Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five: Bookmarked. Curtis Smith
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echoes this Tralfamadorian saying before he’s struck by an assassin’s bullet. Hello, farewell—as steady as my pulse, and here is the rhythm of our days. The hellos of reunion, the first glimpses of the newborns and lovers who will fill our hearts. The farewells that bring tears and the empty spaces never to be filled.
It’s time to go. From atop the dunes, we turn for a final look. The wide vista. The long lines of breakers. The horizon’s kiss of sea and sky. Hello. Farewell. Hello.
*
“And Nietzsche, with his theory of eternal recurrence. He said that the life we lived we’re going to live over again the exact same way for eternity. Great. That means I’ll have to sit through the Ice Capades again.”
—Woody Allen
*
Not so long ago our world was full of time travelers!
A person riding the transcontinental railroad in the 1870’s would, if they cared to be in synch with their surroundings, have to adjust their pocket watch hundreds of times. A minute forward here, three back there, each county and city keepers of their own official clock. This lackadaisical attitude didn’t sit well with Cornelius Vanderbilt and the other railroad barons, their empires built on making connections and the shipment of goods. On November 18, 1883, time zones were established across the United States, and the following year, at an international gathering in Washington DC, the world was segmented into twenty-four time zones. Welcome globalization!
The businessmen of the world set their clocks accordingly. The tribesmen of the vanishing wilderness turned their eyes to the sun, just as their ancestors had.
*
The end of the 1950’s saw Vonnegut at a pivotal point of his career. He’d already put out Player Piano, was about to publish Sirens of Titan, and was in the midst of his long struggle with Cat’s Cradle. He’d made decent money from his stories, the heady days of Colliers and Saturday Evening Post and a half dozen other magazines that could keep a writer with a young family afloat, if not rich. He was penning plays and enjoying the process, but his theater work hadn’t received the recognition he’d hoped. He dabbled in movie scripts, sculpture. He pitched a military-themed board game to uninterested toy companies. He took a teaching job with troubled boys but quit after a semester. He claimed he struggled with writer’s block, but his work kept coming. Perhaps his condition just felt like writer’s block, his Dresden book still inside, pushing, gnawing, waiting to take form.
In a 1959 letter to Knox Burger, an early publisher of Vonnegut’s stories and longtime mentor and friend, Vonnegut wrote: “And tell me—when one is being frog-marched by life, does one giggle or does one try to maintain as much dignity as possible under the circumstances?”
I’ve got to believe Kurt Vonnegut already knew the answer. I see it written in Player Piano and Sirens of Titan and the stories he’d already published. And I see it waiting in Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of Champions, Bluebeard, and a dozen others. Kurt Vonnegut believed in the dignity of laughter. Laughter, if not our most human gift, then a close second behind kindness and/or the magic of baby-making. Laughter made his characters walk a little taller. Laughter, like dignity, arose from courage, from looking one’s fears dead in the eye.
And “frog-marched”—one’s arms pinned behind one’s back, a convict’s walk and a rousting by greater powers. “Frog-marched by life”—how true. How sad and funny and true.
*
A beautiful afternoon, early November, autumn’s pale sky. We climb the church steps. On the entrance overhang, a gray statue, Saint Joan, her head bowed, her hands resting upon her sword’s pommel. Only a few inside, the space hushed and cavernous. My wife and son cross themselves. We pass slender columns of stained glass. Yesterday was my father’s birthday, our plans to come derailed by homework and a chance to sneak in a jog before the weekend’s projected cold snap. Last month we found my son in tears, sad because he both missed his grandfather and because he feared he’d soon no longer be able to remember the old man he’d loved so much. We’ve had this conversation before—how much joy my son brought to my father’s life, his last years enriched by this new relationship, how memories fade but also leave us with something deeper, a residue of the love we’ve given and shared—but for my son, the sense of grief seems set on an odd cycle, an emerging untethered to the logic of clocks and calendars. My father is, after all, the first person my son has lost.
We allow my son to light one of the few unclaimed candles. Flames burn in slender glasses, Veterans Day, a remembering of soldiers gone, and from the candles’ tiered racks, a heat I hadn’t anticipated. My son writes in the prayer book. My father’s name, a set of dates, US Army. We slide into a nearby pew. I’m not a religious man, yet I admire the faith that drives charity and brotherhood. I appreciate the beauty and security to be found in ritual, and as I kneel beside my family in this beautiful prism of stillness and colored light, I wonder if I should accept the story of a man sent to spread a message of love, not literally but as a veil that drapes a current so often covered beneath the spill of blood. I rise and settle into the pew. My son remains kneeling.
Vonnegut wasn’t a religious man, either. He was a humanist, an avowed free thinker. Yet a profound strain of compassion runs through his work, a foundation of empathy worthy of Jesus or any other benevolent deity. In The Sirens of Titan he writes, “A purpose of a human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.” Here’s a quote that could just as easily come from the New Testament than from a novel about interplanetary invasion. Consider Billy Pilgrim. He is human, yes, but also a messenger from another world. He sleeps standing in the boxcar on the way to the POW camp, his arms outstretched to support himself, an outcast even among his sorry fellow travelers. He has walked through the garden and the wasteland. He is a martyr, his death preordained, a note in a larger scheme. Through his letters to newspapers, radio appearances, and speeches, he brings the world good news meant to ease death’s sting.
I too think about death, and without religion or the insight of extraterrestrials, I have no creed to soothe the trepidation that unknowing brings. I’d like to think I’m not afraid, but such statements come easily to a healthy man. Perhaps I will find God, perhaps not. Either way, I will stumble forward, making mistakes but trying not to make the same ones twice.
My wife and son rise, and together, the three of us exit the church. We have another hour of daylight. I’m happy to be here, to love these people who are around to be loved. We walk down the street, and I rest my hand upon my son’s shoulder. How, I wonder, will he remember all of this?
*
If I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, “Kurt is up in heaven now.” That’s my favorite joke.
*
A cool Sunday, and my son and I ascend a steep passage along the Appalachian Trail. The leaves just past peak, and around us, the season’s grays and browns. Up we go, a switchback trail, the path narrow in spots, a drop off to one side, the empty air and the upper branches of trees. My son forges ahead. We’ve been hiking since he could walk, and I’m thankful for the gift of health that allows him to take the lead. Late fall and the hint of looming winter, the hush and the muted tones—here is my favorite time of year. The chill upon my face and the kindled heat beneath my jacket. An hour’s climb, the grade steep in spots, stones that serve as stairs. We reach the summit, a nub in a thousand-mile ridge, and rest upon a boulder larger than our house. The valley opens before us, the road we drove earlier a gray thread, the wide Susquehanna beyond, and above, circling hawks.
The Tralfamadorians chided Billy Pilgrim for his earthling’s habit of asking why. There was no why, they said. There simply is. Perhaps the Tralfamadorians were right. Perhaps why is a human luxury, an appropriation of brainpower freed from the caveman’s wiring of fight or flight. For much of my life I had difficulty enjoying myself. I could smile and laugh, but beneath, I often lapsed into contemplation. I wondered if I was truly happy or simply wearing its mask—and if I was happy, what were the components