Part 3 - Running Into the Great Wall by Ken Kesey (continued)  Part 2

The eyes turned back to the second journalist; his limbered brow indicated he might be ready with his response.

"Have you noticed," was the way he started circling around to it, "how many good ethnic jokes are making the rounds lately? Not just Polish jokes, and not just cheapshot slurs, but good clean bullseyes at a variety of deserving targets?"

"Probably a side effect of the resurgence of racism," was the businessman's impatient analysis.

"No, no, no," number two journalist protested. "It isn't that. Let me show you what I mean . . . "

He scooted forward out of the collapse of the divan and took a long pull from his free gin-and-tonic, preparing his lungs and throat for a topic that obviously fascinated him.

"I believe-and I got this from a black buddy, Arzinia, a good ol' bass player and bullshooter- that there are only two races. The Men and The Women. Everything else is tribal-Jews, Texans, loggers and so forth. So when you tell a sexist joke, you are really being a racist, and vice versa. Now racist jokes are dull and dumb, and tell you more about the teller than the butt. For example: What do you get when you put a black in a blender? Answer: a nig-nog. Now see that says nothing at all about the joke's target. About the dimwit behind'the trigger, however, it tells you a great deal. Not only is he dull, dumb and probably paranoid, he is as undiscerning a marksman as he is a jokester. He's flock shooting, blowing B.B.'s in as broad a pattern as his scattergun will blast, to be sure of hitting something."

Everybody had to nod at this and take a solemn sip in tribute to the notion, whatever it was, and let it roll on:

"A good, ethnic joke, on the other hand, needs a clear head, a keen eye and a certain talent for wing shooting. It must relate directly and perceptively to the tribe of its butt at the time of the joke's telling-all honorable targets are moving, targets-or the joke becomes a joke on the jokester. Example from the past: 'Good gawd Mort, you look terrible! I thought that hunting trip to California woulda perked you up. Didn't you bag no trophies?'

"'I did, Doc. That's the trouble. I shot and slew a creature so strange and vile and upsetting that I left it where it lay and come straight home with the shakes.'

... What'd it look like, Mort?'

... Wal it was shortish, and hairy, with a big runny nose and great long toenails, and it smelt like hell. . .'

. "'Good gawd, boy; you kilt an Oakie!'"

No response. Except a blink from the businessman, who had once been a coach at Oklahoma State and currently had a son and daughter enrolled there in business and pre-med; he moved up out of the deep crump of the divan to get a better look at this journalist about ready to represent his company's publication. He hoped they hadn't hired another Hunter S. Thompson...

"See?" said the journalist, "Nothing. Worked in the thirties, maybe, when the grapes were in wrath. In the eighties, nothing." Taking the businessman's edge-of-the- seat attention for admiration, he directed his next example at him:

"Now here's a good ethnic joke from last year: What do they call a first offender in Iran?"

"I give up,," the businessman had to reply; "What?"

"Lefty. And here's an example of last season's Polish joke now no longer relevant: What's the motto of the Polish Union?"

"I give up, what?"

"Every man for himself. Doesn't work so good this season, does it, because of Solidarity's stance against the Russians? Okay, here's an example of this season's good Polish shot with a little combination bank off the Italians." He directed this one at the stewardess, whose interest seemed to be wandering. "You hear the Pope got shot again?"

"Mother of God, no! What happened?"

"The Vatican hired the Polish Secret Police to re-enact the crime."

Laughter, finally, from the businessman. The stewardess, clutching her crucifix, didn't think it was that funny.

"I didn't think that was funny."

He kept after her. "Here's this season's hottest Irish joke: What do you do if an Irishman throws a pin at you?"

"I give up," the girl answered through a wary smile, "What?"

"Run. He's probably still got the grenade in his mouth."

This time she laughed along. The journalist concluded she wasn't an Irish Catholic after all and re-holstered his wit, many Irish bullets still unfired.

"Anyway. The successful ethnic joke must work out of mutually shared information pool, is my point, and the pool must be relatively fresh. All three participants, joke-teller, tellee and butt, should be able to appreciate the humor." He bored on toward his conclusion. "It is for this reason, as far as I have been able to conclude, that there are no Chinese jokes! Think about it? Anybody know any Mao jokes? Any Gang of Four jokes?"

