Day 8

re: RUCHL OF THE STETL

09.23 With an expanded tummy
Subject: Thank you

Dearest Darling Forsythia,


Thank you for the chocolate cake. It arrived more or less intact, less a chunk along the top. There were the most delightful little nibblesome teeth marks along the edge of a surprisingly large crater. I could swear it bore the signs of a cover up, as though someone had eaten it and then tried to pack the hole with wadded up newspaper clippings and mud-made-to-look-like chocolate-Grand Marnier butter crème. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?

As regards a company mission statement, no, I do not believe we ever got round to ‘whipping one up.’ Did you have anything in particular in mind? I await your inspiration with baited breath.

By the way, seeing the tip of your nose – or least I assume it was the tip, though it may have been a parsnip – sent me into a minor exultation. I am thrilled you agree about the importance of merchandising. By all means include soft toys, but before you make any decisions, I urge you to study the giants. You know, the Disneys, the Bushesnblairs, the Neo-Cons, the Bin Ladens. They are good examples to follow when it comes to obsessing over the Really Big Picture. Neither exclude nor neglect any one of their ideas. We must not be pipped to the post where greed, avarice and the pursuit of victory are concerned.

Yes, a top-secret visit to The Eternal City (I’m speaking of Rome, not your aunt Filominé’s discount underwear emporium) is not only necessary, but vital for our very existence. I took care of the tickets and hotel reservations, but require someone to transport this hideous computer to and from the airport. I’m useless! Why couldn’t I have been devoured by a laptop? Will you oblige? I would rely on a personal concierge, but you never know if and when they’ll blab to all their other clients, do you? We need absolute secrecy, the reasons for which I shall explain in the car.


***

14.30 Upon our return from Rome
Subject: Les affaires Vaticanical

Dearest Darling Forsythia,


What can I say, my dear? We are simply radiant from our trip to The Eternal City! How crass I was to have complained so unceasingly on earlier visits about the mountains of dog excrement on the pavements? When I wrote that unthinking letter (was it March of last year?), complaining about how my shoes and trousers and even my zizi had all died inglorious deaths from exposure to that most adhesive and claylike of substances, and was the Italian government, perhaps, importing it from third world countries to balance their books and fill Berlusconi’s bank account, I must have been in a very foul mood indeed. How life and circumstances change! Of course, it wasn’t raining this time, and it certainly didn’t hurt that I was, to put it bluntly, an honoured guest. Papa Razzi simply adores me (and you, for that matter), and even moved into the little nun’s closet down behind his bathroom so I could spend a most comfortable week in his boudoir. Looking back on it, I’m not entirely sure whether his footnun and nunfunctionaries and other factonuns were under the impression that I was his holiness – an understandable confusion, since Papa Razzi is short and fat and round and white and my computer is small and white – but I was served the most divine food since Ferdinand Point went to his heavenly reward. Everybody went out of their way to bow and scrape and call me “Your Holiness” (especially his attendant nuns, whom are affectionately called my razzi-totzis – only in a Bavarian accent – by the great man. Even the papal urologist asked how my holy spigot was functioning this morning. Under these conditions, you can well imagine that Eternal Roma quite simply flung open her doors to me. The sun shone day and night, the streets sparkled, and, had it not been for a most unfortunate incident having to do with Sunday Mass, I might have been tempted to continue my deception indefinitely. Why not? After all, I am young and vigorous – everything Papa Razzi is not – and I’m sure I could do things with the papacy no one has ever thought about (except, perhaps, the Borgias, but that was such a long time ago they’ve simply forgotten how it’s done). But I digress. Unfortunately for me, I was undone by the fact that everyone in the Vatican is so ancient. Also, they will insist on mumbling. Haven’t they heard of elocution lessons? When they take their vows of silence, couldn’t they add, “and I shall speak with great clarity and vigour whenever I break this vow?” What happened was, I was asked – (I’m not sure by whom - instead of saying My name is Bishop Sulfurious from East Munich and I crave Your Holiness’s blessings, they launch into some stupid obscure theological question, with the expectation that you will actually know, not only who they are, but all the answers as well, without having to resort to your notes or personal lawyer) – some tedious and utterly unnecessary question concerning that morning’s Mass in St. Peter’s. Understandably, I misunderstood, thinking they had said mess and were accusing me of relieving myself under the great alter. Needless to say, I was quite indignant and told them what I thought of them, ending my tirade by demanding to know why that particular vessel had been standing placed on the altar in the first place, within easy reach, if it was not meant to serve an old man with a venerable prostate during Divine Emergencies? Of course, by that time I was quite carried away by my newly acquired role of Temporary Pope. Needless to say, it was not a wise thing to do, opening my mouth like that, as Il Papa’s myriad minions immediately grew just a teeny tiny bit less reverential. “Oh, fuck,” they must have thought. “That’s all we need now. Here goes another pope. First it’s dementia, then he dies. Then we’ll have to call everyone back. Then we’ll have to clean that little stove again and chop firewood and start all over from scratch.” However, before they got completely carried away and summoned the undertaker, the real Papa Razzi managed to break down the closet door and escape. He ran out into the corridor yelling something not very nice in a heavy German accent. And suddenly, there we were - two little short white objects, standing side by side. And there they were, a bunch of Razzi-totzis and ancient and quivery bald white men in purple beanies, all rushing about screeching “It’s a Miracle! The One has become the Two!” Bedlam it was. Simply Bedlam. I have since been lead to believe that such behaviour is very much par for the course. Leading such sheltered lives, they do get overheated quite easily. His holiness’ mouthpiece (officially called The Papal Organ) informed me that I shouldn’t be surprised if, one of these mornings, I wake up with one of those incurable, painful and ugly diseases reserved for only the most saintly of martyrs.

