It sometimes happens that a title precedes a programme, indeed can be the inspiration for a programme, and so it proved to be in this case. In the months following his return to Urbs-Ludus, there gathered around the Prince – that is to say around the Prince’s name – a sizeable representation of the Republic’s youth who discovered in his utterances much that found an echo in their own breasts and, even where his thoughts were unfamiliar to them, much with which they sought to make common cause. In their ebullience, they formed a cheer squad – Fracassites, they called themselves – wherever and on whatever subject the Prince spoke, threatening any members of the audience who showed the slightest inclination to disagree, or who even, by their lights, did not agree emphatically enough. At first they threatened violence without actually doing any. But imperceptibly, the mood of the meetings changed. Impressionable himself, Fracassus found an echo in his breast of the echo of him the Fracassites had found in theirs, and truth to say took pleasure in encouraging them. ‘Chuck ’em out,’ he’d shout, whenever the Fracassites lit upon dissenters, and in the mayhem that ensued – for no sooner did he shout ‘Chuck ’em out’ than everyone was shouting ‘Chuck ’em out’ – the odd bone was broken and a little blood was shed. The Grand Prince ordered Fracassus into his presence.
‘This is not the way we do things,’ he told his son. ‘Put an end to it.’
Fracassus was disappointed. He’d seen professional wrestlers break more bones on breakfast television. But he couldn’t countermand his dying father. ‘What can I do?’ he asked.
‘It’s not for me to tell you,’ his father said. ‘Have some human decency. And if you don’t have any of your own, steal some.’
Fracassus thought hard and then addressed the Fracassites in a video link. ‘Stop it,’ he said, pointing a finger. He also put up posters in railways stations and at bus stops showing him mouthing the same words. ‘Stop it.’
The phrase gained a sort of currency and finally reached the ears of the television production team. There it was, the thing they’d been looking for all these months. Stop It! Nobody else could deliver those words as Fracassus did. Nobody else could lay hold of so little in the way of moral indignation that what was intended as a reprimand came out sounding like an invitation. ‘Stop it,’ young men sidled up to women and whispered in their ears. And as often as not the stopping it went on through the night.
The moment the programme had a title it had a form. Fracassus would invite wrong-doers – wife-beaters, drug-takers, rapists, alcoholics, pickpockets, body snatchers, arsonists, forgers, cat burlars, paedophiles – to own up to their criminality, and then he’d tick them off for it. Stoppit! No outrage. No holier than thou condescension. No off-putting moralizing. No warning or threats. And no bleeding-heart liberal connivance in the criminality either. Just Stoppit!
The advantage to Fracassus himself was obvious. He had only to say two words, and if he forgot those there was always auto-cue.
The show was an immediate success. It laid bare the immorality at the heart of society, sought neither to extenuate nor forgive, and then shrugged. Pinioned between moralists and apologists all their lives, the people tumbled on to their sofas, heaved sighs of relief that could be heard all over the Republic, and allowed Fracassus to disembarrass them of the ancient burdens of blame and absolution.
He was on their screens once a week, and then twice. If they watched repeats they could see him every other day. There were women to whom Fracassus’s features were more familiar than their husbands’. Men thought of him as their friend. Children trusted him and would have leapt willingly into his black limousine had he pulled up to them in the street and offered them chocolate. Stoppit!
The day the Grand Duke died the papers carried the story that the father of Fracassus, the television personality, had Stopped It.
Professor Probrius and Dr Cobalt met in one of their old salad bar haunts by the Wall and discussed what had transpired. They rarely saw the Prince now but he had retained their services out of some queer affection which they felt guilty about being unable to reciprocate. Occasionally he texted them regarding a word, but then either found another or changed his mode of expression. ‘He’s keeping us in reserve,’ Professor Probrius said.
‘Do you know what for?’
‘I think he might be more insecure than we’ve ever realised. He could be wondering when he’s going to run out of the ten words he uses and when, in that case, he’ll need us again.’
‘I think you flatter yourself.’
‘Could be. But I’ve been right about everything so far.’
She spluttered into her salad. ‘Right? What have you been right about?’
‘Didn’t I say that the secret of his success was failure?’
‘No. I did.’
‘Yes but you were talking about his failure. I say the secret of his success is the failure of the people who look up to him. They want a hero who isn’t there.’
‘I said the first part of that. You said the second.’
‘You/me – same difference. Man and wife are one flesh and all that…’
‘Man and wife? Is that a proposal?’
‘Could be.’
‘Does that mean that the Prince has unwittingly brought us together? Can something come of nothing?’
‘Is that a terrible thought?’
‘Terrible.’
CHAPTER XXVI
Retards
With his father dead, there was no one in the way of Fracassus’s rise, at least within the walled confines of Urbs-Ludus. His mother, who had spent increasing periods of time in her room, now never left it. As for his brother, no one knew where he was or would have recognized him had they known.
This situation released Fracassus into the fantasy that was himself. He bought up property, knocked it down or built it higher, as the fancy took him. He put casinos into poor houses and strip clubs into old people’s homes. From the sky, the Republic of Urbs-Ludus had begun to take on a magical quality, so vertiginous were Fracassus’s towers and so extravagant their illumination. From the ground it was now impossible to see a single star. You’re lucky if you get to see the moon these days, the architecture critic for the Urbs-Ludus Guardian wrote. You’ll be seeing the moon and the stars when I knock the crap out of you, Fracassus tweeted in response.
At get togethers of the Fracassites ‘Knock the crap out of him replaced ‘Chuck him out’ as the cri de rage, no matter that there was no actual person among them to rage against.
Some time towards the end of his third series of Stoppit! the producers called Fracassus in for a serious conversation about its future. ‘If you’re planning to axe me I’ll sue the shit out you,’ he announced before he’d even taken off his coat. They weren’t planning to axe him. Quite the opposite. So good were the viewing figures for Stoppit! that they’d been searching for a follow-up show. As ever, it was finding a good title that had held things up. But now they had it. The mystery was why it had taken them so long. Starttit! How good was that? Starttit! – in which young entrepreneurs, some of them perhaps reformed malfeasants from Stoppit! (television loved to recycle) would confide their business hopes and dreams to Fracassus and he would show them how they could be realised. Who knew better about starting a business than he, a penniless child from the shadow of the Wall who had clawed his way out of obscurity to light the sky up with his name? Everyone knew that Fracassus was born a Prince and given his own ziggurat every birthday, but the lie was so preposterous it was charming, and besides, everyone wanted to believe it. The lie that the Grand Duke Fracassus had made himself out of nothing allowed the people to believe that they could make thmselves out of nothing too. In the flagrancy of the falsehood they found a new spirituality of material hope.