The Art of Bugletry & Civil Society
The San Sebastian Chronicles, Part XXVIII
In the meantime, Desotto realized he was contenting himself with visions of vigorously mounting the ginger-haired barmaid from the Michelberg advertisement painted on the wall next to the tobacconist’s in town.
“Also! Also, batteries! The Marconi machine, if a portable variety, requires batteries. They are heavier still. They catch fire, they spill acid, they are dangerous. How has a bugle ever hurt anyone?”
Oh yes, Tomasso was still here. Desotto adjusted his trousers, poured more sweet wine in his port glass, and made a motion to say, Well…
Continued from…
“Shut up, Desotto! Or I will plunk you with my bugle,” Tomasso said with good nature. “That is the only way a bugle can hurt anyone: a plunking! A Marconi machine is practically a death trap. And not nearly as good as bugeltry from a technical perspective as I’ve said ad nauseum.” He actually choked down a bit of vomit at that part, perhaps from the rocking of the airship roiled the wine in his stomach. “At least in San Sebastian. Maybe in Ukraine or the Sahara or somewheres. But not here.”
Desotto ashed his cigarette. He returned from his sexual-theological machinations to the less lustful and boring thought of boxing. How often in his school days he’d boxed away his sexual fantasies.
Jab. Jab. Jab jab. Step. Bob. Slip. Jab jab jab. Hook. Jab jab. Upper cut! Hook again! Down goes my erection! Down goes Tomasso!
Tomasso kept blabbering, “And codes! Marconis are a spy’s dream. The frequencies are open to all. So you have to speak in code. When using a bugle you’re already in code! All the time. No dangers. It takes so long to create a disseminate a bugle code in the first instance that even if you could decode the other side’s bugletry, you couldn’t disseminate that easily. If one man broke a code, he’d have to teach it to another bugler, or use a bugle to demonstrate to another how it is. Whereas with a Marconi code, any code you want, once it is broken, you just write it down in a book and make copies what the code is and everyone knows. So much more secure. Also in the panic of battle on a Marconi, the radio man will often drop the code and just start speaking in the plain vernacular for all to hear, ‘Help we are stranded on Hill 240–4, there are thirty of us, we are out of ammunition, please help!’ And then what? They are all dead. If you have your bugletrist alive though, you can call out for help or relay information and the other side will be totally in the dark.”
“But they will hear the bugle even if they can’t understand it, you ass!”
“So what? That just tells you there is at least one bugletrist in a position. That is practically no information at all.”
“Unless you’re trying to sneak up on the enemy! Tomasso. Or lie in ambush! Tomasso. Or conduct a night raid! Tomasso. Or you’re surrounded but undiscovered! Tomasso! You cowshit! What about that? All of that?! Isn’t that the most obvious problem of bugletry? And a problem impossible to solve? That for it to work you have to blow a bugle as loud as you possibly can, thereby notifying the world of your presence?! Might that in certain tactical situations, if not many, especially in the rapidly modernizing methods of warfare, not sometimes create a special disadvantage!”
“Overall though — ”
“No, not overall!” Desotto’s hands were now in the air, in fists, boxing at the imaginary Tomasso just above the real Tomasso’s head. “You can whisper in a Marconi machine, Tomasso. [Jab.] Can you whisper into a bugle? I’m sure you probably whisper to your bugle, when you are curled up together with it at night. [Jab. Jab.] You can use totally silent key codes with a Marconi machine, bugle boy! [Jab.] You just press a tiny button and it makes a click audible only on the other end, and you can use Mr. Morse’s code, wrapped in another code again, or two. [Hook.]”
“But the echoes!”
“Echoes?! Echoes? Are we truly to rely on echoes! With a Marconi you can move from frequency to frequency. [Jab.] You can use repeating towers. [Jab.] You can easily move intermodally to telephone lines. [Jab. Jab.] You can use speakers of a lost language that the other side doesn’t speak, like Iroquois, or… just perhaps… Etruscan! Most unlike the five notes of the bugle scale! [Hook!] And you can turn down the volume on a Marconi’s sound projection cone, and also wear ear goggles to keep incoming messages totally silent to the enemy! [Hook. Jab. Jab. Jab!] So Marconi is better! It is better! It will keep getting better! And that is just for the army. What about for ships at sea?! Can’t you see that? It is better!” He was really pummeling the imaginary Tomasso now. The real Tomasso occasionally had to duck to avoid Desotto’s shadow blows. “Marconis are far more secure and better communication in all sorts of ways. [Hook!] They are the future! Bugletry is shit. Medieval idiocy. We may as well be using messenger pigeons and dogs. Tomasso! [Raining haymakers!] You cowshit!” Desotto paused, panting a little. “Bugletry is dead, Tomasso. And it will have no funeral. [Upper cut! Knock out!]”