But as always, I digress. You are familiar, are you not, with those plastic glow-in-the-dark statues and busts of the pope? You know the ones: flick the switch and the head lights up, the mouth opens and closes, and a pious and mellifluous blessing fills the room from its many loudspeakers secreted in the base? Well, my dear Forsythia, we are convinced (my new friend Papa Razzi and I) that Bagel-in-the-Bare® can do one better! “Yeah yeah yeah”, I hear you sneer. “It’s already been done a thousand times. Don’t we all have one of those on our personal bedroom altar?”

Yes we do have at least one self-illuminated, talking, household popehead. They’re as common as margerine. Ours will make mere busts of Papa Razzi look like chopped herrings. Not only will we offer a glow-in-the-dark miraculous representation of the saintly Ruchl Immaculata Ultimata (and how divive is that), complete with moving parts, heavenly choirs, realistic frocks and gas fittings, but we can include (at an extra cost) up to ten of her favourite quotes from that seminal work, The Burning Bagels of Liege, Anno Domini CCCDXXXIV, replete with commentaries, concordance and footnotes. Plus, for an additional € 29.99 (plus € 167.82 VAT where applicable), over and above the once-in-a-lifetime low, low introductory price of € 19.00 (plus € 54.92 VAT where applicable), we will throw in a special, ultra-realistic Miraculous Ruchl™ Nitelite® featuring our beloved saint in two of her blessed childhood incarnations: Miraculous Ruchl™ of the Stetl™ playing the Zither in front of the Burning Bush® and Miraculous Ruchl™ the Clean™ Playing with her Big Brother Oingl™ in the Mikvah®.

I must close. Soeur Angelique from down the street is here to anoint my foot. – Laurent.
***

11.47 Having the rapturous vapours
Subject: Bagel Marketing

Dearest Darling Forsythia,


I was quite prepared to reject out of hand the suggestion by our director of marketing that we open a chain of Mediterranean yoga retreats. I mean, who does she think she is? If we wanted a voice of morality and good sense, we’d move our headquarters to Sicily, right? But then, for no good reason, I happened to mention my disquiet to the erstwhile squatters – who’d just happened to drop by to return the bathroom fittings they’d inadvertently borrowed. Because of their reaction – which was swift and compelling, I have become a better person. My stance has been modified. It could very well be, could it not, that by combining deluxe yoga holidays with Bagel-in-the-Bare Holiday Escapades®, we shall have tapped into a font of utter bliss, not to say money? Could, which is not the same thing as would. Either way, one thing is for certain: our director of marketing is proof positive that if you promise an employee improbable remuneration, corruption is sure to follow. Personally, I find great inspiration in this, as I’m sure you do. Isn’t life grand?

