Armageddon In Retrospect - Kurt Vonnegut [50]
“It’s very beautiful here in the mountains,” he said lamely.
We lapsed into an uncomfortable silence, broken from time to time by the major’s rummaging about in the back room. I took a good look at the captain, and was struck by how much more boyish he seemed than the major, though it was quite possible that they were the same age. It was hard to imagine him on a battlefield, and it was hard to imagine the major anywhere else.
I heard Major Evans give a low whistle, and I knew he’d found the commandant’s desk.
“The major must have been a very brave man, he has so many medals,” said Marta at last.
Captain Donnini seemed grateful for a chance to explain about his superior. “He was and is an extremely brave man,” he said warmly. He said that the major and most of the enlisted men in Beda had come from an apparently famous armored division, which, the captain implied, never knew fear or fatigue, and loved nothing better than a good fight.
I clucked my tongue in wonderment, as I always do when hearing of such a division. I have heard of them from American officers, German officers, Russian officers; and my officers in World War I solemnly declared that I belonged to such a division. When I hear of a division of war-lovers from an enlisted man, maybe I will believe it, provided the man is sober and has been shot at. If there are such divisions, perhaps they should be preserved between wars in dry ice.
“And what about you?” said Marta, breaking into the captain’s blood-and-thunder biography of Major Evans.
He smiled. “I’m so new to Europe, I can’t—if you’ll pardon the expression—find my behind with both hands. The air of Fort Benning, Georgia, is still in my lungs. The major—he’s the hero, been fighting for three years without a break.”
“And I didn’t figure to wind up here as a combination constable, county clerk, and wailing wall,” said Major Evans, standing in the doorway of the back room. “Pop, I want this desk. Making it for yourself, were you?”
“What would I do with a desk like that? I was building it for the Russian commandant.”
“A friend of yours, eh?”
I tried to smile, unconvincingly, I imagine. “I wouldn’t be here to talk to you, if I’d refused to make it. And I wouldn’t have been here to talk to him, if I hadn’t made a bed for the Nazi commandant—with a garland of swastikas and the first stanza of the Horst Wessel Song on the headboard.”
The captain smiled with me, but the major didn’t. “This one is different,” said the major. “He comes right out and says he was a collaborator.”
“I didn’t say that,” I said evenly.
“Don’t spoil it, don’t spoil it,” said Major Evans, “it’s a refreshing change.”
Marta suddenly hurried upstairs.
“I was no collaborator,” I said.
“Sure, sure—fought ’em every inch of the way. You bet. I know, I know. Come here a minute, will you? I want to talk about my desk.”
He was seated on the unfinished desk, an enormous and, to me, hideous piece of furniture. I’d designed it as a private satire on the Russian commandant’s bad taste and hypocrisy about symbols of wealth. I’d made it as ornate and pretentious as possible, a Russian peasant’s dream of what a Wall Street banker’s desk looked like. It glittered with bits of colored glass set like jewels in the wood, and it was highlighted with radiator paint that looked something like gilt. Now it appeared that the satire would have to remain private, for the American commandant was as taken by it as the Russian had been.
“This is what I call a piece of furniture,” said Major Evans.
“Very nice,” said Captain Donnini absently. He was looking up the stairs, where Marta had fled.
“There’s just one thing wrong with it, Pop.”
“The hammer and sickle—I know. I was going to take—”
“How right you are,” said the major. He drew back his boot, and gave the massive escutcheon a savage kick on its edge. The round piece broke free, rolled drunkenly into a corner, and settled face down with a rowrroworrowrr—clack! The cat investigated it, and backed away suspiciously.
“An eagle goes there, Pop.” The major took off his cap to show