Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse-Five

The man with the dartboard was the Blue Fairy Godmother who had injured little Paul Lazzaro. He stopped by Lazzaro’s bed, asked Lazzaro how he was.

Lazzaro told him he was going to have him killed after the war.

“Oh?”

“You made a big mistake,” said Lazzaro. “Anybody touches me, he better kill me, or I’m gonna have him killed.”

The Blue Fairy Godmother knew something about killing. He gave Lazzaro a careful smile. “There is still time for me to kill you ,” he said, “if you really persuade me that it’s the sensible thing to do.”

“Why don’t you go fuck yourself?”

“Don’t think I haven’t tried,” the Blue Fairy Godmother answered.

The Blue Fairy Godmother left, amused and patronizing. When he was gone, Lazzaro promised Billy and poor old Edgar Derby that he was going to have revenge, and that revenge was sweet.

“It’s the sweetest thing there is,” said Lazzaro. “People fuck with me,” he said, “and Jesus Christ are they ever fucking sorry. I laugh like hell. I don’t care if it’s a guy or a dame. If the President of the United States fucked around with me, I’d fix him good. You should have seen what I did to a dog one time.”

“A dog?” said Billy.

“Son of a bitch bit me. So I got me some steak, and I got me the spring out of a clock. I cut that spring up in little pieces. I put points on the ends of the pieces. They were sharp as razor blades. I stuck ’em into the steak — way inside. And I went past where they had the dog tied up. He wanted to bite me again. I said to him, “Come on, doggie — let’s be friends. Let’s not be enemies any more. I’m not mad.” He believed me.”

“He did? ”

“I threw him the steak. He swallowed it down in one big gulp. I waited around for ten minutes.” Now Lazzaro’s eyes twinkled. “Blood started coming out of his mouth. He started crying, and he rolled on the ground, as though the knives were on the outside of him instead of on the inside of him. Then he tried to bite out his own insides. I laughed, and I said to him, “You got the right idea now. Tear your own guts out, boy. That’s me in there with all those knives.” So it goes.

“Anybody ever asks you what the sweetest thing in life is—” said Lazzaro, “it’s revenge.”

When Dresden was destroyed later on, incidentally, Lazzaro did not exult. He didn’t have anything against the Germans, he said. Also, he said he liked to take his enemies one at a time. He was proud of never having hurt an innocent bystander. “Nobody ever got it from Lazzaro,” he said, “who didn’t have it coming.”

Poor old Edgar Derby, the high school teacher, got into the conversation now. He asked Lazzaro if he planned to feed the Blue Fairy Godmother clock springs and steak.

“Shit,” said Lazzaro.

“He’s a pretty big man,” said Derby, who, of course, was a pretty big man himself.

“Size don’t mean a thing.”

“You’re going to shoot him?”

“I’m gonna have him shot,” said Lazzaro. “He’ll get home after the war. He’ll be a big hero. The dames’ll be climbing all over him. He’ll settle down. A couple of years’ll go by. And then one day there’ll be a knock on his door. He’ll answer the door, and there’ll be a stranger out there. The stranger’ll ask him if he’s so-and-so. When he says he is, the stranger’ll say, “Paul Lazzaro sent me.” And he’ll pull out a gun and shoot his pecker off. The stranger’ll let him think a couple of seconds about who Paul Lazzaro is and what life’s gonna be like without a pecker. Then he’ll shoot him once in the guts and walk away.” So it goes.

Lazzaro said that he could have anybody in the world killed for a thousand dollars plus traveling expenses. He had a list in his head, he said.

Derby asked him who all was on the list, and Lazzaro said, “Just make fucking sure you don’t get on it. Just don’t cross me, that’s all.” There was a silence, and then he added, “And don’t cross my friends.”

“You have friends? ” Derby wanted to know.

“In the war? ” said Lazzaro. “Yeah — I had a friend in the war. He’s dead.” So it goes.

“That’s too bad.”

Lazzaro’s eyes were twinkling again. “Yeah. He was my buddy on the boxcar. His name was Roland Weary. He died in my arms.” Now he pointed to Billy with his one mobile hand. “He died on account of this silly cocksucker here. So I promised him I’d have this silly cocksucker shot after the war.”

Lazzaro erased with his hand anything Billy Pilgrim might be about to say. “Just forget about it, kid,” he said. “Enjoy life while you can. Nothing’s gonna happen for maybe five, ten, fifteen, twenty years. But lemme give you a piece of advice: Whenever the doorbell rings, have somebody else answer the door.”

Billy Pilgrim says now that this really is the way he is going to die, too. As a time-traveler, he has seen his own death many times, has described it to a tape recorder. The tape is locked up with his will and some other valuables in his safe-deposit box at the Ilium Merchants National Bank and Trust, he says.

I, Billy Pilgrim , the tape begins, will die, have died and always will die on February thirteenth, 1976.

At the time of his death, he says, he is in Chicago to address a large crowd on the subject of flying saucers and the true nature of time. His home is still in Ilium. He has had to cross three international boundaries in order to reach Chicago. The United States of America has been Balkanized, has been divided into twenty petty nations so that it will never again be a threat to world peace. Chicago has been hydrogen-bombed by Angry Chinamen. So it goes. It is all brand new.

Billy is speaking before a capacity audience in a baseball park, which is covered by a geodesic dome. The flag of the country is behind him. It is a Hereford Bull on a field of green. Billy predicts his own death within an hour. He laughed about it, invites the crowd to laugh with him. “It is high time I was dead…” he says. “Many years ago.” he said, “a certain man promised to have me killed. He is an old man now, living not far from here. He has read all the publicity associated with my appearance in your fair city. He is insane. Tonight he will keep his promise.”

There are protests from the crowd.

Billy Pilgrim rebukes them. “If you protest, if you think that death is a terrible thing, then you have not understood a word I’ve said.” Now he closes his speech as he closes every speech — with these words: “Farewell, hello, farewell, hello.”

There are police around him as he leaves the stage. They are there to protect him from the crush of popularity. No threats on his life have been made since 1945. The police offer to stay with him. They are floridly willing to stand in a circle around him all night, with their zap guns drawn.

“No, no,” says Billy serenely. “It is time for you to go home to your wives and children, and it is time for me to be dead for a little while — and then live again.” At that moment, Billy’s high forehead is in the cross hairs of a high-powered laser gun. It is aimed at him from the darkened press box. In the next moment, Billy Pilgrim is dead. So it goes.

So Billy experiences death for a while. It is simply violet light and a hum. There isn’t anybody else there. Not even Billy Pilgrim is there.

Then he swings back into life again, all the way back to an hour after his life was threatened by Lazzaro — in 1945. He has been told to get out of his hospital bed and dress, that he is well. He and Lazzaro and poor old Edgar Derby are to join their fellows in the theater. There they will choose a leader for themselves by secret ballot in a free election.