On to other matters. In your text (please do not communicate in this way. In these dark and cramped quarters my phone takes on an evil aspect, and I am prone to nightmares) you mentioned that Crete is possibly too small and inconsequential a market for us to worry about. Perhaps, but my dear Forsythia, should we not put such negative thoughts aside and consider the thrice Golden Word? Tourism! Tourism! Tourism! Instead of dismissing Crete out of hand, should we not, perhaps, purchase the island, lock, stock and barrel and transform its entire acreage into the ultimate Bagel World Ancient Ruin Shopping Mall and Amusement Park®? I fully realise there are a great many useless ruins, as well as an exuberance of extremely ugly rubble lying about, but none of it has the historical or intrinsically artistic potential as anything our fibreglass workshop can turn out. Let’s face it, original temples and oracles may have been acceptable two and a half thousand years ago, but – as we all know – people living back then had absolutely no standards. Judging by the size of the structures (why were they so small? Were the people midgets as well? Or were they just lower class and extremely common?), I wouldn’t be caught dead praying in one of the temples. How common would that be? If their gods couldn’t do any better than that, they must have been downright useless! What I’m thinking is, for authenticity sake, we make everything BIG. Lots of music and dancing girls. Gold everywhere. Bagel blimps and glitter glitter glitter. It should be just as it was in olden times, before archaeologists painted everything brown and dirty and depressing. The reason I know it wasn’t that way back then was that, if it was, everybody would have killed themselves. And don’t tell me that they’re all dead anyway, because it’s not the same thing. They died later, after the Trojan horse died on them and the meat went bad before they could eat it all.

But forget about back then. Think about now. Now, this year, who wants to be around brown and dirty and depressing (with the possible exception of undertakers and designers of government office furniture)? More importantly, who wants to pay us three-quarters of their salary just to see brown and dirty and depressing and tiny little temples? No one, that’s who. So it’s agreed. We shall plough it under, every last molecule.

As for your next question, I am positive there will be space on the small hillock next to the Magical Pool of Joy and Fulfilment® for a ultra-luxury model Miraculous Ruchl™ Immaculata Ultimata Shrine and Laundrette® (and if there’s not room, then the staff – many of whom, after all, won’t know any better - will have to sacrifice their living quarters to make room). When can we bring in the earthmovers? And before I forget, make certain that the director of marketing is publicly excoriated (or do I mean thanked). Perhaps we should name a bagel after her. The Pickles O’Day Salty BloaterBagel®. Someone has got to take the credit for projects of vision and genius, and it might as well be her.

Now that that is settled, tell her to spend less time with her children and get to work. They are far too fond of her, and I seem to recall one of them – the small smelly one – once biting me on the knee. Pickles O’Day needs to break ground on the Himalayan Franchise. Now. Before anyone notices. Can’t you hear me screaming? Move it! Move it! Move it! Holy fuck, do I feel exhilarated!

Try to remember not to post my memos on the website like last time. Both of us have cherished reputations to consider.
PS. In the middle of a photo opportunity with Papa Razzi, I accidentally caught sight of myself in a mirror, and nearly passed our from disgust. I am entirely en neglegé. The first thing I did upon arriving home was to phone Louis Vuitton. I can see no excuse for computers to lack design sense. Just because they’ve been built by engineers doesn’t mean they have to dress like them as well!
***

20.03 Brimming with ideas
Subject: Shrine plans

Dearest Darling Forsythia,

In a little more than a month, it will be May Day, whatever that means.
I have potentially Exciting News® regarding our Miraculous Ruchl™ Immaculata Ultimata™ Shrines®!

