SLAUGHTERHOUSE

SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE t
OR THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE A Duty-dance with Death
KURT VONNEGUT, JR.
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following material:
'The Waking': copyright 1953 by Theodore Roethke from THE COLLECTED POEMS
OF THEODORE ROETHKE printed by permission of Doubleday & Company, Inc.
THE DESTRUCTION OF DRESDEN by David Irving: From the Introduction by Ira C.
Eaker, Lt. Gen. USAF (RET.) and Foreword by Air Marshall Sir Robert Saundby.
Copyright 1963 by William Kimber and Co. Limited. Reprinted by permission of Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, Inc. and William Kimber and Co. Limited.
'Leven Cent Cotton' by Bob Miller and Emma Dermer: Copyright 1928, 1929 by MCA
Music, a Division of MCA Inc. Copyright renewed 1955,1956 and assigned to MCA
Music, a division of MCA Inc. Used by permission.
One
for Mary O’Hare and Gerhard Müller
The cattle are lowing, The Baby awakes, But the little Lord Jesus No crying He makes.
All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true. One guy I
knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn't his. Another guy I knew
really did threaten to have his personal enemies killed by hired gunmen after the war.
And so on. I've changed all the names.
I really did go back to Dresden with Guggenheim money (God love it) in 1967. It looked
a lot like Dayton, Ohio, more open spaces than Dayton has. There must be tons of human
bone meal in the ground.
I went back there with an old war buddy, Bernard V. O'Hare, and we made friends with a
taxi driver, who took us to the slaughterhouse where we had been locked up at night as
prisoner of war. His name was Gerhard Müller. He told us that he was a prisoner of the
Americans for a while. We asked him how it was to live under Communism, and he said
that it was terrible at first, because everybody had to work so hard, and because there
wasn't much shelter or food or clothing. But things were much better now. He had a
pleasant little apartment, and his daughter was getting an excellent education. His mother
was incinerated in the Dresden fire-storm. So it goes.
He sent O'Hare a postcard at Christmastime, and here is what it said:
'I wish you and your family also as to your friend Merry Christmas and a happy New
Year and I hope that we'll meet again in a world of peace and freedom in the taxi cab if
the accident will.'
I like that very much: 'If the accident will.'
I would hate to tell you what this lousy little book cost me in money and anxiety and
time. When I got home from the Second World War twenty-three years ago, I thought it
would be easy for me to write about the destruction of Dresden, since all I would have to
do would be to report what I had seen. And I thought, too, that it would be a masterpiece
or at least make me a lot of money, since the subject was so big.
But not many words about Dresden came from my mind then-not enough of them to
make a book, anyway. And not many words come now, either, when I have become an
old fart with his memories and his Pall Malls, with his sons full grown. I think of how
useless the Dresden -part of my memory has been, and yet how tempting Dresden has
been to write about, and I am reminded of the famous limerick:

There was a young man from Stamboul, Who soliloquized thus to his tool, 'You took all
my wealth And you ruined my health,
And now you won't pee, you old fool’ And I'm reminded, too, of the song that goes
My name is Yon Yonson, I work in Wisconsin, I work in a lumbermill there. The people
I meet when I walk down the street, They say, 'What's your name? And I say, ‘My name
is Yon Yonson, I work in Wisconsin...
And so on to infinity.
Over the years, people I've met have often asked me what I'm working on, and I've
usually replied that the main thing was a book about Dresden.
I said that to Harrison Starr, the movie-maker, one time, and he raised his eyebrows and
inquired, 'Is it an anti-war book?'
'Yes,' I said. 'I guess.'
'You know what I say to people when I hear they're writing anti-war books?' 'No. What
do you say, Harrison Starr?' 'I say, "Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?"'
What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to
stop as glaciers. I believe that too.
And, even if wars didn't keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death.
When I was somewhat younger, working on my famous Dresden book, I asked an old
war buddy named Bernard V. O'Hare if I could come to see him. He was a district
attorney in Pennsylvania. I was a writer on Cape Cod. We had been privates in the war,
infantry scouts. We had never expected to make any money after the war, but we were
doing quite well.
I had the Bell Telephone Company find him for me. They are wonderful that way. I have
this, disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone. I get drunk, and
I drive my wife away with a breath like mustard gas and roses. And then, speaking
gravely and elegantly into the telephone, I ask the telephone operators to connect me with
this friend or that one, from whom I have not heard in years.
I got O'Hare on the line in this way. He is short and I am tall. We were Mutt and Jeff in
the war. We were captured together in the war. I told him who I was on the telephone. He
had no trouble believing it. He was up. He was reading. Everybody else in his house was
asleep.
'Listen,' I said, 'I'm writing this book about Dresden. I'd like some help remembering
stuff. I wonder if I could come down and see you, and we could drink and talk and
remember.'
He was unenthusiastic. He said he couldn't remember much. He told me, though, to come
ahead.
'I think the climax of the book will be the execution of poor old Edgar Derby,' I said. 'The
irony is so great. A whole city gets burned down, and thousands and thousands of people
are killed. And then this one American foot soldier is arrested in the ruins for taking a
teapot. And he's given a regular trial, and then he's shot by a firing squad.'
'Um,' said O'Hare.
'Don't you think that's really where the climax should come?' 'I don't know anything
about it,' he said. 'That's your trade, not mine.'
As a trafficker in climaxes and thrills and characterization and wonderful dialogue and
suspense and confrontations, I had outlined the Dresden story many times. The best
outline I ever made, or anyway the prettiest one, was on the back of a roll of wallpaper.

I used my daughter's crayons, a different color for each main character. One end of the
wallpaper was the beginning of the story, and the other end was the end, and then there
was all that middle part, which was the middle. And the blue line met the red line and
then the yellow line, and the yellow line stopped because the character represented by the
yellow line was dead. And so on. The destruction of Dresden was represented by a
vertical band of orange cross-hatching, and all the lines that were still alive passed
through it, came out the other side.
The end, where all the lines stopped, was a beetfield on the Elbe, outside of Halle. The
rain was coming down. The war in Europe had been over for a couple of weeks. We were
formed in ranks, with Russian soldiers guarding us-Englishmen, Americans, Dutchmen,
Belgians, Frenchmen, Canadians, South Africans, New Zealanders, Australians,
thousands of us about to stop being prisoners of war.
And on the other side of the field were thousands of Russians and Poles and
Yugoslavians and so on guarded by American soldiers. An exchange was made there in
the rain-one for one. O'Hare and I climbed into the back of an American truck with a lot
of others. O'Hare didn't have any souvenirs. Almost everybody else did. I had a
ceremonial Luftwaffe saber, still do. The rabid little American I call Paul Lazzaro in this
book had about a quart of diamonds and emeralds and rubies and so on' He had taken
these from dead people in the cellars of Dresden.' So it goes.
An idiotic Englishman, who had lost all his teeth somewhere had his souvenir in a canvas
bag. The bag was resting on my insteps. He would peek into the bag every now and then,
and he would roll his eyes and swivel his scrawny neck,, trying to catch people looking
covetously at his bag. And he would bounce the bag on my insteps. I thought this
bouncing was accidental. But I was mistaken. He had to show somebody what was in the
bag, and he had decided he could trust me. He caught my eye, winked,
opened the bag. There was a plaster model of the Eiffel Tower in there. It was painted
gold. It had a clock in it.
'There's a smashin' thing,' he said.
And we were flown to a rest camp in France, where we were fed chocolate malted
milkshakes and other rich foods until we were all covered with baby fat. Then we were
sent home, and I married a pretty girl who was covered with baby fat, too.
And we had babies.
And they're all grown up now, and I'm an old fart with his memories and his Pall Malls.
My name is Yon Yonson, I work in Wisconsin, I work in a lumbermill there.
Sometimes I try to call up old girl friends on the telephone late at night, after my wife has
gone to bed. 'Operator, I wonder if you could give me the number of a Mrs. So-and- So. I
think she lives at such-and-such.'
'I'm sorry, sir. There is no such listing.' 'Thanks, Operator. Thanks just the same.'
And I let the dog out or I let him in, and we talk some. I let him know I like him, and he
lets me know he likes me. He doesn't mind the smell of mustard gas and roses.
'You're all right, Sandy, I'll say to the dog. 'You know that, Sandy? You're O.K.'
Sometimes I'll turn on the radio and listen to a talk program from Boston or New York. I
can't stand recorded music if I've been drinking a good deal.
Sooner or later I go to bed, and my wife asks me what time it is. She always has to know
the time. Sometimes I don't know, and I say, 'Search me.'
I think about my education sometimes. I went to the University of Chicago for a while

after the Second World War. I was a student in the Department of Anthropology. At that
time, they were teaching that there was absolutely no difference between anybody. They
may be teaching that still.
Another thing they taught was that nobody was ridiculous or bad or disgusting. Shortly
before my father died, he said to me, 'You know-you never wrote a story with a villain in
it.'
I told him that was one of the things I learned in college after the war.
While I was studying to be an anthropologist, I was also working as a police reporter for
the famous Chicago City News Bureau for twenty-eight dollars a week. One time they
switched me from the night shift to the day shift., so I worked sixteen hours straight. We
were supported by all the newspapers in town, and the AP and the UP and all that. And
we would cover the courts and the police stations and the Fire Department and the Coast
Guard out on Lake Michigan and all that. We were connected to the institutions that
supported us by means of pneumatic tubes which ran under the streets of Chicago.
Reporters would telephone in stories to writers wearing headphones, and the writers
would stencil the stories on mimeograph sheets. The stories were mimeographed and
stuffed into the brass and velvet cartridges which the pneumatic tubes ate. The very
toughest reporters and writers were women who had taken over the jobs of men who'd
gone to war.
And the first story I covered I had to dictate over the telephone to one of those beastly
girls. It was about a young veteran who had taken a job running an old-fashioned elevator
in an office building. The elevator door on the first floor was ornamental iron lace. Iron
ivy snaked in and out of the holes. There was an iron twig with two iron lovebirds
perched upon it.
This veteran decided to take his car into the basement, and he closed the door and started
down, but his wedding ring Was caught in all the ornaments. So he was hoisted into the
air and the floor of the car went down, dropped out from under him, and the top of the car
squashed him. So it goes.
So I phoned this in, and the woman who was going to cut the stencil asked me. 'What did
his wife say?'
'She doesn't know yet,' I said. 'It just happened.' 'Call her up and get a statement.' 'What?'
'Tell her you're Captain Finn of the Police Department. Say you have some sad news.
Give her the news, and see what she says.' So I did. She said about what you would
expect her to say. There was a baby. And so
on. When I got back to the office, the woman writer asked me, just for her own
information, what the squashed guy had looked Eke when he was squashed. I told her.
'Did it bother you?' she said. She was eating a Three Musketeers Candy Bar. 'Heck no,
Nancy,' I said. 'I've seen lots worse than that in the war.'
Even then I was supposedly writing a book about Dresden. It wasn't a famous air raid
back then in America. Not many Americans knew how much worse it had been than
Hiroshima, for instance. I didn't know that, either. There hadn't been much publicity.
I happened to tell a University of Chicago professor at a cocktail party about the raid as I
had seen it, about the book I would write. He was a member of a thing called The
Committee on Social Thought. And he told me about the concentration camps, and about
how the Germans had made soap and candles out of the fat of dead Jews and so on.
All could say was, 'I know, I know. I know.'

The Second World War had certainly made everybody very tough. And I became a public
relations man for General Electric in Schenectady, New York, and a volunteer fireman in
the Village of Alplaus, where I bought my first home. My boss there was one of the
toughest guys I ever hope to meet. He had been a lieutenant colonel in public relations in
Baltimore. While I was in Schenectady he joined the Dutch Reformed Church, which is a
very tough church, indeed.
He used to ask me sneeringly sometimes why I hadn't been an officer,, as though I'd done
something wrong.
My wife and I had lost our baby fat. Those were our scrawny years. We had a lot of
scrawny veterans and their scrawny wives for friends. The nicest veterans in
Schenectady,, I thought,, the kindest and funniest ones, the ones who hated war the most,
were the ones who'd really fought.
I wrote the Air Force back then, asking for details about the raid on Dresden, who
ordered it, how many planes did it, why they did it, what desirable results there had been
and so on. I was answered by a man who, like myself, was in public relations. He said
that he was sorry, but that the information was top secret still.
I read the letter out loud to my wife, and I said, 'Secret? My God-from whom?'
We were United World Federalists back then. I don't know what we are now.
Telephoners, I guess. We telephone a lot-or I do, anyway, late at night.
A couple of weeks after I telephoned my old war buddy, Bernard V. O'Hare, I really did
go to see him. That must have been in 1964 or so-whatever the last year was for the New
York World's Fair. Eheu, fugaces labuntur anni. My name is Yon Yonson. There was a
young man from Stamboul.
I took two little girls with me, my daughter, Nanny, and her best friend, Allison Mitchell.
They had never been off Cape Cod before. When we saw a river, we had to stop so they
could stand by it and think about it for a while. They had never seen water in that long
and narrow, unsalted form before. The river was the Hudson. There were carp in there
and we saw them. They were as big as atomic submarines.
We saw waterfalls, too, streams jumping off cliffs into the valley of the Delaware. There
were lots of things to stop and see-and then it was time to go, always time to go. The little
girls were wearing white party dresses and black party shoes, so strangers would know at
once how nice they were. 'Time to go, girls,' I'd say. And we would go.
And the sun went down, and we had supper in an Italian place, and then I knocked on the
front door of the beautiful stone house of Bernard V. O'Hare. I was carrying a bottle of
Irish whiskey like a dinner bell.
I met his nice wife, Mary, to whom I dedicate this book. I dedicate it to Gerhard Müller,
the Dresden taxi driver, too. Mary O'Hare is a trained nurse, which is a lovely thing for a
woman to be.
Mary admired the two little girls I'd brought, mixed them in with her own children, sent
them all upstairs to play games and watch television. It was only after the children were
gone that I sensed that Mary didn't like me or didn't like something about the night. She
was polite but chilly.
'It's a nice cozy house you have here,' I said, and it really was. 'I've fixed up a place where
you can talk and not be bothered,' she said.
'Good,' I said, and I imagined two leather chairs near a fire in a paneled room, where two
old soldiers could drink and talk. But she took us into the kitchen. She had put two

straight-backed chairs at a kitchen table with a white porcelain top. That table top was
screaming with reflected light from a two-hundred-watt bulb overhead. Mary had
prepared an operating room. She put only one glass on it, which was for me. She
explained that O'Hare couldn't drink the hard stuff since the war.
So we sat down. O'Hare was embarrassed, but he wouldn't tell me what was wrong. I
couldn't imagine what it was about me that could bum up Mary so. I was a family man.
I'd been married only once. I wasn't a drunk. I hadn't done her husband any dirt in the
war.
She fixed herself a Coca-Cola, made a lot of noise banging the ice-cube tray in the
stainless steel sink. Then she went into another part of the house. But she wouldn't sit
still. She was moving all over the house, opening and shutting doors, even moving
furniture around to work off anger.
I asked O'Hare what I'd said or done to make her act that way.
'It's all right,' he said. "Don't worry about it. It doesn't have anything to do with you.' That
was kind of him. He was lying. It had everything to do with me.
So we tried to ignore Mary and remember the war. I took a couple of belts of the booze
I'd brought. We would chuckle or grin sometimes, as though war stories were coming
back, but neither one of us could remember anything good. O'Hare remembered one guy
who got into a lot of wine in Dresden, before it was bombed, and we had to take him
home in a wheelbarrow.
It wasn't much to write a book about. I remembered two Russian soldiers who had looted
a clock factory. They had a horse-drawn wagon full of clocks. They were happy and
drunk. They were smoking huge cigarettes they had rolled in newspaper.
That was about it for memories, and Mary was still making noise. She finally came out in
the kitchen again for another Coke. She took another tray of ice cubes from the
refrigerator, banged it in the sink, even though there was already plenty of ice out.
Then she turned to me, let me see how angry she was, and that the anger was for me. She
had been talking to herself, so what she said was a fragment of a much larger
conversation. "You were just babies then!' she said.
'What?" I said. 'You were just babies in the war-like the ones upstairs! '
I nodded that this was true. We had been foolish virgins in the war, right at the end of
childhood.
'But you're not going to write it that way, are you.' This wasn't a question. It was an
accusation.
'I-I don't know,' I said.
'Well, I know,' she said. 'You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be
played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other
glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a
lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs.'
So then I understood. It was war that made her so angry. She didn't want her babies or
anybody else's babies killed in wars. And she thought wars were partly encouraged by
books and movies.
So I held up my right hand and I made her a promise 'Mary,' I said, 'I don't think this
book is ever going to be finished. I must have written five thousand pages by now, and
thrown them all away. If I ever do finish it, though, I give you my word of honor: there
won't be a part for Frank Sinatra or John Wayne.

'I tell you what,' I said, 'I'll call it The Children's Crusade.' She was my friend after that.
O'Hare and I gave up on remembering, went into the living room, talked about other
things. We became curious about the real Children's Crusade, so O'Hare looked it up in a
book he had, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, by Charles
Mackay, LL.D. It was first published in London in 1841.
Mackay had a low opinion of all Crusades. The Children's Crusade struck him as only
slightly more sordid than the ten Crusades for grown-ups. O'Hare read this handsome
passage out loud:
History in her solemn page informs us that the Crusaders were but ignorant and savage
men, that their motives were those of bigotry unmitigated, and that their pathway was one
of blood and rears. Romance, on the other hand, dilates upon their piety and heroism, and
portrays, in her most glowing and impassioned hues, their virtue and magnanimity, the
imperishable honor they acquired for themselves, and the great services they rendered to
Christianity.
And then O'Hare read this: Now what was the grand result of all these struggles? Europe
expended millions of her treasures, and the blood of two million of her people; and a
handful of quarrelsome knights retained possession of Palestine for about one hundred
years!
Mackay told us that the Children's Crusade started in 1213, when two monks got the idea
of raising armies of children in Germany and France, and selling them in North Africa as
slaves. Thirty thousand children volunteered, thinking they were going to Palestine. They
were no doubt idle and deserted children who generally swarm in great cities, nurtured on
vice and daring, said Mackay, and ready for anything.
Pope Innocent the Third thought they were going to Palestine, too, and he was thrilled.
'These children are awake while we are asleep!' he said.
Most of the children were shipped out of Marseilles, and about half of them drowned in
shipwrecks. The other half got to North Africa where they were sold.
Through a misunderstanding, some children reported for duty at Genoa, where no slave
ships were waiting. They were fed and sheltered and questioned kindly by good people
there-then given a little money and a lot of advice and sent back home.
'Hooray for the good people of Genoa,' said Mary O'Hare.
I slept that night in one of the children's bedrooms. O'Hare had put a book for me on the
bedside table. It was Dresden, History, Stage and Gallery, by Mary Endell. It was
published in 1908, and its introduction began
It is hoped that this little book will make itself useful. It attempts to give to an English-
reading public a bird's-eye view of how Dresden came to look as it does, architecturally;
of how it expanded musically, through the genius of a few men, to its present bloom; and
it calls attention to certain permanent landmarks in art that make its Gallery the resort of
those seeking lasting impressions.
I read some history further on
Now, in 1760, Dresden underwent siege by the Prussians. On the fifteenth of July began
the cannonade. The Picture-Gallery took fire. Many of the paintings had been transported
to -the Konigstein, but some were seriously injured by splinters of bombshells-notably
Francia's 'Baptism of Christ.' Furthermore, the stately Kreuzkirche tower, from which the
enemy's movements had been watched day and night, stood in flames. It later succumbed.
In sturdy contrast with the pitiful fate of the Kreuzkirche, stood the Frauenkirche, from

the curves of whose stone dome the Prussian bombs - rebounded like rain. Friederich was
obliged finally to give up the siege, because he learned of the fall of Glatz, the critical
point of his new conquests. 'We must be off to Silesia, so that we do not lose everything.'
The devastation of Dresden was boundless. When Goethe as a young student visited the
city, he still found sad ruins 'Von der Kuppel der Frauenkirche sah ich these leidigen
Trümmer zwischen die schone stddtische Ordnung hineingesät; da rühmte mir der Kiister
die Kunst des Baumeisters, welcher Kirche und Kuppel auf einen so unerüinschten Fall
schon eingeyichtet und bombenfest erbaut hatte. Der gute Sakristan deutete mir alsdann
auf Ruinen nach allen Seiten und sagte bedenklich lakonisch: Das hat her Feind Gethan!'
The two little girls and I crossed the Delaware River where George Washington had
crossed it, the next morning. We went to the New York World's Fair, saw what the past
had been like, according to the Ford Motor Car Company and Walt Disney, saw what the
future would be like, according to General Motors.
And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was
mine to keep.
I taught creative writing in the famous Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa for a
couple of years after that. I got into some perfectly beautiful trouble, got out of it again. I
taught in the afternoons. In the mornings I wrote. I was not be disturbed. I was working
on my famous book about Dresden.
And somewhere in there a nice man named Seymour Lawrence gave me a three-book
contract, and I said, 'O.K., the first of the three will be my famous book about Dresden.'
The friends of Seymour Lawrence call him 'Sam.' And I say to Sam now: 'Sam-here's
the book.'
It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say
about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want
anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it
always is, except for the birds.
And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like 'Poo-tee-
weet?'
I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres,
and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee.
I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to
express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that.
As I've said I recently went back to Dresden with my friend O'Hare. We had a million
laughs in Hamburg and West Berlin and East Berlin and Vienna and Salzburg and
Helsinki, and in Leningrad, too. It was very good for me, because I saw a lot of authentic
backgrounds for made-up stories which I will write later on. One of them will be Russian
Baroque and another will be No Kissing and another will be Dollar Bar and another will
be If the Accident Will, and so on.
And so on.
There was a Lufthansa plane that was supposed to fly from Philadelphia to Boston to
Frankfurt. O'Hare was supposed to get on in Philadelphia and I was supposed to get on in
Boston, and off we'd go. But Boston was socked in, so the plane flew straight to
Frankfurt from Philadelphia. And I became a non-person in the Boston Fog, and
Lufthansa put me in a limousine with some other non-persons and sent us to a motel for a
non-night.

The time would not pass. Somebody was playing with the clocks, and not only with the
electric clocks, but the wind-up kind, too. The second hand on my watch would twitch
once, and a year would pass, and then it would twitch again.
There was nothing I could do about it. As an Earthling., I had to believe whatever clocks
said-and calendars.
I had two books with me, which I'd meant to read on the plane. One was Words for the
Wind, by Theodore Roethke, and this is what I found in there: I wake to steep, and take
my waking slow. I feet my late in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go.
My other book was Erika Ostrovsky's Céline and His Vision. Céline was a brave French
soldier in the First World War-until his skull was cracked. After that he couldn't sleep,
and there were noises in his head. He became a doctor, and he treated poor people in the
daytime, and he wrote grotesque novels all night. No art is possible without a dance with
death, he wrote.
The truth is death, he wrote. I've fought nicely against it as long as I could ... danced with
it, festooned it, waltzed it around ... decorated it with streamers, titillated it... Time
obsessed him. Miss Ostrovsky reminded me of the amazing scene in Death on the
Installment Plan where Céline wants to stop the bustling of a street crowd. He screams on
paper, Make them stop ... don't let them move anymore at all ... There, make them
freeze ... once and for all! ... So that they won't disappear anymore!
I looked through the Gideon Bible in my motel room for tales of great destruction. The
sun was risen upon the Earth when Lot entered into Zo-ar, I read. Then the Lord rained
upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of Heaven; and
He overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that
which grew upon the ground.
So it goes.
Those were vile people in both those cities, as is well known. The world was better off
without them.
And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their
homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.
She was turned to a pillar of salt. So it goes. People aren't supposed to look back. I'm
certainly not going to do it anymore. I've finished my war book now. The next one I write
is going to be fun.
This one is a failure, and had to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt. It begins like
this:
Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. It ends like this: Poo-tee-weet?
Two
Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. Billy has gone to sleep a senile widower
and awakened on his wedding day. He has
walked through a door in 1955 and come out another one in 1941. He has gone back
through that door to find himself in 1963. He has seen his birth and death many times, he
says, and pays random visits to all the events in between.
He says.
Billy is spastic in time, has no control over where he is going next, and the trips aren't
necessarily fun. He is 'm a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows
what part of his life he is going to have to act in next.
Billy was bon in 1922 in Ilium, New York, the only child of a barber there. He was a

funny-looking child who became a funny-looking youth-tall and weak, and shaped like a
bottle of Coca-Cola. He graduated from Ilium High School in the upper third of his class,
and attended night sessions at the Ilium School of Optometry for one semester before
being drafted for military service in the Second World War. His father died in a hunting
accident during the war. So it goes.
Billy saw service with the infantry in Europe, and was taken prisoner by the Germans.
After his honorable discharge from the Army in 1945, Billy again enrolled in the Ilium
School of Optometry. During his senior year there, he became engaged to the daughter of
the founder and owner of the school, and then suffered a mild nervous collapse.
He was treated in a veterans' hospital near Lake Placid, and was given shock treatments
and released. He married his fiancée, finished his education, and was set up in business in
Ilium by his father-in-law. Ilium is a particularly good city for optometrists because the
General Forge and Foundry Company is there. Every employee is required to own a pair
of safety glasses, and to wear them in areas where manufacturing is going on. GF&F has
sixty-eight thousand employees in Ilium. That calls for a lot of lenses and a lot of frames.
Frames are where the money is.
Bill became rich. He had two children, Barbara and Robert. In time, his daughter Barbara
married another optometrist., and Billy set him up in business. Billy's son Robert had a
lot of trouble in high school, but then he joined the famous Green Berets. He straightened
out, became a fine Young man, and he fought in Vietnam.
Early in 1968, a group of optometrists, with Billy among them, chartered an airplane to
fly them from Ilium to an international convention of optometrists in Montreal. The plane
crashed on top of Sugarbush Mountain, in Vermont. Everybody was killed but Billy. So it
goes.
While Billy was recuperating in a hospital in Vermont, his wife died accidentally of
carbon-monoxide poisoning. So it goes.
When Billy finally got home to Ilium after the airplane crash, he was quiet for a while.
He had a terrible scar across the top Of his skull. He didn't resume practice. He had a
housekeeper. His daughter came over almost every day.
And then, without any warning, Billy went to New York City, and got on an all-night
radio program devoted to talk. He told about having come unstuck in time. He said, too,
that he had been kidnapped by a flying saucer in 1967. The saucer was from the planet
Tralfamadore, he said. He was taken to Tralfamadore, where he was displayed naked in a
zoo, he said. He was mated there with a former Earthling movie star named Montana
Wildhack.
Some night owls in Ilium heard Billy on the radio, and one of them called Billy's
daughter Barbara. Barbara was upset. She and her husband went down to New York and
brought Billy home. Billy insisted mildly that everything he had said on the radio was
true. He said he had been kidnapped by the Tralfamadorians on the night of his daughter's
wedding. He hadn't been missed, he said, because the Tralfamadorians had taken him
through a time warp, so that he could be on Tralfamadore for years, and still be away
from Earth for only a microsecond.
Another month went by without incident, and then Billy wrote a letter to the Ilium News
Leader, which the paper published. It described the creatures from Tralfamadore. The
letter said that they were two feet high, and green., and shaped like plumber's
friends. Their suction cups were on the ground, and their shafts, which were extremely

flexible, usually pointed to the sky. At the top of each shaft was a little hand with a green
eye in its palm. The creatures were friendly, and they could see in four dimensions. They
pitied Earthlings for being able to see only three. They had many wonderful things to
teach Earthlings, especially about time. Billy promised to tell what some of those
wonderful things were in his next letter.
Billy was working on his second letter when the first letter was published. The second
letter started out like this:
'The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only
appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at
his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.
The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a
stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the
moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion
we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and
that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.
'When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in a bad
condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other
moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what
the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "so it goes."'
And so on.
Billy was working on this letter in the basement rumpus room of his empty house. It was
his housekeeper's day off. There was an old typewriter in the rumpus room. It was a
beast. It weighed as much as a storage battery. Billy couldn't carry it very far very easily,
which was why he was writing in the rumpus room instead of somewhere else.
The oil burner had quit. A mouse had eaten through the insulation of a wire leading to the
thermostat. The temperature in the house was down to fifty degrees, but Billy hadn't
noticed. He wasn't warmly dressed, either. He was barefoot, and still in his pajamas and a
bathrobe, though it was late afternoon. His bare feet were blue and ivory. The cockles of
Billy's heart, at any rate, were glowing coals. What made them so hot was Billy's belief
that he was going to comfort so many people with the truth about time. His
door chimes upstairs had been ringing and ringing. It was his daughter Barbara up there
wanting in. Now she let herself in with a key, crossed the floor over his head calling,
'Father? Daddy, where are you?' And so on.
Billy didn't answer her, so she was nearly hysterical, expecting to find his corpse. And
then she looked into the very last place there was to look-which was the rumpus room.
'Why didn't you answer me when I called?' Barbara wanted to know, standing there in the
door of the rumpus room. She had the afternoon paper with her, the one in which Billy
described his friends from Tralfamadore.
'I didn't hear you,' said Billy.
The orchestration of the moment was this: Barbara was only twenty-one years old, but
she thought her father was senile, even though he was only forty-six-senile because of
damage to his brain in the airplane crash. She also thought that she was head of the
family, since she had had to manage her mother's funeral, since she had to get a
housekeeper for Billy, and all that. Also, Barbara and her husband were having to look
after Billy's business interests, which were considerable, since Billy didn't seem to give a
damn for business any more. All this responsibility at such an early age made her a bitchy

flibbertigibbet. And Billy, meanwhile, was trying to hang onto his dignity, to persuade
Barbara and everybody else that he was far from senile, that, on the contrary, he was
devoting himself to a calling much higher than mere business.
He was doing nothing less now, he thought, then prescribing corrective lenses for
Earthling souls. So many of those souls were lost and wretched, Billy believed, because
they could not see as well as Ws little green friends on Tralfamadore.
'Don't lie to me, Father,' said Barbara. 'I know perfectly well you heard me when I called.'
This was a fairly pretty girl, except that she had legs like an Edwardian grand piano. Now
she raised hell with him about the letter in the paper. She said he was making a laughing
stock of himself and everybody associated with him.
'Father, Father, Father,' said Barbara, 'what are we going to do with you? Are you going
to force us to put you where your mother is?' Billy's mother was still alive. She was in
bed in an old people's home called Pine Knoll on the edge of Ilium.
'What is it about my letter that makes you so mad?' Billy wanted to know. 'It's all just
crazy. None of it's true! ' 'It's all true. ' Bill's anger was not going to rise with hers. He
never got mad at
anything. He was wonderful that way. 'There is no such planet as Tralfamadore.'
'It can't be detected from Earth, if that's what you mean,' said Billy. 'Earth can't be
detected from Tralfamadore, as far as that goes. They're both very small. They're very far
apart.'
'Where did you get a crazy name like "Tralfamadore?"' 'That's what the creatures who
live there call it. 'Oh God,' said Barbara, and she turned her back on him. She celebrated
frustration by
clapping her hands. 'May I ask you a simple question?' 'Of course.' 'Why is it you never
mentioned any of this before the airplane crash?' 'I didn't think the time was ripe.'
And so on. Billy says that he first came unstuck in time in 1944, long before his trip to
Tralfamadore. The Tralfamadorians didn't have anything to do with his coming unstuck
They were simply able to give him insights into what was really going on.
Billy first came unstuck while the Second World War was in progress. Billy was a
chaplain's assistant in the war. A chaplain's assistant is customarily a figure of fun in the
American Army. Billy was no exception. He was powerless to harm the enemy or to help
his friends. In fact, he had no friends. He was a valet to a preacher, expected no
promotions or medals, bore no arms, and had a meek faith in a loving Jesus which most
soldiers found putrid.
While on maneuvers in South Carolina, Billy played hymns he knew from childhood,
played them on a little black organ which was waterproof. It had thirty-nine keys and two
stops- vox humana and vox celeste. Billy also had charge of a portable altar, an olive-
drab attaché case with telescoping legs. It was lined with crimson plush, and nestled in
that passionate plush were an anodized aluminum cross and a Bible.
The altar and the organ were made by a vacuum-cleaner company in Camden, New
Jersey-and said so.
One time on maneuvers Billy was playing 'A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,' with music by
Johann Sebastian Bach and words by Martin Luther. It was Sunday morning. Billy and
his chaplain had gathered a congregatation of about fifty soldiers on a Carolina hillside.
An umpire appeared. There were umpires everywhere, men who said who was winning
or losing the theoretical battle, who was alive and who was dead.

The umpire had comical news. The congregation had been theoretically spotted from the
air by a theoretical enemy. They Were all theoretically dead now. The theoretical corpses
laughed and ate a hearty noontime meal.
Remembering this incident years later, Billy was struck by what a Tralfamadorian
adventure with death that had been, to be dead and to eat at the same time.
Toward the end of maneuvers., Billy was given an emergency furlough home because his
father, a barber in Ilium, New York, was shot dead by a friend while they were out
hunting deer. So it goes.
When Billy got back from his furlough., there were orders for him to go overseas. He was
needed in the headquarters company of an infantry regiment fighting in Luxembourg.
The regimental chaplain's assistant had been killed in action. So it goes.
When Billy joined the regiment, it was in the process of being destroyed by the Germans
in the famous Battle of the Bulge. Billy never even got to meet the chaplain he was
supposed to assist, was never even issued a steel helmet and combat boots. This was in
December of 1944, during the last mighty German attack of the war.
Billy survived, but he was a dazed wanderer far behind the new German lines. Three
other wanderers, not quite so dazed, allowed Billy to tag along. Two of them were scouts,
and one was an antitank gunner. They were without food or maps. Avoiding Germans
they were delivering themselves into rural silences ever more profound. They ate snow.
They went Indian file. First came the scouts, clever, graceful quiet. They had rifles. Next
came the antitank gunner, clumsy and dense, warning Germans away with a Colt .45
automatic in one hand and a trench knife in the other.
Last came Billy Pilgrim, empty-handed, bleakly ready for death. Billy was Preposterous-
six feet and three inches tall, with a chest and shoulders like a box of kitchen matches. He
had no helmet, no overcoat, no weapon and no boots. On his feet were cheap, low-cut
civilian shoes which he had bought for his father's funeral. Billy had lost a heel, which
made him bob up-and-down, up-and-down. The involuntary dancing up and down, up
and down, made his hip joints sore.
Billy was wearing a thin field jacket, a shirt and trousers of scratchy wool, and long
underwear that was soaked with sweat. He was the only one of the four who had a beard.
It was a random, bristly beard, and some of the bristles were white, even though Billy
was only twenty-one years old. He was also going bald. Wind and cold and violent
exercise had turned his face crimson.
He didn't look like a soldier at all. He looked like a filthy flamingo.
And on the third day of wandering, somebody shot at the four from far away-shot four
times as they crossed a narrow brick road. One shot was for the scouts. The next one was
for the antitank gunner, whose name was Roland Weary.
The third bullet was for the filthy flamingo, who stopped dead center in the road when
the lethal bee buzzed past his ear. Billy stood there politely, giving the marksman another
chance. It was his addled understanding of the rules of warfare that the marksman should
be given a second chance. The next shot missed Billy's kneecaps by inches, going end-
on-end, from the sound of it.
Roland Weary and the scouts were safe in a ditch, and Weary growled at Billy, 'Get out
of the road, you dumb motherfucker.' The last word was still a novelty in the speech of
white people in 1944. It was fresh and astonishing to Billy, who had never fucked
anybody-and it did its job. It woke him up and got him off the road.

'Saved your life again, you dumb bastard,' Weary said to Billy in the ditch. He had been
saving Billy's fife for days, cursing him, kicking him, slapping him, making him move. It
was absolutely necessary that cruelty be used, because Billy wouldn't do anything to save
himself. Billy wanted to quit. He was cold, hungry, embarrassed, incompetent. He could
scarcely distinguish between sleep and wakefulness now, on the third day, found no
important differences either, between walking and standing still.
He wished everybody would leave him alone. 'You guys go on without me,' he said again
and again.
Weary was as new to war as Billy. He was a replacement, too. As a part of a gun crew, he
had helped to fire one shot in anger-from a 57-millimeter antitank gun. The gun made a
ripping sound like the opening of a zipper on the fly of God Almighty. The gun lapped up
snow and vegetation with a blowtorch feet long. The flame left a black arrow on the
ground, showing the Germans exactly where the gun was hidden. The shot was a miss.
What had been missed was a Tiger tank. It swiveled its 88-millimeter snout around
sniffingly, saw the arrow on the ground. It fired. It killed everybody on the gun crew but
Weary. So it goes.
Roland Weary was only eighteen, was at the end of an unhappy childhood spent mostly
in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He had been unpopular in Pittsburgh. He had been unpopular
because he was stupid and fat and mean, and smelled like bacon no matter how much he
washed. He was always being ditched in Pittsburgh by people who did not want him with
them.
It made Weary sick to be ditched. When Weary was ditched, le would find somebody
who was even more unpopular than himself, and he would horse around with that person
for a while, pretending to be friendly. And then he would find some pretext for beating
the shit out of him.
It was a pattern. It was a crazy, sexy, murderous relationship Weary entered into with
people he eventually beat up. He told hem about his father's collection of guns and
swords and torture instruments and leg irons and so on. Weary's father, who was a
plumber, actually did collect such things, and his collection was insured for four thousand
dollars. He wasn't alone. He belonged to a big club composed of people who collected
things like that.
Weary's father once gave Weary's mother a Spanish thumbscrew in - working condition-
for a kitchen paperweight. Another time he gave her a table lamp whose base was a
model one foot high of the famous 'Iron Maiden of Nuremburg.' The real Iron Maiden
was a medieval torture instrument, a sort of boiler which was shaped like a woman on the
outside-and lined with spikes. The front of the woman was composed of two hinged
doors. The idea was to put a criminal inside and then close the doors slowly. There were
two special spikes where his eyes would be. There was a drain in the bottom to let out all
the blood.
So it goes.
Weary had told Billy Pilgrim about the Iron Maiden, about the drain in the bottom-and
what that was for. He had talked to Billy about dum-dums. He told him about his father's
Derringer pistol, which could be carried in a vest pocket, which was yet capable of
making a hole in a man 'which a bull bat could fly through without touching either wing.'
Weary scornfully bet Billy one time that he didn't even know what a blood gutter was.
Billy guessed that it was the drain in the bottom of the Iron Maiden, but that was wrong.

A blood gutter, Billy learned, was the shallow groove in the side of the blade of a sword
or bayonet.
Weary told Billy about neat tortures he'd read about or seen in the movies or heard on the
radio-about other neat tortures he himself had invented. One of the inventions was
sticking a dentist's drill into a guy's ear. He asked Billy what he thought the worst form of
execution was. Billy had no opinion. The correct answer turned out to be this: 'You stake
a guy out on an anthill in the desert-see? He's face upward, and you put honey all over his
balls and pecker, and you cut off his eyelids so he has to stare at the sun till he dies.' So it
goes.
Now, lying in the ditch with Billy and the scouts after having been shot at, Weary made
Billy take a very close look at his trench knife. It wasn't government issue. It was a
present from his father. It had a ten-inch blade that was triangular 'in 'cross section. Its
grip consisted of brass knuckles, was a chain of rings through which Weary slipped his
stubby fingers. The rings weren't simple. They bristled with spikes.
Weary laid the spikes along Billy's cheek, roweled the cheek with savagely affectionate
restraint. 'How'd you-like to be hit with this-hm? Hmmmmmmmmm?' he wanted to
know.
'I wouldn't,' said Billy. 'Know why the blade's triangular?' 'No.' 'Makes a wound that
won't close up.' 'Oh.' 'Makes a three-sided hole in a guy. You stick an ordinary knife in a
guy-makes a slit.
Right? A slit closes right up. Right? 'Right.'
'Shit. What do you know? What the hell they teach you in college?'
'I wasn't there very long.' said Billy, which was true. He had had only six months of
college and the college hadn't been a regular college, either. It had been the night school
of the Ilium School of Optometry.
"Joe College,' said Weary scathingly. Billy shrugged. 'There's more to life than what you
read in books.' said Weary. 'You'll find that out.' Billy made no reply to this, either, there
in the ditch, since he didn't want the
conversation to go on any longer than necessary. He was dimly tempted to say, though,
that he knew a thing or two about gore. Billy, after all, had contemplated torture and
hideous wounds at the beginning and the end of nearly every day of his childhood. Billy
had an extremely gruesome crucifix hanging on the wall of his little bedroom in Ilium. A
military surgeon would have admired the clinical fidelity of the artist's rendition of all
Christ's wounds-the spear wound, the thorn wounds, the holes that were made by the iron
spikes. Billy's Christ died horribly. He was pitiful.
So it goes.
Billy wasn't a Catholic, even though he grew up with a ghastly crucifix on the wall. His
father had no religion. His mother was a substitute organist for several churches around
town. She took Billy with her whenever she played, taught him to play a little, too. She
said she was going to join a church as soon as she decided which one was right.
She never did decide. She did develop a terrific hankering for a crucifix, though. And she
bought one from a Sante Fé gift shop during a trip the little family made out West during
the Great Depression. Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that
made sense from things she found in gift shops.
And the crucifix went up on the wall of Billy Pilgrim.
The two scouts, loving the walnut stocks of their rifles in the ditch, whispered that it was

time to move out again. Ten minutes had gone by without anybody's coming to see if
they were hit or not, to finish them off. Whoever had shot was evidently far away and all
alone.
And the four crawled out of the ditch without drawing any more fire. They crawled into a
forest like the big, unlucky mammals they were. Then they stood up and began to walk
quickly. The forest was dark and cold. The pines were planted in ranks and files. There
was no undergrowth. Four inches of unmarked snow blanketed the ground. The
Americans had no choice but to leave trails in the show as unambiguous as diagrams in a
book on ballroom dancing-step, slide, rest-step, slide,-rest.
'Close it up and keep it closed!' Roland Weary warned Billy Pilgrim as they moved out.
Weary looked like Tweedledum or Tweedledee, all bundled up for battle. He was short
and thick.
He had every piece of equipment he had ever been issued, every present he'd received
from home: helmet, helmet liner, wool cap, scarf, gloves, cotton undershirt, woolen
undershirt, wool shirt, sweater, blouse, jacket, overcoat, cotton underpants, woolen
underpants, woolen trousers, cotton socks, woolen socks, combat boots, gas mask,
canteen, mess kit, first-aid kit, trench knife, blanket, shelter-half , raincoat, bulletproof
Bible, a pamphlet entitled 'Know Your Enemy,' another pamphlet entitled 'Why We
Fight' and another pamphlet of German phrases rendered in English phonetics,, which
would enable Weary to ask Germans questions such as 'Where is your headquarters?' and
'How many howitzers have you?' Or to tell them, 'Surrender. Your situation is hopeless,'
and so on.
Weary had a block of balsa wood which was supposed to be a foxhole pillow. He had a
prophylactic kit containing two tough condoms 'For the Prevention of Disease Only!' He
had a whistle he wasn't going to show anybody until he got promoted to corporal. He had
a dirty picture of a woman attempting sexual intercourse with a Shetland pony. He had
made Billy Pilgrim admire that picture several times.
The woman and the pony were posed before velvet draperies which were fringed with
deedlee-balls. They were flanked by Doric columns. In front of one column was a potted
palm. The Picture that Weary had was a print of the first dirty photograph in history. The
word photography was first used in 1839, and it was in that year, too, that Louis J. M.
Daguerre revealed to the French Academy that an image formed on a silvered metal plate
covered with a thin film of silver iodide could be developed in the presence of mercury
vapor.
In 1841, only two years later, an assistant to Daguerre, André Le Fèvre, was arrested in
the Tuileries Gardens for attempting to sell a gentleman a picture of the woman and the
pony. That was where Weary bought his picture,, too-in the Tuileries. Le Fèvre argued
that the picture was fine art, and that his intention was to make Greek mythology come
alive. He said that columns and the potted palm proved that.
When asked which myth he meant to represent, Le Fèvre, replied that there were
thousands of myths like that, with the woman a mortal and the pony a god.
He was sentenced to six months in prison. He died there of pneumonia. So it goes.
Billy and the Scouts were skinny people. Roland Weary had fat to burn. He was a roaring
furnace under all his layers of wool and straps and canvas. He had so much energy that he
bustled back and forth between Billy and the scouts, delivering dumb messages which
nobody had sent and which nobody was pleased to receive. He also began to suspect,

since he was so much busier than anybody else, that he was the leader.
He was so hot and bundled up, in fact, that he had no sense of danger. His vision of the
outside world was limited to what he could see through a narrow slit between the rim of
his helmet and his scarf from home, which concealed his baby face from the bridge of his
nose on down. He was so snug in there that he was able to pretend that he was safe at
home, having survived the war, and that he was telling his parents and his sister a true
war story-whereas the true war story was still going on.
Weary's version of the true war story went like this: There was a big German attack, and
Weary and his antitank buddies fought like hell until everybody was killed but Weary. So
it goes. And then Weary tied in with two scouts, and they became close friends
immediately, and they decided to fight them way back to their own lines. They were
going to travel fast. They were damned if they'd surrender. They shook hands all around.
They called themselves 'The Three Musketeers.'
But then this damn college kid, who was so weak he shouldn't even have been in the
army, asked if he could come along. He didn't even have a gun or a knife. He didn't even
have a helmet or a cap. He couldn't even walk right-kept bobbing up-and down, up-and-
down, driving everybody crazy, giving their position away. He was pitiful. The Three
Musketeers pushed and carried and dragged the college kid all the way back to their own
lines, Weary's story went. They saved his God-damned hide for him.
In. real life, Weary was retracing his steps, trying to find out what had happened to Billy.
He had told the scouts to wait while he went back for the college bastard. He passed
under a low branch now. It hit the top of his helmet with a clonk. Weary didn't hear it.
Somewhere a big dog was barking. Weary didn't hear that, either. His war story was at a
very exciting point. An officer was congratulating the Three Musketeers, telling them that
he was going to put them in for Bronze Stars.
'Anything else I can do for you boys?' said the officer.
'Yes, sir,' said one of the scouts. 'We'd like to stick together for the rest of the war, sir. Is
there some way you can fix it so nobody will ever break up the Three Musketeers?'
Billy Pilgrim had stopped in the forest. He was leaning against a tree with his eyes
closed. His head was tilted back and his nostrils were flaring. He was like a poet in the
Parthenon.
This was when Billy first came unstuck in time. His attention began to swing grandly
through the full arc of his life, passing into death, which was violet light. There wasn't
anybody else there, or any thing. There was just violet light and a hum. And then Billy
swung into life again, going backwards until he was in pre-birth, which was red light and
bubbling sounds. And then he swung into life again and stopped. He was a little boy
taking a shower with his hairy father at the Ilium Y.M.C.A. He smelled chlorine from the
swimming pool next door, heard the springboard boom.
Little Billy was terrified, because his father had said Billy was going to learn to swim by
the method of sink-or-swim. Ms father was going to throw Billy into the deep end, and
Billy was going to damn well swim.
It was like an execution. Billy was numb as his father carried him from the shower room
to the pool. His eyes were closed. When he opened his eyes, he was on the bottom of the
pool, and there was beautiful music everywhere. He lost consciousness, but the music
went on. He dimly sensed that somebody was rescuing him. Billy resented that.
From there he traveled in time to 1965. He was forty-one years old, and he was visiting

his decrepit mother at Pine Knoll, an old people's home he had put her in only a month
before. She had caught pneumonia, and wasn't expected to live. She did live, though, for
years after that.
Her voice was nearly gone, so, in order to hear her, Billy had to put his ear right next to
her papery lips. She evidently had something very important to say.
'How ...?' she began, and she stopped. She was too tired. She hoped that she wouldn’t
have to say the rest of the sentence, and that Billy would finish it for her
But Billy had no idea what was on her mind. 'How what, Mother?' he prompted.
She swallowed hard, shed some tears. Then she gathered energy from all over her ruined
body, even from her toes and fingertips. At last she bad accumulated enough to whisper
this complete sentence:
'How did I get so old? '
Billy's antique mother passed out, and Billy was led from the room by a pretty nurse. The
body of an old man covered by a sheet was wheeled by just as Billy entered the corridor.
The man had been a famous marathon runner in his day. So it goes. This was before Billy
had his head broken in an airplane crash, by the way-before he became so vocal about
flying saucers and traveling in time.
Billy sat down in a waiting room. He wasn't a widower yet. He sensed something hard
under the cushion of his overstuffed chair. He dug it out, discovered that it was a book,
The Execution of Private Slovik, by William Bradford Huie. It was a true account of the
death before an American fixing squad of private Eddie D. Slovik, 36896415, the only
American soldier to be shot for cowardice since the Civil War. So it goes.
Billy read the opinion of a staff judge advocate who reviewed Slovik's case, which ended
like this: He has directly challenged the authority of the government, and future discipline
depends upon a resolute reply to this challenge. If the death penalty is ever to be imposed
for desertion, it should be imposed in this case, not as a punitive measure nor as
retribution, but to maintain that discipline upon which alone an army can succeed against
the enemy. There was no recommendation for clemency in the case and none is here
recommended. So it goes.
Billy blinked in 1965, traveled in time to 1958. He was at a banquet in honour of a Little
League team of which his son Robert was a member. The coach, who had never been
married, was speaking. He was all choked up. 'Honest to God,' he was Saying, 'I'd
consider it an honor just to be water boy for these kids.'
Billy blinked in 1958, traveled in time to 1961. It was New Year's Eve, and Billy was
disgracefully drunk at a party where everybody was in optometry or married to an
optometrist.
Billy usually didn't drink much, because the war had ruined his stomach, but he certainly
had a snootful now, and he was being unfaithful to his wife Valencia for the first and only
time. He had somehow persuaded a woman to come into the laundry room of the house,
and then sit up on the gas dryer, which was running.
The woman was very drunk herself, and she helped Billy get her girdle off. 'What was it
you wanted to talk about?' she said.
'It's all night,' said Billy. He honestly thought it was all right. He couldn't remember the
name of the woman.
'How come they call you Billy instead of William?'
'Business reasons,' said Billy. That was true. His father-in-law, who owned the Ilium

School of Optometry, who had set Billy up in practice, was a genius in his field. He told
Billy to encourage people to call him Billy-because it would stick in their memories. It
would also make him seem slightly magical, since there weren't any other grown Billys
around. It also compelled people to think of him as a friend right away.
Somewhere in there was an awful scene, with people expressing disgust for Billy and the
woman, and Billy found himself out in his automobile, trying to find the steering wheel.
The main thing now was to find the steering wheel. At first, Billy windmilled his arms,
hoping to find it by luck. When that didn't work, he became methodical, working in such
a way that the wheel could not possibly escape him. He placed himself hard against the
left-hand door, searched every square inch of the area before him. When he failed to find
the wheel, he moved over six inches, and searched again. Amazingly, he was eventually
hard against the right-hand door, without having found the wheel. He concluded that
somebody had stolen it. This angered him as he passed out.
He was in the back seat of his car., which was why he couldn't find the steering wheel.
Now somebody was shaking Billy awake. Billy stiff felt drunk, was still angered by the
stolen steering wheel. He was back in the Second World War again, behind the German
lines. The person who was shaking him was Roland Weary. Weary had gathered the front
of Billy's field jacket into his hands. He banged Billy against a tree, then puffed him
away from it, flung him in the direction he was supposed to take under his own power.
Billy stopped, shook his head. 'You go on,' he said. 'What? ' 'You guys go on without me.
I'm all right.' 'You're what?'
'I'm O.K.'
'Jesus-I'd hate to see somebody sick,' said Weary, through five layers of humid scarf from
home. Lilly had never seen Weary's face. He had tried to imagine it one time, had
imagined a toad in a fishbowl.
Weary kicked and shoved Billy for a quarter of a mile. The scouts were waiting between
the banks of a frozen creek. They had heard the dog. They had heard men calling back
and forth, too-calling like hunters who had a pretty good idea of where their quarry was.
The banks of the creek were high enough to allow the scouts, to stand without being seen.
Billy staggered down the bank ridiculously. After him came Weary, clanking and
clinking and tinkling and hot.
'Here he is, boys,' said Weary. 'He don't want to live, but he's gonna live anyway. When
he gets out of this, by God, he's gonna owe his life to the Three Musketeers. '
Billy Pilgrim, there in the creekbed, thought he, Billy Pilgrim, was turning to steam
painlessly. If everybody would leave him alone for just a little while, he thought, he
wouldn't cause anybody any more trouble. He would turn to steam and float up among
the treetops.
Somewhere the big dog barked again. With the help of fear and echoes and winter
silences, that dog had a voice like a big bronze gong.
Roland Weary, eighteen years old, insinuated himself between the scouts, draped a heavy
arm around the shoulder of each. 'So what do the Three Musketeers do now?' he said.
Billy Pilgrim was having a delightful hallucination. He was wearing dry, warm, white
sweatsocks, and he was skating on a ballroom floor. Thousands cheered. This wasn't
time-travel. it had never happened, never would happen. It was the craziness of a dying
young man with his shoes full of snow.
One scout hung his head, let spit fall from his lips. The other did the same. They studied

the infinitesimal effects of spit on snow and history. They were small, graceful people.
They had been behind German lines before many times- living like woods creatures,
living from moment to moment in useful terror, thinking brainlessly with their spinal
cords.
Now they twisted out from under Weary's loving arms. They told Weary that he and Billy
had better find somebody to surrender to. The Scouts weren't going to wait for them any
more.
And they ditched Weary and Billy in the creekbed.
Billy Pilgrim went on skating, doing tricks in sweat-socks, tricks that most people would
consider impossible-making turns, stopping on a dime and so on. The cheering went on,
but its tone was altered as the hallucination gave way to time-travel.
Billy stopped skating, found himself at a lectern in a Chinese restaurant in Ilium, New
York, on an early afternoon in the autumn of 1957. He was receiving a standing ovation
from the Lions Club. He had just been elected President, and it was necessary that he
speak. He was scared stiff, thought a ghastly mistake had been made. AR those
prosperous, solid men out there would discover now that they had elected a ludicrous
waif. They would hear his reedy voice, the one he'd had in the war. He swallowed, knew
that all he -had for a voice box was a little whistle cut from a willow switch. Worse-he
had nothing to say. The crowd quieted down. Everybody was pink and beaming.
Billy opened his mouth, and out came a deep, resonant tone. His voice was a gorgeous
instrument. It told jokes which brought down the house. It grew serious, told jokes again,
and ended on a note of humility. The explanation of the miracle was this: Billy had taken
a course in public speaking.
And then he was back in the bed of the frozen creek again. Roland Weary was about to
beat the living shit out of him.
Weary was filled with a tragic wrath. He had been ditched again. He stuffed his pistol
into its holster. He slipped his knife into its scabbard. Its triangular blade and blood
gutters on all three faces. And then he shook Billy hard, rattled his skeleton, slammed
him against a bank.
Weary barked and whimpered through his layers of scarf from home. He spoke
unintelligibly of the sacrifices he had made on Billy's behalf. He dilated upon the piety
and heroism of 'The Three Musketeers,' portrayed, in the most glowing and impassioned
hues, their virtue and magnanimity, the imperishable honor they acquired for themselves,
and the great services they rendered to Christianity,
It was entirely Billy's fault that this fighting organization no longer existed, Weary felt,
and Billy was going to pay. Weary socked Billy a good one on the side of the jaw,
knocked Billy away from the bank and onto the snow-covered ice of the creek. Billy was
down on all fours on the ice, and Weary kicked him in the ribs, rolled him over on his
side. Billy tried to form himself into a ball.
'You shouldn't even be in the Army,' said Weary.
Billy was involuntarily making convulsive sounds that were a lot like laughter. 'You
think it's funny, huh?' Weary inquired. He walked around to Billy's back. Billy's jacket
and shirt and undershirt had been hauled up around his shoulders by the violence, so his
back was naked. There, inches from the tips of Weary's combat boots, were the pitiful
buttons of Billy's spine.
Weary drew back his right boot, aimed a kick at the spine, at the tube which had so many

of Billy's important wires in it. Weary was going to break that tube.
But then Weary saw that he had an audience. Five German soldiers and a police dog on a
leash were looking down into the bed of the creek. The soldiers' blue eyes were filled
with bleary civilian curiosity as to why one American would try to murder another one so
far from home, and why the victim should laugh.
Three
The Germans and the dog were engaged in a military operation which had an amusingly
self-explanatory name, a human enterprise which is seldom described in detail, whose
name alone, when reported as news or history, gives many war enthusiasts a sort of post-
coital satisfaction. It is, in the imagination of combat's fans, the divinely listless loveplay
that follows the orgasm of victory. It is called 'mopping up.'
The dog, who had sounded so ferocious in the winter distances, was a female German
shepherd. She was shivering. Her tail was between her legs. She had been borrowed that
morning from a farmer. She had never been to war before. She had no idea what game
was being played. Her mine was Princess.
Two of the Germans were boys in their early teens. Two were ramshackle old me
droolers as toothless as carp. They were irregulars, armed and clothed fragmentarily with
junk taken from real soldiers who were newly dead. So it goes. They were farmers from
just across the German border, not far away.
Their commanander was a middle-aged corporal-red-eyed., scrawny, tough as dried beef,
sick of war. He had been wounded four times-and patched up, and sent back to war. He
was a very good soldier-about to quit, about to find somebody to surrender to. His bandy
legs were thrust into golden cavalry boots which he had taken from a dead Hungarian
colonel on the Russian front. So it goes.
Those boots were almost all he owned in this world. They were his home. An anecdote:
One time a recruit was watching him bone and wax those golden boots, and he held one
up to the recruit and said, 'If you look in there deeply enough, you'll see Adam and Eve.'
Billy Pilgrim had not heard this anecdote. But, lying on the black ice there, Billy stared
into the patina of the corporal's boots, saw Adam and Eve in the golden depths. They
were naked. They were so innocent, so vulnerable, so eager to behave decently. Billy
Pilgrim loved them.
Next to the golden boots were a pair of feet which were swaddled in rags. They were
crisscrossed by canvas straps, were shod with hinged wooden clogs. Billy looked up at
the face that went with the clogs. It was the face of a blond angel of fifteen-year-old boy.
The boy was as beautiful as Eve.
Billy was helped to his feet by the lovely boy, by the heavenly androgyne. And the others
came forward to dust the snow off Billy., and then they searched him for weapons. He
didn't have any. The most dangerous thing they found on his person was a two-inch
pencil stub.
Three inoffensive bangs came from far away. They came from German rifles. The two
scouts who had ditched Billy and Weary had just been shot. They had been lying in
ambush for Germans. They had been discovered and shot from behind. Now they were
dying in the snow, feeling nothing, turning the snow to the color of raspberry sherbet. So
it goes. So Roland Weary was the last of the Three Musketeers.
And Weary, bug-eyed with terror, was being disarmed. The corporal gave Weary's pistol
to the pretty boy. He marveled at Weary's cruel trench knife, said in German that Weary

would no doubt like to use the knife on him, to tear his face off with the spiked knuckles,
to stick the blade into his belly or throat. He spoke no English, and Billy and Weary
understood no German.
'Nice playthings you have, the corporal told Weary, and he handed the knife to an old
man. 'Isn't that a pretty thing? Hmmm?
He tore open Weary's overcoat and blouse. Brass buttons flew like popcorn. The corporal
reached into Weary's gaping bosom as though he meant to tear out his pounding heart,
but he brought out Weary's bulletproof Bible instead.
A bullet-proof Bible is a Bible small enough to be slipped into a soldier's breast pocket,
over his heart. It is sheathed in steel.
The corporal found the dirty picture of the woman and the pony in Weary's hip pocket.
'What a lucky pony, eh?' he said. "Hmmmm? Hmmmm? Don't you wish you were that
pony?' He handed the picture to the other old man. 'Spoils of war! It's all yours, you lucky
lad.'
Then he made Weary sit down in the snow and take off his combat boots, which he gave
to the beautiful boy. He gave Weary, the boy's clogs. So Weary and Billy were both
without decent military footwear now' and they had to walk for miles and miles, with
Weary's clogs clacking, with Billy bobbing up-and-down, up-and-down, crashing into
Weary from time to time.
'Excuse me,' Billy would say, or 'I beg your pardon.'
They were brought at last to a stone cottage at a fork in the road. It was a collecting point
for prisoners of war. Billy and Weary were taken inside, where it was warm and smoky.
There vas a fire sizzling and popping in the fireplace. The fuel was furniture. There were
about twenty other Americans in there, sitting on the floor with their backs to the wall,
staring into the flames-thinking whatever there was to think, which was zero. Nobody
talked. Nobody had any good war stories to tell.
Billy and Weary found places for themselves, and Billy went to sleep with his head on
the shoulder of an unprotesting captain. The captain was a chaplain. He was a rabbi. He
had been shot through the hand.
Billy traveled in time, opened his eyes, found himself staring into the glass eyes of a jade
green mechanical owl. The owl was hanging upside down from a rod of stainless steel.
The owl was Billy's optometer in his office in Ilium. An optometer is an instrument for
measuring refractive errors in eyes-in order that corrective lenses may be prescribed.
Billy had fallen asleep while examining a female patient who was m a chair on the other
side of the owl. He had fallen asleep at work before. It had been funny at first. Now Billy
was starting to get worried about it, about his mind in general. He tried to remember how
old he was, couldn't. He tried to remember what year it was. He couldn't remember that,
either.
'Doctor,' said the patient tentatively. 'Hm?' he said. 'You're so quiet.' 'Sorry.'
'You were talking away there-and then you got so quiet' 'Um.' 'You see something
terrible?' 'Terrible?' 'Some disease in my eyes?'
'No, no,' said Billy, wanting to doze again. 'Your eyes are fine. You just need glasses for
reading.' He told her to go across the corridor-to see the wide selection of frames there.
When she was gone, Billy opened the drapes and was no wiser as to what was outside.
The view was still blocked by a venetian blind., which he hoisted clatteringly. Bright
sunlight came crashing in. There were thousands of parked automobiles out there,

twinkling on a vast lake of blacktop. Billy's office was part of a suburban shopping
center.
Right outside the window was Billy's own Cadillac El Dorado Coupe de Ville. He read
the stickers on the bumper. 'Visit Ausable Chasm,' said one. 'Support Your Police
Department,' said another. There was a third. 'Impeach Earl Warren it said. The stickers
about the police and Earl Warren were gifts from Billy's father-in-law, a member of the
John Birch Society. The date on the license plate was 1967, which would make Billy
Pilgrim forty-four years old. He asked himself this: 'Where have all the years gone?'
Billy turned his attention to his desk. There was an open copy of The Review of
Optometry there. It was opened to an editorial, which Billy now read, his lips moving
slightly. What happens in 1968 will rule the fare of European optometrists for at least 50
years! Billy read. With this warning, Jean Thiriart, Secretary of the National Union of
Belgium Opticians, is pressing for formation of a 'European Optometry Society.' The
alternatives, he says, will be the obtaining of Professional status, or, by 1971, reduction to
the role of spectacle-sellers.
Billy Pilgrim tried hard to care.
A siren went off, scared the hell out of him. He was expecting the Third World War at
any time. The siren was simply announcing high noon. It was housed in a cupola atop a
firehouse across the street from Billy's office.
Billy closed his eyes. When he opened them, he was back in the Second World War
again. His head was on the wounded rabbi's shoulder. A German was kicking his feet,
telling him to wake up, that it was time to move on.
The Americans, with Billy among them, formed a fools' parade on the road outside.
There was a photographer present, a German war correspondent with a Leica. He took
pictures of Billy's and Roland Weary's feet. The picture was widely published two days
later as heartening evidence of how miserably equipped the American Army often was,
despite its reputation for being rich.
The photographer wanted something more lively, though, a picture of an actual capture.
So the guards staged one for him. They threw Billy into shrubbery. When Billy came out
of the shrubbery, his face wreathed in goofy good will, they menaced him with their
machine pistols, as though they were capturing him then.
Billy's smile as he came out of the shrubbery was at least as peculiar as Mona Lisa's, for
he was simultaneously on foot in Germany in 1944 and riding his Cadillac in 1967.
Germany dropped away, and 1967 became bright and clear, free of interference from any
other time. Billy was on his way to a Lions Club luncheon meeting. It was a hot August,
but Billy's car was air-conditioned. He was stopped by a signal in the middle of Ilium's
black ghetto. The people who lived here hated it so much that they had burned down a lot
of it a month before. It was all they had, and they'd wrecked it. The neighborhood
reminded Billy of some of the towns he had seen in the war. The curbs and sidewalks
were crushed in many places, showing where the National Guard tanks and half-tracks
had been.
'Blood brother,' said a message written in pink paint on the side of a shattered grocery
store.
There was a tap on Billy's car window. A black man was out there. He wanted to talk
about something. The light had changed. Billy did the simplest thing. He drove on.
Billy drove through a scene of even greater desolation. It looked like Dresden after it was

fire-bombed-like the surface of the moon. The house where Billy had grown up used to
be somewhere in what was so empty now. This was urban renewal. A new Ilium
Government Center and a Pavilion of the Arts and a Peace Lagoon and high-rise
apartment buildings were going up here soon.
That was all right with Billy Pilgrim.
The speaker at the Lions Club meeting was a major in the Marines. He said that
Americans had no choice but to keep fighting in Vietnam until they achieved victory or
until the Communists realized that they could not force their way of life -on weak
countries. The major had been there on two separate tours of duty. He told of many
terrible and many wonderful things he had seen. He was in favor of increased bombings,
of bombing North Vietnam back into the Stone Age, if it refused to see reason.
Billy was not moved to protest the bombing of North Vietnam-, did not shudder about the
hideous things he himself had seen bombing do. He was simply having lunch with the
Lions Club, of which he was past president now.
Billy had a framed prayer on his office wall which expressed his method for keeping
going, even though he was unenthusiastic about living. A lot of patients who saw the
prayer on Billy's wall told him that it helped them to keep going,, too. It went like this
GOD GRANT ME THE SERENITY TO ACCEPT THE THINGS I CANNOT
CHANGE COURAGE TO CHANGE THE THINGS I CAN, AND WISDOM ALWAYS
TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE.
Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present and the
future.
Now he was being introduced to the Marine major. The person who was performing the
introduction was telling the major that Billy was a veteran., and that Billy had a son who
was a sergeant in the Green Berets-in Vietnam.
The major told Billy that the Green Berets were doing a great job, and that he should be
proud of his son.
'I am. I certainly am,' said Billy Pilgrim.
He went home for a nap after lunch. He was under doctor's orders to take a nap every
day. The doctor hoped that this would relieve a complaint that Billy had: Every so often,
for no apparent reason, Billy Pilgrim would find himself weeping. Nobody had ever
caught Billy doing it. Only the doctor knew. It was an extremely quiet thing Billy did,
and not very moist.
Billy owned a lovely Georgian home in Ilium. He was rich as Croesus, something he had
never expected to be, not in a million years. He had five other optometrists working for
him in the shopping plaza location, and netted over sixty thousand dollars a year. In
addition, he owned a fifth of the new Holiday Inn out on Route 54, and -half of three
Tastee-Freeze stands. Tastee-Freeze was a sort of frozen custard. It gave all the pleasure
that ice cream could give, without the stiffness and bitter coldness of ice cream.
Billy's home was empty. His daughter Barbara was about to get warned, and she and his
wife had gone downtown to pick out patterns for her crystal and silverware. There was a
note saying so on the kitchen table. There were no servants. People just weren't interested
in careers in domestic service anymore. There wasn't a dog, either.
There used to be a dog named Spot, but he died. So it goes. Billy had liked Spot a lot, and
Spot had liked him.
Billy went up the carpeted stairway and into his and his wife's bedroom. The room had

flowered wallpaper. There was a double bed with a clock-radio on a table beside it. Also
on the table were controls for the electric blanket, and a switch to turn on a gentle
vibrator which was bolted to the springs of the box mattress. The trade name of the
vibrator was 'Magic Fingers.' The vibrator was the doctor's idea, too.
Billy took off his tri-focals and his coat and his necktie and his shoes, and he closed the
venetian blinds and then the drapes, and he lay down on the outside of the coverlet. But
sleep would not come. Tears came instead. They seeped. Billy turned on the Magic
Fingers, and he was jiggled as he wept.
The doorchimes rang. Billy got off the bed and looked down through a window at the
front doorstep, to see if somebody important had come to call. There was a crippled man
down there, as spastic in space as Billy Pilgrim was in time. Convulsions made the man
dance flappingly all the time, made him change his expressions, too, as though he were
trying to imitate various famous movie stars.
Another cripple was ringing a doorbell across the street. He was an crutches. He had only
one leg. He was so jammed between his crutches that his shoulders hid his ears.
Billy knew what the cripples were up to: They were selling subscriptions to magazines
that would never come. People subscribed to them because the salesmen were so pitiful.
Billy had heard about this racket from a speaker at the Lions Club two weeks before--a
man from the Better Business Bureau. The man said that anybody who saw cripples
working a neighbourhood for magazine subscriptions should call the police.
Billy looked down the street, saw a new, Buick Riviera parked about half a block away.
There was a man in it, and Billy assumed correctly that he was the man who had hired the
cripples to do this thing. Billy went on weeping as he contemplated the cripples and their
boss. His doorchimes clanged hellishly.
He closed his eyes, and opened them again. lie was still weeping, but he was back in
Luxembourg again. He was marching with a lot of other prisoners. It was a winter wind
that was bringing tears to his eyes.
Ever since Billy had been thrown into shrubbery for the sake of the picture, he had been
seeing Saint Elmo's fire, a sort of electronic radiance around the heads of his companions
and captors. It was in the treetops and on the rooftops of Luxembourg, too. It was
beautiful.
Billy was marching with his hands on top of his head, and so were all the other
Americans. Billy was bobbing up-and-down, up-and-down. Now he crashed into Roland
Weary accidentally. 'I beg your pardon,' he said.
Weary's eyes were tearful also. Weary was crying because of horrible pains in his feet.
The hinged clogs were transforming his feet into blood puddings.
At each road intersection Billy's group was joined by more Americans with their hands
on top of their haloed heads. Billy had smiled for them all. They were moving like water,
downhill all the time, and they flowed at last to a main highway on a valley's floor.
Through the valley flowed a Mississippi of humiliated Americans. Tens of thousands of
Americans shuffled eastward, their hands clasped on top of their heads. They sighed and
groaned.
Billy and his group joined the river of humiliation, and the late afternoon sun came out
from the clouds. The Americans didn't have the road to themselves. The west-bound lane
boiled and boomed with vehicles which were rushing German reserves to the front. The
reserves were violent, windburned, bristly men. They had teeth like piano keys.

