Buub to the Rescue

1

Rosa del Mare, traffic worse than usual under the blazing desert sun. The great port city’s ancient amphitheatre, built by the Romans two thousand years ago as a duplicate of the Colosseum, had suddenly fallen down in the main piazza. A mushroom cloud of dust rose high into the air like the aftermath of an atomic attack.

The usually crowded streets around the stricken area were closed to everything – except tour buses with over-excited guides squawking hysterically into megaphones on the upper deck. Ruined ruins added a whole new dimension to the business.

Ignoring the barricades that had been thrown up, families strolled casually amid the shifting pile of rubble eating ice cream and pocketing genuine shards of antiquity to sell on eBay. Such was the reaction to your everyday emergency in Rosa del Mare, capital of the Republic of Lunitunia.

Along Corso Vittorio Emmanuele, the main thoroughfare running up the seafront in the direction of the mountains, there was no sign at all that anything unusual had happened. As always during the middle of the day, beeping taxis and cars converged with the surging mass of humanity taking part in one of the most thrilling and colourful popular spectacles in all of Africa – the Running of the Yamahas. Whizzing scooters and motorbikes zigged and zagged, gleefully aiming at pedestrians dashing for their lives, spinning like tops, ricocheting off the flaccid palm trees.

Amidst the homicidal onslaught strolled a small, slender dark-skinned young man of sleepy-eyed confidence and serenity. Warding off danger with a blasé wave of a take-away slice of potato pizza in one hand and a large bottle of imported Nastro Azzurro beer in the other, he gave each car or scooter a nod and a gap-toothed smile. He wore a baggy light gray suit and a white shirt with a narrow black tie. His shiny, wavy black hair had the look of an old-fashioned Harlem ‘process.’ He appeared to have steeped right out of a 1950s doo-wop group.

His name was Luigi Buub (pronounced with two syllables: boo-oob).

He was the Lunitunian President for Life’s Chauffeur Number Five.

The day was hot as an oven, without a breath of breeze. Chauffeur Number Five Luigi Buub walked through the busy open-air market amid the chaotic fruit and vegetable stalls, buffeted by shouting and clattering. He loved all the noise and jostling, and being engaged to be married didn’t prevent him from enjoying the busy female shoppers wobbling, jiggling and undulating like molten Turkish Delight. He walked past Rosa del Mare’s Byzantine cathedral with its big yellow dome like another hot sun.

He jogged up the stairs of the United Press Service bureau.

Luigi was on his way to pay a quick lunchtime visit to the young woman he was going to marry, an English girl. They had met in Liverpool during Luigi’s time there as a student. Her name was Eileen Underdank and she was an intern at UPS.

Once upon a time UPS had been one of the giants of the news business and the Rosa del Mare bureau’s dusty corridor was lined with visual proof of that illustrious past. The low-ceilinged hallway was too dim to do the black-and-white pictures justice. They were big blow-ups of the most famous UPS photographs, none later than 1957 – the one where you could see up Ava Gardner’s dress, the one where you could see down Kim Novak’s dress, and the one where you could see through Marilyn Monroe’s dress.

It was when the ace photographer who had taken these great pictures fell from a ledge outside Elizabeth Taylor’s hotel room in Cannes that the agency’s downturn had begun.

There were people who said that UPS had failed to keep pace with the times ever since that tragedy more than a half-century ago.

The Rosa del Mare bureau was full of 1957 photo-transmission machines chugging in slow motion. White-robed men trailing strands of film were gliding this way and that. They were local hires, barefoot, serving fresh 1957 pictures to the Bureau Chief, a stocky, square-headed American with a Mission Control crew cut, in a white short-sleeved shirt and a plaid bowtie, who sat poring over them like a fanatical stamp collector. He was wearing a jeweller’s eyepiece.

His name was Bud Zwatz.

The clatter of 1957 teletypes was deafening.

Wearing a regulation brown cap, Eileen Underdank flitted from machine to machine, tearing off paper from the toilet-style rolls churning news from every corner of the globe. She was also mixing a can of paint like a short order cook scrambling eggs.

With the bureau’s budget so tight, Eileen doubled as the janitor.

She had already been working for the agency in Lunitunia longer than she cared to remember, nine years as an intern, four of them with travel expenses and lunch paid for, though she never had a chance to eat lunch.

With the more successful members of her journalistic generation back home having landed jobs with BBC, ITN, Reuters and AP, it peeved her to have to say that she worked for UPS. The company policy of requiring all employees to wear brown uniforms and brown caps did little to ease her frustration.

Luigi Buub knew that his fiancée Eileen wasn’t always happy at work and he tried to set aside a few minutes every day to drop by the office to give her a bit of moral support, even if her boss didn’t seem to like it. He tiptoed up behind her at the clattering teletype machines and put his hands over her eyes.

