While Mortals Sleep_ Unpublished Short Fiction - Kurt Vonnegut [54]
In three weeks’ time, Robert was an excellent dancer and hopelessly in love with Marie.
“How did it happen?” he said to me. “How could it?”
“You are a man and she is a woman,” I said.
“We’re utterly different,” he said.
“Vive la utter difference,” I said.
“What’ll I do, what’ll I do?” he said heartbrokenly.
“Proclaim your love,” I said.
“For a maid?” he said incredulously.
“Royalty’s all gone or spoken for, Robert,” I said. “The descendants of the lieutenant governor of Rhode Island have no choice but to marry commoners. It’s like musical chairs.”
“You’re not very funny,” said Robert bitterly.
“Well, you can’t marry anybody in Pisquontuit, can you?” I said. “There’s been a guard in the woods for three generations, and now all the people inside are at least second cousins. The system carries the seeds of its own destruction, unless it’s willing to start mixing in chauffeurs and upstairs maids.”
“There’s new blood coming in all the time,” said Robert.
“He left,” I said. “He went back to Beacon Hill.”
“Oh? I didn’t know that,” said Robert. “I don’t notice much of anything anymore but Marie.” He laid his hand on his chest. “This force,” he said, “it just does with you what it wants to do with you, makes you feel what it wants to make you feel.”
“Steady, boy, steady,” I said, and I went to question Marie rather sharply as to whether she loved Robert or not.
Over the noise of the vacuum cleaner, she gave me coy, equivocal answers. “I feel like I’d kind of created him,” she said, “starting with nothing.”
“He says you’ve showed him the savage in himself,” I said.
“That’s what I mean,” she said. “I don’t think there was any savage to begin with.”
“What a pity,” I said, “after they’ve gone to so much expense keeping the savages out. If you married him, you’d have a very rich savage, you know.”
“It’s just an incubator baby now,” she said wickedly.
“Life is losing all meaning for Robert,” I said. “You don’t know what you’re doing to him. He’s stopped caring if he wins or loses at tennis and sailing.”
As I spoke of another’s love and looked into the wide, blue windows of her soul, a rich, insistent yearning flooded my senses. “He can’t even manage a smile anymore when somebody pronounces Pisquontuit the way it’s spelled,” I murmured, my voice trailing off at the end.
“I’m very sorry, I’m sure,” she said bewitchingly.
I lost my head. I seized her by the wrist. “Do you love me?” I whispered hoarsely.
“I might,” she said.
“Do you or don’t you?”
“It’s hard,” she said, “for a girl who’s been brought up to be friendly and affectionate to tell. Now let an honest girl get about her work.”
I told myself that I had never seen such an honest and pretty girl in all my life, and went back to Robert a jealous rival.
“I can’t eat, I can’t sleep,” he said.
“Don’t cry on my shoulder,” I snapped. “Go talk to your father about it. Let him sympathize.”
“God no!” he said. “What an idea!”
“Have you ever talked to him about anything?” I said.
“Well, for a while there, there was what he called getting to know the boy,” said Robert. “He used to set aside Wednesday nights for that, when I was little.”
“All right,” I said, “you’ve got a precedent for talking to him. Recreate the spirit of those days.” I wanted him to get off the couch so I could lie down and stare at the ceiling.
“Oh, we didn’t talk exactly,” said Robert. “The butler would come up to my room and set up a motion-picture projector, and then father would come up and run off Mickey Mouse for an hour. We just sat in the dark with the thing grinding away.”
“As thick as thieves!” I said. “What brought an end to these emotional binges?”
“A combination of things,” said Robert. “The war mostly. He was chief air-raid warden of Pisquontuit, in charge of the siren and all, and it took a lot out of him. And I got the hang of feeding the film through the spools and all myself.”
“Kids mature early around here,” I said, contemplating a nice dilemma. It was my duty as tutor to make Robert a mature individual. Yet, his immaturity