Hocus Pocus - Kurt Vonnegut [105]
“I haven’t had any contact with them for years,” I said.
“That’s what they told me,” he said. “But just before I called they got a call from the Governor of New York, who said he had just made you a Brigadier General. He wanted to make sure he hadn’t been made a fool of. He wanted to make sure you were what you were claimed to be.”
“WELL,” I SAID, and we were still standing in the reception room, “I don’t think we need to wait for blood tests to find out whether you are really my son or not. You are the spit and image of me when I was your age.
“You should know that I really loved your mother,” I went on.
“That was in her letter, how much in love you were,” he said.
“You will have to take my word for it,” I said, “that if I had known she was pregnant, I would have behaved honorably. I’m not quite sure what we would have done. We would have worked something out.”
I led the way into my office. “Come on in. There are a couple of easy chairs in here. We can close the door.”
“No, no, no,” he said. “I’m on my way. I just thought we should see each other just one time. We’ve done that now. It’s no big thing.”
“I like life to be simple,” I said, “but if you went away without another word, that would be much too simple for me, and for you, too, I hope.”
So I got him into my office and closed the door, and got us settled in facing easy chairs. We hadn’t touched. We never would touch.
“I would offer you coffee,” I said, “but nobody in this valley has coffee.”
“I’ve got some in my car,” he said.
“I’m sure,” I said. “But don’t go get it. Never mind, never mind.” I cleared my throat. “If you’ll pardon my saying so, you seem to be what I have heard called ‘fabulously well-to-do.’ ”
He said that, yes, he was fortunate financially. The Dubuque meat packer who married his mother and adopted him had sold his business to the Shah of Bratpuhr shortly before he died, and had been paid in gold bricks deposited in a bank in Switzerland.
THE MEAT PACKER’S name was Lowell Fenstermaker, so my son’s full name was Rob Roy Fenstermaker. Rob Roy said he certainly wasn’t going to change his last name to Hartke, that he felt like Fenstermaker and not Hartke.
His stepfather had been very good to him. Rob Roy said that the only thing he didn’t like about him was the way he raised calves for veal. The baby animals, scarcely out of the womb, were put in cages so cramped that they could hardly move, to make their muscles nice and tender. When they were big enough their throats were cut, and they had never run or jumped or made friends, or done anything that might have made life a worthwhile experience.
WHAT WAS THEIR crime?
ROB ROY SAID that his inherited wealth was at first an embarrassment. He said that until very recently he never would have considered buying a car like the 1 parked outside, or wearing a cashmere jacket and lizard-skin shoes made in Italy. That was what he was wearing in my office. “When nobody else in Dubuque could afford black-market coffee and gasoline, I, too, did without. I used to walk everywhere.”
“What happened very recently?” I said.
“I was arrested for molesting little children,” he said.
I itched all over with a sudden attack of psychosomatic hives.
He told me the whole story.
I said to him, “I thank you for sharing that with me.”
THE HIVES WENT away as quickly as they had come.
I felt wonderful, very happy to have him look me over and think what he would. I had seldom been happy to have my legitimate children look me over and think what they would.
What made the difference? I hate to say so, because my answer is so paltry. But here it is: I had always wanted to be a General, and there I was wearing General’s stars.
HOW EMBARRASSING TO be human.
THERE WAS THIS, too: I was no longer encumbered by my wife and mother-in-law. Why did I keep them at home so long, even though it was plain that they were making the lives of my children unbearable?
It could be, I suppose, because somewhere in the back of my mind I believed that there might really be a big