Bluebeard - Kurt Vonnegut [68]
I was aghast.
Her voice was imperious and scornful. “So, my faithless little Armenian protégé,” she said, “we meet again.”
28
“THOUGHT YOU WERE going to get laid again, I’ll bet,” she said. Her words echoed whisperingly in the dome—as though they were being discussed up there by the Divinities.
“Surprise, surprise,” she said, “we’re not even going to shake hands today.”
I wagged my head in unhappy wonderment. “Why are you so mad at me?” I asked.
“During the Great Depression,” she said, “I thought you were the one real friend I had in the world. And then we made love, and I never heard from you again.”
“I can’t believe this,” I said. “You told me to go away—for the good of both of us. Have you forgotten that?”
“You must have been awfully glad to hear me say that,” she said. “You sure went away.”
“What did you expect me to do?” I said.
“To give some sign, any sign, that you cared how I was,” she said. “You’ve had fourteen years to do it, but you never did it—not one telephone call, not one postcard. Now here you are back like a bad penny: expecting what? Expecting to get laid again.”
“You mean we could have gone on being lovers?” I asked incredulously.
“Lovers? Lovers? Lovers?” she mocked me raucously. The echoes of her scorn for lovers sounded like warring blackbirds overhead.
“There’s never been any shortage of lovers for Marilee Kemp,” she said. “My father loved me so much he beat me every day. The football team at the high school loved me so much they raped me all night after the Junior Prom. The stage manager at the Ziegfield Follies loved me so much he told me that I had to be part of his stable of whores or he’d fire me and have somebody throw acid in my face. Dan Gregory loved me so much he threw me down the stairs because I’d sent you some expensive art materials.”
“He did what?” I said.
So she told me the true story of how I had become the apprentice of Dan Gregory.
I was flabbergasted. “But—but he must have liked my pictures, didn’t he?” I stammered.
“No,” she said.
“That’s one beating I took on account of you,” she said. “I took another one after we made love and I never heard from you again. Now let’s talk about all the wonderful things you did for me.”
“I never felt so ashamed in my life,” I said.
“All right—I’ll tell you what you did for me: you went for happy, silly, beautiful walks with me.”
“Yes—” I said, “I remember those.”
“You used to rub your feet on the carpets and then give me shocks on my neck when I least expected it,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“And we were so naughty sometimes,” she said.
“When we made love,” I said.
She blew up again. “No! No! No! You jerk! You jerk! You incomparable jerk!” she exclaimed. “The Museum of Modern Art!”
“So you lost an eye in the war,” she said.
“So did Fred Jones,” I said.
“So did Lucrezia and Maria,” she said.
“Who are they?” I said.
“My cook,” she said, “and the woman who let you in.”
“Did you win a lot of medals in the war?” she said.
Actually, I hadn’t done too badly. I had a Bronze Star with a Cluster, and a Purple Heart for my wound, and a Presidential Unit Citation, a Soldier’s Medal, a Good Conduct Badge, and a European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Ribbon with seven Battle Stars.
I was proudest of my Soldier’s Medal, which is usually awarded to a soldier who has saved the life of another soldier in situations not necessarily related to combat. In 1941, I was giving a course in camouflage techniques to officer candidates at Fort Benning, Georgia. I saw a barracks on fire, and I gave the alarm, and then went in twice, without regard for my own safety, and carried out two unconscious enlisted men.
They were the only two people in there, and nobody was supposed to be in there. They had been drinking, and had accidentally started the fire themselves, for which they were given two years at hard labor—plus loss of all pay and dishonorable discharges.
About my medals: all I said to Marilee was that I guessed I had received