Armageddon in Retrospect

by Kurt Vonnegut

  “‘The Mass of Saint Sécaire may be said only in a ruined or deserted church, where owls mope and hoot, where bats flit in the gloaming, where gypsies lodge of nights, and where toads squat under the desecrated altar. Thither the bad priest comes by night…and at the first stroke of eleven he begins to mumble the mass backwards, and ends just as the clocks are knelling the midnight hour…. The host he blesses is black and has three points; he consecrates no wine, but instead he drinks the water of a well into which the body of an unbaptized infant has been flung. He makes the sign of the cross, but it is on the ground and with his left foot. And many other things he does which no good Christian could look upon without being struck blind and deaf and dumb for the rest of his life.’ Phew!” I said.

  “Supposed to bring the Devil like a fire alarm box brings the hook-and-ladder,” said Dr. Tarbell.

  “Surely you don’t think it’d really work?”

  He shrugged. “I haven’t tried.” The lights suddenly went out. “That’s that,” he sighed, and laid down the soldering iron. “Well, there’s nothing more we can do here. Let’s go out and find an unbaptized infant.”

  “Won’t you tell me what the drum is for?”

  “Perfectly self-evident. It’s a Devil-trap, of course.”

  “Naturally.” I smiled uncertainly, and backed away from it. “And you’re going to bait it with Devil’s-food cake.”

  “One of the major theories to come out of the Pine Institute, my boy, is that the Devil is completely indifferent to Devil’s-food cake. However, we’re sure he’s anything but indifferent to electricity, and, if we could pay the light bill, we could make electricity flow through the walls and lid of this drum. So, all we have to do, once the Devil is inside, is to throw the switch and we’ve got him. Maybe. Who knows? Who was ever crazy enough to try it? But first, as the recipe for rabbit stew goes, catch your rabbit.”

  I’d hoped I’d seen the end of demonology for a while, and was looking forward to moving on to other things. But Dr. Tarbell’s tenacity inspired me to stay with him, to see where his “intelligent playfulness” would lead next.

  And, six weeks later, Dr. Tarbell and I, pulling the copper drum along on a cart, and laying wire from a spool on my back, were picking our way down a hillside at night, down to the floor of the Mohawk Valley, in sight of the lights of Schenectady.

  Between us and the river, catching the full moon’s image and casting it into our eyes, was an abandoned segment of the old Erie Ship Canal, now useless, replaced by channels dredged in the river, filled with still, brackish water. Beside it lay the foundations of an old hotel, that had once served the bargemen and travelers on the now forgotten ditch.

  And beside the foundations was a roofless frame church.

  The old steeple was silhouetted against the night sky, resolute, indomitable, in a parish of rot and ghosts. As we entered the church, a tugboat pulling barges somewhere up the river sounded its horn, and the voice came to us, echoing through the architecture of the valley, funereal, grave.

  An owl hooted, and a bat whirred over our heads. Dr. Tarbell rolled the drum to a spot before the altar. I connected the wires I’d been stringing to a switch, and connected the switch, through twenty feet more of wire, to the drum. The other end of the line was hooked into the circuits of a farmhouse on the hillside.

  “What time is it?” whispered Dr. Tarbell.

  “Five of eleven.”

  “Good,” he said weakly. We were both scared stiff. “Now listen, I don’t think anything at all’s going to happen, but, if it does—I mean to us—I’ve left a letter at the farmhouse.”

  “That makes two of us,” I said. I seized his arm. “Look—what say we call it off,” I pleaded. “If there really is a Devil, and we keep trying to corner him, he’s sure to turn on us—and there’s no telling what he’d do!”

  “You don’t have to stay,” said Tarbell. “I could work the switch, I guess.”

  “You’re determined to go through with it?”

  “Terrified as I am,” he said.

  I sighed heavily. “All right. God help you. I’ll man the switch.”

  “O.K.,” he said, smiling wanly, “put on your protective headset, and let’s go.”

  The bells in a steeple clock in Schenectady started striking eleven.

  Dr. Tarbell swallowed, stepped to the altar, brushed aside a squatting toad, and began the grisly ceremony.

