bout de papier, Vol. 14, No. 3 (1997) — Fall 1997 // Automne 1997, pp. 37–38
A special tribute to a long-time contributor
In the murky world of espionage and intrigue that A Aalto and his/her (their?) creations inhabit, it is often difficult to tell between reality and falsehood, virtue and vice, the genuine and the fake. There is however little doubt in our minds that the understandably anonymous piece we reproduce herewith is as Baywatch is to Lear, as Judith Krantz to Borges, or — if your prefer an analogy closer to home — as the ’Background’ section of a GMR Q and A is to a lofty think-piece produced by CPP. This is an inferior product, a pale, cheap and facile rendition that was evidently put together in a hurry, enlightens no-one and is frustrating to read. In a word, it is not the real thing. However, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and we reproduce “A Aalto – The Final Challenge” as a modest tribute to The Master (or is it The Mictrace 2)
It was a sultry August afternoon in Ottawa. At Fort Pearson, zombie-like foreign service officers sat slumped over their 386s, sporadically blurting out Points to Register. The loudest noise was an occasional buzzing fly.
Downtown, at the world headquarters of the bout de papier publishing empire, the scene was altogether different. In the plush 29th-floor boardroom suite, lined in purple velvet and featuring an entire wall of flickering TV consoles, it was pandemonium. The plate glass tinted windows that overlook the Byward Market pulsated in time with the latest miss from Edible Granite, blasting out from a huge boom-box over which Dryan Tweedie, the wan and lovelorn paramour of Granite’s lead singer, had draped himself protectively. Chief Inspector De Toombs, meerschaum pipe in one hand, a tattered copy of the Spring 1952 edition of bout de papier in another, was standing by the table, arguing heatedly with ace logician Ludwig Leibnitz, who merely shrugged and assented grimly every time De Toombs stabbed him with the pipe. A florid, brow-knit and kilt-clad Hector MacBannoch sat at the other end of the table, poring through a Thesaurus, muttering the odd Scottish profanity and scribbling in a tiny notebook. Large ear plugs could not conceal the brushes of white hair growing out of each ear.
Sitting cross-legged on the plaid carpet under the wall of TVs — on every one of which the distinguished features of Canadian Ambassador Tony Vincent were now looming like some vision from Orwell — MacBannoch’s assistant, the lovely and leggy Lydia Krantz, pulled nervously at her long black tresses and blinked convulsively. Miles Mercator, Deputy Cartographer-general to the Queen, was crouched uncomfortably beneath a large globe, one finger apparently tracing the outline of Tierra del Fuego. Uncharacteristically quiet, but still dominating the room from the black leather chair in which he revolved slowly and inexorably was Rialto Sleazewagon, dressed conservatively in an orangepolyester safari suit, a tasteful turquoise silk cravate at his neck, shiny winklepickers kicking idly at the carpet as he spun round
Suddenly, the double doors swung open. In strode the towering figure of Deborah Harry in a scarlet but low-key Christian Dior power suit, shoulder pads flashing aggressively, black briefcase in one hand, cell-phone in the other. Tweedie abruptly straightened up and, with an apologetic grin, stabbed at the “Power” button on the boombox. The silence was palpable.
All business, Harry, Executive Director of bout and the genius behind the ADM-of-the-month foldout spread that had taken the magazine into the bestseller charts worldwide, took her place at the head of the table and called the meeting to order.
“I think you all know why we’re here”, she began while efficiently powering-up her Mac laptop. “A Aalto, to whom every one of you owes your existence, has vanished off the face of the earth. We don’t even know where to start looking for him – or her.”
“But Debbie old girl”, drawled Sleazewagaon while summoning the sullen but luscious Lydia Krantz to fetch him a gin-and-tonic refill, “surely the editor – Collins, Callaghan, whatever his name is — surely he knows how to reach Aalto…”
“Sleazewagon, you fool”, interrupted Leibnitz in an uncharacteristically aggressive tone of voice, “that’s the whole problem. The secret of how to contact Aalto is a treasure that is passed on from editor to editor, a I kind of Holy Grail. But if you’d been read- : ing your Ottawa Citizen Sunday Magazine, you’d know that Coolin – who, I might add, is incapable of recognising a good pun when he sees one – was posted a month ago to Costaguano and was promptly kidnapped by the Che Guevara Front for National Liberation. They’re asking for a ransom of 8 million colons. DFAIT won’t play…”
“Can’t we get a message to him?” interrupted Mercator.
