Vonnegut, Kurt - Player Piano (v5.0)

by Player Piano [lit]

  "Don't miss any good times on my account," said Wanda. "I get along just fine by myself."

  There was a series of sharp taps on the picture window, and the Hagstrohms looked up to see the Shah of Bratpuhr rattling his ringed fingers against the glass. He had just returned from the pavilion to the limousine, which had been left in front of the Hagstrohm's M-17 home.

  "Brahouna!" cried the Shah cheerfully. He waved. "Brahouna, Takaru."

  " 'Live!' " translated Krashdrahr.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  When Wednesday came, Paul stopped by his farm early in the morning and gave Mr. Haycox his instructions. Mr. Haycox made it clear that he wasn't a parlor maid.

  Reluctantly, Paul gave Mr. Haycox to understand that he could do the job or clear out, and that the job had better be well done. It was that important to Paul that everything be perfect for the delicate transformation of Anita.

  "You think you can just go around buying anybody to do anything you damn please," said Mr. Haycox. "Well, you're mistaken this time, Doctor. You can take your doctor's degree, and -"

  "I don't want to fire you."

  "Then don't!"

  "For the last time, as a favor to me - "

  "Why didn't you say so in the first place?"

  "Say what?"

  " 'As a favor -' "

  "All right; as a favor -"

  "As a favor, just this once," said Mr. Haycox. "I'm no parlor maid, but I try to be a good friend."

  "Thanks."

  "Nothing at all. Don't mention it."

  During the day, Anita called Paul to ask what she was to wear.

  "Old clothes."

  "A barn dance?"

  "Not quite, but close. Dress as though it were."

  "Paul, with the Meadows so close and all, do you think we should be going out and tearing around?"

  "The Meadows isn't a funeral."

  "It could be, Paul."

  "Just for tonight, let's forget the Meadows. Tonight it's going to be just Paul and Anita, and to hell with everybody else."

  "That's very easy to say, Paul. It's a sweet idea and everything, but -"

  "But what?" he asked irritably.

  "Well, I don't know; I don't want to nag, but it does seem to me that you're being awfully slap-happy about the Meadows, about the Blue Team."

  "What should I be doing?"

  "Shouldn't you be training or something? I mean, shouldn't you be getting lots of sleep and eating the right foods and jogging around a little after work? And cutting down on cigarettes, maybe?"

  "What?"

  "You've got to be in shape if the Blue Team's going to win."

  Paul laughed.

  "Now listen, Paul, you needn't laugh. Shepherd says he's seen careers made and broken by how men made out as team captains at the Meadows. Shepherd's given up smoking completely."

  "You can tell him I've taken up hashish to speed up my reaction time. His fast ball will look like a toy balloon blowing over home plate. We are going out tonight."

  "All right," she said gloomily. "All right."

  "I love you, Anita."

  "I love you, Paul."

  And she was ready when he got home, not as Ilium's Lady of the Manor but as a trim, kittenish girl in denim trousers rolled above her knees. She wore one of Paul's shirts, with its tails knotted below her breasts, white sneakers, and a red bandana about her neck.

  "Is this right?"

  "Perfect."

  "Paul - I don't understand what's going on. I called up the Country Club, and they don't know about any barn dance. And neither do the clubs in Albany, Troy, or Schenectady." Anita, Paul knew, hated surprises, couldn't bear not to be on top of every situation.

  "This is a private one," said Paul. "Just for the two of us. You'll see when the time comes."

  "I want to know now."

  "Where are our anniversary martinis?" The table where the pitcher and glasses awaited him every night was bare.

  "You're on the wagon until after the Meadows."

  "Don't be ridiculous! Everybody is going to be drinking for two weeks up there."

  "Not the captains. Shepherd says they can't afford to drink."

  "That shows how much he knows. The drinks are on the house."

  Paul mixed martinis, drank more than his usual ration, and changed into a suit of stiff, crackling denim overalls he'd bought in Homestead that afternoon. He was sorry to see that Anita was getting no pleasure from the suspense he'd built up. Instead of happy anticipation, she showed signs of suspicion.

