Welcome to the Monkey House: The Special Edition

by Kurt Vonnegut,Gregory D. Sumner

  (1960)

  THE FOSTER PORTFOLIO

  I’M A SALESMAN of good advice for rich people. I’m a contact man for an investment counseling firm. It’s a living, but not a whale of a one—or at least not now, when I’m just starting out. To qualify for the job, I had to buy a Homburg, a navy-blue overcoat; a double-breasted banker’s gray suit, black shoes, a regimental-stripe tie, half a dozen white shirts, half a dozen pairs of black socks and gray gloves.

  When I call on a client, I come by cab, and I am sleek and clean and foursquare. I carry myself as though I’ve made a quiet killing on the stock market, and have come to call more as a public service than anything else. When I arrive in clean wool, with crackling certificates and confidential stock analyses in crisp Manila folders, the reaction—ideally and usually—is the same accorded a minister or physician. I am in charge, and everything is going to be just fine.

  I deal mostly with old ladies—the meek, who by dint of cast-iron constitutions have inherited sizable portions of the earth. I thumb through the clients’ lists of securities, and relay our experts’ suggestions for ways of making their portfolios—or bonanzas or piles—thrive and increase. I can speak of tens of thousands of dollars without a catch in my throat, and look at a list of securities worth more than a hundred thousand with no more fuss than a judicious “Mmmmm, uh-huh.”

  Since I don’t have a portfolio, my job is a little like being a hungry delivery boy for a candy store. But I never really felt that way about it until Herbert Foster asked me to have a look at his finances.

  He called one evening to say a friend had recommended me, and could I come out to talk business. I washed, shaved, dusted my shoes, put on my uniform, and made my grave arrival by cab.

  People in my business—and maybe people in general—have an unsavory habit of sizing up a man’s house, car, and suit, and estimating his annual income. Herbert Foster was six thousand a year, or I’d never seen it. Understand, I have nothing against people in moderate circumstances, other than the crucial fact that I can’t make any money off them. It made me a little sore that Foster would take my time, when the most he had to play around with, I guessed, was no more than a few hundred dollars. Say it was a thousand: my take would be a dollar or two at best.

  · · ·

  Anyway, there I was in the Fosters’ jerry-built postwar colonial with expansion attic. They had taken up a local furniture store on its offer of three rooms of furniture, including ashtrays, a humidor, and pictures for the wall, all for $199.99. Hell, I was there, and I figured I might as well go through with having a look at his pathetic problem.

  “Nice place you have here, Mr. Foster,” I said. “And this is your charming wife?”

  A skinny, shrewish-looking woman smiled up at me vacuously. She wore a faded housecoat figured with a fox-hunting scene. The print was at war with the slipcover of the chair, and I had to squint to separate her features from the clash about her. “A pleasure, Mrs. Foster,” I said. She was surrounded by underwear and socks to be mended, and Herbert said her name was Alma, which seemed entirely possible.

  “And this is the young master,” I said. “Bright little chap. Believe he favors his father.” The two-year-old wiped his grubby hands on my trousers, snuffled, and padded off toward the piano. He stationed himself at the upper end of the keyboard, and hammered on the highest note for one minute, then two, then three.

  “Musical—like his father,” Alma said.

  “You play, do you, Mr. Foster?”

  “Classical,” Herbert said. I took my first good look at him. He was lightly built, with the round, freckled face and big teeth I usually associate with a show-off or wise guy. It was hard to believe that he had settled for so plain a wife, or that he could be as fond of family life as he seemed. It may have been that I only imagined a look of quiet desperation in his eyes.

  “Shouldn’t you be getting on to your meeting, dear?” Herbert said.

  “It was called off at the last minute.”

  “Now, about your portfolio—” I began.

  Herbert looked rattled. “How’s that?”

  “Your portfolio—your securities.”

  “Yes, well, I think we’d better talk in the bedroom. It’s quieter in there.”

  Alma put down her sewing. “What securities?”