They were festooned with machine-gun belts, smoked cigars, and guzzled booze. They
took wolfish bites from sausages, patted their horny palms with potato-masher grenades.
One soldier in black was having a drunk herd's picnic all by himself on top of a tank. He
spit on the Americans. The spit hit Roland Weary's shoulder, gave Weary a fourragière of
snot and blutwurst and tobacco juice, and Schnapps.
Billy found the afternoon stingingly exciting. There was so much to see-dragon's teeth,
killing machine, corpses with bare feet that were blue and ivory. So it goes.
Bobbing up-and-down, up-and-down, Billy beamed lovingly at a bright lavender
farmhouse that had been spattered with machine-gun bullets. Standing in its cock-eyed
doorway was a German colonel. With him was his unpainted whore.
Billy crashed into Weary's shoulder, and Weary cried out sobbingly. 'Walk right! Walk
right!'
They were climbing a gentle rise now. When they reached the top, they weren't in
Luxembourg any more. They were in Germany.
A motion-picture camera was set up at the border-to record the fabulous victory. Two
civilians in bearskin coats were leaning on the camera when Billy and Weary came by.
They had run out of film hours ago.
One of them singled out Billy's face for a moment, then focused at infinity again. There
was a tiny plume of smoke at infinity. There was a battle there. People were dying there.
So it goes.
And the sun went down, and Billy found himself bobbing in place in a railroad yard.
There were rows and rows of boxcars waiting. They had brought reserves to the front.
Now they were going to take prisoners into Germany's interior.
Flashlight beams danced crazily.
The Germans sorted out the prisoners according to rank. They put sergeants with
sergeants, majors with majors, and so on. A squad of full colonels was halted near Billy.
One of them had double pneumonia. He had a high fever and vertigo. As the railroad yard
dipped and swooped around the colonel, he tried to hold himself steady by staring into
Billy's eyes.
The colonel coughed and coughed, and then he said to Billy, 'You one of my boys?' This
was a man who had lost an entire regiment, about forty-five hundred men-a lot of them
children, actually. Billy didn't reply. The question made no sense.
'What was your outfit?' said the colonel. He coughed and coughed. Every time he inhaled
his lungs rattled like greasy paper bags.
Billy couldn't remember the outfit he was from. 'You from the Four-fifty-first?' 'Four-
fifty-first what?' said Billy. There was a silence. 'Infantry regiment,' said the colonel at
last.
'Oh,' said Billy Pilgrim.
There was another long silence, with the colonel dying and dying, drowning where he
stood. And then he cited out wetly, 'It's me, boys! It's Wild Bob!' That is what he had
always wanted his troops to call him: 'Wild Bob.'
None of the people who could hear him were actually from his regiment, except for
Roland Weary, and Weary wasn't listening. All Weary could think of was the agony in
his own feet.
But the colonel imagined that he was addressing his beloved troops for the last time, and
he told them that they had nothing to be ashamed of, that there were dead Germans all

over the battlefield who wished to God that they had never heard of the Four-fifty- first.
He said that after the war he was going to have a regimental reunion in his home town,
which was Cody, Wyoming. He was going to barbecue whole steers.
He said all this while staring into Billy's eyes. He made the inside of poor Bill's skull
echo with balderdash. 'God be with you, boys!' he said, and that echoed and echoed. And
then he said. 'If you're ever in Cody, Wyoming, just ask for Wild Bob!' I was there. So
was my old war buddy, Bernard V. O'Hare.
Billy Pilgrim was packed into a boxcar with many other privates. He and Roland Weary
were separated. Weary was packed into another car in the same train.
There were narrow ventilators at the comers of the car, under the eaves. Billy stood by
one of these, and, as the crowd pressed against him, he climbed part way up a diagonal
comer brace to make more room. 'Ms placed his eyes on a level with the ventilator, so he
could see another train about ten yards away.
Germans were writing on the cars with blue chalk-the number of persons in each car,
their rank, their nationality, the date on which they had been put aboard. Other Germans
were securing the hasps on the car doors with wire and spikes and other trackside trash.
Billy could hear somebody writing on his car, too, but he couldn't see who was doing it.
Most of the privates on Billy's car were very young-at the end of childhood. But
crammed into the comer with Billy was a former hobo who was forty years old.
'I been hungrier than this,' the hobo told Billy. 'I been m worse places than this. This ain't
so bad.'
A man in a boxcar across the way called out through the ventilator that a man. had just
died in there. So it goes. There were four guards who heard him. They weren't excited by
the news.
'Yo, yo,' said one, nodding dreamily. 'Yo, yo.'
And the guards didn't open the car with the dead man in it. They opened the next car
instead, and Billy Pilgrim was enchanted by what was in there. It was like heaven. There
was candlelight, and there were bunks with quilts and blankets heaped on them. There
was a cannonball stove with a steaming coffeepot on top. There was a table with a bottle
of wine and a loaf of bread and a sausage on it. There were four bowls of soup.
There were pictures of castles and lakes and pretty girls on the walls. This was the rolling
home of the railroad guards, men whose business it was to be forever guarding freight
rolling from here to there. The four guards went inside and closed the door.
A little while later they came out smoking cigars, talking contentedly in the mellow lower
register of the German language. One of them saw Billy's face at the ventilator. He
wagged a finger at him in affectionate warning, telling him to be a good boy.
The Americans across the way told the guards again about the dead man on their car. The
guards got a stretcher out of their own cozy car, opened the dead man's car and went
inside. The dead man's car wasn't crowded at all. There were just six live colonels in
there-and one dead one.
The Germans carried the corpse out. The corpse was Wild Bob. So it goes.
During the night, some of the locomotives began to tootle to one another, and then to
move. The locomotive and the last car of each train were marked with a striped banner of
orange and black, indicating that the train was not fair game for airplanes that it was
carrying prisoners of war.
The war was nearly over. The locomotives began to move east in late December. The war

would end in May. German prisons everywhere were absolutely full, and there was no
longer any food for the prisoners to eat, and no longer any fuel to keep them warm. And
yet-here came more prisoners.
Billy Pilgrim's train, the longest train of all, did not move for two days. 'This ain't bad,'
the hobo told Billy on the second day. 'This ain't nothing at all.' Billy looked out through
the ventilator. The railroad yard was a desert now, except for
a hospital train marked with red crosses-on a siding far, far away. Its locomotive
whistled. The locomotive of Billy Pilgrim's train whistled back. They were saying,
'Hello.'
Even though Billy's train wasn't moving., its boxcars were kept locked tight. Nobody was
to get off until the final destination. To the guards who walked up and down outside, each
car became a single organism which ate and drank and excreted through its ventilators. It
talked or sometimes yelled through its ventilators, too. In went water and loaves of
blackbread and sausage and cheese, and out came shit and piss and language.
Human beings in there were excreting into steel helmets, which were passed to the people
at the ventilators, who dumped them. Billy was a dumper. The human beings also passed
canteens, which guards would fill with water. When food came in, the human beings
were quiet and trusting and beautiful. They shared.
Human beings in there took turns standing or lying down. The legs of those who stood
were like fence posts driven into a warm., squirming, fatting, sighing earth. The queer
earth was a mosaic of sleepers who nestled like spoons.
Now the train began to creep eastward.
Somewhere in there was Christmas. Billy Pilgrim nestled like a spoon with the hobo on
Christmas night, and he fell asleep, and he traveled in time to 1967 again-to the night he
was kidnapped by a flying saucer from Tralfamadore.
Four
Billy Pilgrim could not sleep on his daughters wedding night. He was forty-four. The
wedding had taken place that afternoon in a gaily striped tent in Billy's backyard. The
stripes were orange and black.
Billy and his wife, Valencia, nestled like spoons in their big double bed. They were
jiggled by Magic Fingers. Valencia didn't need to be jiggled to sleep. Valencia was
snoring like a bandsaw. The poor woman didn't have ovaries or a uterus any more.
They had been removed by a surgeon-by one of Billy's partners in the New Holiday Inn.
There was a full moon.
Billy got out of bed in the moonlight. He felt spooky and luminous felt as though he were
wrapped in cool fur that was full of static electricity. He looked down at his bare feet.
They were ivory and blue.
Billy now shuffled down his upstairs hallway, knowing he was about to be kidnapped by
a flying saucer. The hallway was zebra-striped with darkness and moonlight. The
moonlight came into the hallway through doorways of the empty rooms of Billy's two
children, children no more. They were gone forever. Billy was guided by dread and the
lack of dread. Dread told him when to stop. Lack of it told him when to move again. He
stopped.
He went into his daughter's room. Her drawers were dumped. her closet was empty.
Heaped in the middle of the room were all the possessions she could not take on a
honeymoon. She had a Princess telephone extension all her own-on her windowsill Its

tiny night light stared at Billy. And then it rang.
Billy answered. There was a drunk on the other end. Billy could almost smell his breath-
mustard gas and roses. It was a wrong number. Billy hung up. There was a soft drink
bottle on the windowsill. Its label boasted that it contained no nourishment whatsoever.
Billy Pilgrim padded downstairs on his blue and ivory feet. He went into the kitchen,
where the moonlight called his attention to a half bottle of champagne on the kitchen
table, all that was left from the reception in the tent. Somebody had stoppered it again.
Drink me,' it seemed to say.
So Billy uncorked it with his thumbs. It didn't make a pop. The champagne was dead. So
it goes.
Billy looked at the clock on the gas stove. He had an hour to kill before the saucer came.
He went into the living room, swinging the bottle like a dinner bell, turned on the
television. He came slightly unstuck in time, saw the late movie backwards, then
forwards again. It was a movie about American bombers in the Second World War and
the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this:
American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an
airfield in England. Over France a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards,
sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the
same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards
to join the formation.
The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers
opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires,
gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of
the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had
miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck
more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded
Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though,
German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.
When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks
and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night
and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals.
Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to
specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground., to hide
them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.
The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned
into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn't in the movie. Billy was extrapolating.
Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired
biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed.
Billy saw the war movies backwards then forwards-and then it was time to go out into his
backyard to meet the flying saucer. Out he went, his blue and ivory feet crushing the wet
salad of the lawn. He stopped, took a swig, of the dead champagne. It was like 7-Up. He
would not raise his eyes to the sky, though he knew there was a flying saucer from
Tralfamadore up there. He would see it soon enough, inside and out, and he would see,
too, where it came from soon enough-soon enough.
Overhead he heard the cry of what might have been a melodious owl, but it wasn't a
melodious owl. It was a flying saucer from Tralfamadore, navigating in both space and

time, therefore seeming to Billy Pilgrim to have come from nowhere all at once.
Somewhere a big dog barked.
The saucer was one hundred feet in diameter, with portholes around its rim. The light
from the portholes was a pulsing purple. The only noise it made was the owl song. It ca-
me down to hover over Billy, and to enclose him in a cylinder of pulsing in purple light.
Now there was the sound of a seeming kiss as an airtight hatch in the bottom of the
saucer was opened. Down snaked a ladder that was outlined in pretty lights like a Ferris
wheel.
Billy's will was paralyzed by a zap gun aimed at him from one of the portholes. It became
imperative that he take hold of the bottom rung of the sinuous ladder, which he did. The
rung was electrified, so that Billy's hands locked onto it hard. He was hauled into the
airlock, and machinery closed the bottom door. Only then did the ladder, wound onto a
reel in the airlock, let him go. Only then did Billy's brain start working again.
There were two peepholes inside the airlock-with yellow eyes pressed to them. There was
a speaker on the wall. The Tralfamadorians had no voice boxes. They communicated
telepathicary. They were able to talk to Billy by means of a computer and a sort of
electric organ which made every Earthling speech sound.
'Welcome aboard, Mr. Pilgrim,' said the loudspeaker. 'Any questions?' Billy licked his
lips, thought a while, inquired at last: 'Why me? '
That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter?
Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in
amber?'
'Yes.' Billy in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber
with three ladybugs embedded in it.
'Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.'
They introduced an anesthetic into Billy's atmosphere now, put him to sleep. They carded
him to a cabin where he was strapped to a yellow Barca-Lounger which they had stolen
from a Sears & Roebuck warehouse. The hold of the saucer was crammed with other
stolen merchandise, which would be used to furnish Billy's artificial habitat in a zoo on
Tralfamadore.
The terrific acceleration of the saucer as it left Earth twisted Billy's slumbering body,
distorted his face, dislodged him m time, sent him back to the war.
When he regained consciousness, he wasn't on the flying saucer. He was in a boxcar
crossing Germany again.
Some people were rising from the floor of the car, and others were lying down. Billy
planned to He down, too. It would be lovely to sleep. It was black in the car, and black
outside the car, which seemed to be about two miles an hour. The car never seemed to go
any faster than that. It was a long time between clicks, between joints in the track. There
would be a click, and then a year would go by, and then there would be another click
The train often stopped to let really important trains bawl and hurtle by. Another thing it
did was stop on sidings near prisons, leaving a few cars there. It was creeping across all
of Germany, growing shorter all the time.
And Billy let himself down oh so gradually now, hanging onto the diagonal cross- brace
in the comer in order to make himself seem nearly weightless to those he was joining on
the floor. He knew it was important that he made himself nearly ghostlike when lying
down. He had forgotten why, but a reminder soon came.

'Pilgrim,' said a person he was about to nestle with, 'is that you?' Billy didn't say anything,
but nestled very politely, closed his eyes. 'God damn it' said the person. 'That is you, isn't
it?' He sat up and explored Billy rudely
with his hands. 'It's you, all right. Get the hell out of here.' Now Billy sat up, too-
wretched, close to tears. 'Get out of here! I want to sleep!' 'Shut up,' said somebody else.
'I'll shut up when Pilgrim gets away from here.'
So Billy stood up again, clung to the cross-brace. 'Where can I sleep?' he asked quietly.
'Not with me.' 'Not with me, you son of a bitch,' said somebody else. 'You yell. You kick.'
'I do?' "You're God damn right you do. And whimper.' 'I do?' 'Keep the hell away from
here., Pilgrim.'
And now there was an acrimonious madrigal, with parts sung in all quarters of the car.
Nearly everybody seemingly, had an atrocity story of something Billy Pilgrim had done
to him in his sleep. Everybody told Billy Pilgrim to keep the hell away.
So Billy Pilgrim had to sleep standing up, or not sleep at all. And food had stopped
coming in through the ventilators, and the days and nights were colder all the time.
On the eighth day, the forty-year-old hobo said to Billy, 'This ain't bad. I can be
comfortable anywhere.'
'You can?' said Billy.
On the ninth day, the hobo died. So it goes. His last words were, 'You think this is bad?
This ain't bad.'
There was something about death and the ninth day. There was a death on the ninth day
in the car ahead of Billy's too. Roland Weary died-of gangrene that had started in his
mangled feet. So it goes.
Weary, in his nearly continuous delirium, told again and again of the Three Musketeers,
acknowledged that he was dying, gave many messages to be delivered to his family in
Pittsburgh. Above all, he wanted to be avenged, so he said again and again the name of
the person who had killed him. Everyone on the car learned the lesson well.
'Who killed me?" he would ask. And everybody knew the answer., which was this: "Billy
Pilgrim.'
Listen- on the tenth night the peg was pulled out of the hasp on Billy's boxcar door, and
the door was opened. Billy Pilgrim was lying at an angle on the corner-brace, self-
crucified, holding himself there with a blue and ivory claw hooked over the- sill of the
ventilator. Billy coughed -when the door was opened, and when he coughed he shit thin
gruel. This was in accordance with the Third Law of Motion according to Sir Isaac
Newton. This law tells us that for every action there is a reaction which is equal and
opposite in direction.
This can be useful in rocketry.
The train had arrived on a siding by a prison which was originally constructed as an
extermination camp for Russian prisoners of war.
The guards peeked inside Billy's car owlishly, cooed calmingly. They had never dealt
with Americans before, but they surely understood this general sort of freight. They knew
that it was essentially a liquid which could be induced to flow slowly toward cooing and
light. It was nighttime.
The only light outside came from a single bulb which hung from a pole-high and far
away. All was quiet outside, except for the guards, who cooed like doves. And the liquid
began to flow. Gobs of it built up in the doorway, plopped to the ground.

Billy was the next-to-last human being to reach the door. The hobo was the last. The
hobo could not flow, could not plop. He wasn't liquid any more. He was stone. So it goes.
Billy didn't. want to drop from the car to the ground. He sincerely believed that he would
shatter like glass. So the guards helped him down, cooing still. They set him down facing
the train. It was such a dinky train now.
There was a locomotive, a tender, and three little boxcars. The last boxcar was the
railroad guards' heaven on wheels. Again-in that heaven on wheels-the table was set.
Dinner was served.
At the base of the pole from which the light bulb hung were three seeming haystacks. The
Americans were wheedled and teased over to those three stacks, which weren't hay after
all. They were overcoats taken from prisoners who were dead. So it goes.
It was the guards' firmly expressed wish that every American without an overcoat should
take one. The coats were cemented together with ice, so the guards used their bayonets as
ice picks, pricking free collars and hems and sleeves and so on, then peeling off coats and
handing them out at random. The coats were stiff and dome-shaped, having conformed to
their piles.
The coat that Billy Pilgrim got had been crumpled and frozen in such a way, and was so
small, that it appeared to be not a coat but a sort of large black, three-cornered hat. There
were gummy stains on it, too, like crankcase drainings or old strawberry jam. There
seemed to be a dead, furry animal frozen to it. The animal was in fact the coat's fur collar.
Billy glanced dully at the coats of his neighbors. Their coats all had brass buttons or
tinsel or piping or numbers or stripes or eagles or moons or stars dangling from them.
They were soldiers' coats. Billy was the only one who had a coat from a dead civilian. So
it goes.
And Billy and the rest were encouraged to shuffle around their dinky train and into the
prison camp. There wasn't anything warm or lively to attract them-merely long, low,
narrow sheds by the thousands, with no lights inside.
Somewhere a dog barked. With the help of fear and echoes and winter silences, that dog
had a voice like a big bronze gong.
Billy and the rest were wooed through gate after gate, and Billy saw his first Russian. The
man was all alone in the night-a ragbag with a round, flat face that glowed like a radium
dial.
Billy passed within a yard of him. There was barbed wire between them. The Russian did
not wave or speak, but he looked directly into Billy's soul with sweet hopefulness, as
though Billy might have good news for him-news he might be too stupid to understand,
but good news all the same.
Billy blacked out as he walked through gate after gate. He came to what he thought might
be a building on Tralfamadore. It was shrilly lit and lined with white tiles. It was on
Earth, though. It was a delousing station through which all new prisoners had to pass.
Billy did as he was told, took off his clothes. That was the first thing they told him to do
on Tralfamadore, too.
A German measured Billy's upper right arm with his thumb and forefinger, asked a
companion what sort of an army would send a weakling like that to the front. They
looked at the other American bodies now, pointed out a lot more that were nearly as bad
as Billy's.
One of the best bodies belonged to the oldest American by far, a high school teacher from

Indianapolis. His name was Edgar Derby. He hadn't been in Billy's boxcar. He'd been in
Roland Weary's car, had cradled Weary's head while he died. So it goes. Derby was
forty-four years old. He was so old he had a son who was a marine in the Pacific theater
of war.
Derby had pulled political wires to get into the army at his age. The subject he had taught
in Indianapolis was Contemporary Problems in Western Civilization. He also coached the
tennis team, and took very good care of his body.
Derby's son would survive the war. Derby wouldn't. That good body of his would be
filled with holes by a firing squad in Dresden in sixty-eight days. So it goes.
The worst American body wasn't Billy's. The worst body belonged to a car thief from
Cicero, Illinois. Ms name was Paul Lazzaro. He was tiny, and not only were his bones
and teeth rotten, but his skin was disgusting. Lazzaro was polka-dotted all over with
dime-sized scars. He had had many plagues of boils.
Lazzaro, too, had been on Roland Weary's boxcar, and had given his word of honor to
Weary that he would find some way to make Billy Pilgrim pay for Weary's death. He was
looking around now, wondering which naked human being was Billy.
The naked Americans took their places under many showerheads along a white-tiled
wall. There were no faucets they could control. They could only wait for whatever was
coming. Their penises were shriveled and their balls were retracted. Reproduction was
not the main business of the evening.
An unseen hand turned a master valve. Out of the showerheads gushed scalding rain. The
rain was a blow-torch that did not warm. It jazzed and jangled Billy's skin without
thawing the ice in the marrow of his long bones.
The Americans' clothes were meanwhile passing through poison gas. Body lice and
bacteria and fleas were dying by the billions. So it goes.
And Billy zoomed back in time to his infancy. He was a baby who had just been bathed
by his mother. Now his mother wrapped him in a towel, carried him into a rosy room that
was filled with sunshine. She unwrapped him, laid him on the tickling towel, powdered
him between his legs, joked with him, patted his little jelly belly. Her palm on his little
jelly belly made potching sounds.
Billy gurgled and cooed.
And then Billy was a middle-aged optometrist again, playing hacker's golf this time- on a
blazing summer Sunday morning. Billy never went to church any more. He was hacking
with three other optometrists. Billy was on the green in seven strokes, and it was his turn
to putt.
It was an eight-foot putt and he made it. He bent over to take the ball out of the cup, and
the sun went behind a cloud. Billy was momentarily dizzy. When he recovered, he wasn't
on the golf course any more. He was strapped to a yellow contour chair in a white
chamber aboard a flying saucer, which was bound for Tralfamadore.
'Where am I?' said Billy Pilgrim.
'Trapped in another blob of amber, Mr. Pilgrim. We are where we have to be just now-
three hundred million miles from Earth, bound for a time warp which will get us to
Tralfamadore in hours rather than centuries.'
'How-how did I get here?'
'It would take another Earthling to explain it to you. Earthlings are the great explainers,
explaining why this event is structured as it is, telling how other events may be achieved

or avoided. I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of Rocky
Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or
explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all,
as I've said before, bugs in amber.'
'You sound to me as though you don't believe in free will,' said Billy Pilgrim.
'If I hadn't spent so much time studying Earthlings,' said the Tralfamadorian, 'I wouldn't
have any idea what was meant by "free will." I've visited thirty-one inhabited plants in
the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any
talk of free will.'
Five
Billy Pilgrim says that the Universe does not look like a lot of bright little dots to the
creatures from Tralfamadore. The creatures can see where each star has been and where it
is going, so that the heavens are filled with rarefied, luminous spaghetti. And
Tralfamadorians don't see human beings as two-legged creatures, either. They see them
as great millipedes with babies' legs at one end and old people's legs at the other,' says
Billy Pilgrim.
Billy asked for something to read on the trip to Tralfamadore. His captors had five
million Earthling books on microfilm, but no way to project them in Billy's cabin. They
had only one actual book in English, which would be placed in a Tralfamadorian
museum. It was Valley of the Dolls, by Jacqueline Susann.
Billy read it, thought it was pretty good in spots. The people in it certainly had their ups-
and-downs, ups-and-downs. But Billy didn't want to read about the same ups-and- downs
over and over again. He asked if there wasn't, please, some other reading matters around.
'Only Tralfamadorian novels, which I'm afraid you couldn't begin to understand,' said the
speaker on the wall.
'Let me look at one anyway.'
So they sent him in several. They were little things. A dozen of them might have had the
bulk of Valley of the Dolls-with all its ups-and-downs, up-and-downs.
Billy couldn't read Tralfamadorian, of course, but he could at least see how the books
were laid out-in brief clumps of symbols separated by stars. Billy commented that the
clumps might be telegrams.
'Exactly,' said the voice.
'They are telegrams?'
'There are no telegrams on Tralfamadore. But you're right: each clump of-symbols is a
brief, urgent message describing a situation, a scene., We Tralfamadorians read them all
at once, not one after the other. There isn't any particular relationship between all the
messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at
once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no
beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love
in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.'
Moments after that, the saucer entered a time warp, and Billy was flung back into his
childhood. He was twelve years old, quaking as he stood with his mother and father on
Bright Angel Point, at the rim of Grand Canyon. The little human family was staring at
the floor of the canyon, one mile straight down.
'Well,' said Billy's father, manfully kicking a pebble into space, 'there it is.' They had
come to this famous place by automobile. They had had several blowouts on the way.

'It was worth the trip,' said Billy's mother raptly. 'Oh, God was it ever worth it.'
Billy hated the canyon. He was sure that he was going to fall in. His mother touched him,
and he wet his pants.
There were other tourists looking down into the canyon, too, and a ranger was there to
answer questions. A Frenchman who had come all the way from France asked the ranger
in broken English ff many people committed suicide by jumping in.
'Yes, sir,' said the ranger. 'About three folks a year.' So it goes.
And Billy took a very short trip through time,, made a peewee jump of only ten days, so
he was still twelve, still touring the West with his family. Now they were down in
Carlsbad Caverns, and Billy was praying to God to get him out of there before the ceiling
fell in.
A ranger was explaining that the Caverns had been discovered by a cowboy who saw a
huge cloud of bats come out of a hole in the ground. And then he said that he was going
to mm out all the lights., and that it would probably be the first time in the lives of most
people there that they had ever been in darkness that was total.
Out went the lights. Billy didn't even know whether he was still alive or not. And then
something ghostly floated in air to his left. It had numbers on it. His father had taken out
his Pocket watch. The watch had a radium dial.
Billy went from total dark to total light, found himself back in the war, back in the
delousing station again. The shower was over. An unseen hand had turned the water off.
When Billy got his clothes back, they weren't any cleaner, but all the little animals that
had been living in them were dead. So it goes. And his new overcoat was thawed out and
limp now. It was much too small for Billy. It had a fur collar and a g of crimson silk, and
had apparently been made for an impresario about as big as an organ-grinder's monkey. It
was full of bullet holes.
Billy Pilgrim dressed himself. He put on the little overcoat, too. It split up the back, and,
at the shoulders, the sleeves came entirely free. So the coat became a fur-collared vest. It
was meant to flare at its owners waist, but the flaring took place at Billy's armpits.
'Me Germans found him to be one of the most screamingly funny things they had seen in
all of the Second World War. They laughed and laughed.
And the Germans told everybody else to form in ranks of five, with Billy as their pivot.
Then out of doors went the parade, and through gate after gate again. 'Mere were more
starving Russians with faces like radium dials. The Americans were livelier than before.
The jazzing with hot water had cheered them up. And they came to a shed where a
corporal with only one arm and one eye wrote the name and serial number of each
prisoner in a big, red ledger. Everybody was legally alive now. Before they got their
names and numbers in that book, they were missing in action and probably dead.
So it goes.
As the Americans were waiting to move on, an altercation broke out in their rear-most
rank. An American had muttered something which a guard did not like. The guard knew
English, and he hauled the American out of ranks knocked him down.
The American was astonished. He stood up shakily, spitting blood. He'd had two teeth
knocked out. He had meant no harm by what he'd said, evidently, had no idea that the
guard would hear and understand.
'Why me?' he asked the guard. The guard shoved him back into ranks. 'Vy you? Vy
anybody?' he said.

When Billy Pilgrim's name was inscribed in the ledger of the prison camp, he was given a
number., too, and an iron dogtag in which that number was stamped. A slave laborer
from Poland had done the stamping. He was dead now. So it goes.
Billy was told to hang the tag' around his neck along with his American dogtags, which
he did. The tag was like a salt cracker, perforated down its middle so that a strong man
could snap it in two with his bare hands. In case Billy died, which he didn't, half the tag
would mark his body and half would mark his grave.
After poor Edgar Derby, the high school teacher, was shot in Dresden later on, a doctor
pronounced him dead and snapped his dogtag in two. So it goes.
Properly enrolled and tagged, the Americans were led through gate after gate again. In
two days' time now their families would learn from the International Red Cross that they
were alive.
Next to Billy was little Paul Lazzaro, who had promised to avenge Roland Weary.
Lazzaro wasn't thinking about vengeance. He was thinking about his terrible bellyache.
His stomach had shrunk to the size of a walnut. That dry, shriveled pouch was as sore as
a boil.
Next to Lazzaro was poor, doomed old Edgar Derby, with his American and German
dogs displayed like a necklace, on the outside of his clothes. He had expected to become
a captain, a company commander, because of his wisdom and age. Now here he was on
the Czechoslovakian border at midnight.
'Halt,' said a guard.
The Americans halted. They stood there quietly in the cold. The sheds they were among
were outwardly like thousands of other sheds they had passed. There was this
difference, though: the sheds had tin chimneys, and out of the chimneys whirled
constellations of sparks.
A guard knocked on a door.
The door was flung open from inside. Light leaped out through the door, escaped from
prison at 186,000 miles per second. Out marched fifty middle-aged Englishmen. They
were singing "Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here' from the Pirates of Penzance'.
These lusty, ruddy vocalists were among the first English-speaking prisoners to be taken
in the Second World War. Now they were singing to nearly the last. They had not seen a
woman or a child for four years or more. They hadn't seen any birds, either. Not even
sparrows would come into the camp.
The Englishmen were officers. Each of them had attempted to escape from another prison
at least once. Now they were here, dead-center in a sea of dying Russians.
They could tunnel all they pleased. They would inevitably surface within a rectangle of
barbed wire, would find themselves greeted listlessly by dying Russians who spoke no
English, who had no food or useful information or escape plans of their own. They could
scheme all they pleased to hide aboard a vehicle or steal one, but no vehicle ever came
into their compound. They could feign illness, if they liked, but that wouldn't earn them a
trip anywhere, either. The only hospital in the camp was a six-bed affair in the British
compound itself.
The Englishmen were clean and enthusiastic and decent and strong. They sang
boomingly well. They had been singing together every night for years.
The Englishmen had also been lifting weights and chinning themselves for years. Their
bellies were like washboards. The muscles of their calves and upper arms were like

cannonballs. They were all masters of checkers and chess and bridge and cribbage and
dominoes and anagrams and charades and Ping-Pong and billiards, as well.
They were among the wealthiest people in Europe, in terms of food. A clerical error early
in the war, when food was still getting through to prisoners, had caused the Red Cross to
ship them five hundred parcels every month instead of fifty. The Englishmen had hoarded
these so cunningly that now, as the war was ending, they had three tons of sugar, one ton
of coffee, eleven hundred pounds of chocolate, seven hundred pounds of tobacco,
seventeen hundred pounds of tea, two tons of flour, one ton of canned beef, twelve
hundred pounds of canned butter, sixteen hundred pounds of canned cheese, eight
hundred pounds of powdered milk., and two tons of orange marmalade.
They kept all this in a room without windows. They had ratproofed it by lining it with
flattened tin cans.
They were adored by the Germans, who thought they were exactly what the Englishmen
ought to be. They made war look stylish and reasonable, and fun. So the Germans let
them have four sheds, though one shed would have held them all. And, in exchange for
coffee or chocolate or tobacco, the Germans gave them paint and lumber and nails and
cloth for fixing things up.
The Englishmen had known for twelve hours that American guests were on their way.
They had never had guests before, and they went to work like darling elves, sweeping,
mopping, cooking, baking-making mattresses of straw and burlap bags, setting tables,
putting party favors at each place.
Now they were singing their welcome to their guests in the winter night. Their clothes
were aromatic with the feast they had been preparing. They were dressed half for battle,
half for tennis or croquet. They were so elated by their own hospitality, and by all the
goodies waiting inside, that they did not take a good look at their guests while they sang.
And they imagined that they were singing to fellow officers fresh from the fray.
They wrestled the Americans toward the shed door affectionately, filling the night with
manly blather and brotherly rodomontades. They called them 'Yank,' told them 'Good
show,' promised them that 'Jerry was on the run,' and so on.
Billy Pilgrim wondered dimly who Jerry was.
Now he was indoors., next to an iron cookstove that was glowing cherry red. Dozens of
teapots were boiling there. Some of them had whistles. And there was a witches' cauldron
full of golden soup. The soup was thick. Primeval bubbles surfaced it with lethargical
majesty as Billy Pilgrim stared.
There were long tables set for a banquet. At each place was a bowl made from a can that
had once contained powdered milk. A smaller can was a cup. A taller, more slender can
was a tumbler. Each tumbler was filled with warm milk.
At each place was a safety razor, a washcloth, a package of razor blades, a chocolate bar,
two cigars, a bar of soap,, ten cigarettes, a book of matches, a pencil and a candle.
Only the candles and the soap were of German origin. They had a ghostly, opalescent
similarity. The British had no way of knowing it, but the candles and the soap were made
from the fat of rendered Jews and Gypsies and fairies and communists, and other enemies
of the State.
So it goes.
The banquet hall was illuminated by candlelight. There were heaps of fresh baked white
bread on the tables, gobs of butter, pots of marmalade. There were platters of sliced beef

from cans. Soup and scrambled eggs and hot marmalade pie were yet to come.
And, at the far end of the shed, Billy saw pink arches with azure draperies hanging
between them, and an enormous clock, and two golden thrones, and a bucket and a mop.
It was in this setting that the evening's entertainment would take place, a musical version
of Cinderella, the most popular story ever told.
Billy Pilgrim was on fire, having stood too close to the glowing stove. The hem of his
little coat was burning. It was a quiet, patient sort of fire-like the burning of punk.
Billy wondered ff there was a telephone somewhere. He wanted to call his mother, to tell
her he was alive and well.
There was silence now, as the Englishmen looked in astonishment at the frowsy creatures
they had so lustily waltzed inside. One of the Englishmen saw that Billy was on fire.
'You're on fire lad!' he said, and he got Billy away from the stove and beat out the sparks
with his hands.
When Billy made no comment on this, the Englishman asked him, 'Can you talk? Can
you hear?'
Billy nodded.
The Englishman touched him exploratorily here and there, filled with pity. 'My God-
what have they done to you, lad? This isn't a man. It's a broken kite.'
'Are you really an American?' said the Englishman. 'Yes,' said Billy. 'And your rank?'
'Private.'
'What became of your boots, lad?' 'I don't remember.' 'Is that coat a joke?' 'Sir?'
'Where did you get such a thing?' Billy had to think hard about that. 'They gave it to me,'
he said at last. 'Jerry gave it to you?' 'Who? ' 'The Germans gave it to you?' 'Yes.' Billy
didn't like the questions. They were fatiguing. 'Ohhhh-Yank, Yank, Yank,' said the
Englishman, 'that coat was an insult, 'Sir? ' 'It was a deliberate attempt to humiliate you.
You mustn't let Jerry do things like that.' Billy Pilgrim swooned.
Billy came to on a chair facing the stage. He I had somehow eaten, and now he was
watching Cinderella. Some part of him had evidently been enjoying the performance for
quite a while. Billy was laughing hard.
The women in the play were really men, of course. The clock had just struck midnight
and Cinderella was lamenting
'Goodness me, the clock has struck- Alackaday, and fuck my luck.'
Billy found the couplet so comical that he not only laughed-he shrieked. He went on
shrieking until he was carried out of the shed and into another, where the hospital was. It
was a six-bed hospital. There weren't any other patients in there.
Billy was put to bed and tied down, and given a shot of morphine. Another American
volunteered to watch over him. This volunteer was Edgar Derby, the high school teacher
who would be shot to death in Dresden. So it goes.
Derby sat on a three-legged stool. He was given a book to read. The book was The Red
Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane. Derby had read it before. Now he read it again
while Billy Pilgrim entered a morphine paradise.
Under morphine, Billy had a dream of giraffes in a garden. The giraffes were following
gravel paths, were pausing to munch sugar pears from treetops. Billy was a giraffe, too.
He ate a pear. It was a hard one. It fought back against his grinding teeth. It snapped in
juicy protest.
The giraffes accepted Billy as one of their own, as a harmless creature as preposterously

specialized as themselves. Two approached him from opposite sides, leaned against him.
They had long, muscular upper lips which they could shape like the bells of bugles. They
kissed him with these. They were female giraffes-cream and lemon yellow. They had
horns like doorknobs. The knobs were covered with velvet.
Why?
Night came to the garden of the giraffes, and Billy Pilgrim slept without dreaming for a
while, and then he traveled in time. He woke up with his head under a blanket in a ward
for nonviolent mental patients in a veterans' hospital near Lake Placid, New York. It was
springtime in 1948, three years after the end of the war.
Billy uncovered his head. The windows of the ward were open. Birds were twittering
outside. 'Poo-tee-weet?' one asked him. The sun was high. There were twenty-nine other
patients assigned to the ward, but they were all outdoors now, enjoying the day. They
were free to come and go as they pleased, to go home, even., if they liked-and so was
Billy Pilgrim. They had come here voluntarily, alarmed by the outside world.
Billy had committed himself in the middle of his final year at the Ilium School of
Optometry. Nobody else suspected that he was going crazy. Everybody else thought he
looked fine and was acting fine. Now he was in the hospital. The doctors agreed: He was
going crazy.
They didn't think it had anything to do with the war. They were sure Billy was going to
pieces because his father had thrown him into the deep end of the Y.M.C.A. swimming
pool when he was a little boy, and had then taken him to the rim of the Grand Canyon.
The man assigned to the bed next to Billy's was a former infantry captain named Eliot
Rosewater. Rosewater was sick and tired of being drunk all the time.
It was Rosewater who introduced Billy to science fiction, and in particular to the writings
of Kilgore Trout. Rosewater had a tremendous collection of science-fiction paperbacks
under his bed. He had brought them to the hospital in a steamer trunk. Those beloved,
frumpish books gave off a smell that permeated the ward-like flannel pajamas that hadn't
been changed for a month, or like Irish stew.
Kilgore Trout became Billy's favorite living author, and science fiction became the only
sort of tales he could read.
Rosewater was twice as smart as Billy., but he and Billy were dealing with similar crises
in similar ways. They had both found life meaningless, partly because of what they had
seen in war. Rosewater., for instance, had shot a fourteen-year-old fireman, mistaking
him for a German soldier. So it goes. And Billy had seen the greatest massacre in
European history, which was the firebombing of Dresden. So it goes.
So they were trying to re-invent themselves and their universe. Science fiction was a big
help.
Rosewater said an interesting thing to Billy one time about a book that wasn't science
fiction. He said that everything there was to know about life was in The Brothers
Karamazov, by Feodor Dostoevsky. 'But that isn't enough any more.' said Rosewater.
Another time Billy heard Rosewater say to a psychiatrist, 'I think you guys are going to
have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people just aren't going to want to
go on living.'
There was a still life on Billy's bedside table-two pills, an ashtray with three lipstick-
stained cigarettes in it, one cigarette Still burning, and a glass of water. The water was
dead. So it goes. Air was trying to get out of that dead water. Bubbles were clinging to

the walls of the glass, too weak to climb out.
The cigarettes belonged to Billy's chain-smoking mother. She had sought the ladies'
room, which was off the ward for WACS and WAVES and SPARS and WAFS who had
gone bananas. She would be back at any moment now.
Billy covered his head with his blanket again. He always covered his head when his
mother came to see him in the mental ward-always got much sicker until she went away.
It wasn't that she was ugly, or had bad breath or a bad personality. She was a perfectly
nice, standard-issue, brown-haired, white woman with a high-school education.
She upset Billy simply by being his mother. She made him feel embarrassed and
ungrateful and weak because she had gone to so much trouble to give him life, and to
keep that life going, and Billy didn't really like life at all.
Billy heard Eliot Rosewater come in and lie down. Rosewater's bedsprings talked a lot
about that. Rosewater was a big man, but not very powerful. He looked as though he
might be made out of nose putty.
And then Billy's mother came back from the ladies' room, sat down on a chair between
Billy's and Rosewater's bed. Rosewater greeted her with melodious warmth, asked how
she was today. He seemed delighted to hear that she was fine. He was experimenting with
being ardently sympathetic with everybody he met. He thought that might make the
world a slightly more pleasant place to live in. He called Billy's mother 'dear.' He was
experimenting with calling everybody 'dear.'
Some day' she promised Rosewater., "I'm going to come in here, and Billy is going to
uncover his head, and do you know what he's going to say?'
'What's he going to say, dear?'
'He's going to say, "Hello, Mom," and he's going to smile. He's going to say, "Gee, it's
good to see you, Mom. How have you been?"'
'Today could -be the day.' 'Every night I pray.' 'That's a good thing to do.' 'People would
be surprised ff they knew how much in this world was due to prayers.' 'You never said a
truer word, dear.'
'Does your mother come to see you often?' 'My mother is dead,' said Rosewater. So it
goes. 'I'm sorry.' 'At least she had a happy life as long as it lasted.' 'That's a consolation,
anyway.' 'Yes.' 'Billy's father is dead., you know, said Billy's mother. So it goes.
'A boy needs a father.'
And on and on it went-that duet between the dumb, praying lady and the big, hollow man
so full of loving echoes.
'He was at the top of his class when this happened,' said Billy's mother.
'Maybe he. was working too hard.' said Rosewater. He held a book he wanted to read, but
he was much too polite to read and talk, too, easy as it was to give Billy's mother
satisfactory answers. The book was Maniacs in the Fourth Dimension, by Kilgore Trout.
It was about people whose mental diseases couldn't be treated because the causes of the
diseases were all in the fourth dimension., and three-dimensional Earthling doctors
couldn't see those causes at all, or even imagine them.
One thing Trout said that Rosewater liked very much was that there really were vampires
and werewolves and goblins and angels and so on, but that they were in the fourth
dimension. So was William Blake, Rosewater's favorite poet, according to Trout. So were
heaven and hell.
'He's engaged to a very rich girl,' said Billy's mother. 'That’s good,' said Rosewater.

'Money can be a great comfort sometimes.' 'It really can.' 'Of course it can.' 'It isn't much
fun if you have to pinch every penny till it screams. 'It's nice to have a little breathing
room.' 'Her father owns the optometry school where Billy was going. He also owns six
offices
around our part of the state. He flies his own plane and has a summer place up on Lake
George.'
'That's a beautiful lake.'
Billy fell asleep under his blanket. When he woke up again, he was tied to the bed in the
hospital back in prison. He opened one eye, saw poor old Edgar Derby reading The Red
Badge of Courage by candlelight.
Billy closed that one eye saw in his memory of the future poor old Edgar Derby in front
of a firing squad in the ruins of Dresden. There were only four men in that squad. Billy
had heard that one man in each firing squad was customarily given a rifle loaded with
blank cartridge. Billy didn't think there would be a blank cartridge issued in a squad that
small, in a war that old.
Now the head Englishman came into the hospital to check on Billy. He was an infantry
colonel captured at Dunkirk. It was he who had given Billy morphine. There wasn't a real
doctor in the compound, so the doctoring was up to him. 'How's the patient?' he asked
Derby.
'Dead to the world.' 'But not actually dead.' 'No.' 'How nice-to feel nothing, and still get
full credit for being alive.' Derby now came to lugubrious attention.
'No, no-please-as you were. With only two men for each officer, and all the men sick, I
think we can do without the usual pageantry between officers and men.'
Derby remained standing. 'You seem older than the rest,' said the colonel.
Derby told him he was forty-five, which was two years older than the colonel. The
colonel said that the other Americans had all shaved now, that Billy and Derby were the
only two still with beards. And he said, 'You know we've had to imagine the war here,
and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had
forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was
a shock "My God, my God-" I said to myself. "It's the Children's Crusade."'
The colonel asked old Derby how he had been captured, and Derby told a tale of being in
a clump of trees with about a hundred other frightened soldiers. The battle had been
going on for five days. The hundred had been driven into the trees by tanks.
Derby described the incredible artificial weather that Earthlings sometimes create for
other Earthlings when they don't want those other Earthlings to inhabit Earth any more.
Shells were bursting in the treetops with terrific bangs, he said, showering down knives
and needles and razorblades. Little lumps of lead in copper jackets were crisscrossing the
woods under the shellbursts, zipping along much faster than sound.
A lot of people were being wounded or killed. So it goes.
Then the shelling stopped, and a hidden German with a loudspeaker told the Americans
to put their weapons down and come out of the woods with their hands on the top of their
heads, or the shelling would start again. It wouldn't stop until everybody in there was
dead.
So the Americans put their weapons down, and they came out of the woods with their
hands on top of their heads, because they wanted to go on living, if they possibly could.
Billy traveled in time back to the veterans' hospital again. The blanket was over his head.

It was quiet outside the blanket. "Is my mother gone?' said Billy.
'Yes.'
Billy peeked out from under his blanket. His fiancée was out there now, sitting on the
visitor's chair. Her name was Valencia Merble. Valencia was the daughter of the owner of
the Ilium School of Optometry. She was rich. She was as big as a house because she
couldn't stop eating. She was eating now. She was eating a Three Musketeers Candy Bar.
She was wearing trifocal lenses in harlequin frames, and the frames were trimmed with
rhinestones. The glitter of the rhinestones was answered by the glitter of the diamond in
her engagement ring. The diamond was insured for eighteen hundred dollars. Billy had
found that diamond in Germany. It was booty of war.
Billy didn't want to marry ugly Valencia. She was one of the symptoms of his disease. He
knew he was going crazy, when he heard himself proposing marriage to her., when he
begged her to take the diamond ring and be his companion for life.
Billy said, 'Hello,' to her, and she asked him if he wanted some candy, and he said, 'No,
thanks.'
She asked him how he was, and he said, 'Much better, thanks.' She said that everybody at
the Optometry School was sorry he was sick and hoped he would be well soon, and Billy
said, 'When you see 'em, tell 'em, "Hello."'
She promised she would.
She asked him if there was anything she could bring him from the outside, and he said,
'No. I have just about everything I want.'
'What about books?' said Valencia.
'I'm right next to one of the biggest private libraries in the world,' said Billy, meaning
Eliot Rosewater's collection of science fiction.
Rosewater was on the next bed, reading, and Billy drew him into the conversation, asked
him what he was reading this time.
So Rosewater told him. It was The Gospel from Outer Space, by Kilgore Trout. It was
about a visitor from outer space, shaped very much like a Tralfamadorian by the way.
The visitor from outer space made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could,
why Christians found it so easy to be cruel. He concluded that at least part of the trouble
was slipshod storytelling in the New Testament. He supposed that the intent of the
Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the
low.
But the Gospels actually taught this: Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he
isn't well connected. So it goes.
The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who
didn't look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe.
Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought,
and Rosewater read out loud again:
Oh, boy-they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time!
And that thought had a brother: 'There are right people to lynch.' Who? People not well
connected. So it goes.
The visitor from outer space made a gift to Earth of a new Gospel. In it, Jesus really was
a nobody, and a pain in the neck to a lot of people with better connections than he had.
He still got to say all the lovely and puzzling things he said in the other Gospels.
So the people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross

in the ground. There couldn't possibly be any repercussions, the lynchers thought. The
reader would have to think that, too, since the new Gospel hammered home again and
again what a nobody Jesus was.
And then, just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was thunder and
lightning. The voice of God came crashing down. He told the people that he was adopting
the bum as his son giving him the full powers and privileges of The Son of the Creator of
the Universe throughout all eternity. God said this From this moment on, He will punish
horribly anybody who torments a bum who has no connections!
Billy's fiancée had finished her Three Musketeers Candy Bar. Now she was eating a
Milky Way.
'Forget books,' said Rosewater, throwing that particular book under his bed. 'The hell
with 'em.'
'That sounded like an interesting one,' said Valencia.
Jesus-if Kilgore Trout could only write!' Rosewater exclaimed. He had a point: Kilgore
Trout's unpopularity was deserved. His prose was frightful. Only his ideas were good.
'I don't think Trout has ever been out of the country, ' Rosewater went on. 'My God-he
writes about Earthlings all the time, and they're all Americans. Practically nobody on is
an American.'
'Where does he live?" Valencia asked.
'Nobody knows,' Rosewater replied. 'I'm the only person who ever heard of him, as far as
I can tell. No two books have the same publisher, and every time I write him in care of a
publisher, the letter comes back because the publisher has failed.'
He changed the subject now, congratulated Valencia on her engagement ring.
'Thank you,' she said, and held it out so Rosewater could get a close look. 'Billy got that
diamond in the war.'
'That's the attractive thing about war,' said Rosewater. Absolutely everybody gets a little
something.'
With regard to the whereabouts of Kilgore Trout: he actually lived in Ilium, Billy's
hometown, friendless and despised. Billy would meet him by and by.
'Billy' said Valencia Merble. 'Hm?'
'You want to talk about our silver pattern? ' 'Sure.' 'I've got it narrowed down pretty much
to either Royal Danish or Rambler Rose.' 'Rambler Rose,' said Billy. 'It isn't something
we should rush into,' she said. 'I mean whatever we decide on, that's
what we're going to have to live with the rest of our lives.' Billy studied the pictures.
'Royal Danish.' he said at last. 'Colonial Moonlight is nice, too.' 'Yes, it is,' said Billy
Pilgrim.
And Billy traveled in time to the zoo on Tralfamadore. He was forty-four years old, on
display under a geodesic dome. He was reclining on the lounge chair which had been his
cradle during his trip through space. He was naked. The Tralfamadorians were interested
in his body-all of it. There were thousands of them outside, holding up their little hands
so that their eyes could see him. Billy had been on Tralfamadore for six Earthling months
now. He was used to the crowd.
Escape was out of the question. The atmosphere outside the dome was cyanide, and Earth
was 446,120,000,000,000,000 miles away.
Billy was displayed there in the zoo in a simulated Earthling habitat. Most of the
furnishings had been stolen from the Sears & Roebuck warehouse in Iowa City, Iowa.

There was a color television set and a couch that could be converted into a bed. There
were end tables with lamps and ashtrays on them by the couch. There was a home bar and
two stools. There was a little pool table. There was wall-to-wall carpeting in federal gold,
except in the kitchen and bathroom areas and over the iron manhole cover in the center of
the floor. There were magazines arranged in a fan on the coffee table in front of the
couch.
There was a stereophonic phonograph. The phonograph worked. The television didn't.
There was a picture Of one cowboy g another one pasted to the television tube. So it
goes.
There were no wall in the dome, nor place for Billy to hide. The mint green bathroom
fixtures were right out in the open. Billy got off his lounge chair now, went into the
bathroom and took a leak. The crowd went wild.
Billy brushed his teeth on Tralfamadore, put in his partial denture, and went into his
kitchen. His bottled-gas range and his refrigerator and his dishwasher were mint green,
too. There was a picture painted on the door of the refrigerator. The refrigerator had come
that way. It was a picture of a Gay Nineties couple on a bicycle built for two. Billy
looked at that picture now, tried to think something about the couple. Nothing came to
him. There didn't seem to be anything to think about those two people.
Billy ate a good breakfast from cans. He washed his cup and plate and knife and fork and
spoon and saucepan, put them away. Then he did exercises he had learned in the Army-
straddle jumps, deep knee bends, sit-ups and push-ups. Most Tralfamadorians had no way
of knowing Bill's body and face were not beautiful. They supposed that he was a splendid
specimen. This had a pleasant effect on Billy, who began to enjoy his body for the first
time.
He showered after his exercises and trimmed his toenails. He shaved and sprayed
deodorant under his arms, while a zoo guide on a raised platform outside explained what
Billy was doing-and why. The guide was lecturing telepathically, simply standing there,
sending out thought waves to the crowd. On the platform with him was the little keyboard
instrument with which he would relay questions to Billy from the crowd. Now the first
question came-from the speaker on the television set: 'Are you happy here?'
'About as happy as I was on Earth,' said Billy Pilgrim, which was true.
There were fives sexes on Tralfamadore, each of them performing a step necessary in the
creation of a new individual. They looked identical to Billy-because their sex differences
were all in the fourth dimension.
One of the biggest moral bombshells handed to Billy by the Tralfamadorians,
incidentally, had to do with sex on Earth. They said their flying-saucer crews had
identified no fewer than seven sexes on Earth, each essential to reproduction. Again:
Billy couldn't possibly imagine what five of those seven sexes had to do with the making
of a baby, since they were sexually active only in the fourth dimension.
The Tralfamadorians tried to give Billy clues that would help him imagine sex in the
invisible dimension. They told him that there could be no Earthling babies without male
homosexuals. There could be babies without female homosexuals. There couldn't be
babies without women over sixty-five years old. There could be babies without men over
sixty-five. There couldn't be babies without other babies who had lived an hour or less
after birth. And so on.
It was gibberish to Billy.

