Chapter 212: Next Door (5)
Kehehehe. I won.
It seemed our Mr. Adams had become quite displeased, because a hard grinding sound came from his mouth, and the corners of his eyes trembled.
“…I understand your opinion very well.”
“I’m glad it got through.”
As a polite young man thoroughly versed in the Three Bonds and Five Relationships, Mokminsimseo, and Myeongsimbogam, I smiled brightly at the elder who said he understood me and returned my left hand to its original position.
He was old enough and ugly enough to try and seize the initiative against someone young enough to be his son, but he was still an eeeelder, was he not. One had to show courtesy to someone who would climb Bukmang Mountain before I did. Ahem.
Adams stared at me for a moment, then disappeared first into the main assembly hall with the sound of his shoes striking the floor, while the Federalist legislators followed behind him, each of them looking at me as if they had just seen a ghost.
What did they take me for?
This Guillaume was a real man. If someone looked at me like I was shit, then I was the kind of real man who gave them a reason to think so. How dare they try to set fire to me. Let them come if they wanted. I would show them exactly what it meant to truly set someone’s mouth on fire so thoroughly they would not even be able to gather their bones afterward.
“Your Excellency, was it really all right to provoke him like that?”
“If it truly bothers you, then give me some covering fire.”
“H-hahaha!”
Jefferson pressed a hand to the bridge of his nose and laughed as if I were impossible to deal with.
“Well now. I regret my former self. I should have recruited Your Excellency back when I was the American ambassador to France!
How about it? Even now, won’t you take back what was said then and come to America?”
“Hm. If Secretary Jefferson is willing to proclaim me Emperor, I might consider it.”
“That’s unfortunate. Our United States is a republic.”
“Why? Thomas Jefferson, Chancellor of the American Empire, sounds rather impressive, doesn’t it?”
“Hm, I think Secretary has a better ring to it.”
What a pity. I would have been perfectly willing to take the post of God of the New World.
“We should go in now. I’ve already stirred their anger enough. If we loiter here any longer, I feel as though I’ll be challenged to a duel.”
“Understood.”
I opened the oak doors of the main chamber and stepped forward slowly.
The structure of the chamber was a small central hall ringed around by chairs in a circle. It was as if the seating of the Colosseum had been lowered to the exact eye level of the gladiators.
That’s right. It was a Colosseum. Not one where gladiators in swords and helmets fought to the death as in Roman times, but a Colosseum where gentlemen in formal dress and top hats fought with pens and tongues as their weapons.
And today, I was climbing into the arena not as a spectator, but as a gladiator.
In the red corner stood me, the gladiator; in the blue corner, the American legislators grinding their teeth. Ah, it made the heart thrill. If a man stood in this hall three times a day, thirty minutes after meals, he’d never have to worry about heart disease.
What a shame. If only this era had television or radio, I could have recorded their mouth-fighting, sold it across the world, and earned some tidy money. No one in this world hated watching politicians get torn apart.
“Now then, let us begin.”
—Scrape.
The moment Vice President Adams, glaring at me, said that, one legislator rose from his chair and shouted while slashing his index finger through the air.
“The cause of this diplomatic friction is simple! The excessive corruption of a French diplomat, and behavior beyond all common sense! No more and no less!”
“Ah, is that so?”
“Is it not? A diplomat of a nation openly spoke of bribery and insulted a foreign country. Is that not naturally worthy of criticism?!”
A perfectly straightforward argument without embellishment. There was no lie in his words, only a simple listing of facts. Of course, as for the cause that had produced those results, he acted as though that was none of his concern.
A frontal attack. He didn’t want to say the wrong thing and get buried for it.
If I responded with a frontal attack too, the shape of things would turn strange. No matter what the cause had been, it was true that Talleyrand had done those things.
Which meant it was time for a Korean-style frontal attack.
—Click, click.
I straightened my shoulders, clasped my hands behind my back, and began tracing a small circle around the hall. For a moment the sound of my shoe heels filled that Colosseum clearly.
“Well, it is true that Vice Minister Talleyrand made excessive demands.”
“Are you admitting your country was in the wrong?”
“You are impatient. When a person is speaking, don’t interrupt.
…Thank you. In any case, as I just said, Vice Minister Talleyrand’s demands were certainly beyond common sense.”
However—
I released my hands from behind my back and pointed at the legislator who had just spoken.
“Could any of you truly have refrained from doing the same?”
“Excuse me! What exactly do you mean by that?!”
“Sir, do you happen to have any brothers or sisters?”
“…I have one younger brother, two years younger than me. But why on earth are you asking that?”
“I’ll explain it naively for you. Now then—let us say bandits break into your neighbor’s house. Your kind-hearted younger brother empties his own savings to buy a gun and, after a fierce struggle with the bandits, succeeds in driving them away and preserving the peace.”
“Unfortunately, however, your brother is unlucky, and dies from a lead bullet fired by one of the bandits. The neighbor cries with you at the funeral and says he is deeply grateful, that he will never forget the favor.
“It is terribly sad, but what is done is done. The living must go on living, and so you bury your brother’s death in your heart.
“But then, about ten years later, something strange happens. That same neighbor who once cried with you at your brother’s funeral is suddenly seen walking arm in arm down the street with that very same bandit.
