Newt added these three postscripts to his letter:
«P.S. I can’t sign myself ‘Fraternally yours' because they won’t let me be your brother on account of my grades. I was only a pledge, and now they are going to take even that away from me.
«P.P. S. You call our family ‘illustrious,' and I think you would maybe be making a mistake if you called it that in your book. I am a midget, for instance — four feet tall. And the last we heard of my brother Frank, he was wanted by the Florida police, the F. B.I., and the Treasury Department for running stolen cars to Cuba on war-surplus L. S.T.'s. So I’m pretty sure ‘illustrious' isn’t quite the word you’re after. ‘Glamorous' is probably closer to the truth.
«P.P.P.S. Twenty-four hours later. I have reread this letter and I can see where somebody might get the impression that I don’t do anything but sit around and remember sad things and pity myself. Actually, I am a very lucky person and I know it. I am about to marry a wonderful little girl. There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look. I am proof of that.»
Newt did not tell me who his girl friend was. But about two weeks after he wrote to me everybody in the country knew that her name was Zinka — plain Zinka. Apparently she didn’t have a last name.
Zinka was a Ukrainian midget, a dancer with the Borzoi Dance Company. As it happened, Newt saw a performance by that company in Indianapolis, before he went to Cornell. And then the company danced at Cornell. When the Cornell performance was over, little Newt was outside the stage door with a dozen long-stemmed American Beauty roses.
The newspapers picked up the story when little Zinka asked for political asylum in the United States, and then she and little Newt disappeared.
One week after that, little Zinka presented herself at the Russian Embassy. She said Americans were too materialistic. She said she wanted to go back home.
Newt took shelter in his sister’s house in Indianapolis. He gave one brief statement to the press. «It was a private matter," he said. «It was an affair of the heart. I have no regrets. What happened is nobody’s business but Zinka’s and my own.»
One enterprising American reporter in Moscow, making inquiries about Zinka among dance people there, made the unkind discovery that Zinka was not, as she claimed, only twenty-three years old.
She was forty-two — old enough to be Newt’s mother.
I loafed on my book about the day of the bomb.
About a year later, two days before Christmas, another story carried me through Ilium, New York, where Dr. Felix Hoenikker had done most of his work; where little Newt, Frank, and Angela had spent their formative years.
I stopped off in Ilium to see what I could see.
There were no live Hoenikkers left in Ilium, but there were plenty of people who claimed to have known well the old man and his three peculiar children.
I made an appointment with Dr. Asa Breed, Vice-president in charge of the Research Laboratory of the General Forge and Foundry Company. I suppose Dr. Breed was a member of my karass, too, though he took a dislike to me almost immediately.
«Likes and dislikes have nothing to do with it," says Bokonon — an easy warning to forget.
«I understand you were Dr. Hoenikker’s supervisor during most of his professional life," I said to Dr. Breed on the telephone.
«On paper," he said.
«I don’t understand," I said.
«If I actually supervised Felix," he said, «then I’m ready now to take charge of volcanoes, the tides, and the migrations of birds and lemmings. The man was a force of nature no mortal could possibly control.»
Dr. Breed made an appointment with me for early the next morning. He would pick me up at my hotel on his way to work, he said, thus simplifying my entry into the heavily-guarded Research Laboratory.
So I had a night to kill in Ilium. I was already in the beginning and end of night life in Ilium, the Del Prado Hotel. Its bar, the Cape Cod Room, was a hangout for whores.
As it happened — «as it was meant to happen," Bokonon would say — the whore next to me at the bar and the bartender serving me had both gone to high school with Franklin Hoenikker, the bug tormentor, the middle child, the missing son.
The whore, who said her name was Sandra, offered me delights unobtainable outside of Place Pigalle and Port Said. I said I wasn’t interested, and she was bright enough to say that she wasn’t really interested either. As things turned out, we had both overestimated our apathies, but not by much.