There was a lot that Billy said that was gibberish to the Tralfamadorians, too. They
couldn't imagine what time looked like to him. Billy had given up on explaining that. The
guide outside had to explain as best he could.
The guide invited the crowd to imagine that they were looking across a desert at a
mountain range on a day that was twinkling bright and clear. They could look at a peak or
a bird or a cloud, at a stone right in front of them, or even down into a canyon behind
them. But among them was this poor Earthling, and his head was encased in a steel
sphere which he could never take off. There was only one eyehole through which he
could look, and welded to that eyehole were six feet of pipe.
This was only the beginning of Billy's miseries in the metaphor. He was also strapped to
a steel lattice which was bolted to a flatcar on rails, And there was no way he could turn
his head or touch the pipe. The far end of the pipe rested on a bi-pod which was also
bolted to the flatcar. All Billy could see was the dot at the end of the pipe. He didn't know
he was on a flatcar, didn't even know there was anything peculiar about his situation.
The flatcar sometimes crept, sometimes went extremely fast, often stopped-went uphill,
downhill, around curves, along straightaways. Whatever poor Billy saw through the pipe,
he had no choice but to say to himself, 'That's life.'
Billy expected the Tralfamadorians to be baffled and alarmed by all the wars and other
forms of murder on Earth. He expected them to fear that the Earthling combination of
ferocity and spectacular weaponry might eventually destroy part or maybe all of the
innocent Universe. Science fiction had led him to expect that.
But the subject of war never came up until Billy brought it up himself. Somebody in the
zoo crowd asked him through the lecturer what the most valuable thing he had learned on
Tralfamadore was so far, and Billy replied, 'How the inhabitants of a whole planet can
live in peace I As you know, I am from a planet that has been engaged in senseless
slaughter since the beginning of time. I myself have seen the bodies of schoolgirls who
were boiled alive in a water tower by my own countrymen, who were proud of fighting
pure evil at the time. ' This was true. Billy saw the boiled bodies in Dresden. 'And I have
lit my way in a prison at night with candles from the fat of human beings who were
butchered by the brothers and fathers of those school girls who were boiled. Earthlings
must be the terrors of the Universe! If other planets aren't now in danger from Earth, they
soon will be. So tell me the secret so I can take it back to Earth and save us all: How can
a planet live at peace?'
Billy felt that he had spoken soaringly. He was baffled when he saw the Tralfamadorians
close their little hands on their eyes. He knew from past experience what this meant: He
was being stupid.
'Would-would you mind telling me,' he said to the guide, much deflated, 'what was so
stupid about that?'
'We know how the Universe ends,' said the guide, 'and Earth has nothing to do with it,
except that it gets wiped out, too.'
'How-how does the Universe end?' said Billy.
'We blow it up, experimenting with new fuels for our flying saucers. A Tralfamadorian
test pilot presses a starter button, and the whole Universe disappears.' So it goes.
"If You know this," said Billy, 'isn't there some way you can prevent it? Can't you keep
the pilot from pressing the button?'
'He has always pressed it, and he always will. We always let him and we always will let

him. The moment is structured that way.'
'So,' said Billy gropingly, I suppose that the idea of, preventing war on Earth is stupid,
too. '
'Of course.' 'But you do have a peaceful planet here.' 'Today we do. On other days we
have wars as horrible as any you've ever seen or read
about. There isn't anything we can do about them, so we simply don't look at them. We
ignore them. We spend eternity looking at pleasant moments-like today at the zoo. Isn't
this a nice moment?'
'Yes.'
'That's one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful
times, and concentrate on the good ones.'
'Um,' said Billy Pilgrim.
Shortly after he went to sleep that night, Billy traveled in time to another moment which
was quite nice, his wedding night with the former Valencia Merble. He had been out of
the veterans' hospital for six months. He was all well. He had graduated from the Ilium
School of Optometry-third in his class of forty-seven.
Now he was in bed with Valencia in a delightful studio apartment which was built on the
end of a wharf on Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Across the water were the lights of
Gloucester. Billy was on top of Valencia, making love to her. One result of this act would
be the birth of Robert Pilgrim, who would become a problem in high school, but who
would then straighten out as a member of the famous Green Berets.
Valencia wasn't a time-traveler, but she did have a lively imagination. While Billy was
making love to her, she imagined that she was a famous woman in history. She was being
Queen Elizabeth the First of England, and Billy was supposedly Christopher Columbus.
Billy made a noise like a small, rusty hinge. He had just emptied his seminal vesicles into
Valencia, had contributed his share of the Green Beret According to the Tralfamadorians,
of course, the Green Beret would have seven parents in all.
Now he rolled off his huge wife, whose rapt expression did not change when he departed.
He lay with the buttons of his spine along the edge of the mattress, folded his hands
behind his head. He was rich now. He had been rewarded for marrying a girl nobody in
his right mind would have married. His father-in-law had given him a new Buick
Roadmaster, an all-electric home, and had made him manager of his most prosperous
office, his Ilium office, where Billy could expect to make at least thirty thousand dollars a
year. That was good. His father had been only a barber.
As his mother said, "The Pilgrims are coming up in the world,'
The honeymoon was taking place in the bittersweet mysteries of Indian summer in New
England. The lovers' apartment had one romantic wall which was all French doors. They
opened onto a balcony and the oily harbor beyond.
A green and orange dragger, black in the night, grumbled and drummed past their
balcony, not thirty feet from their wedding bed. It was going to sea with only its running
lights on. Its empty holds were resonant, made the song of the engines rich and loud. The
wharf began to sing the same song, and then the honeymooners' headboard sang, too.
And it continued to sing long after the dragger was gone.
'Thank you,' said Valencia at last. The headboard was singing a mosquito song. 'You're
welcome.' 'It was nice.' 'I'm glad.'
Then she began to cry. 'What's the matter?' 'I'm so happy.' 'Good.'

'I never thought anybody would marry me.' 'Um,' said Billy Pilgrim.
I'm going to lose weight for you,' she said. 'What?' 'I'm going to go on a diet. I'm going to
become beautiful for you.' 'I like you just the way you are.' 'Do you really?' 'Really,' said
Billy Pilgrim. He had already seen a lot of their marriage, thanks to time-
travel, knew that it was going to be at least bearable all the way.
A great motor yacht named the Scheherezade now slid past the marriage bed. The song
its engines sang was a very low organ note. All her lights were on.
Two beautiful people, a young man and a young woman in evening clothes, were at the
rail hi the stem, loving each other and their dreams and the wake. They were
honeymooning, too. They were Lance Rumfoord., of Newport, Rhode Island, and his
bride,, the former Cynthia Landry., who had been a childhood sweetheart of John F.
Kennedy in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.
There was a slight coincidence here. Billy Pilgrim would later share a hospital room with
Rumfoord's uncle, Professor Bertram Copeland Rumfoord of Harvard, official Historian
of the United States Air Force.
When the beautiful people were past, Valencia questioned her funny-looking husband
about war. It was a simple-minded thing for a female Earthling to do, to associate sex and
glamor with war.
'Do you ever think about the war?' she said, laying a hand on his thigh. 'Sometimes,' said
Billy Pilgrim.
'I look at you sometimes,' said Valencia, 'and I get a funny feeling that you're full of
secrets.'
'I'm not,' said Billy. This was a lie, of course. He hadn't told anybody about all the time
traveling he'd done, about Tralfamadore and so on.
'You must have secrets about the war. Or, not secrets, I guess, but things you don't want
to talk about.'
'No.' 'I'm proud you were a soldier. Do you know that?' 'Good.' 'Was it awful?'
'Sometimes.' A crazy thought now occurred to Billy. The truth of it startled him. It
would make a good epitaph for Billy Pilgrim-and for me, too. 'Would you talk about the
war now, if I wanted you to?' said Valencia. In a tiny cavity
in her great body she was assembling the materials for a Green Beret. 'It would sound like
a dream,', said Billy. 'Other people's dreams aren't very interesting
usually.' 'I heard you tell Father one time about a German firing squad.' She was referring
to the
execution of poor old Edgar Derby. 'Um.'
'You had to bury him? ' 'Yes.' Did he see you with your shovels before he was shot?'
'Yes.' 'Did he say anything?'
EVERYTHING WAS BEAUTIFUL, AND NOTHING HURT
'No.' 'Was he scared?' 'They had him doped up. He was sort of glassy-eyed.' And they
pinned a target to him?' A piece of paper,' said Billy. He got out of bed, said, 'Excuse me,
' went to the
darkness of the bathroom to take a leak. He groped for the light, realized as he felt the
rough wall that he had traveled back to 1944, to the prison hospital again.
The candle in the hospital had gone out. Poor old Edgar Derby had fallen asleep on the
cot next to Billy's. Billy was out of bed, groping along a wall, trying to find a way out
because he had to take a leak so badly.

He suddenly found a door, which opened, let him reel out into the prison night. Billy was
loony with time-travel and morphine. He delivered himself to a barbed-wire fence which
snagged him in a dozen places. Billy tried to back away from it but the barbs wouldn't let
go. So Billy did a silly little dance with the fence, taking a step this way, then that way,
then returning to the beginning again.
A Russian, himself out in the night to take a leak, saw Billy dancing-from the other side
of the fence. He came over to the curious scarecrow, tried to talk with it gently, asked it
what country it was from. The scarecrow paid no attention, went on dancing. So
the Russian undid the snags one b y one, and the scarecrow danced off into the night
again without a word of thanks.
The Russian waved to him, and called after him in Russian, 'Good-bye.'
Billy took his pecker out, there in the prison night, and peed and peed on the ground.
Then he put it away again, more or less, and contemplated a new problem: Where had he
come from, and where should he go now?
Somewhere in the night there were cries of grief. With nothing better to do, Billy shuffled
in their direction. He wondered what tragedy so many had found to lament out of doors.
Billy was approaching, without knowing it, the back of the latrine. It consisted of a one-
rail fence with twelve buckets underneath it. The fence was sheltered on three sides by a
screen of scrap lumber and flattened tin cans. The open side faced the black tarpaper wall
of the shed where the feast had, taken place.
Billy moved along the screen and reached a point where he could see a message freshly
painted on the tarpaper wall. The words were written with the same pink paint which had
brightened the set for Cinderella. Billy's perceptions were so unreliable that he saw the
words as hanging in air, painted on a transparent curtain, perhaps. And there were lovely
silver dots on the curtain, too. These were really nailheads holding the tarpaper to the
shed. Billy could not imagine how the curtain was supported in nothingness, and he
supposed that the magic curtain and the theatrical grief were part of some religious
ceremony he knew nothing about.
Here is what the message said:
PLEASE LEAVE THIS LATRINE AS TIDY AS YOU FOUND IT!
Billy looked inside the latrine. The wailing was coming from in there. The place was
crammed with Americans who had taken their pants down. The welcome feast had made
them as sick as volcanoes. The buckets were full or had been kicked over.
An American near Billy wailed that he had excreted everything but his brains. Moments
later he said, 'There they go, there they go.' He meant his brains.
That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book.
Billy reeled away from his vision of Hell. He passed three Englishmen who were
watching the excrement festival from a distance. They were catatonic with disgust.
'Button your pants!' said one as Billy went by. So Billy buttoned his pants. He came to
the door of the little hospital by accident. He went through the door,, and found himself
honeymooning again, going from the bathroom back to bed with his bride on Cape Ann.
'I missed you' said Valencia. 'I missed you,' said Billy Pilgrim.
Billy and Valencia went to sleep nestled like spoons, and Billy traveled in time back to
the train ride he had taken in 194 4 from maneuvers in South Carolina to his father's
funeral in Ilium. He hadn't seen Europe or combat yet. This was still in the days of steam
locomotives.

Billy had to change trains a lot. All the trains were slow. The coaches stunk of coal
smoke and rationed tobacco and rationed booze and the farts of people eating wartime
food. The upholstery of the iron seats was bristly, and Billy couldn't sleep much. He got
to sleep soundly when he was only three hours from Ilium, with his legs splayed toward
the entrance of the busy dining car.
The porter woke him up when the train reached Ilium. Billy staggered off with his duffel
bag, and then he stood on the station platform next to the porter, trying to wake up.
'Have a good nap, did you?' said the porter. 'Yes,' said Billy. 'Man,' said the porter, 'you
sure had a hard-on.'
At three in the morning on Bill's morphine night in prison, a new patient was carried into
the hospital by two lusty Englishmen. He was tiny. He was Paul Lazzaro, the polka-
dotted car thief from Cicero, Illinois. He had been caught stealing cigarettes from under
the pillow of an Englishman. The Englishman, half asleep, had broken Lazzaro's right
arm and knocked him unconscious.
The Englishman who had done this was helping to carry Lazzaro in now. He had fiery
red hair and no eyebrows. He had been Cinderella's Blue Fairy Godmother in the play.
Now he supported his half of Lazzaro with one hand while he closed the door behind
himself with the other. 'Doesn't weigh as much as a chicken,' he said.
The Englishman with Lazzaro's feet was the colonel who had given Billy his knock-out
shot.
The Blue Fairy Godmother was embarrassed, and angry, too. 'If I'd known I was fighting
a chicken,' he said, 'I wouldn't have fought so hard.'
'Um.'
The Blue Fairy Godmother spoke frankly about how disgusting all the Americans were.
'Weak, smelly, self-pitying-a pack of sniveling, dirty, thieving bastards,' he said. 'They're
worse than the bleeding Russians.'
'Do seem a scruffy lot,' the colonel agreed.
A German major came in now. He considered the Englishmen as close friends. He visited
them nearly every day, played games with them, lectured to them on German history,
played their piano, gave them lessons in conversational German. He told them often that,
if it weren't for their civilized company, he would go mad. His English was splendid.
He was apologetic about the Englishmen's having to put up with the American enlisted
men. He promised them that they would not be inconvenienced for more than a day or
two, that the Americans would soon be shipped to Dresden as contract labor. He had a
monograph with him, published by the German Association of Prison Officials. It was a
report on the behavior in Germany of American enlisted men as prisoners of war. It was
written by a former American who had risen high in the German Ministry of Propaganda.
His name was Howard W. Campbell, Jr. He would later hang himself while awaiting trial
as a war criminal.
So it goes.
While the British colonel set Lazzaro's broken arm and mixed plaster for the cast, the
German major translated out loud passages from Howard W. Campbell, Jr.'s monograph.
Campbell had been a fairly well-known playwright at one time. His opening line was this
one:
America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor
Americans are urged to hate themselves To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard,

'It ain't no disgrace to be poor, but might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American
to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk
traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more
estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor.
They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking
establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its
wall asking this cruel question: 'If you're so smart, why ain't You rich? ' There will also
be an American flag no larger than a child's hand-glued to a lollipop stick and, flying
from the cash register.
The author of the monograph, a native of Schenectady, New York, was said by some to
have had the highest I.Q. of all the war criminals who were made to face a death by
hanging. So it goes.
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously
untrue, the monograph went on. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for
any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to
come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame
themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have
had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say,
Napoleonic times.
Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without
precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do
not love themselves. Once this is understood the disagreeable behavior of American
enlisted men in German prisons ceases to be a mystery.
Howard W. Cambell, Jr., now discussed the uniform of the American enlisted in the
Second World War: Every other army in history, prosperous or not, has attempted to
clothe even its lowliest soldiers so as to make them impressive to themselves and others
as stylish experts in drinking and copulation and looting and sudden death. The American
Army, however, sends its enlisted men out to fight and die in a modified business suit
quite evidently made for another man, a sterilized but unpressed gift from a nose-holding
charity which passes out clothing to drunks in the slums.
When a dashingly-clad officer addresses such a frumpishly dressed bum, he scolds him,
as an officer in an army must. But the officer's contempt is not, as in 'other armies,
avuncular theatricality. It is a genuine expression of hatred for the poor, who have no one
to blame for their misery but themselves.
A prison administrator dealing with captured American enlisted men for the first time
should be warned: Expect no brotherly love, even between brothers. There will be no
cohesion between the individuals. Each will be a sulky child who often wishes he were
dead
Campbell told what the German experience with captured American enlisted men had
been. They were known everywhere to be the most self-pitying, least fraternal and dirtiest
of all prisoners of war, said Campbell. They were incapable of concerted action on their
own behalf. They despised any leader from among their own number, refused to follow
or even listen to him, on the grounds that he was no better than they were, that he should
stop putting on airs.
And so on. Billy Pilgrim went to sleep, woke up as a widower in his empty home in
Ilium. His daughter Barbara was reproaching him for writing ridiculous letters to the

newspapers.
'Did you hear what I said?' Barbara inquired. It was 1968 again. 'Of course.' He had been
dozing. 'If you're going to act like a child, maybe we'll just have to treat you like a child.'
'That isn't what happens next,' said Billy. 'We'll see what happens next.' Big Barbara now
embraced herself. 'It's awfully cold in
here. Is the heat on?' 'The heat? ' 'The furnace-the thing in the basement, the thing that
makes hot air that comes out of
these registers. I don't think it's working.' 'Maybe not.' 'Aren't you cold?' 'I hadn't noticed.'
'Oh my God, you are a child. If we leave you alone here, you'll freeze to death, you'll
starve to death.' And so on. It was very exciting for her, taking his dignity away in the
name of love.
Barbara called the oil-burner man, and she made Billy go to bed, made him promise to
stay under the electric blanket until the heat came on. She set the control of the blanket at
the highest notch, which soon made Billy's bed hot enough to bake bread in.
When Barbara left, slamming the door behind her, Billy traveled in time to the zoo on
Tralfamadore again. A mate has just been brought to him from Earth. She was Montana
Wildhack, a motion picture star.
Montana was under heavy sedation. Tralfamadorians wearing gas masks brought her in,
put her on Billy's yellow lounge chair; withdrew through his airlock. The vast crowd
outside was delighted. All attendance records for the zoo were broken. Everybody on the
planet wanted to see the Earthlings mate.
Montana was naked, and so was Billy, of course. He had a tremendous wang,
incidentally. You never know who'll get one.
Now she fluttered her eyelids. Her lashes were like buggy whips. 'Where am I?' she said.
'Everything is all right,' said Billy gently. 'Please don't be afraid.
Montana had been unconscious during her trip from Earth. The Tralfamadorians hadn't
talked to her, hadn't shown themselves to her. The last thing she remembered was
sunning herself by a swimming pool in Palm Springs, California. Montana was only
twenty years old. Around her neck was a silver chain with a heart-shaped locket hanging
from it-between her breasts.
Now she turned her head to see the myriads of Tralfamadorians outside the dome. They
were applauding her by opening and closing their little green hands quickly.
Montana screamed and screamed.
All the little green hands closed fight, because Montana's terror was so unpleasant to see.
The head zoo keeper ordered a crane operator, who was standing by, to drop a navy blue
canopy over the dome, thus simulating Earthling night inside. Real night came to the zoo
for only one Earthling hour out of every sixty-two.
Billy switched on a floor lamp. The light from the single source threw the baroque
detailing of Montana's body into sharp relief. Billy was reminded of fantastic architecture
in Dresden, before it was bombed.
In time, Montana came to love and trust Billy Pilgrim. He did not touch her until she
made it clear that she wanted him to. After she had been on Tralfamadore for what would
have been an Earthling week, she asked him shyly if he wouldn't sleep with her. Which
he did. It was heavenly.
And Billy traveled in time from that delightful bed to a bed in 1968. It was his bed in
Ilium, and the electric blanket was turned up high. He was drenched in sweat,

remembered groggily that his daughter had put him to bed, had told him to stay there
until the oil burner was repaired.
Somebody was knocking on his bedroom door. 'Yes?' said Billy. 'Oil-burner man.' 'Yes?'
'It’s running good now. Heat's coming up.' 'Good.' 'Mouse ate through a wire from the
thermostat' 'I'll be darned.'
Billy sniffed. His hot bed smelled like a mushroom cellar. He had had a wet dream about
Montana Wildhack.
On the morning after that wet dream, Billy decided to go back to work in his office in the
shopping plaza. Business was booming as usual. His assistants were keeping up with it
nicely. They were startled to see him. They had been told by his daughter that he might
never practice again.
But Billy went into his examining room briskly, asked that the first patient be sent in. So
they sent him one-a twelve-year old boy who was accompanied by his-widowed
mother. They were strangers, new in town. Billy asked them a little about themselves,
learned that the boy's father had been killed in Vietnam-in the famous five-day battle for
Hill 875 near Dakto. So it goes.
While he examined the boy's eyes, Billy told him matter-of-factly about his adventures
on Tralfamadore, assured the fatherless boy that his father was very much alive still in
moments the boy would see again and again.
'Isn't that comforting?' Billy asked.
And somewhere in there, the boy's mother went out and told the receptionist that Billy
was evidently going crazy. Billy was taken home. His daughter asked him again, 'Father,
Father, Father-what are we going to do with you?'
Six
Listen: Billy Pilgrim says he went to Dresden Germany, on the day after his morphine
night in
the British compound in the center of the extermination camp for Russian prisoners of
war. Billy woke up at dawn on that day in January. There were no windows in the little
hospital, and the ghostly candles had gone out. So the only light came from pin-prick
holes in the walls, and from a sketchy rectangle that outlined the imperfectly fitted door.
Little Paul Lazzaro, with a broken arm, snored on one bed. Edgar Derby, the high school
teacher who would eventually he shot, snored on another.
Billy sat up in bed. He had no idea what year it was or what planet he was on. Whatever
the planet's name was, it was cold. But it wasn't the cold that had awakened Billy. It was
animal magnetism which was making him shiver and itch. It gave him profound aches in
his musculature, as though he had been exercising hard.
The animal magnetism was coming from behind him. If Billy had had to guess as to the
source, he would have said that there was a vampire bat hanging upside down on the wall
behind him.
Billy moved down toward the foot of his cot before turning to look at whatever it was. He
didn't want the animal to drop into his face and maybe claw his eyes out or bite off his
big nose. Then he turned. The source of the magnetism really did resemble a bat. It was
Billy's impresario's coat with the fur collar. It was hanging from a nail.
Billy now backed toward it again, looking at it over his shoulder, feeling the magnetism
increase. Then he faced it, kneeling on his cot, dared to touch it here and there. He was
seeking the exact source of the radiations.

He found two small sources, two lumps an inch apart and hidden in the lining. One was
shaped like a pea. The other was shaped like a tiny horseshoe. Billy received a message
carried by the radiations. He was told not to find out what the lumps were. He was
advised to be content with knowing that they could work miracles for him, provided he
did not insist on learning their nature. That was all right with Billy Pilgrim. He was
grateful. He was glad.
Billy dozed, awakened in the prison hospital again. The sun was high. Outside were
Golgotha sounds of strong men digging holes for upright timbers in hard, hard ground.
Englishmen were building themselves a new latrine. They had abandoned their old latrine
to the American d their theater the place where the feast had been held, too.
Six Englishmen staggered through a hospital with a pool table on which several
mattresses were piled. They were transferring it to living quarters attached to the hospital.
They were followed by an Englishman dragging his mattress and carrying a dartboard.
The man with the dartboard was the Blue Fairy Godmother who had injured little Paul
Lazzaro. He stopped by Lazzaro's bed, asked Lazzaro how he was.
Lazzaro told him he was going to have him killed after the war. 'Oh? ' 'You made a big
mistake,' said Lazzaro. 'Anybody touches me, he better kill me, or I'm
gonna have him killed.' The Blue Fairy Godmother knew something about killing. He
gave Lazzaro a careful
smile. 'There is still time for me to kill you,' he said, 'if you really persuade me that it's
the sensible thing to do.'
'Why don't you go fuck yourself?' 'Don't think I haven't tried,' the Blue Fairy Godmother
answered.
The Blue Fairy Godmother left, amused and patronizing. When he was gone, Lazzaro
promised Billy and poor old Edgar Derby that he was going to have revenge, and that
revenge was sweet.
'It's the sweetest thing there is,' said Lazzaro. 'People fuck with me,' he said, 'and Jesus
Christ are they ever fucking sorry. I laugh like hell. I don't care if it's a guy or a dame. If
the President of the United States fucked around with me, I'd fix him good. You should
have seen what I did to a dog one time.'
'A dog?' said Billy.
'Son of a bitch bit me. So 1 got me some steak, and I got me the spring out of a clock. I
cut that spring up in little pieces. I put points on the ends of the pieces. They were sharp
as razor blades. I stuck 'em into the steak-way inside. And I went past where they had the
dog tied up. He wanted to bite me again. I said to him, 'Come on., doggie-let's be friends.
Let's not be enemies any more. I'm not mad." He believed me.'
'He did?'
'I threw him the steak. He swallowed it down in one big gulp. I waited around for ten
minutes.' Now Lazzaro's eyes twinkled. 'Blood started coming out of his mouth. He
started crying, and he rolled on the ground, as though the knives were on the outside of
him instead of on the inside of him. Then he tried to bite out his own insides. I laughed,
and I said to him, "You got the right idea now. Tear your own guts out, boy. That's me in
there with all those knives."' So it goes.
'Anybody ever asks you what the sweetest thing in life is-' said Lazzaro, 'it's revenge.'
When Dresden was destroyed later on, incidentally, Lazzaro did not exult. He didn't have
anything against the Germans, he said. Also, he said he liked to take his enemies one at a

time. He was proud of never having hurt an innocent bystander. 'Nobody ever got it from
Lazzaro,' he said, 'who didn't have it coming.'
Poor old Edgar Derby, the high school teacher, got into the conversation now. He asked
Lazzaro if he planned to feed the Blue Fairy Godmother clock springs and steak.
'Shit,' said Lazzaro. 'He's a pretty big man,' said Derby, who, of course, was a pretty big
man himself. 'Size don't mean a thing.' 'You're going to shoot him?' 'I'm gonna have him
shot,' said Lazzaro. 'He'll get home after the war. He'll be a big
hero. The dames'll be climbing all over him. He'll settle down. A couple of years'll go by.
And then one day there'll be a knock on his door. He'll answer the door, and there'll be a
stranger out there. The stranger'll ask him if he's so-and-so. When he says he is, the
stranger'll say, "Paul Lazzaro sent me." And he'll pull out a gun and shoot his pecker off.
The stranger'll let him think a couple of seconds about who Paul Lazzaro is and what
life's gonna be like without a pecker. Then he'll shoot him once in the guts and walk
away.' So it goes.
Lazzaro said that he could have anybody in the world killed for a thousand dollars plus
traveling expenses. He had a list in his head, he said.
Derby asked him who all was on the list, and Lazzaro said, 'Just make fucking sure you
don't get on it. just don't cross me, that's all.' There was a silence, and then he added, 'And
don't cross my friends.'
'You have friends?' Derby wanted to know. 'In the war?' said Lazzaro. 'Yeah-I had a
friend in the war. He's dead.' So it goes. 'That's too bad.' Lazzaro's eyes were twinkling
again. 'Yeah. He was my buddy on the boxcar. His
name was Roland Weary. He died in my arms.' Now he pointed to Billy with his one
mobile hand. 'He died on account of this silly cocksucker here. So I promised him I'd
have this silly cocksucker shot after the war.'
Lazzaro erased with his hand anything Billy Pilgrim might be about to say. 'Just forget
about it, kid,' he said. 'Enjoy life while you can. Nothing's gonna happen for maybe five,
ten, fifteen, twenty years. But lemme give you a piece of advice: Whenever the doorbell
rings, have somebody else answer the door.'
Billy Pilgrim says now that this really is the way he is going to die, too. As a time-
traveler, he has seen his own death many times, has described it to a tape recorder. The
tape is locked up with his will and some other valuables in his safe-deposit box at the
Ilium Merchants National Bank and Trust, he says.
I, Billy Pilgrim, the tape begins, will die, have died and always will die on February
thirteenth, 1976.
At the time of his death, he says, he is in Chicago to address a large crowd on the subject
of flying saucers and the true nature of time. His home is still in Ilium. He has had to
cross three international boundaries in order to reach Chicago. The United States of
America has been Balkanized, has been divided into twenty petty nations so that it will
never again be a threat to world peace. Chicago has been hydrogen-bombed by Angry
Chinamen. So it goes. It is all brand new.
Billy is speaking before a capacity audience in a baseball park, which is covered by a
geodesic dome. The flag of the country is behind him. It is a Hereford Bull on a field of
green. Billy predicts his own death within an hour. He laughed about it, invites the crowd
to laugh with him. 'It is high time I was dead..' he says. 'Many years ago.' he said, 'a
certain man promised to have me killed. He is an old man now, living not far from here.

He has read all the publicity associated with my appearance in your fair city. He is
insane. Tonight he will keep his promise.'
There are protests from the crowd.
Billy Pilgrim rebukes them. 'If you protest, if you think that death is a terrible thing, then
you have not understood a word I've said.' Now he closes his speech as he closes every
speech with these words: 'Farewell, hello, farewell, hello.'
There are police around him as he leaves the stage. They are there to protect him from the
crush of popularity. No threats on his life have been made since 1945. The police offer to
stay with him. They are floridly willing to stand in a circle around him all night, with
their zap guns drawn.
'No, no,' says Billy serenely. 'It is time for you to go home to your wives and children,
and it is time for me to be dead for a little while-and then live again.' At that moment,
Billy's high forehead is in the cross hairs of a high-powered laser gun. It is aimed at him
from the darkened press box. In the next moment, Billy Pilgrim is dead. So it goes.
So Billy experiences death for a while. It is simply violet light and a hum. There isn't
anybody else there. Not even Billy Pilgrim is there.
Then he swings back into life again, all the way back to an hour after his life was
threatened by Lazzaro-in 1945. He has been told to get out of his hospital bed and dress,
that he is well. He and Lazzaro and poor old Edgar Derby are to join their fellows in the
theater. There they will choose a leader for themselves by secret ballot in a free election.
Billy and Lazzaro and poor old Edgar Derby crossed the prison yard to the theater now.
Billy was carrying his little coat as though it were a lady's muff. It was wrapped around
and round his hands. He was the central clown in an unconscious travesty of that famous
oil painting, 'The Spirit of '76.'
Edgar Derby was writing letters home in his head, telling his Wife that he was alive and
well, that she shouldn't worry, that the war was. nearly over, that he would soon be home.
Lazzaro was talking to himself about people he was going to have killed after the war,
and rackets he was going to work, and women he was going to make fuck Mm, whether
they wanted to or not. If he had been a dog in a city, a policeman would have shot him
and sent his head to a laboratory, to see if he had rabies. So it goes.
As they neared the theater, they came upon an Englishman who was hacking a groove in
the Earth with the heel of his boot. He was marking the boundary between the American
and English sections of the compound. Billy and Lazzaro and Derby didn't have to ask
what the line meant. It was a familiar symbol from childhood.
The theater was paved with American bodies that nestled like spoons. Most of the
Americans were in stupors or asleep. Their guts were fluttering, dry.
'Close the fucking door,' somebody said to Billy. 'Were you born I'm a barn?'
Billy closed it., took a hand from his muff, touched a stove. It was as cold as ice. The
stage was still set for Cinderella. Azure curtains hung from the arches which were
shocking pink. There were golden thrones and the dummy clock, whose hands were set at
midnight. Cinderella's slippers, which were a man's boots painted silver, were capsized
side by side under a golden throne.
Billy and poor old Edgar Derby and Lazzaro had been in the hospital when the British
passed out blankets and mattresses, so they had none. They had to improvise. The only
space open to them was up on the stage, and they went up there, pulled the azure curtains
down, made nests.

Billy, curled in his azure nest., found himself staring at Cinderella's silver boots under a
throne. And then he remembered that his shoes were ruined, that he needed boots. He
hated to get out of his nest., but he forced himself to do it. He crawled to the boots on all
fours, sat, tried them on.
The boots fit perfectly. Billy Pilgrim was Cinderella, and Cinderella was Billy Pilgrim.
Somewhere in there was a lecture on personal hygiene by the head Englishman., and then
a free election. At least half the Americans went on snoozing through it all. The
Englishman' got up on the stage, and he rapped on the arm of a throne with a swagger
stick, called, 'Lads, lads, lad I have your attention, please?' And so on.
What the Englishman. said about survival was this 'If you stop taking pride 'm your
appearance, you will very soon die.' He said that he had seen several men die in the
following way: They ceased to stand up straight, then ceased to shave or wash, then
ceased to get out of bed, then ceased to talk, then died. There is this much to be said for
it: it is evidently a very easy and painless way to go.' So it goes.
The Englishman said that he, when captured, had made and kept the following vows to
himself: To brush his teeth twice a day, to shave once a day, to wash his face and hands
before every meal and after going to the latrine, to polish his shoes once a day, to
exercise for at least half an hour each morning and then move his bowels, and to look into
a mirror frequently, frankly evaluating his appearance, particularly with respect to
posture.
Billy Pilgrim heard all this while lying in his nest. He looked not at the Englishman's face
but his ankles.
'I envy you lads,' said the Englishman. Somebody laughed. Billy wondered what the joke
was. 'You lads are leaving this afternoon for Dresden-a beautiful city., I'm told. You
won't
be cooped up like us. You'll be out where the life is, and the food is certain to be more
plentiful than here. If I may inject a personal note: It has been five years now since I have
seen a tree or flower or woman or child-or a dog or a cat or a place of entertainment, or a
human being doing useful work of any kind.
'You needn't worry about bombs, by the way. Dresden is an open city. It is undefended,
and contains no war industries or troop concentrations of any importance.'
Somewhere in there, old Edgar Derby was elected head American. The Englishman
called for nominations from the floor, and there weren't any. So he nominated Derby,
praising him for his maturity and long experience in dealing with people. There were no
further nominations, so the nominations were closed.
'All in favor?'
Two or three people said, 'Aye.'
Then poor old Derby made a speech. He thanked the Englishman for his good advice,
said he meant to follow it exactly. He said he was sure that all the other Americans would
do the mm. He said that his primary responsibility now was to make damn well sure that
everybody got home safely.
'Go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut,' murmured Paul Lazzaro in his azure nest.
'Go take a flying fuck at the moon.'
The temperature climbed startlingly that day. The noontime was balmy. The Germans
brought soup and bread in two-wheeled carts which were pulled by Russians. The
Englishmen sent over real coffee and sugar and marmalade and cigarettes and cigars, and

the doors of the theater were left open, so the warmth could get in.
The Americans began to feel much better. They were able to hold their food. And then it
was time to go to Dresden. The Americans marched fairly stylishly out of the British
compound. Billy Pilgrim again led the parade. He had silver boots now, and a muff, and a
piece of azure curtain which he wore like a toga. Billy still had a beard. So did poor old
Edgar Derby, who was beside him. Derby was imagining letters to home, his lips
working tremulously.
Dear Margaret-We are leaving for Dresden today. Don t worry. It will never be bombed.
It is an open city. There was an election at noon, and guess what? And so on.
They came to the prison railroad yard again. They had arrived on only two cars. They
would depart far more comfortably on four. They saw the dead hobo again. He was
frozen stiff in the weeds beside the track. He was in a fetal position, trying even in death
to nestle like a spoon with others. There were no others now. He was nestling within thin
air and cinders. Somebody had taken his boots. His bare feet were blue and ivory. It was
all right, somehow, his being dead. So it goes.
The trip to Dresden was a lark. It took only two hours. Shriveled little bellies were full.
Sunlight and cold air came in through the ventilators. There were plenty of smokes from
the Englishmen.
The Americans arrived in Dresden at five in the afternoon. The boxcar doors were
opened, and the doorways framed the loveliest city that most of the Americans had ever
seen. The skyline was intricate and voluptuous and enchanted and absurd. It looked like a
Sunday school picture of Heaven to Billy Pilgrim.
Somebody behind him in the boxcar said, 'Oz.' That was I. That was me. The only other
city I'd ever seen was Indianapolis, Indiana.
Every other big city in Germany had been bombed and burned ferociously. Dresden had
not suffered so much as a cracked windowpane. Sirens went off every day, screamed like
hell, and people went down into cellars and listened to radios there. The planes were
always bound for someplace else-Leipzig, Chemnitz, Plauen, places like that. So it goes.
Steam radiators still whistled cheerily in Dresden. Street-cars clanged. Telephones rang
and were answered. Lights went on and off when switches were clicked. There were
theaters and restaurants. There was a zoo. The principal enterprises of the city were
medicine and food-processing and the making of cigarettes.
People were going home from work now in the late afternoon. They were tired.
Eight Dresdeners crossed the steel spaghetti of the railroad yard. They were wearing new
uniforms. They had been sworn into the army the day before. They were boys and men
past middle age, and two veterans who had been shot to pieces in Russia. Their
assignment was to guard one hundred American prisoners of war, who would work as
contract labor. A grandfather and his grandson were in the squad. The grandfather was an
architect.
The eight were grim as they approached the boxcars containing their wards. They knew
what sick and foolish soldiers they themselves appeared to be. One of them actually had
an artificial leg, and carried not only a loaded rifle but a cane. Still they were expected to
earn obedience and respect from tall cocky, murderous American infantrymen who had
just come from all the killing of the front.
And then they saw bearded Billy Pilgrim in his blue toga and silver shoes, with his hands
in a muff. He looked at least sixty years old. Next to Billy was little Paul Lazzaro with a

broken arm. He was fizzing with rabies. Next to Lazzaro was the poor old high school
teacher, Edgar Derby, mournfully pregnant with patriotism and middle age and imaginary
wisdom. And so on.
The eight ridiculous Dresdeners ascertained that these hundred ridiculous creatures really
were American fighting men fresh from the front. They smiled, and then they laughed.
Their terror evaporated. There was nothing to be afraid of. Here were more crippled
human beings, more fools like themselves. Here was light opera.
So out of the gate of the railroad yard and into the streets of Dresden marched the light
opera. Billy Pilgrim was the star. He led the parade. Thousands of people were on the
sidewalks, going home from work. They were watery and putty-colored, having eaten
mostly potatoes during the past two years. They had expected no blessings beyond the
mildness of the day. Suddenly-here was fun.
Billy did not meet many of the eyes that found him so entertaining. He was enchanted by
the architecture of the city. Merry amoretti wove garlands above windows. Roguish fauns
and naked nymphs peeked down at Billy from festooned cornices. Stone monkeys frisked
among scrolls and seashells and bamboo.
Billy, with his memories of the future, knew that the city would be smashed to
smithereens and then burned-in about thirty more days. He knew, too, that most of the
people watching him would soon be dead. So it goes.
And Billy worked his hands in his muff as he marched. His fingertips, working there in
the hot darkness of the muff, wanted to know what the two lumps in the lining of the little
impresario's coat were. The fingertips got inside the lining. They palpated the lumps, the
pea-shaped thing and the horseshoe-shaped thing. The parade had to halt by a busy
corner. The traffic light was red.
There at the comer, in the front rank of pedestrians, was a surgeon who had been
operating all day. He was a civilian, but his posture was military. He had served in two
world wars. The sight of Billy offended him, especially after he learned from the guards
that Billy was an American. It seemed to Wm that Billy was in abominable taste,
supposed that Billy had gone to a lot of silly trouble to costume himself just so.
The surgeon spoke English, and he said to Billy, 'I take it you find war a very comical
thing.'
Billy looked at him vaguely. Billy had lost track momentarily of where he was or how he
had gotten there. He had no idea that people thought he was clowning. It was Fate, of
course, which had costumed him-Fate, and a feeble will to survive.
'Did you expect us to laugh?' the surgeon asked him.
The surgeon was demanding some sort of satisfaction. Billy was mystified. Billy wanted
to be friendly, to help, if he could, but his resources were meager. His fingers now held
the two objects from the lining of the coat. Billy decided to show the surgeon what they
were.
'You thought we would enjoy being mocked?' the surgeon said. 'And do you feel proud to
represent America as you do?' Billy withdrew a hand from his muff, held it under the
surgeon's nose. On his palm rested a two-carat diamond and a partial denture. The
denture was an obscene little artifact-silver and pearl and tangerine. Billy smiled.
The parade pranced, staggered and reeled to the gate of the Dresden slaughterhouse, and
then it went inside. The slaughterhouse wasn't a busy place any more. Almost all the
hooved animals in Germany had been killed and eaten and excreted by human beings,

mostly soldiers. So it goes.
The Americans were taken to the fifth building inside the gate. It was a one-story cement-
block cube with sliding doors in front and back. It had been built as a shelter for pigs
about to be butchered. Now it was going to serve as a home away from home for one
hundred American prisoners of war. There were bunks in there, and two potbellied stoves
and a water tap. Behind it was a latrine, which was a one-rail fence with buckets under it.
There was a big number over the door of the building. The number was five. Before the
Americans could go inside, their only English-speaking guard told them to memorize
their simple address, in case they got lost in the big city. Their address was this:
'Schlachthöf-funf.' Schlachthöf meant slaughterhouse. Funf was good old five.
Seven
Billy Pilgrim got onto a chartered airplane in Ilium twenty-five years after that. He knew
he was going to crash, but he didn't want to make a fool of himself by saying so. It was
supposed to carry Billy and twenty-eight other optometrists to a convention in Montreal.
His wife, Valencia, was outside, and his father-in-law, Lionel Merble, was strapped to the
seat beside him.
Lionel Merble was a machine. Tralfamadorians, of course, say that every creature and
plant in the Universe is a machine. It amuses them that so many Earthlings are offended
by the idea of being machines.
Outside the plane, the machine named Valencia Merble Pilgrim was eating a Peter Paul
Mound Bar and waving bye-bye.
The plane took off without incident. The moment was structured that way. There was a
barbershop quartet on board. They were optometrists, too. They called themselves 'The
Febs,' which was an acronym for 'Four-eyed Bastards.'
When the plane was safely aloft, the machine that was Bill's father-in-law asked the
quartet to sing his favorite song. They knew what song he meant, and they sang it, and it
went like this:
In my prison cell I sit, With my britches full of shit, And my balls are bouncing gently on
the floor. And I see the bloody snag When she bit me in the bag. Oh, I'll never fuck a
Polack any more.
Billy's father-in-law laughed and laughed at that, and he begged the quartet to sing the
other Polish song he liked so much. So they sang a song from the Pennsylvania coal
mines that began:
Me, and Mike, ve vork in mine. Holy shit, ve have good time. Vunce a veek ve get our
pay. Holy shit, no vork next day.
Speaking of people from Poland: Billy- Pilgrim accidentally saw a Pole hanged in public,
about three days after Billy got to Dresden. Billy just happened to be walking to work
with some others shortly after sunrise, and they came to a gallows and a small crowd in
front of a soccer stadium. The Pole was a farm laborer who was being hanged for having
had sexual intercourse with a German woman. So it goes.
Billy, knowing the plane was going to crash pretty soon, closed his eyes, traveled in time
back to 1944. He was back in the forest in Luxembourg again-with the Three Musketeers.
Roland Weary was shaking him, bonking his head against a tree. 'You guys go on without
me,' said Billy Pilgrim.
The barbershop quartet on the airplane was singing 'Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nelly,'
when the plane smacked into the top of Sugarbush Mountain in Vermont. Everybody was

killed but Billy and the copilot. So it goes.
The people who first got to the crash scene were young Austrian ski instructors from the
famous ski resort below. They spoke to each other in German as they went from body to
body. They wore black wind masks with two holes for their eyes and a red topknot. They
looked like golliwogs, like white people pretending to be black for the laughs they could
get.
Billy had a fractured skull, but he was still conscious. He didn't know where he was. His
lips were working, and one of the golliwogs put his ear close to them to hear what might
be his dying words.
Billy thought the golliwog had something to do with the Second World War, and he
whispered to him his address: 'Schlachthöf-funf.'
Billy was brought down Sugarbush Mountain on a toboggan. The golliwogs controlled it
with ropes and yodeled melodiously for right-of-way. Near the bottom, the trail swooped
around the pylons of a chair lift. Billy looked up at all the young people in bright elastic
clothing and enormous boots and goggles, bombed out of their skulls with snow,
swinging through the sky in yellow chairs. He supposed that they were part of an
amazing new phase of the Second World War. It was all right with him. Everything was
pretty much all right with Billy.
He was taken to a small private hospital. A famous brain surgeon came up from Boston
and operated on him for three hours. Billy was unconscious for two days after that, and
he dreamed millions of things, some of them true. The true things were time-travel.
One of the true things was his first evening in the slaughterhouse. He and poor old Edgar
Derby were pushing an empty two-wheeled cart down a dirt lane between empty pens for
animals. They were going to a communal kitchen for supper for all. They were guarded
by a sixteen-year-old German named Werner Gluck. The axles of the cart were greased
with the fat of dead animals. So it goes.
The sun had just gone down, and its afterglow was backlighting the city, which formed
low cliffs around the bucolic void to the idle stockyards. The city was blacked out
because bombers might come, so Billy didn't get to see Dresden do one of the most
cheerful things a city is capable of doing when the sun goes down, which is to wink its
lights on one by one.
There was a broad river to reflect those lights, which would have made their nighttime
winkings very pretty indeed. It was the Elbe.
Werner Gluck, the young guard, was a Dresden boy. He had never been in the
slaughterhouse before, so he wasn't sure where the kitchen was. He was tall and weak
like Billy, might have been a younger brother of his. They were, in fact, distant cousins,
something they never found out. Gluck was armed with an incredibly heavy musket, a
single-shot museum piece with an octagonal barrel and a smooth bore. He had fixed his
bayonet. It was like a long knitting needle. It had no blood gutters.
Gluck led the way to a building that he thought might contain the kitchen, and he opened
the sliding doors in its side. There wasn't a kitchen in there, though. There was a dressing
room adjacent to a communal shower, and there was a lot of steam. In the steam were
about thirty teen-age girls with no clothes on. They were German refugees from Breslau,
which had been tremendously bombed. They had just arrived in Dresden, too. Dresden
was jammed with refugees.
There those girls were with all their private parts bare, for anybody to see. And there in

the doorway were Gluck and Derby and Pilgrim-the childish soldier and the poor old high
school teacher and the clown in his toga and silver shoes-staring. The girls screamed.
They covered themselves with their hands and turned their backs and so on, and made
themselves utterly beautiful.
Werner Gluck, who had never seen a naked woman before, closed the door. Bill had
never seen one, either. It was nothing new to Derby.
When the three fools found the communal kitchen, whose main job was to make lunch
for workers in the slaughterhouse, everybody had gone home but one woman who had
been waiting for them impatiently. She was a war widow. So it goes. She had her hat and
coat on. She wanted to go home, too, even though there wasn't anybody there. Her white
gloves were laid out side by side on the zinc counter top.
She had two big cans of soup for the Americans. It was simmering over low fires on the
gas range. She had stacks of loaves of black bread, too.
She asked Gluck if he wasn't awfully young to be in the army. He admitted that he was.
She asked Edgar Derby if he wasn't awfully old to be in the army. He said he was.
She asked Billy Pilgrim what he was supposed to be. Billy said he didn't know. He was
just trying to keep warm.
'All the real soldiers are dead,' she said. It was true. So it goes.
Another true thing that Billy saw while he was unconscious in Vermont was the work
that he and the others had to do in Dresden during the month before the city was
destroyed. They washed windows and swept floors and cleaned lavatories and put jars
into boxes and sealed cardboard boxes in a factory that made malt syrup. The syrup was
enriched with vitamins and minerals. The syrup was for pregnant women.
The syrup tasted like thin honey laced with hickory smoke, and everybody who worked
in the factory secretly spooned it all day long. They weren't pregnant, but they needed
vitamins and minerals, too. Billy didn't spoon syrup on his first day at work, but lots of
other Americans did.
Billy spooned it on his second day. There were spoons hidden all over the factory, on
rafters, in drawers, behind radiators, and so on. They had been hidden in haste by persons
who had been spooning syrup, who had heard somebody else coming. Spooning was a
crime.
On his second day, Billy was cleaning behind a radiator and he found a spoon. To his
back was a vat of syrup that was cooling. The only other person who could see Billy and
his spoon was poor old Edgar Derby, who was washing a window outside. The spoon
was a tablespoon. Billy thrust it into the vat, turned it around and around, making a gooey
lollipop. He thrust it into his mouth.
A moment went by, and then every cell in Billy's body shook him with ravenous
gratitude and applause.
There were diffident raps at the factory window. Derby was out there, having seen all. He
wanted some syrup, too.
So Billy made a lollipop for him. He opened the window. He stuck the lollipop into poor
old Derby's gaping mouth. A moment passed, and then Derby burst into tears. Billy
closed the window and hid the sticky spoon. Somebody was coming.
Eight
The Americans in the slaughterhouse had a very interesting visitor two days before
Dresden was destroyed. He was Howard W. Campbell, Jr., an American who had become

a Nazi. Campbell was the one who had written the monograph about the shabby behavior
of American prisoners of war. He wasn't doing more research about prisoners now. He
had come to the slaughter house to recruit men for a German military unit called 'The
Free American Corps.' Campbell was the inventor and commander of the unit, which was
supposed to fight only on the Russian front.
Campbell was an ordinary looking man, but he was extravagantly costumed in a uniform
of his own design. He wore a white ten-gallon hat and black cowboy boots decorated
with swastikas and stars. He was sheathed in a blue body stocking which had yellow
stripes running from his armpits to his ankles. His shoulder patch was a silhouette of
Abraham Lincoln's profile on a field of pale green. He had a broad armband which was
red, with a blue swastika in a circle of white.
He was explaining this armband now in the cement-block hog barn.
Billy Pilgrim had a boiling case of heartburn, since he had been spooning malt syrup all
day long at work. The heartburn brought tears to his eves, so that his image of Campbell
was distorted by jiggling lenses of salt water.
'Blue is for the American sky,' Campbell was saying. 'White is for the race that pioneered
the continent, drained the swamps and cleared the forests and built the roads and bridges.
Red is for the blood of American patriots which was shed so gladly in years gone by.'
Campbell's audience was sleepy. It had worked hard at the syrup factory, and then it had
marched a long way home in the cold. It was skinny and hollow-eyed. Its skins were
beginning to blossom with small sores. So were its mouths and throats and intestines. The
malt syrup it spooned at the factory contained only a few of the vitamins and minerals
every Earthling needs.
Campbell offered the Americans food now, steaks and mashed potatoes and gravy and
mince pie, if they would join the Free Corps. 'Once the Russians are defeated,' he went
on, you will be repatriated through Switzerland.'
There was no response.
'You're going to have to fight the Communists sooner or later,' said Campbell. "Why not
get it over with now?'
And then it developed that Campbell was not going to go unanswered after all. Poor old
Derby, the doomed high school teacher, lumbered to his feet for what was probably the
finest moment in his life. 'Mere are almost no characters in this story, and almost no
dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the
listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after an, is that
people are discouraged from being characters. But old Derby was a character now.
His stance was that of a punch-drunk fighter. His head was down, his fists were out front,
waiting for information and battle plan. Derby raised his head, called Campbell a snake.
He corrected that. He said that snakes couldn't help being snakes, and that Campbell, who
could help being what he was, was something much lower than a snake or a rat-or even a
blood-filled tick.
Campbell smiled.
Derby spoke movingly of the American form of government, with freedom and justice
and opportunities and fair play for all. He said there wasn't a man there who wouldn't
gladly die for those ideals.
He spoke of the brotherhood between the American and the Russian people, and how
those two nations were going to crush the disease of Nazism, which wanted to infect the

whole world.
The air-raid sirens of Dresden howled mournfully.
The Americans and their guards and Campbell took shelter in an echoing meat locker
which was hollowed in living rock under the slaughterhouse. There was an iron staircase
with iron doors at the top and bottom.
Down in the locker were a few cattle and sheep and pigs, and horses hanging from iron
hooks. So it goes. The locker had empty hooks for thousands more. It was naturally cool.
There was no refrigeration. There was candlelight. The locker was whitewashed and
smelled of carbolic acid. There were benches along a wall. The Americans went to these,
brushing away flakes of whitewash before they sat down.
Howard W. Campbell. Jr., remained standing, like the guards. He talked to the guards in
excellent German. He had written many popular German plays and poems in his time,
and had married a famous German actress named Resi North. She was dead now, had
been killed while entertaining troops in the Crimea. So it goes.
Nothing happened that night. It was the next night that about one hundred and thirty
thousand people in Dresden would die. So it goes. Billy dozed in the meat locker. He
found himself engaged again, word for word, gesture for gesture, in the argument with
his daughter with which this tale begun.
'Father,' she said, 'What are we going to do with you?' And so on. 'You know who I could
just kill?' she asked. 'Who could you kill?' said Billy. 'That Kilgore Trout.'
Kilgore Trout was and is a science-fiction writer, of course. Billy has not only read
dozens of books by Trout-he has also become a friend of Trout, who is a bitter man.
Trout lives in a rented basement in Ilium, about two miles from Billy's nice white home.
He himself has no idea how many novels he has written-possibly seventy-five of the
things. Not one of them has made money. So Trout keeps body and soul together as a
circulation man for the Ilium Gazette, manages newspaper delivery boys, bullies and
flatters and cheats little kids.
Billy met him for the first time in 1964. Billy drove his Cadillac down a back alley in
Ilium and he found his way blocked by dozens of boys and their bicycles. A meeting was
in progress. The boys were harangued by a man in a full beard. He was cowardly and
dangerous, and obviously very good at his job. Trout was sixty-two years old back then.
He was telling the kids to get off their dead butts and get their daily customers to
subscribe to the fucking Sunday edition, too. He said that whoever sold the most Sunday
subscriptions during the next two months would get a free trip for himself and his parents
to 's fucking Vineyard for a week, all expenses paid.
And so on.
One of the newspaper boys was actually a newspaper girl. She was electrified.
Trout's paranoid face was terribly familiar to Billy, who had seen it on the jackets of so
many books. But., coming upon that face suddenly in a home-town alley, Billy could not
guess why the face was familiar. Billy thought maybe he had known this cracked messiah
in Dresden somewhere. Trout certainly looked like a prisoner of war.
And then the newspaper girl held up her hand. 'Mr. Trout,' she said, 'if I win, can I take
my sister, too?'
'Hell no,' said Kilgore Trout. 'You think money grows on trees?'
Trout, incidentally, had written a book about a money tree. It had twenty-dollar bills for
leaves. Its flowers were government bonds. Its fruit was diamonds. It attracted human

beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer.
So it goes.
Billy Pilgrim parked his Cadillac in the alley, and waited for the meeting to end. When
the meeting broke up, there was still one boy Trout had to deal with. The boy wanted to
quit because the work was so hard and the hours were so long and the pay was so small.
Trout was concerned, because, if the boy really quit, Trout would have to deliver the
boy's route himself, until he could find another sucker.
'What are you?' Trout asked the boy scornfully. 'Some kind of gutless wonder?'
This, too, was the title of a book by Trout, The Gutless Wonder. It was about a robot who
had bad breath, who became popular after his halitosis was cured. But what made the
story remarkable, since it was written in 1932, was that it predicted the widespread use of
burning jellied gasoline on human beings.
It was dropped on them from airplanes. Robots did the dropping. They had no
conscience, and no circuits which would allow them to imagine what was happening to
the people on the ground.
Trout's leading robot looked like a human being, and could talk and dance and so on, and
go out with girls. And nobody held it against him that he dropped jellied gasoline on
people. But they found his halitosis unforgivable. But then he cleared that up, and he was
welcomed to the human race.
Trout lost his argument with the boy who wanted to quit. He told the boy about all the
millionaires who had carried newspapers as boys, and the boy replied: 'Yeah-but I bet
they quit after a week, it's such a royal screwing.'
And the boy left his full newspaper bag at Trout's feet, with the customer book on top. It
was up to Trout to deliver these papers. He didn't have a car. He didn't even have a
bicycle, and he was scared to death of dogs.
Somewhere a big dog barked. As Trout lugubriously slung the bag from his shoulder,
Billy Pilgrim approached him. 'Mr. Trout-' 'Yes?' "Are-are you Kilgore Trout?
'Yes.' Trout supposed that Billy had some complaint about the way his newspapers were
being delivered. He did not think of himself as a writer for the simple reason that the
world had never allowed him to think of himself in this way.
'The-the writer?' said Billy. 'The what?' Billy was certain that he had made a mistake.
'There's a writer named Kilgore Trout.' 'There is?' Trout looked foolish and dazed. 'You
never heard of him?' Trout shook his head. 'Nobody-nobody ever did.'
Billy helped Trout deliver his papers, driving him from house to house in the Cadillac.
Billy was the responsible one, finding the houses, checking them off. Trout's mind was
blown. He had never met a fan before, and Billy was such an avid fan.
Trout told him that he had never seen a book of his advertised, reviewed, or on sale. 'All
these years' he said, 'I've been opening the window and making love to the world.'
'You must surely have gotten letters,' said Billy. 'I've felt like writing you letters many
times.'
Trout held up a single finger. 'One.' 'Was it enthusiastic?' 'It was insane. The writer said I
should be President of the World.' It turned out that the person who had written this letter
was Elliot Rosewater, Billy's
friend in the veterans' hospital near Lake Placid. Billy told Trout about Rosewater. 'My
God-I thought he was about fourteen years old,' said Trout. "A full grown man-a captain
in the war.' 'The writes like a fourteen-year-old,' said Kilgore Trout.

Billy invited Trout to his eighteenth wedding anniversary which was only two days
hence. Now the party was in progress.
Trout was in Billy's dining room, gobbling canapés. He was talking with a mouthful of
Philadelphia cream cheese and salmon roe to an optometrist's wife. Everybody at the
party was associated with optometry in some way, except Trout. And he alone was
without glasses. He was making a great hit. Everybody was ed to have a real author at the
party, even though they had never read his books.
Trout was talking to a Maggie White, who had given up being a dental assistant to
become a homemaker for an optometrist. She was very pretty. The last book she had read
was Ivanhoe.
Billy Pilgrim stood nearby, listening. He was palpating something in his pocket. It was a
present he was about to give his Wife, a white satin box containing a star sapphire
cocktail ring. The ring was worth eight hundred dollars.
The adulation that Trout was receiving, mindless and illiterate as it was, affected Trout
like marijuana. He was happy and loud and impudent.
'I'm afraid I don't read as much as I ought to,' said Maggie.
'We're all afraid of something,' Trout replied. 'I'm afraid of cancer and rats and Doberman
pinschers.'
'I should know, but I don't, so I have to ask,' said Maggie, 'what's the most famous thing
you ever wrote?'
'It was about a funeral for a great French chef.' 'That sounds interesting.' 'All the great
chefs in the world are there. It's a beautiful ceremony.' Trout was making
this up as he went along. 'Just before the casket is closed, the mourners sprinkle parsley
and paprika on the deceased.' So it goes.
'Did that really happen?' said Maggie White. She was a dull person, but a sensational
invitation to make babies. Men looked at her and wanted to fill her up with babies right
away. She hadn't had even one baby yet. She used birth control.
'Of course it happened,' Trout told her. 'If I wrote something that hadn't really happened,
and I tried to sell it, I could go to jail. That's fraud!'
Maggie believed him. 'I'd never thought about that before.' 'Think about it now.' 'It's like
advertising. You have to tell the truth in advertising, or you get in trouble.' 'Exactly. The
same body of laws applies.' 'Do you think you might put us in a book sometime?' 'I put
everything that happens to me in books.' 'I guess I better be careful what I say.' 'That's
right. And I'm not the only one who's listening. God is listening, too. And on
Judgment Day he's going to tell you all the things you said and did. If it turns out they're
bad things instead of good things, that's too bad for you, because you'll bum forever and
ever. The burning never stops hurting.'
Poor Maggie turned gray. She believed that too, and was petrified.
Kilgore Trout laughed uproariously. A salmon egg flew out of his mouth and landed in
Maggie's cleavage.
Now an optometrist called for attention. He proposed a toast to Billy and Valencia, whose
anniversary it was. According to plan, the barbershop quartet of optometrists, 'The Febs,'
sang while people drank and Billy and Valencia put their arms around each other, just
glowed. Everybody's eyes were shining. The song was 'That Old Gang of Mine.'
Gee, that song went, but I'd give the world to see that old gang of mine. And so on. A
little later it said. So long forever, old fellows and gals, so long forever old sweethearts

and pals-God bless 'em-And so on.
Unexpectedly, Billy Pilgrim found himself upset by the song and the occasion. He had
never had an old gang, old sweethearts and pals, but he missed one anyway, as the quartet
made slow, agonized experiments with chords-chords intentionally sour, sourer still,
unbearably sour, and then a chord that was suffocatingly sweet, and then some sour ones
again. Billy had powerful psychosomatic responses to the changing chords. His mouth
filled with the taste of lemonade, and his face became grotesque, as though he really were
being stretched on the torture engine called the rack.
He looked so peculiar that several people commented on it solicitously when the song
was done. They thought he might have been having a heart attack, and Billy seemed to
confirm this by going to a chair and sitting down haggardly.
There was silence. 'Oh my God,' said Valencia, leaning over him, 'Billy-are you all right?'
'Yes.' 'You look so awful.' 'Really-I'm O.K.' And he was, too, except that he could find no
explanation for why the
song had affected him so grotesquely. He had supposed for years that he had no secrets
from himself. Here was proof that he had a great big secret somewhere inside, and he
could not imagine what it was.
People drifted away now, seeing the color return to Billy's cheeks, seeing him smile.
Valencia stayed with him, and Kilgore Trout, who had been on the fringe of the crowd,
came closer, interested, shrewd.
'You looked as though you'd seen a ghost,' said Valencia.
'No,' said Billy. He hadn't seen anything but what was really before him-the faces of the
four singers, those four ordinary men, cow-eyed and mindless and anguished as they
went from sweetness to sourness to sweetness again.
'Can I make a guess?' said Kilgore Trout 'You saw through a time window.' 'A what?' said
Valencia. 'He suddenly saw the past or the future. Am I right?' 'No,' said Billy Pilgrim.
He got up, put a hand into his pocket, found the box containing
the ring in there. He took out the box, gave it absently to Valencia. He had meant to give
it to her at the end of the song, while everybody was watching. Only Kilgore Trout was
there to see.
'For me?' said Valencia. 'Yes' "Oh my God, she said. Then she said it louder, so other
people heard. They gathered
around, and she opened it, and she almost screamed when she saw the sapphire with a
star in it. 'Oh my God,' she said. She gave Billy a big kiss. She said, 'Thank you, thank
you, thank you.'
There was a lot of talk about what wonderful jewelry Billy had given to Valencia over the
years. 'My God,' said Maggie White, 'she's already got the biggest diamond I ever saw
outside of a movie.' She was talking about the diamond Billy had brought back from the
war.
The partial denture he had found inside his little impresario's coat, incidentally, was in his
cufflinks box in his dresser drawer. Billy had a wonderful collection of cufflinks. It was
the custom of the family to give him cufflinks on every Father's Day. He was wearing
Father's Day cufflinks now. They had cost over one hundred dollars. They were made out
of ancient Roman coins. He had one pair of cufflinks upstairs which were little roulette
wheels that really worked. He had another pair which had a real thermometer in one and
a real compass in the other.

