Tries taking advantage of stage with ‘Power of Three’ presentation
The odd-shaped rounded figure reckons no one’s really watching him. People mill in clusters among the protest tents, food stations and the makeshift memorials to the dead bordered by stained-glassed candles and piled high with flowers.
He looks whimsically up at the stage, set up in the middle of Kyiv’s Independence Square, also popularly, and now historically, referred to as Euromaidan. The stage is the venue for amplified speeches, prayer, and occasionally song, but no one is using it at this moment.
Attempting to be furtive and inconspicuous, ambling about this way and that, he finds the steps up to the stage and with difficulty manages to mount them.
With his hands behind his back and humming a tune that doesn’t exist, he reaches the microphone. As though absentmindedly, he pokes the mic with a finger to check if it is on, the way you or I might pick a new leaf off a tree while taking our first walk through a park in the spring.
The mic is not on, so he switches it on – “Nyug.”
“Testing, testing, one, two, three, testing… And that’s the point of today’s lesson, ladies and gentlemen – the ‘Power of Three.’”
He stops and looks out into the street to see if anyone is taking notice – taking notice in a way that might mean they will want to stop him. After all, many of these people have come here in mourning, to pay their respects to the dead. Many others, who have faced death, or saw their comrades die not that long ago, are still in shock and dealing with the psychological trauma of those harrowing days. Virtually all are weighed down with the very real prospect of war and what it will do to their lives – if they are not killed. Indeed, the very country, currently known as Ukraine, may be destroyed – paying the ultimate price for wanting freedom from Russia and visa-free travel to Europe.
Some do look up at him, but mostly because annoying high-pitched feedback from the microphone has disturbed their thoughts. And of those who look, a still smaller portion wonder what that deformed-looking lump in an off-white twill suit is going on about.
Sort of understanding what he’s saying, they quickly figure out that he’s not going on about much of anything, and that as a speaker he’s simply not engaging, although he desperately tries to be. Eventually, most people ignore him and go about their day, but he thinks, since he isn’t being stopped, that he’s coming off as a success. Although the people figure that not stopping him is his own worst punishment. This eventually proves to be the case.
“For you see,” he’s saying with his scratchy grating voice, “the key to the Ukrainian government’s success on the world stage is in making its requests in sets of three. Yes, that’s right, ladies and gentlemen. Those running top countries around the world are busy people. This isn’t the 19th century. They only have so much time to make the most vital decisions every day, and believe you me, they’re not about to stand around and wait while Ukraine rattles off a litany of the things it would like to have for itself. Therein lies its failure to date.
“But that can change, my friends. That’s right! If the Ukrainians say they want, for example, sovereignty, democracy, and closer ties to the EU – three easy things to remember – instead of adding to that list, oh, things like Russian gas at a reasonable price, an end to corruption, rule of law, more transparency in business and civil society, significantly lower taxes, a more diversified economy capable of growth, higher wages and living standards, freedom of speech, well, well, well, nyoo-oog nyaaaooo hexcarebrafichel, that’s just a tad too much – nya-a-a-ooxer…”
The people looking up at the stage know they are being subjected to the desultory rant of a deformed clown. As Welsh Losser turns this way and that by way of emphasizing a point, they have begun to notice his humpback, the shoulder pads of his suit cleverly tailored asymmetrically in an attempt to hide the anomaly.
“Yes, that’s right, my friends” – he continues, buoyed by the increased attention from the crowd, which he interprets as the result of his effective and powerful speechcraft and eloquence, while a kind of sickly, self-emitting grease, rather than sweat, begins to cover his chin – “based on my secret sources and reliable inside information, it is an unfortunate fact that Ukraine’s parliamentarians have made a debilitating crutch out of an overreliance on PowerPoint presentations – that’s yesterday’s technology; moreover, it is long proven ineffective, and I submit to you, one of the major reasons for the Ukrainian government’s failure to establish a properly functioning country to date.”
No one is listening to him anymore. Near the stage, movements among a small group appear to be afoot to pull the idiot off the stage and drag him out of the square.
Losser receives the bad feeling and it sends a nervous tremor through him. He gulps hard and his repulsive lips – already an old man’s lips – go dry, as the crowd seems to part and dissolve before him, receding farther and farther away, like in a restless dream turning into a nightmare.
“My wife, nyieg-ho-ya,” he again begins, thinking that mentioning a spouse whose face looks like a melted cheese sandwich with a witch’s nose on it will somehow reestablish his legitimacy – a legitimacy that he, in fact, had never had. But aside from the small group of people that is beginning to circle the stage, the crowd that Losser has been beseeching to hear him draws still farther away.
That he should mention his wife at all strikes me as particularly absurd, given his sexual predilection for The Ferret, whose recent transformation into an insane psychopathic rat became the professed cause for Losser’s sudden revulsion toward the evil humanoid rodent.
Although that is not entirely true. For Losser has heard how The rat-faced-and-bodied Ferret has taken to walking around from tent to tent on Independence Square, accoutered in a khaki combat costume that seems meant to project the image of The Ferret as a powerful and influential military advisor among the revolutionaries, or, at the very least, a highly visible adjutant to a general.
The prospect of seeing The Ferret, dressed in uniform, excites Welsh Losser even though he shakes his fire-hydrant head in denial in an attempt to discard the picture of being physically close to a relentless rat Ferret in handsome combat gear backed by military power.
Losser sighs despite himself and that tingling sensation he recognizes as longing and lust runs through his loins.
A dog that looks like a man wearing a trench coat and sitting out on the asphalt in a folding beach chair opposite the stage reading what appears to be the latest issue of the nearly defunct English-language tabloid rag known as the Kyiv Poster suddenly crunches the paper under an arm (or leg) and begins barking viciously at Losser, baring his sharp teeth, making Losser jump back and miraculously shutting his mouth.
The small group is already on the stage, moving toward him, and one of the group has shut off the mic.
And what is this, anyway, this Penmanship International, of which Losser is purportedly the Managing Director, on behalf of which he gives these ridiculous ‘Power of Three’ speeches? Is it a real company, or is it a virtually nonexistent shadow firm concocted by Boss Lard to wield control over Welsh Losser while keeping him at arm’s length – even from the grave?
I’m sick of tracking this piece of shit. I’m fucking sick of it. Seeing him, that face, it’s fucking disgusting – that disgusting mouth – ugh, it makes me sick – and I can’t believe he thinks people actually want to look at that revolting nob, the walleyes barely obscured by tinted glasses, and communicate with him as an engaging orator dispensing deep thoughts and ideas in profound and intriguing speeches.
I’ve got to talk to Mack.
Filed by John Smith, March 24, 2014