Before we took the measure of each other’s passions, however, we talked about Frank Hoenikker, and we talked about the old man, and we talked a little about Asa Breed, and we talked about the General Forge and Foundry Company, and we talked about the Pope and birth control, about Hitler and the Jews. We talked about phonies. We talked about truth. We talked about gangsters; we talked about business. We talked about the nice poor people who went to the electric chair; and we talked about the rich bastards who didn’t. We talked about religious people who had perversions. We talked about a lot of things.
We got drunk.
The bartender was very nice to Sandra. He liked her. He respected her. He told me that Sandra had been chairman of the Class Colors Committee at Ilium High. Every class, he explained, got to pick distinctive colors for itself in its junior year, and then it got to wear those colors with pride.
«What colors did you pick?» I asked.
«Orange and black.»
«Those are good colors.»
«I thought so.»
«Was Franklin Hoenikker on the Class Colors Committee, too?»
«He wasn’t on anything," said Sandra scornfully. «He never got on any committee, never played any game, never took any girl out. I don’t think he ever even talked to a girl. We used to call him Secret Agent X-9.»
«X-9?»
«You know — he was always acting like he was on his way between two secret places; couldn’t ever talk to anybody.»
«Maybe he really did have a very rich secret life," I suggested.
«Nah.»
«Nah," sneered the bartender. «He was just one of those kids who made model airplanes and jerked off all the time.»
«He was suppose to be our commencement speaker," said Sandra.
«Who was?» I asked.
«Dr. Hoenikker — the old man.»
«What did he say?»
«He didn’t show up.»
«So you didn’t get a commencement address?»
«Oh, we got one. Dr. Breed, the one you’re gonna see tomorrow, he showed up, all out of breath, and he gave some kind of talk.»
«What did he say?»
«He said he hoped a lot of us would have careers in science," she said. She didn’t see anything funny in that. She was remembering a lesson that had impressed her. She was repeating it gropingly, dutifully. «He said, the trouble with the world was…» She had to stop and think.
«The trouble with the world was," she continued hesitatingly, «that people were still superstitious instead of scientific. He said if everybody would study science more, there wouldn’t be all the trouble there was.»
«He said science was going to discover the basic secret of life someday," the bartender put in. He scratched his head and frowned. «Didn't I read in the paper the other day where they’d finally found out what it was?»
«I missed that," I murmured.
«I saw that," said Sandra. «About two days ago.»
«That's right," said the bartender.
«What is the secret of life?» I asked.
«I forget," said Sandra.
«Protein," the bartender declared. «They found out something about protein.»
«Yeah," said Sandra, «that's it.»
An older bartender came over to join in our conversation in the Cape Cod Room of the Del Prado. When he heard that I was writing a book about the day of the bomb, he told me what the day had been like for him, what the day had been like in the very bar in which we sat. He had aW. C. Fields twang and a nose like a prize strawberry.
«It wasn’t the Cape Cod Room then," he said. «We didn’t have all these fugging nets and seashells around. It was called the Navajo Tepee in those days. Had Indian blankets and cow skulls on the walls. Had little tom-toms on the tables. People were supposed to beat on the tom-toms when they wanted service. They tried to get me to wear a war bonnet, but I wouldn’t do it. Real Navajo Indian came in here one day; told me Navajos didn’t live in tepees. ‘That's a fugging shame,' I told him. Before that it was the Pompeii Room, with busted plaster all over the place; but no matter what they call the room, they never change the fugging light fixtures. Never changed the fugging people who come in or the fugging town outside, either. The day they dropped Hoenikker’s fugging bomb on the Japanese a bum came in and tried to scrounge a drink. He wanted me to give him a drink on account of the world was coming to an end. So I mixed him an ‘End of the World Delight.' I gave him about a half-pint of creme de menthe in a hollowed-out pineapple, with whipped cream and a cherry on top. ‘There, you pitiful son of a bitch,' I said to him, ‘don't ever say I never did anything for you.' Another guy came in, and he said he was quitting his job at the Research Laboratory; said anything a scientist worked on was sure to wind up as a weapon, one way or another. Said he didn’t want to help politicians with their fugging wars anymore. Name was Breed. I asked him if he was any relation to the boss of the fugging Research Laboratory. He said he fugging well was. Said he was the boss of the Research Laboratory’s fugging son.»
