Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Short Fiction

by Kurt Vonnegut

  “How much money?” I said.

  “I’ll take whatever you’ve got on you now,” he said.

  I had twelve dollars. I gave it to him. “Now do I get the picture back?” I said.

  “No,” he said. “I’m sorry, but this goes on indefinitely, I’m afraid. One has to live, you know.” He sighed, tucked away the money in his billfold.

  “Shameful days, shameful days,” he murmured. “And to think that I was once a respected professional man.”

  KING AND QUEEN OF

  THE UNIVERSE

  Mind going back to the Great Depression for a few minutes—clear back to 1932? It was an awful time, I know, but there are a lot of good stories in the Great Depression.

  Back in 1932 Henry and Anne were seventeen.

  At seventeen, Henry and Anne were in love with each other in a highly ornamental way. They knew how good their love looked. They knew how good they looked. They could read in the eyes of their elders how right they were for each other—how right for the society into which they had been born.

  Henry was Henry Davidson Merrill, son of the President of the Merchants’ National Bank; grandson of the late George Mills Davidson, Mayor from 1916 to 1922; grandson of Dr. Rossiter Merrill, founder of the Children’s Wing of the City Hospital …

  Anne was Anne Lawson Heiler, daughter of the President of the Citizens’ Gas Company; granddaughter of the late federal judge Franklin Pace Heiler; granddaughter of D. Dwight Lawson, architect, the Christopher Wren of the Middle Western city…

  Their credentials and their fortunes were in order—had been from the instants of their births. Love like theirs made no demands beyond good grooming, good sailing, good tennis, good golf. They remained as untouched by the soul-deep aspects of love as Winnie-the-Pooh, the storybook teddy bear.

  It was all so cheerful and easy—so natural and clean.

  And, in a Winnie-the-Pooh mood, wherein sordid things could happen only to sordid people, Henry Davidson Merrill and Anne Lawson Heiler crossed a city park late one night—crossed it in evening clothes. They crossed it on their way from an Athletic Club dance to the garage where Henry’s car was parked.

  The night was black, and the few lights of the park were far apart and sickly pale.

  People had been murdered in the park. One man had been butchered for twelve cents, and his murderer was still at large. But he had been a dirty, homeless man—one of those people who were born, seemingly, to be murdered for less than a dollar.

  Henry regarded his tuxedo as a safe-conduct pass through the park—a costume so different from that of the natives as to make him immune to their squalid troublemaking.

  Henry looked at Anne, and found her correctly bored—a pink bonbon in blue tulle, wearing her mother’s pearls and orchids from Henry.

  “I wouldn’t mind sleeping on a park bench,” said Anne loudly. “I think it would be fun. I think it would be fun to be a hobo.” She put her hand in Henry’s. Her hand was hard, tanned, comradely.

  There was no cheap thrill in the meeting of their palms in the dark park. Having grown up together, knowing they would marry and grow old together, neither could surprise or puzzle the other with a touch or a glance or a word—or even with a kiss.

  “It wouldn’t be much fun to be a hobo in the wintertime,” said Henry. He held her hand for a moment, swung it, then let it go without regret.

  “I’d go to Florida in the wintertime,” said Anne. “I’d sleep on the beaches and steal oranges.”

  “You can’t live on just oranges,” said Henry. He was being manly now—letting her know that he understood more about the harshnesses of the world than she did.

  “Oranges and fish,” said Anne. “I would steal ten cents’ worth of hooks from a hardware store, and make a fishline out of string from somebody’s wastebasket, and make a sinker out of a stone. Honestly,” said Anne, “I think it would be heaven. I think people are crazy to worry about money the way they do.”

  In the exact middle of the park, what seemed to be a gargoyle on the rim of a fountain detached itself. It revealed itself as a man.

  The movement transformed the park into the black River Styx, transformed the lights of the garage beyond into the gates of Paradise—gates a million miles away.

  Henry became a foolish, slope-shouldered boy, as ungainly as a homemade stepladder. His white shirt bosom became a beacon for thieves and lunatics.