“I said nothing about messenger dogs. Those are less than ideal. I am talking of bugletry. Far as that, what of its sonorousness?”
“Aiche! You can blow your trumpet with your ass, Tomasso.”
“It is not a trumpet, Desotto. You know this!”
“Your ass or your bugle? Enough! Enough, Tomasso. Stop talking. That is an order.” Desotto popped a fist on the table.
“But I outrank you,” said Tomasso, confused.
“Bugle corps ranks do not count for me. I’d sooner take orders from the T&TP postmaster-general. Plus, I am a trained boxer.”
Tomasso sat in silence for a moment. “Well, wait until you need one,” he said, crossing his arms. Desotto shot him a warning glance. “But enough of bugles for tonight.”
“Oy,” came a rumbling vocal thunder from by the valves across the main cabin. They’d forgotten he was there, but Tomasso and Desotto turned to see Ugo wiping his hands with his ever present oily rag. “Marconi macaroni far as me care, corporals. My favva were a bugletrist ‘imself.”
Desotto sighed and shrunk slightly.
Tomasso sprang to life. “He was in the Corps?”
“No. ‘Obbyist.”
Desotto turned in his booth, “Pardon me, and amateur bugletrist? I can scarcely believe there was such a thing… Mister Ugo. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. As a hobby. Not any different than others, that is. My boxing, for example. Silly things that is. And dangerous. Not like… amateur bugletry.”
“Oh, Desotto, you wouldn’t have heard of it and none of us remember it, but amateur bugletry used to be quite the thing, isn’t that right, there, Ugo?”
“Yeah, dat’s royght. Quite a fing it was then, in my favver’s youf. Went out of style I’d say,” said Ugo.
Tomasso explained, “You see, Desotto, bugletry was not truly perfected as a science until the Napoleonic campaigns.”
“Oh, I see,” Desotto nodded, skillfully pushing his sarcasm to just below levels detectable by his two current, guileless cabinmates.
Tomasso went on, “Yes, that was largely due to the difficulty in production of suitable numbers then of bugles of sufficient quality to allow for reliable differentiation between notes and that would support sufficient volume and sonic carriage. After Herr Metternich’s work, the early bugletrists of the continental armies returned home and took up amateur bugletry, honing the art at home as it was further developed in your various barrackses and martial bugle corps..es.”
“Dat’s right, dad’s dad were a bugler for Bianchi at Tolentino, if you’ll beg ‘is pardon. Dad took it up, but he were never in the army so to speak, so ‘e took up with others in our valley doin’ amateur bugletry. I remember it quite well growin’ up, me. I learned quite a bit of it, to ‘ear it anyways, though I never could play m’self. Didn’t ‘ave the lungs for it, I suppose.”
“I very much doubt that, Mister Ugo,” said Desotto, “But may I ask, what did one do as an amateur bugletrist?”
Ugo shrugged. “Communicate with like minded bugletrists ‘round.”
“Yes, you know,” said Tomasso, smiling broadly now, “all sorts of things. ‘How’s the weather where you are? Any news over there? Things are good here.’ That sort of thing. Gossip.”
“Fascinating,” said Desotto, nearly giving himself up to laughter. “Gossip then?”
“Ha,” croaked Ugo.
“Seriously, Desotto, I sometimes wonder if you ever listen to me. Bugletry would be a poor method for gossip, wouldn’t it? Audible as it is to anyone nearby who knows amateur bugletrish.”
“Yes, that’s precisely my — ,” Desotto stammered.
“I suppose you could make up a private code with nearby fellows, but you’d have to meet and decide on one and practice and — ”
“Yes, I know, Tomasso! You think I don’t listen? That’s exactly — ”
Ugo chimed in, “Yeah, it were mostly like Mister Tomasso there says. Seen any deer? Vat sorta fing. You might bugle to someone to the souff of you, ‘Can you see the northern lights? Because I can!’ Always good for a laugh that, as if you was such a bugler you were bugling from Sweden innat.” He chuckled.
