Bagombo Snuff Box

by Kurt Vonnegut

  “You wouldn’t want to leave your family, would you?”

  Harry was conscience-stricken. “Oh, no! I thought maybe I could take them.”

  “No soap,” said Laird. “What they want is bachelors. And anyway, you’ve got a nice setup here. And you’ve got to have a specialty, too, to qualify for the big money. Fly, handle a boat, speak a language. Besides, most of the recruiting is done in bars in Singapore, Algiers, and places like that. Now, I’m taking a flier at uranium prospecting on my own, up in the Klondike, and I need a couple of good Geiger counter technicians. Can you repair a Geiger counter, Harry?”

  “Nope,” said Harry.

  “Well, the men I want are going to have to be single, anyway,” said Laird. “It’s a beautiful part of the world, teeming with moose and salmon, but rugged. No place for women or children. What is your line?”

  “Oh,” said Harry, “credit manager for a department store.”

  “Harry,” Amy called, “would you please warm up the baby’s formula, and see if the lima beans are done?”

  “Yes, dear,” said Harry.

  “What did you say, honey?”

  “I said yes!” Harry bellowed.

  A shocked silence settled over the house.

  And then Amy came in, and Laird had his memory refreshed. Laird stood. Amy was a lovely woman, with black hair, and wise brown affectionate eyes. She was still young, but obviously very tired. She was prettily dressed, carefully made-up, and quite self-conscious.

  “Eddie, how nice,” she said with brittle cheerfulness. “Don’t you look well!”

  “You, too,” Laird said.

  “Do I really?” Amy said. “I feel so ancient.”

  “You shouldn’t,” Laird said. “This life obviously agrees with you.”

  “We have been very happy,” Amy said.

  “You’re as pretty as a model in Paris, a movie star in Rome.”

  “You don’t mean it.” Amy was pleased.

  “I do,” Laird said. “I can see you now in a Mainbocher suit, your high heels clicking smartly along the Champs-Élysées, with the soft winds of the Parisian spring ruffling your black hair, and with every eye drinking you in—and a gendarme salutes!”

  “Oh, Eddie!” Amy cried.

  “Have you been to Paris?” said Laird.

  “Nope,” said Amy.

  “No matter. In many ways, there are more exotic thrills in New York. I can see you there, in a theater crowd, with each man falling silent and turning to stare as you pass by. When was the last time you were in New York?”

  “Hmmmmm?” Amy said, staring into the distance.

  “When were you last in New York?”

  “Oh, I’ve never been there. Harry has—on business.”

  “Why didn’t he take you?” Laird said gallantly. “You can’t let your youth slip away without going to New York. It’s a young person’s town.”

  “Angel,” Harry called from the kitchen, “how can you tell if lima beans are done?”

  “Stick a lousy fork into ’em!” Amy yelled.

  Harry appeared in the doorway with drinks, and blinked in hurt bewilderment. “Do you have to yell at me?” he said.

  Amy rubbed her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m tired. We’re both tired.”

  “We haven’t had much sleep,” Harry said. He patted his wife’s back. “We’re both a little tense.”

  Amy took her husband’s hand and squeezed it. Peace settled over the house once more.

  Harry passed out the drinks, and Laird proposed a toast.

  “Eat, drink, and be merry,” Laird said, “for tomorrow we could die.”

  Harry and Amy winced, and drank thirstily.

  “He brought us a snuff box from Bagombo, honey,” said Harry. “Did I pronounce that right?”

  “You’ve Americanized it a little,” said Laird. “But that’s about it.” He pursed his lips. “Bagombo.”

  “It’s very pretty,” said Amy. “I’ll put it on my dressing table, and not let the children near it. Bagombo.”

  “There!” Laird said. “She said it just right. It’s a funny thing. Some people have an ear for languages. They hear them once, and they catch all the subtle sounds immediately. And some people have a tin ear, and never catch on. Amy, listen, and then repeat what I say: ‘Toli! Pakka sahn nebul rokka ta. Si notte loni gin ta tonic.’”

  Cautiously Amy repeated the sentence.