  Henry glanced at Anne. She had become a fuddled butterball. Her hands went to her throat, hiding her mother’s necklace. Her orchids seemed to weigh her down like cannonballs.

  “Stop—please stop,” the man wheezed softly. He coughed boozily, flagged them down with his hands. “Please—whoa, just a second.”

  Henry felt the sickening excitement of battle billow in his breast, raised his hands to somewhere between fight and surrender.

  “Put your hands down,” said the man. “I only want to talk to you. The robbers are all in bed by now. Drunks, drifters, and poets are the only ones up this late at night.”

  He lurched toward Henry and Anne, his own hands raised in a gesture of utter harmlessness. He was small and scrawny, and his cheap clothes wrinkled and crackled like newspaper.

  He tipped his head back, exposing his scrawny throat to death at Henry’s hands. He smiled slackly. “Big young man like you could kill me with two fingers,” he said. Turtlelike, he watched with pop eyes for signs of trust.

  Henry lowered his hands slowly, and so did the man.

  “What you want?” said Henry. “You want money?”

  “Don’t you?” said the man. “Doesn’t everybody? Bet even your old man could use some more.” He chuckled, mimicked Henry. “‘You want money?’”

  “My father isn’t rich,” said Henry.

  “These pearls aren’t real,” said Anne. It came out a series of unbecoming squawks.

  “Oh—they’re real enough, I imagine,” said the man. He bowed slightly to Henry. “And your father has some money, I imagine. Maybe not enough for the next thousand years, but for the next five hundred, anyway.” He swayed. His face was mobile, showed in quick succession shame, contempt, whimsy, and finally great sadness. His face showed sadness when he introduced himself. “Stanley Karpinsky is the name,” he said. “Don’t want your money. Don’t want your pearls. Want to talk.”

  Henry found that he couldn’t brush past Karpinsky—couldn’t even refuse his hand. Henry Davidson Merrill found that Stanley Karpinsky had become precious to him—had become a small god of the park, a supernatural being who could see into the shadows, who knew what lay behind every shrub and tree.

  It seemed to Henry that Karpinsky and Karpinsky alone could lead them safely to the edge of the park so far away.

  Anne’s terror now turned into hysterical friendliness as Henry shook Karpinsky’s hand. “Goodness!” she cried into the night. “We thought you were a robber or we didn’t know what!” She laughed.

  Karpinsky became reserved, sure of their trust. He studied their clothes. “King and Queen of the Universe—that’s what she’d think you were,” he said. “By God, if she wouldn’t!”

  “Beg pardon?” said Henry.

  “My mother would,” said Karpinsky. “She’d think you were the two most beautiful creatures she ever laid eyes on. Little old Polish woman—scrubbing floors all her life. Never even got up off her hands and knees long enough to learn English. She’d think you were angels.” He cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. “Would you come and let her have a look at you?” he said.

  In the flaccid idiocy that had followed terror, Henry and Anne accepted Karpinsky’s peculiar invitation—not only accepted it, but accepted it with enthusiasm.

  “Mother?” babbled Anne. “Love to, love to, love to.”

  “Sure—where to?” said Henry.

  “Just a block from here,” said Karpinsky. “We’d go in, let her see you, and then you could leave right away. It wouldn’t take over ten minutes.”

  “O.K.,” said Henry.r />
  “O.K.,” said Anne. “This is fun.”

  Karpinsky studied them for a little while longer, taking from his pocket a loose cigarette that had been bent into almost a right angle. Karpinsky didn’t bother to straighten it out, but lit it as it was.

  “Come on,” he said suddenly, flicking the match away. And Henry and Anne found themselves following him, walking very quickly. He was leading them away from the lights of the garage, was leading them toward a side street that was hardly better illuminated than the park.

  Henry and Anne stayed right with him. For all the un-earthliness of their mission and the park at night, Henry and Anne might have been hurtling through the black vacuum of space to the moon.

  The odd expedition reached the edge of the park and crossed the street. The street seemed a murky tunnel through a nightmare, with bright, warm, safe reality at either end.

  The city was very quiet. An empty streetcar far away screamed rustily, rang its cracked bell. An automobile horn bleated a reply.