Everybody thought about it. Nobody knew any.

"For decades the place has been so shielded, so secretive, that the rest of the world has not been able to find a foible or flaw to hook a joke on. Nor will a graft take. Take this joke for example: What's Jewish foreplay consist of? Thirty minutes of begging. Now substitute 'Chinese' for 'Jewish'. See? Meaningless, thus unfunny."

His point secure, he took another swallow and slid back into the divan.

"That's one of the things about a curtain of bamboo: It gets so thick so quick. A few short years, you can't see a thing through it. No characteristic idiosyncrasies. No quirks. No rotten spots. No way to get in a good zinger because no soft ethnic underbelly has been exposed, yellow or otherwise."

"Until now?" asked the editor, relieved at the way his man had wiggled through a sticky situation.

"Right. Until now. Maybe. Now they are sponsoring this big prestigious marathon with top runners from all over the globe, even though the best Chinese marathoner is slower by many minutes than the times of the most mediocre from the rest of the racing world. This may be the crack in the curtain the jokester has been waiting for. Remember what your secretary gave as a possible reason for their poor times? That maybe it was because they had to take a lot more steps than normal runners."

"Not much of a joke," the editor judged.

"Nope. Not a great joke for man, perhaps, but it could be the first little step for a whole hell of a lot of mankind.. ."

The speaker over the bar crackled. "Pan Am's Clipper flight for Beijing now available for boarding," a soft, Georgia Peach drawl advised; "Y'all have a nice trip." The journalists rushed to finish their drinks.

"Calm yourself, guys," the stewardess informed the trio, herself calmly unfolding from her seat and straightening her skirt. "You get free booze in business class, too."

In the dew-laden dawn outside of one of Tanzania's 8000 ujamaa villages, tall, handsome Agapius Mason (best time: 2:20:46) sat beside the road on his wicker suitcase. He was waiting for the local bus that would take him to the central station in Dar es Salaam where he was to meet his coach for the ride to the airport. The so-called Dawn Express Local was already tardy by nearly 40 minutes of daylight and Agapius would not be surprised if it became later by twice that time, and twice again, before the bus arrived. His coach and trainer would then be forced to proceed on to China without their athlete, with no certainty of another flight until after the race.

How so like the Tanzania of recent, he thought forlornly; with such a teetering bureaucracy that everybody gets in on the race but the runner. Even the most avid supporters of President Nyerere's socialistic progress were beginning to admit that the nation's economic strife was caused by more than increased oil prices and recent droughts and floods. Oil prices had increased for all nations; droughts and floods had always been. And if sweeping socialist reform had brought clean tap water to half of the villages and increased life-expectancy by 20 percent in a decade, it still took often as long as two years to install the few connecting pipes that would bring that pure water to the kitchen sinks; and what was the joy in a longer life when the warm traditional tribal amenities and respect toward the aged was as rare as the old stylized drum-dances?

As much as the race itself, Agapius was looking forward to visiting the People's Republic of China. If the dream were to live, reaffirmation must be found there, in the mightiest stronghold of the Third World experiment. Everybody knew there was no juice in Russia any more, no kuntu as the Bantu put it. No baraka, as the Arabs would say. And the boat loads hysterical to escape Cuba and Haiti for the capitalistic coasts of Florida did not speak well of Castro's collective. But China... ahh, China... surviving Mao's madness as well as Brezhnev's belligerence if great China could not accomplish it, perhaps it could not be accomplished.

He heard a motor and stood to wave at the approaching headlights. It was not the bus. It was a loaded sisal truck that had encountered the bus miles back, stuck crossways in the middle of the tiny road, front wheels in one ditch, backwheels in the other. The bus had been turning around to return to pick up the week's mail for the village that the driver had forgotten.

One of the truck's drivers boosted Agapius' luggage to the top of the load of fiber and invited him to join it for the ride on to the city. They would have invited him into the cab but, in the nation's battle against rampant unemployment, there were now three drivers required in every vehicle of transport, whether they could drive or not.

Agapius thanked them and climbed the heap of fibers. How particularly Tanzanian-three men in a clean cab in filthy work aprons; one on top in the blowing white fluff in the only suit the family owned, black ...

Continued in Part 4