  "Ready?" he said brightly.

  "Yes - I suppose."

  They walked in silence to the garage. With a grand gesture, Paul held the car door open.

  "Oh, Paul, not the old car."

  "There's a reason."

  "There couldn't be a reason good enough to get me in that thing."

  "Please, Anita - you'll see soon enough why we've got to take this one."

  She got in and sat on the edge of the seat, trying to come in contact with the car as little as possible. "Honestly! I mean really!"

  They rode like strangers. On the long grade by the golf course, however, she unbent a trifle. In the beams of the headlights was a pale and hairy man in green shorts, green socks, and a green shirt with the word "Captain" written across it. The man was jogging along the shoulder of the road, now and then breaking his pace to pirouette and shadowbox, then picking up his jogging again.

  Paul blasted Shepherd with his automobile horn, and was delighted to see him bound across the ditch to get out of his way.

  Anita rolled down her window and cheered.

  The captain of the Green Team waved, his face twisted by exertion.

  Paul pressed the throttle to the floor, laying down a cloud of burned oil and carbon monoxide.

  "That man's got a lot of get up and go," said Anita.

  "He fills me full of lie down and die," said Paul.

  They were passing the battlements of the Ilium Works now, and one of the guards, recognizing Paul's car from his pillbox, waggled his fifty-caliber machine gun in friendly fashion.

  Anita, who had been getting more and more restless, made as though to grab the wheel. "Paul! Where are you going? Are you crazy?"

  He brushed her hand away, smiled, and kept on going across the bridge into Homestead.

  The bridge was blocked again by Reeks and Wrecks who were painting yellow lines to mark traffic lanes. Paul looked at his watch. They had ten more minutes until time for, as the expression went, knocking off work. Paul wondered if Bud Calhoun had thought up this project. Like most of the R&R projects, it was, to Paul at least, ironic. The fourlane bridge had, before the war, been jammed with the cars of workers going to and from the Ilium Works. Four lanes had been nothing like enough, and a driver stayed within his lane or got the side of his car ground off. Now, at any time of day, a driver could swerve from one side of the bridge to the other with perhaps one chance in ten thousand of hitting another vehicle.

  Paul came to a stop. Three men were painting, twelve were directing traffic, and another twelve were resting. Slowly, they opened a lane.

  "Hey, Mac, your headlamp's busted."

  "Thanks," said Paul.

  Anita slid across the seat to get close to him, and he saw that she was scared stiff. "Paul - this is awful. Take me home."

  Paul smiled patiently and drove into Homestead. The hydrant in front of the saloon by the end of the bridge was going again, and he had to park down the block. The same dirty boy was making paper boats for the amusement of the crowd. Leaning against a building and smoking nervously was a seedy old man who looked familiar to Paul. Then Paul realized that the man was Luke Lubbock, the indefatigable joiner, who was lost in the limbo of mufti, waiting for the next parade or meeting to start. With mixed emotions he looked around for Lasher and Finnerty, but saw no sign of them. Very probably they were in the saloon's dark, rearmost booth, agreeing on everything.

  "Paul - is this your idea of a joke? Take me home,
please."

  "Nobody's going to hurt you. These people are just your fellow Americans."

  "Just because they were born in the same part of the world as I was, that doesn't mean I have to come down here and wallow with them."

  Paul had expected this reaction, and remained patient in the face of it. Of all the people on the north side of the river, Anita was the only one whose contempt for those in Homestead was laced with active hatred. She was also the only wife on the north side who had never been to college at all. The usual attitude of the Country Club set toward Homesteaders was contempt, all right, but it had an affectionate and amused undertone, the same sort of sentiment felt by most for creatures of the woods and fields. Anita hated Homesteaders.

  If Paul were ever moved to be extremely cruel to her, the cruelest thing he could do, he knew, would be to point out to her why she hated as she did: if he hadn't married her, this was where she'd be, what she'd be.

  "We're not getting out," said Paul. "We'll just sit here a few minutes and watch. Then we'll move on."

  "Watch what?"

  "Whatever there is to see. The line painters, the man running the hydrant, the people watching him, the little boy making boats, the old men in the saloon. Just keep looking around. There's plenty to see."