  “Perfect! You know what you just said in Buhna-Simca? ‘Young woman, go cover the baby, and bring me a gin and tonic on the south terrace.’ Now then, Harry, you say, ‘Pilla! Sibba tu bang-bang. Libbin hru donna steek!’”

  Harry, frowning, repeated the sentence.

  Laird sat back with a sympathetic smile for Amy. “Well, I don’t know, Harry. That might get across, except you’d earn a laugh from the natives when you turned your back.”

  Harry was stung. “What did I say?”

  “‘Boy!’” Laird translated. “‘Hand me the gun. The tiger is in the clump of trees just ahead.’”

  “Pilla!” Harry said imperiously. “Sibba tu bang-bang. Libbin hru donna steek!” He held out his hand for the gun, and the hand twitched like a fish dying on a riverbank.

  “Better—much better!” Laird said.

  “That was good,” Amy said.

  Harry brushed off their adulation. He was grim, purposeful. “Tell me,” he said, “are tigers a problem around Bagombo?”

  “Sometimes, when game gets scarce in the jungles, tigers come into the outskirts of villages,” Laird said. “And then you have to go out and get them.”

  “You had servants in Bagombo, did you?” Amy said.

  “At six cents a day for a man, and four cents a day for a woman? I guess!” Laird said.

  There was the sound of a bicycle bumping against the outside of the house.

  “Stevie’s home,” Harry said.

  “I want to go to Bagombo,” Amy said.

  “It’s no place to raise kids,” Laird said. “That’s the big drawback.”

  The front door opened, and a good-looking, muscular nine-year-old boy came in, hot and sweaty. He threw his cap at a hook in the front closet and started upstairs.

  “Hang up your hat, Stevie!” Amy said. “I’m not a servant who follows you around, gathering things wherever you care to throw them.”

  “And pick up your feet!” said Harry.

  Stevie came creeping down the stairway, shocked and perplexed. “What got into you two all of a sudden?” he said.

  “Don’t be fresh,” Harry said. “Come in here and meet Mr. Laird.”

  “Major Laird,” said Laird.

  “Hi,” said Stevie. “How come you haven’t got a uniform on, if you’re a Major?”

  “Reserve commission,” Laird said. The boy’s eyes, frank, irreverent, and unromantic, scared him. “Nice boy you have here.”

  “Oh,” Stevie said, “that kind of a Major.” He saw the snuff box, and picked it up.

  “Stevie,” Amy said, “put that down. It’s one of Mother’s treasures, and it’s not going to get broken like everything else. Put it down.”

  “Okay, okay, okay,” said Stevie. He set the box down with elaborate gentleness. “I didn’t know it was such a treasure.”

  “Major Laird brought it all the way from Bagombo,” Amy said.

  “Bagombo, Japan?” Stevie said.

  “Ceylon, Stevie,” Harry said. “Bagombo is in Ceylon.”

  “Then how come it’s got ‘Made in Japan’ on the bottom?”

  Laird paled. “They export their stuff to Japan, and the Japanese market it for them,” he said.

  “There, Stevie,” Amy said. “You learned something today.”

  “Then why don’t they say it was made in Ceylon?” Stevie wanted to know.

  “The Oriental mind works in devious ways,” said Harry.

  “Exactly,” said Laird. “You’ve caught the whole spirit of the Orient in that one sentence, Harry.”

  “T
hey ship these things all the way from Africa to Japan?” Stevie asked.

  A hideous doubt stabbed Laird. A map of the world swirled in his mind, with continents flapping and changing shape and with an island named Ceylon scuttling through the seven seas. Only two points held firm, and these were Stevie’s irreverent blue eyes.

  “I always thought it was off India,” Amy said.

  “It’s funny how things leave you when you start thinking about them too hard,” Harry said. “Now I’ve got Ceylon all balled up with Madagascar.”

  ‘And Sumatra and Borneo,” Amy said. “That’s what we get for never leaving home.”

  Now four islands were sailing the troubled seas in Laird’s mind.

  “What’s the answer, Eddie?” Amy said. “Where is Ceylon?”

  “It’s an island off Africa,” Stevie said firmly. “We studied it.”

  Laird looked around the room and saw doubt on every face but Stevie’s. He cleared his throat. “The boy is right,” he croaked.