  A policeman down the block paused in his rounds to watch Henry, Anne, and Karpinsky. Feeling his protective gaze, Henry and Anne hesitated for an instant, then pressed on. They were committed to seeing the adventure through.

  And it wasn’t fear that was committing them to it anymore. Exhilaration was driving them now. Henry Davidson Merrill and Anne Lawson Heiler were suddenly, stunningly, dangerously, romantically leading lives of their own.

  An old colored man, talking to himself, came from the opposite direction. He stopped and leaned against a building, still talking to himself, to watch them pass.

  Henry and Anne met his gaze squarely. They were denizens of the night themselves.

  And then Karpinsky opened a door. A steep stairway went up abruptly from the door. On the stair riser that was at eye level for a person standing on the street was a small sign. STANLEY KARPINSKY, M.S., it said, INDUSTRIAL CHEMIST, 3RD FLOOR.

  Karpinsky watched Henry and Anne read the sign, and he seemed to draw strength from it. He sobered up, became respectable and grave, became the master of science that the sign proclaimed. He combed his hair with his fingers, straightened his coat.

  Until that moment, Henry and Anne had thought of him as old. They could see now that Karpinsky’s scrawniness wasn’t a withering but a result of his having taken very bad care of himself.

  He was only in his late twenties.

  “I’ll lead the way,” said Karpinsky.

  The walls of the stairway were sheathed in a bristly fiberboard. They smelled of cabbage. The building was an old house that had been divided into apartments.

  It was the first unclean, unsafe building that Henry and Anne had ever been in.

  As Karpinsky reached the second floor, an apartment door opened.

  “George—that you?” said a woman peevishly. She stepped into the corridor, squinting. She was a big, stupid beast of a woman, holding her bathrobe closed with grubby fists. “Oh,” she said, seeing Karpinsky, “the mad scientist—drunk again.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Purdy,” said Karpinsky. He was blocking her view of Henry and Anne.

  “You seen my George?” she said.

  “No,” said Karpinsky.

  She smiled crookedly. “Made a million dollars yet?” she said.

  “No—not yet, Mrs. Purdy,” said Karpinsky.

  “Better make it pretty quick,” said Mrs. Purdy, “now that your mother’s too sick to support you anymore.”

  “I expect to,” said Karpinsky coolly. He stepped aside, letting her look at Henry and Anne on the stairs. “These are two good friends of mine, Mrs. Purdy,” he said. “They think a great deal of my work.”

  Mrs. Purdy was thunderstruck.

  “They’ve been dancing at the Athletic Club,” said Karpinsky. “They heard my mother was very ill, and they decided to drop over to see her—to tell her how all the important people at the dance were talking about my experiments.”

  Mrs. Purdy opened her mouth and closed it again, without having made a sound.

  Mrs. Purdy made a mirror of herself for Henry and Anne—showed them images of themselves that they’d never seen before. She showed them how enormously powerful they were, or would be. They had always known that they would be more comfortable and have more expensive pleasures than most—but it had never occurred to them that they would be more powerful, too.

  That could be the only explanation of Mrs. Purdy’s awe—that she was in awe of their power. “Nice—nice to know you,” she said, keeping her eyes right on them. “Good night.” She backed into her apartment and closed the door.

  The home and the laboratory of Stanley Karpinsky, industrial chemist, were a single, drafty attic room—a room with the proportions of a shotgun. There were two tiny windows, one in each of the gable ends. They rattled in their frames.

  The ceiling of the room was wood, the boards of the roof itself, rising to meet at the rooftree. The studs of the wall were bare. Shelves had been nailed between the studs, supporting a meager food supply, a microscope, books, reagent bottles, test tubes, beakers …

  A great walnut dining table with lions’-claw feet was in the exact center of the room, with a shaded lightbulb over it. This was Karpinsky’s laboratory table. A complex system of ring stands, flasks, glass tubing, and burettes was set up on it.

  “Whisper,” said Karpinsky, as he turned on the light over the table. He put his finger to his lips, and nodded meaningfully at a bed tucked under the eaves. The bed was so deep in shadows that it might have gone unnoticed, if Karpinsky hadn’t pointed it out. His mother was sleeping there.