Eileen was slightly hunch-backed. Her huge heavy beehive of frizzy brown hair seemed to have pushed her neck down into her body, leaving her oversized earrings nowhere to dangle. The big spangled whorls of fake gemstones rested on her shoulders like an outlandish military rank on her brown uniform.

Not now, Luigi, she shrugged him off, knocking her cap askew. There’s a big story coming through. The Russians have launched a satellite into space.

What about the escape, eucalyptus blossom? Tegani Fanka has escaped from right under the noses of the police. Who cares about a satellite?

It’s called Sputnik. She tore the story off the teletype.

Listen to me, my ripe quince. That war criminal has escaped. The Demon Chef of Wadi’leif-ericson has got away. It’s all over the TV.

I’m at work, Luigi. I don’t have time to watch television.

That’s right, pal, Bud Zwatz interjected.

"Buongiorno, dottore," Luigi greeted him with a polite little bow.

As in Italy, everyone in Lunitunia who’d graduated from high school was addressed as a dottore, a doctor, as if they had an advanced degree.

This is a news bureau, not a recreation room. Eileen, I’m having a problem with the stuff you wrote this morning. Bud swivelled in his chair on wheels. Listen to this… He read from the typewritten sheet of the shipping report that Eileen had prepared. "S.S. Heavenly Aroma left Rosa del Mare for Rotterdam…S.S. Percolator Blend left Rosa del Mare for Singapore…S.S. Good To The Last Drop left Rosa del Mare for Livorno…"

The names of the ships reflected that the main business of Lunitunia was the exportation of coffee. Though not a coffee producer itself, the country was an outlet to the Red Sea for coffee-growing neighbours in the African interior.

I’m having a problem, Eileen, because the language we use here at UPS is English, which I believe is your native tongue. Bearing that in mind, would you tell me why one of those ships was going to Livorno?

She hesitated before replying. To deliver coffee, I guess.

"I mean, why in hell Livorno?" Bud snapped.

Because that was the ship’s destination?

The name of the place in English is Leghorn. He poked the sheet back on the spike with finality. At UPS we don’t say Livorno. We say Leghorn!

Sorry, Bud. Eileen averted her eyes. The teletypes rattled like machine guns. She pounced on the latest hot bulletin. Bud, look at this! President Eisenhower has sent federal troops to de-segregate the schools in Little Rock, Arkansas!

"Arkansaw, Bud corrected. It’s pronounced Arkan-saw, not Ar-kansas."

Luigi took his put-upon fiancée’s hand and pulled her out of earshot of the Bureau Chief for a moment. He whispered in her ear, Don’t let Dottor Zwatz get under your skin, my pomegranate. He’s just a bully.

I know, she replied softly. Don’t work about me.

Check out the news about Tegani Fanka’s escape. It’s an amazing tale. He set off an explosion and jumped into in a river from a moving train. It was like something out of a movie. Luigi gave her the transistor radio he always carried with him.

I’ll do it in the bathroom.

I have to run. The President for Life is getting back from Switzerland. I just wanted to stick my head in.

I’ll be fine, Luigi. She gave him a peck on the cheek.

You know how much seeing you brightens my day, banana peel.

You too, sweetheart, Eileen waved bye-bye. Slipping the radio into her pocket, she was about to wave to get Bud’s attention and hold up her fingers for permission to leave the room for number two. But she changed her mind. She didn’t really have to go yet and if she went just as cover for listening to the radio, what would happen when she really did have to go? That would be too many bathroom trips. UPS was very strict about that.

Stirring a can of spackle for patching up the walls of the UPS bureau, long-serving intern Eileen Underdank gazed out the tall dust-streaked window that she would soon have to take care of washing as part of her janitorial duties. She drank in the faded grandeur of Corso Vittorio Emmanuele in the heart of Rosa del Mare. The once-proud boulevard’s white colonnades were discoloured with what appeared to be large splashes of caffe latte. The awnings were tattered, the sidewalks crowded with feisty beggars asking for alms. Eileen could almost hear them – in fact she could hear them, even though she was looking down from the sixth floor. Some were begging in the name of Allah, others doing so in the name of Jesus Christ, for the popular occupation of aggressively harassing passers-by on Lunitunian streets was open to all creeds, it being a nation of equal opportunity panhandling.

The bloom had faded from Lunitunia’s prickly pear in the twenty years since independence. The country was no longer as stable, no longer as prosperous, no longer as technologically advanced, cultured and go-getting as Italy’s other former colonies in the region – Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Indeed, little Lunitunia sometimes appeared to be struggling to find its place among sovereign nations.