  She didn't look around, but slouched down in the seat and stared at her hands.

  Paul had an idea what she was thinking - that for some reason she couldn't understand, he was doing this to humiliate her, to recall her humble origins. Had that been what he wanted to do, he would have been completely successful, because her virulent hate had decayed. She'd fallen silent and tried to make herself small.

  "You know why I brought you here?"

  Her voice was a whisper. "No. But I want to go home, Paul. Please?"

  "Anita - I brought us here because I think it's high time we got a completely new perspective, not on just our relationship to ourselves, but on our relationship to society as a whole." He didn't like the sound of the words as they came out, sententious and inflated. Their impact on Anita was nothing.

  He tried again: "In order to get what we've got, Anita, we have, in effect, traded these people out of what was the most important thing on earth to them - the feeling of being needed and useful, the foundation of self-respect." That wasn't much good either. He wasn't getting through to Anita yet. She still seemed certain that she was somehow being punished by him.

  He tried once more: "Darling, when I see what we've got, and then see what these people have got, I feel like a horse's ass."

  A glimmering of understanding crossed Anita's face. Guardedly, she cheered up a little. "Then you're not mad at me?"

  "Lord, no. Why should I be mad at you?"

  "I don't know. I thought maybe you thought I nagged too much - or maybe you thought something was going on between Shepherd and me."

  This last - this suggestion that he would ever worry about Shepherd - threw Paul completely off the orderly course of re-educating Anita. The notion that he might be jealous of the captain of the Green Team was so ludicrous, showed so poor an understanding, that it commanded his full attention. "I'll be jealous of Shepherd when you're jealous of Katharine Finch," he laughed.

  This, to his surprise, Anita chose to take seriously. "You don't mean that!"

  "Mean what?"

  "That I should be jealous of Katharine Finch. That dumpy little -"

  "Wait a minute!" The conversation was really afield now. "I just meant there was about as much chance of there being something between Katharine and me as there was of there being something between you and Shepherd."

  She was still on the defensive, and apparently hadn't grasped the negative sense of his parallel. She came back at him aggressively. "Well, Shepherd is certainly a more attractive man than Katharine is a woman."

  "I'm not arguing that," said Paul desperately. "I don't want to argue that at all. There isn't anything between Katharine and me, and there isn't anything between you and Shepherd. I was simply pointing out how absurd it would be for either one of us to suspect the other."

  "You don't think I'm attractive?"

  "I think you're devastatingly attractive. You know that." His voice had gotten loud, and as he glanced out at the street scene he saw that he and Anita, the would-be observers, were being observed. A paper boat shot the rapids to the storm sewer unnoticed. "I didn't bring us here to accuse each other of adultery," he whispered hoarsely.

  "Then why did you?"

  "I told you: so we could both get the feel of the world as a whole, not just our side of the river. So we could see what our way of life has done to the lives of others."

  Anita was on top of the situation now, having successfully attacked and confused Paul, and having found that she wasn't being baited or punished. "They all look perfectly well fed to me."

  "But they've had the spiritual stuffing knocked out of them by people like my father, like Kroner and Baer and Shepherd, like us."

  "They couldn't have been too well stuffed in the first place, or they wouldn't be here."

  Paul was mad, and the delicate mechanism that kept him from hurting her stripped its gears. "Here, but for the grace of God, go you!"

  "Paul!" She burst into tears. "That's not fair," she said brokenly. "Not at all fair. I don't know why you had to say that."

  "It isn't fair for you to cry."

  "You're cruel, that's what you are - just plain cruel. If you wanted to hurt me, congratulate yourself. You certainly did." She blew her nose. "I must have had something these people don't, or you wouldn't have married me."

  "Oligomenorrhea," he said.

  She blinked. "What's that?"

  "Oligomenorrhea - that's what you had that these others don't. Means delayed menstrual period."

  "How on earth did you ever learn a word like that?"

  "I looked it up a month after we were married, and it etched itself on the inside of my skull."

  "Oh." She turned crimson. "You've said enough, quite enough," she said bitterly. "If you won't drive me home, I'll walk."

