Armageddon In Retrospect - Kurt Vonnegut [52]
“Well,” I said gloomily, “if I’d been fighting for three years, I wonder how friendly I would be. Let’s face it, whether all of us wanted to or not, we gave men and materials that helped to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans.” I gestured at the mountains to the west. “Look where the Russians got their uranium.”
“Eye for eye, tooth for tooth,” said Marta. “How long does that go on?”
I sighed and shook my head. “The Czechs have paid with interest, God knows. Hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.” We’d lost most of our young men, Marta’s husband among them, in suicide waves before main Russian attacks; and our largest cities were little more than gravel and smoke.
“And, after paying it, we get a new commissar. They’re no different from the rest,” she said bitterly. “It was childish to expect anything else.”
Her terrible disappointment, for which I’d built her up, her apathy and hopelessness—good God in Heaven, I couldn’t bear it! And there would be no more liberators. The only strength left anywhere in the world was in America, and the Americans were in Beda.
Dully, I set to work on the American eagle again. The captain had given me a dollar bill from which to copy the insignia. “Let me see—nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen arrows in the claw.”
There was a diffident knock on the door, and Captain Donnini walked in. “Pardon me,” he said.
“I guess we’ll have to,” I said. “Your side won the war.”
“Afraid I didn’t have much to do with it.”
“The major didn’t leave anybody for the captain to shoot,” said Marta.
“What happened to your window?” said the captain.
There was shattered glass all over the floor, and a big piece of cardboard now kept the weather from coming in the window. “It was liberated last night by a beer bottle,” I said. “I’ve written the major a note about it—for which I’ll probably be beheaded.”
“What’s that you’re making?”
“An eagle with thirteen arrows in one claw, and an olive branch in the other.”
“You’re well-off. You could be whitewashing rocks. You were kept off the list, just so you could finish the desk.”
“Yes, I saw the rock whitewashers,” I said. “With the whitewashed rocks, Beda looks better than it did before the war. You’d never know it had been shelled.” The major had ordered that a stirring message be written on his lawn in whitewashed rock: 1402 MP Company, Major Lawson Evans Commanding. The flower beds and walks were also being outlined in rock.
“Oh, he’s not a bad man,” said the captain. “It’s a miracle he’s come through it all as well as he has.”
“It’s a miracle any of us have come through as well as we have,” said Marta.
“Yes, I realize that. I know—you’ve been through terrible times. But, well, so has the major. He lost his family in the Chicago bombings, his wife and three children.”
“I lost my husband in the war,” said Marta.
“So what are you trying to tell us—that we’re all doing penance for the death of the major’s family? Does he think we wanted them killed?” I said.
He leaned against the workbench, and closed his eyes. “Oh hell, I don’t know, I don’t know. I thought it would help you to understand him—make you not hate him. Nothing makes any sense, though—nothing seems to help.”
“Did you think you could help, Captain?” said Marta.
“Before I came over here—yes, I did. Now I know I’m not what’s needed, and I don’t know what is. I sympathize with everybody, damn it, and see why they are the way they are—you two, all the people in town, the major, the enlisted men. Maybe, if I’d got a bullet through me or had somebody come after me with a flame-thrower, maybe I’d be more of a man.”
“And hate like everyone else,” said Marta.
“Yes—and be as sure of myself as everybody else seems to be on account of it.”
“Not sure—numb,” I said.
“Numb,” he repeated, “everyone has reasons for being numb.”
“That’s the last defense,” said Marta. “Numbness or suicide.