Kurt Vonnegut - Mother Night

'Protecting the Republic,' said Jones. 'Why bother us? Everything we do is to make the country stronger! Join with us, and let's go after the people who are trying to make it weaker!'

'Who's that?' said the G-man.

'I have to tell you?' said Jones. 'Haven't you even found that out in the course of your work? The Jews! The Catholics! The Negroes! The Orientals! The Unitarians! The foreign-born, who don't have any understanding of democracy, who play right into the hands of the socialists, the communists, the anarchists, the anti-Christ and the Jews!'

'For your information,' said the G-man in cool triumph, 'I am a Jew.'

'That proves what I've just been saying!' said Jones.

'How's that?' said the G-man.

'The Jews have infiltrated everything!' said Jones, smiling the smile of a logician who could never be topped.

'You talk about the Catholics and the Negroes — ' said the G-man, 'and yet, here your two best friends are a Catholic and a Negro.'

'What's so mysterious about that?' said Jones.

'Don't you hate them?' said the G-man.

'Certainly not,' said Jones. 'We all believe the same basic thing.'

'What's that?' said the G-man.

'This once-proud country of ours is falling Into the hands of the wrong people,' said Jones. He nodded, and so did Father Keeley and the Black Fuehrer. 'And, before it gets back on the right track,' said Jones, 'some heads are going to roll.'

I have never seen a more sublime demonstration of the totalitarian mind, a mind which might be likened unto a system of gears whose teeth have been filed off at random. Such a snaggle-toothed thought machine, driven by a standard or even a substandard libido, whirls with the jerky, noisy, gaudy pointlessness of a cuckoo clock in Hell.

The boss G-man concluded wrongly that there were no teeth on the gears in the mind of Jones. 'You're completely crazy,' he said.

Jones wasn't completely crazy. The dismaying thing about the classic totalitarian mind is that any given gear, though mutilated, will have at its circumference unbroken sequences of teeth that are immaculately maintained, that are exquisitely machined.

Hence the cuckoo clock in Hell — keeping perfect time for eight minutes and thirty-three seconds, jumping ahead fourteen minutes, keeping perfect time for six seconds, jumping ahead two seconds, keeping perfect time for two hours and one second, then jumping ahead a year.

The missing teeth, of course, are simple, obvious truths, truths available and comprehensible even to ten-year-olds, in most cases.

The willful filing off of gear teeth, the willful doing without certain obvious pieces of information —

That was how a household as contradictory as one composed of Jones, Father Keeley, Vice-Bundesfuebrer Krapptauer, and the Black Fuehrer could exist in relative harmony —

That was how my father-in-law could contain in one mind an indifference toward slave women and love for a blue vase —

That was how Rudolf Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz, could alternate over the loudspeakers of Auschwitz great music and calls for corpse-carriers —

That was how Nazi Germany could sense no important differences between civilization and hydrophobia —

That is the closest I can come to explaining the legions, the nations of lunatics I've seen in my time. And for me to attempt such a mechanical explanation is perhaps a reflection of the father whose son I was. Am. When I pause to think about it, which is rarely, I am, after all, the son of an engineer.

Since there is no one else to praise me, I will praise myself — will say that I have never tampered with a single tooth in my thought machine, such as it is. There are teeth missing, God knows, some I was born without, teeth that will never grow. And other teeth have been stripped by the clutchless shifts of history —

But never have I willfully destroyed a tooth on a gear of my thinking machine. Never have I said to myself, 'This fact I can do without.'

Howard W. Campbell, Jr., praises himself There's life in the old boy yet! And, where there's life —

There is life.

'My only regret,' Dr. Jones said to the boss G-man there on the cellar stairs, 'is that I have but one me to give to my country.'

'Well see if we can't dig up some other regrets for you, too,' said the boss.

Now the Iron Guard of the White Sons of the American Constitution crowded in from the furnace room. Some of the guardsmen were hysterical. The paranoia their parents had been inculcating for years had suddenly paid off. Here was persecution!

One youth clutched the staff on an American flag. He waved it back and forth, banging the eagle on the tip of the staff against overhead pipes.

'This is your country's flag!' he cried.

'We already know that,' said the boss G-man. 'Take it away from him!'

'This day will go down in history!' said Jones.

'Every day goes down in history,' said the boss. 'All right — ' he said, 'where's the man who calls himself George Kraft?'

Kraft raised his hand. He did it almost cheerfully.

'Is that your country's flag, too?' said the boss wryly.

'I'd have to look at it more closely,' said Kraft

'How does it feel to have such a long and distinguished career come to an end?' the boss asked Kraft.

'All careers do end,' said Kraft. 'That's something I've known for a long time.'

'Maybe they'll make a movie of your life,' said the boss.

Kraft smiled. 'Maybe,' he said. 'I would want a lot of money for the rights.'

'There's only one actor who could really play the part, though,' said the boss. 'He might be hard to get.'

'Oh?' said Kraft 'Who is that?'

'Charlie Chaplin,' said the boss. 'Who else could play a spy who was steadily drunk from 1941 until 1948? Who else could play a Russian spy who built an apparatus composed almost entirely of American agents?'

Kraft's urbanity dropped away, revealing him as a pale and puckered old man. 'That's not true!' he said.

'Ask your superiors, if you don't believe me,' said the boss.

'They know?' said Kraft.

'They finally caught on,' said the boss. 'You were on your way home to a bullet in the back of your neck.'

'Why did you save me?' said Kraft

'Call it sentimentality,' said the boss.

Kraft thought his situation over, and schizophrenia rescued him neatly. 'None of this really concerns me,' he said and his urbanity returned.

'Why not?' said the boss.

'Because I'm a painter,' said Kraft 'That's the main thing I am.'

'Be sure to bring your paintbox to prison,' said the boss. He switched his attention to Resi 'You, of course, are Resi Noth,' he said.

'Yes,' she said.

'Have you enjoyed your little stay in our country?' said the boss.

'What am I supposed to say?' said Resi.

'Anything you like,' said the boss. 'If you have any complaints, I'll pass them on to the proper authorities. We're trying to increase the tourist trade from Europe, you know.'

'You say very funny things,' she said unsmilingly. 'I am sorry I can't say funny things back. This is not a funny time for me.'

'I'm sorry to hear that,' said the boss lightly.

'You aren't sorry,' said Resi. I am the only person who is sorry.

'I am sorry I have nothing to live for,' said Resi. 'All I have is love for one man, but that man does not love me. He is so used up that he can't love any more. There is nothing left of him but curiosity and a pair of eyes.

'I can't say anything funny,' said Resi. 'But I can show you something interesting.'

Resi seemed to dab her lip with a finger. What she really did was put a little capsule of cyanide in her mouth.

'I will show you a woman who dies for love,' she said.

Right then and there, Resi Noth pitched into my arms, stone dead.