  Paul started the car, abused the gears with savage satisfaction, and drove back across the bridge, toward the north side of the river.

  When they'd reached the mid-point of the bridge, he was still warmed and excited by the sudden fight with Anita. By the time they were under the guns of the Ilium Works, rationality and remorse were setting in.

  The fight had been a complete surprise. Never had they gone at it so poisonously. More surprising, Paul had been the vicious one, and Anita had been little more than a victim. Confusedly he tried to remember the events that had led up to the fight. His memory was no help.

  And how completely fruitless and destructive the fight had been! In the heat of a bad instant he had said what he knew would hurt her most, would, by extension, make her hate him most. And he hadn't wanted to do that. God knows he hadn't. And here he was with his cheery and careful plans for starting a new life with her shot to hell.

  They were passing the golf course now. In minutes they'd be home.

  "Anita -"

  By way of an answer, she turned on the car radio and impatiently twiddled the dials, waiting for the volume to come up, presumably to drown him out. The radio hadn't worked for years.

  "Anita - listen. I love you more than anybody on earth. Good God but I'm sorry about what we said to each other."

  "I didn't say anything to you like what you said to me."

  "I could cut my tongue out for having said those things."

  "Don't use any of our good kitchen knives."

  "It was a freak."

  "So am I, apparently. You passed our driveway."

  "I meant to. I have a surprise for you. Then you'll see how much I really love you - how insignificant that stupid fight was."

  "I've had quite enough surprises tonight, thank you. Turn around, please. I'm worn out."

  "This surprise cost eight thousand, Anita. Still want to turn around?"

  "Think I can be bough
t, do you?" she said angrily, but her expression was softening, answering her own question. "What on earth could it be? Really? Eight thousand dollars?"

  Paul relaxed, settling back in his seat to enjoy the ride. "You don't belong in Homestead, sweetheart."

  "Oh, hell - maybe I do."

  "No, no. You've got something the tests and machines will never be able to measure: you're artistic. That's one of the tragedies of our times, that no machine has ever been built that can recognize that quality, appreciate it, foster it, sympathize with it."

  "It is," said Anita sadly. "It is, it is."

  "I love you, Anita."

  "I love you, Paul."

  "Look! A deer!" Paul flicked on his bright lights to illuminate the animal, and recognized the captain of the Green Team, still jogging, but now in an advanced state of exhaustion. Shepherd's legs flailed about weakly and disjointedly, and his feet struck the pavement with loud, limp slaps. There was no recognition in his eyes this time, and he floundered on heedlessly.

  "With every step he hammers another nail into my coffin," said Paul, lighting a fresh cigarette from the one he had just finished.

  Ten minutes later he stopped the car, went around to Anita's side, and affectionately offered his arm. "The latchstring is out, darling, for a whole new and happier life for the two of us."

  "What does that mean?"

  "You'll see." He led her to the front door of the low little house through a dark, fragrant tunnel roofed and walled by lilacs. He took her hand and placed it on the latchstring. "Pull."

  She tugged gingerly. The latch inside clattered free, and the door swung open. "Oh! Ohhhh - Paul!"

  "Ours. This belongs to Paul and Anita."

  She walked in slowly, her head back, her nostrils wide. "I feel like crying, it's so darling."

  Hastily, Paul checked the preparations for the tricky hours ahead, and was delighted. Mr. Haycox, probably in an orgy of masochism, had scrubbed every surface. Gone were the soot and dust, leaving only the clean, soft, glowing patina of age over everything - the pewter on the mantel, the cherry case of the grandfather clock, the black ironware on the hearth, the walnut stock and silver inlays of the long rifle on the wall, the tin potbellies of the kerosene lamps, the warm, worn maple of the chairs. . . . And on a table in the center of the room, looking archaic, too, in the soft light, were two glasses, a pitcher, a bottle of gin, a bottle of vermouth, and a bucket of ice. And beside these were two glasses of whole, fresh milk from the farm, fresh hard-boiled eggs from the farm, fresh peas from the farm, and fresh fried chicken from the farm.