Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle

“I wish you much happiness, Miss Monzano,” said Minton warmly. “And I congratulate you , General Hoenikker.”

The two young people nodded their thanks.

Minton now spoke of the so-called Hundred Martyrs to Democracy, and he told a whooping lie. “There is not an American schoolchild who does not know the story of San Lorenzo’s noble sacrifice in World War Two. The hundred brave San Lorenzans, whose day tomorrow is, gave as much as freedom-loving men can. The President of the United States has asked me to be his personal representative at ceremonies tomorrow, to cast a wreath, the gift of the American people to the people of San Lorenzo, on the sea.”

“The people of San Lorenzo thank you and your President and the generous people of the United States of America for their thoughtfulness,” said “Papa.” “We would be honored if you would cast the wreath into the sea during the engagement party tomorrow.”

“The honor is mine.”

“Papa” commanded us all to honor him with our presence at the wreath ceremony and engagement party next day. We were to appear at his palace at noon.

“What children these two will have!” “Papa” said, inviting us to stare at Frank and Mona. “What blood! What beauty!”

The pain hit him again.

He again closed his eyes to huddle himself around that pain.

He waited for it to pass, but it did not pass.

Still in agony, he turned away from us, faced the crowd and the microphone. He tried to gesture at the crowd, failed. He tried to say something to the crowd, failed.

And then the words came out. “Go home,” he cried strangling. “Go home!”

The crowd scattered like leaves.

“Papa” faced us again, still grotesque in pain.…

And then he collapsed.

He wasn’t dead.

But he certainly looked dead; except that now and then, in the midst of all that seeming death, he would give a shivering twitch.

Frank protested loudly that “Papa” wasn’t dead, that he couldn’t be dead. He was frantic. “ ‘Papa’! You can’t die! You can’t!”

Frank loosened “Papa’s” collar and blouse, rubbed his wrists. “Give him air! Give ‘Papa’ air!”

The fighter-plane pilots came running over to help us. One had sense enough to go for the airport ambulance.

The band and the color guard, which had received no orders, remained at quivering attention.

I looked for Mona, found that she was still serene and had withdrawn to the rail of the reviewing stand. Death, if there was going to be death, did not alarm her.

Standing next to her was a pilot. He was not looking at her, but he had a perspiring radiance that I attributed to his being so near to her.

“Papa” now regained something like consciousness. With a hand that flapped like a captured bird, he pointed at Frank. “You…” he said.

We all fell silent, in order to hear his words.

His lips moved, but we could hear nothing but bubbling sounds.

Somebody had what looked like a wonderful idea then — what looks like a hideous idea in retrospect. Someone — a pilot, I think — took the microphone from its mount and held it by “Papa’s” bubbling lips in order to amplify his words.

So death rattles and all sorts of spastic yodels bounced off the new buildings.

And then came words.

“You,” he said to Frank hoarsely, “you — Franklin Hoenikker — you will be the next President of San Lorenzo. Science — you have science. Science is the strongest thing there is.

“Science,” said “Papa.” “Ice.” He rolled his yellow eyes, and he passed out again.

I looked at Mona.

Her expression was unchanged.

The pilot next to her, however, had his features composed in the catatonic, orgiastic rigidity of one receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor.

I looked down and I saw what I was not meant to see.

Mona had slipped off her sandal. Her small brown foot was bare.

And with that foot, she was kneading and kneading and kneading — obscenely kneading — the instep of the flyer’s boot.

“Papa” didn’t die — not then.

He was rolled away in the airport’s big red meat wagon. The Mintons were taken to their embassy by an American limousine.

Newt and Angela were taken to Frank’s house in a San Lorenzan limousine.

The Crosbys and I were taken to the Casa Mona hotel in San Lorenzo’s one taxi, a hearselike 1939 Chrysler limousine with jump seats. The name on the side of the cab was Castle Transportation Inc. The cab was owned by Philip Castle, the owner of the Casa Mona, the son of the completely unselfish man I had come to interview.

The Crosbys and I were both upset. Our consternation was expressed in questions we had to have answered at once. The Crosbys wanted to know who Bokonon was. They were scandalized by the idea that anyone should be opposed to “Papa” Monzano.

Irrelevantly, I found that I had to know at once who the Hundred Martyrs to Democracy had been.

The Crosbys got their answer first. They could not understand the San Lorenzan dialect, so I had to translate for them. Crosby’s basic question to our driver was: “Who the hell is this pissant Bokonon, anyway?”

“Very bad man,” said the driver. What he actually said was, “V orry ball moan .”

“A Communist?” asked Crosby, when he heard my translation.

“Oh, sure.”

“Has he got any following?”

“Sir?”

“Does anybody think he’s any good?”

“Oh, no, sir,” said the driver piously. “Nobody that crazy.”

“Why hasn’t he been caught?” demanded Crosby.

“Hard man to find,” said the driver. “Very smart.”

“Well, people must be hiding him and giving him food or he’d be caught by now.”

“Nobody hide him; nobody feed him. Everybody too smart to do that.”

“You sure?”

“Oh, sure,” said the driver. “Anybody feed that crazy old man, anybody give him place to sleep, they get the hook. Nobody want the hook.”

He pronounced that last word: “h y-u-o- ook -kuh .”

I asked the driver who the Hundred Martyrs to Democracy had been. The boulevard we were going down, I saw, was called the Boulevard of the Hundred Martyrs to Democracy.

The driver told me that San Lorenzo had declared war on Germany and Japan an hour after Pearl Harbor was attacked.

San Lorenzo conscripted a hundred men to fight on the side of democracy. These hundred men were put on a ship bound for the United States, where they were to be armed and trained.

The ship was sunk by a German submarine right outside of Bolivar harbor.

“ Dose, sore ,” he said, “ yeeara lo hoon-yera mora-toorz tut zamoo-cratz-ya .”

“Those, sir,” he’d said in dialect, “are the Hundred Martyrs to Democracy.”

The Crosbys and I had the curious experience of being the very first guests of a new hotel. We were the first to sign the register of the Casa Mona.

The Crosbys got to the desk ahead of me, but H. Lowe Crosby was so startled by a wholly blank register that he couldn’t bring himself to sign. He had to think about it a while.

“You sign,” he said to me. And then, defying me to think he was superstitious, he declared his wish to photograph a man who was making a huge mosaic on the fresh plaster of the lobby wall.

The mosaic was a portrait of Mona Aamons Monzano. It was twenty feet high. The man who was working on it was young and muscular. He sat at the top of a stepladder. He wore nothing but a pair of white duck trousers.