  “I’ll get my atlas and show you,” Stevie said with pride, and ran upstairs.

  Laird stood up, weak. “Must dash.”

  “So soon?” Harry said. “Well, I hope you find lots of uranium.” He avoided his wife’s eyes. “I’d give my right arm to go with you.”

  “Someday, when the children are grown,” Amy said, “maybe we’ll still be young enough to enjoy New York and Paris, and all those other places—and maybe retire in Bagombo.”

  “I hope so,” said Laird. He blundered out the door, and down the walk, which now seemed endless, and into the waiting taxicab. “Let’s go,” he told the driver.

  “They’re all yelling at you,” said the driver. He rolled down his window so Laird could hear.

  “Hey, Major!” Stevie was shouting. “Mom’s right, and we’re wrong. Ceylon is off India.”

  The family that Laird had so recently scattered to the winds was together again, united in mirth on the doorstep.

  “Pilla!” called Harry gaily. “Sibba tu bang-bang. Libbin hru donna steek!”

  “Toli!” Amy called back. “Pakka sahn nebul rokka ta. Si notte loni gin ta tonic.”

  The cab pulled away.

  That night, in his hotel room, Laird put in a long-distance call to his second wife, Selma, in a small house in Levittown, Long Island, New York, far, far away.

  “Is Arthur doing any better with his reading, Selma?” he asked.

  “The teacher says he isn’t dull, he’s lazy,” Selma said. “She says he can catch up with the class anytime he makes up his mind to.”

  “I’ll talk to him when I get home,” Laird said. “And the twins? Are they letting you sleep at all?”

  “Well, I’m getting two of them out of the way at one crack. Let’s look at it that way.” Selma yawned agonizingly. “How’s the trip going?”

  “You remember how they said you couldn’t sell potato chips in Dubuque?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I did,” said Laird. “I’m going to make history in this territory. I’ll stand this town on its ear.”

  “Are you—” Selma hesitated. “Are you going to call her up, Eddie?”

  “Naaaaah,” Laird said. “Why open old graves?”

  “You’re not even curious about what’s happened to her?”

  “Naaaaah. We’d hardly know each other. People change, people change.” He snapped his fingers. “Oh, I almost forgot. What did the dentist say about Dawn’s teeth?”

  Selma sighed. “She needs braces.”

  “Get them. I’m clicking, Selma. We’re going to start living. I bought a new suit.”

  “It’s about time,” Selma said. “You’ve needed one for so long. Does it look nice on you?”

  “I think so,” Laird said. “I love you, Selma.”

  “I love you, Eddie. Good night.”

  “Miss you,” Laird said. “Good night.”

  The Powder-Blue

  Dragon

  A thin young man with big grimy hands crossed the sun-softened asphalt of the seaside village’s main street, went from the automobile dealership where he worked to the post office. The village had once been a whaling port. Now its natives served the owners and renters of mansions on the beachfront.

  The young man mailed some letters and bought stamps for his boss. Then he went to the drugstore next door on business of his own. Two summer people, a man and a woman his age, were coming out as he was going in. He gave them a sullen glance, as though their health and wealth and lazy aplomb were meant to mock him.

  He asked the druggist, who knew him well, to cash his own personal check for five dollars. It was drawn on his account at a bank in the next town. There was no bank in the village. His name was Kiah.

  Kiah had moved his money, which was quite a lot, from a savings account into checking. The check Kiah handed the druggist was the first he had ever written. It was in fact numbered 1. Kiah didn’t need the five dollars. He worked off the books for the automobile dealer, and was paid in cash. He wanted to make sure a check written by him was really money, would really work.

  “My name is written on top there,” he said.

  “I see that,” said the druggist. “You’re certainly coming up in the world.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Kiah, “it’s good.” Was it ever good! Kiah thought maybe the druggist would faint if he knew how good that check was.

  “Why would I worry about a check from the most honest, hardworking boy in town?” The druggist corrected himself. “A checking account makes you a big man now, just like J.P Morgan.”

  “What kind of a car does he drive?” asked Kiah.

  “Who?”

  “J.R Morgan.”