Billy now moved about the party-outwardly normal. Kilgore Trout was shadowing him,
keen to know what Billy had suspected or seen. Most of Trout's novels, after all, dealt
with time warps and extrasensory perception and other unexpected things. Trout believed
in things like that, was greedy to have their existence proved.
'You ever put a full-length mirror on the floor, and then have a dog stand on it?' Trout
asked Billy.
'No.'
'The dog will look down, and all of a sudden he'll realize there's nothing under him. He
thinks he's standing on thin air. He'll jump a mile.'
'He will?'
That's how you looked-as though you all of a sudden realized you were standing on thin
air.'
The barbershop quartet sang again. Billy was emotionally racked again. The experience
was definitely associated with those four men and not what they sang.
Here is what they sang, while Billy was pulled apart inside: 'Leven cent cotton, forty cent
meat, How in the world can a poor man eat? Pray for the sunshine, 'cause it will rain.
Things gettin' worse, drivin' all insane; Built a nice bar, painted it brown Lightnin' came
along and burnt it down: No use talkin' any man's beat,
With 'leven cent cotton and forty cent meat. 'Leven cent cotton, a car-load of tax, The
load's too heavy for our poor backs...
And so on. Billy fled upstairs in his nice white home.
Trout would have come upstairs with him if Billy hadn't told him not to. Then Billy went
into the upstairs bathroom, which was dark He closed and locked the door. He left it dark,
and gradually became aware that he was not alone. His son was in there.
'Dad?' his son said in the dark. Robert, the future Green Beret, was seventeen then. Billy
liked him, but didn't know him very well. Billy couldn't help suspecting that there wasn't
much to know about Robert.
Billy flicked on the light. Robert was sitting on the toilet with his pajama bottoms around
his ankles. He was wearing an electric guitar, slung around his neck on a strap. He had
just bought the guitar that day. He couldn't play it yet and, in fact, never learned to play
it. It was a nacreous pink.
'Hello, son,' said Billy Pilgrim.
Billy went into his bedroom, even though there were guests to be entertained downstairs.
He lay down on his bed, turned on the Magic Fingers. The mattress trembled, drove a dog
out from under the bed. The dog was Spot. Good old Spot was still alive in those days.
Spot lay down again in a corner.
Billy thought hard about the effect the quartet had had on him, and then found an
association with an experience he had had long ago. He did not travel in time to the
experience. He remembered it shimmeringly-as follows:
He was down in the meat locker on the night that Dresden was destroyed. There were
sounds like giant footsteps above. Those were sticks of high-explosive bombs. The giants
walked and walked. The meat locker was a very safe shelter. All that happened down
there was an occasional shower of calcimine. The Americans and four of their guards and
a few dressed carcasses were down there, and nobody else. The rest of the guards had,
before the raid began, gone to the comforts of their own homes in Dresden. They were all
being killed with their families.

So it goes.
The girls that Billy had seen naked were all being killed, too, in a much shallower shelter
in another part of the stockyards.
So it goes.
A guard would go to the head of the stairs every so often to see what it was like outside,
then he would come down and whisper to the other guards. There was a firestorm out
there. Dresden was one big flame. The one flame ate everything organic, everything that
would burn.
It wasn't safe to come out of the shelter until noon the next day. When the Americans and
their guards did come out, the sky was black with smoke. The sun was an angry little
pinhead. Dresden was like the moon now nothing but minerals. The stones were hot.
Everybody else in the neighborhood was dead.
So it goes.
The guards drew together instinctively, rolled their eyes. They experimented with one
expression and then another, said nothing, though their mouths were often open. They
looked like a silent film of a barbershop quartet.
'So long forever,' they might have been singing, 'old fellows and pals; So long forever,
old sweethearts and pals-God bless 'em-'
'Tell me a story,' Montana Wildhack said to Billy Pilgrim in the Tralfamadorian zoo one
time. They were in bed side by side. They had privacy. The canopy covered the dome.
Montana was six months pregnant now, big and rosy, lazily demanding small favors from
Billy from time to time. She couldn't send Billy out for ice cream or strawberries, since
the atmosphere outside the dome was cyanide, and the nearest strawberries and ice cream
were millions of light years away.
She could send him to the refrigerator, which was decorated with the blank couple on the
bicycle built for two-or, as now she could wheedle, 'Tell me a story, Billy boy.'
'Dresden was destroyed on the night of February 13, 1945,' Billy Pilgrim began. 'We
came out of our shelter the next day.' He told Montana about the four guards who, in their
astonishment and grief, resembled a barber-shop quartet. He told her about the stockyards
with all the fenceposts gone, with roofs and windows gone-told her about seeing little
logs lying around. These were people who had been caught in the firestorm. So it goes.
Billy told her what had happened to the buildings that used to form cliffs around the
stockyards. They had collapsed. Their wood had been consumed, and their stones had
crashed down, had tumbled against one another until they locked at last in low and
graceful curves.
'It was like the moon,' said Billy Pilgrim.
The guards told the Americans to form in ranks of four, which they did. Then they had
them march back to the hog barn which had, been their home. Its wars still stood, but its
windows and roof were gone, and there was nothing inside but ashes and dollops of
melted glass. It was realized then that there was no food or water, and that the survivors,
if they were going to continue to survive, were going to have to climb over curve after
curve on the face of the moon.
Which they did.
The curves were smooth only when seen from a distance. The people climbing them
learned that they were treacherous, jagged things-hot to the touch, often unstable eager,
should certain important rocks be disturbed, to tumble some more, to form lower, more

solid curves.
Nobody talked much as the expedition crossed the moon. There was nothing appropriate
to say. One thing was clear: Absolutely everybody in the city was supposed to be dead,
regardless of what they were, and that anybody that moved in it represented a flaw in the
design. There were to be no moon men at all.
American fighter planes came in under the smoke to see if anything was moving. They
saw Billy and the rest moving down there. The planes sprayed them with machine-gun
bullets, but the bullets missed. Then they saw some other people moving down by the
riverside and they shot at them. They hit some of them. So it goes.
The idea was to hasten the end of the war.
Billy's story ended very curiously in a suburb untouched by fire and explosions. The
guards and the Americans came at nightfall to an inn which was open for business. There
was candlelight. There were fires in three fireplaces downstairs. There were empty tables
and chairs waiting for anyone who might come, and empty beds with covers turned down
upstairs.
There was a blind innkeeper and his sighted wife, who was the cook, and their two young
daughters, who worked as waitresses and maids. This family knew that Dresden was
gone. Those with eyes had seen it bum and bum, understood that they were on the edge
of a desert now. Still-they had opened for business, had polished the glasses and wound
the clocks and stirred the fires, and waited and waited to see who would come.
There was no great flow of refugees from Dresden. The clocks ticked on, the crackled,
the translucent candles dripped. And then there was a knock on the door, and in came
four guards and one hundred American prisoners of war.
The innkeeper asked the guards if they had come from the city. 'Yes.' Are there more
people coming?' And the guards said that, on the difficult route they had chosen, they had
not seen
another living soul.
The blind innkeeper said that the Americans could sleep in his stable that night, and he
gave them soup and ersatz coffee and a little beer. Then he came out to the stable to listen
to them bedding down in the straw.
'Good night, Americans,' he said in German. 'Sleep well.'
Nine
Here is how Billy Pilgrim lost his wife, Valencia. He was unconscious in the hospital in
Vermont, after the airplane crash on Sugarbush
Mountain, and Valencia, having heard about the crash, was driving from Ilium to the
hospital in the family Cadillac El Dorado Coupe de Ville. Valencia was hysterical,
because she had been told frankly that Billy might die, or that, if he lived, he might be a
vegetable.
Valencia adored Billy. She was crying and yelping so hard as she drove that she missed
the correct turnoff from the throughway. She applied her power brakes, and a Mercedes
slammed into her from behind. Nobody was hurt, thank God, because both drivers were
wearing seat belts. Thank God, thank God. The Mercedes lost only a headlight. But the
rear end of the Cadillac was a body-and-fender man's wet dream. The trunk and fenders
were collapsed. The gaping trunk looked like the mouth of a village idiot who 'was
explaining that he didn't know anything about anything. The fenders shrugged. The
bumper was at a high port arms. 'Reagan for President!' a sticker on the bumper said. The

back window was veined with cracks. The exhaust system rested on the pavement.
The driver of the Mercedes got out and went to Valencia, to find out if she was all right.
She blabbed hysterically about Billy and the airplane crash, and then she put her car in
gear and crossed the median divider, leaving her exhaust system behind.
When she arrived at the hospital, people rushed to the windows to see what all the noise
was. The Cadillac, with both mufflers gone, sounded like a heavy bomber coming in on a
wing and a prayer. Valencia turned off the engine, but then she slumped against the
steering wheel, and the horn brayed steadily. A doctor and a nurse ran out to find out
what the trouble was. Poor Valencia was unconscious, overcome by carbon monoxide.
She was a heavenly azure.
One hour later she was dead. So it goes.
Billy knew nothing about it. He, dreamed on, and traveled in time and so forth. The
hospital was so crowded that Billy couldn't have a room to himself. He shared a room
with a Harvard history professor named Bertram Copeland Rumfoord. Rumfoord didn't
have to look at Billy, because Billy was surrounded by white linen screens on rubber
wheels. But Rumfoord could hear Billy talking to himself from time to time.
Rumfoord's left leg was in traction. He had broken it while skiing. He was seventy years
old, but had the body and spirit of a man half that age. He had been honeymooning with
his fifth wife when he broke his leg. Her name was Lily. Lily was twenty-three.
Just about the time poor Valencia was pronounced dead, Lily came into Billy's and
Rumfoord's room with an armload of books. Rumfoord had sent her down to Boston to
get them. He was working on a one-volume history of the United States Army Air Corps
in the Second World War. The books were about bombings and sky battles that had
happened before Lily was even born.
'You guys go on without me,' said Billy Pilgrim deliriously, as pretty little Lily came in.
She had been an a-go-go girl when Rumfoord saw her and resolved to make her his own.
She was a high school dropout. Her I.Q. was 103. 'He scares me,' she whispered to her
husband about Billy Pilgrim.
'He bores the hell out of me!' Rumfoord replied boomingly. 'All he does in his sleep is
quit and surrender and apologize and ask to be left alone.' Rumfoord was a retired
brigadier general in the Air Force Reserve, the official Air Force Historian, a fun
professor, the author of twenty-six books, a multimillionaire since birth, and one of the
great competitive sailors of all time. His most popular book was about sex and strenuous
athletics for men over sixty-five. Now he quoted Theodore Roosevelt whom he
resembled a lot:
"'I could carve a better man out of a banana."'
One of the things Rumfoord had told Lily to get in Boston was a copy of President Harry
S. Truman's announcement to the world that an atomic bomb had been dropped on
Hiroshima. She had a Xerox of it, and Rumfoord asked her if she had read it.
'No.' She didn't read well, which was one of the reasons she had dropped out of high
school.
Rumfoord ordered her to sit down and read the Truman statement now. He didn't know
that she couldn't read much. He knew very little about her, except that she was one more
public demonstration that he was a superman.
So Lily sat down and pretended to read the Truman thing, which went like this:
Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important

Japanese Army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T. It had more
than two thousand times the blast power of the British 'Grand Slam' which is the largest
bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare.
The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many-
fold. And the end is not yet. With this bomb we have now added a new and revolutionary
increase in destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces. In their
present form these bombs are now in production, and even more powerful forms are in
development.
It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from
which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far
East.
Before 1939, it was the accepted belief of scientists that it was theoretically possible to
release atomic energy. But nobody knew any practical method of doing it. By 1942,
however, we knew that the Germans were working feverishly to find a way to add atomic
energy to all the other engines of war with which they hoped to enslave the world. But
they failed. We may be grateful to Providence that the Germans got the V-1's and V-2's
late and in limited quantities and even more grateful that they did not get the atomic
bomb at all.
The battle of the laboratories held-fateful risks for us as well as the battles of the air, land
and sea, and we have now won the battle of the laboratories as we have won the other
battles.
We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive
enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city, said Harry Truman. We shall
destroy their docks, their factories and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we
shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war. It was to spare-
And so on.
One of the books that Lily had brought Rumfoord was The Destruction of Dresden by an
Englishman named David Irving. It was an American edition, published by Holt.,
Rinehart and Winston in 1964. What Rumfoord wanted from it were. portions of the
forewords by his friends Ira C. Eaker, Lieutenant General, U.S.A.F., retired, and British
Air Marshal Sir Robert Saundby, K.C.B., K.B.E., M.C., D.F.C., A.F.C.
I find it difficult to understand Englishmen or Americans .who weep about enemy
civilians who were killed but who have not shed a tear for our gallant crews lost in
combat with a cruel enemy, wrote his friend General Eaker in part. I think it would have
been well for Mr. Irving to have remembered, when he was drawing the frightful picture
of the civilian killed at Dresden, that V-1's and V-2's were at that very time failing on
England, killing civilian men, women and children indiscriminately, as they were
designed and launched to do. It might be well to remember Buchenwald and Coventry,
too
Eaker's foreword ended this way
I deeply regret that British and U.S. bombers killed 135,000 people in the attack on
Dresden, but I remember who started the last war and I regret even more the -loss of
more than 5,000,000, Allied lives in the necessary effort to completely defeat and utterly
destroy nazism.
So it goes. What Air Marshal Saundby said, among other things, was this That the
bombing of Dresden was a great tragedy none can deny. That it was really a

military necessity few, after reading this book, will believe. It was one of those terrible
things that sometimes happen in wartime, brought about by an unfortunate combination
of circumstances. Those who approved it were neither wicked no?, cruel, though it may
well be that they were too remote from the harsh realities of war to understand fully the
appalling destructive power of air bombardment in the spring of 1945
The advocates of nuclear disarmament seem to believe that, if they could achieve their
aim., war would become tolerable and decent. They would do well to read this book and
ponder the fate of Dresden, where 135,000 people died as the result of an at attack with
conventional weapons. On the night of March 9th, 1945, an air attack on Tokyo by
American heavy bombers, using incendiary and high explosive bombs, caused the death
of 83,793 people. The atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima killed 71,379 people.
So it goes.
'If you're ever in Cody, Wyoming,' said Billy Pilgrim behind his white linen screens, 'just
ask for Wild Bob.'
Lily Rumfoord shuddered, went on pretending to read the Harry Truman thing.
Billy's daughter Barbara came in later that day. She was all doped up, had the same
glassy-eyed look that poor old Edgar Derby wore just before he was shot in Dresden.
Doctors had given her pills so she could continue to function, even though her father was
broken and her mother was dead.
So it goes.
She was accompanied by a doctor and a nurse. Her brother Robert was flying home from
a battlefield in Vietnam. 'Daddy,' she said tentatively. 'Daddy? '
But Billy was ten years away, back in 1958. He was examining the eyes of a young male
Mongolian idiot in order to prescribe corrective lenses. The idiot's mother was there,
acting as an interpreter.
'How many dots do you see?' Billy Pilgrim asked him.
And then Billy traveled in time to when he was sixteen years old, in the waiting room of
a doctor. Billy had an infected thumb. There was only one other patient waiting-an old,
old man. The old man was in agony because of gas. He farted tremendously, and then he
belched.
'Excuse me,' he said to Billy. Then he did it again. 'Oh God he said, 'I knew it was going
to be bad getting old.' He shook his head. 'I didn't know it was going to be this bad.'
Billy Pilgrim opened his eyes in the hospital in Vermont, did not know where he was.
Watching him was his son Robert. Robert was wearing the uniform of the famous Green
Berets. Robert's hair was short, was wheat-colored bristles. Robert was clean and neat.
He was decorated with a Purple Heart and a Silver Star and a Bronze Star with two
clusters.
This was a boy who had flunked out of high school, who had been an alcoholic at sixteen,
who had run with a rotten bunch of kids, who had been arrested for tipping over hundreds
of tombstones in a Catholic cemetery one time. He was all straightened out now. His
posture was wonderful and his shoes were shined and his trousers were pressed, and he
was a leader of men.
'Dad?' Billy Pilgrim closed his eyes again.
Billy had to miss his wife's funeral because he was still so sick. He was conscious,
though, while Valencia was being put into the ground in Ilium. Billy hadn't said much
since regaining consciousness, hadn't responded very elaborately to the news of

Valencia's death and Robert's coming home from the war and so on-so it was generally
believed that he was a vegetable. There was talk of performing an operation on him later,
one which might improve the circulation of blood to his brain.
Actually, Billy's outward listlessness was a screen. The listlessness concealed a mind
which was fizzing and flashing thrillingly. It was preparing letters and lectures about the
flying saucers, the negligibility of death and the true nature of time.
Professor Rumfoord said frightful things about Billy within Billy's hearing, confident that
Billy no longer had any brain at all. 'Why don't they let him die?' he asked Lily.
'I don't know, she said.
'That's not a human being anymore. Doctors are for human beings. They should turn him
over to a veterinarian or a tree surgeon. They'd know what to do. Look at him! That's life,
according to the medical profession. Isn't life wonderful?'
'I don't know,' said Lily.
Rumfoord talked to Lily about the bombing of Dresden one time, and Billy heard it all.
Rumfoord had a problem about Dresden. His one-volume history of the Army Air Force
in the Second World War was supposed to be a readable condensation of the twenty-
seven-volume Official History of the Army Air Force in World War Two. The thing was,
though, there was almost nothing in the twenty-seven volumes about the Dresden raid,
even though it had been such a howling success. The extent of the success had been kept
a secret for many years after the war-a secret from the American people. It was no secret
from the Germans, of course, or from the Russians, who occupied Dresden after the war,
who are in Dresden still.
'Americans have finally heard about Dresden.,' said Rumfoord, twenty-three years after
the raid. 'A lot of them know now how much worse it was than Hiroshima. So I've got to
put something about it in my book. From the official Air Force standpoint., it'll all be
new.'
'Why would they keep it a secret so long?' said Lily.
'For fear that a lot of bleeding hearts' said Rumfoord, 'might not think it was such a
wonderful thing to do.'
It was now that Billy Pilgrim spoke up intelligently. 'I was there' he said.
It was difficult for Rumfoord to take Billy seriously, since Rumfoord, had so long
considered Billy a repulsive non-person who would be much better off dead. Now, with
Billy speaking clearly and to the point, Rumfoord's ears wanted to treat the words as a
foreign language that was not worth learning. did he say?' said Rumfoord.
Lily had to serve as an 'interpreter. 'He said he was there.' she explained. 'He was where?
'I don't know,' said Lily. 'Where were you?' she asked Billy. 'Dresden' said Billy.
'Dresden,' Lily told Rumfoord. 'He's simply echoing things we say,' said Rumfoord. 'Oh, '
said Lily. 'He's got echolalia now.' 'Oh.'
Echolalia is a mental disease which makes people immediately repeat things that well
people around them say. But Billy didn't really have it. Rumfoord simply insisted, for his
own comfort, that Billy had it. Rumfoord was thinking in a military manner: that an
inconvenient person, one whose death he wished for very much, for practical reasons,
was suffering from a repulsive disease.
Rumfoord went on insisting for several hours that Billy had echolalia-told nurses and a
doctor that Billy had echolalia now. Some experiments were performed on Billy. Doctors
and nurses tried to get Billy to echo something, but Billy wouldn't make a sound for

them.
'He isn't doing it now,' said Rumfoord peevishly. 'The minute you go away, he'll start
doing it again.'
Nobody took Rumfoord's diagnosis seriously. The staff thought Rumfoord was a hateful
old man, conceited and cruel. He often said to them, in one way or another, that
people who were weak deserved to die. Whereas the staff, of course, was devoted to the
idea that weak people should be helped as much as possible, that nobody should die.
There in the hospital, Billy was having an adventure very common among people without
power in time of war: He was trying to prove to a wilfully deaf and blind enemy that he
was interesting to hear and see. He kept silent until the lights went' out at night, and then,
when there had been a long silence containing nothing to echo, he said to Rumfoord, 'I
was in Dresden when it was bombed. I was a prisoner of war.' Rumfoord sighed
impatiently.
'Word of honor.,' said Billy Pilgrim. 'Do you believe me?' 'Must we talk about it now?'
said Rumfoord. He had heard. He didn't believe. 'We don't ever have to talk about it,' said
Billy. 'I just want you to know: I was there.'
Nothing more was said about Dresden that night, and Billy closed his eyes, traveled in
time to a May afternoon, two days after the end of the Second World War in Europe.
Billy and five other American prisoners were riding in a coffin-shaped green wagon,
which they had found abandoned complete with two horses, in a suburb of Dresden. Now
they were being drawn by the clop-clop-clopping horses down narrow lanes which had
been cleared through the moonlike ruins. They were going back to the slaughterhouse for
souvenirs of the war. Billy was reminded of the sounds of milkmen's horses early in the
morning in Ilium, when he was a boy.
Billy sat in the back of the jiggling coffin. His head was tilted back and his nostrils were
flaring. He was happy. He was warm. There was food in the wagon, and wine-and a
camera, and a stamp collection, and a stuffed owl, and a mantel clock that ran on changes
of barometric pressure. The Americans had gone into empty houses in the suburb where
they had been imprisoned, and they had taken these and many other things.
The owners, hearing that the Russians were coming, killing and robbing and raping and
burning, had fled.
But the Russians hadn't come yet, even two days after the war. It was peaceful in the
ruins. Billy saw only one other person on the way to the slaughterhouse. It was an old
man pushing a baby buggy. In the buggy were pots and cups and an umbrella frame, and
other things he had found.
Billy stayed in the wagon when it reached the slaughterhouse, sunning himself. The
others went looking for souvenirs. Later on in life, the Tralfamadorians would advise
Billy to concentrate on the happy moments of his life, and to ignore the unhappy ones-to
stare only at pretty things as eternity failed to go by. If this sort of selectivity had been
possible for Billy, he might have chosen as his happiest moment his sun-drenched snooze
in the back of the wagon.
Billy Pilgrim was armed as he snoozed. It was the first time he had been armed since
basic training. His companions had insisted that he arm himself, since God only knew
what sorts of killers might be in burrows on the face of the moon-wild dogs, packs of rats
fattened on corpses, escaped maniacs and murderers, soldiers who would never quit
killing until they themselves were killed.

Billy had a tremendous cavalry pistol in his belt. It was a relic of the First World War. It
had a ring in its butt. It was loaded with bullets the size of robins' eggs. Billy had found it
in the bedside table in a house. That was one of the things about the end of the war:
Absolutely anybody who wanted a weapon could have one. They were lying all around.
Billy had a saber, too. It was a Luftwaffe ceremonial saber. Its hilt was stamped with a
screaming eagle. The eagle was carrying a swastika and looking down. Billy found it
stuck into a telephone pole. He had pulled it out of the pole as the wagon went by.
Now his snoozing became shallower as be heard a man and a woman speaking German in
pitying tones. The speakers were commiserating with somebody lyrically. Before Billy
opened his eyes, it seemed to him that the tones might have been those used by the
friends of Jesus when they took His ruined body down from His cross. So it goes.
Billy opened his eyes. A middle-aged man and wife were crooning to the horses. They
were noticing what the Americans had not noticed-that the horses' mouths were bleeding,
gashed by the bits, that the horses' hooves were broken, so that every step meant agony,
that the horses were insane with thirst. The Americans had treated their form of
transportation as though it were no more sensitive than a six-cylinder Chevrolet.
These two horse pitiers moved back along the wagon to where they could gaze in
patronizing reproach at Billy-at Billy Pilgrim, who was so long and weak, so ridiculous in
his azure toga and silver shoes. They weren't afraid of him. They weren't afraid of
anything. They were doctors, both obstetricians. They had been delivering babies until
the hospitals were all burned down. Now they were picnicking near where their
apartment used to be.
The woman was softly beautiful, translucent from having eaten potatoes for so long. The
man wore a business suit, necktie and all. Potatoes had made him gaunt. He was as tall as
Billy, wore steel-rimmed tri-focals. This couple, so involved with babies, had never
reproduced themselves, though they could have. This was an interesting comment on the
whole idea of reproduction.
They had nine languages between them. They tried Polish on Billy Pilgrim first, since he
was dressed so clownishly, since the wretched Poles were the involuntary clowns of the
Second World War.
Billy asked them in English what it was they wanted, and they at once scolded him in
English for the condition of the horses. They made Billy get out of the wagon and come
look at the horses. When Billy saw the condition of his means of transportation, he burst
into tears. He hadn't cried about anything else in the war.
Later on, as a middle-aged optometrist, he would weep quietly and privately sometimes,
but never make loud boo-hoo-ing noises.
Which is why the epigraph of this book is the quatrain from the famous Christmas carol.
Billy cried very little, though he often saw things worth crying about, and in that respect,
at least, he resembled the Christ of the Carol:
The cattle are lowing, The Baby awakes. But the little Lord Jesus No crying He makes.
Billy traveled in time back to the hospital in Vermont. Breakfast had been eaten and
cleared away and Professor Rumfoord was reluctantly becoming interested in Billy as a
human being. Rumfoord questioned Billy gruffly, satisfied himself that Billy really had
been in Dresden. He asked Billy what it had been like, and Billy told him about the
horses and the couple picnicking on the moon.
The story ended this way,. Billy and the doctors unharnessed the horses, but the horses

wouldn't go anywhere. Their feet hurt too much. And then Russians came on
motorcycles, and they arrested everybody but the horses.
Two days after that, Billy was turned over to the Americans, who shipped him home on a
very slow freighter called the Lucretia A. Mott. Lucretia A. Mott was a famous American
suffragette. She was dead. So it goes.
'It had to be done,' Rumfoord told Billy, speaking of the destruction of Dresden. 'I know,'
said Billy. 'That's war.' 'I know. I'm not complaining.'
'It must have been hell on the ground.' 'It was,' said Billy Pilgrim. Pity the men who had
to do it.' "I do.'
'You must have had mixed feelings, there on the ground.'
"It was all right.,' said Billy. 'Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly
what he does. -I learned that on Tralfamadore.'
Billy Pilgrim's daughter took him home later that day, put him to bed in his house, turned
the Magic Fingers on. There was a practical nurse there. Billy wasn't supposed to work or
even leave the house for a while, at least. He was under observation.
But Billy sneaked out while the nurse wasn't watching and he drove to New York City,
where he hoped to appear on television. He was going to tell the world about the lessons
of Tralfamadore.
Billy Pilgrim checked into the Royalton Hotel on Forty-fourth Street in New York. He by
chance was given a room which had once been the home of George Jean Nathan, the
critic and editor. Nathan, according to the Earthling concept of time, had died back in
1958. According to the Tralfamadorian concept, of course. Nathan was still alive
somewhere and always would be.
The room was small and simple, except that it was on the top floor, and had French doors
which opened onto a terrace as large as the room. And beyond the parapet of the terrace
was the air space over Forty-fourth Street. Billy now leaned over that parapet, looked
down at all the people moving hither and yon. They were jerky little scissors. They were
a lot of fun.
It was a chilly night, and Billy came indoors after a while, closed the French doors.
Closing those doors reminded him of his honeymoon. There had been French doors on
the Cape Ann love nest of his honeymoon, still were, always would be.
Billy turned on his television set checking its channel selector around and around. He was
looking for programs on which he might be allowed to appear. But it was too early in
the evening for programs that allowed people with peculiar opinions to speak out. It was
only a little after eight o'clock, so all the shows were about silliness or murder. So it goes.
Billy left his room, went down the slow elevator, walked over to Times Square, looked
into the window of a tawdry bookstore. In the window were hundreds of books about
fucking and buggery and murder, and a street guide to New York City, and a model of
the Statue of Liberty with a thermometer on it. Also in the window, speckled with soot
and fly shit, were four paperback novels by Billy's friend, Kilgore Trout.
The news of the day, meanwhile, was being written in a ribbon of lights on a building to
Billy's back. The window reflected the news. It was about power and sports and anger
and death. So it goes.
Billy went into the bookstore.
A sign in there said that adults only were allowed in the back. There were peep shows in
the back that showed movies of young women and men with no clothes on. It cost a

quarter to look into a machine for one minute. There were still photographs of naked
young people for sale back there, too. You could take those home. The stills were a lot
more Tralfamadorian than the movies, since you could look at them whenever you
wanted to, and they wouldn't change. Twenty years in the future, those girls would still
be young, would still be smiling or smoldering or simply looking stupid, with their legs
wide open. Some of them were eating lollipops or bananas. They would still be eating
those. And the peckers of the young men would still be semi-erect, and their muscles
would be bulging like cannonballs.
But Billy Pilgrim wasn't beguiled by the back of the store. He was thrilled by the Kilgore
Trout novels in the front. The tides were all new to him, or he thought they were. Now he
opened one. It seemed all right for him to do that. Everybody else in the store was pawing
things. The name of the book was The Big Board. He got a few paragraphs into it, and
then realized that he had read it before-years ago, in the veterans' hospital. It was about an
Earthling man and woman who were kidnapped by extra-terrestrials. They were put on
display in a zoo on a planet called Zircon-212.
These fictitious people in the zoo had a big board supposedly showing stock market,
quotations and commodity prices along one wall of their habitat, and a news ticker, and a
telephone that was supposedly connected to a brokerage on Earth. The creatures on
Zircon-212 told their captives that they had invested a million dollars for them back on
Earth, and that it was up to the captives to manage it so that they would be fabulously
wealthy when they returned to Earth.
The telephone and the big board and the ticker were all fakes, of -course. They were
simply stimulants to make the Earthlings perform vividly for the crowds at the zoo- to
make them jump up and down and cheer, or gloat, or sulk, or tear their hair, to be scared
shitless or to feel as contented as babies in their mothers' arms.
The Earthlings did very well on paper. That was part of the rigging, of course. And
religion got mixed up in it, too. The news ticker reminded them that the President of the
United States had declared National Prayer Week, and that everybody should pray. The
Earthlings had had a bad week on the market before that. They had lost a small fortune in
olive oil futures. So they gave praying a whirl.
It worked. Olive oil went up.
Another Kilgore Trout book there in the window was about a man who built a time
machine so he could go back and see Jesus. It worked, and he saw Jesus when Jesus was
only twelve years old. Jesus was learning the carpentry trade from his father.
Two Roman soldiers came into the shop with a mechanical drawing on papyrus of a
device they wanted built by sunrise the next morning. It was a cross to be used in the
execution of a rabble-rouser.
Jesus and his father built it. They were glad to have the work. And the rabble-rouser was
executed on it.
So it goes.
The bookstore was run by seeming quintuplets, by five short, bald men chewing unfit
cigars that were sopping wet. They never smiled, and each one had a stool to perch on.
They were making money running a paper-and-celluloid whorehouse.
They didn't have hard-ons. Neither did Billy Pilgrim. Everybody else did. It was a
ridiculous store, all about love and babies.
The clerks occasionally told somebody to buy or get out, not to just look and look and

look and paw and paw. Some of the people were looking at each other instead of the
merchandise.
A clerk came up to Billy and told him the good stuff was in the back, that the books Billy
was reading were window dressing. 'That ain't what you want, for Christ's sake,' he told
Billy 'What you want's in back.'
So Billy moved a little farther back, but not as far as the part for adults only. He moved
because of absentminded politeness, taking a Trout book with him-the one about Jesus
and the time machine.
The time-traveler in the book went back to Bible times to find out one thing in particular:
Whether or not Jesus had really died on the cross, or whether he had been taken down
while still alive, whether he had really gone on living. The hero had a stethoscope along.
Billy skipped to the end of the book, where the hero mingled with the people who were
taking Jesus down from the cross. The time-traveler was the first one up the ladder,
dressed in clothes of the period, and he leaned close to Jesus so people couldn't see him
use the stethoscope, and he listened.
There wasn't a sound inside the emaciated chest cavity. The Son of God was as dead as a
doornail.
So it goes.
The time-traveler, whose name was Lance Corwin, also got to measure the length of
Jesus, but not to weigh him. Jesus was five feet and three and a half inches long.
Another clerk came up to Billy and asked him if he was going to buy the book or not, and
Billy said that he wanted to buy it, please. He had his back to a rack of paperback books
about oral-genital contacts from ancient Egypt to the present and so on, and the clerk
supposed Billy was reading one of these. So he was startled when he saw what Billy's
book was. He said, 'Jesus Christ, where did you find this thing?' and so on, and he
had to tell the other clerks about the pervert who wanted to buy the window dressing. The
other clerks already knew about Billy. They had been watching him, too.
The cash register where Billy waited for his change was near a bin of old girly
magazines. Billy looked at one out of the corner of his eye, and he saw this question on
its cover: What really became of Montana Wildhack?
So Billy read it. He knew where Montana Wildhack really was, of course. She was back
on Tralfamadore, taking care of the baby, but the magazine, which was called Midnight
Pussycats, promised that she was wearing a cement overcoat under fathoms of saltwater
in San Pedro Bay.
So it goes.
Billy wanted to laugh. The magazine., which was published for lonesome men to jerk off
to, ran the story so it could print pictures taken from blue movies which Montana had
made as a teenagers Billy did not look closely at these. They were grainy things, soot and
chalk. They could have been anybody.
Billy was again directed to the back of the store and he went this time. A jaded sailor
stepped away from a movie machine while the film was still running. Billy looked in, and
there was Montana Wildhack alone on a bed, peeling a banana. The picture clicked off.
Billy did not want to see what happened next, and a clerk importuned him to come over
and see some really hot stuff they kept under the counter for connoisseurs.
Billy was mildly curious as to what could possibly have been kept hidden in such a place.
The clerk leered and showed him. It was a photograph of a woman and a Shetland pony.

They were attempting to have sexual intercourse between two Doric columns, in front of
velvet draperies which were fringed with deedlee-balls.
Billy didn't get onto television in New York that night., but he did get onto a radio talk
show. There was a radio station right next to Billy's hotel. He saw its call letters over the
entrance of an office building, so he went in. He went up to the studio on an automatic
elevator, and there were other people up there, waiting to go in. They were literary critics,
and they thought Billy was one, too. They were going to discuss whether the novel was
dead or not. So it goes.
Billy took his seat with the others around a golden oak table, with a microphone all his
own. The master of ceremonies asked him his name and what paper he was from. Billy
said he was from the Ilium Gazette.
He was nervous and happy. 'If you're ever in Cody, Wyoming,' he told himself, 'just ask
for Wild Bob.'
Billy put his hand up at the very first part of the program but he wasn't called on right
away. Others got in ahead of him. One of them said that it would be a nice time to bury
the novel, now that a Virginian, one hundred years after Appomattox, had written Uncle
Tom's Cabin. Another one said that people couldn't read well enough anymore to turn
print into exciting situations in their skulls, so that authors had to do what Norman Mailer
did, which was to perform in public what he had written. The master of ceremonies asked
people to say what they thought the function of the novel might be in modem society, and
one critic said, 'To provide touches of color in rooms with all-white wars.' Another one
said, 'To describe blow-jobs artistically.' Another one said, 'To teach wives of junior
executives what to buy next and how to act in a French restaurant.'
And then Billy was allowed to speak. Off he went, in that beautifully trained voice of his,
telling about the flying saucers and Montana Wildhack and so on.
He was gently expelled from the studio during a commercial. He went back to his hotel
room, put a quarter into the Magic Fingers machine connected to his bed, and he went to
sleep. He traveled in time back to Tralfamadore.
'Time-traveling again?' said Montana. It was artificial evening in the dome. She was
breast-feeding their child.
'Hmm?' said Billy. 'You've been time-traveling again. I can always tell.' 'Um.' 'Where did
you go this time? It wasn't the war. I can tell that, too. ' 'New York.' 'The Big Apple.'
'Hm?' 'That's what they used to call New York.' "Oh.' 'You see any plays or movies?' 'No-
I walked around Times Square some, bought a book by Kilgore Trout.' 'Lucky you.' She
did not share his enthusiasm for Kilgore Trout. Billy mentioned casually that he had seen
part of a blue movie she had made. Her
response was no less casual. It was Tralfamadorian and guilt-free: 'Yes-' she said, 'and
I've heard about you in the war, about what a clown you were. And
I've heard about the high school teacher who was shot. He made a blue movie with a
firing squad.' She moved the baby from one breast to the other, because the moment was
so structured that she had to do so.
There was a silence.
'They're playing with the clocks again,' said Montana, rising, preparing to put the baby
into its crib. She meant that their keepers were making the electric clocks in the dome go
fast, then slow, then fast again., and watching the little Earthling family through
peepholes.

There was a silver chain around Montana Wildhack's neck. Hanging from it, between her
breasts, was a locket containing a photograph of her alcoholic mother-grainy thing, soot
and chalk. It could have been anybody. Engraved on the outside of the locket were these
words:
GOD GRANT ME THE SERENITY TO ACCEPT THE THINGS I CANNOT
CHANGE, COURAGE TO CHANGE THE THINGS
I CAN, AND WISDOM ALWAYS TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE.
Ten
Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles from the home I live in all year
round, was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes.
Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died, too. So it goes.
And every day my Government gives me a count of corpses created by military science
in Vietnam. So it goes.
My father died many years ago now-of natural causes. So it goes. He was a sweet man.
He was a gun nut, too. He left me his guns. They rust.
On Tralfamadore, says Billy Pilgrim, there isn't much interest in Jesus Christ. The
Earthling figure who is most engaging to the Tralfamadorian mind, he says, is Charles
Darwin-who taught that those who die are meant to die, that corpses are improvements.
So it goes.
The same general idea appears in The Big Board by Kilgore Trout. The flying saucer
creatures who capture Trout's hem ask him about Darwin. They also ask him about golf.
If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live
forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still-if I
am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of
those moments are nice.
One of the nicest ones in recent times was on my trip back to Dresden with my old war
buddy, O'Hare.
We took a Hungarian Airlines plane from East Berlin. The pilot had a handlebar
mustache. He looked like Adolph Menjou. He smoked a Cuban cigar while the plane was
being fueled. When we took off, there was no talk of fastening seat belts.
When we were up in the air, a young steward served us rye bread and salami and butter
and cheese and white wine. The folding tray in front of me would not open out. The
steward went into the cockpit for a tool, came back with a beer-can opener. He used it to
pry out the tray.
There were only six other passengers. They spoke many languages. They were having
nice times, too. East Germany was down below, and the lights were on. I imagined
dropping bombs on those lights, those villages and cities and towns.
O'Hare and I had never expected to make any money-and here we were now, extremely
well-to-do.
'If you're ever in Cody, Wyoming,' I said to him lazily, 'just ask for Wild Bob.'
O'Hare had a little notebook with him, and printed in the back of it were postal rates and
airline distances and the altitudes of famous mountains and other key facts about the
world. He was looking up the population of Dresden, which wasn't in the notebook, when
he came across this, which he gave me to read:
On an average, 324,000 new babies are born into the world every day. During that same
day, 10,000 persons, in an average, will have starved to death or died from malnutrition.

So it goes. In addition, 123,000 persons will die for other reasons. So it goes. This leaves
a net gain of about 191,000 each day in the world. The Population
Reference Bureau predicts that the world's total population will double to 7,000,000,000
before the year 2000.
'I suppose they will all want dignity,' I said. 'I suppose,' said O'Hare.
Billy Pilgrim was meanwhile traveling back to Dresden, too, but not in the present. He
was going back there in 1945, two days after the city was destroyed. Now Billy and the
rest were being marched into the ruins by their guards. I was there. O'Hare was there. We
had spent the past two nights in the blind innkeeper's stable. Authorities had found us
there. They told us what to do. We were to borrow picks and shovels and crowbars and
wheelbarrows from our neighbors. We were to march with these implements to such and
such a place in the ruins, ready to go to work.
There were cades on the main roads leading into the ruins. Germans were stopped there.
They were not permitted to explore the moon.
Prisoners of war from many lands came together that morning at such and such a place in
Dresden. It had been decreed that here was where the digging for bodies was to begin. So
the digging began.
Billy found himself paired as a digger with a Maori, who had been captured at Tobruk.
The Maori was chocolate brown. He had whirlpools tattooed on his forehead and his
cheeks. Billy and the Maori dug into the inert, unpromising gravel of the moon. The
materials were loose, so there were constant little avalanches.
Many holes were dug at once. Nobody knew yet what there was to find. Most holes came
to nothing-to pavement, or to boulders so huge they would not move. There was no
machinery. Not even horses or mules or oxen could cross the moonscape.
And Billy and the Maori and others helping them with their particular hole came at last to
a membrane of timbers laced over rocks which had wedged together to form an
accidental dome. They made a hole in the membrane. There was darkness and space
under there.
A German soldier with a flashlight went down into the darkness, was gone a long time.
When he finally came back, he told a superior on the rim of the hole that there were
dozens of bodies down there. They were sitting on benches. They were unmarked.
So it goes.
The superior said that the opening in the membrane should be enlarged, and that a ladder
should be put in the hole, so that bodies could be carried out. Thus began the first corpse
mine in Dresden.
There were hundreds of corpse mines operating by and by. They didn't smell bad at first,
were wax museums. But then the bodies rotted and liquefied, and the stink was like roses
and mustard gas.
So it goes.
The Maori Billy had worked with died of the dry heaves, after having been ordered to go
down in that stink and work. He tore himself to pieces, throwing up and throwing up.
So it goes.
So a new technique was devised. Bodies weren't brought up any more. They were
cremated by soldiers with flamethrowers right where they were. The soldiers. stood
outside the shelters, simply sent the fire in.
Somewhere in there the poor old high school teacher, Edgar Derby, was caught with a

teapot he had taken from the catacombs. He was arrested for plundering. He was tried
and shot.
So it goes.
And somewhere in there was springtime. The corpse mines were closed down. The
soldiers all left to fight the Russians. In the suburbs, the women and children dug rifle
pits. Billy and the rest of his group were locked up in the stable in the suburbs. And then,
one morning, they got up to discover that the door was unlocked. The Second World War
in Europe was over.
Billy and the rest wandered out onto the shady street. The trees were leafing out. There
was nothing going on out there, no traffic of any kind. There was only one vehicle, an
abandoned wagon drawn by two horses. The wagon was green and coffin-shaped.
Birds were talking. One bird said to Billy Pilgrim, 'Poo-tee-weet?'

CAT'S CRADLE by Kurt Vonnegut
Copyright 1963 by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Published by DELL PUBLISHING CO., INC., 1 Dag Hammarskjold
Plaza, New York, N.Y. 10017 All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0-440-11149-8
For Kenneth Littauer, a man of gallantry and taste.
Nothing in this book is true.
"Live by the foma* that makes you brave and kind and
healthy and happy."
--The Books of Bokonon. 1:5 *Harmless untruths
contents
1. The Day the World Ended 2. Nice, Nice, Very Nice 3.
Folly 4. A Tentative Tangling of Tendrils 5. Letter
from a Pie-med
6. Bug Fights 7. The Illustrious Hoenikkers 8. Newt's
Thing with Zinka 9. Vice-president in Charge of Volcanoes
10. Secret Agent X-9 11. Protein 12. End of the World
Delight 13. The Jumping-off Place 14. When Automobiles Had
Cut-glass Vases 15. Merry Christmas
16. Back to Kindergarten 17. The Girl Pool 18. The Most
Valuable Commodity on Earth 19. No More Mud 20. Ice-nine
21. The Marines March On 22. Member of the Yellow Press 23.
The Last Batch of Brownies 24. What a Wampeter Is 25. The
Main Thing About Dr. Hoenikker 26. What God Is 27. Men from
Mars 28. Mayonnaise 29. Gone, but Not 30. Only Sleeping 31.
Another Breed 32. Dynamite Money 33. An Ungrateful Man 34.
Vin-dit 35. Hobby Shop 36. Meow 37. A Modem Major General
38. Barracuda Capital of the World 39. Fata Morgana 40.
House of Hope and Mercy 41. A Karass Built for Two 42.
Bicycles for Afghanistan 43. The Demonstrator 44. Communist
Sympathizers 45. Why Americans Are Hated 46. The Bokononist
Method for Handling Caesar 47. Dynamic Tension 48. Just
Like Saint Augustine 49. A Fish Pitched Up by an Angry Sea
50. A Nice Midget 51. O.K., Mom 52. No Pain 53. The
President of Fabri-Tek 54. Communists, Nazis, Royalists,
Forgotten
Parachutists, and Draft Dodgers 55. Never Index Your Own
Book
56. A Self-supporting Squirrel Cage 57. The Queasy Dream
58. Tyranny with a Difference 59. Fasten Your Seat Belts
60. An Underprivileged Nation 61. What a Corporal Was Worth
62. Why Hazel Wasn't Scared 63. Reverent and Free 64. Peace
and Plenty 65. A Good Time to Come to San Lorenzo 66. The
Strongest Thing There Is
67. Hy-u-o-ook-kuh! 68. Hoon-yera Mora-toorz 69. A Big
Mosaic 70. Tutored by Bokonon 71. The Happiness of Being an
American 72. The Pissant Hilton 73. Black Death 74. Cat's

Cradle 75. Give My Regards to Albert Schweitzer 76. Julian
Castle Agrees with Newt
that Everything Is Meaningless 77. Aspirin and Boko-maru
78. Ring of Steel 79. Why McCabe's Soul Grew Coarse 80. The
Waterfall Strainers 81. A White Bride for the Son of a
Pullman Porter 82. Zah-mah-ki-bo 83. Dr. Schlichter von
Koenigswald Approaches
the Break-even Point 84. Blackout
85. A Pack of Foma 86. Two Little Jugs 87. The Cut of My
Jib 88. Why Frank Couldn't Be President 89. Duffle
90. Only One Catch 91. Mona 92. On the Poet's Celebration
of his First Boko-maru 93. How I Almost Lost My Mona 94.
The Highest Mountain 95. I See the Hook 96. Bell, Book, and
Chicken in a Hatbox 97. The Stinking Christian 98. Last
Rites 99. Dyot meet mat 100. Down the Oubliette Goes Frank
101. Like My Predecessors, I Outlaw Bokonon 102. Enemies of
Freedom 103. A Medical Opinion on the Effects of a Writers'
Strike 104. Sulfathiazole 105. Pain-killer 106. What
Bokononists Say When They Commit Suicide
107. Feast Your Eyes! 108. Frank Tells Us What to Do 109.
Frank Defends Himself 110. The Fourteenth Book 111. Time
Out 112. Newt's Mother's Reticule 113. History 114. When I
Felt the Bullet Enter My Heart 115. As It Happened 116. The
Grand Ah-whoom 117. Sanctuary 118. The Iron Maiden and the
Oubliette 119. Mona Thanks Me 120. To Whom It May Concern
121. I Am Slow to Answer 122. The Swiss Family Robinson
123. Of Mice and Men 124. Frank's Ant Farm 125. The
Tasmanians 126. Soft Pipes, Play On 127. The End
cat's cradle
The Day the World Ended 1 Call me Jonah. My parents did, or
nearly did. They called me
John.
Jonah – John - if I had been a Sam, I would have been a
Jonah still, not because I have been unlucky for others,
but because somebody or something has compelled me to be
certain places at certain times, without fail. Conveyances
and motives, both conventional and bizarre, have been
provided. And, according to plan, at each appointed second,
at each appointed place this Jonah was there.
Listen:
When I was a younger man--two wives ago, 250,000 cigarettes
ago, 3,000 quarts of booze ago.
When I was a much younger man, I began to collect material
for a book to be called The Day the World Ended.
The book was to be factual.
The book was to be an account of what important Americans
had done on the day when the first atomic bomb was dropped

on Hiroshima, Japan.
It was to be a Christian book. I was a Christian then. I am
a Bokononist now. I would have been a Bokononist then, if
there had been anyone
to teach me the bittersweet lies of Bokonon. But Bokononism
was unknown beyond the gravel beaches and coral knives that
ring this little island in the Caribbean Sea, the Republic
of San Lorenzo.
We Bokononists believe that humanity is organized into
teams, teams that do God's Will without ever discovering
what they are doing. Such a team is called a karass by
Bokonon, and the instrument, the kan-kan, that brought me
into my own particular karass was the book I never
finished, the book to be called The Day the World Ended.
Nice, Nice, Very Nice 2
"If you find your life tangled up with somebody else's life
for no very logical reasons," writes Bokonon, "that person
may be a member of your karass."
At another point in The Books of created the checkerboard;
God created means that a karass ignores national, familial,
and class boundaries.
It is as free-form as an amoeba.
Bokonon he tells us, "Man the karass." By that he
institutional, occupational,
In his "Fifty-third Calypso," Bokonon invites us to sing
along with him:
Oh, a sleeping drunkard Up in Central Park, And a lion-
hunter
Folly 3
In the jungle dark, And a Chinese dentist, And a British
queen-- All fit together In the same machine. Nice, nice,
very nice; Nice, nice, very nice; Nice, nice, very nice--
So many different people In the same device.
Nowhere does Bokonon warn against a person's trying to
discover the limits of his karass and the nature of the
work God Almighty has had it do. Bokonon simply observes
that such investigations are bound to be incomplete.
In the autobiographical section of The Books of Bokanon he
writes a parable on the folly of pretending to discover, to
understand:
I once knew an Episcopalian lady in Newport, Rhode Island,
who asked me to design and build a doghouse for her Great
Dane. The lady claimed to understand God and His Ways of
Working perfectly. She could not understand why anyone
should be puzzled about what had been or about what was
going to be.
And yet, when I showed her a blueprint of the doghouse I

proposed to build, she said to me, "I'm sorry, but I never
could read one of those things."
"Give it to your husband or your minister to pass on to
God," I said, "and, when God finds a minute, I'm sure he'll
explain this doghouse of mine in a way that even you can
understand."
She fired me. I shall never forget her. She believed that
God liked people in sailboats much better than He liked
people in motorboats. She could not bear to look at a worm.
When she saw a worm, she screamed.
She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he
sees what God is Doing, [writes Bokonon].
A Tentative Tangling of Tendrils 4
Be that as it may, I intend in this book to include as many
members of my karass as possible, and I mean to examine all
strong hints as to what on Earth we, collectively, have
been up to.
I do not intend that this book be a tract on behalf of
Bokononism. I should like to offer a Bokononist warning
about it, however. The first sentence in The Books of
Bokonon is this:
"All of the true things I am about to tell you are
shameless lies."
My Bokononist warning is this:
Anyone unable to understand how a useful religion can be
founded on lies will not understand this book either.
So be it.
About my karass, then.
It surely includes the three children of Dr. Felix
Hoenikker, one of the so-called "Fathers" of the first
atomic bomb. Dr. Hoenikker himself was no doubt a member of
my karass, though he was dead before my sinookas, the
tendrils of my life, began to tangle with those of his
children.
The first of his heirs to be touched by my sinookas was
Newton Hoenikker, the youngest of his three children, the
younger of his two sons. I learned from the publication of
my fraternity, The Delta Upsilon Quarterly, that Newton
Hoenikker, son of the Nobel Prize physicist, Felix
Hoenikker, had been pledged by my chapter, the Cornell
Chapter.
So I wrote this letter to Newt: "Dear Mr. Hoenikker: "Or
should I say, Dear Brother Hoenikker? "I am a Cornell DU
now making my living as a freelance
writer. I am gathering material for a book relating to the
first atomic bomb. Its contents will be limited to events
that took

place on August 6, 1945, the day the bomb was dropped on
Hiroshima.
"Since your late father is generally recognized as having
been one of the chief creators of the bomb, I would very
much appreciate any anecdotes you might care to give me of
life in your father's house on the day the bomb was dropped.
"I am sorry to say that I don't know as much about your
illustrious family as I should, and so don't know whether
you have brothers and sisters. If you do have brothers and
sisters, I should like very much to have their addresses so
that I can send similar requests to them.
"I realize that you were very young when the bomb was
dropped, which is all to the good. My book is going to
emphasize the human rather than the technical side of the
bomb, so recollections of the day through the eyes of a
'baby,' if you'll pardon the expression, would fit in
perfectly.
"You don't have to worry about style and form. Leave all
that to me. Just give me the bare bones of your story.
"I will, of course, submit the final version to you for
your approval prior to publication.
"Fraternally yours."
Letter from a Pre-med 5
To which Newt replied:
"I am sorry to be so long sounds like a very interesting
when the bomb was dropped that help. You should really ask
my brother and sister, who are both older than I am. My
sister is Mrs. Harrison C. Conners, 4918 North Meridian
Street, Indianapolis, Indiana. That is my home address,
too, now. I think she will be glad to help you. Nobody
knows where my brother Frank is. He disappeared right after
Father's funeral two years ago, and nobody has heard from
him since. For all we know, he may be dead now.
"I was only six years old when they dropped the atomic bomb
on Hiroshima, so anything I remember about that day other
people have helped me to remember.
about answering your letter. That book you are doing. I was
so young I don't think I'm going to be much
"I remember I was playing on the living-room carpet outside
my father's study door in Ilium, New York. The door was
open, and I could see my father. He was wearing pajamas and
a bathrobe. He was smoking a cigar. He was playing with a
loop of string. Father was staying home from the laboratory
in his pajamas all day that day. He stayed home whenever he
wanted to.
"Father, as you probably know, spent practically his whole
professional life working for the Research Laboratory of

the General Forge and Foundry Company in Ilium. When the
Manhattan Project came along, the bomb project, Father
wouldn't leave Ilium to work on it. He said he wouldn't
work on it at all unless they let him work where he wanted
to work. A lot of the time that meant at home. The only
place he liked to go, outside of Ilium, was our cottage on
Cape Cod. Cape Cod was where he died. He died on a
Christmas Eve. You probably know that, too.
"Anyway, I was playing on the carpet outside his study on
the day of the bomb. My sister Angela tells me I used to
play with little toy trucks for hours, making motor sounds,
going 'burton, burton, burton' all the time. So I guess I
was going 'burton, burton, burton,' on the day of the bomb;
and Father was in his study, playing with a loop of string.
"It so happens I know where the string he was playing with
came from. Maybe you can use it somewhere in your book.
Father took the string from around the manuscript of a
novel that a man in prison had sent him. The novel was
about the end of the world in the year 2000, and the name
of the book was _2000 A.D._ It told about how mad
scientists made a terrific bomb that wiped out the whole
world. There was a big sex orgy when everybody knew that
the world was going to end, and then Jesus Christ Himself
appeared ten seconds before the bomb went off. The name of
the author was Marvin Sharpe Holderness, and he told Father
in a covering letter that he was in prison for killing his
own brother. He sent the manuscript to Father because he
couldn't figure out what kind of explosives to put in the
bomb. He thought maybe Father could make suggestions.
"I don't mean to tell you I read the book when I was six.
We had it around the house for years. My brother Frank made
it his personal property, on account of the dirty parts.
Frank kept it hidden in what he called his 'wall safe' in
his bedroom. Actually, it wasn't a safe but just an old
stove flue with a tin lid. Frank and I must have read the
orgy part a thousand times when we were kids. We had it for
years, and then my sister Angela found it. She read it and
said it was nothing but a piece of dirty rotten filth. She
burned it up, and the string with it. She was a mother to
Frank and me, because our real mother died when I was born.
"My father never read the book, I'm pretty sure. I don't
think he ever read a novel or even a short story in his
whole
life, or at least not since he was a little boy. He didn't
read his mail or magazines or newspapers, either. I suppose
he read a lot of technical journals, but to tell you the
truth, I can't remember my father reading anything.

"As I say, all he wanted from that manuscript was the
string. That was the way he was. Nobody could predict what
he was going to be interested in next. On the day of the
bomb it was string.
"Have you ever read the speech he made when he accepted the
Nobel Prize? This is the whole speech: 'Ladies and
Gentlemen. I stand before you now because I never stopped
dawdling like an eight-year-old on a spring morning on his
way to school. Anything can make me stop and look and
wonder, and sometimes learn. I am a very happy man. Thank
you.'
"Anyway, Father looked at that loop of string for a while,
and then his fingers started playing with it. His fingers
made the string figure called a 'cat's cradle.' I don't
know where Father learned how to do that. From his father,
maybe. His father was a tailor, you know, so there must
have been thread and string around all the time when Father
was a boy.
"Making the cat's cradle was the closest I ever saw my
father come to playing what anybody else would call a game.
He had no use at all for tricks and games and rules that
other people made up. In a scrapbook my sister Angela used
to keep up, there was a clipping from _Time_ magazine where
somebody asked Father what games he played for relaxation,
and he said, 'Why should I bother with made-up games when
there are so many real ones going on?'
"He must have surprised himself when he made a cat's cradle
out of the string, and maybe it reminded him of his own
childhood. He all of a sudden came out of his study and did
something he'd never done before. He tried to play with me.
Not only had he never played with me before; he had hardly
ever even spoken to me.
"But he went down on his knees on the carpet next to me,
and he showed me his teeth, and he waved that tangle of
string in my face. 'See? See? See?' he asked. 'Cat's
cradle. See the cat's cradle? See where the nice pussycat
sleeps? Meow. Meow.'
"His pores looked as big as craters on the moon. His ears
and nostrils were stuffed with hair. Cigar smoke made him
smell like the mouth of Hell. So close up, my father was
the ugliest thing I had ever seen. I dream about it all the
time.
"And then he sang. 'Rockabye catsy, in the tree top'; he
sang, 'when the wind blows, the cray-dull will rock. If the
bough breaks, the cray-dull will fall. Down will come
craydull, catsy and all.'
"I burst into tears. I jumped up and I ran out of the house

as fast as I could go.
"I have to sign off here. It's after two in the morning. My
roommate just woke up and complained about the noise from
the typewriter."
Bug Fights 6
Newt resumed his letter the next morning. He resumed it as
follows:
"Next morning. Here I go again, fresh as a daisy after
eight hours of sleep. The fraternity house is very quiet
now. Everybody is in class but me. I'm a very privileged
character. I don't have to go to class any more. I was
flunked out last week. I was a pre- med. They were right to
flunk me out. I would have made a lousy doctor.
"After I finish this letter, I think I'll go to a movie. Or
if the sun comes out, maybe I'll go for a walk through one
of the gorges. Aren't the gorges beautiful? This year, two
girls jumped into one holding hands. They didn't get into
the sorority they wanted. They wanted Tri-Delt.
"But back to August 6, 1945. My sister Angela has told me
many times that I really hurt my father that day when I
wouldn't admire the cat's cradle, when I wouldn't stay
there on the carpet with my father and listen to him sing.
Maybe I did hurt him, but I don't think I could have hurt
him much. He was one of the best- protected human beings
who ever lived. People couldn't get at him because he just
wasn't interested in people. I remember one time, about a
year before he died, I tried to get him to tell me
something about my mother. He couldn't remember anything
about her.
"Did you ever hear the famous story about breakfast on the
day Mother and Father were leaving for Sweden to accept the
Nobel Prize? It was in The Saturday Evening Post one time.
Mother cooked a big breakfast. And then, when she cleared
off the table, she found a quarter and a dime and three
pennies by Father's coffee cup. He'd tipped her.
"After wounding my father so terribly, if that's what I
did, I ran out into the yard. I didn't know where I was
going until I found my brother Frank under a big spiraea
bush. Frank was twelve
then, and I wasn't surprised to find him under there. He
spent a lot of time under there on hot days. Just like a
dog, he'd make a hollow in the cool earth all around the
roots. And you never could tell what Frank would have under
the bush with him. One time he had a dirty book. Another
time he had a bottle of cooking sherry. On the day they
dropped the bomb Frank had a tablespoon and a Mason jar.
What he was doing was spooning different kinds of bugs into

the jar and making them fight.
"The bug fight was so interesting that I stopped crying
right away--forgot all about the old man. I can't remember
what all Frank had fighting in the jar that day, but I can
remember other bug fights we staged later on: one stag
beetle against a hundred red ants, one centipede against
three spiders, red ants against black ants. They won't
fight unless you keep shaking the jar. And that's what
Frank was doing, shaking, shaking, the jar.
"After a while Angela came looking for me. She lifted up
one side of the bush and said, 'So there you are!' She
asked Frank what he thought he was doing, and he said,
'Experimenting.' That's what Frank always used to say when
people asked him what he thought he was doing. He always
said, 'Experimenting.'
"Angela was twenty-two then. She had been the real head of
the family since she was sixteen, since Mother died, since
I was born. She used to talk about how she had three
children--me, Frank, and Father. She wasn't exaggerating,
either. I can remember cold mornings when Frank, Father,
and I would be all in a line in the front hail, and Angela
would be bundling us up, treating us exactly the same. Only
I was going to kindergarten; Frank was going to junior
high; and Father.was going to work on the atom bomb. I
remember one morning like that when the oil burner had
quit, the pipes were frozen, and the car wouldn't start. We
all sat there in the car while Angela kept pushing the
starter until the battery was dead. And then Father spoke
up. You know what he said? He said, 'I wonder about
turtles.' 'What do you wonder about turtles? Angela asked
him. 'When they pull in their heads,' he said, 'do their
spines buckle or contract?'
"Angela was one of the unsung heroines of the atom bomb,
incidentally, and I don't think the story has ever been
told. Maybe you can use it. After the turtle incident,
Father got so interested in turtles that he stopped working
on the atom bomb. Some people from the Manhattan Project
finally came out to the house to ask Angela what to do. She
told them to take away Father's turtles. So one night they
went into his laboratory and stole the turtles and the
aquarium. Father never said a word about the disappearance
of the turtles. He just came to work the next day and
looked for things to play with and think about, and
everything there was to play with and think about had
something to do with the bomb.
"When Angela got me out from under the bush, she asked me
what had happened between Father and me. I just kept saying

over and over again how ugly he was, how much I hated him.
So she slapped me. 'How dare you say that about your
father?' she said. 'He's one of the greatest men who ever
lived! He won the war today! Do you realize that? He won
the war!' She slapped me again.
"I don't blame Angela for slapping me. Father was all she
had. She didn't have any boy friends. She didn't have any
friends at all. She had only one hobby. She played the
clarinet.
"I told her again how much I hated my father; she slapped
me again; and then Frank came out from under the bush and
punched her in the stomach. It hurt her something awful.
She fell down and she rolled around. When she got her wind
back, she cried and she yelled for Father.
"'He won't come,' Frank said, and he laughed at her. Frank
was right. Father stuck his head out a window, and he
looked at Angela and me rolling on the ground, bawling, and
Frank standing over us, laughing. The old man pulled his
head indoors again, and never asked later what all the fuss
had been about. People weren't his specialty.
"Will that do? Is that any help to your book? Of course,
you've really tied me down, asking me to stick to the day
of the bomb. There are lots of other good anecdotes about
the bomb and Father, from other days. For instance, do you
know the story about Father on the day they first tested a
bomb out at Alamogordo? After the thing went off, after it
was a sure thing that America could wipe out a city with
just one bomb, a scientist turned to Father and said,
'Science has now known sin.' And do you know what Father
said? He said, 'What is Sin?'
"All the best, "Newton Hoenikker"
The Illustrious Hoenikkers 7
Newt added these three postscripts to his letter:
"P.S. I can't sign myself 'Fraternally yours' because they
won't let me be your brother on account of my grades. I was
only a pledge, and now they are going to take even that
away from me.
"P.P.S. You call our family 'illustrious,' and I think you
would maybe be making a mistake if you called it that in
your book. I am a midget, for instance--four feet tall. And
the last we heard of my brother Frank, he was wanted by the
Florida police, the F.B.I., and the Treasury Department for
running stolen cars to Cuba on war-surplus L.S.T.'s. So I'm
pretty sure 'illustrious' isn't quite the word you're
after. 'Glamorous' is probably closer to the truth.
"P.P.P.S. Twenty-four hours later. I have reread this
letter and I can see where somebody might get the

impression that I don't do anything but sit around and
remember sad things and pity myself. Actually, I am a very
lucky person and I know it. I am about to marry a wonderful
little girl. There is love enough in this world for
everybody, if people will just look. I am proof of that."
Newt's Thing with Zinka 8
Newt did not tell me who his girl friend was. But about two
weeks after he wrote to me everybody in the country knew
that her name was Zinka - plain Zinka. Apparently she
didn't have a last name.
Zinka was a Ukrainian midget, a dancer with the Borzoi
Dance Company. As it happened, Newt saw a performance by
that company in Indianapolis, before he went to Cornell.
And then the company danced at Cornell. When the Cornell
performance was over, little Newt was outside the stage
door with a dozen long-stemmed American Beauty roses.
The newspapers picked up the story when little Zinka asked
for political asylum in the United States, and then she and
little Newt disappeared.
One week after that, little Zinka presented herself at the
Russian Embassy. She said Americans were too materialistic.
She said she wanted to go back home.
Newt took shelter in his sister's house in Indianapolis. He
gave one brief statement to the press. "It was a private
matter," he said. "It was an affair of the heart. I have no
regrets. What happened is nobody's business but Zinka's and
my own."
One enterprising American reporter in Moscow, making
inquiries about Zinka among dance people there, made the
unkind discovery that Zinka was not, as she claimed, only
twenty-three years old.
She was forty-two--old enough to be Newt's mother.
Vice-president in Charge of Volcanoes 9
I loafed on my book about the day of the bomb.
About a year later, two days before Christmas, another
story carried me through Ilium, New York, where Dr. Felix
Hoenikker had done most of his work; where little Newt,
Frank, and Angela had spent their formative years.
I stopped off in Ilium to see what I could see.
There were no live Hoenikkers left in Ilium, but there were
plenty of people who claimed to have known well the old man
and his three peculiar children.
I made an appointment with Dr. Asa Breed, Vice-president in
charge of the Research Laboratory of the General Forge and
Foundry Company. I suppose Dr. Breed was a member of my
_karass_, too, though he took a dislike to me almost
immediately.