  He had spent weeks reading up on his role and practicing it, while I had gone in search of a proper site and the grim props. I hadn’t found a well in which an unbaptized infant had been flung, but I’d found other items in the same category that seemed gruesome enough to be satisfactory substitutes in the eyes of the most depraved demon.

  Now, in the name of science and humanity, Dr. Tarbell put his whole heart into the performance of the Mass of Saint Sécaire, doing, with a look of horror on his face, what no good Christian could look upon without being struck blind and deaf and dumb.

  I somehow survived with my senses, and sighed with relief as the clock in Schenectady knelled twelve.

  “Appear, Satan!” shouted Dr. Tarbell as the clock struck. “Hear your servants, Lord of Night, and appear!”

  The clock struck for the last time, and Dr. Tarbell slumped against the altar, exhausted. He straightened up after a moment, shrugged, and smiled. “What the hell,” he said, “you never know until you try.” He took off his headset.

  I picked up a screwdriver, preparing to disconnect the wires. “And that, I hope, really winds up UNDICO and the Pine Institute,” I said.

  “Well, still got a few more ideas,” said Dr. Tarbell. And then he howled.

  I looked up to see him wide-eyed, leering, trembling all over. He was trying to say something, but all that came out was a strangled gurgle.

  Then began the most fantastic struggle any man will ever see. Dozens of artists have tried to paint the picture, but, bulging as they paint Tarbell’s eyes, red as they paint his face, knotted as they paint his muscles, they can’t recapture a splinter of the heroism of Armageddon.

  Tarbell dropped to his knees, and, as though straining against chains held by a giant, he began to inch toward the copper drum. Sweat soaked his clothes, and he could only pant and grunt. Time and again, as he would pause to catch his breath, he was pulled back by invisible forces. And again he would rise to his knees, and toil forward over the lost ground and inches beyond.

  At last he reached the drum, stood with stupendous effort, as though lifting bricks, and tumbled into the opening. I could hear him scratching against the insulation inside, and his breathing was amplified in the chamber, awing.

  I was stupefied, unable to believe or understand what I’d seen, or to know what to do next.

  “Now!” cried Dr. Tarbell from within the drum. His hand appeared for a moment, pulled the lid shut, and once more he cried, sounding far away and weak, “Now.”

  And then I understood, and began to quake, and a wave of nausea passed over me. I understood what it was he wanted me to do, what he was asking with the last fragment of his soul that was being consumed by the Devil in him.

  So I locked the lid from the outside, and I closed the switch.

  Thank heaven Schenectady was nearby. I telephoned a professor of electrical engineering from Union College, and, inside of three-quarters of an hour, he had devised and installed a crude air-lock, through which air and food and water could be gotten to Dr. Tarbell, but which always kept an electrified, Devil-proof barrier between him and the outside.

  Certainly the most heartbreaking aspect of the tragic victory over the Devil is the deterioration of Dr. Tarbell’s mind. There is nothing left of that splendid instrument. Instead, there is something that uses his voice and body, that wheedles and tries to gain sympathy and freedom by shouting, among other bitter lies, that Tarbell was dumped into the drum by me. If I may say so, my own role has not been without pain and sacrifice.

  Since the Tarbell affair is, alas, controvers
ial, and since, for propaganda reasons, our country cannot officially admit that the Devil was caught here, the Tarbell Protective Foundation is without Government subsidies. The expense of maintaining the Devil-trap and its contents has been borne by donations from public-spirited individuals like yourself.

  The expenditures and proposed expenditures of the Foundation are extremely modest in proportion to value received by all humanity. We have done no more in the way of improving the physical plant than seemed absolutely necessary. The church has been roofed and painted and insulated and fenced in, and rotting timbers have been replaced by sound ones, and a heating system and an auxiliary generating system have been installed. You will agree that all of these items are essential.

  However, despite the limits we have placed on our spending, the Foundation finds that its treasury is badly depleted by the inroads of inflation. What we had laid aside for small improvements has been absorbed in bare maintenance. The Foundation employs a skeleton staff of three paid caretakers, who work in shifts around the clock, feeding Dr. Tarbell, keeping away thrill-seekers, and maintaining the vital electrical equipment. This staff cannot be cut without inviting the incomparable disaster of Armageddon’s victory’s turning to defeat in a single, unguarded instant. The directors, myself included, serve without compensation.