While in Rome, I took advantage of my friendship with Papa Razzi and introduced the Cause of our Beloved SOG (Servant of God). As I had feared, however, he and those doing his bidding were prepared to be utterly uncooperative. Can you believe it? After all I have done for them? Do you know what they said? That (1) they had not heard of our beloved SOG, and (2) they were unaware she had died, and (3) they were ignorant of any miracle attributed to anyone call the Miraculous Ruchl™. Of course, their Bavarian-accented Latin management-speak told me all I wanted to know: that they are under the thumbs of their evil political masters. How sad, that not even the keeper of a billion souls is open to new ideas!

Being me, I was, of course, prepared for such callous intransigency. In a beautifully prepared statement, hand written and illuminated on the whitest velum, I issued our rebuttal.

My dearest Papa Razzi, Organ of God, Enforcer of Matters Inquisitional and Santa Claus,

Please know that the following is the Indisputable and Nonnegotiable Truth, as God sees it:

(1) Your Holiness denies all knowledge of Our Beloved SOG, the Miraculous Ruchl™ Immaculata™ Ultimata™, Patroness of Fleshpots, Chocolate Fountains and Laundrettes®. Our Beloved SOG, the Miraculous Ruchl™ Immaculata™ Ultimata™, Patroness of Fleshpots, Chocolate Fountains and Laundrettes®, has not heard of Your Holiness either, but that does not necessarily mean Your Holiness does not exist. She does, however, know that Your Holiness’ telephone is always answered by a Razzi-totzi, even at three in the morning. Furthermore, she is in possession of the private number of the lower order of media barons, and is wondering if, perhaps, they should be told.

(2) The fact that the Miraculous Ruchl™ spends much of her time walking and talking proves conclusively that NOT ONLY is she bodily incorrupt, but that she is also MENTALLY AND SPIRITUALLY incorrupt, as well. Wasn’t she trained by her mother, The Blessed Sadie-in-the-Stetl™, to be a devoted wife and mother and always to keep a clean house and shiny windows? A husband, a daughter, and two potential doctors yet live and struggle in their earthy rigours! How could Miraculous Ruchl™ leave them alone, miserable, and disconsolate without being talked about behind her back? As I told Your Holiness’ favourite Razzi-totzi-floozi, “please kindly utilize an ounce or two of mental anguish in the future. Avoid making blind and scurrilous value-judgments.” The totzi, une fusante de la volière, one whose ears are stoppered against even the blessed name of the Miraculous Ruchl™, dared to dismiss her as of being of No Consequence. God’s Wroth™ trembles at her impudence, and the mountains sink beneath the waves!

(3) The mere fact that the local archbishop is unaware of the existence of our much venerated and beloved SOG speaks about the invisibility of her sanctity. It tells me he is blinded by her incorruptibility. That he knows not of the many miracles she has performed is a miracle unto itself. Three miracles that makes! Three blessed occurrences for Your Hulinooss Papa Razzi to dwell upon. If that not be proof enough and he remains repugnant, I shall make it my life’s work (at least until next week) to search out more of her fundament. Not that it matters. Given that out director of marketing is working so diligently to ensure premature world domination by Miraculous Ruchl™ and Her Many Marvellous Causes® I doubt whether anything a fat little papushka can say will make any difference. This very morning I have rung up the Devil’s Avocado (himself) in the Office of the Propagation of Faith. During our conversation, I required and received the proper measure of obliviance. He demonstrated an unprecedented scandal of adoration, a Lox Populi of the twelve wintry glories!

I remain, Your Most Huly Papa Razzi, Vicar of the World, your most divided onion, The Author of this Adoring Epistle.