Eileen tried not to take this backwardness personally but being engaged to marry a Lunitunian citizen very soon, she sometimes felt at a disadvantage. Looking at her boss Bud Zwatz, who was from Michigan or Montana, some ridiculously big rich place, seeing the overfed squareness of him, scrunched in his chair, at his thick neck bulging over his tight collar, she felt that she and her Lunitunian husband-to-be were distinctly underdeveloped.

Leaning out the window, she looked down on President for Life Bondimu’s limousine parked in the little square just below the window. Her fiancée Luigi was walking around the car, painstakingly inspecting it, flicking off bird droppings and insects and polishing the chrome. It was amazing how a man who weighed less than one hundred and fifty pounds could waddle exactly like a pregnant hippo. She loved Luigi like crazy. They were made for each other. He wanted her to have seventeen children like his mother. That was exactly what Eileen wanted too.

Maybe sixteen would be enough.

Bud Zwatz came and stood next to her and looked out the window too. She knew that as usual he was going to mention the dusty streaks and tell her to get the squeegee and safety harness and climb out and do her duty.

Instead, much to her surprise, he said, I like your boyfriend, Eileen.

I’m glad to hear it. So do I.

He’s still Bondimu’s chauffeur, isn’t he?

Chauffeur Number Five, Eileen said proudly. He’s just been promoted from Chauffeur Number Six. President for Life Bondimu depends on him. Thank goodness. We couldn’t get married if Luigi didn’t have such a good job.

He sure is quite a guy.

You can say that again. He’s some kind of man. All man… But don’t believe everything you hear about black men, Bud.

Her boss gagged on his Nescafé.

Luigi’s not much of a dancer. He’s never once taken me to a disco. He’s more of the quiet type. He just wants to have a few beers and watch soccer on the telly like the lads I knew growing up back in Cheshire. I guess that’s not surprising, see how much time he spent in England. We met when he was studying there. We were both going to RAC in my hometown.

RAC School of Motoring.

Luigi had studied there for a three full years, majoring in Parallel Parking.

Eileen continued to reminisce. It’s funny how things work out. I never expected to go out with him. We used to see each other at the school and he was always shy around me. I guess he had to get up the nerve to say something. Weeks went by and then one afternoon after my lesson Luigi just came up and asked me what a red light was supposed to mean. Things sort of took off from there. Pretty soon we were spending a lot of time on the couch together.

Hearing herself, she blushed and clarified, Watching soccer on the telly, I mean.

Well, nobody is going to have any soccer to watch on the telly anymore, I’m afraid, Bud said. Not in this country. That’s what I want to talk to you about. I have a reporting assignment for you, Eileen.

A reporting assignment?

Eileen Underdank was gobsmacked. You do?

I want you to start covering sports.

"Sports?" Her surprise turned to confusion.

I don’t have to tell you that this is a complicated country, Eileen. Look at the demographics. Lunitunia is fifty-five percent Roman Catholic and thirty-two percent Muslim with thirteen percent leaning toward Hillary and eleven percent undecided. Half the country lives in huts. The other half lives in shacks. Half of them are men. The other half are women. Lots of them are children. Many of the children are parents. Like I said, it’s complicated. There’s only one thing that brings them all together, one thing they’re all obsessed with. And you know what that is, don’t you?

Pasta with raw garlic and sand crabs? Eileen guessed.

Pasta with raw garlic and sand crabs was Lunitunia’s national dish.

The team, Bud Zwatz said.

The team?

You’ve been following the situation pretty closely, haven’t you? Your boyfriend must keep you in the loop.

Eileen nodded vigorously. Absolutely… What team?

"The team, Eileen. The national soccer team. You know how nuts about soccer the Lunitunians are. They live and die for it. That’s just the problem. The national team has been banned from international competition for five years for corruption. The Lunitunian coach, Santiago Valdez, was bribing referees. Valdez is a real no-goodnik who used to coach in Colombia. They caught him on camera handing over money. Bags of cocaine too. That’s why Bondimu went to Switzerland this week."

President for Life Bondimu went to Switzerland for bags of cocaine? Eileen asked in amazement.

He went up there to make an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Of course he might have picked up some cocaine while he was there. He probably took the opportunity to stuff some more public funds into his Swiss bank account too. Anyway, he begged the court not to uphold the ban on Lunitunia’s soccer team. It didn’t do any good. They told him to take a hike. There’s going to be hell to pay. He was going to go to Europe and straighten everything out but his appeal was a flop. Lunitunia is out. No soccer until 1962.

Eileen nodded. Five years from 1957.

Working for UPS was very confusing.

We haven’t heard the end of the story, Bud continued. "Not by a long shot. The word on the street is that Bondimu has something up his sleeve. Apparently he’s cooking something up with the same Valdez guy. I even hear they’re planning some sort of new team. It’s anybody’s guess what they’re really up to, but you can bet that it’s not on the level. Bondimu’s under pressure. Tons of pressure. These people are soccer fanatics,