  “He’s dead. Is that how you judge people, by the cars they drive?” The druggist was seventy years old, very tired, and looking for somebody to buy his store. “You must have a very low opinion of me, driving a secondhand Chevy.” He handed Kiah five one-dollar bills.

  Kiah named the Chevy’s model instantly: “Malibu.”

  “I think maybe working for Daggett has made you car-crazy.” Daggett was the dealer across the street. He sold foreign sports cars there, and had another showroom in New York City. “How many jobs you got now, besides Daggett?”

  “Wait tables at the Quarterdeck weekends, pump gas at Ed’s nights.” Kiah was an orphan who lived in a boardinghouse. His father had worked for a landscape contractor, his mother as a chambermaid at the Howard Johnson’s out on the turnpike. They were killed in a head-on collision in front of the Howard Johnson’s when Kiah was sixteen. The police had said the crash was their fault. His parents had no money, and their secondhand Plymouth Fury was totaled, so they didn’t even have a car to leave him.

  “I worry about you, Kiah,” said the druggist. “All work and no play. Still haven’t saved enough to buy a car?” It was generally known in the village that Kiah worked such long hours so he could buy a car. He had no girl.

  “Ever hear of a Marittima-Frascati?”

  “No. And I don’t believe anybody else ever heard of one, either.”

  Kiah looked at the druggist pityingly. “Won the Avignon road race two years in a row—over Jaguars, Mercedes, and everything. Guaranteed to do a hundred and thirty on an open stretch. Most beautiful car in the world. Daggett’s got one in his New York place.” Kiah went up on his tiptoes. “Nobody’s ever seen anything like it around here. Nobody.”

  “Why don’t you ever talk about Fords or Chevrolets or something I’ve heard of? Marittima-Frascati!”

  “No class. That’s why I don’t talk about them.”

  “Class! Listen who’s talking about class all the time. He sweeps floors, polishes cars, waits tables, pumps gas, and he’s got to have class or nothing.”

  “You dream your dreams, I’ll dream mine,” Kiah said.

  “I dream of being young like you in a village that’s as pretty and pleasant as this one is,” said the druggist. “You can take class and—”

  Daggett, a portl
y New Yorker who operated his branch showroom only in the summer, was selling a car to an urbane and tweedy gentleman as Kiah walked in.

  “I’m back, Mr. Daggett,” Kiah said.

  Daggett paid no attention to him. Kiah sat down on a chair to wait and daydream. His heart was beating hard.

  “It’s not for me, understand,” the customer was saying. He looked down in amazement at the low, boxy MG. “It’s for my boy. He’s been talking about one of these things.”

  “A fine young-man’s car,” Daggett said. “And reasonably priced for a sports car.”

  “Now he’s raving about some other car, a Mara-something.”

  “Marittima-Frascati,” said Kiah.

  Daggett and the customer seemed surprised to find him in the same room.

  “Mmmm, yes, that’s the name,” the customer said.

  “Have one in the city. I could get it out here early next week,” said Daggett.

  “How much?”

  “Fifty-six hundred and fifty-one dollars,” said Kiah.

  Daggett gave a flat, unfriendly laugh. “You’ve got a good memory, Kiah.”

  “Fifty-six hundred!” the customer said. “I love my boy, but love’s got to draw the line somewhere. I’ll take this one.” He took a checkbook from his pocket.

  Kiah’s long shadow fell across the receipt Daggett was making out.

  “Kiah, please. You’re in the light.” Kiah didn’t move. “Kiah, what is it you want? Why don’t you sweep out the back room or something?”

  “I just wanted to say,” Kiah said, his breathing shallow, “that when this gentleman is through, I’d like to order the Marittima-Frascati.”

  “You what?” Daggett stood angrily.

  Kiah took out his own checkbook.

  “Beat it!” Daggett said.

  The customer laughed.

  “Do you want my business?” Kiah asked.

  “I’ll take care of your business, kid, but good. Now sit down and wait.”

  Kiah sat down until the customer left.

  Daggett then walked toward Kiah slowly, his fists clenched. “Now, young man, your funny business almost lost me a sale.”

  “I’ll give you two minutes, Mr. Daggett, to call up the bank and find out if I’ve got the money, or I’ll get my car someplace else.”