  “The bonds, dear. The government bonds.”

  “Now, Herbert, you’re not going to cash them in.”

  “No, Alma, just want to talk them over.”

  “I see,” I said tentatively. “Uh—approximately how much in government bonds?”

  “Three hundred and fifty dollars,” Alma said proudly.

  “Well,” I said, “I don’t see any need for going into the bedroom to talk. My advice, and I give it free, is to hang on to your nest egg until it matures. And now, if you’ll let me phone a cab—”

  “Please,” Herbert said, standing in the bedroom door, “there are a couple of other things I’d like to discuss.”

  “What?” Alma said.

  “Oh, long-range investment planning,” Herbert said vaguely.

  “We could use a little short-range planning for next month’s grocery bill.”

  “Please,” Herbert said to me again.

  I shrugged and followed him into the bedroom. He closed the door behind me. I sat on the edge of the bed and watched him open a little door in the wall, which bared the pipes servicing the bathroom. He slid his arm up into the wall, grunted, and pulled down an envelope.

  “Oho,” I said apathetically, “so that’s where we’ve got the bonds, eh? Very clever. You needn’t have gone to that trouble, Mr. Foster. I have an idea what government bonds look like.”

  “Alma,” he called.

  “Yes, Herbert.”

  “Will you start some coffee for us?”

  “I don’t drink coffee at night,” I said.

  “We have some from dinner,” Alma said.

  “I can’t sleep if I touch it after supper,” I said.

  “Fresh—we want some fresh,” Herbert said.

  The chair springs creaked, and her reluctant footsteps faded into the kitchen.

  “Here,” said Herbert, putting the envelope in my lap. “I don’t know anything about this business, and I guess I ought to have professional help.”

  All right, so I’d give the poor guy a professional talk about his three hundred and fifty dollars in government bonds. “They’re the most conservative investment you can make. They haven’t the growth characteristics of many securities, and the return isn’t great, but they’re very safe. By all means hang onto them.” I stood up. “And now, if you’ll let me call a cab—”

  “You haven’t looked at them.”

  I sighed, and untwisted the red string holding the envelope shut. Nothing would do but that I admire the things. The bonds and a list of securities slid into my lap. I riffled through the bonds quickly, and then read the list of securities slowly.

  “Well?”

  I put the list down on the faded bedspread. I composed myself. “Mmmmm, uh-huh,” I said. “Do you mind telling me where the securities listed here came from?”

  “Grandfather left them to me two years ago. The lawyers who handled the estate have them. They sent me that list.”

  “Do you know what these stocks are worth?”

  “They were appraised when I inherited them.” He told me the figure, and, to my bewilderment, he looked sheepish, even a little unhappy about it.

  “They’ve gone up a little since then.”

  “How much?”

  “On today’s market—maybe they’re worth seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, Mr. Foster. Sir.”

  His expression didn’t change. My news moved him about as much as if I’d told him it’d been a chilly winter. He raised his eyebrows as Alma’s footsteps came back into the living room. “Shhhh!”

  “She doesn’t know?”

  “Lord, no!” He seemed to have surprised himself with his vehemence. “I mean
the time isn’t ripe.”

  “If you’ll let me have this list of securities, I’ll have our New York office give you a complete analysis and recommendations,” I whispered. “May I call you Herbert, sir?”

  · · ·

  My client, Herbert Foster, hadn’t had a new suit in three years; he had never owned more than one pair of shoes at a time. He worried about payments on his secondhand car, and ate tuna and cheese instead of meat, because meat was too expensive. His wife made her own clothes, and those of Herbert, Jr., and the curtains and slipcovers—all cut from the same bargain bolt. The Fosters were going through hell, trying to choose between new tires or retreads for the car; and television was something they had to go two doors down the street to watch. Determinedly, they kept within the small salary Herbert made as a bookkeeper for a wholesale grocery house.

