Slapstick, Or, Lonesome No More! - Kurt Vonnegut [36]
“He promised to bring us together, but tore us apart instead,” I said. “Now, hey prestol, he will bring us together after all.”
I posed for photographs beneath the inscription on the facade of the Archives, which said this:
“THE PAST IS PROLOGUE.”
“They were not basically criminals,” I said. “But they yearned to partake of the brotherhood they saw in Organized Crime.”
• • •
“So many crimes committed by lonesome people in Government are concealed in this place,” I said, “that the inscription might well read, ‘Better a Family of Criminals than No Family at All.’
“I think we are now marking the end of the era of such tragic monkeyshines. The Prologue is over, friends and neighbors and relatives. Let the main body of our noble work begin.
“Thank you,” I said.
• • •
There were no large newspapers or national magazines to print my words. The huge printing plants had all shut down—for want of fuel. There were no microphones. There were just the people there.
Hi ho.
• • •
I passed out a special decoration to the soldiers, to commemorate the occasion. It consisted of a pale blue ribbon from which depended a plastic button.
I explained, only half-jokingly, that the ribbon represented “The Bluebird of Happiness.” And the button was inscribed with these words, of course:
35
IT IS MID-MORNING here in Skyscraper National Park. The gravity is balmy, but Melody and Isadore will not work on the baby’s pyramid today. We will have a picnic on top of the building instead. The young people are being so companionable with me because my birthday is only two days away now. What fun!
There is nothing they love more than a birthday!
Melody plucks a chicken which a slave of Vera Chipmunk-17 Zappa brought to us this morning. The slave also brought two loaves of bread and two liters of creamy beer. He pantomimed how nourishing he was being to us. He pressed the bases of the two beer bottles to his nipples, pretending that he had breasts that gave creamy beer.
We laughed. We clapped our hands.
• • •
Melody tosses pinches of feathers skyward. Because of the mild gravity, it appears that she is a white witch. Each snap of her fingers produces butterflies.
I have an erection. So does Isadore. So does every male.
• • •
Isadore sweeps the lobby with a broom he has made of twigs. He sings one of the only two songs he knows. The other song is “Happy Birthday to You.” Yes, and he is tone-deaf, too, so he drones.
“Row, row, row your boat,” he drones,
“Gently down the stream.
“Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily—
“Life is but a dream.”
Yes, and I now remember a day in the dream of my life, far upstream from now, in which I received a chatty letter from the President of my country, who happened to be me. Like any other citizen, I had been waiting on pins and needles to learn from the computers what my new middle name would be.
My President congratulated me on my new middle name. He asked me to use it as a regular part of my signature, and on my mailbox and letterheads and in directories, and so on. He said that the name was selected at immaculate random, and was not intended as a comment on my character or my appearance or my past.
He offered deceptively homely, almost inane examples of how I might serve artificial relatives: By watering their houseplants while they were away; by taking care of their babies so they could get out of the house for an hour or two; by telling them the name of a truly painless dentist; by mailing a letter for them; by keeping them company on a scary visit to a doctor; by visiting them in a jail or a hospital; by keeping them company at a