My husband was one of those nerds. He read everything. He read so much his eyes dried up in his head. It made him blind, these damn books.” A film of dust had covered her glasses. “He used to read me from that Vonnegut book you’ve been reading,” she added in a fallen voice. “We were in Dresden at the same time, that little Billy Pilgrim and me. What a sham, all of it.” This must be why her husband was obsessed with translating the book into their native tongue, he thought. It was an American novel that told their story, if only in brief, apocalyptic glimpses.
