Hocus Pocus

by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

THE ASSASSINATION OF an Austrian archduke led to World War I, and probably to World War II as well. Just as surely, my father’s black eye brought me to the sorry state in which I find myself today. He was looking for some way, almost any way, to recapture the respect of the community, and to attract favorable attention from Barrytron’s new owner, Du Pont. Du Pont, of course, has now been taken over by I. G. Farben of Germany, the same company that manufactured and packaged and labeled and addressed the cyanide gas used to kill civilians of all ages, including babes in arms, during the Holocaust. What a planet.

Most of the company’s employees were content to do what they were told and incurious as to how it was, exactly, that they had worked the miracles that somehow arrived all packaged and labeled and addressed on the loading docks. I am reminded now of dead American soldiers, teenagers mostly, all packaged and labeled and addressed on loading docks in Vietnam. How many people knew or cared how these curious artifacts were actually manufactured? A few.

poor and powerless people, no matter how docile, were no longer of use to canny investors. What they used to do was now being done by heroic and uncomplaining machinery. So an appropriate sign to put over the gate to Athena might have been, instead of “Work Makes Free,” for example: “Too bad you were born. Nobody has any use for you,” or maybe: “Come in and stay in, all you burdens on Society.”

He hadn’t killed nearly as many people as I had. But then again, he hadn’t had my advantage, which was the full cooperation of our Government.

BERGERON’S EPITAPH FOR the planet, I remember, which he said should be carved in big letters in a wall of the Grand Canyon for the flying-saucer people to find, was this: WE COULD HAVE SAVED IT, BUT WE WERE TOO DOGGONE CHEAP. Only he didn’t say “doggone.”

IF THERE REALLY had been a Mercutio, and if there really were a Paradise, Mercutio might be hanging out with teenage Vietnam draftee casualties now, talking about what it felt like to die for other people’s vanity and foolishness.