Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle

He roused himself from this sordid recollection. “Come on. Be president of San Lorenzo. You’d be real good at it, with your personality. Please?”

And the time of night and the cave and the waterfall — and the stone angel in Ilium…

And 250,000 cigarettes and 3,000 quarts of booze, and two wives and no wife…

And no love waiting for me anywhere…

And the listless life of an ink-stained hack…

And Pabu , the moon, and Borasisi , the sun, and their children…

All things conspired to form one cosmic vin-dit , one mighty shove into Bokononism, into the belief that God was running my life and that He had work for me to do. And, inwardly, I sarooned , which is to say that I acquiesced to the seeming demands of my vin-dit .

Inwardly, I agreed to become the next President of San Lorenzo.

Outwardly, I was still guarded, suspicious. “There must be a catch,” I hedged.

“There isn’t.”

“There’ll be an election?”

“There never has been. We’ll just announce who the new President is.”

“And nobody will object?”

“Nobody objects to anything. They aren’t interested. They don’t care.”

“There has to be a catch!”

“There’s kind of one,” Frank admitted.

“I knew it!” I began to shrink from my vin-dit . “What is it? What’s the catch?”

“Well, it isn’t really a catch, because you don’t have to do it, if you don’t want to. It would be a good idea, though.”

“Let’s hear this great idea.”

“Well, if you’re going to be President, I think you really ought to marry Mona. But you don’t have to, if you don’t want to. You’re the boss.”

“She would have me?”

“If she’d have me, she’d have you. All you have to do is ask her.”

“Why should she say yes?”

“It’s predicted in The Books of Bokonon that she’ll marry the next President of San Lorenzo,” said Frank.

Frank brought Mona to her father’s cave and left us alone. We had difficulty in speaking at first. I was shy. Her gown was diaphanous. Her gown was azure. It was a simple gown, caught lightly at the waist by a gossamer thread. All else was shaped by Mona herself. Her breasts were like pomegranates or what you will, but like nothing so much as a young woman’s breasts.

Her feet were all but bare. Her toenails were exquisitely manicured. Her scanty sandals were gold.

“How — how do you do?” I asked. My heart was pounding. Blood boiled in my ears.

“It is not possible to make a mistake,” she assured me. I did not know that this was a customary greeting given by all Bokononists when meeting a shy person. So, I responded with a feverish discussion of whether it was possible to make a mistake or not.

“My God, you have no idea how many mistakes I’ve already made. You’re looking at the world’s champion mistake-maker,” I blurted — and so on. “Do you have any idea what Frank just said to me?”

“About me? ”

“About everything, but especially about you.”

“He told you that you could have me, if you wanted.”

“Yes.”

“That’s true.”

“I — I—I…”

“Yes?”

“I don’t know what to say next.”

“ Boko-maru would help,” she suggested.

“What?”

“Take off your shoes,” she commanded. And she removed her sandals with the utmost grace.

I am a man of the world, having had, by a reckoning I once made, more than fifty-three women. I can say that I have seen women undress themselves in every way that it can be done. I have watched the curtains part in every variation of the final act.

And yet, the one woman who made me groan involuntarily did no more than remove her sandals.

I tried to untie my shoes. No bridegroom ever did worse. I got one shoe off, but knotted the other one tight. I tore a thumbnail on the knot; finally ripped off the shoe without untying it.

Then off came my socks.

Mona was already sitting on the floor, her legs extended, her round arms thrust behind her for support, her head tilted back, her eyes closed.

It was up to me now to complete my first — my first — my first, Great God…

Boko-maru .

These are not Bokonon’s words. They are mine.

“Do you find it easier to talk to me now?” Mona inquired.

“As though I’d known you for a thousand years,” I confessed. I felt like crying. “I love you, Mona.”

“I love you.” She said it simply.

“What a fool Frank was!”

“Oh?”

“To give you up.”

“He did not love me. He was going to marry me only because ‘Papa’ wanted him to. He loves another.”

“Who?”

“A woman he knew in Ilium.”

The lucky woman had to be the wife of the owner of Jack’s Hobby Shop. “He told you?”

“Tonight, when he freed me to marry you.”

“Mona?”

“Yes?”

“Is — is there anyone else in your life?”

She was puzzled. “Many,” she said at last.

“That you love? ”

“I love everyone.”

“As — as much as me?”

“Yes.” She seemed to have no idea that this might bother me.

I got off the floor, sat in a chair, and started putting my shoes and socks back on.

“I suppose you — you perform — you do what we just did with — with other people?”

“ Boko-maru? ”

“ Boko-maru .”

“Of course.”

“I don’t want you to do it with anybody but me from now on,” I declared.

Tears filled her eyes. She adored her promiscuity; was angered that I should try to make her feel shame. “I make people happy. Love is good, not bad.”

“As your husband, I’ll want all your love for myself.”

She stared at me with widening eyes. “A sin-wat! ”

“What was that?”

“A sin-wat! ” she cried. “A man who wants all of somebody’s love. That’s very bad.”

“In the case of marriage, I think it’s a very good thing. It’s the only thing.”

She was still on the floor, and I, now with my shoes and socks back on, was standing. I felt very tall, though I’m not very tall; and I felt very strong, though I’m not very strong; and I was a respectful stranger to my own voice. My voice had a metallic authority that was new.

As I went on talking in ball-peen tones, it dawned on me what was happening, what was happening already. I was already starting to rule.

I told Mona that I had seen her performing a sort of vertical boko-maru with a pilot on the reviewing stand shortly after my arrival. “You are to have nothing more to do with him,” I told her. “What is his name?”

“I don’t even know,” she whispered. She was looking down now.

“And what about young Philip Castle?”

“You mean boko-maru? ”

“I mean anything and everything. As I understand it, you two grew up together.”

“Yes.”

“Bokonon tutored you both?”

“Yes.” The recollection made her radiant again.

“I suppose there was plenty of boko-maruing in those days.”