“We’ve tried that”, Harry answered, containing her impatience behind an icy glare. “We smuggled in a message, written in invisible ink on the latest copy of PANORAMA. He sent back a completed overtime claim form, with a note asking whether he would still have to pay his rent share now that he had been kidnapped”
Only the frantic scribbling of MacBannoch, whose ear plugs were still in place, broke the silence. Mercator nudged him and he fell off his chair with a crash, arms flailing. It sank in on all those present — with the exception of Harry, who had a standing job offer at Cosmo should the novelty of the ADM pinups fade or the flow of A Aalto puzzles dry up and bout sales collapse – that their very existence was at stake. If A Aalto could not be found, they would slowly fade away and disappear into magazine limbo, populated by long-forgotten characters from Beano and Seventeen.
“What about the editors that came before Coolin?”, Tweedie finally suggested.
Harry began counting on her fingers. For a moment Sleazewagon, who had once foolishly imagined that Harry could be his, recalled the heady days when she had strutted the stage at the Olympia, Paris, belting out “Picture this…” to an adoring crowd of 50,000….
“One’s at PMO. It’s well known that regardless of the amount of information that pours into PMO, not a scrap ever comes out. Another’s working for one of the security divisions and only talks in inaudible whispers, with her head bowed. Then there’s Robertson — left the service and now does media relations for the PM. Answers every question with the fact that the UN ranks Canada as the best place in the world to live. Oh, and there’s O’Shea in New York. I e-mailed him last week.
He wrote back in blank verse, saying he no longer knows anybody; the Big Apple has got to him”
Leibnitz pursed his lips and wrinkled his brows. The entire cast of “Entertainment” was transfixed. Finally, he opened his mouth. Nothing came out.
“Well, what is it, Leibnitz?” barked MacBannoch, still irritable from his fall.
“Pass me Coolin’s overtime form,” he said thoughtfully.
For several minutes the ace logician pored attentively over the rows of numbers, every so often turning the pink form over to check the leave codes.
“Hmm…” he muttered. “Double pay on the second day of rest….”
Minute by minute, the tension rose. Tweedie began absent-mindedly to pick his nose until Krantz transfixed him with the icy stare that had been known to drop Mongol ice-hockey goaltenders dead in their tracks.
“It’s really laughably simple,” Leibnitz finally announced, smoothing the bloodstained form out on the boardroom table. “What he’s tried to do is imitate an Aalto puzzle. You’ll notice that he’s never claimed more than eight hours overtime on any one day. Each of the numbers in the x1 column corresponds to one of the first eight letters and in the x2 — in otherwords the hours worked on a second day of rest — to the last eight. We can assume that he’s discarded Y and Z…
There was an expectant pause.
“Well?”, Sleazewagon finally drawled, several gins the worse for wear.
“Here it is!” ’, cried Leibnitz.
Letter by letter, chewing anxiously on his pencil between letters, Leibnitz spelled out what he had deduced. Slowly, it sank in on the others.
In his broad Scots burr, MacBannoch heavily repeated the letters, one by one.
“V-I-V-A-L-A-R-E-V-O-L-U-C-I-O-N”
“Dammit!”, De Toombs finally said, banging the table in frustration. “I always thought Coolin was unsound. Now he’s damn well gone over the top….”
The shadows lengthened as the sun sank slowly behind the Corel Centre. CNN had somehow been replaced by The World’s Funniest Home Videos, but with no sound. From underneath Sleazewagon’s empty glass, a wet stain spread slowly over the polished oak boardroom table. Harry’s expensive Mac beeped disconsolately every few minutes.
Can you succeed where Leibnitz failed? Can you reach Coolin’s jungle hideout, outwit his neo-Maoist captors, extort the identity of Aalto and return with the answer, unscathed, to bout HQ within twelve hours? The first correct entry to be opened will receive a vinyl LP of “Barry White: The Golden Years” and a copy of the best-selling “Drama at Midnight: the 1997 FSD debacle”
View the original scanned pages →
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 14, No. 3 (1997) — Fall 1997 // Automne 1997, pp. 37–38. Read the rest of this issue →