  She did not stir. Her breathing was slow. Each time she exhaled, she seemed to be saying, “Thee.”

  Karpinsky touched the apparatus on the lion-clawed table—touched it with emotions that plainly teetered between love and hate.

  “This,” whispered Karpinsky, “is what everyone at the Athletic Club was talking about tonight. The captains of finance and industry could talk of nothing else.” He raised his eyebrows quizzically. “Your father said I was going to be very rich on account of this, didn’t he?” he said to Henry.

  Henry managed a smile.

  “Say yes,” said Karpinsky.

  Henry and Anne said nothing for fear of involving their fathers in an unprofitable business enterprise.

  “Don’t you see what this is?” whispered Karpinsky, his eyes wide. He was playing the magician now. “You mean it isn’t self-evident?”

  Henry and Anne exchanged glances, shook their heads.

  “It’s my mother’s and father’s dream come true,” said Karpinsky. “It’s what made their son rich and famous. Think of it—they were humble peasants in a strange land, unable to even read or write. But they worked hard in this land of promise, and every tearstained penny they got they put into an education for their son. They sent him not only to high school, but to college! Not only to college, but to graduate school! Now look at him—how successful he is!”

  Henry and Anne were too young, too innocent, to recognize Karpinsky’s performance for what it was—bloodcurdling satire. They looked at his apparatus gravely, and were prepared to believe that it really would make a fortune.

  Karpinsky watched them for a reaction. And, when he got none, he flabbergasted them by bursting into tears. He made as though to grab the apparatus and hurl it to the floor. He stopped just short of doing that, one hand fighting with the other.

  “Do I have to spell it out for you?” he whispered. “My father worked himself to death for my future; my mother is dying, killed by the same thing. And now, college degrees and all, I can’t even get a job as a dishwasher!”

  He closed in on the apparatus with his hands again, again seemed on the verge of destroying it. “This?” he said wistfully. He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s something and maybe it isn’t. Take years and thousands of dollars to find out.” He looked toward the bed. “My mother hasn’t got years to see me be a big success,” he said. “She hasn’t even got days,
probably. She’s going to the hospital for an operation tomorrow, and they tell me she hasn’t got much of a chance of coming back.”

  Now the woman awakened. She didn’t move, but she spoke her son’s name.

  “So I’ve got to be a big success tonight or never,” said Karpinsky. “Stand there and admire the apparatus—look at it as though it were the most wonderful thing you ever laid eyes on, while I tell her you are millionaires, and you’ve come to buy the apparatus for a fortune!”

  He went to his mother’s side, knelt by the bed, and told her the good news in exulting Polish.

  Henry and Anne went to the apparatus self-consciously, their arms limp at their sides.

  Now Karpinsky’s mother sat up, exclaiming.

  Henry smiled glassily at the apparatus. “It’s very nice, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Oh, yes—isn’t it?” said Anne.

  “Smile!” said Henry.

  “What?” said Anne.

  “Smile—look happy!” said Henry. It was the first order he had ever given her.

  Anne was startled, and then she smiled. “He’s a great success,” said Henry. “It’s a wonderful thing.”

  “It’s going to make him so rich,” said Anne.

  “His mother should be very proud of him,” said Henry.

  “She wants to meet you,” said Karpinsky.

  Henry and Anne went to the foot of the old woman’s bed. She was speechless and radiant.

  Karpinsky was wildly happy, too. His deception had paid off stunningly. In less than a minute, his mother had received her full reward, a perfectly gorgeous reward, for a life of awful sacrifices. Her joy shot with the speed of light into her past, illuminating every wretched moment of it with great joy.

  “Tell her your names,” said Karpinsky. “Any names. Doesn’t make any difference.”

  Henry bowed. “Henry Davidson Merrill,” he said. “Anne Lawson Heiler,” said Anne.

  It would have been a shame to use any names other than the true ones. What Henry and Anne had just done was, after all, perfectly beautiful—and the first thing they had ever done that was likely to be noticed in Heaven.