  God knows it’s no disgrace to live that way, which is better than the way I live, but it was pretty disturbing to watch, knowing Herbert had an income, after taxes, of perhaps twenty thousand a year.

  I had our securities analysts look over Foster’s holdings, and report on the stocks’ growth possibilities, prospective earnings, the effects of war and peace, inflation and deflation, and so on. The report ran to twenty pages, a record for any of my clients. Usually, the reports are bound in cardboard covers. Herbert’s was done up in red leatherette.

  It arrived at my place on a Saturday afternoon, and I called up Herbert to ask if I could bring it out. I had exciting news for him. My by-eye estimate of the values had been off, and his portfolio, as of that day, was worth close to eight hundred and fifty thousand.

  “I’ve got the analysis and recommendations,” I said, “and things look good, Mr. Foster—very good. You need a little diversification here and there, and maybe more emphasis on growth, but—”

  “Just go ahead and do whatever needs to be done,” he said.

  “When could we talk about this? It’s something we ought to go over together, certainly. Tonight would be fine with me.”

  “I work tonight.”

  “Overtime at the wholesale house?”

  “Another job—in a restaurant. Work Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights.”

  I winced. The man had maybe seventy-five dollars a day coming in from his securities, and he worked three nights a week to make ends meet! “Monday?”

  “Play organ for choir practice at the church.”

  “Tuesday?”

  “Volunteer Fire Department drill.”

  “Wednesday?”

  “Play piano for folk dancing at the church.”

  “Thursday?”

  “Movie night for Alma and me.”

  “When, then?”

  “You go ahead and do whatever needs to be done.”

  “Don’t you want to be in on what I’m doing?”

  “Do I have to be?”

  “I’d feel better if you were.”

  “All right, Tuesday noon, lunch.”

  “Fine with me. Maybe you’d better have a good look at this report before then, so you can have questions ready.”

  He sounded annoyed. “Okay, okay, okay. I’ll be here tonight until nine. Drop it off before then.”

  “One more thing, Herbert.” I’d saved the kicker for last. “I was way off about what the stocks are worth. They’re now up to about eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

  “Um.”

  “I said, you’re about a hundred thousand dollars richer than you thought!”

  “Uh-huh. Well, you just go ahead and do whatever needs to be done.”

  “Yes, sir.” The phone was dead.

  · · ·

  I was delayed by other business, and I didn’t get out to the Fosters’ until quarter of ten. Herbert was gone. Alma answered the door, and, to my surprise, she asked for the report, which I was hiding under my coat.

  “Herbert said I wasn’t supposed to look at it,” she said, “so you don’t need to worry about me peeking.”

  “Herbert told you about this?” I said carefully.

  “Yes. He said it’s confidential reports on stocks you want to sell him.”

  “Yes, uh-huh—well, if he said to leave it with you, here it is.”

  “He told me he had to promise you not to let anybody look at it.”

  “Mmm? Oh, yes, yes. Sorry, company rules.”

  She was a shade hostile. “I’ll tell you one thing without looking at any reports, and that is he’s not going to cash those bonds to buy any stocks with.”

  “I’d be the last one to recommend that, Mrs. Foster.”

  “Then why do you keep after him?”

  “He may be a good customer at a later date.” I looked at my hands, which I realized had become inkstained on the earlier call. “I wonder if I might wash up?”

  Reluctantly, she let me in, keeping as far away from me as the modest floor plan would permit.

  As I washed up, I thought of the list of securities Herbert had taken from between the plasterboard walls. Those securities meant winters in Florida, filet mignon and twelve-year-old bourbon, Jaguars, silk underwear and handmade shoes, a trip around the world.… Name it; Herbert Foster could have it. I sighed heavily. The soap in the Foster soap dish was mottled and dingy—a dozen little chips moistened and pressed together to make a new bar.

  I thanked Alma, and started to leave. On my way out, I paused by the mantel to look at a small tinted photograph. “Good picture of you,” I said. A feeble effort at public relations. “I like that.”

