Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle

She told me that she had put her husband through college years before with her earnings as an indexer, that the earnings had been good, and that few people could index well.

She said that indexing was a thing that only the most amateurish author undertook to do for his own book. I asked her what she thought of Philip Castle’s job.

“Flattering to the author, insulting to the reader,” she said. “In a hyphenated word,” she observed, with the shrewd amiability of an expert, “ ‘ self-indulgent .’ I’m always embarrassed when I see an index an author has made of his own work.”

“Embarrassed?”

“It’s a revealing thing, an author’s index of his own work,” she informed me. “It’s a shameless exhibition — to the trained eye.”

“She can read character from an index,” said her husband.

“Oh?” I said. “What can you tell about Philip Castle?”

She smiled faintly. “Things I’d better not tell strangers.”

“Sorry.”

“He’s obviously in love with this Mona Aamons Monzano,” she said.

“That’s true of every man in San Lorenzo I gather.”

“He has mixed feelings about his father,” she said.

“That’s true of every man on earth.” I egged her on gently.

“He’s insecure.”

“What mortal isn’t?” I demanded. I didn’t know it then, but that was a very Bokononist thing to demand.

“He’ll never marry her.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve said all I’m going to say,” she said.

“I’m gratified to meet an indexer who respects the privacy of others.”

“Never index your own book,” she stated.

A duprass , Bokonon tells us, is a valuable instrument for gaining and developing, in the privacy of an interminable love affair, insights that are queer but true. The Mintons’ cunning exploration of indexes was surely a case in point. A duprass , Bokonon tells us, is also a sweetly conceited establishment. The Mintons’ establishment was no exception.

Sometime later, Ambassador Minton and I met in the aisle of the airplane, away from his wife, and he showed that it was important to him that I respect what his wife could find out from indexes.

“You know why Castle will never marry the girl, even though he loves her, even though she loves him, even though they grew up together?” he whispered.

“No, sir, I don’t.”

“Because he’s a homosexual,” whispered Minton. “She can tell that from an index, too.”

When Lionel Boyd Johnson and Corporal Earl McCabe were washed up naked onto the shore of San Lorenzo, I read, they were greeted by persons far worse off than they. The people of San Lorenzo had nothing but diseases, which they were at a loss to treat or even name. By contrast, Johnson and McCabe had the glittering treasures of literacy, ambition, curiosity, gall, irreverence, health, humor, and considerable information about the outside world.

From the “Calypsos” again:

This statement of the property situation in San Lorenzo in 1922 is entirely accurate, according to Philip Castle. Castle Sugar was founded, as it happened, by Philip Castle’s great-grandfather. In 1922, it owned every piece of arable land on the island.

“Castle Sugar’s San Lorenzo operations,” wrote young Castle, “never showed a profit. But, by paying laborers nothing for their labor, the company managed to break even year after year, making just enough money to pay the salaries of the workers’ tormentors.

“The form of government was anarchy, save in limited situations wherein Castle Sugar wanted to own something or to get something done. In such situations the form or government was feudalism. The nobility was composed of Castle Sugar’s plantation bosses, who were heavily armed white men from the outside world. The knighthood was composed of big natives who, for small gifts and silly privileges, would kill or wound or torture on command. The spiritual needs of the people caught in this demoniacal squirrel cage were taken care of by a handful of butterball priests.

“The San Lorenzo Cathedral, dynamited in 1923, was generally regarded as one of the man-made wonders of the New World,” wrote Castle.

That Corporal McCabe and Johnson were able to take command of San Lorenzo was not a miracle in any sense. Many people had taken over San Lorenzo — had invariably found it lightly held. The reason was simple: God, in His Infinite Wisdom, had made the island worthless.

Hernando Cortes was the first man to have his sterile conquest of San Lorenzo recorded on paper. Cortes and his men came ashore for fresh water in 1519, named the island, claimed it for Emperor Charles the Fifth, and never returned. Subsequent expeditions came for gold and diamonds and rubies and spices, found none, burned a few natives for entertainment and heresy, and sailed on.

“When France claimed San Lorenzo in 1682,” wrote Castle, “no Spaniards complained. When Denmark claimed San Lorenzo in 1699, no Frenchmen complained. When the Dutch claimed San Lorenzo in 1704, no Danes complained. When England claimed San Lorenzo in 1706, no Dutchmen complained. When Spain reclaimed San Lorenzo in 1720, no Englishmen complained. When, in 1786, African Negroes took command of a British slave ship, ran it ashore on San Lorenzo, and proclaimed San Lorenzo an independent nation, an empire with an emperor, in fact, no Spaniards complained.

“The emperor was Tum-bumwa, the only person who ever regarded the island as being worth defending. A maniac, Tum-bumwa caused to be erected the San Lorenzo Cathedral and the fantastic fortifications on the north shore of the island, fortifications within which the private residence of the so-called President of the Republic now stands.

“The fortifications have never been attacked, nor has any sane man ever proposed any reason why they should be attacked. They have never defended anything. Fourteen hundred persons are said to have died while building them. Of these fourteen hundred, about half are said to have been executed in public for substandard zeal.”

Castle Sugar came into San Lorenzo in 1916, during the sugar boom of the First World War. There was no government at all. The company imagined that even the clay and gravel fields of San Lorenzo could be tilled profitably, with the price of sugar so high. No one complained.

When McCabe and Johnson arrived in 1922 and announced that they were placing themselves in charge, Castle Sugar withdrew flaccidly, as though from a queasy dream.

“There was at least one quality of the new conquerors of San Lorenzo that was really new,” wrote young Castle. “McCabe and Johnson dreamed of making San Lorenzo a Utopia.

“To this end, McCabe overhauled the economy and the laws.

“Johnson designed a new religion.”

Castle quoted the “Calypsos” again:

There was a tug at my coat sleeve as I read. I looked up. Little Newt Hoenikker was standing in the aisle next to me. “I thought maybe you’d like to go back to the bar,” he said, “and hoist a few.”

So we did hoist and topple a few, and Newt’s tongue was loosened enough to tell me some things about Zinka, his Russian midget dancer friend. Their love nest, he told me, had been in his father’s cottage on Cape Cod.