Jailbird - Kurt Vonnegut [21]
My accepting those goods was surely my most corrupt act as a public servant, and my only corrupt act—until Watergate. I did it for love.
I began to speak to Ruth of love almost as soon as she got out of the hospital and went to work for me. Her replies were kind of funny and perceptive—but above all pessimistic. She believed, and was entitled to believe, I must say, that all human beings were evil by nature, whether tormentors or victims, or idle standers-by. They could only create meaningless tragedies, she said, since they weren’t nearly intelligent enough to accomplish all the good they meant to do. We were a disease, she said, which had evolved on one tiny cinder in the universe, but could spread and spread.
“How can you speak of love to a woman,” she asked me early in our courtship, “who feels that it would be just as well if nobody had babies anymore, if the human race did not go on?”
“Because I know you don’t really believe that,” I replied. “Ruth—look at how full of life you are!” It was true. There was no movement or sound she made that was not at least accidentally flirtatious—and what is flirtatiousness but an argument that life must go on and on and on?
What a charmer she was! Oh, I got the credit for how smoothly things ran. My own country gave me a Distinguished Service Medal, and France made me a chevalier in the Légion d’honneur, and Great Britain and the Soviet Union sent me letters of commendation and thanks. But it was Ruth who worked all the miracles, who kept each guest in a state of delighted forgivingness, no matter what went wrong.
“How can you dislike life and still be so lively?” I asked her.
“I couldn’t have a child, even if I wanted to,” she said. “That’s how lively I am.”
She was wrong about that, of course. She was only guessing. She would give birth to a son by and by, a very unpleasant person, who, as I have already said, is now a book reviewer for The New York Times.
That conversation with Ruth in Nuremberg went on. We were in Saint Martha’s Church, close to where fate had first brought us together. It was not yet operating as a church again. The roof had been put back on—but there was a canvas flap where the rose window used to be. The window and the altar, an old custodian told us, had been demolished by a single cannon shell from a British fighter plane. To him, judging from his solemnity, this was yet another religious miracle. And I must say that I seldom met a male German who was saddened by all the destruction in his own country. It was always the ballistics of whatever had done the wrecking that he wished to talk about.
“There is more to life than having babies, Ruth,” I said.
“If I had one, it would be a monster,” she said. And it came to pass.
“Never mind babies,” I said. “Think of the new era that is being born. The world has learned its lesson at last, at last. The closing chapter to ten thousand years of madness and greed is being written right here and now—in Nuremberg. Books will be written about it. Movies will be made about it. It’s the most important turning point in history.” I believed it.
“Walter,” she said, “sometimes I think you are only eight years old.”
“It’s the only age to be,” I said, “when a new era is being born.”
Clocks struck six all over town. A new voice joined the chorus of public chimes and bells. It was in fact an old voice in Nuremberg,