Ah, God, what an ugly city Ilium is!
«Ah, God," says Bokonon, «what an ugly city every city is!»
Sleet was falling through a motionless blanket of smog. It was early morning. I was riding in the Lincoln sedan of Dr. Asa Breed. I was vaguely ill, still a little drunk from the night before. Dr. Breed was driving. Tracks of a long-abandoned trolley system kept catching the wheels of his car.
Breed was a pink old man, very prosperous, beautifully dressed. His manner was civilized, optimistic, capable, serene. I, by contrast, felt bristly, diseased, cynical. I had spent the night with Sandra.
My soul seemed as foul as smoke from burning cat fur.
I thought the worst of everyone, and I knew some pretty sordid things about Dr. Asa Breed, things Sandra had told me.
Sandra told me everyone in Ilium was sure that Dr. Breed had been in love with Felix Hoenikker’s wife. She told me that most people thought Breed was the father of all three Hoenikker children.
«Do you know Ilium at all?» Dr. Breed suddenly asked me.
«This is my first visit.»
«It's a family town.»
«Sir?»
«There isn’t much in the way of night life. Everybody’s life pretty much centers around his family and his home.»
«That sounds very wholesome.»
«It is. We have very little juvenile delinquency.»
«Good.»
«Ilium has a very interesting history, you know.»
«That's very interesting.»
«It used to be the jumping-off place, you know.»
«Sir?»
«For the Western migration.»
«Oh.»
«People used to get outfitted here.»
«That's very interesting.»
«Just about where the Research Laboratory is now was the old stockade. That was where they held the public hangings, too, for the whole county.»
«I don’t suppose crime paid any better then than it does now.»
«There was one man they hanged here in 1782 who had murdered twenty-six people. I’ve often thought somebody ought to do a book about him sometime. George Minor Moakely. He sang a song on the scaffold. He sang a song he’d composed for the occasion.»
«What was the song about?»
«You can find the words over at the Historical Society, if you’re really interested.»
«I just wondered about the general tone.»
«He wasn’t sorry about anything.»
«Some people are like that.»
«Think of it!» said Dr. Breed. «Twenty-six people he had on his conscience!»
«The mind reels," I said.
My sick head wobbled on my stiff neck. The trolley tracks had caught the wheels of Dr. Breed’s glossy Lincoln again.
I asked Dr. Breed how many people were trying to reach the General Forge and Foundry Company by eight o’clock, and he told me thirty thousand.
Policemen in yellow raincapes were at every intersection, contradicting with their white-gloved hands what the stop-and-go signs said.
The stop-and-go signs, garish ghosts in the sleet, went through their irrelevant tomfoolery again and again, telling the glacier of automobiles what to do. Green meant go. Red meant stop. Orange meant change and caution.
Dr. Breed told me that Dr. Hoenikker, as a very young man, had simply abandoned his car in Ilium traffic one morning.
«The police, trying to find out what was holding up traffic," he said, «found Felix’s car in the middle of everything, its motor running, a cigar burning in the ash tray, fresh flowers in the vases…»
«Vases?»
«It was a Marmon, about the size of a switch engine. It had little cut-glass vases on the doorposts, and Felix’s wife used to put fresh flowers in the vases every morning. And there that car was in the middle of traffic.»
«Like the Marie Celeste," I suggested.
«The Police Department hauled it away. They knew whose car it was, and they called up Felix, and they told him very politely where his car could be picked up. Felix told them they could keep it, that he didn’t want it any more.»