Tomasso laughed too, “Oh, yes. There were all sorts of jokes in amateur bugletry.”
“I can only imagine,” said Desotto, accepting his fate. “I must confess I do not recall ever hearing amateur bugletrists honking about in my youth and certainly not now.”
“Oh, no, not now,” said Tomasso. “It’s a lost hobby that, like bear baiting or debating theology.”
“What about alpenhorns?” Desotto asked gamely.
“Alpenhorns! Ha!,” Ugo uproared, shuddering the cabin. “Do you go ‘round comparin’ crabapples to tarte de pommes a la Normande often, Mister Desotto?”
“Or lighthouses to the telegraph?!” Ugo and Tomasso shared a great laugh at that. “Alpenhorns!” Tomasso slapped his knee. “The less said about those tubes the better.”
“Well, what happened to it then?” Desotto asked, spreading his hands out.
“Amateur bugletry?” said Tomasso with a crick his neck.
“Yes! For fu — ”
“Why does anything die out. Children move on to new hobbies,” Tomasso grimaced and glanced at Ugo.
The giant spoke, “We should be honest, Mister Tomasso, corporal. It must be said vat the amateur bugletrist’s enfusiasm for the avocation was not always shared by ‘is neighbors.”
Tomasso sighed, “No. It is true. Being mostly carried out in it practitioners’ free time, amateur bugletrism took place mostly at night and in the evenings. The sound would carry better at night as well.”
Ugo took the relay, “Dats right. During battle’s one fing, but I will say vat buglin’ does make a mighty racket, especially if one’s neighbors is trying to sleep. Made your amateur bugletrist not exactly the high man at the inn.”
“So, my views on bugletry are not only mine,” Desotto guffawed, slapping his hand on the table. “They were shamed out of existence.”
“Strong word, vat,” said Ugo, stuffing his rag in his pocket and going back to his valves.
“Yes, I wouldn’t say shamed,” Tomasso sighed. “Perhaps nudged would be the right word. And it was…”
“What?”
“Well, it was made… ’em, well, technically speaking…”
“Yes.”
“Not, eh, legally permitted, as it were. Technically speaking…”
“Banned! Ha! I had not idea. What joy!”
“Well, not totally, you were allowed to bugle on an amateur basis during the afternoons, after Sext and before None. Anyone can. Even now. Totally allowed. No permit needed even, since two years ago. We’re working on changing the law to allow more mid-day bugling?”
“So there was that allowance, then, well, that’s something,” Desotto laughed. “And who’s working on this? You and Ugo?”
“I don’t know about Mister Ugo, but the Civilian Bugletry Guild and Board is lobbying the Circa Plebia and the Landestag each year.”
Ugo turned around, “You’re in the CBGB?”
“Yes, of course,” Tomasso beamed. “You too!”
“Corresponding member, me, Premadio District.”
“Wonderful! I should give you the old toot salute!”
Desotto could only stare agog as Tomasso held his thumb to his mouth, curled up his middle three fingers, stuck up his pinky, and let out a little lip fart. Desotto’s ironic horror continued as Ugo returned the gesture and the two laughed uproariously.
“Will I see you at the annual meeting in Lucho in August, Ugo? War should be over then, we all hope.”
“I haven’t been in several years, owin’ to my commitments ‘ere, but I could make it if I plan it wiff Miss Paz.”
“Splendid. I will write you over the summer and we can make arrangements.”
“Oh, say I can come,” Desotto groaned.
“Of course,” Tomasso nodded with a callow grin.
“Perfect,” said Desotto, “But back to the bugle ban. How did that play out?”
“Well, of course, most of your amateur bugletrists were at their daily work at the times permitted for bugletry, so you didn’t hear the die bella ottona after that,” moped Tomasso.
Ugo called out from the gauges, “Shame, that, bugeltry is music to my ears.”
Tomasso seemed to nearly sniff away a tear. “Yes, well, enough about bugletry, then, Corporal Desotto?”
Desotto smiled upside-downly and threw out his palms, “Beg your pardon, Tomasso. Didn’t realize the tenderness of the subject. Enough about bugles and bugletry for the evening. I quite agree.”
Desotto lit a cigarette, shook his head, smiled, and lost himself in the reverie of the absurd.
Continued…
