Look at the Birdie

by Kurt Vonnegut

  It had a title. It was called “A Song for Selma.”

  And there were words to go with the music:

  I break the chains that bind me.

  I leave the clown I was behind me.

  It was wonderful of you to remind me

  That if I looked I would find me.

  Oh, Selma, Selma, thank you.

  I can never say good-bye.

  When Helmholtz looked up from the words and music, the poet-composer was gone.

  There was a spry debate that noon in the teachers’ cafeteria. The subject, as stated by Hal Bourbeau of the chemistry department: “Does the good news about Big Floyd Hires deciding to be a musical genius offset the bad news about Schroeder deciding to withdraw from the field entirely?”

  The obvious purpose of the debate was to twit Helmholtz. It was good fun for everybody but Helmholtz, since the problem was regarded as being purely a band matter, and since the band was regarded as being a not very serious enterprise anyway. It was not yet known that Schroeder despaired of amounting to anything in any field of learning.

  “As I see it,” said Bourbeau, “if a slow student decides to take band music seriously and a genius decides to give it up in favor of chemistry, say, it isn’t a case of one person’s going up and another person’s going down. It’s a case of two persons’ going up.”

  “Yes,” said Helmholtz mildly, “and the bright boy can give us a new poison gas, and the dumb one can give us a new tune to whistle.”

  Ernest Groper, the physics teacher, joined the group. He was a rude, realistic, bomb-shaped man, at war with sloppy thinking. As he transferred his lunch from his tray to the table, he gave the impression that he was obeying the laws of motion voluntarily, with gusto—not because he had to obey them but because he thought they were darn fine laws.

  “You hear the news about Big Floyd Hires?” Bourbeau asked him.

  “The great nucular fizzist?” said Groper.

  “The what?” said Bourbeau.

  “That’s what Big Floyd told me he was going to be this morning,” said Groper. “Said he was through loafing, said he was going to be a nucular fizzist. I think he means nuclear physicist, but he may mean veterinarian.” He picked up the copy of Big Floyd’s “A Song for Selma,” which Helmholtz had passed around the table a few minutes before. “What’s this?”

  “Big Floyd wrote it,” said Helmholtz.

  Groper raised his eyebrows. “He is busy these days, isn’t he!” he said. “Selma? Selma who? Selma Ritter?” He tucked his napkin under his collar.

  “She’s the only Selma we could think of,” said Helmholtz.

  “Must be Selma Ritter,” said Groper. “She and Big Floyd sit at the same table in the physics lab.” He closed his eyes, rubbed the bridge of his nose. “What a crazy, mixed-up table that is, too,” he said tiredly. “Schroeder, Big Floyd, and Selma Ritter.”

  “They all three sit together?” said Helmholtz musingly, trying to find some pattern.

  “I thought Schroeder might help to pull Big Floyd and Selma up,” said Groper. He nodded wonderingly. “And he certainly has, hasn’t he?” He looked quizzically at Helmholtz. “You don’t happen to know what Big Floyd’s I.Q. is, do you, George?”

  “I wouldn’t even know how to find out,” said Helmholtz. “I don’t believe in I.Q.s.”

  “There’s a confidential file in the principal’s office,” said Groper. “If you want a real thrill, look up Schroeder, sometime.”

  “Which one is Selma Ritter?” said Hal Bourbeau, looking through the plate glass partition that separated the teachers’ cafeteria from the students’ cafeteria.

  “She’s a little thing,” said Groper.

  “A quiet little thing,” said Eldred Crane, head of the English department. “Shy, and not very popular.”

  “She’s certainly popular now—with Big Floyd,” said Groper. “They’ve got a big love affair going, from all I can see.” He shuddered. “I’ve got to get those two away from Schroeder. I don’t know how they do it, but they certainly manage to depress him.”

  “I don’t see her out there anywhere,” said Helmholtz, still scanning the student cafeteria for Selma Ritter’s face. He did see Schroeder, who was sitting by himself. The small, brilliant boy was looking very dejected, ruefully resigned. And Helmholtz saw Big Floyd. Big Floyd was sitting alone, too—massive, inarticulate, and inexpressibly hopeful about something. He was apparently thinking prodigiously. He squirmed and scowled, and bent imaginary iron bars.