  “Everybody says that. It isn’t me; it’s Herbert’s mother.”

  “Amazing likeness.” And it was. Herbert had married a girl just like the girl that married dear old dad. “And this picture is his father?”

  “My father. We don’t want a picture of his father.”

  This looked like a sore point that might prove informative. “Herbert is such a wonderful person, his father must have been wonderful, too, eh?”

  “He deserted his wife and child. That’s how wonderful he was. You’ll be smart not to mention him to Herbert.”

  “Sorry. Everything good about Herbert comes from his mother?”

  “She was a saint. She taught Herbert to be decent and respectable and God-fearing.” Alma was grim about it.

  “Was she musical, too?”

  “He gets that from his father. But what he does with it is something quite different. His taste in music is his mother’s—the classics.”

  “His father was a jazz man, I take it?” I hinted.

  “He preferred playing piano in dives, and breathing smoke and drinking gin, to his wife and child and home and job. Herbert’s mother finally said he had to choose one life or the other.”

  I nodded sympathetically. Maybe Herbert looked on his fortune as filthy, untouchable, since it came from his father’s side of the family. “This grandfather of Herbert’s, who died two years ago—?”

  “He supported Herbert and his mother after his son deserted them. Herbert worshipped him.” She shook her head sadly. “He was penniless when he died.”

  “What a shame.”

  “I’d so hoped he would leave us a little something, so Herbert wouldn’t have to work weekends.”

  · · ·

  We were trying to talk above the clatter, tinkle, and crash of the cafeteria where Herbert ate every day. Lunch was on me—or on my expense account—and I’d picked up his check for eighty-seven cents. I said, “Now, Herbert, before we go any further, we’d better decide what you want from your investments: growth or income.” It was a cliché of the counseling business. God know what he wanted from the securities. It didn’t seem to be what everybody else wanted—money.

  “Whatever you say,” Herbert said absently. He was upset about something, and not paying much attention to me.

  “Herbert—look, you’ve got to face this thing. You’re a rich man. You’ve got to concentrate on making the most of your holdings.”

  “That’s why I called you. I want you to concen
trate. I want you to run things for me, so I won’t have to bother with the deposits and proxies and taxes. Don’t trouble me with it at all.”

  “Your lawyers have been banking the dividends, eh?”

  “Most of them. Took out thirty-two dollars for Christmas, and gave a hundred to the church.”

  “So what’s your balance?”

  He handed me the deposit book.

  “Not bad,” I said. Despite his Christmas splurge and largess toward the church, he’d managed to salt away $50,227.33. “May I ask what a man with a balance like that can be blue about?”

  “Got bawled out at work again.”

  “Buy the place and burn it down,” I suggested.

  “I could, couldn’t I?” A wild look came into his eyes, then disappeared.

  “Herbert, you can do anything your heart desires.”

  “Oh, I suppose so. It’s all in the way you look at it.”

  I leaned forward. “How do you look at it, Herbert?”

  “I think every man, for his own self-respect, should earn what he lives on.”

  “But, Herbert—”

  “I have a wonderful wife and child, a nice house for them, and a car. And I’ve earned every penny of the way. I’m living up to the full measure of my responsibilities. I’m proud to say I’m everything my mother wanted me to be, and nothing my father was.”

  “Do you mind my asking what your father was?”

  “I don’t enjoy talking about him. Home and family meant nothing to him. His real love was for low-down music and honky-tonks, and for the trash in them.”

  “Was he a good musician, do you think?”

  “Good?” For an instant, there was excitement in his voice, and he tensed, as though he were going to make an important point. But he relaxed again. “Good?” he repeated, flatly this time. “Yes, in a crude way, I suppose he was passable—technically, that is.”

  “And that much you inherited from him.”

  “His wrists and hands, maybe. God help me if there’s any more of him in me.”

  “You’ve got his love of music, too.”

  “I love music, but I’d never let it get like dope to me!” he said, with more force than seemed necessary.

  “Uh-huh. Well—”