Welcome to the Monkey House - Kurt Vonnegut [132]
"Dr. Brainard Keyes Bullard," said the commentator, "President of Wyandotte College, said in an address tonight that most of the world’s ills can be traced to the fact that Man’s knowledge of himself has not kept pace with his knowledge of the physical world."
"Hell!" said Gramps. "We said that a hundred years ago."
"In Chicago tonight," said the commentator, "a special celebration is taking place in the Chicago Lying-in Hospital. The guest of honor is Lowell W. Hitz, age zero. Hitz, born this morning, is the twenty-five-millionth child to be born in the hospital." The commentator faded, and was replaced on the screen by young Hitz, who squalled furiously.
"Hell," whispered Lou to Emerald, "we said that a hundred years ago."
"I heard that!" shouted Gramps. He snapped off the television set, and his petrified descendants stared silently at the screen. "You, there, boy—"
"I didn’t mean anything by it, sir," said Lou.
"Get me my will. You know where it is. You kids all know where it is. Fetch, boy!"
Lou nodded dully, and found himself going down the hall, picking his way over bedding to Gramps’ room, the only private room in the Schwartz apartment. The other rooms were the bathroom, the living room, and the wide, windowless hallway, which was originally intended to serve as a dining area, and which had a kitchenette in one end. Six mattresses and four sleeping bags were dispersed in the hallway and living room, and the daybed, in the living room, accommodated the eleventh couple, the favorites of the moment.
On Gramps’ bureau was his will, smeared, dog-eared, perforated, and blotched with hundreds of additions, deletions, accusations, conditions, warnings, advice, and homely philosophy. The document was, Lou reflected, a fifty-year diary, all jammed onto two sheets—a garbled, illegible log of day after day of strife. This day, Lou would be disinherited for the eleventh time, and it would take him perhaps six months of impeccable behavior to regain the promise of a share in the estate.
"Boy!" called Gramps.
"Coming, sir." Lou hurried back into the living room, and handed Gramps the will.
"Pen!" said Gramps.
He was instantly offered eleven pens, one from each couple.
"Not that leaky thing," he said, brushing Lou’s pen aside. "Ah, there’s a nice one. Good boy, Willy." He accepted Willy’s pen. That was the tip they’d all been waiting for. Willy, then, Lou’s father, was the new favorite.
Willy, who looked almost as young as Lou, though one hundred and forty-two, did a poor job of concealing his pleasure. He glanced shyly at the daybed, which would become his, and from which Lou and Emerald would have to move back into the hall, back to the worst spot of all by the bathroom door.
Gramps missed none of the high drama he’d authored, and he gave his own familiar role everything he had. Frowning and running his finger along each line, as though he were seeing the will for the first time, he read aloud in a deep, portentous monotone, like a bass tone on a cathedral organ:
"I, Harold D. Schwartz, residing in Building 257 of Alden Village, New York City, do hereby make, publish, and declare this to be my last Will and Testament, hereby revoking any and all former wills and codicils by me at any time heretofore made." He blew his nose importantly, and went on, not missing a word, and repeating many for emphasis—repeating in particular his ever-more-elaborate specifications for a funeral.
At the end of these specifications, Gramps was so choked with emotion that Lou thought he might forget why he’d gotten out the will in the first place. But Gramps heroically brought his powerful emotions under control, and, after erasing for a full minute, he began to write and speak at the same time. Lou could have spoken his lines for him, he’d heard them so often.
"I have had many heartbreaks ere leaving this vale of tears for