"Likes and dislikes have nothing to do with it," says
Bokonon--an easy warning to forget.
"I understand you were Dr. Hoenikker's supervisor during
most of his professional life," I said to Dr. Breed on the
telephone.
"On paper," he said. "I don't understand," I said. "If I
actually supervised Felix," he said, "then I'm ready
now to take charge of volcanoes, the tides, and the
migrations of birds and lemmings. The man was a force of
nature no mortal could possibly control."
Secret Agent X-9 10
Dr. Breed made an appointment with me for early the next
morning. He would pick me up at my hotel on his way to
work, he said, thus simplifying my entry into the heavily-
guarded Research Laboratory.
So I had a night to kill in Ilium. I was already in the
beginning and end of night life in Ilium, the Del Prado
Hotel. Its bar, the Cape Cod Room, was a hangout for whores.
As it happened--"as it was _meant_ to happen," Bokonon
would say--the whore next to me at the bar and the
bartender serving •me had both gone to high school with
Franklin Hoenikker, the bug tormentor, the middle child,
the missing son.
The whore, who said her name was Sandra, offered me
delights unobtainable outside of Place Pigalle and Port
Said. I said I wasn't interested, and she was bright enough
to say that she wasn't really interested either. As things
turned out, we had both overestimated our apathies, but not
by much.
Before we took the measure of each other's passions,
however, we talked about Frank Hoenikker, and we talked
about the old man, and we talked a little about Asa Breed,
and we talked about the General Forge and Foundry Company,
and we talked about the Pope and birth control, about
Hitler and the Jews. We talked about phonies. We talked
about truth. We talked about gangsters; we talked about
business. We talked about the nice poor people who went to
the electric chair; and we talked about the rich bastards
who didn't. We talked about religious people who had
perversions. We talked about a lot of things.
We got drunk.
The bartender was very nice to Sandra. He liked her. He
respected her. He told me that Sandra had been chairman of
the Class Colors Committee at Ilium High. Every class, he
explained, got to pick distinctive colors for itself in its
junior year, and then it got to wear those colors with
pride.

"What colors did you pick?" I asked. "Orange and black."
"Those are good colors." "I thought so."
"Was Franklin Hoenikker on the Class Colors Committee, too?"
"He wasn't on anything," said Sandra scornfully. "He never
got on any committee, never played any game, never took any
girl out. I don't think he ever even talked to a girl. We
used to call him Secret Agent X-9."
"X-9?"
"You know--he was always acting like he was on his way
between two secret places; couldn't ever talk to anybody."
"Maybe he really _did_ have a very rich secret life," I
suggested.
"Nah."
"Nah," sneered the bartender. "He was just one of those
kids who made model airplanes and jerked off all the time."
Protein 11
"He was suppose to be our commencement speaker," said
Sandra. "Who was?" I asked. "Dr. Hoenikker--the old man."
"What did he say?"
"He didn't show up." "So you didn't get a commencement
address?" "Oh, we got one. Dr. Breed, the one you're gonna
see
tomorrow, he showed up, all out of breath, and he gave some
kind of talk."
"What did he say?"
"He said he hoped a lot of us would have careers in
science," she said. She didn't see anything funny in that.
She was remembering a lesson that had impressed her. She
was repeating it gropingly, dutifully. "He said, the
trouble with the world was . . ." She had to stop and think.
"The trouble with the world was," she continued
hesitatingly, "that people were still superstitious instead
of scientific. He said if everybody would study science
more, there wouldn't be all the trouble there was."
"He said science was going to discover the basic secret of
life someday," the bartender put in. He scratched his head
and frowned. "Didn't I read in the paper the other day
where they'd finally found out what it was?"
"I missed that," I murmured. "I saw that," said Sandra.
"About two days ago." "That's right," said the bartender.
"What _is_ the secret of life?" I asked. "I forget," said
Sandra.
"Protein," the bartender declared. "They found out
something about protein."
"Yeah," said Sandra, "that's it."
End of the World Delight 12
An older bartender came over to join in our conversation in

the Cape Cod Room of the Del Prado. When he heard that I
was writing a book about the day of the bomb, he told me
what the day had been like for him, what the day had been
like in the very bar in which we sat. He had a W. C. Fields
twang and a nose like a prize strawberry.
"It wasn't the Cape Cod Room then," he said. "We didn't
have all these fugging nets and seashells around. It was
called the Navajo Tepee in those days. Had Indian blankets
and cow skulls on the walls. Had little tom-toms on the
tables. People were supposed to beat on the tom-toms when
they wanted service. They tried to get me to wear a war
bonnet, but I wouldn't do it. Real Navajo Indian came in
here one day; told me Navajos didn't live in tepees.
'That's a fugging shame,' I told him. Before that it was
the Pompeii Room, with busted plaster all over the place;
but no matter what they call the room, they never change
the fugging light fixtures. Never changed the fugging
people who come in or the fugging town outside, either. The
day they dropped Hoenikker's fugging bomb on the Japanese a
bum came in and tried to scrounge a drink. He wanted me to
give him a drink on account of the world was coming to an
end. So I mixed him an 'End of the World Delight.' I gave
him about a half-pint of creme de menthe in a hollowed-out
pineapple, with whipped cream and a cherry on top. 'There,
you pitiful son of a bitch,' I said to him, 'don't ever say
I never did anything for you.' Another guy came in, and he
said he was quitting his job at the Research Laboratory;
said anything a scientist worked on was sure to wind up as
a weapon, one way or another. Said he didn't want to help
politicians with their fugging wars anymore. Name was
Breed. I asked him if he was any relation to the boss of
the fugging Research Laboratory. He said he fugging well
was. Said he was the boss of the Research Laboratory's
fugging son."
The Jumping-off Place 13
Ah, God, what an ugly city Ilium is! "Ah, God," says
Bokonon, "what an ugly city every city is!" Sleet was
falling through a motionless blanket of smog. It
was early morning. I was riding in the Lincoln sedan of Dr.
Asa Breed. I was vaguely ill, still a little drunk from the
night before. Dr. Breed was driving. Tracks of a long-
abandoned trolley system kept catching the wheels of his
car.
Breed was a pink old man, very prosperous, beautifully
dressed. His manner was civilized, optimistic, capable,
serene. I, by contrast, felt bristly, diseased, cynical. I
had spent the night with Sandra.

My soul seemed as foul as smoke from burning cat fur.
I thought the worst of everyone, and I knew some pretty
sordid things about Dr. Asa Breed, things Sandra had told
me.
Sandra told me everyone in Ilium was sure that Dr. Breed
had been in love with Felix Hoenikker's wife. She told me
that most people thought Breed was the father of all three
Hoenikker children.
"Do you know Ilium at all?" Dr. Breed suddenly asked me.
"This is my first visit." "It's a family town." "Sir?"
"There isn't much in the way of night life. Everybody's
life pretty much centers around his family and his home."
"That sounds very wholesome." "It is. We have very little
juvenile delinquency." "Good." "Ilium has a very
interesting history, you know." "That's very interesting."
"It used to be the jumping-off place, you know." "Sir?"
"For the Western migration." "Oh." "People used to get
outfitted here." "That's very interesting."
"Just about where the Research Laboratory is now was the
old stockade. That was where they held the public hangings,
too, for the whole county."
now."
"I don't suppose crime paid any better then than it does
"There was one man they hanged here in 1782 who had
murdered twenty-six people. I've often thought somebody
ought to do a book about him sometime. George Minor
Moakely. He sang a song on the scaffold. He sang a song
he'd composed for the occasion."
"What was the song about?"
"You can find the words over at the Historical Society, if
you're really interested."
"I just wondered about the general tone." "He wasn't sorry
about anything." "Some people are like that." "Think of
it!" said Dr. Breed. "Twenty-six people he had on
his conscience!" "The mind reels," I said.
When Automobiles Had Cut-glass Vases 14
My sick head wobbled on my stiff neck. The trolley tracks
had caught the wheels of Dr. Breed's glossy Lincoln again.
I asked Dr. Breed how many people were trying to reach the
General Forge and Foundry Company by eight o'clock, and he
told me thirty thousand.
Policemen in yellow raincapes were at every intersection,
contradicting with their white-gloved hands what the stop-
and-go signs said.
The stop-and-go signs, garish ghosts in the sleet, went
through their irrelevant tomfoolery again and again,
telling the glacier of automobiles what to do. Green meant

go. Red meant stop. Orange meant change and caution.
Dr. Breed told me that Dr. Hoenikker, as a very young man,
had simply abandoned his car in Ilium traffic one morning.
"The police, trying to find out what was holding up
traffic," he said, "found Felix's car in the middle of
everything, its motor
running, a cigar burning in the ash tray, fresh flowers in
the vases . . ."
"Vases?"
"It was a Marmon, about the size of a switch engine. It had
little cut-glass vases on the doorposts, and Felix's wife
used to put fresh flowers in the vases every morning. And
there that car was in the middle of traffic."
"Like the _Marie Celeste_," I suggested.
"The Police Department hauled it away. They knew whose car
it was, and they called up Felix, and they told him very
politely where his car could be picked up. Felix told them
they could keep it, that he didn't want it any more."
"Did they?"
"No. They called up his wife, and she came and got the
Marmon."
"What was her name, by the way?"
"Emily." Dr. Breed licked his lips, and he got a faraway
look, and he said the name of the woman, of the woman so
long dead, again. "Emily."
"Do you think anybody would object if I used the story
about the Marmon in my book?" I asked.
"As long as you don't use the end of it." "The _end_ of
it?" "Emily wasn't used to driving the Marmon. She got into
a bad
wreck on the way home. It did something to her
pelvis . . ." The traffic wasn't moving just then. Dr.
Breed closed his eyes and tightened his hands on the
steering wheel.
"And that was why she died when little Newt was born."
Merry Christmas 15
The Research Laboratory of the General Forge and Foundry
Company was near the main gate of the company's Ilium
works, about a city block from the executive parking lot
where Dr. Breed put his car.
I asked Dr. Breed how many people worked for the Research
Laboratory. "Seven hundred," he said, "but less than a
hundred are actually doing research. The other six hundred
are all
housekeepers in one way or another, and I am the chiefest
housekeeper of all."
When we joined the mainstream of mankind in the company

street, a woman behind us wished Dr. Breed a merry
Christmas. Dr. Breed turned to peer benignly into the sea
of pale pies, and identified the greeter as one Miss
Francine Pefko. Miss Pefko was twenty, vacantly pretty, and
healthy--a dull normal.
In honor of the dulcitude of Christmastime, Dr. Breed
invited Miss Pefko to join us. He introduced her as the
secretary of Dr. Nilsak Horvath. He then told me who
Horvath was. "The famous surface chemist," he said, "the
one who's doing such wonderful things with films."
"What's new in surface chemistry?" I asked Miss Pefko.
"God," she said, "don't ask me. I just type what he tells
me to type." And then she apologized for having said "God."
"Oh, I think you understand more than you let on," said Dr.
Breed.
"Not me." Miss Pefko wasn't used to chatting with someone
as important as Dr. Breed and she was embarrassed. Her gait
was affected, becoming stiff and chickenlike. Her smile was
glassy, and she was ransacking her mind for something to
say, finding nothing in it but used Kleenex and costume
jewelry.
"Well . . . ," rumbled Dr. Breed expansively, "how do you
like us, now that you've been with us--how long? Almost a
year?"
"You scientists _think_ too much," blurted Miss Pefko. She
laughed idiotically. Dr. Breed's friendliness had blown
every fuse in her nervous system. She was no longer
responsible. "You _all_ think too much."
A winded, defeated-looking fat woman in filthy coveralls
trudged beside us, hearing what Miss Pefko said. She turned
to examine Dr. Breed, looking at him with helpless
reproach. She hated people who thought too much. At that
moment, she struck me as an appropriate representative for
almost all mankind.
The fat woman's expression implied that she would go crazy
on the spot if anybody did any more thinking.
"I think you'll find," said Dr. Breed, "that everybody does
about the same amount of thinking. Scientists simply think
about things in one way, and other people think about
things in others."
"Ech," gurgled Miss Pefko emptily. "I take dictation from
Dr. Horvath and it's just like a foreign language. I don't
think I'd understand--even if I was to go to college. And
here he's maybe talking about something that's going to
turn everything upside- down and inside-out like the atom
bomb.
"When I used to come home from school Mother used to ask me

what happened that day, and I'd tell her," said Miss Pefko.
"Now I come home from work and she asks me the same
question, and all I
can say is--" Miss Pefko shook her head and let her crimson
lips flap slackly-- "I dunno, I dunno, I dunno."
"If there's something you don't understand," urged Dr.
Breed, "ask Dr. Horvath to explain it. He's very good at
explaining." He turned to me. "Dr. Hoenikker used to say
that any scientist who couldn't explain to an eight-year-
old what he was doing was a charlatan."
"Then I'm dumber than an eight-year-old," Miss Pefko
mourned. "I don't even know what a charlatan is."
Back to Kindergarten 16
We climbed the four granite steps before the Research
Laboratory. The building itself was of unadorned brick and
rose six stories. We passed between two heavily-armed
guards at the entrance.
Miss Pefko showed the guard on the left the pink
_confidential_ badge at the tip of her left breast.
Dr. Breed showed the guard on the right the black _top-
secret_ badge on his soft lapel. Ceremoniously, Dr. Breed
put his arm around me without actually touching me,
indicating to the guards that I was under his august
protection and control.
I smiled at one of the guards. He did not smile back. There
was nothing funny about national security, nothing at all.
Dr. Breed, Miss Pefko, and I moved thoughtfully through the
Laboratory's grand foyer to the elevators.
"Ask Dr. Horvath to explain something Breed to Miss Pefko.
"See if you don't get "He'd have to start back in the first
kindergarten," she said. "I missed a lot."
sometime," said Dr. a nice, clear answer." grade--or maybe
even
"We _all_ missed a lot," Dr. Breed agreed. "We'd _all_ do
well to start over again, preferably with kindergarten."
We watched the Laboratory's receptionist turn on the many
educational exhibits that lined the foyer's walls. The
receptionist was a tall, thin girl--icy, pale. At her crisp
touch, lights twinkled, wheels turned, flasks bubbled,
bells rang.
"Magic," declared Miss Pefko.
"I'm sorry to hear a member of the Laboratory family using
that brackish, medieval word," said Dr. Breed. "Every one
of those exhibits explains itself. They're designed so as
_not_ to be mystifying. They're the very antithesis of
magic."
"The very what of magic?" "The exact opposite of magic."

"You couldn't prove it by me." Dr. Breed looked just a
little peeved. "Well," he said, "we
don't _want_ to mystify. At least give us credit for that."
The Girl Pool 17
Dr. Breed's secretary was standing on her desk in his outer
office tying an accordion-pleated Christmas bell to the
ceiling fixture.
"Look here, Naomi," cried Dr. Breed, "we've gone six months
without a fatal accident! Don't you spoil it by falling off
the desk!"
Miss Naomi Faust was a merry, desiccated old lady. I
suppose she had served Dr. Breed for almost all his life,
and her life, too. She laughed. "I'm indestructible. And,
even if I did fall, Christmas angels would catch me."
"They've been known to miss."
Two paper tendrils, also accordion-pleated, hung down from
the clapper of the bell. Miss Faust pulled one. It unfolded
stickily and became a long banner with a message written on
it. "Here," said Miss Faust, handing the free end to Dr.
Breed, "pull it the rest of the way and tack the end to the
bulletin board."
Dr. Breed obeyed, stepping back to read the banner's
message. "Peace on Earth!" he read out loud heartily.
Miss Faust stepped down from her desk with the other
tendril, unfolding it. "Good Will Toward Men!" the other
tendril said.
"By golly," chuckled Dr. Breed, "they've dehydrated
Christmas! The place looks festive, very festive."
"And I remembered the chocolate bars for the Girl Pool,
too," she said. "Aren't you proud of me?"
Dr. Breed touched his forehead, dismayed by his
forgetfulness. "Thank God for that! It slipped my mind."
"We mustn't ever forget that," said Miss Faust. "It's
tradition now--Dr. Breed and his chocolate bars for the
Girl Pool at Christmas." She explained to me that the Girl
Pool was the typing bureau in the Laboratory's basement.
"The girls belong to anybody with access to a dictaphone."
All year long, she said, the girls of the Girl Pool
listened to the faceless voices of scientists on dictaphone
records-- records brought in by mail girls. Once a year the
girls left their cloister of cement block to go a-
caroling--to get their chocolate bars from Dr. Asa Breed.
"They serve science, too," Dr. Breed testified, "even
though they may not understand a word of it. God bless
them, every one!"
The Most Valuable Commodity on Earth 18
When we got into Dr. Breed's inner office, I attempted to

put my thoughts in order for a sensible interview. I found
that my mental health had not improved. And, when I started
to ask Dr. Breed questions about the day of the bomb, I
found that the public-relations centers of my brain had
been suffocated by booze and burning cat fur. Every
question I asked implied that the creators of the atomic
bomb had been criminal accessories to murder most foul.
Dr. Breed was astonished, and then he got very sore. He
drew back from me and he grumbled, "I gather you don't like
scientists very much."
"I wouldn't say that, sir."
"All your questions seem aimed at getting me to admit that
scientists are heartless, conscienceless, narrow boobies,
indifferent to the fate of the rest of the human race, or
maybe not really members of the human race at all."
"That's putting it pretty strong."
"No stronger that what you're going to put in your book,
apparently. I thought that what you were after was a fair,
objective biography of Felix Hoenikker--certainly as
significant a task as a young writer could assign himself
in this day and age. But no, you come here with
preconceived notions, about mad
scientists. Where did you ever get such ideas? From the
funny papers?"
"From Dr. Hoenikker's son, to name one source." "Which
son?" "Newton," I said. I had little Newt's letter with me,
and I
showed it to him. "How small is Newt, by the way?" "No
bigger than an umbrella stand," said Dr. Breed, reading
Newt's letter and frowning. "The other two children are
normal?" "Of course! I hate to disappoint you, but
scientists have
children just like anybody else's children." I did my best
to calm down Dr. Breed, to convince him that I
was really interested in an accurate portrait of Dr.
Hoenikker. "I've come here with no other purpose than to
set down exactly what you tell me about Dr. Hoenikker.
Newt's letter was just a beginning, and I'll balance off
against it whatever you can tell me."
"I'm sick of people misunderstanding what a scientist is,
what a scientist does."
"I'll do my best to clear up the misunderstanding."
"In this country most people don't even understand what
pure research is."
"I'd appreciate it if you'd tell me what it is."
"It isn't looking for a better cigarette filter or a softer
face tissue or a longer-lasting house paint, God help us.

Everybody talks about research and practically nobody in
this country's doing it. We're one of the few companies
that actually hires men to do pure research. When most
other companies brag about their research, they're talking
about industrial hack technicians who wear white coats,
work out of cookbooks, and dream up an improved windshield
wiper for next year's Oldsmobile."
"But here . . . ?"
"Here, and shockingly few other places in this country, men
are paid to increase knowledge, to work toward no end but
that."
"That's very generous of General Forge and Foundry Company."
"Nothing generous about it. New knowledge is the most
valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work
with, the richer we become."
Had I been a Bokononist then, that statement would have
made me howl.
No More Mud 19
"Do you mean," I said to Dr. Breed, "that nobody in this
Laboratory is ever told what to work on? Nobody even
_suggests_ what they work on?"
"People suggest things all the time, but it isn't in the
nature of a pure-research man to pay any attention to
suggestions. His head is full of projects of his own, and
that's the way we want it."
"Did anybody ever try to suggest projects to Dr. Hoenikker?"
"Certainly. Admirals and generals in particular. They
looked upon him as a sort of magician who could make
America invincible with a wave of his wand. They brought
all kinds of crackpot schemes up here--still do. The only
thing wrong with the schemes is that, given our present
state of knowledge, the schemes won't work. Scientists on
the order of Dr. Hoenikker are supposed to fill the little
gaps. I remember, shortly before Felix died, there was a
Marine general who was hounding him to do something about
mud."
"Mud?"
"The Marines, after almost two-hundred years of wallowing
in mud, were sick of it," said Dr. Breed. "The general, as
their spokesman, felt that one of the aspects of progress
should be that Marines no longer had to fight in mud."
"What did the general have in mind?" "The absence of mud.
No more mud." "I suppose," I theorized, "it might be
possible with
mountains of some sort of chemical, or tons of some sort of
machinery . . ."
"What the general had in mind was a little pill or a little

machine. Not only were the Marines sick of mud, they were
sick of carrying cumbersome objects. They wanted something
_little_ to carry for a change."
"What did Dr. Hoenikker say?"
"In his playful way, and _all_ his ways were playful, Felix
suggested that there might be a single grain of something--
even a microscopic grain--that could make infinite expanses
of muck, marsh, swamp, creeks, pools, quicksand, and mire
as solid as this desk."
Dr. Breed banged his speckled old fist on the desk. The
desk was a kidney-shaped, sea green steel affair. "One
Marine could carry more than enough of the stuff to free an
armored division bogged down in the everglades. According
to Felix, one Marine
could carry enough of the stuff to do that under the nail
of his little finger."
"That's impossible."
"You would say so, I would say so--practically everybody
would say so. To Felix, in his playful way, it was entirely
possible. The miracle of Felix--and I sincerely hope you'll
put this in your book somewhere--was that he always
approached old puzzles as though they were brand new."
"I feel like Francine Pefko now," I said, "and all the
girls in the Girl Pool, too. Dr. Hoenikker could never have
explained to me how something that could be carried under a
fingernail could make a swamp as solid as your desk."
"I told you what a good explainer Felix was . . ." "Even so
. . ." "He was able to explain it to me," said Dr. Breed,
"and I'm
sure I can explain it to you. The puzzle is how to get
Marines out of the mud--right?"
"Right." "All right," said Dr. Breed, "listen carefully.
Here we go."
Ice-nine 20
"There are several ways," Dr. Breed said to me, "in which
certain liquids can crystallize--can freeze--several ways
in which their atoms can stack and lock in an orderly,
rigid way."
That old man with spotted hands invited me to think of the
several ways in which cannonballs might be stacked on a
courthouse lawn, of the several ways in which oranges might
be packed into a crate.
"So it is with atoms in crystals, too; and two different
crystals of the same substance can have quite different
physical properties."
He told me about a factory that had been growing big
crystals of ethylene diamine tartrate. The crystals were

useful in certain manufacturing operations, he said. But
one day the factory discovered that the crystals it was
growing no longer had the properties desired. The atoms had
begun to stack and lock--to freeze--in different fashion.
The liquid that was crystallizing
hadn't changed, but the crystals it was forming were, as
far as industrial applications went, pure junk.
How this had come about was a mystery. The theoretical
villain, however, was what Dr. Breed called "a seed." He
meant by that a tiny grain of the undesired crystal
pattern. The seed, which had come from God-only-knows-
where, taught the atoms the novel way in which to stack and
lock, to crystallize, to freeze.
"Now think about cannonballs on a courthouse lawn or about
oranges in a crate again," he suggested. And he helped me
to see that the pattern of the bottom layers of cannonballs
or of oranges determined how each subsequent layer would
stack and lock. "The bottom layer is the seed of how every
cannonball or every orange that comes after is going to
behave, even to an infinite number of cannonballs or
oranges."
"Now suppose," chortled Dr. Breed, enjoying himself, "that
there were many possible .ways in which water could
crystallize, could freeze. Suppose that the sort of ice we
skate upon and put into highballs--what we might call _ice-
one_--is only one of several types of ice. Suppose water
always froze as _ice-one_ on Earth because it had never had
a seed to teach it how to form _ice-two_, _ice-three_,
_ice-four_ . . . ? And suppose," he rapped on his desk with
his old hand again, "that there were one form, which we
will call _ice-nine_--a crystal as hard as this desk-- with
a melting point of, let us say, one-hundred degrees
Fahrenheit, or, better still, a melting point of one-
hundred-and- thirty degrees."
"All right, I'm still with you," I said.
Dr. Breed was interrupted by whispers in his outer office,
whispers loud and portentous. They were the sounds of the
Girl Pool.
The girls were preparing to sing in the outer office.
And they did sing, as Dr. Breed and I appeared in the
doorway. Each of about a hundred girls had made herself
into a choirgirl by putting on a collar of white bond
paper, secured by a paper clip. They sang beautifully.
I was surprised and mawkishly heartbroken. I am always
moved by that seldom-used treasure, the sweetness with
which most girls can sing.
The girls sang "O Little Town of Bethlehem." I am not

likely to forget very soon their interpretation of the line:
"The hopes and fears of all the years are here with us
tonight."
The Marines March On 21
When old Dr. Breed, with the help of Miss Faust, had passed
out the Christmas chocolate bars to the girls, we returned
to his office.
There, he said to me, "Where were we? Oh yes!" And that old
man asked me to think of United States Marines in a
Godforsaken swamp.
"Their trucks and tanks and howitzers are wallowing," he
complained, "sinking in stinking miasma and ooze."
He raised a finger and winked at me. "But suppose, young
man, that one Marine had with him a tiny capsule containing
a seed of _ice-nine_, a new way for the atoms of water to
stack and lock, to freeze. If that Marine threw that seed
into the nearest puddle . . ."
"The puddle would freeze?" I guessed. "And all the muck
around the puddle?" "It would freeze?" "And all the puddles
in the frozen muck?" "They would freeze?"
"And the pools and the streams in the frozen muck?" "They
would freeze?" "You _bet_ they would!" he cried. "And the
United States
Marines would rise from the swamp and march on!"
Member of the Yellow Press 22
"There _is_ such stuff?" I asked.
"No, no, no, no," said Dr. Breed, losing patience with me
again. "I only told you all this in order to give you some
insight into the extraordinary novelty of the ways in which
Felix was likely to approach an old problem. What I've just
told you is what he told the Marine general who was
hounding him about mud.
"Felix ate alone here in the cafeteria every day. It was a
rule that no one was to sit with him, to interrupt his
chain of thought. But the Marine general barged in, pulled
up a chair, and started talking about mud. What I've told
you was Felix's offhand reply."
"There--there really _isn't_ such a thing?"
"I just told you there wasn't!" cried Dr. Breed hotly.
"Felix died shortly after that! And, if you'd been
listening to what I've been trying to tell you about pure
research men, you wouldn't ask such a question! Pure
research men work on what fascinates them, not on what
fascinates other people."
"I keep thinking about that swamp . . ."
"You can _stop_ thinking about it! I've made the only point
I wanted to make with the swamp."

"If the streams flowing through the swamp froze as _ice-
nine_, what about the rivers and lakes the streams fed?"
"They'd freeze. But there is no such thing as _ice-nine_."
"And the oceans the frozen rivers fed?" "They'd freeze, of
course," he snapped. "I suppose you're
going to rush to market with a sensational story about
_ice-nine_ now. I tell you again, it does not exist!"
"And the springs feeding the frozen lakes and streams, and
all the water underground feeding the springs?"
"They'd freeze, damn it!" he cried. "But if I had known
that you were a member of the yellow press," he said
grandly, rising to his feet, "I wouldn't have wasted a
minute with you!"
"And the rain?" "When it fell, it would freeze into hard
little hobnails of
_ice-nine_--and that would be the the interview, too! Good-
bye!"
The Last Batch of Brownies 23
Dr. Breed was mistaken about such a thing as _ice-nine_.
And _ice-nine_ was on earth.
end of the world! And the end of
at least one thing: there was
_Ice-nine_ was the last gift mankind before going to his
just reward.
Felix Hoenikker created for
He did it without anyone's realizing what he was doing. He
did it without leaving records of what he'd done.
True, elaborate apparatus was necessary in the act of
creation, but it already existed in the Research
Laboratory. Dr. Hoenikker had only to go calling on
Laboratory neighbors-- borrowing this and that, making a
winsome neighborhood nuisance of himself--until, so to
speak, he had baked his last batch of brownies.
He had made a chip of _ice-nine_. It was blue-white. It had
a melting point of one-hundred-fourteen-point-four-degrees
Fahrenheit.
Felix Hoenikker had put the chip in a little bottle; and he
put the bottle in his jacket. And he had gone to his
cottage on Cape Cod with his three children, there
intending to celebrate Christmas.
Angela had been thirty-four. Frank had been twenty-four.
Little Newt had been eighteen.
The old man had died on Christmas Eve, having told only his
children about _ice-nine_.
His children had divided the _ice-nine_ among themselves.
What a Wampeter Is 24
Which brings me to the Bokononist concept of a _wampeter_.

A _wampeter_ is the pivot of a _karass_. No _karass_ is
without a _wampeter_, Bokonon tells us, just as no wheel is
without a hub.
Anything can be a _wampeter_: a tree, a rock, an animal, an
idea, a book, a melody, the Holy Grail. Whatever it is, the
members of its _karass_ revolve about it in the majestic
chaos of a spiral nebula. The orbits of the members of a
_karass_ about their common _wampeter_ are spiritual
orbits, naturally. It is souls and not bodies that revolve.
As Bokonon invites us to sing:
Around and around and around we spin, With feet of lead and
wings of tin.
And _wampeters_ come and _wampeters_ go, Bokonon tells us.
At any given time a _karass_ actually has two _wampeters_--
one waxing in importance, one waning.
And I am almost certain that while I was talking to Dr.
Breed in Ilium, the _wampeter_ of my _karass_ that was just
coming into bloom was that crystalline form of water, that
blue-white gem, that seed of doom called _ice-nine_.
While I was talking to Dr. Breed in Ilium, Angela,
Franklin, and Newton Hoenikker had in their possession
seeds of _ice-nine_, seeds grown from their father's seed--
chips, in a manner of speaking, off the old block.
What was to become of those three chips was, I am
convinced, a principal concern of my _karass_.
The Main Thing About Dr. Hoenikker 25
So much, for now, for the _wampeter_ of my _karass_.
After my unpleasant interview with Dr. Breed in the
Research Laboratory of the General Forge and Foundry
Company, I was put into the hands of Miss Faust. Her orders
were to show me to the door. I prevailed upon her, however,
to show me the laboratory of the late Dr Hoenikker first.
En route, I asked her how well she had known Dr. Hoenikker.
She gave me a frank and interesting reply, and a piquant
smile to go with it.
"I don't think he was knowable. I mean, when most peopie
talk about knowing somebody a lot or a little, they're
talking about secrets they've been told or haven't been
told. They're talking about intimate things, family things,
love things," that nice old lady said to me. "Dr. Hoenikker
had all those things in his life, the way every living
person has to, but they weren't the main things with him."
"What _were_ the main things?" I asked her.
"Dr. Breed keeps telling me the main thing with Dr.
Hoenikker was truth."
"You don't seem to agree."
"I don't know whether I agree or not. I just have trouble

understanding how truth, all by itself, could be enough for
a person."
Miss Faust was ripe for Bokononism.
What God Is 26
"Did you ever talk to Dr. Hoenikker?" I asked Miss Faust.
"Oh, certainly. I talked to him a lot." "Do any
conversations stick in your mind?" "There was one where he
bet I couldn't tell him anything that
was absolutely true. So I said to him, 'God is love.'" "And
what did he say?" "He said, 'What is God? What is love?'"
"Um."
"But God really _is_ love, you know," said Miss Faust, "no
matter what Dr. Hoenikker said."
Men from Mars 27
The room that had been the laboratory of Dr. Felix
Hoenikker was on the sixth floor, the top floor of the
building.
A purple cord had been stretched across the doorway, and a
brass plate on the wall explained why the room was sacred:
IN THIS ROOM, DR. FELIX HOENIKKER, NOBEL LAUREATE IN
PHYSICS, SPENT THE LAST TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS OF HIS LIFE.
"WHERE HE WAS, THERE WAS THE FRONTIER OF KNOWLEDGE."
THE IMPORTANCE OF THIS ONE MAN IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND IS
INCALCULABLE.
Miss Faust offered to unshackle the purple cord for me so
that I might go inside and traffic more intimately with
whatever ghosts there were.
I accepted.
"It's just as he left it," she said, "except that there
were rubber bands all over one counter."
"Rubber bands?" "Don't ask me what for. Don't ask me what
any of all this is
for."
The old man had left the laboratory a mess. What engaged my
attention at once was the quantity of cheap toys lying
around. There was a paper kite with a broken spine. There
was a toy gyroscope, wound with string, ready to whirr and
balance itself. There was a top. There was a bubble pipe.
There was a fish bowl with a castle and two turtles in it.
"He loved ten-cent stores," said Miss Faust. "I can see he
did." "Some of his most famous experiments were performed
with
equipment that cost less than a dollar." "A penny saved is
a penny earned." There were numerous pieces of conventional
laboratory
equipment, too, of course, but they seemed drab accessories
to the cheap, gay toys.

Dr. Hoenikker's desk was piled with correspondence.
"I don't think he ever answered a letter," mused Miss
Faust. "People had to get him on the telephone or come to
see him if they wanted an answer."
There was a framed photograph on his desk. Its back was
toward me and I ventured a guess as to whose picture it
was. "His wife?"
"No." "One of his children?" "No." "Himself?" "No." So I
took a look. I found that the picture was of an humble
little war memorial in front of a small-town courthouse.
Part of the memorial was a sign that gave the names of
those villagers who had died in various wars, and I thought
that the sign must be the reason for the photograph. I
could read the names, and I half expected to find the name
Hoenikker among them. It wasn't there.
"That was one of his hobbies," said Miss Faust. "What was?"
"Photographing how cannonballs are stacked on different
courthouse lawns. Apparently how they've got them stacked
picture is very unusual."
"I see." "He was an unusual man." "I agree." "Maybe in a
million years everybody will be as smart
was and see things the way he did. But, compared with the
person of today, he was as different as a man from Mars."
"Maybe he really _was_ a Martian," I suggested.
in that
as he average
"That would certainly go a long way toward explaining his
three strange kids."
Mayonnaise 28
While Miss Faust and I waited for an elevator to take us to
the first floor, Miss Faust said she hoped the elevator
that came would not be number five. Before I could ask her
why this was a reasonable wish, number five arrived.
Its operator was a small ancient Negro whose name was Lyman
Enders Knowles. Knowles was insane, I'm almost sure--
offensively so, in that he grabbed his own behind and
cried, "Yes, yes!" whenever he felt that he'd made a point.
"Hello, fellow anthropoids and lily pads and paddlewheels,"
he said to Miss Faust and me. "Yes, yes!"
"First floor, please," said Miss Faust coldly.
All Knowles had to do to close the door and get us to the
first floor was to press a button, but he wasn't going to
do that yet. He wasn't going to do it, maybe, for years.
"Man told me," he said, "that these here elevators was
Mayan architecture. I never knew that till today. And I
says to him, 'What's that make me--mayonnaise?' Yes, yes!
And while he was thinking that over, I hit him with a

question that straightened him up and made him think twice
as hard! Yes, yes!"
"Could we please go down, Mr. Knowles?" begged Miss Faust.
"I said to him," said Knowles, "'This here's a _re_-search
laboratory. _Re_-search means _look again_, don't it? Means
they're looking for something they found once and it got
away
somehow, and now they got to _re_-search for it? How come
they got to build a building like this, with mayonnaise
elevators and all, and fill it with all these crazy people?
What is it they're trying to find again? Who lost what?'
Yes, yes!"
"That's very interesting," sighed Miss Faust. "Now, could
we go down?"
"Only way we _can_ go is down," barked Knowles. "This
here's the top. You ask me to go up and wouldn't be a thing
I could do for you. Yes, yes!"
"So let's go down," said Miss Faust.
"Very soon now. This gentleman here been paying his
respects to Dr. Hoenikker?"
"Yes," I said. "Did you know him?" "_Intimately_," he said.
"You know what I said when he died?" "No." "I said, 'Dr.
Hoenikker--he ain't dead.'" "Oh?" "Just entered a new
dimension. Yes, yes!" He punched a
button, and down we went. "Did you know the Hoenikker
children?" I asked him. "Babies full of rabies," he said.
"Yes, yes!"
Gone, but Not Forgotten 29
There was one more thing I wanted to do in Ilium. I wanted
to get a photograph of the old man's tomb. So I went back
to my room, found Sandra gone, picked up my camera, hired a
cab.
Sleet was still coming down, acid and gray. I thought the
old man's tombstone in all that sleet might photograph
pretty well, might even make a good picture for the jacket
of _The Day the World Ended_.
The custodian at the cemetery gate told me how to find the
Hoenikker burial plot. "Can't miss it," he said. "It's got
the biggest marker in the place."
He did not lie. The marker was an alabaster phallus twenty
feet high and three feet thick. It was plastered with sleet.
"By God," I exclaimed, getting out of the cab with my
camera, "how's that for a suitable memorial to a father of
the atom bomb?" I laughed.
I asked the driver if he'd mind standing by the monument in
order to give some idea of scale. And then I asked him to
wipe away some of the sleet so the name of the deceased

would show.
He did so.
And there on the shaft in letters six inches high, so help
me God, was the word:
MOTHER
Only Sleeping 30
"Mother?" asked the driver, incredulously. I wiped away
more sleet and uncovered this poem:
Mother, Mother, how I pray For you to guard us every day.
--Angela Hoenikker And under this poem was yet another;
You are not dead, But only sleeping. We should smile, And
stop our weeping.
--Franklin Hoenikker
And underneath this, inset in the shaft, was a square of
cement bearing the imprint of an infant's hand. Beneath the
imprint were the words:
Baby Newt.
"If that's Mother," said the driver, "what in hell could
they have raised over Father?" He made an obscene
suggestion as to what the appropriate marker might be.
We found Father close by. His memorial--as specified in his
will, I later discovered--was a marble cube forty
centimeters on each side.
"FATHER," it said.
Another Breed 31
As we were leaving the cemetery the driver of the cab
worried about the condition of his own mother's grave. He
asked if I would mind taking a short detour to look at it.
It was a pathetic little stone that marked his mother-- not
that it mattered.
And the driver asked me if I would mind another brief
detour, this time to a tombstone salesroom across the
street from the cemetery.
I wasn't a Bokononist then, so I agreed with some
peevishness. As a Bokononist, of course, I would have
agreed gaily to go anywhere anyone suggested. As Bokonon
says: "Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from
God."
The name of the tombstone establishment was Avram Breed and
Sons. As the driver talked to the salesman I wandered among
the monuments--blank monuments, monuments in memory of
nothing so far.
I found a little institutional joke in the showroom: over a
stone angel hung mistletoe. Cedar boughs were heaped on her
pedestal, and around her marble throat was a necklace of
Christmas tree lamps.
"How much for her?" I asked the salesman.

"Not for sale. She's a hundred years old. My
greatgrandfather, Avram Breed, carved her."
"This business is that old?" "That's right."
"And you're a Breed?" "The fourth generation in this
location." "Any relation to Dr. Asa Breed, the director of
the Research
Laboratory?" "His brother." He said his name was Marvin
Breed. "It's a small world," I observed. "When you put it
in a cemetery, it is." Marvin Breed was a
sleek and vulgar, a smart and sentimental man.
Dynamite Money 32
"I just came from your brother's office. I'm a writer. I
was interviewing him about Dr. Hoenikker," I said to Marvin
Breed.
"There was one queer son of a bitch. Not my brother; I mean
Hoenikker."
"Did you sell him that monument for his wife?"
"I sold his kids that. He didn't have anything to do with
it. He never got around to putting any kind of marker on
her grave. And then, after she'd been dead for a year or
more, Hoenikker's three kids came in here--the big tall
girl, the boy, and the little baby. They wanted the biggest
stone money could buy, and the two older ones had poems
they'd written. They wanted the poems on the stone.
"You can laugh at that stone, if you want to," said Marvin
Breed, "but those kids got more consolation out of that
than anything else money could have bought. They used to
come and look at it and put flowers on it I-don't-know-how-
many-times a year."
"It must have cost a lot."
"Nobel Prize money bought it. Two things that money bought:
a cottage on Cape Cod and that monument."
"Dynamite money," I marveled, thinking of the violence of
dynamite and the absolute repose of a tombstone and a
summer home.
"What?" "Nobel invented dynamite." "Well, I guess it takes
all kinds . . ." Had I been a Bokononist then, pondering
the miraculously
intricate chain of events that had brought dynamite money
to that
particular tombstone company, I might have whispered,
"Busy, busy, busy."
_Busy, busy, busy_, is what we Bokononists whisper whenever
we think of how complicated and unpredictable the life
really is.
But all I could say as a Christian then was, funny
sometimes."

"And sometimes it isn't," said Marvin Breed.
An Ungrateful Man 33
machinery of "Life is sure
I asked Marvin Breed if he'd known Emily Hoenikker, the
wife of Felix; the mother of Angela, Frank, and Newt; the
woman under that monstrous shaft.
"Know her?" His voice turned tragic. "Did I _know_ her,
mister? Sure, I knew her. I knew Emily. We went to Ilium
High together. We were co-chairmen of the Class Colors
Committee then. Her father owned the Ilium Music Store. She
could play every musical instrument there was. I fell so
hard for her I gave up football and tried to play the
violin. And then my big brother Asa came home for spring
vacation from M.I.T., and I made the mistake of introducing
him to my best girl." Marvin Breed' snapped his fingers.
"He took her away from me just like that. I smashed up my
seventy-five-dollar violin on a big brass knob at the foot
of my bed, and I went down to a florist shop and got the
kind of box they put a dozen roses in, and I put the busted
fiddle in the box, and I sent it to her by Western Union
messenger boy."
"Pretty, was she?"
"Pretty?" he echoed. "Mister, when I see my first lady
angel, if God ever sees fit to show me one, it'll be her
wings and not her face that'll make my mouth fall open.
I've already seen the prettiest face that ever could be.
There wasn't a man in Ilium County who wasn't in love with
her, secretly or otherwise. She could have had any man she
wanted." He spit on his own floor. "And she had to go and
marry that little Dutch son of a bitch! She was engaged to
my brother, and then that sneaky little bastard hit town."
Marvin Breed snapped his fingers again. "He took her away
from my big brother like that.
"I suppose it's high treason and ungrateful and ignorant
and backward and anti-intellectual to call a dead man as
famous as Felix Hoenikker a son of a bitch. I know all
about how harmless and gentle and dreamy he was supposed to
be, how he'd never hurt a fly, how he didn't care about
money and power and fancy clothes and automobiles and
things, how he wasn't like the rest of us, how he was
better than the rest of us, how he was so innocent he was
practically a Jesus--except for the Son of God part. .
Marvin Breed felt it was unnecessary to complete his
thought. I had to ask him to do it.
"But what?" he said. "But what?" He went to a window
looking out at the cemetery gate. "But what," he murmured
at the gate and the sleet and the Hoenikker shaft that

could be dimly seen.
"But," he said, "but how the hell innocent is a man who
helps make a thing like an atomic bomb? And how can you say
a man had a good mind when he couldn't even bother to do
anything when the best-hearted, most beautiful woman in the
world, his own wife, was dying for lack of love and
understanding . . ."
He shuddered, "Sometimes I wonder if he wasn't born dead. I
never met a man who was less interested in the living.
Sometimes I think that's the trouble with the world: too
many people in high places who are stone-cold dead."
Vin-dit 34
It was in the tombstone salesroom that I had my first _vin-
dit_, a Bokononist word meaning a sudden, very personal
shove in the direction of Bokononism, in the direction of
believing that God Almighty knew all about me, after all,
that God Almighty had some pretty elaborate plans for me.
The _vin-dit_ had to do with the stone angel under the
mistletoe. The cab driver had gotten it into his head that
he had to have that angel for his mother's grave at any
price. He was standing in front of it with tears in his
eyes.
Marvin Breed was still staring out the window at the
cemetery gate, having just said his piece about Felix
Hoenikker. "The little Dutch son of a bitch may have been a
modern holy man," he
added, "But Goddamn if he ever did anything he didn't want
to, and Goddamn if he didn't get everything he ever wanted.
"Music," he said. "Pardon me?" I asked. "That's why she
married him. She said his mind was tuned to
the biggest music there was, the music of the stars." He
shook his head. "Crap."
And then the gate reminded him of the last time he'd seen
Frank Hoenikker, the model-maker, the tormentor of bugs in
jars. "Frank," he said.
"What about him?"
"The last I saw of that poor, queer kid was when he came
out through that cemetery gate. His father's funeral was
still going on. The old man wasn't underground yet, and out
through the gate came Frank. He raised his thumb at the
first car that came by. It was a new Pontiac with a Florida
license plate. It stopped. Frank got in it, and that was
the last anybody in Ilium ever saw of him."
"I hear he's wanted by the police."
"That was an accident, a freak. Frank wasn't any criminal.
He didn't have that kind of nerve. The only work he was any
good at was model-making. The only job he ever held onto

was at Jack's Hobby Shop, selling models, making models,
giving people advice on how to make models. When he cleared
out of here, went to Florida, he got a job in a model shop
in Sarasota. Turned out the model shop was a front for a
ring that stole Cadillacs, ran 'em straight on board old
L.S.T.'s and shipped 'em to Cuba. That's how Frank got
balled up in all that. I expect the reason the cops haven't
found him is he's dead. He just heard too much while he was
sticking turrets on the battleship _Missouri_ with Duco
Cement."
"Where's Newt now, do you know?"
"Guess he's with his sister in Indianapolis. Last I heard
was he got mixed up with that Russian midget and flunked
out of pre- med at Cornell. Can you imagine a midget trying
to become a doctor? And, in that same miserable family,
there's that great big, gawky girl, over six feet tall.
That man, who's so famous for having a great mind, he
pulled that girl out of high school in her sophomore year
so he could go on having some woman take care of him. All
she had going for her was the clarinet she'd played in the
Ilium High School band, the Marching Hundred.
"After she left school," said Breed, "nobody out. She
didn't have any friends, and the old man thought to give
her any money to go anywhere. You used to do?"
"Nope."
ever asked her never even know what she
"Every so often at night she'd lock herself in her room and
she'd play records, and she'd play along with the records
on her
clarinet. The miracle of this age, as far as I'm concerned,
is that that woman ever got herself a husband."
"How much do you want for this angel?" asked the cab
driver. "I've told you, it's not for sale." "I don't
suppose there's anybody around who can do that kind
of stone cutting any more," I observed. "I've got a nephew
who can," said Breed. "Asa's boy. He was
all set to be a heap-big _re_-search scientist, and then
they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and the kid quit, and he
got drunk, and he came out here, and he told me he wanted
to go to work cutting stone."
"He works here now?" "He's a sculptor in Rome." "If
somebody offered you enough," said the driver, "you'd
take it, wouldn't you?" "Might. But it would take a lot of
money." "Where would you put the name on a thing like
that?" asked
the driver. "There's already a name on it--on the
pedestal." We couldn't

see the name, because of the boughs banked against the
pedestal. "It was never called for?" I wanted to know. "It
was never _paid_ for. The way the story goes: this German
immigrant was on his way West with his wife, and she died
of smallpox here in Ilium. So he ordered this angel to be
put up over her, and he showed my great-grandfather he had
the cash to pay for it. But then he was robbed. Somebody
took practically every cent he had. All he had left in this
world was some land he'd bought in Indiana, land he'd never
seen. So he moved on--said he'd be back later to pay for
the angel."
"But he never came back?" I asked.
"Nope." Marvin Breed nudged some of the boughs aside with
his toe so that we could see the raised letters on the
pedestal. There was a last name written there. "There's a
screwy name for you," he said. "If that immigrant had any
descendants, I expect they Americanized the name. They're
probably Jones or Black or Thompson now."
"There you're wrong," I murmured.
The room seemed to tip, and its walls and ceiling and floor
were transformed momentarily into the mouths of many
tunnels-- tunnels leading in all directions through time. I
had a Bokononist vision of the unity in every second of all
time and all wandering mankind, all wandering womankind,
all wandering children.
"There you're wrong," I said, when the vision was gone.
"You know some people by that name?" "Yes." The name was my
last name, too.
Hobby Shop 35
On the way back to the hotel I caught sight of Jack's Hobby
Shop, the place where Franklin Hoenikker had worked. I told
the cab driver to stop and wait.
I went in and found Jack himself presiding over his teeny-
weeny fire engines, railroad trains, airplanes, boats,
houses, lampposts, trees, tanks, rockets, automobiles,
porters, conductors, policemen, firemen, mommies, daddies,
cats, dogs, chickens, soldiers, ducks, and cows. He was a
cadaverous man, a serious man, a dirty man, and he coughed
a lot.
"What kind of a boy was Franklin Hoenikker?" he echoed, and
he coughed and coughed. He shook his head, and he showed me
that he adored Frank as much as he'd ever adored anybody.
"That isn't a question I have to answer with words. I can
_show_ you what kind of a boy Franklin Hoenikker was." He
coughed. "You can look," he said, "and you can judge for
yourself."
And he took me down into the basement of his store. He

lived down there. There was a double bed and a dresser and
a hot plate.
Jack apologized for the unmade bed. "My wife left me a week
ago." He coughed. "I'm still trying to pull the strings of
my life back together."
And then he turned on a switch, and the far end of the
basement was filled with a blinding light.
We approached the light and found that it was sunshine to a
fantastic little country build on plywood, an island as
perfectly rectangular as a township in Kansas. Any restless
soul, any soul seeking to find what lay beyond its green
boundaries, really would fall off the edge of the world.
The details were so exquisitely in scale, so cunningly
textured and tinted, that it was unnecessary for me to
squint in order to believe that the nation was real--the
hills, the lakes, the rivers, the forests, the towns, and
all else that good natives everywhere hold so dear.
And everywhere ran a spaghetti pattern of railroad tracks.
"Look at the doors of the houses," said Jack reverently.
"Neat. Keen."
"They've got real knobs on 'em, and the knockers really
work."
"God."
"You ask what kind of a boy Franklin Hoenikker was; he
built this." Jack choked up.
"All by himself?"
"Oh, I helped some, but anything I did was according to his
plans. That kid was a genius."
"How could anybody argue with you?" "His kid brother was a
midget, you know." "I know." "He did some of the soldering
underneath." "It sure looks real." "It wasn't easy, and it
wasn't done overnight, either." "Rome wasn't built in a
day." "That kid didn't have any home life, you know." "I've
heard." "This was his real home. Thousands of hours he
spent down
here. Sometimes he wouldn't even run the trains; just sit
and look, the way we're doing."
"There's a lot to see. It's practically like a trip to
Europe, there are so many things to see, if you look close."
"He'd see things you and I wouldn't see. He'd all of a
sudden tear down a hill that would look just as real as any
hill you ever saw--to you and me. And he'd be right, too.
He'd put a lake where that hill had been and a trestle over
the lake, and it would look ten times as good as it did
before."
"It isn't a talent everybody has."
"That's right!" said Jack passionately. The passion cost

him another coughing fit. When the fit was over, his eyes
were watering copiously. "Listen, I told that kid he should
go to college and study some engineering so he could go to
work for American Flyer or somebody like that--somebody
big, somebody who'd really back all the ideas he had."
"Looks to me as if you backed him a good deal."
"Wish I had, wish I could have," mourned Jack. "I didn't
have the capital. I gave him stuff whenever I could, but
most of this stuff he bought out of what he earned working
upstairs for me. He didn't spend a dime on anything but
this--didn't drink, didn't smoke, didn't go to movies,
didn't go out with girls, wasn't car crazy."
"This country could certainly use a few more of those."
Jack shrugged. "Well . . . I guess the Florida gangsters
got him. Afraid he'd talk."
"Guess they did."
Jack suddenly broke down and cried. "I wonder if those
dirty sons of bitches," he sobbed, "have any idea what it
was they killed!"
Meow 36
During my trip to Ilium and to points beyond--a two-week
expedition bridging Christmas--I let a poor poet named
Sherman Krebbs have my New York City apartment free. My
second wife had left me on the grounds that I was too
pessimistic for an optimist to live with.
Krebbs was a bearded man, a platinum blond Jesus with
spaniel eyes. He was no close friend of mine. I had met him
at a cocktail party where he presented himself as National
Chairman of Poets and Painters for Immediate Nuclear War.
He begged for shelter, not necessarily bomb proof, and it
happened that I had some.
When I returned to my apartment, still twanging with the
puzzling spiritual implications of the unclaimed stone
angel in Ilium, I found my apartment wrecked by a
nihilistic debauch. Krebbs was gone; but, before leaving,
he had run up three-hundred- dollars' worth of long-
distance calls, set my couch on fire in five places, killed
my cat and my avocado tree, and torn the door off my
medicine cabinet.
He wrote this poem, in what proved to be excrement, on the
yellow linoleum floor of my kitchen:
I have a kitchen. But it is not a complete kitchen. I will
not be truly gay Until I have a Dispose-all.
There was another message, written in lipstick in a
feminine hand on the wallpaper over my bed. It said: "No,
no, no, said Chicken-licken."
There was a sign hung around my dead cat's neck. It said,

"Meow."
I have not seen Krebbs since. Nonetheless, I sense that he
was my _karass_. If he was, he served it as a _wrang-
wrang_. A _wrang-wrang_, according to Bokonon, is a person
who steers people away from a line of speculation by
reducing that line, with the example of the _wrang-wrang's_
own life, to an absurdity.
I might have been vaguely inclined to dismiss the stone
angel as meaningless, and to go from there to the
meaninglessness of all. But after I saw what Krebbs had
done, in particular what he had done to my sweet cat,
nihilism was not for me.
Somebody or something did not wish me to be a nihilist. It
was Krebbs's mission, whether he knew it or not, to
disenchant me with that philosophy. Well, done, Mr. Krebbs,
well done.
A Modern Major General 37
And then, one day, one Sunday, I found out where the
fugitive from justice, the model-maker, the Great God
Jehovah and Beelzebub of bugs in Mason jars was--where
Franklin Hoenikker could be found.
He was alive!
The news was in a special supplement to the New York
_Sunday Times_. The supplement was a paid ad for a banana
republic. On its cover was the profile of the most
heartbreakingly beautiful girl I ever hope to see.
Beyond the girl, bulldozers were knocking down palm trees,
making a broad avenue. At the end of the avenue were the
steel skeletons of three new buildings.
"The Republic of San Lorenzo," said the copy on the cover,
"on the move! A healthy, happy, progressive, freedom-
loving, beautiful nation makes itself extremely attractive
to American investors and tourists alike."
I was in no hurry to read the contents. The girl on the
cover was enough for me--more than enough, since I had
fallen in love with her on sight. She was very young and
very grave, too--and luminously compassionate and wise.
She was as brown as chocolate. Her hair was like golden
flax.
Her name was Mona Aamons Monzano, the cover said. She was
the
adopted daughter of the dictator of the island. I opened
the supplement, hoping for more pictures of
sublime mongrel Madonna. I found instead a portrait of the
island's dictator,
"Papa" Monzano, a gorilla in his late seventies. Next to
"Papa's" portrait was a picture of a narrow- shouldered,

fox-faced, immature young man. He wore a snow
this Miguel
white military blouse with some sort of jeweled sunburst
hanging on it. His eyes were close together; they had
circles under them. He had
apparently told barbers all his life to shave the sides and
back of his head, but to leave the top of his hair alone.
He had a wiry pompadour, a sort of cube of hair, marcelled,
that arose to an incredible height.
This unattractive child was identified as Major General
Franklin Hoenikker, _Minister of Science and Progress in
the Republic of San Lorenzo_.
He was twenty-six years old.
Barracuda Capital of the World 38
San Lorenzo was fifty miles long and twenty miles wide, I
learned from the supplement to the New York _Sunday Times_.
Its population was four hundred, fifty thousand souls, ". .
. all fiercely dedicated to the ideals of the Free World."
Its highest point, Mount McCabe, was eleven thousand feet
above sea level. Its capital was Bolivar, ". . . a
strikingly modern city built on a harbor capable of
sheltering the entire United States Navy." The principal
exports were sugar, coffee, bananas, indigo, and
handcrafted novelties.
"And sports fishermen recognize San Lorenzo as the
unchallenged barracuda capital of the world."
I wondered how Franklin Hoenikker, who had never even
finished high school, had got himself such a fancy job. I
found a partial answer in an essay on San Lorenzo that was
signed by "Papa" Monzano.
"Papa" said that Frank was the architect of the "San
Lorenzo Master Plan," which included new roads, rural
electrification,
sewage-disposal plants, hotels, hospitals, clinics,
railroads--the works. And, though the essay was brief and
tightly edited, "papa" referred to Frank five times as:
". . . the _blood son_ of Dr. Felix Hoenikker."
The phrase reeked of cannibalism.
"Papa" plainly felt that Frank was a chunk of the old man's
magic meat.
Fata Morgana 39
A little more light was shed by another essay in the
supplement, a florid essay titled, "What San Lorenzo Has
Meant to One American." It was almost certainly ghost-
written. It was signed by Major General Franklin Hoenikker.
In the essay, Frank told of being all alone on a nearly
swamped sixty-eight-foot Chris-Craft in the Caribbean. He

didn't explain what he was doing on it or how he happened
to be alone. He did indicate, though, that his point of
departure had been Cuba.
"The luxurious pleasure craft was going down, and my
meaningless life with it," said the essay. "All I'd eaten
for four days was two biscuits and a sea gull. The dorsal
fins of man- eating sharks were cleaving the warm seas
around me, and needle- teethed barracuda were making those
waters boil.
"I raised my eyes to my Maker, willing to accept whatever
His decision might be. And my eyes alit on a glorious
mountain peak above the clouds. Was this Fata Morgana--the
cruel deception of a mirage?"
I looked up Fata Morgana at this point in my reading;
learned that it was, in fact, a mirage named after Morgan
le Fay, a fairy who lived at the bottom of a lake. It was
famous for appearing in the Strait of Messina, between
Calabria and Sicily. Fata Morgana was poetic crap, in short.
What Frank saw from his sinking pleasure craft was not
cruel Fata Morgana, but the peak of Mount McCabe. Gentle
seas then nuzzled Frank's pleasure craft to the rocky
shores of San Lorenzo, as though God wanted him to go there.
Frank stepped ashore, dry shod, and asked where he was. The
essay didn't say so, but the son of a bitch had a piece of
_ice- nine_ with him--in a thermos jug.
Frank, having no passport, was put in jail in the capital
city of Bolivar. He was visited there by "Papa" Monzano,
who wanted to know if it were possible that Frank was a
blood relative of the immortal Dr. Felix Hoenikker.
"I admitted I was," said Frank in the essay. "Since that
moment, every door to opportunity in San Lorenzo has been
opened wide to me."
House of Hope and Mercy 40
As it happened--"As it was _supposed_ to happen," Bokonon
would say--I was assigned by a magazine to do a story in
San Lorenzo. The story wasn't to be about "Papa" Monzano or
Frank. It was to be about Julian Castle, an American sugar
millionaire who had, at the age of forty, followed the
example of Dr. Albert Schweitzer by founding a free
hospital in a jungle, by devoting his life to miserable
folk of another race.
Castle's hospital was called the House of Hope and Mercy in
the Jungle. Its jungle was on San Lorenzo, among the wild
coffee trees on the northern slope of Mount McCabe.
old.
When I flew to San Lorenzo, Julian Castle was sixty years
He had been absolutely unselfish for twenty years.

