Armageddon In Retrospect - Kurt Vonnegut [53]
“Marta!” I said.
“You know it’s true,” she said flatly. “If gas chambers were set up on European street corners, they’d have longer queues than the bakeries. When does all the hate end? Never.”
“Marta, for the love of Heaven, I won’t have you talking that way,” I said.
“Major Evans talks that way, too,” said Captain Donnini. “Only he says he wants to go on fighting. Once or twice, when he’s been tight, he’s said he wished he’d been killed—that there wasn’t anything to go home to. He took fantastic chances in the fighting, and never got a scratch.”
“Poor man,” said Marta, “no more war.”
“Well, there’s still guerrilla action—a lot of it around Leningrad. He’s applied for a transfer there, so he can get into it.” He looked down and spread his fingers over his knees. “Well, anyway, what I came to tell you was that the major wants his desk tomorrow.”
The door swung open, and the major strode into the workshop. “Captain, where the hell have you been? I sent you on an errand that should have taken five minutes, and you’ve been gone thirty.”
Captain Donnini stood at attention. “Sorry, sir.”
“You know how I feel about my men fraternizing with the enemy.”
“Yessir.”
He confronted me. “Now what’s this about your window?”
“One of your men broke it last night.”
“Now, isn’t that too damn bad?” It was another one of his unanswerable questions. “I said, isn’t that too damn bad, Pop?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Pop, I’m going to tell you something that I want you to get through your head. And then I want you to make sure everybody else in town understands it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ve lost a war. Have you got that? And I’m not here to have you or anybody else cry on my shoulder. I’m here to see that everybody damn well understands they lost a war, and to see that nobody makes trouble. And that’s all I’m here for. And the next person who tells me he was a pal of the Russians because he had to be gets his teeth kicked in. And that goes for the next person who tells me he’s got it rough. You haven’t got it half rough enough.”
“Yes, sir.”
“It’s your Europe,” said Marta quietly.
He turned to her angrily. “If it were mine, young lady, I’d have the engineers bulldoze the whole lousy mess flat. Nothing in it but gutless wonders who’ll follow any damn dictator that comes along.” Again I was struck, as I’d been on the first day, by how awfully tired and distracted he seemed.
“Sir—” said the captain.
“Be quiet. I didn’t fight my way here so the Eagle Scouts could take over. Now, where’s my desk?”
“I’m finishing the eagle.”
“Let’s have a look.” I handed him the disk. He swore softly, and touched the insignia on his cap. “Like this one,” he said. “I want it exactly like this one.”
I blinked at the insignia on his cap. “But it is like that one. I copied exactly from a dollar bill.”
“The arrows, Pop! Which claw are the arrows in?”
“Oh—on your hat they’re in the right claw, on the bill they’re in the left.”
“All the difference in the world, Pop: one’s the Army, the other’s for civilians.” He raised his knee, and snapped the carving over it. “Try again. You were so anxious to please the Russian commandant, please me!”
“Could I say something?” I said.
“No. All I want to hear from you is that I’ll get the desk tomorrow morning.”
“But the carving will take days.”
“Stay up all night.”
“Yes, sir.”
He walked out, with the captain at his heels.
“What were you going to tell him?” said Marta, with a wry smile.
“I was going to tell him that the Czechs have fought against the Europe he hates as hard and long as he has. I was going to tell him—Oh well, what’s the use?”
“Go on.”
“You’ve heard it a thousand times, Marta. It’s a tiresome story, I suppose. I wanted to tell him how I’ve fought the Hapsburgs and the Nazis, and then the Czech communists, and then the Russians—fought them in my own small ways. Not once have I sided with a dictator, and I never will.”
“Better get to work on the eagle. Remember, arrows in the right hand.”
“Marta, you’ve never tasted Scotch, have you?” I dug the claws of a hammer into a crack in the floor, and pried up the