  “Selma isn’t out there,” said Helmholtz.

  “I just remembered,” said Eldred Crane, “Selma doesn’t eat during the regular lunch hour. She eats during the next period.”

  “What does she do during the lunch hour?” said Helmholtz.

  “She holds down the switchboard in the principal’s office,” said Crane, “while the staff is out to lunch.”

  Helmholtz excused himself, and he went to the principal’s office to have a talk with Selma Ritter. The office was actually a suite, consisting of a foyer, a meeting room, two offices, and a file room.

  When Helmholtz entered the suite, his first impression was that there was no one in it. The switchboard was deserted. The switches buzzed and blinked in dismal futility.

  And then Helmholtz heard what was little more than a mouse noise in the file room. He went to the room quietly, peeked in.

  Selma Ritter was kneeling by an open file drawer, writing something in her notebook.

  Helmholtz was not shocked. He didn’t jump to the conclusion that Selma was looking into something that wasn’t any of her business—for the simple reason that he didn’t believe in secrets. As far as Helmholtz was concerned, there weren’t any secrets in Lincoln High School.

  Selma took a rather different view of secrecy. What she had her hands in were the confidential files, the files that told, among other things, what everyone’s I.Q. was. When Helmholtz caught her red-handed, Selma literally lost her balance, toppled to one side from her precarious kneel.

  Helmholtz helped her up. And while he was doing it, he caught a glimpse of the file card Selma had been copying from. The card had unexplained numbers scattered over it, seemingly at random.

  The numbers meant nothing to Helmholtz, since he had never used the files. They represented not only an individual’s I.Q. but his sociability index, his dexterity, his weight, his leadership potential, his height, his work preferences, and his aptitudes in six different fields of human accomplishment. The Lincoln High School testing program was a thorough one.

  It was a famous one, too—a favorite hunting ground for would-be Ph.D.s, since Lincoln’s testing records went back more than twenty-five years.

  In order to find out what each number meant, Helmholtz would have had to use a decoding card, a card with holes punched in it, which was kept locked up in the principal’s safe. By placing the decoding card over the file card, Helmholtz might have found out what all the numbers meant.

  But he didn’t need the decoding card to find out whose file card Selma had been copying from. The name of the individual was typed big as life at the top of the card.

  George M. Helmholtz was startled to read the name.

  The name was HELMHOLTZ, GEO. M.

  “What is this?” murmured Helmholtz, taking the card from the drawer. “What’s this doing with my name on it? What’s this got to do with me?”

  Selma burst into tears. “Oh, Mr. Helmholtz,” she wailed, “I didn’t mean any harm. Please don’t tell on me. I’ll never do it again. Please don’t tell.”

  “What is there to tell?” said Helmholtz, completely at sea.

  “I was looking up your I.Q.,” said Selma. “I admit it. You caught me. And I suppose I could get thrown out of school for it. But I had a reason, Mr. Helmholtz—a very important reason.”

  “I have no idea what my I.Q. is, Selma,” said Helmholtz, “but you’re certainly welcome to it, whatever it is.”

  Selma’s crying abated some. “You won
’t report me?” she said.

  “What’s the crime?” said Helmholtz. “If my I.Q. is so interesting, I’ll paint it on my office door for all to see.”

  Selma’s eyes widened. “You don’t know what your I.Q. is?” she said.

  “No,” said Helmholtz humbly. “Very submedium, I’d guess,” he said.

  Selma pointed to a number on the file card. “There,” she said, “that’s your I.Q., Mr. Helmholtz.” She stepped back, as though she expected Helmholtz to collapse in astonishment. “That’s it,” she whispered.

  Helmholtz studied the number. He pulled in his chin, creating a multitude of echoing chins beneath it. The number was 183. “I know nothing about I.Q.s,” he said. “Is that high or low?” He tried to remember when his I.Q. had last been tested. As nearly as he could recall, it hadn’t been tested since he himself had been a student in Lincoln High.

  “It’s very, very, very high, Mr. Helmholtz,” said Selma earnestly. “Mr. Helmholtz,” she said, “don’t you even know you’re a genius?”