In his selfish days he had been as familiar to tabloid
readers as Tommy Manville, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini,
and Barbara Hutton. His fame had rested on lechery,
alcoholism, reckless driving, and draft evasion. He had had
a dazzling talent for spending millions without increasing
mankind's stores of anything but chagrin.
He had been married five times, had produced one son. The
one son, Philip Castle, was the manager and owner of the
hotel at which I planned to stay. The hotel was called the
Casa Mona and was named after Mona Aamons Monzano, the
blonde Negro on the cover of the supplement to the New York
_Sunday Times_. The Casa Mona
was brand new; it was one of the three new buildings in the
background of the supplement's portrait of Mona.
While I didn't feel that purposeful seas were wafting me to
San Lorenzo, I did feel that love was doing the job. The
Fata Morgana, the mirage of what it would be like to be
loved by Mona Aamons Monzano, had become a tremendous force
in my meaningless life. I imagined that she could make me
far happier than any woman had so far succeeded in doing.
A Karass Built for Two 41
The seating on the airplane, bound ultimately for San
Lorenzo from Miami, was three and three. As it happened--
"As it was _supposed_ to happen"--my seatmates were Horlick
Minton, the new American Ambassador to the Republic of San
Lorenzo, and his wife, Claire. They were whitehaired,
gentle, and frail.
Minton told me that he was a career diplomat, holding the
rank of Ambassador for the first time. He and his wife had
so far served, he told me, in Bolivia, Chile, Japan,
France, Yugoslavia, Egypt, the Union of South Africa,
Liberia, and Pakistan.
They were lovebirds. They entertained each other endlessly
with little gifts: sights worth seeing out the plane
window, amusing or instructive bits from things they read,
random recollections of times gone by. They were, I think,
a flawless example of what Bokonon calls a _duprass_, which
is a _karass_ composed of only two persons.
"A true _duprass_," Bokonon tells us, "can't be invaded,
not even by children born of such a union."
I exclude the Mintons, therefore, from my own _karass_,
from Frank's _karass_, from Newt's _karass_, from Asa
Breed's _karass_, from Angela's _karass_, from Lyman Enders
Knowles's _karass_, from Sherman Krebbs's _karass_. The
Mintons' _karass_ was a tidy one, composed of only two.
"I should think you'd be very pleased," I said to Minton.
"What should I be pleased about?" "Pleased to have the rank

of Ambassador." From the pitying way Minton and his wife
looked at each
other, I gathered that I had said a fat-headed thing. But
they
humored me. "Yes," winced Minton, "I'm very pleased." He
smiled wanly. "I'm _deeply_ honored."
And so it went with almost every subject I brought up. I
couldn't make the Mintons bubble about anything.
said.
For instance: "I suppose you can speak a lot of languages,"
I
"Oh, six or seven--between us," said Minton" "That must be
very gratifying." "What must?" "Being able to speak to
people of so many different
nationalities." "Very gratifying," said Minton emptily.
"Very gratifying," said his wife. And they went back to
reading a fat, typewritten manuscript
that was spread across the chair arm between them. "Tell
me," I said a little later, "in all your wide travels,
have you found people everywhere about the same at heart?"
"Hm?" asked Minton.
"Do you find people to be about the same at heart, wherever
you go?"
He looked at his wife, making sure she had heard the
question, then turned back to me. "About the same, wherever
you go," he agreed.
"Um," I said.
Bokonon tells us, incidentally, that members of a _duprass_
always die within a week of each other. When it came time
for the Mintons to die, they did it within the same second.
Bicycles for Afghanistan 42
There was a small saloon in the rear of the plane and I
repaired there for a drink. It was there that I met another
fellow American, H. Lowe Crosby of Evanston, Illinois, and
his wife, Hazel.
They were heavy people, in their fifties. They spoke
twangingly. Crosby told me that he owned a bicycle factory
in Chicago, that he had had nothing but ingratitude from his
employees. He was going to move his business to grateful
San Lorenzo.
"You know San Lorenzo well?" I asked.
"This'll be the first time I've ever seen it, but
everything I've heard about it I like," said H. Lowe
Crosby. "They've got discipline, They've got something you
can count on from one year to the next. They don't have the
government encouraging everybody to be some kind of
original pissant nobody every heard of before."

"Sir?"
"Christ, back in Chicago, we don't make bicycles any more.
It's all human relations now. The eggheads sit around
trying to figure out new ways for everybody to be happy.
Nobody can get fired, no matter what; and if somebody does
accidentally make a bicycle, the union accuses us of cruel
and inhuman practices and the government confiscates the
bicycle for back taxes and gives it to a blind man in
Afghanistan."
"And you think things will be better in San Lorenzo?"
"I know damn well they will be. The people down there are
poor enough and scared enough and ignorant enough to have
some common sense!"
Crosby asked me what my name was and what my business was.
I told him, and his wife Hazel recognized my name as an
Indiana name. She was from Indiana, too.
"My God," she said, "are you a _Hoosier?_" I admitted I
was. "I'm a Hoosier, too," she crowed. "Nobody has to be
ashamed
of being a Hoosier." "I'm not," I said. "I never knew
anybody who was." "Hoosiers do all right. Lowe and I've
been around the world
twice, and everywhere we went we found Hoosiers in charge
of everything."
."
"That's reassuring." "You know the manager of that new
hotel in Istanbul?" "No." "He's a Hoosier. And the
military-whatever-he-is in Tokyo . .
"Attaché," said her husband.
"He's a Hoosier," said Hazel. "And the new Ambassador to
Yugoslavia . . ."
"A Hoosier?" I asked.
"Not only him, but the Hollywood Editor of _Life_ magazine,
too. And that man in Chile . . ."
said.
"A Hoosier, too?" "You can't go anywhere a _Hoosier_ hasn't
made his mark," she
"The man who wrote _Ben Hur_ was a Hoosier." "And James
Whitcomb Riley."
"Are you from Indiana, too?" I asked her husband. "Nope.
I'm a Prairie Stater. 'Land of Lincoln,' as they say." "As
far as that goes," said Hazel triumphantly, "Lincoln was
a Hoosier, too. He grew up in Spencer County." "Sure," I
said.
"I don't know what it is about Hoosiers," said Hazel, "but
they've sure got something. If somebody was to make a list,
they'd be amazed."

"That's true," I said.
She grasped me firmly by the arm. "We Hoosiers got to stick
together."
"Right." "You call "What?" "Whenever
_Mom_.'" "Uh huh."
me 'Mom.'" I meet a young Hoosier, I tell them, 'You call me
"Let me hear you say it," she urged. "Mom?" She smiled and
let go of my arm. Some piece of clockwork had
completed its cycle. My calling Hazel "Mom" had shut it
off, and now Hazel was rewinding it for the next Hoosier to
come along.
Hazel's obsession with Hoosiers around the world was a
textbook example of a false _karass_, of a seeming team
that was meaningless in terms of the ways God gets things
done, a textbook example of what Bokonon calls a
_granfalloon_. Other examples of _granfalloons_ are the
Communist party, the Daughters of the American Revolution,
the General Electric Company, the International Order of
Odd Fellows--and any nation, anytime, anywhere.
As Bokonon invites us to sing along with him:
If you wish to study a _granfalloon_, Just remove the skin
of a toy balloon.
The Demonstrator 43
H. Lowe Crosby was of the opinion that dictatorships were
often very good things. He wasn't a terrible person and he
wasn't a fool. It suited him to confront the world with a
certain barn- yard clownishness, but many of the things he
had to say about undisciplined mankind were not only funny
but true.
The major point at which his reason and his sense of humor
left him was when he approached the question of what people
were really supposed to do with their time on Earth.
him.
He believed firmly that they were meant to build bicycles
for
"I hope San Lorenzo is every bit as good as you've heard it
is," I said.
"I only have to talk to one man to find out if it is or
not," he said. "When 'Papa' Monzano gives his word of honor
about anything on that little island, that's it. That's how
it is; that's how it'll be."
"The thing I like," said Hazel, "is they all speak English
and they're all Christians. That makes things so much
easier."
me.
"You know how they deal with crime down there?" Crosby asked
"Nope."

"They just don't have any crime down there. 'Papa'
Monzano's made crime so damn unattractive, nobody even
thinks about it without getting sick. I heard you can lay a
billfold in the middle of a sidewalk and you can come back
a week later and it'll be right there, with everything
still in it."
"Um." "You know what the punishment is for stealing
something?" "Nope." "The hook," he said. "No fines, no
probation, no thirty days
in jail. It's the hook. The hook for stealing, for murder,
for arson, for treason, for rape, for being a peeping Tom.
Break a law--any damn law at all--and it's the hook.
Everybody can understand that, and San Lorenzo is the best-
behaved country in the world."
"What is the hook?"
"They put up a gallows, see? Two posts and a cross beam.
And then they take a great big kind of iron fishhook and
they hang it down from the cross beam. Then they take
somebody who's dumb enough to break the law, and they put
the point of the hook in through one side of his belly and
out the other and they let him go--and there he hangs, by
God, one damn sorry law-breaker."
"Good God!"
"I don't say it's good," said Crosby, "but I don't say it's
bad either. I sometimes wonder if something like that
wouldn't clear up juvenile delinquency. Maybe the hook's a
little extreme for a democracy. Public hanging's more like
it. String up a few
teen-age car thieves on lampposts in front of their houses
with signs around their necks saying, 'Mama, here's your
boy.' Do that a few times and I think ignition locks would
go the way of the rumble seat and the running board."
"We saw that thing in the basement of the waxworks in
London," said Hazel.
"What thing?" I asked her.
"The hook. Down in the Chamber of Horrors in the basement;
they had a wax person hanging from the hook. It looked so
real I wanted to throw up."
"Harry Truman didn't look anything like Harry Truman," said
Crosby.
"Pardon me?"
"In the waxworks," said Crosby. "The statue of Truman
didn't really look like him."
her.
"Most of them did, though," said Hazel. "Was it anybody in
particular hanging from the hook?" I asked
"I don't think so. It was just somebody." "Just a

demonstrator?" I asked. "Yeah. There was a black velvet
curtain in front of it and
you had to pull the curtain back to see. And there was a
note pinned to the curtain that said children weren't
supposed to look."
"But kids did," said Crosby. "There were kids down there,
and they all looked."
"A sign like that is just catnip to kids," said Hazel.
"How did the kids react when they saw the person on the
hook?" I asked.
"Oh," said Hazel, "they reacted just about the way the
grownups did. They just looked at it and didn't say
anything, just moved on to see what the next thing was."
"What was the next thing?"
"It was an iron chair a man had been roasted alive in,"
said Crosby. "He was roasted for murdering his son."
"Only, after they roasted him," Hazel recalled blandly,
"they found out he hadn't murdered his son after all."
Communist Sympathizers 44
When I again took my seat beside the _duprass_ of Claire
and Horlick Minton, I had some new information about them.
I got it from the Crosbys.
The Crosbys didn't know Minton, but they knew his
reputation. They were indignant about his appointment as
Ambassador. They told me that Minton had once been fired by
the State Department for his softness toward communism, and
the Communist dupes or worse had had him reinstated.
"Very pleasant little saloon back there," I said to Minton
as I sat down.
"Hm?" He and his wife were still reading the manuscript
that lay between them.
"Nice bar back there." "Good. I'm glad." The two read on,
apparently uninterested in talking to me.
And then Minton turned to me suddenly, with a bittersweet
smile, and he demanded, "Who was he, anyway?"
"Who was who?"
"The man you were talking to in the bar. We went back there
for a drink, and, when we were just outside, we heard you
and a man talking. The man was talking very loudly. He said
I was a Communist sympathizer."
"A bicycle manufacturer named H. Lowe Crosby," I said. I
felt myself reddening.
it."
"I was fired for pessimism. Communism had nothing to do with
"I got him fired," said his wife. "The only piece of real
evidence produced against him was a letter I wrote to the
New York _Times_ from Pakistan."

"What did it say?"
"It said a lot of things," she said, "because I was very
upset about how Americans couldn't imagine what it was like
to be something else, to be something else and proud of it."
"I see."
"But there was one sentence they kept coming to again and
again in the loyalty hearing," sighed Minton.
"'Americans,'" he said, quoting his wife's letter to the
_Times_, "'are forever searching for love in forms it never
takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to
do with the vanished frontier.'"
Why Americans Are Hated 45
Claire Minton's letter to the _Times_ was published during
the worst of the era of Senator McCarthy, and her husband
was fired twelve hours after the letter was printed.
"What was so awful about the letter?" I asked.
"The highest possible form of treason," said Minton, "is to
say that Americans aren't loved wherever they go, whatever
they do. Claire tried to make the point that American
foreign policy should recognize hate rather than imagine
love."
"I guess Americans _are_ hated a lot of places."
"_People_ are hated a lot of places. Claire pointed out in
her letter that Americans, in being hated, were simply
paying the normal penalty for being people, and that they
were foolish to think they should somehow be exempted from
that penalty. But the loyalty board didn't pay any
attention to that. All they knew was that Claire and I both
felt that Americans were unloved."
"Well, I'm glad the story had a happy ending." "Hm?" said
Minton. "It finally came out all right," I said. "Here you
are on
your way to an embassy all your own." Minton and his wife
exchanged another of those pitying
_duprass_ glances. Then Minton said to me, "Yes. The pot of
gold at the end of the rainbow is ours."
The Bokononist Method for Handling Caesar 46
I talked to the Mintons about the legal status of Franklin
Hoenikker, who was, after all, not only a big shot in
"Papa" Monzano's government, but a fugitive from United
States justice.
"That's all been written off," said Minton. "He isn't a
United States citizen any more, and he seems to be doing
good things where he is, so that's that."
"He gave up his citizenship?"
"Anybody who declares allegiance to a foreign state or
serves in its armed forces or accepts employment in its

government loses his citizenship. Read your passport. You
can't lead the sort of funny-paper international romance
that Frank has led and still have Uncle Sam for a mother
chicken."
"Is he well liked in San Lorenzo?"
Minton weighed in his hands the manuscript he and his wife
had been reading. "I don't know yet. This book says not."
"What book is that?"
"It's the only scholarly book ever written about San
Lorenzo."
"_Sort_ of scholarly," said Claire.
"Sort of scholarly," echoed Minton. "It hasn't been
published yet. This is one of five copies." He handed it to
me, inviting me to read as much as I liked.
I opened the book to its title page and found that the name
of the book was _San Lorenzo: The Land, the History, the
People_. The author was Philip Castle, the son of Julian
Castle, the hotel- keeping son of the great altruist I was
on my way to see.
I let the book fall open where it would. As it happened, it
fell open to the chapter about the island's outlawed holy
man, Bokonon.
There was a quotation from _The Books of Bokonon_ on the
page before me. Those words leapt from the page and into my
mind, and they were welcomed there.
The words were a paraphrase of the suggestion by Jesus:
"Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are
Caesar's."
Bokonon's paraphrase was this:
"Pay no attention to Caesar. Caesar doesn't have the
slightest idea what's _really_ going on."
Dynamic Tension 47
I became so absorbed in Philip Castle's book that I didn't
even look up from it when we put down for ten minutes in
San Juan, Puerto Rico. I didn't even look up when somebody
behind me whispered, thrilled, that a midget had come
aboard.
A little while later I looked around for the midget, but
could not see him. I did see, right in front of Hazel and
H. Lowe Crosby, a horse-faced woman with platinum blonde
hair, a woman new to the passenger list. Next to hers was a
seat that appeared to be empty, a seat that might well have
sheltered a midget without my seeing even the top of his
head.
But it was San Lorenzo--the land, the history, the people--
that intrigued me then, so I looked no harder for the
midget. Midgets are, after all, diversions for silly or

quiet times, and I was serious and excited about Bokonon's
theory of what he called "Dynamic Tension," his sense of a
priceless equilibrium between good and evil.
When I first saw the term "Dynamic Tension" in Philip
Castle's book, I laughed what I imagined to be a superior
laugh. The term was a favorite of Bokonon's, according to
young Castle's book, and I supposed that I knew something
that Bokonon didn't know: that the term was one vu!garized
by Charles Atlas, a mail- order muscle-builder.
As I learned when I read on, briefly, Bokonon knew exactly
who Charles Atlas was. Bokonon was, in fact, an alumnus of
his muscle-building school.
It was the belief of Charles Atlas that muscles could be
built without bar bells or spring exercisers, could be
built by simply pitting one set of muscles against another.
It was the belief of Bokonon that good societies could be
built only by pitting good against evil, and by keeping the
tension between the two high at all times. And, in Castle's
book, I read my first
"Calypso." It went like this:
Bokononist poem, or
so sad;
Just Like
"Papa" Monzano, he's so very bad, But without bad "Papa" I
would be Because without "Papa's" badness, Tell me, if you
would,
How could wicked old Bokonon Ever, ever look good?
Saint Augustine 48
Bokonon, I learned from Castle's book, was born in 1891. He
was a Negro, born an Episcopalian and a British subject on
the island of Tobago.
He was christened Lionel Boyd Johnson.
He was the youngest of six children, born to a wealthy
family. His family's wealth derived from the discovery by
Bokonon's grandfather of one quarter of a million dollars
in buried pirate treasure, presumably a treasure of
Blackbeard, of Edward Teach.
Blackbeard's treasure was reinvested by Bokonon's family in
asphalt, copra, cacao, livestock, and poultry.
Young Lionel Boyd Johnson was educated in Episcopal
schools, did well as a student, and was more interested in
ritual than most. As a youth, for all his interest in the
outward trappings of organized religion, he seems to have
been a carouser, for he invites us to sing along with him
in his "Fourteenth Calypso":
When I was young, I was so gay and mean, And I drank and
chased the girls Just like young St. Augustine. Saint

Augustine, He got to be a saint. So, if I get to be one,
also, Please, Mama, don't you faint.
A Fish Pitched Up by an Angry Sea 49
Lionel Boyd Johnson was intellectually ambitious enough, in
1911, to sail alone from Tobago to London in a sloop named
the _Lady's Slipper_. His purpose was to gain a higher
education.
He enrolled in the London School of Economics and Political
Science.
His education was interrupted by the First World War. He
enlisted in the infantry, fought with distinction, was
commissioned in the field, was mentioned four times in
dispatches. He was gassed in the second Battle of Ypres,
was hospitalized for two years, and then discharged.
And he set sail for home, for Tobago, alone in the _Lady's
Slipper_ again.
When only eighty miles from home, he was stopped and
searched by a German submarine, the _U-99_. He was taken
prisoner, and his little vessel was used by the Huns for
target practice. While still surfaced, the submarine was
surprised and captured by the British destroyer, the
_Raven_.
Johnson and the Germans were taken on board the destroyer
and the _U-99_ was sunk.
The _Raven_ was bound for the Mediterranean, but it never
got there. It lost its steering; it could only wallow
helplessly or make grand, clockwise circles. It came to
rest at last in the Cape Verde Islands.
Johnson stayed in those islands for eight months, awaiting
some sort of transportation to the Western Hemisphere.
He got a job at last as a crewman on a fishing vessel that
was carrying illegal immigrants to New Bedford,
Massachusetts. The vessel was blown ashore at Newport,
Rhode Island.
By that time Johnson had developed a conviction that
something was trying to get him somewhere for some reason.
So he stayed in Newport for a while to see if he had a
destiny there. He worked as a gardener and carpenter on the
famous Rumfoord Estate.
During that time, he glimpsed many distinguished guests of
the Rumfoords, among them, J. P. Morgan, General John J.
Pershing, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Enrico Caruso, Warren
Gamaliel Harding, and Harry Houdini. And it was during that
time that the First World War came to an end, having killed
ten million persons and wounded twenty million, Johnson
among them.
When the war ended, the young rakehell of the Rumfoord

family, Remington Rumfoord, IV, proposed to sail his steam
yacht, the _Scheherazade_, around the world, visiting
Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Egypt, India, China, and
Japan. He invited Johnson to accompany him as first mate,
and Johnson agreed.
Johnson saw many wonders of the world on the voyage. The
_Scheherazade_ was rammed in a fog in Bombay harbor, and
only Johnson survived. He stayed in India for two years,
becoming a follower of Mohandas K. Gandhi. He was arrested
for leading groups that protested British rule by lying
down on railroad tracks. When his jail term was over, he
was shipped at Crown expense to his home in Tobago.
There, he built another schooner, which he called the
_Lady's Slipper II_.
And he sailed her about the Caribbean, an idler, still
seeking the storm that would drive him ashore on what was
unmistakably his destiny.
In 1922, he sought shelter from a hurricane in Port-au-
Prince, Haiti, which country was then occupied by United
States Marines.
Johnson was approached there by a brilliant, self-educated,
idealistic Marine deserter named Earl McCabe. McCabe was a
corporal. He had just stolen his company's recreation fund.
He offered Johnson five hundred dollars for transportation
to Miami.
The two set sail for Miami.
But a gale hounded the schooner onto the rocks of San
Lorenzo. The boat went down. Johnson and McCabe, absolutely
naked, managed to swim ashore. As Bokonon himself reports
the adventure:
A fish pitched up By the angry sea, I gasped on land, And I
became me.
He was enchanted by the mystery of coming ashore naked on
an unfamiliar island. He resolved to let the adventure run
its full course, resolved to see just how far a man might
go, emerging naked from salt water.
It was a rebirth for him:
Be like a baby, The Bible say, So I stay like a baby To
this very day.
How he came by the name of was the pronunciation given the
English dialect.
As for that dialect . . .
Bokonon was very simple. "Bokonon" name Johnson in the
island's
The dialect of San Lorenzo difficult to write down. I say
it is easy to understand, but I speak only for myself.
Others have found it as incomprehensible as Basque, so my

understanding of it may be telepathic.
Philip Castle, in his book, gave a phonetic demonstration
of the dialect and caught its flavor very well. He chose
for his sample the San Lorenzan version of "Twinkle,
Twinkle, Little Star."
is both easy to understand and
In American English, one version of that immortal poem goes
like this:
Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are,
Shining in the sky so bright, Like a tea tray in the night,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are.
In San Lorenzan dialect, according to Castle, the same poem
went like this:
_Tsvent-kiul, tsvent-kiul, lett-pool store,_ _Ko jy
tsvantoor bat voo yore._ _Put-shinik on lo shee zo brath,_
_Kam oon teetron on lo nath,_
_Tsvent-kiul, tsvent-kiul, lett-poll store,_ _Ko jy
tsvantoor bat voo yore._
Shortly after Johnson became Bokonon, incidentally, the
lifeboat of his shattered ship was found on shore. That
boat was later painted gold and made the bed of the
island's chief executive.
"There is a legend, made up by Bokonon," Philip Castle
wrote in his book, "that the golden boat will sail again
when the end of the world is near."
A Nice Midget 50
My reading of the life of Bokonon was interrupted by H.
Lowe Crosby's wife, Hazel. She was standing in the aisle
next to me. "You'll never believe it," she said, "but I
just found two more Hoosiers on this airplane."
"I'll be damned."
"They weren't born Hoosiers, but they _live_ there now.
They live in Indianapolis."
"Very interesting." "You want to meet them?" "You think I
should?" The question baffled her. "They're your fellow
Hoosiers." "What are their names?" "Her name is Conners and
his name is Hoenikker. They're
brother and sister, and he's though." She winked. "He's a
"Does he call you Mom?" "I almost asked him to. maybe it
wouldn't be rude to
"Nonsense."
O.K., Mom 51
a midget. He's a nice midget, smart little thing."
And then I stopped, and I wondered if ask a midget to do
that."
So I went aft to talk to Angela Hoenikker Conners and
little Newton Hoenikker, members of my _karass_.

Angela was the horse-faced platinum blonde I had noticed
earlier.
Newt was a very tiny young man indeed, though not
grotesque. He was as nicely scaled as Gulliver among the
Brobdingnagians, and as shrewdly watchful, too.
He held a glass of champagne, which was included in the
price of his ticket. That glass was to him what a fishbowl
would have been to a normal man, but he drank from it with
elegant ease--as though he and the glass could not have
been better matched.
The little son of a bitch had a crystal of _ice-nine_ in a
thermos bottle in his luggage, and so did his miserable
sister, while under us was God's own amount of water, the
Caribbean Sea.
When Hazel had got all the pleasure she could from
introducing Hoosiers to Hoosiers, she left us alone.
"Remember," she said as she left us, "from now on, call me
_Mom_."
"O.K., Mom," I said.
"O.K., Mom," said Newt. His voice was fairly high, in
keeping with his little larynx. But he managed to make that
voice distinctly masculine.
Angela persisted in treating Newt like an infant--and he
forgave her for it with an amiable grace I would have
thought impossible for one so small.
Newt and Angela remembered me, remembered the letters I'd
written, and invited me to take the empty seat in their
group of three.
Angela apologized to me for never having answered my
letters.
"I couldn't think of anything to say that would interest
anybody reading a book. I could have made up something
about that day, but I didn't think you'd want that.
Actually, the day was just like a regular day."
"Your brother here wrote me a very good letter."
Angela was surprised. "Newt did? How could Newt remember
anything?" She turned to him. "Honey, you don't remember
anything about that day, do you? You were just a baby."
"I remember," he said mildly.
"I wish I'd _seen_ the letter." She implied that Newt was
still too immature to deal directly with the outside world.
Angela was a God-awfully insensitive woman, with no feeling
for what smallness meant to Newt.
"Honey, you should have showed me that letter," she
scolded. "Sorry," said Newt. "I didn't think." "I might as
well tell you," Angela said to me, "Dr. Breed
told me I wasn't supposed to co-operate with you. He said

you weren't interested in giving a fair picture of Father."
She showed me that she didn't like me for that.
I placated her some by telling her that the book would
probably never be done anyway, that I no longer had a clear
idea of what it would or should mean.
"Well, if you ever _do_ do the book, you better make Father
a saint, because that's what he was."
I promised that I would do my best to paint that picture. I
asked if she and Newt were bound for a family reunion with
Frank in San Lorenzo.
"Frank's getting married," said Angela. "We're going to the
engagement party."
"Oh? Who's the lucky girl?"
"I'll show you," said Angela, and she took from her purse a
billfold that contained a sort of plastic accordion. In
each of the accordion's pleats was a photograph. Angela
flipped through the photographs, giving me glimpses of
little Newt on a Cape Cod beach, of Dr. Felix Hoenikker
accepting his Nobel Prize, of Angela's own homely twin
girls, of Frank flying a model plane on the end of a string.
And then she showed me a picture of the girl Frank was
going to marry.
She might, with equal effect, have struck me in the groin.
The picture she showed me was of Mona Aamons Monzano, the
woman I loved.
No Pain 52
Once Angela had opened her plastic accordion, she was
reluctant to close it until someone had looked at every
photograph.
"There are the people I love," she declared.
So I looked at the people she loved. What she had trapped
in plexiglass, what she had trapped like fossil beetles in
amber, were the images of a large part of our _karass_.
There wasn't a _granfallooner_ in the collection.
There were many photographs of Dr. Hoenikker, father of a
bomb, father of three children, father of _ice-nine_. He
was a little person, the purported sire of a midget and a
giantess.
My favorite picture of the old man in Angela's fossil
collection showed him all bundled up for winter, in an
overcoat, scarf, galoshes, and a wool knit cap with a big
pom-pom on the crown.
This picture, Angela told me, with a catch in her throat,
had been taken in Hyannis just about three hours before the
old man died. A newspaper photographer had recognized the
seeming Christmas elf for the great man he was.
"Did your father die in the hospital?"

"Oh, no! He died in our cottage, in a big white wicker
chair facing the sea. Newt and Frank had gone walking down
the beach in the snow . . ."
"It was a very warm snow," said Newt. "It was almost like
walking through orange blossoms. It was very strange.
Nobody was in any of the other cottages . . ."
"Ours was the only one with heat," said Angela.
"Nobody within miles," recalled Newt wonderingly, "and
Frank and I came across this big black dog out on the
beach, a Labrador retriever. We threw sticks into the ocean
and he brought them back."
"I'd gone back into the village for more Christmas tree
bulbs," said Angela. "We always had a tree."
"Did your father enjoy having a Christmas tree?" "He never
said," said Newt. "I think he liked it," said Angela. "He
just wasn't very
demonstrative. Some people aren't." "And some people are,"
said Newt. He gave a small shrug. "Anyway," said Angela,
"when we got back home, we found him
in the chair." She shook her head. "I don't think he
suffered any. He just looked asleep. He couldn't have
looked like that if there'd been the least bit of pain."
She left out an interesting part of the story. She left out
the fact that it was on that same Christmas Eve that she
and Frank and little Newt had divided up the old man's
_ice-nine_.
The President of Fabri-Tek 53
Angela encouraged me to go on looking at snapshots.
"That's me, if you can believe it." She showed me an
adolescent girl six feet tall. She was holding a clarinet
in the picture, wearing the marching uniform of the Ilium
High School band. Her hair was tucked up under a bandsman's
hat. She was smiling with shy good cheer.
And then Angela, a woman to whom God had given virtually
nothing with which to catch a man, showed me a picture of
her husband.
"So that's Harrison C. Conners." I was stunned. Her husband
was a strikingly handsome man, and looked as though he knew
it. He was a snappy dresser, and had the lazy rapture of a
Don Juan about.the eyes.
"What--what does he do?" I asked. "He's president of Fabri-
Tek." "Electronics?" "I couldn't tell you, even if I knew.
It's all very secret
government work." "Weapons?"
"Well, war anyway." "How did you happen to meet?" "He used
to work as a laboratory assistant to Father," said
Angela. "Then he went out to Indianapolis and started

Fabri-Tek."
"So your marriage to him was a happy ending to a long
romance?"
"No. I didn't even know he knew I was alive. I used to
think he was nice, but he never paid any attention to me
until after Father died.
"One day he came through Ilium. I was sitting around that
big old house, thinking my life was over . . ." She spoke
of the awful days and weeks that followed her father's
death. "Just me and little Newt in that big old house.
Frank had disappeared, and the ghosts were making ten times
as much noise as Newt and I were. I'd given my whole life
to taking care of Father, driving him to and from work,
bundling him up when it was cold, unbundling him when it
was hot, making him eat, paying his bills. Suddenly, there
wasn't anything for me to do. I'd never had any close
friends, didn't have a soul to turn to but Newt.
"And then," she continued, "there was a knock on the door--
and there stood Harrison Conners. He was the most beautiful
thing I'd ever seen. He came in, and we talked about
Father's last days and about old times in general."
Angela almost cried now. "Two weeks later, we were married."
Communists, Nazis, Royalists, Parachutists, and Draft
Dodgers 54
Returning to my own seat in the plane, feeling far shabbier
for having lost Mona Aamons Monzano to Frank, I resumed my
reading of Philip Castle's manuscript.
I looked up _Monzano, Mona Aamons_ in the index, and was
told by the index to see Aamons, Mona.
So I saw _Aamons, Mona_, and found almost as many page
references as I'd found after the name of "Papa" Monzano
himself.
And after _Aamons, Mona_ came _Aamons, Nestor_. So I turned
to the few pages that had to do with Nestor, and learned
that he was Mona's father, a native Finn, an architect.
Nestor Aamons was captured by the Russians, then liberated
by the Germans during the Second World War. He was not
returned home by his liberators, but was forced to serve in
a _Wehrmacht_ engineer unit that was sent to fight the
Yugoslav partisans. He
was captured by Chetniks, royalist Serbian partisans, and
then by Communist partisans who attacked the Chetniks. He
was liberated by Italian parachutists who surprised the
Communists, and he was shipped to Italy.
The Italians put him to work designing fortifications for
Sicily. He stole a fishing boat in Sicily, and reached
neutral Portugal.

While there, he met an American draft dodger named Julian
Castle.
Castle, upon learning that Aamons was an architect, invited
him to come with him to the island of San Lorenzo and to
design for him a hospital to be called the House of Hope
and Mercy in the Jungle.
Aamons accepted. He designed the hospital, married a native
woman named Celia, fathered a perfect daughter, and died.
Never Index Your Own Book 55
As for the life of _Aamons, Mona_, the index itself gave a
jangling, surrealistic picture of the many conflicting
forces that had been brought to bear on her and of her
dismayed reactions to them.
"_Aamons, Mona:_" the index said, "adopted by Monzano in
order to boost Monzano's popularity, 194-199, 216a.;
childhood in compound of House of Hope and Mercy, 63-81;
childhood romance with P. Castle, 72f; death of father,
89ff; death of mother, 92f; embarrassed by role as national
erotic symbol, 80, 95f, 166n., 209, 247n., 400-406, 566n.,
678; engaged to P. Castle, 193; essential naïveté, 67-71,
80, 95f, 116a., 209, 274n., 400-406, 566a., 678; lives with
Bokonon, 92-98, 196-197; poems about, 2n., 26, 114, 119,
311, 316, 477n., 501, 507, 555n., 689, 718ff, 799ff, 800n.,
841, 846ff, 908n., 971, 974; poems by, 89, 92, 193; returns
to Monzano, 199; returns to Bokonon, 197; runs away from
Bokonon, 199; runs away from Moazano, 197; tries to make
self ugly in order to stop being erotic symbol to
islanders, 89, 95f, 116n., 209, 247n., 400-406, 566n., 678;
tutored by Bokonon, 63-80; writes letter to United Nations,
200; xylophone virtuoso, 71."
I showed this index entry to the Mintons, asking them if
they didn't think it was an enchanting biography in itself,
a biography of a reluctant goddess of love. I got an
unexpectedly expert answer, as one does in life sometimes.
It appeared that Claire Minton, in her time, had been a
professional indexer. I had never heard of such a
profession before.
She told me that she had put her husband through college
years before with her earnings as an indexer, that the
earnings had been good, and that few people could index
well.
She said that indexing was a thing that only the most
amateurish author undertook to do for his own book. I asked
her what she thought of Philip Castle's job.
"Flattering to the author, insulting to the reader," she
said. "In a hyphenated word," she observed, with the shrewd
amiability of an expert, " '_self-indulgent_.' I'm always

embarrassed when I see an index an author has made of his
own work."
"Embarrassed?"
"It's a revealing thing, an author's index of his own
work," she informed me. "It's a shameless exhibition--to
the _trained_ eye."
said.
"She can read character from an index," said her husband.
"Oh?" I said. "What can you tell about Philip Castle?" She
smiled faintly. "Things I'd better not tell strangers."
"Sorry."
"He's obviously in love with this Mona Aamons Monzano," she
"That's true of every man in San Lorenzo I gather." "He has
mixed feelings about his father," she said. "That's true of
every man on earth." I egged her on gently. "He's
insecure." "What mortal isn't?" I demanded. I didn't know
it then, but
that was a very Bokononist thing to demand. "He'll never
marry her." "Why not?" "I've said all I'm going to say,"
she said. "I'm gratified to meet an indexer who respects
the privacy of
others." "Never index your own book," she stated. A
_duprass_, Bokonon tells us, is a valuable instrument for
gaining and developing, in the privacy of an interminable
love affair, insights that are queer but true. The Mintons'
cunning exploration of indexes was surely a case in point.
A _duprass_, Bokonon tells us, is also a sweetly conceited
establishment. The Mintons' establishment was no exception.
Sometime later, Ambassador Minton and I met in the aisle of
the airplane, away from his wife, and he showed that it was
important to him that I respect what his wife could find
out from indexes.
"You know why Castle will never marry the girl, even though
he loves her, even though she loves him, even though they
grew up together?" he whispered.
"No, sir, I don't."
"Because he's a homosexual," whispered Minton. "She can
tell that from an index, too."
A Self-supporting Squirrel Cage 56
When Lionel Boyd Johnson and Corporal Earl McCabe were
washed up naked onto the shore of San Lorenzo, I read, they
were greeted by persons far worse off than they. The people
of San Lorenzo had nothing but diseases, which they were at
a loss to treat or even name. By contrast, Johnson and
McCabe had the glittering treasures of literacy, ambition,
curiosity, gall, irreverence, health, humor, and
considerable information about the outside world.

From the "Calypsos" again:
Oh, a very sorry people, yes, Did I find here. Oh, they had
no music, And they had no beer.
And, oh, everywhere Where they tried to perch Belonged to
Castle Sugar, Incorporated, Or the Catholic church.
This statement of the property situation in San Lorenzo in
1922 is entirely accurate, according to Philip Castle.
Castle Sugar was founded, as it happened, by Philip
Castle's greatgrandfather. In 1922, it owned every piece
of arable land on the island.
"Castle Sugar's San Lorenzo operations," wrote young
Castle, "never showed a profit. But, by paying laborers
nothing for their
labor, the company managed to break even year after year,
making just enough money to pay the salaries of the
workers' tormentors.
"The form of government was anarchy, save in limited
situations wherein Castle Sugar wanted to own something or
to get something done. In such situations the form or
government was feudalism. The nobility was composed of
Castle Sugar's plantation bosses, who were heavily armed
white men from the outside world. The knighthood was
composed of big natives who, for small gifts and silly
privileges, would kill or wound or torture on command. The
spiritual needs of the people caught in this demoniacal
squirrel cage were taken care of by a handful of butterball
priests.
"The San Lorenzo Cathedral, dynamited in 1923, was
generally regarded as one of the man-made wonders of the
New World," wrote Castle.
The Queasy Dream 51
That Corporal McCabe and Johnson were able to take command
of San Lorenzo was not a miracle in any sense. Many people
had taken over San Lorenzo--had invariably found it lightly
held. The reason was simple: God, in His Infinite Wisdom,
had made the island worthless.
Hernando Cortes was the first man to have his sterile
conquest of San Lorenzo recorded on paper. Cortes and his
men came ashore for fresh water in 1519, named the island,
claimed it for Emperor Charles the Fifth, and never
returned. Subsequent expeditions came for gold and diamonds
and rubies and spices, found none, burned a few natives for
entertainment and heresy, and sailed on.
"When France claimed San Lorenzo in 1682," wrote Castle,
"no Spaniards complained. When Denmark claimed San Lorenzo
in 1699, no Frenchmen complained. When the Dutch claimed
San Lorenzo in 1704, no Danes complained. When England

claimed San Lorenzo in 1706, no Dutchmen complained. When
Spain reclaimed San Lorenzo in 1720, no Englishmen
complained. When, in 1786, African Negroes took command of
a British slave ship, ran it ashore on San Lorenzo, and
proclaimed San Lorenzo an independent nation, an empire
with an emperor, in fact, no Spaniards complained.
"The emperor was Tum-bumwa, the only person who ever
regarded the island as being worth defending. A maniac,
Tum-bumwa caused to be erected the San Lorenzo Cathedral
and the fantastic fortifications on the north shore of the
island, fortifications within which the private residence
of the so-called President of the Republic now stands.
"The fortifications have never been attacked, nor has any
sane man ever proposed any reason why they should be
attacked. They have never defended anything. Fourteen
hundred persons are said to have died while building them.
Of these fourteen hundred, about half are said to have been
executed in public for substandard zeal."
Castle Sugar came into San Lorenzo in 1916, during the
sugar boom of the First World War. There was no government
at all. The company imagined that even the clay and gravel
fields of San Lorenzo could be tilled profitably, with the
price of sugar so high. No one complained.
When McCabe and Johnson arrived in 1922 and announced that
they were placing themselves in charge, Castle Sugar
withdrew flaccidly, as though from a queasy dream.
Tyranny with a Difference 58
"There was at least one quality of the new conquerors of
San Lorenzo that was really new," wrote young Castle.
"McCabe and Johnson dreamed of making San Lorenzo a Utopia.
"To this end, McCabe overhauled the economy and the laws.
"Johnson designed a new religion." Castle quoted the
"Calypsos" again:
I wanted all things To seem to make some sense, So we all
could be happy, yes, Instead of tense. And I made up lies
So that they all fit nice, And I made this sad world A par-
a-dise.
There was a tug at my coat sleeve as I read. I looked up.
Little Newt Hoenikker was standing in the aisle next to me.
"I thought maybe you'd like to go back to the bar," he
said, "and hoist a few."
So we did hoist and topple a few, and Newt's tongue was
loosened enough to tell me some things about Zinka, his
Russian midget dancer friend. Their love nest, he told me,
had been in his father's cottage on Cape Cod.
"I may not ever have a marriage, but at least I've had a
honeymoon."

He told me of idyllic hours he and his Zinka had spent in
each other's arms, cradled in Felix Hoenikker's old white
wicker chair, the chair that faced the sea.
And Zinka would dance for him. "Imagine a woman dancing
just for me."
"I can see you have no regrets."
"She broke my heart. I didn't like that much. But that was
the price. In this world, you get what you pay for."
He proposed a gallant toast. "Sweethearts and wives," he
cried.
Fasten Your Seat Belts 59
I was in the bar with Newt and H. Lowe Crosby and a couple
of strangers, when San Lorenzo was sighted. Crosby was
talking about pissants. "You know what I mean by a pissant?"
"I know the term," I said, "but it obviously doesn't have
the ding-a-ling associations for me that it has for you."
Crosby was in his cups and had the drunkard's illusion that
he could speak frankly, provided he spoke affectionately.
He spoke frankly and affectionately of Newt's size,
something nobody else in the bar had so far commented on.
"I don't mean a little feller like this." Crosby hung a ham
hand on Newt's shoulder. "It isn't size that makes a man a
pissant. It's the way he thinks. I've seen men four times
as big as this little feller here, and they were pissants.
And I've seen little fellers--well, not this little
actually, but pretty damn little, by God--and I'd call them
real men."
"Thanks," said Newt pleasantly, not even glancing at the
monstrous hand on his shoulder. Never had I seen a human
being better adjusted to such a humiliating physical
handicap. I shuddered with admiration.
"You were talking about pissants," I said to Crosby, hoping
to get the weight of his hand off Newt.
"Damn right I was." Crosby straightened up. "You haven't
told us what a pissant is yet," I said. "A pissant is
somebody who thinks he's so damn smart, he
never can keep his mouth shut. No matter what anybody says,
he's got to argue with it. You say you like something, and,
by God, he'll tell you why you're wrong to like it. A
pissant does his best to make you feel like a boob all the
time. No matter what you say, he knows better."
"Not a very attractive characteristic," I suggested.
"My daughter wanted to marry a pissant once," said Crosby
darkly.
"Did she?"
"I squashed him like a bug." Crosby hammered on the bar,
remembering things the pissant had said and done. "Jesus!"

he said, "we've all been to college!" His gaze lit on Newt
again. "You go to college?"
"Cornell," said Newt. "Cornell!" cried Crosby gladly. "My
God, I went to Cornell." "So did he." Newt nodded at me.
"Three Cornellians--all in the same plane!" said Crosby, and
we had another _granfalloon_ festival on our hands. When it
subsided some, Crosby asked Newt what he did. "I paint."
"Houses?" "Pictures." "I'll be damned," said Crosby.
"Return to your seats and fasten your seat belts, please,"
warned the airline hostess. "We're over Monzano Airport,
Bolivar, San Lorenzo."
"Christ! Now wait just a Goddamn minute here," said Crosby,
looking down at Newt. "All of a sudden I realize you've got
a name I've heard before."
"My father was the father of the atom bomb." Newt didn't
say Felix Hoenikker was _one_ of the fathers. He said Felix
was _the_ father.
"Is that so?" asked Crosby. "That's so." "I was thinking
about something else," said Crosby. He had to
think hard. "Something about a dancer." "I think we'd
better get back to our seats," said Newt,
tightening some. "Something about a Russian dancer." Crosby
was sufficiently
addled by booze to see no harm in thinking out loud. "I
remember an editorial about how maybe the dancer was a spy."
"Please, gentlemen," said the stewardess, "you really must
get back to your seats and fasten your belts."
Newt looked up at H. Lowe Crosby innocently. "You sure the
name was Hoenikker?" And, in order to eliminate any chance
of mistaken identity, he spelled the name for Crosby.
"I could be wrong," said H. Lowe Crosby.
An Underprivileged Nation 60
The island, seen from the air, was an amazingly regular
rectangle. Cruel and useless stone needles were thrust up
from the sea. They sketched a circle around it.
At the south end of the island was the port city of
Bolivar. It was the only city. It was the capital. It was
built on a marshy table. The runways of Monzano
Airport were on its water front. Mountains arose abruptly
to the north of Bolivar, crowding
the remainder of the island with their brutal humps. They
were called the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, but they looked
like pigs at a trough to me.
Bolivar had had many names: Caz-ma-caz-ma, Santa Maria,
Saint Louis, Saint George, and Port Glory among them. It
was given its present name by Johnson and McCabe in 1922,
was named in honor of Simon Bolivar, the great Latin-

American idealist and hero.
When Johnson and McCabe came upon the city, it was built of
twigs, tin, crates, and mud--rested on the catacombs of a
trillion happy scavengers, catacombs in a sour mash of
slop, feculence, and slime.
That was pretty much the way I found it, too, except for
the new architectural false face along the water front.
Johnson and McCabe had failed to raise the people from
misery and muck.
"Papa" Monzano had failed, too.
Everybody was bound to fail, for San Lorenzo was as
unproductive as an equal area in the Sahara or the Polar
Icecap.
At the same time, it had as dense a population as could be
found anywhere, India and China not excluded. There were
four hundred and fifty inhabitants for each uninhabitable
square mile.
"During the idealistic phase of McCabe's and Johnson's
reorganization of San Lorenzo, it was announced that the
country's total income would be divided among all adult
persons in equal shares," wrote Philip Castle. "The first
and only time this was tried, each share came to between
six and seven dollars."
What a Corporal Was Worth 61
In the customs shed at Monzano Airport, we were all
required to submit to a luggage inspection, and to convert
what money we intended to spend in San Lorenzo into the
local currency, into _Corporals_, which "Papa" Monzano
insisted were worth fifty American cents.
The shed was neat and new, but plenty of signs had already
been slapped on the walls, higgledy-piggledy.
ANYBODY CAUGHT PRACTICING BOKONONISM IN SAN LORENZO, said
one, WILL DIE ON THE HOOK!
Another poster featured a picture of Bokonon, a scrawny old
colored man who was smoking a cigar. He looked clever and
kind and amused.
Under the picture were the words: WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE,
10,000 CORPORALS REWARD!
I took a closer look at that poster and found reproduced at
the bottom of it some sort of police identification form
Bokonon had had to fill out way back in 1929. It was
reproduced, apparently, to show Bokonon hunters what his
fingerprints and handwriting were like.
But what interested me were some of the words Bokonon had
chosen to put into the blanks in 1929. Wherever possible,
he had taken the cosmic view, had taken into consideration,
for instance, such things as the shortness of life and the

longness of eternity.
He reported his avocation as: "Being alive." He reported
his principal occupation as: "Being dead." THIS IS A
CHRISTIAN NATION! ALL FOOT PLAY WILL BE PUNISHED BY
THE HOOK, said another sign. The sign was meaningless to
me, since I had not yet learned that Bokononists mingled
their souls by pressing the bottoms of their feet together.
And the greatest mystery of all, since I had not read all
of Philip Castle's book, was how Bokonon, bosom friend of
Corporal McCabe, had come to be an outlaw.
Why Hazel Wasn't Scared 62
There were seven of us who got off at San Lorenzo: Newt and
Angela, Ambassador Minton and his wife, H. Lowe Crosby and
his wife, and I. When we had cleared customs, we were
herded outdoors and onto a reviewing stand.
There, we faced a very quiet crowd.
Five thousand or more San Lorenzans stared at us. The
islanders were oatmeal colored. The people were thin. There
wasn't a fat person to be seen. Every person had teeth
missing. Many legs were bowed or swollen.
Not one pair of eyes was clear.
The women's breasts were bare and paltry. The men wore
loose loincloths that did little to conceal penes like
pendulums on grandfather clocks.
There were many dogs, but not one barked. There were many
infants, but not one cried. Here and there someone
coughed--and that was all.
A military band stood at attention before the crowd. It did
not play.
There was a color guard before the band. It carried two
banners, the Stars and Stripes and the flag of San Lorenzo.
The flag of San Lorenzo consisted of a Marine Corporal's
chevrons on a royal blue field. The banners hung lank in
the windless day.
I imagined that somewhere far away I heard the blamming of
a sledge on a brazen drum. There was no such sound. My soul
was simply resonating the beat of the brassy, clanging heat
of the San Lorenzan clime.
"I'm sure glad it's a Christian country," Hazel Crosby
whispered to her husband, "or I'd be a little scared."
Behind us was a xylophone.
There was a glittering sign on the xylophone. The sign was
made of garnets and rhinestones.
The sign said, MONA.
Reverent and Free 63
To the left side of our reviewing stand were six propeller-
driven fighter planes in a row, military assistance from

the United States to San Lorenzo. On the fuselage of each
plane was painted, with childish bloodlust, a boa
constrictor which was crushing a devil to death. Blood came
from the devil's ears, nose, and mouth. A pitchfork was
slipping from satanic red fingers.
too.
Before each plane stood an oatmeal-colored pilot; silent,
Then, above that tumid silence, there came a nagging song
like the song of a gnat. It was a siren approaching. The
siren was on "Papa's" glossy black Cadillac limousine.
The limousine came to a stop before us, tires smoking.
Out climbed "Papa" Monzano, his adopted daughter, Mona
Aamons Monzano, and Franklin Hoenikker.
At a limp, imperious signal from "Papa," the crowd sang the
San Lorenzan National Anthem. Its melody was "Home on the
Range." The words had been written in 1922 by Lionel Boyd
Johnson, by Bokonon. The words were these:
Oh, ours is a land Where the living is grand, And the men
are as fearless as sharks; The women are pure, And we
always are sure
Peace and
That our children will all toe their marks. San, San Lo-
ren-zo! What a rich, lucky island are we! Our enemies quail,
For they know they will fail Against people so reverent and
free.
Plenty 64
And then the crowd was deathly still again.
"Papa" and Mona and Frank joined us on the reviewing stand.
One snare drum played as they did so. The drumming stopped
when "Papa" pointed a finger at the drummer.
He wore a shoulder holster on the outside of his blouse.
The weapon in it was a chromium-plated .45. He was an old,
old man, as so many members of my _karass_ were. He was in
poor shape. His steps were small and bounceless. He was
still a fat man, but his lard was melting fast, for his
simple uniform was loose. The balls of his hoptoad eyes
were yellow. His hands trembled.
His personal bodyguard was Major General Franklin
Hoenikker, whose uniform was white. Frank--thin-wristed,
narrow-shouldered-- looked like a child kept up long after
his customary bedtime. On his breast was a medal.
I observed the two, "Papa" and Frank, with some
difficulty-- not because my view was blocked, but because I
could not take my eyes off Mona. I was thrilled,
heartbroken, hilarious, insane. Every greedy, unreasonable
dream I'd ever had about what a woman should be came true
in Mona. There, God love her warm and creamy soul, was

peace and plenty forever.
That girl--and she was only eighteen--was rapturously
serene. She seemed to understand all, and to be all there
was to understand. In _The Books of Bokonon_ she is
mentioned by name. One thing Bokonon says of her is this:
"Mona has the simplicity of the all."
Her dress was white and Greek. She wore flat sandals on her
small brown feet. Her pale gold hair was lank and long. Her
hips were a lyre.
Oh God. Peace and plenty forever. She was the one beautiful
girl in San Lorenzo. She was the
national treasure. "Papa" had adopted her, according to
Philip Castle, in order to mingle divinity with the
harshness of his
rule.
The xylophone was rolled to the front of the stand. And
Mona played it. She played "When Day Is Done." It was all
tremolo-- swelling, fading, swelling again. The crowd was
intoxicated by beauty. And then it was time for "Papa" to
greet us.
A Good Time to Come to San Lorenzo 65
"Papa" was a self-educated man, who had been majordomo to
Corporal McCabe. He had never been off the island. He spoke
American English passably well.
Everything that any one of us said on the reviewing stand
was bellowed out at the crowd through doomsday horns.
Whatever went out through those horns gabbled down a wide,
short boulevard at the back of the crowd, ricocheted off
the three glass-faced new buildings at the end of the
boulevard, and came cackling back.
"Welcome," said "Papa." "You are coming to the best friend
America ever had. America is misunderstood many places, but
not here, Mr. Ambassador." He bowed to H. Lowe Crosby, the
bicycle manufacturer, mistaking him for the new Ambassador.
"I know you've got a good country here, Mr. President,"
said Crosby. "Everything I ever heard about it sounds great
to me. There's just one thing . . ."
"Oh?"
"I'm not the Ambassador," said' Crosby. "I wish I was, but
I'm just a plain, ordinary businessman." It hurt him to say
who the real Ambassador was. "This man over here is the big
cheese."
"Ah!" "Papa" smiled at his mistake. The smile went away
suddenly. Some pain inside of him made him wince, then made
him hunch over, close his eyes--made him concentrate on
surviving the pain.
Frank Hoenikker went to his support, feebly, incompetently.

"Are you all right?"
"Excuse me," "Papa" whispered at last, straightening up
some. There were tears in his eyes. He brushed them away,
straightening up all the way. "I beg your pardon."
He seemed to be in doubt for a moment as to where he was,
as to what was expected of him. And then he remembered. He
shook Horlick Minton's hand. "Here, you are among friends."
"I'm sure of it," said Minton gently. "Christian," said
"Papa." "Good." "Anti-Communists," said "Papa." "Good."
"No Communists here," said "Papa." "They fear the hook too
much."
"I should think they would," said Minton.
"You have picked a very good time to come to us," said
"Papa." "Tomorrow will be one of the happiest days in the
history of our country. Tomorrow is our greatest national
holiday, The Day of the Hundred Martyrs to Democracy. It
will also be the day of the engagement of Major General
Hoenikker to Mona Aamons Monzano, to the most precious
person in my life and in the life of San Lorenzo."
"I wish you much happiness, Miss Monzano," said Minton
warmly. "And I congratulate _you_, General Hoenikker."
The two young people nodded their thanks.
Minton now spoke of the so-called Hundred Martyrs to
Democracy, and he told a whooping lie. "There is not an
American schoolchild who does not know the story of San
Lorenzo's noble sacrifice in World War Two. The hundred
brave San Lorenzans, whose day tomorrow is, gave as much as
freedom-loving men can. The President of the United States
has asked me to be his personal representative at
ceremonies tomorrow, to cast a wreath, the gift of the
American people to the people of San Lorenzo, on the sea."
"The people of San Lorenzo thank you and your President and
the generous people of the United States of America for
their thoughtfulness," said "Papa." "We would be honored if
you would cast the wreath into the sea during the
engagement party tomorrow."
"The honor is mine."
"Papa" commanded us all to honor him with our presence at
the wreath ceremony and engagement party next day. We were
to appear at his palace at noon.
"What children these two will have!" "Papa" said, inviting
us to stare at Frank and Mona. "What blood! What beauty!"
The pain hit him again. He again closed his eyes to huddle
himself around that pain.
He waited for it to pass, but it did not pass.
Still in agony, he turned away from us, faced the crowd and
the microphone. He tried to gesture at the crowd, failed.

He tried to say something to the crowd, failed.
And then the words came out. "Go home," he cried
strangling. "Go home!"
The crowd scattered like leaves. "Papa" faced us again,
still grotesque in pain. . . . And then he collapsed.
The Strongest Thing There Is 66
He wasn't dead.
But he certainly looked dead; except that now and then, in
the midst of all that seeming death, he would give a
shivering twitch.
Frank protested loudly that "Papa" wasn't dead, that he
_couldn't_ be dead. He was frantic. "'Papa'! You can't die!
You can't!"
Frank loosened "Papa's" collar and blouse, rubbed his
wrists. "Give him air! Give 'Papa' air!"
The fighter-plane pilots came running over to help us. One
had sense enough to go for the airport ambulance.
The band and the color guard, which had received no orders,
remained at quivering attention.
I looked for Mona, found that she was still serene and had
withdrawn to the rail of the reviewing stand. Death, if
there was going to be death, did not alarm her.
Standing next to her was a pilot. He was not looking at
her, but he had a perspiring radiance that I attributed to
his being so near to her.
"Papa" now regained something like consciousness. With a
hand that flapped like a captured bird, he pointed at
Frank. "You . . ." he said.
We all fell silent, in order to hear his words.
His lips moved, but we could hear nothing but bubbling
sounds.
Somebody had what looked like a wonderful idea then--what
looks like a hideous idea in retrospect. Someone--a pilot,
I think--took the microphone from its mount and held it by
"Papa's" bubbling lips in order to amplify his words.
So death rattles and all sorts of spastic yodels bounced
off the new buildings.
And then came words.
"You," he said to Frank hoarsely, "you--Franklin
Hoenikker-- you will be the next President of San Lorenzo.
Science--you have science. Science is the strongest thing
there is.
"Science," said "Papa." "Ice." He rolled his yellow eyes,
and he passed out again.
I looked at Mona. Her expression was unchanged. The pilot
next to her, however, had his features composed in
the catatonic, orgiastic rigidity of one receiving the

Congressional Medal of Honor.
I looked down and I saw what I was not meant to see. Mona
had slipped off her sandal. Her small brown foot was
bare. kneading--obscenely kneading--the instep of the
flyer's boot.
And with that foot, she was kneading and kneading and
Hy-u-o-ook-kuh! 67
"Papa" didn't
He was rolled Mintons were taken
die--not then. away in the airport's big red meat wagon.
The to their embassy by an American limousine.
Newt and Angela were taken to Frank's house in a San
Lorenzan limousine.
The Crosbys and I were taken to the Casa Mona hotel in San
Lorenzo's one taxi, a hearselike 1939 Chrysler limousine
with jump seats. The name on the side of the cab was Castle
Transportation Inc. The cab was owned by Philip Castle, the
owner of the Casa Mona, the son of the completely unselfish
man I had come to interview.
The Crosbys and I were both upset. Our consternation was
expressed in questions we had to have answered at once. The
Crosbys wanted to know who Bokonon was. They were
scandalized by the idea that anyone should be opposed to
"Papa" Monzano.
Irrelevantly, I found that I had to know at once who the
Hundred Martyrs to Democracy had been.
The Crosbys got their answer first. They could not
understand the San Lorenzan dialect, so I had to translate
for them. Crosby's basic question to our driver was: "Who
the hell is this pissant Bokonon, anyway?"
"Very bad man," said the driver. What he actually said was,
"_Vorry ball moan_."
"A Communist?" asked Crosby, when he heard my translation.
"Oh, sure." "Has he got any following?" "Sir?"
"Does anybody think he's any good?" "Oh, no, sir," said the
driver piously. "Nobody that crazy." "Why hasn't he been
caught?" demanded Crosby. "Hard man to find," said the
driver. "Very smart." "Well, people must be hiding him and
giving him food or he'd
be caught by now." "Nobody hide him; nobody feed him.
Everybody too smart to do
that." "You sure?"
"Oh, sure," said the driver. "Anybody feed that crazy old
man, anybody give him place to sleep, they get the hook.
Nobody want the hook."
He pronounced that last word: "_hy-u-o-_ook_-kuh_."
Hoon-yera Mora-toorz 68

I asked the driver who the Hundred Martyrs to Democracy had
been. The boulevard we were going down, I saw, was called
the Boulevard of the Hundred Martyrs to Democracy.
The driver told me that San Lorenzo had declared war on
Germany and Japan an hour after Pearl Harbor was attacked.
San Lorenzo conscripted a hundred men to fight on the side
of democracy. These hundred men were put on a ship bound
for the United States, where they were to be armed and
trained.
The ship was sunk by a German submarine right outside of
Bolivar harbor.
"_Dose, sore_," he said, "_yeeara lo hoon-yera mora-toorz
tut zamoo-cratz-ya_."
"Those, sir," he'd said in dialect, "are the Hundred
Martyrs to Democracy."
A Big Mosaic 69
The Crosbys and I had the curious experience of being the
very first guests of a new hotel. We were the first to sign
the register of the Casa Mona.
The Crosbys got to the desk ahead of me, but H. Lowe Crosby
was so startled by a wholly blank register that he couldn't
bring himself to sign. He had to think about it a while.
"You sign," he said to me. And then, defying me to think he
was superstitious, he declared his wish to photograph a man
who was making a huge mosaic on the fresh plaster of the
lobby wall.
The mosaic was a portrait of Mona Aamons Monzano. It was
twenty feet high. The man who was working on it was young
and muscular. He sat at the top of a stepladder. He wore
nothing but a pair of white duck trousers.
He was a white man.
The mosaicist was making the fine hairs on the nape of
Mona's swan neck out of chips of gold.
Crosby went over to photograph him; came back to report
that the man was the biggest pissant he had ever met.
Crosby was the color of tomato juice when he reported this.
"You can't say a damn thing to him that he won't turn
inside out."
So I went over to the mosaicist, watched him for a while,
and then I told him, "I envy you."
"I always knew," he sighed, "that, if I waited long enough,
somebody would come and envy me. I kept telling myself to
be patient, that, sooner or later, somebody envious would
come along."
"Are you an American?"
"That happiness is mine." He went right on working; he was
incurious as to what I looked like. "Do you want to take my

photograph, too?"
"Do you mind?" "I think; therefore I am, therefore I am
photographable." "I'm afraid I don't have my camera with
me." "Well, for Christ's sake, get it! You're not one of
those
people who trusts his memory, are you?" "I don't think I'll
forget that face you're working on very
soon." "You'll forget it when you're dead, and so will I.
When I'm
dead, I'm going to forget everything--and I advise you to
do the same."
"Has she been posing for this or are you working from
photographs or what?"
"I'm working from or what." "What?" "I'm working from or
what." He tapped his temple. "It's all
in this enviable head of mine." "You know her?"
"That happiness is mine." "Frank Hoenikker's a lucky man."
"Frank Hoenikker is a piece of shit." "You're certainly
candid." "I'm also rich." "Glad to hear it." "If you want
an expert opinion, money doesn't necessarily
make people happy." "Thanks for the information. You've
just saved me a lot of
trouble. I was just about to make some money." "How?"
"Writing." "I wrote a book once." "What was it called?"
"_San Lorenzo_," he said, "the Land, the History, the
People_."
Tutored by Bokonon 70
"You, I take it," I said to the mosaicist, "are Philip
Castle, son of Julian Castle."
"That happiness is mine." "I'm here to see your father."
"Are you an aspirin salesman?" "No." "Too bad. Father's low
on aspirin. How about miracle drugs?
Father enjoys pulling off a miracle now and then." "I'm not
a drug salesman. I'm a writer." "What makes you think a
writer isn't a drug salesman?" "I'll accept that. Guilty as
charged." "Father needs some kind of book to read to people
who are
dying or in terrible pain. I don't suppose you've written
anything like that."
"Not yet."
"I think there'd be money in it. There's another valuable
tip for you."
"I suppose I could overhaul the 'Twenty-third Psalm,'
switch it around a little so nobody would realize it wasn't
original with me."
"Bokonon tried to overhaul it," he told me. "Bokonon found
out he couldn't change a word."

