Bluebeard

by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

“Which represents good and which represents evil—” he asked me, “the rifle or the rubbery, jiggling, giggling bag of bones we call the body?” I said that the rifle was evil and the body was good. “But don’t you know that this rifle was designed to be used by Americans defending their homes and honor against wicked enemies?” he said. So I said a lot depended on whose body and whose rifle we were talking about, that either one of them could be good or evil. “And who renders the final decision on that?” he said. “God?” I said. “I mean here on Earth,” he said. “I don’t know,” I said. “Painters—and storytellers, including poets and playwrights and historians,” he said. “They are the justices of the Supreme Court of Good and Evil, of which I am now a member, and to which you may belong someday!” How was that for delusions of moral grandeur! Yes, and now that I think about it: maybe the most admirable thing about the Abstract Expressionist painters, since so much senseless bloodshed had been caused by cockeyed history lessons, was their refusal to serve on such a court.

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say? • • •