That much having been accomplished, my dearest Forsythia, perhaps you should (discretely, of course) consult with our Corporate Executive Committee. Ensure that, in the humble opinion of that august assembly, that Société du Bagel-in-the-Bare® and its subsidiaries and divisions should throw their entire worldly muscle behind the cause of our beloved SOG. It could be REALLY BIG! Think Lourdes (multiplied by seven dozen). Think Fatima (only with better grammar). Think Mecca (only with comfortable chairs). Throw them all together and add a really really adequate press agent (I was thinking Max Whatisname). Visualise a Miraculous Ruchl™ Immaculata™ Ultimata™ Shrine™ Laundrette™ Magazine Stand™® in every major city. In every minor city. On every street corner in every neighbourhood of every fleabag town and village on the face of this planet. On every farm. On every outdoor toilet. And each and every one complete with Genuine Quaint™ Stetl™ Themeparks™, each one serviced by a Gloriously Beautiful and Perfectly Tasteful and Utterly Yummy® Bagel-in-the-Bare® Seven Tummies of Wonder Tummy Stuffer Restaurant and House of Ill-Repute®. Think of it! A world overrun with Holy Trinity™ and Blessed Virgin Mary™ Ice cream™ flavours. Palates everywhere soothed and satiated by globules of Auto da Fe™ Crispie Crackles™, St. Laurence™ Barbequed Chocolate™ Ice Lollies™ and St. Hugh™ Chewy Wafers™ with Strawberry™ Sauce™.

Have you heard from our director of marketing since she developed this, to my way of thinking, inappropriately dangerous and morbid interest in Dr. Jimmy’s Cucumber Muscle Relaxers (which we don’t own!!!!!) and YogaBagels™? She is starting to turn very strange. I am, frankly, worried. A little spirituality is one thing. A couple of sanctified breads per day are acceptable. However, we must keep in mind that once fanaticism gets a grip on one, nothing good will come of it. Just look at the outrageous and exuberant proliferation of roundabouts!

But what did I just say? Roundabouts? Roundabouts! Roundabouts as locations for mini Miraculous Ruchl™ Immaculata™ Ultimata™ Shrines™ and Drive-In™ Bagel-in-the-Bare™ Bars™®, shrunk down to size, with room for only one topless dancer instead of the usual spectacular floor show. Roundabouts! Am I a genius or what?

To protect our proliferating trademarks, etc., I have authorised the engagement of an additional 5,200 lawyers. We were offered Versailles as temporary quarters for the legal department. Suitable? Or do you think we can do better? Advise me please. I cannot do everything on my own.

Please please please de-program our director of marketing. Wean her from this ghastly Eastern mumbo-jumbo. Either that or explain to her the difference between meditation and drunken stupors. It is hardly encouraging to clients when, seated in a lotus position, she fades from view and then proceeds to snore. Love to all, Laurent.

PS. Is dearest Majorie Doorhandle old enough to care whether or not I buy her the occasional present?
***

22.07 Reflecting on worldly affairs
Subject: Shrine plans

Dearest Darling Forsythia,

If I may be permitted to return once again to the source of our many blessings, how do you feel about luminous representations of the Miraculous Ruchl’s™ Transformation™ into the Blessed™ Virgin™ in the Lowly™ and Humble™ Jerusalem™ Taxi™®? It would, of course, necessitate that she wear a burka™, but what the Hell, burkas are the hot fashion accessory, are they not? What I’m thinking is, a Dior burka. Long and flowing. Incandescent. Sheer as finest gossimer. The Miraculous Ruchl™ must, of course, be fully recognisable. Her holiness™ must be seen to be believed. More than anything else, we must ensure that everyone who gazes upon her is fully aware that it is, indeed, she who is the one true and glorious Miraculous Ruchl™, the very same Immaculata™ Ultimata™ who leaps naked and wholly unashamed over each and every bagel™ in each and every logo™. Should, perhaps, a button be attached to every likeness, proclaiming her true identity and urging all comers to accept no substitutes? Such a gimmick has been used before with great success (I’m referring, of course, to Steif bears), but what works for one company works even better when the idea is stolen by someone else). How about a ring through her nose? Or, better yet, a phosphorescent glow over her head and a Heavenly choir proclaiming “Come, little children, it is I. I who am!”®.

I am sorry to hear about your carbuncles. Are they planning to be fatal?