Bluebeard

by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

He said that among the last orders he would ever give was one which called for all enlisted men with what he called “artistic experiences” to be assigned to a new camouflage unit under the command of, now get this: “Master Sergeant Rabo Karabekian. I hope I pronounced his name right.” He had, he had!

I was a master sergeant at Fort Belvoir when I read of the deaths of Dan Gregory and Fred Jones in Egypt. There was no mention of Marilee.

When my country finally went to war like everybody else, I was commissioned a lieutenant and served, if not fought, in North Africa and Sicily and England and France. I was forced to fight at last on the border of Germany, and was wounded and captured without having fired a shot. There was this white flash.

At the end of my war, my country, where the only person I knew was a Chinese laundryman, paid in full for cosmetic surgery performed on the place where my eye used to be. Was I bitter? No, I was simply blank, which I came to realize was what Fred Jones used to be. Neither one of us had anything to come home to.

Santa Claus, whose image in shopping malls at Christmas time nowadays is largely based on a painting Dan Gregory made for Liberty magazine in 1923. No. I am speaking of my Uncle Sam.

As I’ve said, I married my nurse at the hospital. As I’ve said, we had two sons who no longer speak to me. They aren’t even Karabekians anymore. They had their last names legally changed to that of their stepfather, whose name was Roy Steel.

There can’t be all that many Rabo Karabekians in the world. If you’re the wrong one, come on over anyway. I’m mad for Armenians. Isn’t everybody? You can rub your feet on my carpets and make sparks. Sound like fun? Down with modern art! Wear something green. And it was signed, Marilee, Countess Portomaggiore (the coal miner’s daughter). Wow!

Ownership, upon Marilee’s death two years ago, passed on to her late husband’s nearest male blood relative, a second cousin, an automobile dealer in Milan, who sold it at once to an Egyptian man of mystery, believed to be an arms dealer. His name? Hold on to your hats; his name is Leo Mamigonian! Small World! He is the son of Vartan Mamigonian, the man who diverted my parents from Paris to San Ignacio, and who cost me an eye, among other things. How could I ever forgive Vartan Mamigonian?

Kim Bum Suk, incidentally, was thrown out of his native South Korea for forming a union of university students which demanded improvements in the curricula. Girolamo Savonarola, incidentally, was hanged and burned in the piazza in front of what had been the Palazzo of Innocenzo “the Invisible” de Medici in 1494.

I now think of the rotunda of that palazzo, when it still had its pagan as well as its Christian images, as a Renaissance effort to make an atom bomb. It cost a great deal of money and employed many of the best minds of the time, and it compressed into a small space and in bizarre combinations the most powerful forces of the Universe as the Universe was understood in the fifteenth century. The Universe has certainly come a long, long way since then. • • •

He drowned while in exile in Venice. This was long before the invention of water wings.

I am afraid that I said, too, in making light of my years as a warrior, that I had spent most of my time “… combing pussy out of my hair.” This meant that women had made themselves available to me in great numbers. This odd locution was a variant of a metaphor which made a lot more sense: a person who had been shelled a great deal might say that he had been combing tree bursts out of his hair.

“There’s never been any shortage of lovers for Marilee Kemp,” she said. “My father loved me so much he beat me every day. The football team at the high school loved me so much they raped me all night after the Junior Prom. The stage manager at the Ziegfield Follies loved me so much he told me that I had to be part of his stable of whores or he’d fire me and have somebody throw acid in my face. Dan Gregory loved me so much he threw me down the stairs because I’d sent you some expensive art materials.” “He did what?” I said. So she told me the true story of how I had become the apprentice of Dan Gregory. I was flabbergasted. “But—but he must have liked my pictures, didn’t he?” I stammered. “No,” she said.

And then she brought up the unfortunate expression I had used when talking to her on the telephone: “Did you say that in the war you were ‘combing pussy out of your hair’?” I said I was sorry I’d said it, and I was. “I never heard that expression before,” she said. “I had to guess what it meant.” “Just forget I said it,” I said. “You want to know what my guess was? I guessed that wherever you went there were women who would do anything for food or protection for themselves and the children and the old people, since the young men were dead or gone away,” she said. “How close was I?” “Oh my, oh my, oh my,” I said. “What’s the matter, Rabo?” she said. “You hit the nail on the head,” I said.

“Wasn’t very hard to guess,” she said. “The whole point of war is to put women everywhere in that condition. It’s always men against women, with the men only pretending to fight among themselves.” “They can pretend pretty hard sometimes,” I said. “They know that the ones who pretend the hardest,” she said, “get their pictures in the paper and medals afterwards.”

Only a male would design and bury a device that ingenious. Before you leave, maybe you can persuade Lucrezia to show you all the medals she won.” And then she added: “Women are so useless and unimaginative, aren’t they? All they ever think of planting in the dirt is the seed of something beautiful or edible. The only missile they can ever think of throwing at anybody is a ball or a bridal bouquet.”

“O.K., Marilee—you’ve certainly made your point. I have never felt worse in my life. I only wish the Arno were deep enough to drown myself in. Can I please return to my hotel?” “No,” she said. “I think I’ve reduced you to the level of self-esteem which men try to force on women. If I have, I would very much like to have you stay for the tea I promised you. Who knows? We might even become friends again.”

They were people who had been marched out of concentration camps and factories where they had been slaves, and out of regular prisons for criminals, and out of lunatic asylums. The idea was to turn us loose as far as possible from the cities, where we might raise hell.

“After all that men have done to the women and children and every other defenseless thing on this planet, it is time that not just every painting, but every piece of music, every statue, every play, every poem and book a man creates, should say only this: ‘We are much too horrible for this nice place. We give up. We quit. The end!’

“Yup,” I said. We were extricating ourselves from Happy Valley, and returning to real life. The melancholy roll-call of real-life suicides among the Abstract Expressionists again: Gorky by hanging in 1948, Pollock and then almost immediately Kitchen, by drunken driving and then pistol in 1956—and then Rothko with all possible messiness by knife in 1970.

“Twice now I’ve been a Lazarus,” I said. “I died with Terry Kitchen, and Edith brought me back to life again. I died with dear Edith, and Circe Berman brought me back to life again.” “Whoever that is,” she said.

Terry Kitchen’s

“His meat did that, and your meat made the picture in the potato barn,” she said. “Sounds right,” I said. “My soul didn’t know what kind of picture to paint, but my meat sure did.” She cleared her throat. “Well, then,” she said, “isn’t it time for your soul, which has been ashamed of your meat for so long, to thank your meat for finally doing something wonderful?” I thought that over. “That sounds right, too,” I said. “You have to actually do it,” she said. “How?” I said. “Hold your hand in front of your eye,” she said, “and look at those strange and clever animals with love and gratitude, and tell them out loud: ‘Thank you, Meat.’ ” So I did.