"You know him, too?"
"That happiness is mine. He was my tutor when I was a
little boy." He gestured sentimentally at the mosaic. "He
was Mona's tutor, too."
"Was he a good teacher?"
"Mona and I can both read and write and do simple sums,"
said Castle, "if that's what you mean."
The Happiness of Being an American 71
H. Lowe Crosby came over to have another go at Castle, the
pissant.
"What do you call yourself," sneered Crosby, "a beatnik or
what?"
"I call myself a Bokononist."
"That's against the law in this country, isn't it?"
"I happen to have the happiness of being an American. I've
been able to say I'm a Bokononist any time I damn please,
and, so far, nobody's bothered me at all."
"I believe in obeying the laws of whatever country I happen
to be in."
"You are not telling me the news." Crosby was livid. "Screw
you, Jack!" "Screw you, Jasper," said Castle mildly, "and
screw Mother's
Day and Christmas, too." Crosby marched across the lobby to
the desk clerk and he
said, "I want to report that man over there, that pissant,
that so-called artist. You've got a nice little country
here that's trying to attract the tourist trade and new
investment in industry. The way that man talked to me, I
don't ever want to see San Lorenzo again--and any friend
who asks me about San Lorenzo, I'll tell him to keep the
hell away. You may be getting a nice picture on the wall
over there, but, by God, the pissant who's making it is the
most insulting, discouraging son of a bitch I ever met in
my life."
The clerk looked sick. "Sir . . ." "I'm listening," said
Crosby, full of fire. "Sir--he owns the hotel."
The Pissant Hilton 72
H. Lowe Crosby and his wife checked out of the Casa Mona.
Crosby called it "The Pissant Hilton," and he demanded
quarters at the American embassy.
So I was the only guest in a one-hundred-room hotel.
My room was a pleasant one. It faced, as did all the rooms,
the Boulevard of the Hundred Martyrs to Democracy, Monzano
Airport, and Bolivar harbor beyond. The Casa Mona was built
like a bookcase, with solid sides and back and with a front
of blue-green glass. The squalor and misery of the city,
being to the sides and back of the Casa Mona, were

impossible to see.
My room was air-conditioned. It was almost chilly. And,
coming from the blamming heat into that chilliness, I
sneezed.
There were fresh flowers on my bedside table, but my bed
had not yet been made. There wasn't even a pillow on the
bed. There was simply a bare, brand-new Beautyrest
mattress. And there weren't any coat hangers in the closet;
and there wasn't any toilet paper in the bathroom.
So I went out in the corridor to see if there was a
chambermaid who would equip me a little more completely.
There wasn't anybody out there, but there was a door open
at the far end and very faint sounds of life.
I went to this door and found a large suite paved with
drop- cloths. It was being painted, but the two painters
weren't painting when I appeared. They were sitting on a
shelf that ran the width of the window wall.
They had their shoes off. They had their eyes closed. They
were facing each other.
They were pressing the soles of their bare feet together.
Each grasped his own ankles, giving himself the rigidity of
a triangle.
I cleared my throat.
The two rolled off the shelf and fell to the spattered
dropcloth. They landed on their hands and knees, and they
stayed in that position--their behinds in the air, their
noses close to the ground.
They were expecting to be killed. "Excuse me," I said,
amazed. "Don't tell," begged one querulously. "Please--
please don't
tell." "Tell what?"
"What you saw!" "I didn't see anything." "If you tell," he
said, and he put his cheek to the floor and
looked up at me beseechingly, "if you tell, we'll die on
the _hy- u-o-ook-kuh!_"
"Look, friends," I said, "either I came in too early or too
late, but, I tell you again, I didn't see anything worth
mentioning to anybody. Please--get up."
They got up, their eyes still on me. They trembled and
cowered. I convinced them at last that I would never tell
what I had seen.
What I had seen, of course, was the Bokononist ritual of
_boko-maru_, or the mingling of awarenesses.
We Bokononists believe that it is impossible to be sole-to-
sole with another person without loving the person,
provided the feet of both persons are clean and nicely
tended.

The basis for the foot ceremony is this "Calypso":
We will touch our feet, yes, Yes, for all we're worth, And
we will love each other, yes, Yes, like we love our Mother
Earth.
Black Death 73
When I got back to my room I found that Philip Castle--
mosaicist, historian, self-indexer, pissant, and hotel-
keeper--was installing a roll of toilet paper in my
bathroom.
"Thank you very much," I said. "You're entirely welcome."
"This is what I'd call a hotel with a real heart. How many
hotel owners would take such a direct interest in the
comfort of a guest?"
"How many hotel owners have just one guest?" "You used to
have three." "Those were the days." "You know, I may be
speaking out of turn, but I find it hard
to understand how a person of your interests and talents
would be attracted to the hotel business."
He frowned perplexedly. "I don't seem to be as good with
guests as I might, do I?"
"I knew some people in the Hotel School at Cornell, and I
can't help feeling they would have treated the Crosbys
somewhat differently."
He nodded uncomfortably. "I know. I know." He flapped his
arms. "Damned if I know why I built this hotel --something
to do with my life, I guess. A way to be busy, a way not to
be lonesome." He shook his head. "It was be a hermit or
open a hotel- -with nothing in between."
"Weren't you raised at your father's hospital?" "That's
right. Mona and I both grew up there." "Well, aren't you at
all tempted to do with your life what
your father's done with his?" Young Castle smiled wanly,
avoiding a direct answer. "He's a
funny person, Father is," he said. "I think you'll like
him."
"I expect to. There aren't many people who've been as
unselfish as he has." "One time," said a mutiny near here
on with a load of wicker ship, didn't know how near 'Papa'
Monzano's
Castle, "when I was about fifteen, there was a Greek ship
bound from Hong Kong to Havana furniture. The mutineers got
control of the to run her, and smashed her up on the rocks
castle. Everybody drowned but the rats. The
rats and the wicker furniture came ashore." That seemed to
be the end of the story, but I couldn't be
sure. "So?" "So some people got free furniture, and some
people got

bubonic plague. At Father's hospital, we had fourteen-
hundred deaths inside of ten days. Have you ever seen
anyone die of bubonic plague?"
"That unhappiness has not been mine."
"The lymph glands in the groin and the armpits swell to the
size of grapefruit."
"I can well believe it."
"After death, the body turns black--coals to Newcastle in
the case of San Lorenzo. When the plague was having
everything its own way, the House of Hope and Mercy in the
Jungle looked like Auschwitz or Buchenwald. We had stacks
of dead so deep and wide that a bulldozer actually stalled
trying to shove them toward a common grave. Father worked
without sleep for days, worked not only without sleep but
without saving many lives, either."
Castle's grisly tale was interrupted by the ringing of my
telephone.
"My God," said Castle, "I didn't even know the telephones
were connected yet."
I picked up the phone. "Hello?"
It was Major General Franklin Hoenikker who had called me
up. He sounded out of breath and scared stiff. "Listen!
You've got to come out to my house right away. We've got to
have a talk! It could be a very important thing in your
life!"
"Could you give me some idea?"
"Not on the phone, not on the phone. You come to my house.
You come right away! Please!"
"All right."
"I'm not kidding you. This is a really important thing in
your life. This is the most important thing ever." He hung
up.
"What was that all about?" asked Castle.
"I haven't got the slightest idea. Frank Hoenikker wants to
see me right away."
"Take your time. Relax. He's a moron." "He said it was
important." "How does he know what's important? I could
carve a better
man out of a banana."
"Well, finish your story anyway." "Where was I?" "The
bubonic plague. The bulldozer was stalled by corpses." "Oh,
yes. Anyway, one sleepless night I stayed up with Father
while he worked. It was all we could do to find a live
patient to treat. In bed after bed after bed we found dead
people.
"And Father started giggling," Castle continued.
"He couldn't stop. He walked out into the night with his

flashlight. He was still giggling. He was making the
flashlight beam dance over all the dead people stacked
outside. He put his hand on my head, and do you know what
that marvelous man said to me?" asked Castle.
"Nope."
"'Son,' my father said to me, 'someday this will all be
yours.'"
Cat's Cradle 74
I went to Frank's house in San Lorenzo's one taxicab.
We passed through scenes of hideous want. We climbed the
slope of Mount McCabe. The air grew cooler. There was mist.
Frank's house had once been the home of Nestor Aamons,
father of Mona, architect of the House of Hope and Mercy in
the Jungle.
Aamons had designed it.
It straddled a waterfall; had a terrace cantilevered out
into the mist rising from the fall. It was a cunning
lattice of very light steel posts and beams. The
interstices of the lattice were variously open, chinked
with native stone, glazed, or curtained by sheets of canvas.
The effect of the house was not so much to enclose as to
announce that a man had been whimsically busy there.
A servant greeted me politely and told me that Frank wasn't
home yet. Frank was expected at any moment. Frank had left
orders to the effect that I was to be made happy and
comfortable, and that I was to stay for supper and the
night. The servant, who introduced himself as Stanley, was
the first plump San Lorenzan I had seen.
Stanley led me to my room; led me around the heart of the
house, down a staircase of living stone, a staircase
sheltered or exposed by steel-framed rectangles at random.
My bed was a foam- rubber slab on a stone shelf, a shelf of
living stone. The walls of my chamber were canvas. Stanley
demonstrated how I might roll them up or down, as I pleased.
I asked Stanley if anybody else was home, and he told me
that only Newt was. Newt, he said, was out on the
cantilevered terrace, painting a picture. Angela, he said,
had gone sightseeing to the House of Hope and Mercy in the
Jungle.
I went out onto the giddy terrace that straddled the
waterfall and found little Newt asleep in a yellow
butterfly chair.
The painting on which Newt had been working was set on an
easel next to the aluminum railing. The painting was framed
in a misty view of sky, sea, and valley.
Newt's painting was small and black and warty.
It consisted of scratches made in a black, gummy impasto.

The scratches formed a sort of spider's web, and I wondered
if they might not be the sticky nets of human futility hung
up on a moonless night to dry.
I did not wake up the midget who had made this dreadful
thing. I smoked, listening to imagined voices in the water
sounds. What awakened little Newt was an explosion far away
below. It
caromed up the valley and went to God. It was a cannon on
the water front of Bolivar, Frank's major-domo told me. It
was fired every day at five.
Little Newt stirred.
While still half-snoozing, he put his black, painty hands
to his mouth and chin, leaving black smears there. He
rubbed his eyes and made black smears around them, too.
it."
"Hello," he said to me, sleepily. "Hello," I said. "I like
your painting." "You see what it is?" "I suppose it means
something different to everyone who sees
"It's a cat's cradle." "Aha," I said. "Very good. The
scratches are string. Right?" "One of the oldest games
there is, cat's cradle. Even the
Eskimos know it." "You don't say."
"For maybe a hundred thousand years or more, grownups have
been waving tangles of string in their children's faces."
"Um."
Newt remained curled in the chair. He held out his painty
hands as though a cat's cradle were strung between them.
"No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat's cradle is nothing
but a bunch
of X's between somebody's hands, and little kids look and
look and look at all those X's . . ."
"And?" "_No damn cat, and no damn cradle_."
Give My Regards to Albert Schweitzer 75
And then Angela Hoenikker Conners, Newt's beanpole sister,
came in with Julian Castle, father of Philip, and founder
of the House of Hope and Mercy in the Jungle. Castle wore a
baggy white linen suit and a string tie. He had a scraggly
mustache. He was bald. He was scrawny. He was a saint, I
think.
He introduced himself to Newt and to me on the cantilevered
terrace. He forestalled all references to his possible
saintliness by talking out of the corner of his mouth like
a movie gangster.
"I understand you are a follower of Albert Schweitzer," I
said to him.
"At a distance . . ." He gave a criminal sneer. "I've never
met the gentleman."

"He must surely know of your work, just as you know of
his." "Maybe and maybe not. You ever see him?" "No." "You
ever expect to see him?"
"Someday maybe I will."
"Well," said Julian Castle, "in case you run across Dr.
Schweitzer in your travels, you might tell him that he is
_not_ my hero." He lit a big cigar.
When the cigar was going good and hot he pointed its red
end at me. "You can tell him he isn't my hero," he said,
"but you can also tell him that, thanks to him, Jesus
Christ _is_."
"I think he'll be glad to hear it."
"I don't give a damn if he is or not. This is something
between Jesus and me."
Julian Castle Agrees with Newt 76 that Everything Is
Meaningless
Julian Castle and Angela went to Newt's painting. Castle
made a pinhole of a curled index finger, squinted at the
painting through it.
"What do you think of it?" I asked him. "It's _black_. What
is it--hell?" "It means whatever it means," said Newt.
"Then it's hell," snarled Castle.
"I was told a moment ago that it was a cat's cradle," I
said. "Inside information always helps," said Castle. "I
don't think it's very nice," Angela complained. "I think
it's ugly, but I don't know anything about modern art.
Sometimes I wish Newt would take some lessons, so he could
know for sure if he was doing something or not."
"Self-taught, are you?" Julian Castle asked Newt. "Isn't
everybody?" Newt inquired. "Very good answer." Castle was
respectful. I undertook to explain the deeper significance
of the cat's
cradle, since Newt seemed disinclined to go through that
song and dance again.
And Castle nodded sagely. "So this is a picture of the
meaninglessness of it all! I couldn't agree more."
"Do you _really_ agree?" I asked. "A minute ago you said
something about Jesus."
"Who?" said, Castle. "Jesus Christ?" "Oh," said Castle.
"_Him_." He shrugged. "People have to talk
about something just to keep their voice boxes in working
order, so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's
ever anything really meaningful to say."
"I see." I knew I wasn't going to have an easy time writing
a popular article about him. I was going to have to
concentrate on his saintly deeds and ignore entirely the
satanic things he thought and said.

"You may quote me:" he said. "Man is vile, and man makes
nothing worth making, knows nothing worth knowing."
He leaned down and he shook little Newt's painty hand.
"Right?"
Newt nodded, seeming to suspect momentarily that the case
had been a little overstated. "Right."
And then the saint marched to Newt's painting and took it
from its easel. He beamed at us all. "Garbage--like
everything else."
And he threw the painting off the cantilevered terrace. It
sailed out on an updraft, stalled, boomeranged back, sliced
into the waterfall.
There was nothing little Newt could say.
Angela spoke first. "You've got paint all over your face,
honey. Go wash it off."
Aspirin and Boko-maru 77
"Tell me, Doctor," I said to Julian Castle, "how is 'Papa'
Monzano?"
"How would I know?" "I thought you'd probably been treating
him." "We don't speak . . ." Castle smiled. "He doesn't
speak to
me, that is. The last thing he said to me, which was about
three years ago, was that the only thing that kept me off
the hook was my American citizenship."
"What have you done to offend him? You come down here and
with your own money found a free hospital for his
people . . ."
"'Papa' doesn't like the way we treat the whole patient,"
said Castle, "particularly the whole patient when he's
dying. At the House of Hope and Mercy in the Jungle, we
administer the last rites of the Bokononist Church to those
who want them."
"What are the rites like?"
"Very simple. They start with a responsive reading. You
want to respond?"
"I'm not that close to death just now, if you don't mind."
He gave me a grisly wink. "You're wise to be cautious.
People taking the last rites have a way of dying on cue. I
think we could keep you from going all the way, though, if
we didn't touch feet."
"Feet?" He told me about the Bokononist attitude relative
to feet. "That explains something I saw in the hotel." I
told him
about the two painters on the window sill.
"It works, you know," he said. "People who do that really
do feel better about each other and the world."
"Um." "_Boko-maru_." "Sir?" "That's what the foot business

is called," said Castle. "It
works. I'm grateful for things that work. Not many things
_do_ work, you know."
"I suppose not."
"I couldn't possibly run that hospital of mine if it
weren't for aspirin and _boko-maru_."
"I gather," I said, "that there are still several
Bokononists on the island, despite the laws, despite the
_hy-u-o-ook-kuh_ . . ."
He laughed. "You haven't caught on, yet?" "To what?"
"Everybody on San Lorenzo is a devout Bokononist, the _hy-u-
o-ook-kuh_ notwithstanding."
Ring of Steel 78
"When Bokonon and McCabe took over this miserable country
years ago," said Julian Castle, "they threw out the
priests. And then Bokonon, cynically and playfully,
invented a new religion."
"I know," I said.
"Well, when it became evident that no governmental or
economic reform was going to make the people much less
miserable, the religion became the one real instrument of
hope. Truth was the enemy of the people, because the truth
was so terrible, so Bokonon made it his business to provide
the people with better and better lies."
"How did he come to be an outlaw?"
"It was his own idea. He asked McCabe to outlaw him and his
religion, too, in order to give the religious life of the
people more zest, more tang. He wrote a little poem about
it, incidentally."
Castle quoted this poem, which does not appear in _The
Books of Bokonon_:
So I said good-bye to government, And I gave my reason:
That a really good religion Is a form of treason.
"Bokonon suggested the hook, too, as the proper punishment
for Bokononists," he said. "It was something he'd seen in
the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's." He winked
ghoulishly. "That was for zest, too."
"Did many people die on the hook?"
"Not at first, not at first. At first it was all make-
believe. Rumors were cunningly circulated about executions,
but no one really knew anyone who had died that way. McCabe
had a good old time making bloodthirsty threats against the
Bokononists-- which was everybody.
"And Bokonon went into cozy hiding in the jungle," Castle
continued, "where he wrote and preached all day long and
ate good things his disciples brought him.
"McCabe would organize the unemployed, which was

practically everybody, into great Bokonon hunts.
"About every six months McCabe would announce triumphantly
that Bokonon was surrounded by a ring of steel, which was
remorselessly closing in.
"And then the leaders of the remorseless ring would have to
report to McCabe, full of chagrin and apoplexy, that
Bokonon had done the impossible.
"He had escaped, had evaporated, had lived to preach
another day. Miracle!"
Why McCabe's Soul Grew Coarse 79
"McCabe and Bokonon did not succeed in raising what is
generally thought of as the standard of living," said
Castle. "The truth was that life was as short and brutish
and mean as ever.
"But people didn't have to pay as much attention to the
awful truth. As the living legend of the cruel tyrant in
the city and the gentle holy man in the jungle grew, so,
too, did the happiness of the people grow. They were all
employed full time as actors in a play they understood,
that any human being anywhere could understand and applaud."
"So life became a work of art," I marveled. "Yes. There was
only one trouble with it." "Oh?" "The drama was very tough
on the souls of the two main
actors, McCabe and Bokonon. As young men, they had been
pretty much alike, had both been half-angel, half-pirate.
"But the drama demanded that the pirate half of Bokonon and
the angel half of McCabe wither away. And McCabe and
Bokonon paid a terrible price in agony for the happiness of
the people--McCabe knowing the agony of the tyrant and
Bokonon knowing the agony of the saint. They both became,
for all practical purposes, insane."
Castle crooked the index finger of his left hand. "And
then, people really did start dying on the _hy-u-o-ook-
kuh_."
"But Bokonon was never caught?" I asked.
"McCabe never went that crazy. He never made a really
serious effort to catch Bokonon. It would have been easy to
do."
"Why didn't he catch him?"
"McCabe was always sane enough to realize that without the
holy man to war against, he himself would become
meaningless. 'Papa' Monzano understands that, too."
"Do people still die on the hook?" "It's inevitably fatal."
"I mean," I said, "does 'Papa' really have people executed
that way?" "He executes one every two years--just to keep
the pot
boiling, so to speak." He sighed, looking up at the evening

"Busy, busy, busy."
"Sir?"
"It's what we Bokononists say," he said, "when we feel lot
of mysterious things are going on."
"You?" I was amazed. "A Bokononist, too?" He gazed at me
levelly. "You, too. You'll find out."
sky. that a
The Waterfall Strainers 80
Angela and Newt were on the cantilevered terrace with
Julian Castle and me. We had cocktails. There was still no
word from Frank.
Both Angela and Newt, it appeared, were fairly heavy
drinkers. Castle told me that his days as a playboy had
cost him a kidney, and that he was unhappily compelled, per
force, to stick to ginger ale.
Angela, when she got a few drinks into her, complained of
how the world had swindled her father. "He gave so much,
and they gave him so little."
I pressed her for examples of the world's stinginess and
got some exact numbers. "General Forge and Foundry gave him
a forty- five-dollar bonus for every patent his work led
to," she said. "That's the same patent bonus they paid
anybody in the company." She shook her head mournfully.
"Forty-five dollars--and just think what some of those
patents were for!"
"Um," I said. "I assume he got a salary, too."
"The most he ever made was twenty-eight thousand dollars a
year."
"I'd say that was pretty good."
She got very huffy. "A lot, sometimes." "You know Dr. Breed
than Father did?" "That was certainly
"You know what movie stars make?" made ten thousand more
dollars a year an injustice."
"I'm sick of injustice."
She was so shrilly exercised that I changed the subject. I
asked Julian Castle what he thought had become of the
painting he had thrown down the waterfall.
"There's a little village at the bottom," he told me. "Five
or ten shacks, I'd say. It's 'Papa' Monzano's birthplace,
incidentally. The waterfall ends in a big stone bowl there.
"The villagers have a net made out of chicken wire
stretched across a notch in the bowl. Water spills out
through the notch into a stream."
"And Newt's painting is in the net now, you think?" I asked.
"This is a poor country--in case you haven't noticed," said
Castle. "Nothing stays in the net very long. I imagine
Newt's painting is being dried in the sun by now, along

with the butt of my cigar. Four square feet of gummy
canvas, the four milled and mitered sticks of the
stretcher, some tacks, too, and a cigar. All in all, a
pretty nice catch for some poor, poor man."
"I could just scream sometimes," said Angela, "when I think
about how much some people get paid and how little they paid
Father--and how much he gave." She was on the edge of a
crying
jag.
"Don't cry," Newt begged her gently. "Sometimes I can't
help it," she said. "Go get your clarinet," urged Newt.
"That always helps." I thought at first that this was a
fairly comical suggestion.
But then, from Angela's reaction, I learned that the
suggestion was serious and practical.
"When I get this way," she said to Castle and me,
"sometimes it's the only thing that helps."
But she was too shy to get her clarinet right away. We had
to keep begging her to play, and she had to have two more
drinks.
"She's really just wonderful," little Newt promised. "I'd
love to hear you play," said Castle. "All right," said
Angela finally as she rose unsteadily. "All
right--I will." When she was out of earshot, Newt
apologized for her., "She's
had a tough time. She needs a rest." "She's been sick?" I
asked. "Her husband is mean as hell to her," said Newt. He
showed us
that he hated Angela's handsome young husband, the
extremely successful Harrison C. Conners, President of
Fabri-Tek. "He hardly ever comes home--and, when he does,
he's drunk and generally covered with lipstick."
"From the way she talked," I said, "I thought it was a very
happy marriage."
Little Newt held his hands six inches apart and he spread
his fingers. "See the cat? See the cradle?"
A White Bride for the Son of a Pullman Porter 81
I did not know what was going to come from Angela's
clarinet. No one could have imagined what was going to come
from there.
I expected something pathological, but I did not expect the
depth, the violence, and the almost intolerable beauty of
the disease.
Angela moistened and warmed the mouthpiece, but did not
blow a single preliminary note. Her eyes glazed over, and
her long, bony fingers twittered idly over the noiseless
keys.

I waited anxiously, and I remembered what Marvin Breed had
told me--that Angela's one escape from her bleak life with
her father was to her room, where she would lock the door
and play along with phonograph records.
Newt now put a long-playing record on the large phonograph
in the room off the terrace. He came back with the record's
slipcase, which he handed to me.
The record was called _Cat House Piano_. It was of
unaccompanied piano by Meade Lux Lewis.
Since Angela, in order to deepen her trance, let Lewis play
his first number without joining him, I read some of what
the jacket said about Lewis.
"Born in Louisville, Ky., in 1905," I read, "Mr. Lewis
didn't turn to music until he had passed his 16th birthday
and then the instrument provided by his father was the
violin. A year later young Lewis chanced to hear Jimmy
Yancey play the piano. 'This,' as Lewis recalls, 'was the
real thing.' Soon," I read, "Lewis was teaching himself to
play the boogie-woogie piano, absorbing all that was
possible from the older Yancey, who remained until his
death a close friend and idol to Mr. Lewis. Since his
father was a Pullman porter," I read, "the Lewis family
lived near the railroad. The rhythm of the trains soon
became a natural pattern to young Lewis and he composed the
boogie-woogie solo, now a classic of its kind, which became
known as 'Honky Tonk Train Blues.'"
I looked up from my reading. The first number on the record
was done. The phonograph needle was now scratching its slow
way across the void to the second. The second number, I
learned from the jacket, was "Dragon Blues."
Meade Lux Lewis played four bars alone-and then Angela
Hoenikker joined in.
Her eyes were closed. I was flabbergasted. She was great.
She improvised around the music of the Pullman porter's son;
went from liquid lyricism to rasping lechery to the shrill
skittishness of a frightened child, to a heroin nightmare.
Her glissandi spoke of heaven and hell and all that lay
between.
Such music from such a woman could only be a case of
schizophrenia or demonic possession.
My hair stood on end, as though Angela were rolling on the
floor, foaming at the mouth, and babbling fluent Babylonian.
When the music was done, I shrieked at Julian Castle, who
was transfixed, too, "My God--life! Who can understand even
one little minute of it?"
"Don't try," he said. "Just pretend you understand."
"That's--that's very good advice." I went limp. Castle

quoted another poem:
Tiger got to hunt, Bird got to fly; Man got to sit and
wonder, "Why, why, why?" Tiger got to sleep, Bird got to
land; Man got to tell himself he understand.
"What's that from?" I asked. "What could it possibly be
from but _The Books of Bokonon?_" "I'd love to see a copy
sometime." "Copies are hard to come by," said Castle. "They
aren't
printed. They're made by hand. And, of course, there is no
such thing as a completed copy, since Bokonon is adding
things every day."
Little Newt snorted. "Religion!" "Beg your pardon?" Castle
said. "See the cat?" asked Newt. "See the cradle?"
Zah-mah-ki-bo 82
Major General Franklin Hoenikker didn't appear for supper.
He telephoned, and insisted on talking to me and to no one
else. He told me that he was keeping a vigil by "Papa's"
bed; that "Papa" was dying in great pain. Frank sounded
scared and lonely.
"Look," I said, "why don't I go back to my hotel, and you
and I can get together later, when this crisis is over."
"No, no, no. You stay right there! I want you to be where I
can get hold of you right away!" He was panicky about my
slipping
out of his grasp. Since I couldn't account for his interest
in me, I began to feel panic, too.
"Could you give me some idea what you want to see me
about?" I asked.
"Not over the telephone." "Something about your father?"
"Something about _you_." "Something I've done?" "Something
you're _going_ to do." I heard a chicken clucking in the
background of Frank's end
of the line. I heard a door open, and xylophone music came
from some chamber. The music was again "When Day Is Done."
And then the door was closed, and I couldn't hear the music
any more.
"I'd appreciate it if you'd give me some small hint of what
you expect me to do--so I can sort of get set," I said.
"_Zah-mah-ki-bo_." "What?" "It's a Bokononist word." "I
don't know any Bokononist words." "Julian Castle's there?"
"Yes." "Ask him," said Frank. "I've got to go now." He hung
up. So I
asked Julian Castle what _zah-mah-ki-bo_ meant. "You want a
simple answer or a whole answer?" "Let's start with a
simple one." "Fate--inevitable destiny."
Dr. Schlichter von Koenigswald 83 Approaches the Break-even
Point

"Cancer," said Julian Castle "Papa" was dying in pain.
"Cancer of what?"
"Cancer of about everything. reviewing stand today?"
"He sure did," said Angela.
at dinner, when I told him that You say he collapsed on the
"That was the effect of drugs," Castle declared. "He's at
the point now where drugs and pain just about balance out.
More drugs would kill him."
"I'd kill myself, I think," murmured Newt. He was sitting
on a sort of folding high chair he took with him when he
went visiting. It was made of aluminum tubing and canvas.
"It beats sitting on a dictionary, an atlas, and a
telephone book," he'd said when he erected it.
"That's what Corporal McCabe did, of course," said Castle.
"He named his major-domo as his successor, then he shot
himself."
"Cancer, too?" I asked.
"I can't be sure; I don't think so, though. Unrelieved
villainy just wore him out, is my guess. That was all
before my time."
"This certainly is a cheerful conversation," said Angela.
"I think everybody would agree that these are cheerful
times," said Castle.
"Well," I said to him, "I'd think you would have more
reasons for being cheerful than most, doing what you are
doing with your life."
"I once had a yacht, too, you know." "I don't follow you."
"Having a yacht is a reason for being more cheerful than
most, too." "If you aren't 'Papa's' doctor," I said, "who
is?" "One of my staff, a Dr. Schlichter von Koenigswald."
"A German?" "Vaguely. He was in the S.S. for fourteen
years. He was a
camp physician at Auschwitz for six of those years." "Doing
penance at the House of Hope and Mercy is he?" "Yes," said
Castle, "and making great strides, too, saving
lives right and left." "Good for him."
"Yes. If he keeps going at his present rate, working night
and day, the number of people he's saved will equal the
number of people he let die--in the year 3010."
So there's another member of my _karass_: Dr. Schlichter
von Koenigswald.
Blackout 84
Three hours after supper Frank still hadn't come home.
Julian Castle excused himself and went back to the House of
Hope and Mercy in the Jungle.
Angela and Newt and I sat on the cantilevered terrace. The
lights of Bolivar were lovely below us. There was a great,

illuminated cross on top of the administration building of
Monzano Airport. It was motor-driven, turning slowly,
boxing the compass with electric piety.
There were other bright places on the island, too, to the
north of us. Mountains prevented our seeing them directly,
but we could see in the sky their balloons of light. I
asked Stanley, Frank Hoenikker's major-domo, to identify
for me the sources of the auroras.
He pointed them out, counterclockwise. "House of Hope and
Mercy in the Jungle, 'Papa's' palace, and Fort Jesus."
"Fort Jesus?" "The training camp for our soldiers." "It's
named after Jesus Christ?" "Sure. Why not?" There was a new
balloon of light growing quickly to the
north. Before I could ask what it was, it revealed itself
as headlights topping a ridge. The headlights were coming
toward us. They belonged to a convoy.
The convoy was composed of five American-made army trucks.
Machine gunners manned ring mounts on the tops of the cabs.
The convoy stopped in Frank's driveway. Soldiers dismounted
at once. They set to work on the grounds, digging foxholes
and machine-gun pits. I went out with Frank's major-domo to
ask the officer in charge what was going on.
"We have been ordered to protect the next President of San
Lorenzo," said the officer in island dialect.
"He isn't here now," I informed him.
"I don't know anything about it," he said. "My orders are
to dig in here. That's all I know."
I told Angela and Newt about it. "Do you think there's any
real danger?" Angela asked me. "I'm a stranger here
myself," I said. At that moment there was a power failure.
Every electric
light in San Lorenzo went out.
A Pack of Foma 85
Frank's servants brought us gasoline lanterns; told us that
power failures were common in San Lorenzo, that there was
no cause for alarm. I found that disquiet was hard for me
to set aside, however, since Frank had spoken of my _zah-
mah-ki-bo_.
He had made me feel as though my own free will were as
irrelevant as the free will of a piggy-wig arriving at the
Chicago stockyards.
I remembered again the stone angel in ilium.
And I listened to the soldiers outside--to their clinking,
chunking, murmuring labors.
I was unable to concentrate on the conversation of Angela
and Newt, though they got onto a fairly interesting
subject. They told me that their father had had an

identical twin. They had never met him. His name was
Rudolph. The last they had heard of him, he was a music-box
manufacturer in Zurich, Switzerland.
"Father hardly ever mentioned him," said Angela. "Father
hardly ever mentioned anybody," Newt declared.
There was a sister of the old man, too, they told name was
Celia. She raised giant schnauzers on Shelter
me. Her Island, New
little
York.
Newt.
"She always sends a Christmas card," said Angela. "With a
picture of a giant schnauzer on it," said
"It sure is funny how different people in different
families turn out," Angela observed.
"That's very true and well said," I agreed. I excused
myself from the glittering company, and I asked Stanley,
the major-domo, if there happened to be a copy of _The
Books of Bokonon_ about the house.
Stanley pretended not to know what I was talking about. And
then he grumbled that _The Books of Bokonon_ were filth.
And then he insisted that anyone who read them should die
on the hook. And then he brought me a copy from Frank's
bedside table.
It was a heavy thing, about the size of an unabridged
dictionary. It was written by hand. I trundled it off to my
bedroom, to my slab of rubber on living rock.
There was no index, so my search for the implications of
_zah-mah-ki-bo_ was difficult; was, in fact, fruitless that
night. I learned some things, but they were scarcely
helpful. I
learned of the Bokononist cosmogony, for instance, wherein
_Borasisi_, the sun, held _Pabu_, the moon, in his arms,
and hoped that _Pabu_ would bear him a fiery child.
But poor _Pabu_ gave birth to children that were cold, that
did not burn; and _Borasisi_ threw them away in disgust.
These were the planets, who circled their terrible father
at a safe distance.
Then poor _Pabu_ herself was cast away, and she went to
live with her favorite child, which was Earth. Earth was
_Pabu's_ favorite because it had people on it; and the
people looked up at her and loved her and sympathized.
And what opinion did Bokonon hold of his own cosmogony?
"_Foma!_ Lies!" he wrote. "A pack of _foma!_"
Two Little Jugs 86
It's hard to believe that I slept at all, but I must have--
for, otherwise, how could I have found myself awakened by a

series of bangs and a flood of light?
I rolled out of bed at the first bang and ran to the heart
of the house in the brainless ecstasy of a volunteer
fireman.
I found myself rushing headlong at Newt and Angela, who
were fleeing from beds of their own.
We all stopped short, sheepishly analyzing the nightmarish
sounds around us, sorting them out as coming from a radio,
from an electric dishwasher, from a pump--all restored to
noisy life by the return of electric power.
The three of us awakened enough to realize that there was
humor in our situation, that we had reacted in amusingly
human ways to a situation that seemed mortal but wasn't.
And to demonstrate my mastery over my illusory fate, I
turned the radio off.
We all chuckled.
And we all vied, in saving face, to be the greatest student
of human nature, the person with the quickest sense of
humor.
Newt was the quickest; he pointed out to me that I had my
passport and my billfold and my wristwatch in my hands. I
had no idea what I'd grabbed in the face of death--didn't
know I'd grabbed anything.
I countered hilariously by asking Angela and Newt why it
was that they both carried little Thermos jugs, identical
red-and-gray jugs capable of holding about three cups of
coffee.
It was news to them both that they were carrying such jugs.
They were shocked to find them in their hands.
They were spared making an explanation by more banging
outside. I was bound to find out what the banging was right
away; and, with a brazenness as unjustified as my earlier
panic, I investigated, found Frank Hoenikker outside
tinkering with a motor-generator set mounted on a truck.
The generator was the new source of our electricity. The
gasoline motor that drove it was backfiring and smoking.
Frank was trying to fix it.
He had the heavenly Mona with him. She was watching him, as
always, gravely.
"Boy, have I got news for you!" he yelled at me, and he led
the way back into the house.
Angela and Newt were still in the living room, but,
somehow, somewhere, they had managed to get rid of their
peculiar Thermos
jugs.
The contents of those jugs, of course, were parts of the
legacies from Dr. Felix Hoenikker, were parts of the

_wampeter_ of my _karass_, were chips of _ice-nine_.
Frank took me aside. "How awake are you?" "As awake as I
ever was." "I hope you're really wide awake, because
talk right now." "Start talking."
"Let's get some privacy." Frank told Mona comfortable.
"We'll call you if we need you."
we've got to have a
to make herself
I looked at Mona, meltingly, and I thought that I had never
needed anyone as much as I needed her.
The Cut of My Jib 81
About this Franklin Hoenikker--the pinch-faced child spoke
with the timbre and conviction of a kazoo. I had heard it
said in the Army that such and such a man spoke like a man
with a paper
rectum. Such a man was General Hoenikker. Poor Frank had
had almost no experience in talking to anyone, having spent
a furtive childhood as Secret Agent X-9.
Now, hoping to be hearty and persuasive, he said tinny
things to me, things like, "I like the cut of your jib!"
and "I want to talk cold turkey to you, man to man!"
And he took me down to what he called his "den" in order
that we might, ". . . call a spade a spade, and let the
chips fall where they may."
So we went down steps cut into a cliff and into a natural
cave that was beneath and behind the waterfall. There were
a couple of drawing tables down there; three pale, bare-
boned Scandinavian chairs; a bookcase containing books on
architecture, books in German, French, Finnish, Italian,
English.
All was lit by electric lights, lights that pulsed with the
panting of the motor-generator set.
And the most striking thing about the cave was that there
were pictures painted on the walls, painted with
kindergarten boldness, painted with the flat clay, earth,
and charcoal colors of very early man. I did not have to
ask Frank how old the cave paintings were. I was able to
date them by their subject. The paintings were not of
mammoths or saber-toothed tigers or ithyphallic cave bears.
The paintings treated endlessly the aspects of Mona Aamons
Monzano as a little girl.
"This--this is where Mona's father worked?" I asked.
"That's right. He was the Finn who designed the House of
Hope and Mercy in the Jungle."
"I know." "That isn't what I brought you down here to talk
about." "This is something about your father?" "This is
about _you_." Frank put his hand on my shoulder and

he looked me in the eye. The effect was dismaying. Frank
meant to inspire camaraderie, but his head looked to me
like a bizarre little owl, blinded by light and perched on
a tall white post.
"Maybe you'd better come to the point."
"There's no sense in beating around the bush," he said.
"I'm a pretty good judge of character, if I do say so
myself, and I like the cut of your jib."
"Thank you." "I think you and I could really hit it off."
"I have no doubt of it." 'We've both got things that mesh."
I was grateful when he took his hand from my shoulder. He
meshed the fingers of his hands like gear teeth. One hand
represented him, I suppose, and the other represented me.
"We need each other." He wiggled his fingers to show me how
gears worked.
I was silent for some time, though outwardly friendly. "Do
you get my meaning?" asked Frank at last. "You and I--we're
going to _do_ something together?" "That's right!" Frank
clapped his hands. "You're a worldly
person, used to meeting the public; and I'm a technical
person, used to working behind the scenes, making things
go."
"How can you possibly know what kind of a person I am?
We've just met."
"Your clothes, the way you talk." He put his hand on my
shoulder again. "I like the cut of your jib!"
"So you said."
Frank was frantic for me to complete his thought, to do it
enthusiastically, but I was still at sea. "Am I to
understand that . . . that you are offering me some kind of
job here, here in San Lorenzo?"
He clapped his hands. He was delighted. "That's right! What
would you say to a hundred thousand dollars a year?"
"Good God!" I cried. "What would I have to do for that?"
"Practically nothing. And you'd drink out of gold goblets
every night and eat off of gold own."
"What's the job?" "President of the Republic
Why Frank Couldn't Be President
"Me? President?" I gasped. "Who else is there?" "Nuts!"
"Don't say no until you've
watched me anxiously. "No!"
plates and have a palace all your of San Lorenzo."
88
really thought about it." Frank
"You haven't really thought about it." "Enough to know it's
crazy." Frank made his fingers into gears again. "We'd work
_together_. I'd be backing you up all the time."

too."
"Good. So, if I got plugged from the front you'd get it,
"Plugged?" "Shot! Assassinated!" Frank was mystified. "Why
would anybody shoot you?" "So he could get to be
President." Frank shook his head. "Nobody in San Lorenzo
wants to be
President," he promised me. "It's against their religion."
"It's against _your_ religion, too? I thought you were going
to be the next President." "I . . ." he said, and found it
hard to go on. He looked
haunted. "You what?" I asked.
He faced the sheet of water that curtained the cave.
"Maturity, the way I understand it," he told me, "is
knowing what your limitations are."
He wasn't far from Bokonon in defining maturity.
"Maturity," Bokonon tells us, "is a bitter disappointment
for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to
remedy anything."
"I know I've got limitations," Frank continued. "They're
the same limitations my father had."
"Oh?"
"I've got a lot of very good ideas, just the way did,"
Frank told me and the waterfall, "but he was no facing the
public, and neither am I."
Duffle 89
my father good at
"You'll take the job?" Frank inquired anxiously. "No," I
told him. "Do you know anybody who _might_ want the job?"
Frank was
giving a classic illustration of what Bokonon calls
_duffle_. _Duffle_, in the Bokononist sense, is the destiny
of thousands upon thousands of persons when placed in the
hands of a _stuppa_. A _stuppa_ is a fogbound child.
I laughed. "Something's funny?"
"Pay no attention when I laugh," I begged him. "I'm a
notorious pervert in that respect."
"Are you laughing at me?" I shook my head. "No." "Word of
honor?" "Word of honor."
"People used to make fun of me all the time." "You must
have imagined that." "They used to yell things at me. I
didn't imagine _that_." "People are unkind sometimes
without meaning to be," I
suggested. I wouldn't have given him my word of honor on
that. "You know what they used to yell at me?" "No." "They
used to yell at me, 'Hey, X-9, where you going?'" "That
doesn't seem too bad."
"That's what they used to call me," said Frank in sulky

reminiscence, "'Secret Agent X-9.'"
I didn't tell him I knew that already. "'Where are you
going, X-9?' "Frank echoed again. I imagined what the
taunters had been like, imagined where
Fate had eventually goosed and chivvied them to. The wits
who had yelled at Frank were surely nicely settled in
deathlike jobs at Genera! Forge and Foundry, at Ilium Power
and Light, at the Telephone Company. .
And here, by God, was Secret Agent X-9, a Major General,
offering to make me king . . . in a cave that was curtained
by a tropical waterfall.
"They really would have been surprised if I'd stopped and
told them where I was going."
"You mean you had some premonition you'd end up here?" It
was a Bokononist question.
"I was going to Jack's Hobby Shop," he said, with no sense
of anticlimax.
"Oh."
"They all knew I was going there, but they didn't know what
really went on there. They would have been really
surprised-- especially the girls--if they'd found out what
_really_ went on. The girls didn't think I knew anything
about girls."
"What _really_ went on?"
"I was screwing Jack's wife every day. That's how come I
fell asleep all the time in high school. That's how come I
never achieved my full potential."
He roused himself from this sordid recollection. "Come on.
Be president of San Lorenzo. You'd be real good at it, with
your personality. Please?"
Only One Catch 90
And the time of night and the cave and the waterfall--and
the stone angel in Ilium . . .
And 250,000 cigarettes and 3,000 quarts of booze, and two
wives and no wife . . .
And no love waiting for me anywhere . . . And the listless
life of an ink-stained hack . . . And _Pabu_, the moon, and
_Borasisi_, the sun, and
children . . . All things conspired to form one cosmic
_vin-dit_,
their
one mighty shove into Bokononism, into the belief that God
was running my
life and that He had work for me to do. And, inwardly, I
_sarooned_, which is to say that I acquiesced to the
seeming demands of my _vin-dit_.
Inwardly, I agreed to become the next President of San

Lorenzo.
Outwardly, I was still guarded, suspicious. "There must be
a catch," I hedged.
"There isn't." "There'll be an election?" "There never has
been. We'll
President is." "And nobody will object?" "Nobody objects to
anything.
just announce who the new
They aren't interested. They
don't care." "There _has_ to be a catch!" "There's kind of
one," Frank admitted. "I knew it!" I began to shrink from
my _vin-dit_. "What is
it? What's the catch?" "Well, it isn't really a catch,
because you don't have to do
it, if you don't want to. It _would_ be a good idea,
though." "Let's hear this great idea." "Well, if you're
going to be President, I think you really
ought to marry Mona. But you don't have to, if you don't
want to. You're the boss."
her."
"She would _have_ me?" "If she'd have me, she'd have you.
All you have to do is ask
"Why should she say yes?"
"It's predicted in _The Books of Bokonon_ that she'll marry
the next President of San Lorenzo," said Frank.
Mona 91
Frank brought Mona to her father's cave and left us alone.
We had difficulty in speaking at first. I was shy. Her gown
was diaphanous. Her gown was azure. It was a simple gown,
caught lightly at the waist by a gossamer thread. All else
was shaped by Mona herself. Her breasts were like
pomegranates or what you will, but like nothing so much as
a young woman's breasts.
Her feet were all but bare. Her toenails were exquisitely
manicured. Her scanty sandals were gold.
"How--how do you do?" I asked. My heart was pounding. Blood
boiled in my ears.
"It is not possible to make a mistake," she assured me. I
did not know that this was a customary greeting given by
all Bokononists when meeting a shy person. So, I responded
with a feverish discussion of whether it was possible to
make a mistake or not.
"My God, you have no idea how many mistakes I've already
made. You're looking at the world's champion mistake-
maker," I blurted--and so on. "Do you have any idea what
Frank just said to me?"
"About _me?_" "About everything, but _especially_ about

you." "He told you that you could have me, if you wanted."
"Yes." "That's true." "I--I--I . . ." "Yes?" "I don't know
what to say next." "_Boko-maru_ would help," she suggested.
"What?" "Take off your shoes," she commanded. And she
removed her
sandals with the utmost grace.
I am a man of the world, having had, by a reckoning I once
made, more than fifty-three women. I can say that I have
seen women undress themselves in every way that it can be
done. I have watched the curtains part in every variation
of the final act.
And yet, the one woman who made me groan involuntarily did
no more than remove her sandals.
I tried to untie my shoes. No bridegroom ever did worse. I
got one shoe off, but knotted the other one tight. I tore a
thumbnail on the knot; finally ripped off the shoe without
untying it.
Then off came my socks.
Mona was already sitting on the floor, her legs extended,
her round arms thrust behind her for support, her head
tilted back, her eyes closed.
It was up to me now to complete my first--my first--my
first, Great God . . .
_Boko-maru_.
On the Poet's Celebration of His First Boko-maru 92
These are not Bokonon's words. They are mine.
Sweet wraith, Invisible mist of . . . I am-- My soul--
Wraith lovesick O'erlong alone: Wouldst another Long have I
Advised thee ill As to where two souls Might tryst. My
soles, my soles! My soul, my soul, Go there, Sweet soul; Be
kissed.
o'erlong, sweet soul meet?
Mmmmmmm.
How I Almost Lost My Mona 93
"Do you find it easier to talk to me now?" Mona inquired.
"As though I'd known you for a thousand years," I
confessed. I felt like crying. "I love you, Mona."
"I love you." She said it simply. "What a fool Frank was!"
"Oh?" "To give you up."
"He did not love me. He was going to marry me only because
'Papa' wanted him to. He loves another."
"Who?" "A woman he knew in Ilium." The lucky woman had to
be the wife of the owner of Jack's
Hobby Shop. "He told you?" "Tonight, when he freed me to
marry you." "Mona?" "Yes?" "Is--is there anyone else in
your life?" She was puzzled. "Many," she said at last.
"That you _love?_" "I love everyone." "As--as much as me?"

"Yes." She seemed to I got off the floor,
shoes and socks back on. "I suppose you--you perform--you
do what we just did with--
with other people?" "_Boko-maru?_" "_Boko-maru_."
"Of course."
"I don't want you to do it with anybody but me from now
on," I declared.
Tears filled her eyes. She adored her promiscuity; was
angered that I should try to make her feel shame. "I make
people happy. Love is good, not bad."
have no idea that this might bother me. sat in a chair, and
started putting my
"As your husband, I'll want all your love for myself." She
stared at me with widening eyes. "A _sin-wat!_" "What was
that?" "A _sin-wat!_" she cried. "A man who wants all of
somebody's
love. That's very bad." "In the case of marriage, I think
it's a very good thing.
It's the only thing." She was still on the floor, and I,
now with my shoes and
socks back on, was standing. I felt very tall, though I'm
not very tall; and I felt very strong, though I'm not very
strong; and I was a respectful stranger to my own voice. My
voice had a metallic authority that was new.
As I went on talking in ball-peen tones, it dawned on me
what was happening, what was happening already. I was
already starting to rule.
I told Mona that I had seen her performing a sort of
vertical _boko-maru_ with a pilot on the reviewing stand
shortly after my arrival. "You are to have nothing more to
do with him," I told her. "What is his name?"
"I don't even know," she whispered. She was looking down
now. "And what about young Philip Castle?" "You mean _boko-
maru?_" "I mean anything and everything. As I understand
it, you two
grew up together." "Yes."
"Bokonon tutored you both?" "Yes." The recollection made
her radiant again. "I suppose there was plenty of _boko-
maruing_ in those days." "Oh, yes!" she said happily. "You
aren't to see him any more, either. Is that clear?" "No."
"No?" "I will not marry a _sin-wat_." She stood. "Good-
bye." "Good-bye?" I was crushed. "Bokonon tells us it is
very wrong not to love everyone
exactly the same. What does _your_ religion say?" "I--I
don't have one." "I _do_." I had stopped ruling. "I see you
do," I said. "Good-bye, man-with-no-religion." She went to
the stone

staircase. "Mona . . ."
She stopped. "Yes?" "Could I have your religion, if I
wanted it?" "Of course." "I want it." "Good. I love you."
"And I love you," I sighed.
The Highest Mountain 94
So I became betrothed at dawn to the most beautiful woman
in the world. And I agreed to become the next President of
San Lorenzo.
"Papa" wasn't dead yet, and it was Frank's feeling that I
should get "Papa's" blessing, if possible. So, as
_Borasisi_, the sun, came up, Frank and I drove to "Papa's"
castle in a Jeep we commandeered from the troops guarding
the next President.
Mona stayed at Frank's. I kissed her sacredly, and she went
to sacred sleep.
Over the mountains Frank and I went, through groves of wild
coffee trees, with the flamboyant sunrise on our right.
It was in the sunrise that the cetacean majesty of the
highest mountain on the island, of Mount McCabe, made
itself known to me. It was a fearful hump, a blue whale,
with one queer stone plug on its back for a peak. In scale
with a whale, the plug might have been the stump of a
snapped harpoon, and it seemed so unrelated to the rest of
the mountain that I asked Frank if it had been built by men.
He told me that it was a natural formation. Moreover, he
declared that no man, as far as he knew, had ever been to
the top of Mount McCabe.
"It _doesn't_ look very tough to climb," I commented. Save
for the plug at the top, the mountain presented inclines no
more forbidding than courthouse steps. And the plug itself,
from a distance at any rate, seemed conveniently laced with
ramps and ledges.
"Is it sacred or something?" I asked. "Maybe it was once.
But not since Bokonon." "Then why hasn't anybody climbed
it?" "Nobody's felt like it yet." "Maybe I'll climb it."
"Go ahead. Nobody's stopping you." We rode in silence.
"What _is_ sacred to Bokononists?" I asked after a while.
"Not even God, as near as I can tell." "Nothing?" "Just one
thing." I made some guesses. "The ocean? The sun?" "Man,"
said Frank. "That's all. Just man."
I See the Hook 95
We came at last to the castle. It was low and black and
cruel. Antique cannons still lolled on the battlements.
Vines and
bird nests clogged the crenels, the machicolations, and the
balistrariae.
Its parapets to the north were continuous with the scarp of

a monstrous precipice that fell six hundred feet straight
down to the lukewarm sea.
It posed the question posed by all such stone piles: how
had puny men moved stones so big? And, like all such stone
piles, it answered the question itself. Dumb terror had
moved those stones so big.
The castle was built according to the wish of Tum-bumwa,
Emperor of San Lorenzo, a demented man, an escaped slave.
Tum- bumwa was said to have found its design in a child's
picture book.
A gory book it must have been.
Just before we reached the palace gate the ruts carried us
through a rustic arch made of two telephone poles and a
beam that spanned them.
Hanging from the middle of the beam was a huge iron hook.
There was a sign impaled on the hook.
"This hook," the sign proclaimed, "is reserved for Bokonon
himself."
I turned to look at the hook again, and that thing of sharp
iron communicated to me that I really was going to rule. I
would chop down the hook!
And I flattered myself that I was going to be a firm, just,
and kindly ruler, and that my people would prosper.
Fata Morgana. Mirage!
Bell, Book, and Chicken in a Hatbox 96
Frank and I couldn't get right in to see "Papa." Dr.
Schlichter von Koenigswald, the physician in attendance,
muttered that we would have to wait about half an hour. So
Frank and I waited in the anteroom of "Papa's" suite, a
room without windows. The room was thirty feet square,
furnished with several rugged benches and a card table. The
card table supported an electric fan. The walls were stone.
There were no pictures, no decorations of any sort on the
walls.
There were iron rings fixed to the wall, however, seven
feet off the floor and at intervals of six feet. I asked
Frank if the room had ever been a torture chamber.
He told me that it had, and that the manhole cover on which
I stood was the lid of an oubliette.
There was a listless guard in the anteroom. There was also
a Christian minister, who was ready to take care of
"Papa's" spiritual needs as they arose. He had a brass
dinner bell and a hatbox with holes drilled in it, and a
Bible, and a butcher knife- -all laid out on the bench
beside him.
He told me there was a live chicken in the hatbox. The
chicken was quiet, he said, because he had fed it

tranquilizers.
Like all San Lorenzans past the age of twenty-five, he
looked at least sixty. He told me that his name was Dr. Vox
Humana, that he was named after an organ stop that had
struck his mother when San Lorenzo Cathedral was dynamited
in 1923. His father, he told me without shame, was unknown.
I asked him what particular Christian sect he represented,
and I observed frankly that the chicken and the butcher
knife were novelties insofar as my understanding of
Christianity went.
"The bell," I commented, "I can understand how that might
fit in nicely."
He turned out to be an intelligent man. His doctorate,
which he invited me to examine, was awarded by the Western
Hemisphere University of the Bible of Little Rock,
Arkansas. He made contact with the University through a
classified ad in _Popular Mechanics_, he told me. He said
that the motto of the University
had become his own, and that it explained the chicken and
the butcher knife. The motto of the University was this:
MAKE RELIGION LIVE!
He said that he had had to feel his way along with
Christianity, since Catholicism and Protestantism had been
outlawed along with Bokononism.
"So, if I am going to be a Christian under those
conditions, I have to make up a lot of new stuff."
"_Zo_," he said in dialect, "_yeff jy bam gong be Kret-yeen
hooner yoze kon-steez-yen, jy hap my yup oon lot nee
stopf_."
Dr. Schlichter von Koenigswald now came out of "Papa's"
suite, looking very German, very tired. "You can see 'Papa'
now."
"We'll be careful not to tire him," Frank promised.
"If you could kill him," said Von Koenigswald, "I think
he'd be grateful."
The Stinking Christian 97
"Papa" Monzano and his merciless disease were in a bed that
was made of a golden dinghy--tiller, painter, oarlocks and
all, all gilt. His bed was the lifeboat of Bokonon's old
schooner, the _Lady's Slipper_; it was the lifeboat of the
ship that had brought Bokonon and Corporal McCabe to San
Lorenzo so long ago.
The walls of the room were white. But "Papa" radiated pain
so hot and bright that the walls seemed bathed in angry red.
He was stripped from the waist up, and, his glistening
belly wall was knotted. His belly shivered like a luffing
sail.

Around his neck hung a chain with a cylinder the size of a
rifle cartridge for a pendant. I supposed that the cylinder
contained some magic charm. I was mistaken. It contained a
splinter of _ice-nine_.
"Papa" could hardly speak. His teeth chattered and his
breathing was beyond control.
back.
"Papa's" agonized head was at the bow of the dinghy, bent
Mona's xylophone was near the bed. She had apparently tried
to soothe "Papa" with music the previous evening.
"'Papa'?" whispered Frank. "Good-bye," "Papa" gasped. His
eyes were bugging, sightless. "I brought a friend." "Good-
bye." "He's going to be the next President of San Lorenzo.
He'll be
a much better President than I could be." "Ice!" "Papa"
whimpered. "He asks for ice," said Von Koenigswald. "When
we bring it,
he does not want it." "Papa" rolled his eyes. He relaxed
his neck, took the weight
of his body from the crown of his head. And then he arched
his neck again. "Does not matter," he said, "who is
President of . . ." He did not finish.
I finished for him. "San Lorenzo?"
"San Lorenzo," he agreed. He managed a crooked smile. "Good
luck!" he croaked.
"Thank you, sir," I said. "Doesn't matter! Bokonon. Get
Bokonon." I attempted a sophisticated reply to this last. I
remembered
that, for the joy of the people, Bokonon was always to be
chased, was never to be caught. "I will get him."
"Tell him . . ."
I leaned closer, in order to hear the message from "Papa"
to Bokonon.
"Tell him I am sorry I did not kill him," said "Papa." "I
will." "_You_ kill him." "Yessir."
"Papa" gained control enough of his voice to make it
commanding. "I mean _really!_"
I said nothing to that. I was not eager to kill anyone.
"He teaches the people lies and lies and lies. Kill him and
teach the people truth."
"Yessir." "You and Hoenikker, you teach them science."
"Yessir, we will," I promised. "Science is magic that
_works_." He fell silent, relaxed, closed his eyes. And
then he
whispered, "Last rites." Von Koenigswald called Dr. Vox
Humana in. Dr. Humana took his
tranquilized chicken out of the hatbox, preparing to

administer Christian last rites as he understood them.
"Papa" opened one eye. "Not you," he sneered at Dr. Humana.
"Get out!"
"Sir?" asked Dr. Humana.
"I am a member of the Bokononist faith," "Papa" wheezed.
"Get out, you stinking Christian."
Last Rites 98
So I was privileged to see the last rites of the Bokononist
faith.
We made an effort to find someone among the soldiers and
the household staff who would admit that he knew the rites
and would give them to "Papa." We got no volunteers. That
was hardly surprising, with a hook and an oubliette so near.
So Dr. von Koenigswald said that he would have a go at the
job. He had never administered the rites before, but he had
seen Julian Castle do it hundreds of times.
"Are you a Bokononist?" I asked him.
"I agree with one Bokononist idea. I agree that all
religions, including Bokononism, are nothing but lies."
"Will this bother you as a scientist," I inquired, "to go
through a ritual like this?"
"I am a very bad scientist. I will do anything to make a
human being feel better, even if it's unscientific. No
scientist worthy of the name could say such a thing."
And he climbed into the golden boat with "Papa." He sat in
the stern. Cramped quarters obliged him to have the golden
tiller under one arm.
He wore sandals without socks, and he took these off. And
then he rolled back the covers at the foot of the bed,
exposing "Papa's" bare feet. He put the soles of his feet
against "Papa's" feet, assuming the classical position for
_boko-maru_.
Dyot meet mat 99
"_Gott mate mutt_," crooned Dr. von Koenigswald. "_Dyot
meet mat_," echoed "Papa" Monzano. "God made mud," was what
they'd said, each in his own
dialect. I will here abandon the dialects of the "God got
lonesome," said Von Koenigswald. "God got lonesome." "So
God said to some of the mud, 'Sit up!'" "So God said to
some of the mud, 'Sit up!'" "'See all I've made,' said God,
'the hills,
the stars.' "'See all I've made,' said God, 'the hills,
litany.
the sea, the sky,
the stars.'" "And I was some of the
around." "And I was some of the
around." "Lucky me; lucky mud." "Lucky me, lucky mud."

the sea, the sky, mud that got to sit up and look mud that
got to sit up and look
Tears were streaming down "Papa's"
cheeks. "I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had
done." "I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had
done." "Nice going, God!" "Nice going, God!" "Papa" said it
with all "Nobody but You could have done it, God! I
have." "Nobody but You could have done it, God! I
his heart. certainly couldn't
have." "I feel very unimportant compared to You." "I feel
very unimportant compared to You." "The only way I can feel
the least bit important is to think
of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look
around." "The only way I can feel the least bit important
is to think
of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look
around." "I got so much, and most mud got so little." "I
got so much, and most mud got so little." "_Deng you vore
da on-oh!_" cried Von Koenigswald. "_Tz-yenk voo vore lo
yon-yo!_" wheezed "Papa."
What they had said was, "Thank you for the honor!" "Now mud
lies down again and goes to sleep." "Now mud lies down
again and goes to sleep." "What memories for mud to have!"
"What memories for mud to have!"
certainly couldn't
"What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!"
"What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!" "I
loved everything I saw!" "I loved everything I saw!"
"Good night." "Good night." "I will go to "I will go to "I
can hardly "I can hardly "To find out for certain what my
_wampeter_ was . . ." "To find out for certain what my
_wampeter_ was . . ." "And who was in my _karass_ . . ."
"And who was in my _karass_ . . ." "And all the good things
our _karass_ did for you." "And all the good things our
_karass_ did for you." "Amen." "Amen."
Down the Oubliette Goes Frank 100
But "Papa" didn't die and go to heaven--not then. I asked
Frank how we might best time the announcement of my
elevation to the Presidency. He was no help, had no ideas;
he left it all up to me.
"I thought you were going to back me up," I complained.
"As far as anything _technical_ goes." Frank was prim about
it. I wasn't to violate his integrity as a technician;
wasn't to make him exceed the limits of his job.
"I see."
"However you want to handle people is all right with me.
That's _your_ responsibility."

