Inspired by Eugene Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros,” this piece examines the prevailing perceptions of the upper class in Washington D.C., particularly in relation to recent events.
Off Pennsylvania Avenue in the Eastern Market section of Capitol Hill, I sit by my balcony table, five stories up on a quiet tree-lined street, and let the cold January air liven my fingers, toes, and ears while I sip my mid-morning espresso. It’s been a dull 11 months with this pandemic business, and the balcony offers the rhythms of the city, slowed as they might be.
Across the way is a gourmet Italian grocery and café. The bundled midday customers come and go, gloves wrapped around a latte or a tote bag of Masseto. The winter chill paces the brisk-walking denizens along the cobblestone sidewalk. They move a notch faster than they’d otherwise move. They do not rush, though, as there is no rush, and it is distasteful to rush, undignified, even – who can be rushed?
Seven blocks away, its body hidden by lower buildings, the Capitol dome orients Washington, D.C., a shimmer of neoclassical marble that charms the skyline and sets the eye West to the Washington Monument, and onward to the Lincoln Memorial in a clean line.
A distant rumble rattles my saucer and teaspoon. A mild earthquake, here in DC? Some construction mishap? Those slapdash luxury condo developments have been a headache, no doubt. No, no, it’s not a rumble. It’s gallops…hooves on pavement? In a moment I hear grunts too. A large, loose animal comes into view, what a scene! Are others seeing this? A rhinoceros barreling down Pennsylvania Avenue, straight towards the Capitol!
I’m not imagining things. The café customers halt mid-step and stare. “Well, I’ll be!” They crane their necks as the rhinoceros tears by and curves out of sight down the hill. Bemused, the customers move on. Yes, it’s a rhinoceros, but what is a rhinoceros to us? We’re a proper city, after all. Who’s to be consumed by frivolity? Given the chance, Washingtonians place our town a notch above other proper cities: a more manageable New York, a more temperate Chicago, a less provincial Boston, a cleaner San Francisco. Yet we are among them, and they are among us, and most importantly, we are all not among those who would entertain a scene longer than its due course.
Another rumble. Not from a distance this time. It builds within the belly of the Eastern Market Metro stop, right across the Avenue. The rolling elevators from the platform halt, and the commuters about to descend into the tunnel jump away, as if hit by the frigid winds that make Chicago winters untenable. Again, the noise sharpens into gallops and grunts, and five more rhinoceroses emerge from the incapacitated elevator, charging around the corner West down Pennsylvania, their massive, brutish bodies knocking down street signs. Here now, a dozen more rhinoceroses beat down the Avenue, and a dozen more follow, followed by dozens more, until there are hundreds of rhinoceroses, some of them tourists just minutes before, now a full-fledge herd, from all directions! Their robust, cylindrical bodies pile into one another and roil the streets and sidewalks as they course downhill towards the Capitol.
What are these simple brutes about? What will they do, all together? Uproot the Avenue, sure, and smash store windows, but worse than that they have the gall to disrupt us! Curiosity gets me. On go the coat, gloves, and mask, and I use side streets to head down the eight blocks to the Capitol. Let’s see this spectacle.
It’s a bizarre but not unpredictable mess. The grass patchwork from the Capitol to 15th street Northwest is a dustbowl. The Washington obelisk is barely visible. I stay along the periphery, but the ground shakes with the stomps and sounds of the herd. Through the choked air, it seems most of the beasts are in a circular march of fury, while others offshoot and charge in various directions, some even coming close to me, only to halt, turn, and charge back into the march. The large circle moves slowly, tightly, and startlingly right up the Capitol steps. The U.S. Capitol! The police officers look small and hapless, except for a few; squinting I can see the seams of laced black boots burst and hooves jut out, and noses holding up aviator sunglasses protrude, morphing into horns. Soon it seems there are no officers at all. That’s enough. I turn and walk briskly, as I always do, around the jutting concrete slabs of the gutted streets, glad when my intact building comes back into view.
I reach the gate, lock it, and close and lock my front door as well. More rhinoceroses stampede down the cratered Avenue. I turn from my door’s window to my television and hear news pundits breathlessly repeat “They’ve breached the Capitol!”
It’s an odd sensation to enter your home knowing that when you walk outside again a substantial shift will have taken hold in the world. Odder still, perhaps, is my indifference. The extrême droite is not en-vogue. The daily matters of society cannot be disrupted by the simple stampede of rhinoceroses! I look once more at the Capitol dome from my balcony, and wonder if I should make lunch because the ruckus has taken up more time than I care to admit.
There are some less fortunate than me. Several neighbors, in fact, emerge from their rowhouses with hair turned to fur, bleached teeth to yellow fangs, shoes paws, formed into beasts: lions, hyenas, wild dogs. Roaring into the downtown wilds, they seethe and nip and claw the rhinoceroses. The rhinoceroses charge them, they pounce back, and soon all of the creatures are tethered into an undistinguishable chaos that tightens the strangle of dust around the now-blurred marble dome.
Fortunately for most of us, those not inclined to such distractions, we meet the moment as we meet the whole of politics: a nod-along to the media actors, a spew of revulsion amongst our friends, and in the evening, a sigh. My bedroom mirror assigns a grace to a body unaffected, and surely a mind distinct from the mindless, bulging masses.
But life is not without its sacrifices. Elizabeth’s winter wonderland-themed soiree is next week, at her summer-estate-turned-pandemic-residence, out on the shore. It’d be impolite to decline last minute. Now the main thoroughfares will be closed. My driver will have to take the scenic route, a few hours longer each way. Perhaps I can take work calls from the road.
In the days after, half-submerged in swamp water, the idling snakes and crocodiles gather. Such vile creatures. Their glistened, sunken eyes hint at jaws below the surface and a prehistoric intent to lunge and pull under any and all prey until the muddied water stills with death. They have been in patient wait for the madness. The rhinoceroses and lions and hyenas and wild dogs. More eyes emerge to take position, eager and paralyzed only by the variety of riches. Such horrid, soulless lives. To think my children attend school with theirs. To think of the ones that’ll attend Elizabeth’s, trading cards and hissing about the rats of the CCP.
And how to describe what I’ve just seen to Elizabeth’s crowd? I consider “shocking” but that’s a touch dramatic. “Sad” is passive; no gravity. I could go with “reprehensible”; a bit strong, but it keeps me distanced. Yes, yes: reprehensible. “It’s reprehensible, these ongoings,” I’ll say to nods, and repeat once more for measure, “just reprehensible.” A segue to mention the Governor’s undoubtedly well-worded public response, and I ought to call him soon – we went to school together in Connecticut, didn’t you know, and have kept in touch; his favorables are up from this fiasco, the political calculus is such that a future Senate run isn’t out of the question.
Maybe I’ll follow through. At the very least, it’ll be good conversation.
What then, of this urge? I look at my knuckles to see if they’ve started to web. Should I have gone with them while there was still time? My face is the same face, no plated contours, no protrusions or toughened skin. Could they be the good-looking ones? Am I the monster? No, it would make a mockery of the éminence grise, the first and last guard, the Industrial Age hands that birthed society and our generational eyes tasked with the fabric, if even one of us contracted this fever. Society beckons, but so too does this urge. How nice, I wonder, to have a skin that looks decent without any hair on it?
No, I’ll not amuse such trivialities. My posture straightens and my chin tilts; not a man of my position, assuredly not. I’m staying this way until the end. I am not capitulating!