“You are so hurt and dumbfounded that you go to ask the neighbor just what in the world he thinks he is doing. And that neighbor says this.”
I paused for a moment and swept my eyes over the legislators.
“He says: ‘Why are you butting into someone else’s household affairs?’”
Silence. Not a single person could carelessly let words spill from their lips.
Well then, what do you think, you bastards? This is the “what if it were your family?” line, two hundred and fifty years ahead of schedule. Doesn’t that twenty-first-century style of argument hit nice and hard?
After a long silence settled over the hall, that same legislator once again shouldered the burden and broke it.
“……Isn’t that comparison far too much of a leap?”
“A leap? Ah! I must be too stupid, because I fail to see exactly where the leap is. Would the honorable gentleman care to explain it to me personally?”
“To begin with, calling them family—”
“Well now! I fail to see why that is a leap. Were the Frenchmen buried in this American land not someone’s husbands, sons, and brothers?”
“……They were.”
“Then they are family, aren’t they? Right?”
“……”
If he refuted me, he became human trash ignoring the death of family. If he agreed, then he had already been persuaded by me.
Go on, hit me if you like. But be prepared to see yourself splashed across tomorrow’s newspapers in giant letters.
“Our France willingly sacrificed itself to defend the liberty, equality, and fraternity upon this land! And yet you seek to place the dishonor of interference in domestic affairs upon us! When exactly did we tell you to change your policies!? If a simple diplomatic protest counts as interference in domestic affairs, then when the Federalist Party dispatches an envoy to Britain, are you going there to hand your domestic affairs over to Britain diplomatically?”
Ahh. The feeling of impact was exquisite. Every time I struck, I could see their faces rot a little more, and it made me want to beat them even harder.
You sons of bitches. I went to the graves of our fallen soldiers with your President, paid my respects, rode horses, ate with the citizens—I did all that.
“When you called upon us, when we fought together, we were your dependable ally. But now that we’re dead, we’re just your bothersome ally? Even some filthy gypsy fortune-teller in the market wouldn’t say something like that! Isn’t that right, gentlemen?”
“Hear, hear!”
Was that James Monroe of the Democratic-Republicans? He was responding beautifully, and it made me feel quite good. Oh ho ho.
In the end, with their faces twisted as far as my sword dance had twisted them, the Federalist side finally sent out its strongest card.
“Very well, former President Guillaume. There is one thing I would like to ask. May I?”
“Vice President Adams, you are seated here now as President of the Senate! Maintain political neutrality!”
“I may be President of the Senate, but I am also the leader of the Federalist Party. I ask now in the capacity of leader of the Federalist Party.”
Adams trampled the Democratic-Republicans’ objections lightly underfoot and looked at me.
“Well? May I?”
“Yes. Go ahead.”
“My thanks.”
Adams leaned forward toward me and opened his mouth.
“What is it that you want from our United States? What sort of decision would you like America to make? Should we summon back John Jay, our envoy to Britain, at once? Or would it be enough if we issued a declaration of support for the alliance? Or perhaps we should declare war on Britain this very moment? Go on then—speak freely and honestly.”
Hmm. He says I should speak freely and honestly, but it seems to me he’s dug traps all through his words.
If I answered carelessly there, that would be unmistakable interference in domestic affairs. No excuses would work. I’d be openly saying, “I want your America to do this.”
I was sorely tempted to feed him one more poetic middle finger, but if I did, this really would end in a pistol duel.
To avoid that, I had to beat him with words while dodging this thorny path. If I wanted to say something our Mr. Adams would dislike, what should I say?
From France’s perspective he was irritating, but from America’s perspective Adams was a patriot. I could see it plainly—his determination to shut his eyes and ears completely and endure, endure, and endure again until America across the Atlantic gained enough weight to stand on its own, because he absolutely could not bear to see that newborn nation get dragged recklessly into Europe’s flames and end up broken beyond recovery.
And he wasn’t wrong. The moment the great European powers with populations of over ten million projected their strength, America would shatter.
I clasped my hands behind my back again and spoke.
“Hm. Vice President. I’m sorry, but I fail to understand what it is you fear so much.”
“Why pretend not to know? You know perfectly well.”
Huh. How did he know?
“To the north lies British Canada, and in the Atlantic to the east, the Royal Navy. To the west lies the Viceroyalty of New Spain. And France, our so-called ally, is farther from America than Britain itself. Is that not enough of an answer?”
“British Canada is frozen wilderness with very few inhabitants, and the Royal Navy is spread across every sea in the world, so if they issued a general mobilization just to strike America, their dominance across the world’s oceans would collapse. It would take at least two to three months to cross the Atlantic, and during that time the Netherlands and Spain would hardly sit still, would they?”
“And do you not know that same Spain lies to our west?”
“Don’t you know that French Louisiana and Arkansas form a natural barrier? And for your information, General Dumouriez—the very great commander who defended our France twice over from the military powers of Prussia and Spain—has been appointed there.”
“…Very well. Then I will ask one last question.”
Adams spoke with a hardened face.
“Can France abandon Paris for the sake of Philadelphia?”
“Gladly.”
Really now. I told you we were sharing the American Dream, didn’t I?