This abrupt abdication of Frank from all human affairs
shocked and angered me, and I said to him, meaning to be
satirical, "You mind telling me what, in a purely technical
way, is planned for this day of days?"
I got a strictly technical reply. "Repair the power plant
and stage an air show."
heaven now." heaven now." wait . . ." wait . . ."
"Good! So one of my first triumphs as President will be to
restore electricity to my people."
Frank didn't see anything funny in that. He gave me a
salute. "I'll try, sir. I'll do my best for you, sir. I
can't guarantee how long it'll be before we get juice back."
"That's what I want--a juicy country." "I'll do my best,
sir." Frank saluted me again. "And the air show?" I asked.
"What's that?" I got another wooden reply. "At one o'clock
this afternoon,
sir, six planes of the San Lorenzan Air Force will fly past
the palace here and shoot at targets in the water. It's
part of the celebration of the Day of the Hundred Martyrs
to Democracy. The American Ambassador also plans to throw a
wreath into the sea."
So I decided, tentatively, that I would have Frank announce
my apotheosis immediately following the wreath ceremony and
the air show.
"What do you think of that?" I said to Frank. "You're the
boss, sir." "I think I'd better have a speech ready," I
said. "And there
should be some sort of swearing-in, to make it look
dignified, official."
"You're the boss, sir." Each time he said those words they
seemed to come from farther away, as though Frank were
descending the rungs of a ladder into a deep shaft, while I
was obliged to remain above.
And I realized with chagrin that my agreeing to be boss had
freed Frank to do what he wanted to do more than anything
else, to do what his father had done: to receive honors and
creature comforts while escaping human responsibilities. He
was accomplishing this by going down a spiritual oubliette.
Like My Predecesors, I Outlaw Bokonon 101
So I wrote my speech in a round, bare room at the foot of a
tower. There was a table and a chair. And the speech I
wrote was round and bare and sparsely furnished, too.
It was hopeful. It was humble.
And I found it impossible not to lean on God. I had never
needed such support before, and so had never believed that
such support was available.
Now, I found that I had to believe in it--and I did.

In addition, I would need the help of people. I called for
a list of the guests who were to be at the ceremonies and
found that Julian Castle and his son had not been invited.
I sent messengers to invite them at once, since they knew
more about my people than anyone, with the exception of
Bokonon.
As for Bokonon:
I pondered asking him to join my government, thus bringing
about a sort of millennium for my people. And I thought of
ordering that the awful hook outside the palace gate be
taken down at once, amidst great rejoicing.
But then I understood that a millennium would have to offer
something more than a holy man in a position of power, that
there would have to be plenty of good things for all to
eat, too, and nice places to live for all, and good schools
and good health and good times for all, and work for all
who wanted it--things Bokonon and I were in no position to
provide.
So good and evil had to remain separate; good in the
jungle, and evil in the palace. Whatever entertainment
there was in that was about all we had to give the people.
There was a knock on my door. A servant told me the guests
had begun to arrive.
So I put my speech in my pocket and I mounted the spiral
staircase in my tower. I arrived at the uppermost
battlement of my castle, and I looked out at my guests, my
servants, my cliff, and my lukewarm sea.
Enemies of Freedom 102
When I think of all those people on my uppermost
battlement, I think of Bokonon's "hundred-and-nineteenth
Calypso," wherein he invites us to sing along with him:
"Where's my good old gang done gone?"
I heard a sad man say. I whispered in that sad man's ear,
"Your gang's done gone away."
Present were Ambassador Horlick Minton and his lady; H.
Lowe Crosby, the bicycle manufacturer, and his Hazel; Dr.
Julian Castle, humanitarian and philanthropist, and his son
Philip, author and innkeeper; little Newton Hoenikker, the
picture painter, and his musical sister, Mrs. Harrison C.
Conners; my heavenly Mona; Major General Franklin
Hoenikker; and twenty assorted San Lorenzo bureaucrats and
military men.
Dead--almost all dead now. As Bokonon tells us, "It is
never a mistake to say goodbye." There was a buffet on my
battlements, a buffet burdened with
native delicacies: roasted warblers in little overcoats
made of their own blue-green feathers; lavender land crabs

taken from their shells, minced, fried in coconut oil, and
returned to their shells; fingerling barracuda stuffed with
banana paste; and, on unleavened, unseasoned cornmeal
wafers, bite-sized cubes of boiled albatross.
The albatross, I was told, had been shot from the very
bartizan in which the buffet stood. There were two
beverages offered, both un-iced: Pepsi-Cola and native rum.
The Pepsi-Cola was served in plastic Pilseners. The rum was
served in coconut shells. I was unable to identify the
sweet bouquet of the rum, though it somehow reminded me of
early adolescence.
Frank was able to name the bouquet for me. "Acetone."
"Acetone?" "Used in model-airplane cement." I did not drink
the rum.
Ambassador Minton did a lot of ambassadorial, gourmand
saluting with his coconut, pretending to love all men and
all the beverages that sustained them. But I did not see
him drink. He had with him, incidentally, a piece of
luggage of a sort I had never seen before. It looked like a
French horn case, and proved to contain the memorial wreath
that was to be cast into the sea.
The only person I saw drink the rum was H. Lowe Crosby, who
plainly had no sense of smell. He was having a good time,
drinking acetone from his coconut, sitting on a cannon,
blocking the touchhole with his big behind. He was looking
out to sea through a huge pair of Japanese binoculars. He
was looking at targets mounted on bobbing floats anchored
offshore.
The targets were cardboard cutouts shaped like men.
They were to be fired upon and bombed in a demonstration of
might by the six planes of the San Lorenzan Air Force.
Each target was a caricature of some real person, and the
name of that person was painted on the targets' back and
front.
I asked who the caricaturist was and learned that he was
Dr. Vox Humana, the Christian minister. He was at my elbow.
"I didn't know you were talented in that direction, too."
"Oh, yes. When I was a young man, I had a very hard time
deciding what to be."
"I think the choice you made was the right one." "I prayed
for guidance from Above." "You got it." H. Lowe Crosby
handed his binoculars to his wife. "There's
old Joe Stalin, closest in, and old Fidel Castro's anchored
right next to him."
"And there's old Hitler," chuckled Hazel, delighted. "And
there's old Mussolini and some old Jap."
"And there's old Karl Marx."

"And there's old Kaiser Bill, spiked hat and all," cooed
Hazel. "I never expected to see _him_ again."
"And there's old Mao. You see old Mao?"
"Isn't _he_ gonna get it?" asked Hazel. "Isn't _he_ gonna
get the surprise of his life? This sure is a cute idea."
"They got practically every enemy that freedom, ever had
out there," H. Lowe Crosby declared.
A Medical Opinion on the 103 Effects of a Writers' Strike
None of the guests knew yet that I was to be President.
None knew how close to death "Papa" was. Frank gave out the
official word that "Papa" was resting comfortably, that
"Papa" sent his best wishes to all.
The order of events, as announced by Frank, was that
Ambassador Minton would throw his wreath into the sea, in
honor of the Hundred Martyrs; and then the airplanes would
shoot the targets in the sea; and then he, Frank, would say
a few words.
He did not tell the company that, following his speech,
there would be a speech by me.
So I was treated as nothing more than a visiting
journalist, and I engaged in harmless _granfalloonery_ here
and there.
"Hello, Mom," I said to Hazel Crosby.
"Why, if it isn't my boy!" Hazel gave me a perfumed hug,
and she told everybody, "This boy's a Hoosier!"
The Castles, father and son, stood separate from the rest
of the company. Long unwelcome at "Papa's" palace, they
were curious as to why they had now been invited there.
Young Castle called me "Scoop." "Good morning, Scoop.
What's new in the word game?"
"I might ask the same of you," I replied.
"I'm thinking of calling a general strike of all writers
until mankind finally comes to its senses. Would you
support it?"
"Do writers have a right to strike? That would be like the
police or the firemen walking out."
"Or the college professors."
"Or the college professors," I agreed. I shook my head.
"No, I don't think my conscience would let me support a
strike like that. When a man becomes a writer, I think he
takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and
enlightenment and comfort at top speed."
"I just can't help thinking what a real shaking up it would
give people if, all of a sudden, there were no new books,
new plays, new histories, new poems . . ."
"And how proud would you be when people started dying like
flies?" I demanded.

"They'd die more like mad dogs, I think--snarling and
snapping at each other and biting their own tails."
I turned to Castle the elder. "Sir, how does a man die when
he's deprived of the consolations of literature?"
"In one of two ways," he said, "petrescence of the heart or
atrophy of the nervous system."
"Neither one very pleasant, I expect," I suggested.
"No," said Castle the elder. "For the love of God, _both_
of you, _please_ keep writing!"
Sulfathiazole 104
My heavenly Mona did not approach me and did not encourage
me with languishing glances to come to her side. She made a
hostess of herself, introducing Angela and little Newt to
San Lorenzans.
As I ponder now the meaning of that girl--recall her
indifference to "Papa's" collapse, to her betrothal to me--
I vacillate between lofty and cheap appraisals.
Did she represent the highest form of female spirituality?
Or was she anesthetized, frigid--a cold fish, in fact, a
dazed addict of the xylophone, the cult of beauty, and
_boko- maru?_
I shall never know. Bokonon tells us:
A lover's a liar, To himself he lies. The truthful are
loveless, Like oysters their eyes!
So my instructions are clear, I suppose. I am to remember
my Mona as having been sublime.
"Tell me," I appealed to young Philip Castle on the Day of
the Hundred Martyrs to Democracy, "have you spoken to your
friend and admirer, H. Lowe Crosby, today?"
"He didn't recognize me with a suit and shoes and necktie
on," young Castle replied. "We've already had a nice talk
about bicycles. We may have another."
I found that I was no longer amused by Crosby's wanting to
build bicycles in San Lorenzo. As chief executive of the
island I wanted a bicycle factory very much. I developed
sudden respect for what H. Lowe Crosby was and could do.
"How do you think the people of San Lorenzo would take to
industrialization?" I asked the Castles, father and son.
"The people of San Lorenzo," the father told me, "are
interested in only three things: fishing, fornication, and
Bokononism."
"Don't you think they could be interested in progress?"
"They've seen some of it. There's only one aspect of
progress that really excites them."
"What's that?" "The electric guitar." I excused myself and
I rejoined the Crosbys. Frank Hoenikker was with them,
explaining who Bokonon was and

what he was against. "He's against science." "How can
anybody in his right mind be against science?" asked
Crosby.
"I'd be dead now if it wasn't for penicillin," said Hazel.
"And so would my mother."
"How old _is_ your mother?" I inquired. "A hundred and six.
Isn't that wonderful?" "It certainly is," I agreed. "And
I'd be a widow, too, if it wasn't for the medicine they
gave my husband that time," said Hazel. She had to ask her
husband the name of the medicine. "Honey, what was the name
of that stuff that saved your life that time?"
"Sulfathiazole."
And I made the mistake of taking an albatross canape from a
passing tray.
Pain-killer 105
As it happened--"As it was _supposed_ to happen," Bokonon
would say--albatross meat disagreed with me so violently
that I was ill the moment I'd choked the first piece down.
I was compelled to canter down the stone spiral staircase
in search of a bathroom. I availed myself of one adjacent
to "Papa's" suite.
When I shuffled out, somewhat relieved, I was met by Dr.
Schlichter von Koenigswald, who was bounding from "Papa's"
bedroom. He had a wild look, and he took me by the arms and
he cried, "What is it? What was it he had hanging around
his neck?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"He took it! Whatever was in that cylinder, 'Papa' took--
and now he's dead."
I remembered the cylinder "Papa" had hung around his neck,
and I made an obvious guess as to its contents. "Cyanide?"
"Cyanide? Cyanide turns a man to cement in a second?"
"Cement?"
"Marble! Iron! I have never seen such a rigid corpse
before. Strike it anywhere and you get a note like a
marimba! Come look!" Von Koenigswald hustled me into
"Papa's" bedroom.
In bed, in the golden dinghy, was a hideous thing to see.
"Papa" was dead, but his was not a corpse to which one
could say, "At rest at last."
'Papa's" head was bent back as far as it would go. His
weight rested on the crown of his head and the soles of his
feet, with the rest of his body forming a bridge whose arch
thrust toward the ceiling. He was shaped like an andiron.
That he had died of the contents of the cylinder around his
neck was obvious. One hand held the cylinder and the
cylinder was uncapped. And the thumb and index finger of

the other hand, as though having just released a little
pinch of something, were stuck between his teeth.
Dr. von Koenigswald slipped the tholepin of an oarlock from
its socket in the gunwale of the gilded dinghy. He tapped
"Papa" on his belly with the steel oarlock, and "Papa"
really did make a sound like a marimba.
And "Papa's" lips and nostrils and eyeballs were glazed
with a blue-white frost.
Such a syndrome is no novelty now, God knows. But it
certainly was then. "Papa" Monzano was the first man in
history to die of _ice-nine_.
I record that fact for whatever it may be worth. "Write it
all down," Bokonon tells us. He is really telling us, of
course, how futile it is to write or read histories.
"Without accurate records of the past, how can men and
women be expected to avoid making serious mistakes in the
future?" he asks ironically.
So, again: "Papa" Monzano was the first man in history to
die of _ice-nine_.
What Bokononists Say 106 When They Commit Suicide
Dr. von Koenigswald, the humanitarian with the terrible
deficit of Auschwitz in his kindliness account, was the
second to die of _ice-nine_.
He was talking about rigor mortis, a subject I had
introduced.
"Rigor mortis does not set in in seconds," he declared. "I
turned my back to 'Papa' for just a moment. He was raving .
. ."
"What about?" I asked.
"Pain, ice, Mona--everything. And then 'Papa' said, 'Now I
will destroy the whole world.'"
"What did he mean by that?"
"It's what Bokononists always say when they are about to
commit suicide." Von Koenigswald went to a basin of water,
meaning to wash his hands. "When I turned to look at him,"
he told me, his hands poised over the water, "he was dead--
as hard as a statue, just as you see him. I brushed my
fingers over his lips. They looked so peculiar."
He put his hands into the water. "What chemical could
possibly . . ." The question trailed off.
Von Koenigswald raised his hands, and the water in the
basin came with them. It was no longer water, but a
hemisphere of _ice- nine_.
Von Koenigswald touched the tip of his tongue to the blue-
white mystery.
Frost bloomed on his lips. He froze solid, tottered, and
crashed.

The blue-white hemisphere shattered. Chunks skittered over
the floor.
I went to the door and bawled for help. Soldiers and
servants came running. I ordered them to bring Frank and
Newt and Angela to "Papa's"
room at once. At last I had seen _ice-nine!_
Feast Your Eyes! 101
I let the three children of Dr. Felix Hoenikker into "Papa"
Monzano's bedroom. I closed the door and put my back to it.
My mood was bitter and grand. I knew _ice-nine_ for what it
was. I had seen it often in my dreams.
There could be no doubt that Frank had given "Papa" _ice-
nine_. And it seemed certain that if _ice-nine_ were
Frank's to give, then it was Angela's and little Newt's to
give, too.
So I snarled at all three, calling them to account for
monstrous criminality. I told them that the jig was up,
that I knew about them and _ice-nine_. I tried to alarm
them about _ice-
nine's_ being a means to ending life on earth. I was so
impressive that they never thought to ask how I knew about
_ice-nine_.
"Feast your eyes!" I said.
Well, as Bokonon tells us: "God never wrote a good play in
His Life." The scene in "Papa's" room did not lack for
spectacular issues and props, and my opening speech was the
right one.
But the first reply from a Hoenikker destroyed all
magnificence.
Little Newt threw up.
Frank Tells Us What to Do 108
And then we all wanted to throw up. Newt certainly did what
was called for. "I couldn't agree more," I told Newt. And I
snarled at Angela
and Frank, "Now that we've got Newt's opinion, I'd like to
hear what you two have to say."
"Uck," said Angela, cringing, her tongue out. She was the
color of putty.
"Are those your sentiments, too?" I asked Frank. "'Uck?'
General, is that what you say?"
Frank had his teeth bared, and his teeth were clenched, and
he was breathing shallowly and whistlingly between them.
"Like the dog," murmured little Newt, looking down at Von
Koenigswald.
"What dog?"
Newt whispered his answer, and there was scarcely any wind
behind the whisper. But such were the acoustics of the

stonewalled room that we all heard the whisper as clearly
as we would have heard the chiming of a crystal bell.
"Christmas Eve, when Father died."
Newt was talking to himself. And, when I asked him to tell
me about the dog on the night his father died, he looked up
at me as though I had intruded on a dream. He found me
irrelevant.
His brother and sister, however, belonged in the dream. And
he talked to his brother in that nightmare; told Frank,
"You gave it to him.
"That's how you got this fancy job, isn't it?" Newt asked
Frank wonderingly. "What did you tell him--that you had
something better than the hydrogen bomb?"
Frank didn't acknowledge the question. He was looking
around the room intently, taking it all in. He unclenched
his teeth, and he made them click rapidly, blinking his
eyes with every click. His color was coming back. This is
what he said.
"Listen, we've got to clean up this mess."
Frank Defends Himself 109
"General," I told Frank, "that must be one of the most
cogent statements made by a major general this year. As my
technical advisor, how do you recommend that _we_, as you
put it so well, 'clean up this mess'?"
Frank gave me a straight answer. He snapped his fingers. I
could see him dissociating himself from the causes of the
mess; identifying himself, with growing pride and energy,
with the purifiers, the world-savers, the cleaners-up.
"Brooms, dustpans, blowtorch, hot plate, buckets," he
commanded, snapping, snapping, snapping his fingers.
"You propose applying a blowtorch to the bodies?" I asked.
Frank was so charged with technical thinking now that he
was practically tap dancing to the music of his fingers.
"We'll sweep up the big pieces on the floor, melt them in a
bucket on a hot plate. Then we'll go over every square inch
of floor with a blowtorch, in case there are any
microscopic crystals. What we'll do with the bodies--and
the bed . . ." He had to think some more.
"A funeral pyre!" he cried, really pleased with himself.
"I'll have a great big funeral pyre built out by the hook,
and we'll have the bodies and the bed carried out and
thrown on."
He started to leave, to order the pyre built and to get the
things we needed in order to clean up the room.
Angela stopped him. "How _could_ you?" she wanted to know.
Frank gave her a glassy smile. "Everything's going to be
all right."

"How _could_ you give it to a man like 'Papa' Monzano?"
Angela asked him.
"Let's clean up the mess first; then we can talk."
Angela had him by the arms, and she wouldn't let him go.
"How _could_ you!" She shook him.
Frank pried his sister's hands from himself. His glassy
smile went away and he turned sneeringly nasty for a
moment--a moment in which he told her with all possible
contempt, "I bought myself a job, just the way you bought
yourself a tomcat husband, just the way Newt bought himself
a week on Cape Cod with a Russian midget!"
The glassy smile returned. Frank left; and he slammed the
door.
The Fourteenth Book 110
"Sometimes the _pool-pah_," Bokonon tells us, "exceeds the
power of humans to comment." Bokonon translates _pool-pah_
at one point in _The Books of Bokonon_ as "shit storm" and
at another point as "wrath of God."
From what Frank had said before he slammed the door, I
gathered that the Republic of San Lorenzo and the three
Hoenikkers weren't the only ones who had _ice-nine_.
Apparently the United States of America and the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics had it, too. The United States
had obtained it through Angela's husband, whose plant in
Indianapolis was understandably surrounded by electrified
fences and homicidal German shepherds. And Soviet Russia
had come by it through Newt's little Zinka, that winsome
troll of Ukrainian ballet.
I was without comment.
I bowed my head and closed my eyes; and I awaited Frank's
return with the humble tools it would take to clean up one
bedroom--one bedroom out of all the bedrooms in the world,
a bedroom infested with _ice-nine_.
Somewhere, in the violet, velvet oblivion, I heard Angela
say something to me. It wasn't in her own defense. It was
in defense of little Newt. "Newt didn't give it to her. She
stole it."
I found the explanation uninteresting.
"What hope can there be for mankind," I thought, "when
there are such men as Felix Hoenikker to give such
playthings as _ice-
nine_ to such short-sighted children as almost all men and
women
are?"
And I remembered _The Fourteenth Book of Bokonon_, which I
had read in its entirety the night before. _The Fourteenth
Book_ is entitled, "What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for

Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million
Years?"
It doesn't take long to read _The Fourteenth Book_. It
consists of one word and a period.
This is it: "Nothing."
Time Out 111
Frank came back with brooms and dustpans, a blowtorch, and
a kerosene hot plate, and a good old bucket and rubber
gloves.
We put on the gloves in order not to contaminate our hands
with _ice-nine_. Frank set the hot plate on the heavenly
Mona's xylophone and put the honest old bucket on top of
that.
And we picked up the bigger chunks of _ice-nine_ from the
floor; and we dropped them into that humble bucket; and
they melted. They became good old, sweet old, honest old
water.
Angela and I swept the floor, and little Newt looked under
furniture for bits of _ice-nine_ we might have missed. And
Frank followed our sweeping with the purifying flame of the
torch.
The brainless serenity of charwomen and janitors working
late at night came over us. In a messy world we were at
least making our little corner clean.
And I heard myself asking Newt and Angela and Frank in
conversational tones to tell me about the Christmas Eve on
which the old-man died, to tell me about the dog.
And, childishly sure that they were making everything all
right by cleaning up, the Hoenikkers told me the tale.
The tale went like this:
On that fateful Christmas Eve, Angela went into the village
for Christmas tree lights, and Newt and Frank went for a
walk on the lonely winter beach, where they met a black
Labrador retriever. The dog was friendly, as all Labrador
retrievers are, and he followed Frank and little Newt home.
Felix Hoenikker died--died in his white wicker chair
looking out at the sea--while his chldren were gone. All
day the old man had been teasing his children with hints
about _ice-nine_, showing it to them in a little bottle on
whose label he had drawn a skull and crossbones, and on
whose label he had written: "Danger! _Ice- nine!_ Keep away
from moisture!"
All day long the old man had been nagging his children with
words like these, merry in tone: "Come on now, stretch your
minds a little. I've told you that its melting point is a
hundred fourteen-point-four degrees Fahrenheit, and I've
told you that it's composed of nothing but hydrogen and

oxygen. What could the explanation be? Think a little!
Don't be afraid of straining your brains. They won't break."
"He was always telling us to stretch our brains," said
Frank, recalling olden times.
"I gave up trying to stretch my brain when I-don't-know-
how- old-I-was," Angela confessed, leaning on her broom. "I
couldn't even listen to him when he talked about science.
I'd just nod and pretend I was trying to stretch my brain,
but that poor brain, as far as science went, didn't have
any more stretch than an old garter belt."
Apparently, before he sat down in his wicker chair and
died, the old man played puddly games in the kitchen with
water and pots and pans and _ice-nine_. He must have been
converting water to _ice-nine_ and back to water again, for
every pot and pan was out on the kitchen countertops. A
meat thermometer was out, too, so the old man must have
been taking the temperature of things.
The old man meant to take only a brief time out in his
chair, for he left quite a mess in the kitchen. Part of the
disorder was a saucepan filled with solid _ice-nine_. He no
doubt meant to melt it up, to reduce the world's supply of
the blue-white stuff to a splinter in a bottle again--after
a brief time out.
But, as Bokonon tells us, "Any man can call time out, but
no man can say how long the time out will be."
Newt's Mother's Reticule 112
"I should have know he was dead the minute I came in," said
Angela, leaning on her broom again. "That wicker chair, it
wasn't making a sound. It always talked, creaked away, when
Father was in it--even when he was asleep."
But Angela had assumed that her father was sleeping, and
she went on to decorate the Christmas tree.
Newt and Frank came in with the Labrador retriever. They
went out into the kitchen to find something for the dog to
eat. They found the old man's puddles.
There was water on the floor, and little Newt took a
dishrag and wiped it up. He tossed the sopping dishrag onto
the counter.
As it happened, the dishrag fell into the pan containing
_ice-nine_.
Frank thought the pan contained some sort of cake frosting,
and he held it down to Newt, to show Newt what his
carelessness with the dishrag had done.
Newt peeled the dishrag from the surface and found that the
dishrag had a peculiar, metallic, snaky quality, as though
it were made of finely-woven gold mesh.
"The reason I say 'gold mesh,'" said little Newt, there in

"Papa's" bedroom, "is that it reminded me right away of
Mother's reticule, of how the reticule felt."
Angela explained sentimentally that when a child, Newt had
treasured his mother's gold reticule. I gathered that it
was a little evening bag.
"It felt so funny to me, like nothing else I'd ever
touched," and Newt, investigating his old fondness for the
reticule. "I wonder whatever happened to it."
"I wonder what happened to a _lot_ of things," said Angela.
The question echoed back through time--woeful, lost.
What happened to the dishrag that felt like a reticule, at
any rate, was that Newt held it out to the dog, and the dog
licked it. And the dog froze stiff.
Newt went to tell his father about the stiff dog and found
out that his father was stiff, too.
History 113
Our work in "Papa's" bedroom was done at last.
But the bodies still had to be carried to the funeral pyre.
We decided that this should be done with pomp, that we
should put it off until the ceremonies in honor of the
Hundred Martyrs to Democracy were over.
The last thing we did was stand Von Koenigswald on his feet
in order to decontaminate the place where he had been
lying. And then we hid him, standing up, in "Papa's"
clothes closet.
I'm not quite sure why we hid him. I think it must have
been to simplify the tableau.
As for Newt's and Angela's and Frank's tale of how they
divided up the world's supply of _ice-nine_ on Christmas
Eve--it petered out when they got to details of the crime
itself. The Hoenikkers couldn't remember that anyone said
anything to justify their taking _ice-nine_ as personal
property. They talked about what _ice-nine_ was, recalling
the old man's brain-stretchers, but there was no talk of
morals.
"Who did the dividing?" I inquired.
So thoroughly had the three Hoenikkers obliterated their
memories of the incident that it was difficult for them to
give me even that fundamental detail.
"It wasn't Newt," said Angela at last. "I'm sure of ihat."
"It was either you or me," mused Frank, thinking hard. "You
got the three Mason jars off the kitchen shelf," said
Angela. "It wasn't until the next day that we got the three
little Thermos jugs."
"That's right," Frank agreed. "And then you took an ice
pick and chipped up the _ice-nine_ in the saucepan."
"That's right," said Angela. "I did. And then somebody

brought tweezers from the bathroom."
Newt raised his little hand. "I did."
Angela and Newt were amazed, remembering how enterprising
little Newt had been.
"I was the one who picked up the chips and put them in the
Mason jars," Newt recounted. He didn't bother to hide the
swagger he must have felt.
"What did you people do with the dog?" I asked limply.
"We put him in the oven," Frank told me. "It was the only
thing to do."
"History!" writes Bokonon. "Read it and weep!"
When I Felt the Bullet Enter My Heart 114
So I once again mounted the spiral staircase in my tower;
once again arrived at the uppermost battlement of my
castle; and once more looked out at my guests, my servants,
my cliff, and my lukewarm sea.
The Hoenikkers were with me. We had locked "Papa's" door,
and had spread the word among the household staff that
"Papa" was feeling much better.
Soldiers were now building a funeral pyre out by the hook.
They did not know what the pyre was for.
There were many, many secrets that day. Busy, busy, busy. I
supposed that the ceremonies might as well begin, and I
told Frank to suggest to Ambassador Horlick Minton that he
deliver his speech.
Ambassador Minton went to the seaward parapet with his
memorial wreath still in its case. And he delivered an
amazing speech in honor of the Hundred Martyrs to
Democracy. He dignified the dead, their country, and the
life that was over for them by saying the "Hundred Martyrs
to Democracy" in island dialect. That fragment of dialect
was graceful and easy on his lips.
The rest of his speech was in American English. He had a
written speech with him--fustian and bombast, I imagine.
But, when he found he was going to speak to so few, and to
fellow Americans for the most part, he put the formal
speech away.
A light sea wind ruffled his thinning hair. "I am about to
do a very un-ambassadorial thing," he declared. "I am about
to tell you what I really feel."
Perhaps Minton had inhaled too much acetone, or perhaps he
had an inkling of what was about to happen to everybody but
me. At any rate, it was a strikingly Bokononist speech he
gave.
"We are gathered here, friends," he said, "to honor _lo
Hoon- yera Mora-toorz tut Zamoo-cratz-ya_, children dead,
all dead, all murdered in war. It is customary on days like

this to call such lost children men. I am unable to call
them men for this simple reason: that in the same war in
which _lo Hoon-yera Mora-toorz tut Zamoo-cratz-ya_ died, my
own son died.
"My soul insists that I mourn not a man but a child.
"I do not say that children at war do not die like men, if
they have to die. To their everlasting honor and our
everlasting shame they _do_ die like men, thus making
possible the manly jubilation of patriotic holidays.
"But they are murdered children all the same.
"And I propose to you that if we are to pay our sincere
respects to the hundred lost children of San Lorenzo, that
we might best spend the day despising what killed them;
which is to say, the stupidity and viciousness of all
mankind.
"Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our
clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all
day long and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more
appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-
oiled guns.
"I do not mean to be ungrateful for the fine, martial show
we are about to see--and a thrilling show it really will be
. . ."
He looked each of us in the eye, and then he commented very
softly, throwing it away, "And hooray say I for thrilling
shows."
We had to strain our ears to hear what Minton said next.
"But if today is really in honor of a hundred children
murdered in war," he said, "is today a day for a thrilling
show?
"The answer is yes, on one condition: that we, the
celebrants, are working consciously and tirelessly to
reduce the stupidity and viciousness of ourselves and of
all mankind."
He unsnapped the catches on his wreath case. "See what I
have brought?" he asked us. He opened the case and showed
us the scarlet lining and the
golden wreath. The wreath was made of wire and artificial
laurel leaves, and the whole was sprayed with radiator
paint.
The wreath was spanned by a cream-colored silk ribbon on
which was printed, "PRO PATRIA."
Minton now recited a poem from Edgar Lee Masters' the
_Spoon River Anthology_, a poem that must have been
incomprehensible to the San Lorenzans in the audience--and
to H. Lowe Crosby and his Hazel, too, for that matter, and
to Angela and Frank.

Ridge.
I was the first fruits of the battle of Missionary
When I felt the bullet enter my heart I wished I had staid
at home and gone to jail For stealing the hogs of Curl
Trenary, Instead of running away and joining the army.
Rather a thousand times the county jail Than to lie under
this marble figure with wings, And this granite pedestal
Bearing the words, "_Pro Patria_." What do they mean,
anyway?
"What do they mean, anyway?" echoed Ambassador Horlick
Minton. "They mean, 'For one's country.'" And he threw away
another line. "Any country at all," he murmured.
"This wreath I bring is a gift from the people of one
country to the people of another. Never mind which
countries. Think of people . . .
"And children murdered in war. "And any country at all.
"Think of peace. "Think of brotherly love. "Think of plenty.
"Think of what paradise, this world would be if men were
kind and wise.
"As stupid and vicious as men are, this is a lovely day,"
said Ambassador Horlick Minton. "I, in my own heart and as
a representative of the peace-loving people of the United
States of America, pity _lo Hoon-yera Mora-toorz tut Za-
moo-cratz-ya_ for being dead on this fine day."
And he sailed the wreath off the parapet.
There was a hum in the air. The six planes of the San
Lorenzan Air Force were coming, skimming my lukewarm sea.
They were going to shoot the effigies of what H. Lowe
Crosby had called "practically every enemy that freedom
ever had."
As It Happened 115
We went to the seaward parapet to see the show. The planes
were no larger than grains of black pepper. We were able to
spot them because one, as it happened, was trailing smoke.
We supposed that the smoke was part of the show.
I stood next to H. Lowe Crosby, who, as it happened, was
alternately eating albatross and drinking native rum. He
exhaled fumes of model airplane cement between lips
glistening with albatross fat. My recent nausea returned.
I withdrew to the landward parapet alone, gulping air.
There were sixty feet of old stone pavement between me and
all the rest.
I saw that the planes would be coming in low, below the
footings of the castle, and that I would miss the show. But
nausea made me incurious. I turned my head in the direction
of their now snarling approach. Just as their guns began to
hammer, one plane,

the one that had been trailing smoke, suddenly appeared,
belly up, in flames.
It dropped from my line of sight again and crashed at once
into the cliff below the castle. Its bombs and fuel
exploded.
The surviving planes went booming on, their racket thinning
down to a mosquito hum.
And then there was the sound of a rockslide--and one great
tower of "Papa's" castle, undermined, crashed down to the
sea.
The people on the seaward parapet looked in astonishment at
the empty socket where the tower had stood. Then I could
hear rockslides of all sizes in a conversation that was
almost orchestral.
The conversation went very fast, and new voices entered in.
They were the voices of the castle's timbers lamenting that
their burdens were becoming too great.
And then a crack crossed the battlement like lightning, ten
feet from my curling toes.
It separated me from my fellow men. The castle groaned and
wept aloud. The others comprehended their peril. They,
along with tons of
masonry, were about to lurch out and down. Although the
crack was only a foot wide, people began to cross it with
heroic leaps.
Only my complacent Mona crossed the crack with a simple
step.
The crack gnashed shut; opened wider, leeringly. Still
trapped on the canted deathtrap were H. Lowe Crosby and his
Hazel and Ambassador Horlick Minton and his Claire.
Philip Castle and Frank and I reached across the abyss to
haul the Crosbys to safety. Our arms were now extended
imploringly to the Mintons.
Their expressions were bland. I can only guess what was
going through their minds. My guess is that they were
thinking of dignity, of emotional proportion above all else.
Panic was not their style. I doubt that suicide was their
style either. But their good manners killed them, for the
doomed crescent of castle now moved away from us like an
ocean liner moving away from a dock.
The image of a voyage seems to have occurred to the
voyaging Mintons, too, for they waved to us with wan
amiability.
They held hands. They faced the sea. Out they went; then
down they went in a cataclysmic rush,
were gone!
The Grand Ah-whoom 116

The ragged rim of oblivion was now inches from my curling
toes. I looked down. My lukewarm sea had swallowed all. A
lazy curtain of dust was wafting out to sea, the only trace
of all that fell.
The palace, its massive, seaward mask now gone, greeted the
north with a leper's smile, snaggle-toothed and bristly.
The bristles were the splintered ends of timbers.
Immediately below me a large chamber had been laid open.
The floor of that chamber, unsupported, stabbed out into
space like a diving platform.
I dreamed for a moment of dropping to the platform, of
springing up from it in a breath-taking swan dive, of
folding my arms, of knifing downward into a blood-warm
eternity with never a splash.
I was recalled from this dream by the cry of a darting bird
above me. It seemed to be asking me what had happened.
"Pootee- phweet?" it asked.
We all looked up at the bird, and then at one another. We
backed away from the abyss, full of dread. And, when I
stepped off the paving stone that had supported me, the
stone began to rock. It was no more stable than a teeter-
totter. And it tottered now over the diving platform.
Down it crashed onto the platform, made the platform a
chute. And down the chute came the furnishings still
remaining in the room below.
A xylophone shot out first, scampering fast on its tiny
wheels. Out came a bedside table in a crazy race with a
bounding blowtorch. Out came chairs in hot pursuit.
And somewhere in that room below, out of sight, something
mightily reluctant to move was beginning to move.
Down the chute it crept. At last it showed its golden bow.
It was the boat in which dead "Papa" lay.
It reached the end of the chute. Its bow nodded. Down it
tipped. Down it fell, end over end.
"Papa" was thrown I closed my eyes. There was a sound
clear, and he fell separately.
like that of the gentle closing of a portal
as big as the sky, the It was a grand AH-WHOOM.
great door of heaven being closed softly.
I opened my eyes--and all the sea was _ice-nine_. The moist
green earth was a blue-white pearl. The sky darkened.
_Borasisi_, the sun, became a sickly yellow ball, tiny and
cruel.
The sky was filled with worms. The worms were tornadoes.
Sanctuary 117
I looked up at the sky where the bird had been. An enormous
worm with a violet mouth was directly overhead. It buzzed

like bees. It swayed. With obscene peristalsis, it ingested
air.
We humans separated; fled my shattered battlements tumbled
down staircases on the landward side.
Only H. Lowe Crosby and his Hazel cried out. "American!
American!" they cried, as though tornadoes were interested
in the _granfalloons_ to which their victims belonged.
I could not see the Crosbys. They had descended by another
staircase. Their cries and the sounds of others, panting
and running, came gabbling to me through a corridor of the
castle. My only companion was my heavenly Mona, who had
followed noiselessly.
When I hesitated, she slipped past me and opened the door
to the anteroom of "Papa's" suite. The walls and roof of
the anteroom were gone. But the stone floor remained. And
in its center was the manhole cover of the oubliette. Under
the wormy sky, in the flickering violet light from the
mouths of tornadoes that wished to eat us, I lifted the
cover.
The esophagus of the dungeon was fitted with iron rungs. I
replaced the manhole cover from within. Down those iron
rungs we went.
And at the foot of the ladder we found a state secret.
"Papa" Monzano had caused a cozy bomb shelter to be
constructed there. It had a ventilation shaft, with a fan
driven by a stationary bicycle. A tank of water was
recessed in one wall. The water was sweet and wet, as yet
untainted by _ice-nine_. And there was a chemical toilet,
and a short-wave radio, and a Sears, Roebuck catalogue; and
there were cases of delicacies, and liquor, and candles;
and there were bound copies of the _National Geographic_
going back twenty years.
And there was a set of _The Books of Bokonon_.
And there were twin beds.
I lighted a candle. I opened a can of campbell's chicken
gumbo soup and I put it on a Sterno stove. And I poured two
glasses of Virgin Islands rum.
Mona sat on one bed. I sat down on the other. "I am about
to say something that must have been said by men to women
several times before," I informed her. "However, I don't
believe that these words have ever carried quite the
freight they carry now."
"Oh?" I spread my hands. "Here we are."
The Iron Maiden and the Oubliette 118
_The Sixth Book of The Books of Bokonon_ is devoted to
pain, in particular to tortures inflicted by men on men.
"If I am ever put to death on the hook," Bokonon warns us,

"expect a very human performance."
Then he speaks of the rack and the peddiwinkus and the iron
maiden and the _veglia_ and the oubliette.
In any case, there's bound to be much crying. But the
oubliette alone will let you think while dying.
And so it was in Mona's and my rock womb. At least we could
think. And one thing I thought was that the creature
comforts of the dungeon did nothing to mitigate the basic
fact of oubliation.
During our first day and night underground, tornadoes
rattled our manhole cover many times an hour. Each time the
pressure in our hole would drop suddenly, and our ears
would pop and our heads would ring.
As for the radio--there was crackling, fizzing static and
that was all. From one end of the short-wave band to the
other not one word, not one telegrapher's beep, did I hear.
If life still existed here and there, it did not broadcast.
Nor does life broadcast to this day.
This I assumed: tornadoes, strewing the poisonous blue-
white frost of _ice-nine_ everywhere, tore everyone and
everything above
ground to pieces. Anything that still lived would die soon
enough of thirst--or hunger--or rage--or apathy.
I turned to _The Books of Bokonon_, still sufficiently
unfamiliar with them to believe that they contained
spiritual comfort somewhere. I passed quickly over the
warning on the title page of _The First Book_:
"Don't be a fool! Close this book at once! It is nothing
but _foma!_"
_Foma_, of course, are lies. And then I read this:
In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon
it in His cosmic loneliness.
And God said, "Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so
the mud can see what We have done." And God created every
living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as
man alone could speak. God leaned close as mud as man sat
up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked. "What is the
_purpose_ of all this?" he asked politely.
God.
"Everything must have a purpose?" asked God. "Certainly,"
said man. "Then I leave it to you to think of one for all
this," said
And He went away.
I thought this was trash. "Of course it's trash!" says
Bokonon. And I turned to my heavenly Mona for comforting
secrets a
good deal more profound. I was able, while mooning at her

across the space that
separated our beds, to imagine that behind her marvelous
eyes lurked mysteries as old as Eve.
I will not go into the sordid sex episode that followed.
Suffice it to say that I was both repulsive and repulsed.
The girl was not interested in reproduction--hated the
idea. Before the tussle was over, I was given full credit
by her, and by myself, too, for having invented the whole
bizarre, grunting, sweating enterprise by which new human
beings were made.
Returning to my own bed, gnashing my teeth, I supposed that
she honestly had no idea what love-making was all about.
But then
she said to me, gently, "It would be very sad to have a
little baby now. Don't you agree?"
"Yes," I agreed murkily.
"Well, that's the way little babies are made, in case you
didn't know."
Mona Thanks Me 119
"Today I will be a Bulgarian Minister of Education,"
Bokonon tells us. "Tomorrow I will be Helen of Troy." His
meaning is crystal clear: Each one of us has to be what he
or she is. And, down in the oubliette, that was mainly what
I thought--with the help of _The Books of Bokonon_.
Bokonon invited me to sing along with him:
We do, doodley do, doodley do, doodley do, What we must,
muddily must, muddily must, muddily must; Muddily do,
muddily do, muddily do, muddily do, Until we bust, bodily
bust, bodily bust, bodily bust.
I made up a tune to go with that and I whistled it under my
breath as I drove the bicycle that drove the fan that gave
us air, good old air.
"Man breathes in oxygen and exhales carbon dioxide," I
called to Mona.
"What?" "Science." "Oh." "One of the secrets of life man
was a long time
understanding: Animals breathe in what animals breathe out,
and vice versa."
"I didn't know." "You know now." "Thank you." "You're
welcome."
When I'd bicycled our atmosphere to sweetness and
freshness, I dismounted and climbed the iron rungs to see
what the weather was like above. I did that several times a
day. On that day, the fourth day, I perceived through the
narrow crescent of the lifted manhole cover that the
weather had become somewhat stabilized.
The stability was of a wildly dynamic sort, for the

tornadoes were as numerous as ever, and tornadoes remain
numerous to this day. But their mouths no longer gobbled
and gnashed at the earth. The mouths in all directions were
discreetly withdrawn to an altitude of perhaps a half of a
mile. And their altitude varied so little from moment to
moment that San Lorenzo might have been protected by a
tornado-proof sheet of glass.
We let three more days go by, making certain that the
tornadoes had become as sincerely reticent as they seemed.
And
then we filled canteens from our water tank and The air was
dry and hot and deathly still. I had heard it suggested one
time that the
temperate zone ought to be six rather than four autumn,
locking, winter, unlocking, and spring. that as I
straightened up beside our manhole, and stared and listened
and sniffed.
we went above.
There were no smells. There was no movement. Every step I
took made a gravelly squeak in blue-white frost. And every
squeak was echoed loudly. The season of locking was over.
The earth was locked up tight.
It was winter, now and forever.
I helped my Mona out of our hole. I warned her to keep her
hands away from the blue-white frost and to keep her hands
away from her mouth, too. "Death has never been quite so
easy to come by," I told her. "All you have to do is touch
the ground and then your lips and you're done for."
She shook her head and sighed. "A very bad mother." "What?"
"Mother Earth--she isn't a very good mother any more."
"Hello? Hello?" I called through the palace ruins. The
awesome winds had torn canyons through that great stone
pile. Mona and I made a half-hearted search for survivors--
half-hearted because we could sense no life. Not even a
nibbling, twinkle-nosed rat had survived.
The arch of the palace gate was the only man-made form
untouched. Mona and I went to it. Written at its base in
white paint was a Bokononist "Calypso." The lettering was
neat. It was new. It was proof that someone else had
survived the winds.
The "Calypso" was this: Someday, someday, this crazy world
will have to end,
seasons in the in number: summer, And I remembered
lend. nod.
And our God will take things back that He to us did
And if, on that sad day, you want to scold our God, Why go
right ahead and scold Him. He'll just smile and

To Whom It May Concern 120
I recalled an advertisement for a set of children's books
called _The Book of Knowledge_. In that ad, a trusting boy
and girl looked up at their father. "Daddy," one asked,
"what makes the sky blue?" The answer, presumably, could be
found in _The Book of Knowledge_.
If I had had my daddy beside me as Mona and I walked down
the road from the palace, I would have had plenty of
questions to ask as I clung to his hand. "Daddy, why are
all the trees broken? Daddy, why are all the birds dead?
Daddy, what makes the sky so sick and wormy? Daddy, what
makes the sea so hard and still?"
It occurred to me that I was better qualified to answer
those tough questions than any other human being, provided
there were any other human beings alive. In case anyone was
interested, I knew what had gone wrong-- where and how.
So what?
wondered where the dead could be. Mona and I ventured more
mile from our oubliette without seeing one dead human
I than a being. I sensed
wasn't half so curious about the living, probably
accurately that I would first have to contemplate dead. I
saw no columns of smoke from possible campfires; would have
been hard to see against an horizon of worms.
because I a lot of but they
One thing did catch my eye: a lavender corona about plug
that was the peak on the hump of Mount McCabe. It seemed to
be calling me, and I had a silly, cinematic notion of
climbing that peak with Mona. But what would it mean?
We were walking into the wrinkles now at the foot of Mount
McCabe. And Mona, as though aimlessly, left my side, left
the road, and climbed one of the wrinkles. I followed.
the queer
I joined her at the top of the ridge. She was looking down
raptly into a broad, natural bowl. She was not crying.
She might well have cried.
In that bowl were thousands upon thousands of dead. On the
lips of each decedent was the blue-white frost of _ice-
nine_.
Since the corpses were not scattered or tumbled about, it
was clear that they had been assembled since the withdrawal
of the frightful winds. And, since each corpse had its
finger in or near its mouth, I understood that each person
had delivered himself to this melancholy place and then
poisoned himself with _ice-nine_.
There were men, women,, and children, too, many in the
attitudes of _boko-maru_. All faced the center of the bowl,

as though they were spectators in an amphitheater.
Mona and I looked at the focus of all those frosted eyes,
looked at the center of the bowl. There was a round
clearing there, a place in which one orator might have
stood.
Mona and I approached the clearing gingerly, avoiding the
morbid statuary. We found a boulder in it. And under the
boulder was a penciled note which said:
To whom it may concern: These people around you are almost
all of the survivors on San Lorenzo of the winds that
followed the freezing of the sea. These people made a
captive of the spurious holy man named Bokonon. They
brought him here, placed him at their center, and commanded
him to tell them exactly what God Almighty was up to and
what they should now do. The mountebank told them that God
was surely trying to kill them, possible because He was
through with them, and that they should have the good
manners to die. This, as you can see, they did.
The note was signed by Bokonon.
I Am Slow to Answer 121
"What a cynic!" I gasped. I looked up from the note and
gazed around the death-filled bowl. "Is _he_ here
somewhere?"
"I do not see him," said Mona mildly. She wasn't depressed
or angry. In fact, she seemed to verge on laughter. "He
always said he would never take his own advice, because he
knew it was worthless."
"He'd _better_ be here!" I said bitterly. "Think of the
gall of the man, advising all these people to kill
themselves!"
Now Mona did laugh. I had never heard her laugh. Her laugh
was startlingly deep and raw.
"This strikes you as _funny?_"
She raised her arms lazily. "It's all so simple, that's
all. It solves so much for so many, so simply."
And she went strolling up among the petrified thousands,
still laughing. She paused about midway up the slope and
faced me. She called down to me, "Would you wish any of
these alive again, if you could? Answer me quickly.
"Not quick enough with your answer," she called playfully,
after half a minute had passed. And, still laughing a
little, she touched her finger to the ground, straightened
up, and touched the finger to her lips and died.
Did I weep? They say I did. H. Lowe Crosby and his Hazel
and little Newton Hoenikker came upon me as I stumbled down
the road. They were in Bolivar's one taxicab, which had
been spared by the storm. They tell me I was crying. Hazel

cried, too, cried for joy that I was alive.
They coaxed me into the cab.
Hazel put her arm around me. "You're with your mom, now.
Don't you worry about a thing."
I let my mind go blank. I closed my eyes. It was with deep,
idiotic relief that I leaned on that fleshy, humid, barn-
yard fool.
The Swiss Family Robinson 122
They took me to what was left of Franklin Hoenikker's house
at the head of the waterfall. What remained was the cave
under the waterfall, which had become a sort of igloo under
a translucent, blue-white dome of _ice-nine_.
The ménage consisted of Frank, little Newt, and the
Crosbys. They had survived in a dungeon in the palace, one
far shallower and more unpleasant than the oubliette. They
had moved out the moment the winds had abated, while Mona
and I had stayed underground for another three days.
As it happened, they had found the miraculous taxicab
waiting for them under the arch of the palace gate. They
had found a can of white paint, and on the front doors of
the cab Frank had painted white stars, and on the roof he
had painted the letters of a _granfalloon_: U.S.A.
"And you left the paint under the arch," I said. "How did
you know?" asked Crosby. "Somebody else came along and
wrote a poem." I did not inquire at once as to how Angela
Hoenikker Conners
and Philip and Julian Castle had met their ends, for I
would have had to speak at once about Mona. I wasn't ready
to do that yet.
I particularly didn't want to discuss the death of Mona
since, as we rode along in the taxi, the Crosbys and little
Newt seemed so inappropriately gay.
Hazel gave me a clue to the gaiety. "Wait until you see how
we live. We've got all kinds of good things to eat.
Whenever we want water, we just build a campfire and melt
some. The Swiss Family Robinson--that's what we call
ourselves."
Of Mice and Men 123
A curious six months followed--the six months in which I
wrote this book. Hazel spoke accurately when she called our
little society the Swiss Family Robinson, for we had
survived a storm, were isolated, and then the living became
very easy indeed. It was not without a certain Walt Disney
charm.
No plants or animals survived, it's true. But _ice-nine_
preserved pigs and cows and little deer and windrows of
birds and berries until we were ready to thaw and cook

them. Moreover, there were tons of canned goods to be had
for the grubbing in the ruins of Bolivar. And we seemed to
be the only people left on San Lorenzo.
Food was no problem, and neither were clothing or shelter,
for the weather was uniformly dry and dead and hot. Our
health was monotonously good. Apparently all the germs were
dead, too--or napping.
Our adjustment became so satisfactory, so complacent, that
no one marveled or protested when Hazel said, "One good
thing anyway, no mosquitoes."
She was sitting on a three-legged stool in the clearing
where Frank's house had stood. She was sewing strips of
red, white, and blue cloth together. Like Betsy Ross, she
was making an American flag. No one was unkind enough to
point out to her that the red was really a peach, that the
blue was nearly a Kelly green, and that the fifty stars she
had cut out were six-pointed stars of David rather than
five-pointed American stars.
Her husband, who had always been a pretty good cook, now
simmered a stew in an iron pot over a wood fire nearby. He
did all our cooking for us; he loved to cook.
"Looks good, smells good," I commented. He winked. "Don't
shoot the cook. He's doing the best he
can."
In the background of this cozy conversation were the
nagging dah-dah-dahs and dit-dit-dits of an automatic SOS
transmitter Frank had made. It called for help both night
and day.
"Save our soullllls," Hazel intoned, singing along with the
transmitter as she sewed, "save our soulllllls."
"How's the writing going?" Hazel asked me. "Fine, Mom, just
fine." "When you going to show us some of it?" "When it's
ready, Mom, when it's ready." "A lot of famous writers were
Hoosiers." "I know."
"You'll be one of a long, long line." She smiled hopefully.
"Is it a funny book?"
"I hope so, Mom." "I like a good laugh." "I know you do."
"Each person here had some specialty, something to give the
rest. You write books that make us laugh, and Frank goes
science things, and little Newt--he paints pictures for us
all, and I sew, and Lowie cooks."
"'Many hands make much work light.' Old Chinese proverb."
"They were smart in a lot of ways, those Chinese were."
"Yes, let's ketp their memory alive." "I wish now I'd
studied them more."
"Well, it was hard to do, even under ideal conditions." "I
wish now I'd studied everything more." "We've all got

regrets, Mom."
"No use crying over spilt milk."
"As the poet said, Mom, 'Of all the words of mice and men,
the saddest are, "It might have been."'"
"That's so beautiful, and so true."
Frank's Ant Farm 124
I hated to see Hazel finishing the flag, because I was
balled up in her addled plans for it. She had the idea that
agreed to plant the fool thing on the peak of Mount McCabe.
all I had
"If Lowe and I were younger, we'd do it ourselves. Now all
we can do is give you the flag and send our best wishes
with you."
"Mom, I wonder if that's really a good place for the flag."
"What other place _is_ there?' "I'll put on my thinking
cap." I excused myself and went down
into the cave to see what Frank was up to. He was up to
nothing new. He was watching an ant farm he had
constructed. He had dug up a few surviving ants in the
three- dimensional world of the ruins of Bolivar, and he
had reduced the dimensions to two by making a dirt and ant
sandwich between two sheets of glass. The ants could do
nothing without Frank's catching them at it and commenting
upon it.
The experiment had solved in short order the mystery of how
ants could survive in a waterless world. As far as I know,
they were the only insects that did survive, and they did
it by forming with their bodies tight balls around grains
of _ice-nine_. They would generate enough heat at the
center to kill half their number and produce one bead of
dew. The dew was drinkable. The corpses were edible.
"Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die," I said to
Frank and his tiny cannibals.
His response was always the same. It was a peevish lecture
on all the things that people could learn from ants.
My responses were ritualized, too. "Nature's a wonderful
thing, Frank. Nature's a wonderful thing."
"You know why ants are so successful?" he asked me for the
thousandth time. "They co-_op_-er-ate."
"That's a hell of a good word--co-operation."
"Who _taught_ them how to make water?" "Who taught _me_ how
to make water?" "That's a silly answer and you know it."
"Sorry."
"There was a time when I took people's silly answers
seriously. I'm past that now."
"A milestone." "I've grown up a good deal." "At a certain
amount of expense to the world." I could say

things like that to Frank with an absolute assurance that
he would not hear them.
"There was a time when people could bluff me without much
trouble because I didn't have much self-confidence in
myself."
"The mere cutting down of the number of people on earth
would go a long way toward alleviating your own particular
social problems," I suggested. Again, I made the suggestion
to a deaf man.
"You _tell_ me, you _tell_ me who told these ants how to
make water," he challenged me again.
Several times I had offered the obvious notion that God had
taught them. And I knew from onerous experience that he
would neither reject nor accept this theory. He simply got
madder and madder, putting the question again and again.
I walked away from Frank, just as _The Books of Bokonon_
advised me to do. "Beware of the man who works hard to
learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than
before," Bokonon tells us. "He is full of murderous
resentment of people who are ignorant without having come
by their ignorance the hard way."
I went looking for our painter, for little Newt.
The Tasmanians 125
When I found little Newt, painting a blasted landscape a
quarter of a mile from the cave, he asked me if I would
drive him into Bolivar to forage for paints. He couldn't
drive himself. He couldn't reach the pedals.
So off we went, and, on the way, I asked him if he had any
sex urge left. I mourned that I had none--no dreams in that
line, nothing.
"I used to dream of women twenty, thirty, forty feet tall,"
he told me. "But now? God, I can't even remember what my
Ukrainian midget looked like."
I recalled a thing I had read about the aboriginal
Tasmanians, habitually naked persons who, when encountered
by white men in the seventeenth century, were strangers to
agriculture, animal husbandry, architecture of any sort,
and possibly even fire. They were so contemptible in the
eyes of white men, by reason of their ignorance, that they
were hunted for sport by the first settlers, who were
convicts from England. And the aborigines found life so
unattractive that they gave up reproducing.
I suggested to Newt now that it was a similar hopelessness
that had unmanned us.
Newt made a shrewd observation. "I guess all the excitement
in bed had more to do with excitement about keeping the
human race going than anybody ever imagined."

"Of course, if we had a woman of breeding age among us,
that might change the situation radically. Poor old Hazel
is years beyond having even a Mongolian idiot."
Newt revealed that he knew quite a bit about Mongolian
idiots. He had once attended a special school for grotesque
children, and several of his schoolmates had been
Mongoloids. "The best writer in our class was a Mongoloid
named Myrna--I mean penmanship, not what she actually wrote
down. God, I haven't thought about her for years."
"Was it a good school?"
"All I remember is what the headmaster used to say all the
time. He was always bawling us out over the loudspeaker
system for some mess we'd made, and he always started out
the same way: 'I am sick and tired . . .'"
"That comes pretty close to describing how I feel most of
the time."
"Maybe that's the way you're supposed to feel." "You talk
like a Bokononist, Newt." "Why shouldn't I? As far as I
know, Bokononism is the only
religion that has any commentary on midgets." When I hadn't
been writing, I'd been poring over _The Books
of Bokonon_, but the reference to midgets had escaped me. I
was grateful to Newt for calling it to my attention, for
the quotation captured in a couplet the cruel paradox of
Bokononist thought, the heartbreaking necessity of lying
about reality, and the heartbreaking impossibility of lying
about it.
Midget, midget, midget, how he struts and winks, For he
knows a man's as big as what he hopes and thinks!
Soft Pipes, Play On 126
"Such a _depressing_ religion!" I cried. I directed our
conversation into the area of Utopias, of what might have
been, of what should have been, of what might yet be, if
the world would thaw.
But Bokonon had been there, too, had written a whole book
about Utopias, _The Seventh Book_, which he called
"Bokonon's Republic." In that book are these ghastly
aphorisms:
The hand that stocks the drug stores rules the world.
Let us start our Republic with a chain of drug stores, a
chain of grocery stores, a chain of gas chambers, and a
national game. After that, we can write our Constitution.
I called Bokonon a jigaboo bastard, and I changed the
subject again. I spoke of meaningful, individual heroic
acts. I praised in particular the way in which Julian
Castle and his son had chosen to die. While the tornadoes
still raged, they had set out on foot for the House of Hope

and Mercy in the Jungle to give whatever hope and mercy was
theirs to give. And I saw magnificence in the way poor
Angela had died, too. She had picked up a clarinet in the
ruins of Bolivar and had begun to play it at once, without
concerning herself as to whether the mouthpiece might be
contaminated with _ice-nine_.
Newt.
"Soft pipes, play on," I murmured huskily. "Well, maybe you
can find some neat way to die, too," said
It was a Bokononist thing to say.
I blurted out my dream of climbing Mount McCabe with some
magnificent symbol and planting it there. I took my hands
from the wheel for an instant to show him how empty of
symbols they were.
"But what in hell would the right symbol _be_, Newt? What
in hell would it _be?_" I grabbed the wheel again. "Here it
is, the end of the world; and here I am, almost the very
last man; and there it is, the highest mountain in sight. I
know now what my _karass_ has been up to, Newt. It's been
working night and day for maybe half a million years to get
me up that mountain." I wagged my head and nearly wept.
"But what, for the love of God, is supposed to be in my
hands?"
I looked out of the car window blindly as I asked that, so
blindly that I went more than a mile before realizing that
I had looked into the eyes of an old Negro man, a living
colored man, who was sitting by the side of the road.
eyes.
And then I slowed down. And then I stopped. I covered my
"What's the matter?" asked Newt. "I saw Bokonon back there."
The End 127
He was sitting on a rock. He was barefoot. His feet were
frosty with _ice-nine_. His only garment was a white
bedspread with blue tufts. The tufts said Casa Mona. He
took no note of our arrival. In one hand was a pencil. In
the other was paper.
"Bokonon?" "Yes?" "May I ask what you're thinking?" "I am
thinking, young man, about the final sentence for _The
Books of Bokonon_. The time for the final sentence has
come." "Any luck?"
He shrugged and handed me a piece of paper. This is what I
read:
If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human
stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and
lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I
would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison
that makes statues

of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my
back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know
Who.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE

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