down the corridor from the Oval Office to the corner office of the White House Chief of Staff. The chief of staff was the top advisor and assistant to POTUS, the president of the United States, and managed POTUS’s other assistants and advisers in the West Wing. It was the chief of staff who helped POTUS plan his schedule and decide where to focus his attention to be most effective in his leadership.

The visitor, a highly decorated colonel in the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), was tall, a little over six feet, and solidly built. He was clearly a man who had spent time leading men in tough combat. His skin was tanned and leathery from too much time in the sun. The colonel had a pair of laser-intense blue eyes that looked straight at the chief of staff, a former classmate from West Point.

Good morning, my friend, the chief of staff said, shaking the colonel’s hand. What brings you here?

Glad to see you after all these years, the colonel replied. Nothing much, but the coming presidential election is a bit troubling, especially the frightening prospect of such extremism developing among members or trainees in the US military.

The chief of staff nodded. It’s an understandable anxiety, and it may be validated yet. But in the meantime, there’s a more worrisome danger: that right-wing extremists who have served in the US military will use their training to carry out violence here at home against the state.

As the most divisive presidential election in recent memory nears its conclusion, some armed militia groups are preparing for the possibility of a stolen election on November 8, and civil unrest in the days following the election.

They say they won’t fire the first shot, but they’re not planning to leave their guns at home, either.

Dead bodies, mile after mile of burned, smashed, shattered vehicles of every description—tanks, armored cars, trucks, autos—littering the highways, said the colonel, envisioning the days to come.

The colonel, a highly unorthodox officer who had commanded Afghan mercenaries in the War on Terror, was a ruthless operator from the CIA’s Special Activities Division. He was known to drop decapitated heads into enemy-controlled villages as a form of psychological warfare, and to use severed human penises to record the number of enemies his indigenous troops had killed. When the Army accused him of murdering four Pakistani double agents in Waziristan, the colonel argued that by killing the traitors, he was simply exhibiting a soldier’s clarity:

The previous year, the colonel had marched along Pennsylvania Avenue at the head of a military cortege of three hundred JSOC soldiers. It was a dramatic entrance. He had been called in to restore law and order. As images of the procession appeared on television screens across the country to the sound of a military drumbeat, a reporter summarized his military career to date. Veteran of the anti-Al Qaeda operations in the Arabian Peninsula, Mali, Algeria, and Libya, and the anti-terrorist wars in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Somalia. He has executed snatch, grab, and assassination operations. Muscular, slim, and athletic, always with his trademark dark glasses, he is a battle-hardened commander who has the respect of his men.

The colonel, in his meeting with the chief of staff, outlined a scenario in which a POTUS could become an undisguised tyrant who had to be replaced by a military junta.

What if the American people were to elect a president who wanted to destroy the nation and worked to create division among the people, encouraged a culture of ridicule for basic morality and the principles that made and sustained the country, undermined the nation’s financial stability, and weakened and destroyed the military?

Elections have consequences, the chief of staff replied.

What remedies, if any, did the framers recommend in the event a tyrant should ever assume the presidency? the colonel asked. Do the people have the right to resist a tyrant, and does that hold any prospect of success without the support of the military?

The legal impeachment and removal of that tyrant is the remedy.

Does the US military have the right or even the duty to intervene in the domestic politics of the nation as its constitutional and political savior when the times require it? the colonel asked. If so, who makes that determination? Is such a duty incumbent upon the armed forces?

Our duty is to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, the chief of staff replied.

The colonel scoffed. Our country was built on revolution, and it’s about time we took it back. We are soldiers. Our duty is to win wars.

After a moment of quiet, the colonel decided to put his real question to the chief of staff. Therefore, to be completely clear, it is my turn to ask a question. Should the POTUS continue with the 2016 elections? If your answer is still yes, then you must accept all the consequences.

The chief of staff eyed his old friend with concern.

~~~~

Civic leaders, politicians, statesmen, business leaders, captains of industry, financial experts, and scholars gathered at a secret underground location in the windswept desert of White Sands, New Mexico, to ponder what would happen following a coup in America.

The coup de founder leaders known as Generals Gaius Cassius Longinus, Marcus Junius Brutus, and Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus, and the CIA chief called Marcus Aurelius gathered around the table.

General Longinius began the proceedings by stating, POTUS closed out a trip that began with an acrimonious NATO summit in Brussels with a private meeting with the Russian president. Afterward, the men held a remarkably confusing news conference where both addressed accusations that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election. The POTUS appeared to be groveling and begging for a few crumbs.

General Brutus clarified by saying, The Russian president denied it—and POTUS appeared to stop just short of saying he believed the Russian leader more than he did his own intelligence aides. Shocking.

General Longinius responded, Shocking? An understatement. And although international affairs were expected to dominate the session, POTUS turned again and again to a defense of his own political legitimacy.

It’s a shame that there can even be a little bit of a cloud over his 2016 election victory, General Albinus said.

"The New York Times is now suggesting that the president could be a Russian sleeper agent and that intelligence agencies should withhold information from POTUS while in office because he would share them with the Russian president. This is equivalent to saying that the POTUS is preemptively guilty of treason! These people are nuts!" General Brutus snarled indignantly.

He surrounds himself with known Russian agents and sympathizers. Those include his foreign policy advisors, the menacing presidential campaign chief, and his deputy. You’d imagine that a Kremlin agent in the White House would appoint a close friend of Russia—indeed, someone who actually won the Russian Order of Friendship award—as secretary of state, commented CIA Director Aurelius.

POTUS, the man who is making a hash of virtually anything he touches—has actually succeeded in the domain least familiar to him—foreign relations—in the most mesmerizing and unexpected of manners. Provided, of course, one looks at it all from the perspective of his real bosses and handlers in Moscow and Beijing, General Longinius said forcefully.

POTUS, the masterful Russian sleeper agent, can rightfully say to his masters in Russia and China, ‘Mission accomplished’, General Brutus added sarcastically.

CIA chief Aurelius emphasized, We cannot tolerate this any longer. He looked down the long table. We have to forcibly retake the government from POTUS. His command must be terminated. It is the only way save our democracy.

Let’s go for it! hollered General Longinius.

~~~~

Experts who study coups don’t think one is in the cards for the US. The senior professor on government at the US War College and a commentator on authoritarianism emphasized, A coup is completely unlikely. The vice chancellor at the University of Chicago, a scholar of coups and professor of law, felt the same way as the JSOC commander— he’s published a paper to that effect. But, he added, We’re at this moment where it’s very good to be considering these things.

Bearing in mind that a coup is not about to happen, the JSOC commander helped me game out this crazy hypothetical. So, here’s how a coup would go.

~~~~

The display panel is projecting images of large protests, demonstrations, rallies, and riots in more than fifty American cities. This was followed by a short video clip, which opens with a panorama of the Sonora Desert. After presenting the viewer with some beautiful, if bleak, scenery during the opening credits, the video switches to a scene in which Native American nomads and their children are rummaging through the aftermath of a battle. Dead American soldiers, burned-out American tanks, Humvees, armored personnel carriers, artillery pieces, and abandoned equipment of every kind litter the rocky landscape; howling, hot winds blow through the pass mile after mile; black smoke darkens the scene, with bodies of dead soldiers still inside the smoldering hulks.

The nomads are in the process of stripping the dead bodies of boots, socks, jackets, and other articles of clothing when two military Jeeps arrive on the scene, their passengers firing their