Palm Sunday_ An Autobiographical Collage - Kurt Vonnegut [73]
Tony Costa and I exchanged a few letters after he was put away. He would eventually hang himself. The message of his letters to me was that a person as intent on being virtuous as he was could not possibly have harmed a fly. He believed it.
• • •
I know the feeling.
• • •
Have I ever really killed anybody, even in a war? Not that I know of. Maybe I have forgotten. I await the police.
11
RELIGION
TOWARD THE END OF OUR MARRIAGE, it Was mainly religion in a broad sense that Jane and I fought about. She came to devote herself more and more to making alliances with the supernatural in her need to increase her strength and understanding—and happiness and health. This was painful to me. She could not understand and cannot understand why that should have been painful to me, or why it should be any of my business at all.
And it is to suggest to her and to some others why it was painful that I chose for this book’s epigraph a quotation from a thin book, Instruction in Morals, published in 1900 and written by my Free Thinker great-grandfather Clemens Vonnegut, then seventy-six years old:
“Whoever entertains liberal views and chooses a consort that is captured by superstition risks his happiness.”
• • •
I did not know that my great-grandfather had said such a thing, or even that he had written a book, until about ten days ago. My brother Bernard sent the book to me then, after picking it up on a recent trip to Indianapolis. Bernard also sent me a copy of Clemens Vonnegut’s comments on life and death, which were read at his funeral. Clemens Vonnegut planned his own funeral in 1874, and actually died in 1906. His words to his mourners were these:
“Friends or Opponents: To all of you who stand here to deliver my body to the earth:
“To you, my next of kin:
“Do not mourn! I have now arrived at the end of the course of life, as you will eventually arrive at yours. I am at rest and nothing will ever disturb my deep slumber.
“I am disturbed by no worries, no grief, no fears, no wishes, no passions, no pains, no reproaches from others. All is infinitely well with me.
“I departed from life with loving, affectionate feelings for all mankind; and I admonish you: Be aware of this truth that the people on this earth could be joyous, if only they would live rationally, and if they would contribute mutually to each others’ welfare.
“This world is not a vale of sorrows if you will recognize discriminatingly what is truly excellent in it; and if you will avail yourself of it for mutual happiness and well-being. Therefore, let us explain as often as possible, and particularly at the departure from life, that we base our faith on firm foundations, on Truth for putting into action our ideas which do not depend on fables and ideas which Science has long ago proven to be false.
“We also wish Knowledge, Goodness, Sympathy, Mercy, Wisdom, Justice, and Truthfulness. We also strive for and venerate all of those attributes from which the fantasy of man has created a God. We also strive for the virtues of Temperance, Industriousness, Friendship, and Peace. We believe in pure ideas based on Truth and Justice.
“Therefore, however, we do not believe, cannot believe, that a Thinking Being existed for millions and millions of years, and eventually and finally out of nothing—through a Word—created this world, or rather this earth with its Firmament, its Sun and Moon and the Stars.
“We cannot believe that this Being formed a human being from clay and breathed into it an Immortal Soul, and then allowed this human being to procreate millions, and then delivered them all into unspeakable misery, wretchedness and pain for all eternity. Nor can we believe that the descendants of one or two human beings will inevitably become sinners; nor do we believe that through