  “What is this card anyway?” said Helmholtz.

  “It’s from when you were a student,” said Selma.

  Helmholtz frowned at the card. He remembered fondly the sober, little, fat boy he’d been, and it offended him to see that boy reduced to numbers. “I give you my word of honor, Selma,” he said, “I was no genius then, and I am not a genius now. Why on earth did you look me up?”

  “You’re a teacher of Big Floyd’s,” said Selma. At the mention of Big Floyd, she gained an inch in stature and became radiantly possessive. “I knew you’d gone to school here, so I looked you up,” she said, “to see if you were smart enough to realize how really smart Big Floyd is.”

  Helmholtz cocked his head quizzically. “And just how smart do you think Big Floyd is?” said Helmholtz.

  “Look him up, if you want to,” said Selma. She was becoming self-righteous now. “I guess nobody ever bothered to look him up before I did.”

  “You looked him up, too?” said Helmholtz.

  “I got so sick of everybody saying how dumb Big Floyd was, and how smart that stupid Alvin Schroeder was,” said Selma. “I had to find out for myself.”

  “What did you find?” said Helmholtz.

  “I found out Alvin Schroeder was a big bluffer,” said Selma, “acting so smart all the time. He’s actually dumb. And I found out Big Floyd wasn’t dumb at all. Actually, he’s a big loafer. Actually, he’s a genius like you.”

  “Um,” said Helmholtz. “And you told them so?”

  Selma hesitated. And then, so steeped in crime she could hardly worsen her case, she nodded. “Yes—I told them,” she said. “I told them for their own good.”

  From three until four that afternoon, Helmholtz was in charge of an extracurricular activity, the Railsplitters, the glee club of Lincoln High. On this particular occasion, the sixty voices of the Railsplitters were augmented by a grand piano, a brass choir of three trumpets, two trombones, and a tuba, and the bright, sweet chimes of a glockenspiel.

  The musicians who backed the glee club so richly had been recruited by Helmholtz since the lunch hour. Helmholtz had been frantically busy in his tiny office since lunch, making plans and sending off messengers like the commander of a battalion under fire.

  When the clock on the wall of the rehearsal room stood at one minute until four, Helmholtz pinched off with his thumb and forefinger the almost insufferably beautiful final chord of the song the augmented glee club had been rehearsing.

  When Helmholtz had pinched it off, he and the group looked stunned.

  They had found the lost chord.

  Never had there been such beauty.

  The undamped voice of the glockenspiel was the last to die. The high song of the last chime struck on the glockenspiel faded into infinity, and it seemed to promise that it would be forever audible to anyone willing to listen hard enough.

  “That’s it—that’s certainly it,” whispered Helmholtz raptly. “Ladies and gentlemen—I can’t thank you enough.”

  The buzzer on the wall clock sounded. It was four o’clock.

  Right on the dot of four, Schroeder, Selma, and Big Floyd came into the rehearsal room, just as Helmholtz had told them to do. Helmholtz stepped down from the podium, led the three into his office, and closed the door.

  “I suppose you all know why I’ve asked you to come,” said Helmholtz.

  “I don’t,” said Schroeder.

  “It’s about I.Q.s, Schroeder,” said Helmholtz. And he told Schroeder about catching Selma in the file room. Schroeder shrugged listlessly.

  “If any of you three talks about this to anybody,” said Helmholtz, “it will get Selma into terrible trouble, and me, too. I haven’t reported the very bad thing Selma’s done, and that makes me an accessory.”

  Selma paled.

  “Selma,” said Helmholtz, “what made you think that one particular number on the file cards was an I.Q.?”

  “I—I read up on I.Q.s in the library,” said Selma, “and then I looked myself up in the files, and I found the number on my card that was probably my I.Q.”

  “Interesting,” said Helmholtz, “and a tribute to your modesty. That number you thought was your I.Q., Selma—that was your weight. And when you looked up the rest of us here, all you found out was who was heavy and who was light. In my case, you discovered that I was once a very fat boy. Big Floyd and I are far from being geniuses, and small Schroeder here is far from being a moron.”