  Because there is a larger need, beyond mere maintenance, we must go in search of new friends. That is why I am writing to you. Dr. Tarbell’s immediate quarters have been enlarged since those first nightmarish months in the drum, and now comprise a copper-walled, insulated chamber eight feet in diameter and six feet high. But this is, you will admit, a poor home for what remains of Dr. Tarbell. We have hopes of being able, through open hearts and hands such as yours, to expand his quarters to include a small study, bedroom, and bath. And recent research indicates that there is every hope of giving him a current-carrying picture window, though the cost will be great.

  But whatever the cost, we can make no sacrifices in scale with what Dr. Tarbell has done for us. And, if the contributions from new friends like you are great enough, we hope, in addition to expanding Dr. Tarbell’s quarters, to be able to erect a suitable monument outside the church, bearing his likeness and the immortal words he wrote in a letter hours before he vanquished the Devil:

  “If I have succeeded tonight, then the Devil is no longer among men. I can do no more. Now, if others will rid the earth of vanity, ignorance, and want, mankind can live happily ever after.—Dr. Gorman Tarbell.”

  No contribution is too small.

  Respectfully yours,

  Dr. Lucifer J. Mephisto

  Chairman of the Board

  List of Illustrations

  Endpaper sketches courtesy Edie Vonnegut.

  Frontispiece. Self-portrait courtesy Kurt Vonnegut & Origami Express LLC.

  "Letter from PFC Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., to his family, May 29, 1945" Letter from Kurt Vonnegut courtesy The Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Trust; facsimile provided by the Indiana Historical Society.

  "Letter from PFC Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., to his family, May 29, 1945" “Back Door” courtesy Kurt Vonnegut & Origami Express LLC.

  "Kurt Vonnegut at Clowes Hall, Indianapolis, April 27, 2007" Sketch courtesy Edie Vonnegut.

  "Wailing Shall Be in All Streets" “Confetti #44” courtesy Kurt Vonnegut & Origami Express LLC.

  "Wailing Shall Be in All Streets" Sketch courtesy Kurt Vonnegut & Origami Express LLC.

  "Great Day" “Confetti #62” courtesy Kurt Vonnegut & Origami Express LLC.

  "Great Day" Sketch courtesy Edie Vonnegut.

  "Guns Before Butter" “Civil Defense” courtesy Kurt Vonnegut & Origami Express LLC.

  "Guns Before Butter" Sketch courtesy Edie Vonnegut.

  "Happy Birthday, 1951" “Confetti #36” courtesy Kurt Vonnegut & Origami Express LLC.

  "Happy Birthday, 1951" Sketch courtesy Edie Vonnegut.

  "Brighten Up" “Confetti #46” courtesy Kurt Vonnegut & Origami Express LLC.

  "Brighten Up" Sketches courtesy Edie Vonnegut.

  "The Unicorn Trap" “November 11, 1918” courtesy Kurt Vonnegut & Origami Express LLC.

  "The Unicorn Trap" Sketch courtesy Edie Vonnegut.

  "Spoils" “Confetti #56” courtesy Kurt Vonnegut & Origami Express LLC.

  "Spoils" Sketch courtesy Edie Vonnegut.

  "Just You and Me, Sammy" “Trust Me” courtesy Kurt Vonnegut & Origami Express LLC.

  "Just You and Me, Sammy" Sketches courtesy Edie Vonnegut.

  "The Commandant’s Desk" “Confetti #50” courtesy Kurt Vonnegut & Origami Express LLC.

  "The Commandant’s Desk" Sketch courtesy Edie Vonnegut.

  "Armageddon in Retrospect" “Big Goodbye” courtesy Kurt Vonnegut & Origami Express LLC.

  "Armageddon in Retrospect" Sketch courtesy Edie Vonnegut.

  "Armageddon in Retrospect" “Confetti #8” courtesy Kurt Vonnegut & Origami Express LLC.