«Did they?»
«No. They called up his wife, and she came and got the Marmon.»
«What was her name, by the way?»
«Emily.» Dr. Breed licked his lips, and he got a faraway look, and he said the name of the woman, of the woman so long dead, again. «Emily.»
«Do you think anybody would object if I used the story about the Marmon in my book?» I asked.
«As long as you don’t use the end of it.»
«The end of it?»
«Emily wasn’t used to driving the Marmon. She got into a bad wreck on the way home. It did something to her pelvis…» The traffic wasn’t moving just then. Dr. Breed closed his eyes and tightened his hands on the steering wheel.
«And that was why she died when little Newt was born.»
The Research Laboratory of the General Forge and Foundry Company was near the main gate of the company’s Ilium works, about a city block from the executive parking lot where Dr. Breed put his car.
I asked Dr. Breed how many people worked for the Research Laboratory. «Seven hundred," he said, «but less than a hundred are actually doing research. The other six hundred are all housekeepers in one way or another, and I am the chiefest housekeeper of all.»
When we joined the mainstream of mankind in the company street, a woman behind us wished Dr. Breed a merry Christmas. Dr. Breed turned to peer benignly into the sea of pale pies, and identified the greeter as one Miss Francine Pefko. Miss Pefko was twenty, vacantly pretty, and healthy — a dull normal.
In honor of the dulcitude of Christmas time, Dr. Breed invited Miss Pefko to join us. He introduced her as the secretary of Dr. Nilsak Horvath. He then told me who Horvath was. «The famous surface chemist," he said, «the one who’s doing such wonderful things with films.»
«What's new in surface chemistry?» I asked Miss Pefko. «God," she said, «don't ask me. I just type what he tells me to type.» And then she apologized for having said «God.»
«Oh, I think you understand more than you let on," said Dr. Breed.
«Not me.» Miss Pefko wasn’t used to chatting with someone as important as Dr. Breed and she was embarrassed. Her gait was affected, becoming stiff and chickenlike. Her smile was glassy, and she was ransacking her mind for something to say, finding nothing in it but used Kleenex and costume jewelry.
«Well… ," rumbled Dr. Breed expansively, «how do you like us, now that you’ve been with us — how long? Almost a year?»
«You scientists think too much," blurted Miss Pefko. She laughed idiotically. Dr. Breed’s friendliness had blown every fuse in her nervous system. She was no longer responsible. «Youall think too much.»
A winded, defeated-looking fat woman in filthy coveralls trudged beside us, hearing what Miss Pefko said. She turned to examine Dr. Breed, looking at him with helpless reproach. She hated people who thought too much. At that moment, she struck me as an appropriate representative for almost all mankind.
The fat woman’s expression implied that she would go crazy on the spot if anybody did any more thinking.
«I think you’ll find," said Dr. Breed, «that everybody does about the same amount of thinking. Scientists simply think about things in one way, and other people think about things in others.»
«Ech," gurgled Miss Pefko emptily. «I take dictation from Dr. Horvath and it’s just like a foreign language. I don’t think I’d understand — even if I was to go to college. And here he’s maybe talking about something that’s going to turn everything upside-down and inside-out like the atom bomb.
«When I used to come home from school Mother used to ask me what happened that day, and I’d tell her," said Miss Pefko. «Now I come home from work and she asks me the same question, and all I can say is — «Miss Pefko shook her head and let her crimson lips flap slackly— «I dunno, I dunno, I dunno.»
«If there’s something you don’t understand," urged Dr. Breed, «ask Dr. Horvath to explain it. He’s very good at explaining.» He turned to me. «Dr. Hoenikker used to say that any scientist who couldn’t explain to an eight-year-old what he was doing was a charlatan.»
«Then I’m dumber than an eight-year-old," Miss Pefko mourned. «I don’t even know what a charlatan is.»
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