  “Oh,” said Selma.

  Big Floyd gave a sigh that sounded like a freight whistle. “I told you I was dumb,” he said to Selma wretchedly. “I told you I wasn’t any genius.” He pointed helplessly at Schroeder. “He’s the genius. He’s the one who’s got it. He’s the one who’s got the brains to carry him right up into the stars or somewhere! I told you that!”

  Big Floyd pressed the heels of his hands against his temples, as though to jar his brains into working better. “Boy,” he said tragically, “I sure proved how dumb I was, believing for even one minute I had something on the ball.”

  “There’s only one test to pay any attention to,” said Helmholtz, “and that’s the test of life. That’s where you’ll make the score that counts. That’s true for Schroeder, for Selma, for you, Big Floyd, for me—for everybody.”

  “You can tell who’s going to amount to something,” said Big Floyd.

  “Can you?” said Helmholtz. “I can’t. Life is nothing but surprises to me.”

  “Think of the surprises that are waiting for a guy like me,” said Big Floyd. He nodded at Schroeder. “Then think of the surprises that are waiting for a guy like him.”

  “Think of the surprises that are waiting for everybody!” said Helmholtz. “My mind reels!” He opened his office door, indicating that the interview was at an end.

  Selma, Big Floyd, and Schroeder shuffled from Helmholtz’s office into the rehearsal room. Their chins were not held high. The talk from Helmholtz hadn’t inspired them much. On the contrary, the talk, like so many pep talks on the high school level, had been fairly depressing.

  And then, as Selma, Big Floyd, and Schroeder shuffled past the glee club, the glee club and the musicians in support of it stood up.

  At a signal from Helmholtz, there was a brilliant fanfare of brass.

  The fanfare brought Selma, Big Floyd, and Schroeder to a halt and to startled attention.

  The fanfare went on and on—intricately. And the grand piano and the glockenspiel joined the fanfare—clanged, banged, and pealed triumphantly, like church bells celebrating a great victory.

  The seeming church bells and the fanfare died reluctantly.

  The sixty voices of the glee club began to murmur sweetly, to murmur low.

  And then the sixty voices, crying out wordlessly, began to climb. They reached a plateau, and they seemed to want to stay there.

  But the brasses and the grand piano and the glockenspiel taunted them into climbing again, taunted the voices into overcoming all obs
tacles above them, taunted the voices into aspiring to the stars.

  Up and up the voices went, to unbelievable heights. And as the wordless voices climbed, they seemed to promise that, when they reached the uppermost limits of their aspirations, they would at last speak words. They seemed to promise too that, when they spoke those words, those words would be stunning truth.

  The voices now could go no higher.

  They strained melodramatically. Melodramatically, they could rise no more.

  And then, musical miracle of miracles, a soprano sent her voice not a little above the rest, but far, far, far above the rest. And, soaring so far above the rest, she found words.

  “I break the chains that bind meeeeeeeeeeee,” she sang. Her voice was a thread of pure sunlight.

  The piano and the glockenspiel both made sounds like breaking chains.

  The glee club groaned in harmonic wonder at the broken chains.

  “I leave the clown I was behind me,” sang a rumbling bass.

  The trumpets laughed ironically, and then the entire brass choir sang a haunting phrase from “Auld Lang Syne.”

  “It was wonderful of you to remind me,” sang a baritone, “That if I looked I would find me.”

  In very swift order, the soprano sang a phrase from “Someday I’ll Find You,” the full glee club sang a phrase from “These Foolish Things,” and the piano played a phrase from “Among My Souvenirs.”

  “Oh, Selma, Selma, Selma, thank you,” sang all the basses together.

  “Selma?” echoed the real Selma in real life.

  “You,” said Helmholtz to Selma. “This is a song Big Floyd, the well-known genius, wrote for you.”

  “For me?” said Selma, astonished.

  “Sh!” said Helmholtz.

  “I can never—” sang the soprano.

  “Never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never—” chanted the glee club.

  “Say—” rumbled the basses.

  “Good—” piped the soprano.

  And now the entire ensemble, Helmholtz included, joined in a hair-raising final chord, “Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”