Player Piano

by Kurt Vonnegut

  Paul reflected that Baer was possibly the most just, reasonable, and candid person he'd ever known--remarkably machine-like in that the only problems he interested himself in were those brought to him, and in that he went to work on all problems with equal energy and interest, insensitive to quality and scale.

  Paul glanced once more at Berringer, saw his luncheon companion was Shepherd and that his shirt was green, and forgot about him.

  He and Garth finally found a pair of very young strangers with two empty seats between them, and sat down.

  The redheaded youngster next to Paul looked at his badge. "Oh, Doctor Proteus. I've heard of you. How are you, sir?"

  "Paul, not Doctor. Fine, how are you--" he studied his companion's badge--"Doctor Edmund L. Harrison, of the Ithaca Works?"

  "Get to know the man next to you," said the loudspeaker. "Don't talk to anyone you know."

  "Married?" said Paul.

  "That's what you're here for, to get to know new people, to broaden your horizons," said the loudspeaker.

  "Nossir, I'm en--"

  "The more contacts you make here at the Meadows," said the loudspeaker, "the more smoothly industry will function, co-operationwise."

  "I'm engaged," said Doctor Harrison.

  "An Ithaca girl?"

  "Two seats right over here, gentlemen--over in the corner. Right over there. Let's get our seats quickly, because there's a full program, and everybody wants to get down to knowing everybody else," said the loudspeaker.

  "Nossir," said Doctor Harrison. "Atlanta." He looked at Paul's badge again. "Aren't you the son of--"

  "Now that we're all seated and getting to know one another, how about a little song to pull us all together?" said the loudspeaker.

  "Yes, he was my father," said Paul.

  "Turn to page twenty-eight of the Song Book," said the loudspeaker. "Twenty-eight, twenty-eight!"

  "He was quite a man," said Harrison.

  "Yes," said Paul.

  " 'Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie!' " shouted the loudspeaker. "Find it? Twenty-eight! All right, now, let's go!"

  The band at the far end of the hall, amplified to the din of an elephant charge, smashed and hewed at the tune as though in a holy war against silence. It was impossible even to be cordial to oneself in the midst of the uproar. Paul's stomach knotted and his tastebuds went dead, and the delicious, expensive food went down his gullet like boiled horsemeat and hominy grits.

  "Paul, Paul, Paul, oh Paul!" shouted Baer from across the table. "Paul!"

  "What?"

  "That's you--you they're calling for; they're calling for you!"

  "Don't tell me the captain of the Blue Team is such a coward he ran out at the last minute," the loudspeaker was saying sarcastically. "Come on! Where's that Blue captain?"

  Paul stood, and held up his hand. "Here," he said in a voice inaudible even to himself.

  Cheers and boos greeted him, in a proportion of one to three. He was pelted by wadded paper napkins and maraschino cherries from the tops of salads.

  "Well," said the loudspeaker tauntingly, "let's hear your song."

  Hands gripped Paul and hoisted him into the air, and he was borne down the aisle toward the bandstand by a flying wedge of blue-shirted men. They dumped him on the bandstand and formed a cordon about him. The master of ceremonies, a fat, red old man with breasts like a woman's sticking through his wet T-shirt, thrust a Song Book into his hands. The band blasted out the fight song of the Blue Team.

  "Oh you Blue Team, you tried and true team," said Paul. His voice came back at him, strange and frightening, amplified electronically to fierce defiance and determination. "There are no teams as good as you!"

  At this point he was completely drowned out by the stamping of feet, whistles, catcalls, and the clank of spoons on glasses. The master of ceremonies, delighted with the high spirits he was evoking, handed Paul a blue banner to wave. No sooner were Paul's hands on the staff than he saw the ranks of his protectors split wide open. Berringer, his head lowered, his thick legs driving, charged him.

  In the scuffle, Paul swung at the informality-maddened Berringer, missed, and was knocked, hors de combat, off the bandstand and halfway through the kitchen doors.

  "Please! Please!" the loudspeaker was pleading. "There are very few rules at the Meadows, but the few that there are must be observed! Get back to your seat, now, you in the green shirt. There's to be no rough stuff indoors. Do you understand?"

  Laughter was general.

  "One more outburst like this one, and you'll be asked to leave the island!"

  Kind hands picked up Paul, and he found himself looking into the grave, dull face of Luke Lubbock, the perennial joiner, who wore a busboy's uniform. One of the cooks, who had been watching with disdain, turned away quickly when Paul looked at him, and disappeared into the big meat locker.

  As Paul's teammates carried him back to his seat, he realized fleetingly, as a fragment of a nightmare, that the cook had been Alfy, the master of silent television.

  "Now, now," said the loudspeaker. "No more rough stuff, or well have to call off the rest of the fun. Now, where's the captain of the White Team?"

  When the fun was over, Paul and Doctor Harrison of Ithaca walked out together.

  "You have ten minutes of free time until the memorial service," said the loudspeaker. "Ten minutes to make new contacts before the memorial service."

  "Nice meeting you, sir," said Doctor Harrison.

  "I enj--"

  "My wild Irish rose," howled the loudspeaker, "the sweetest flow'r that grows--" The refrain ended in a clatter. "Your attention, please. The Program Committee has just informed me that we're running seven minutes behind schedule, so would you please form up at the Oak right away, please. The memorial service will take place right away."

  A reverent hush settled like smog over the perspiring crowd that had dispersed over the shuffleboard courts and around the ping-pong tables near the dining hall. Now they began to form about the Oak, the official symbol for the entire national organization. Its image was on every letter-head, and, stitched in a rectangle of white silk, its image snapped in the breeze, just below the American Flag on the parade-ground mast.

  The youngsters imitated the oldsters' uniform stances of piety: eyes fixed on the lower branches of the magnificent old tree, hands folded before their genitals.

  "White's going to win!" cried a short, thin youngster with big teeth.

  The older men looked at him with sadness, with melancholy rebuke. Now was not the time for such horseplay. Now was almost the only time that was not the time. The youngster's outburst of infinite bad taste would poison his next two weeks, and probably his career. He had in an instant become "the boy who yelled at memorial service." That described him, and nobody would care to investigate him any further. Now, if he turned out to be a spectacular athlete ... No. His flaccid physique and pale skin indicated that this avenue to forgiveness was closed to him.

  Paul looked at him sympathetically, and recalled similar bad starts from the past. The man would be terribly lonely, turn to a career of surly drinking, and never be invited again.

  The only sounds now were the rustling of leaves and the fluttering of the flags, and now and then the clatter of dishes and silverware from the dining hall.

  A harried-looking photographer ran in front of the group, dropped to one knee, fired a flashbulb, and ran away again.

  "Vuuuuzzzzzip!" went a rocket. "Kabloooom!" A parachuted American Flag was flung from the bomb to drift lazily to the river.

  Kroner detached himself from the crowd and walked soberly to the thick tree trunk. He turned and looked down at his hands thoughtfully. His first words were so soft, so choked with emotion, that few heard them. He inhaled deeply, threw back his shoulders, raised his eyes, and gathered strength to say them again.

  In the brief moment before Kroner spoke again, Paul looked about himself. His eyes met those of Shepherd and Berringer, and what passed between them was tender an
d sweet. The crowd had miraculously become a sort of homogenized pudding. It was impossible to tell where one ego left off and the next began.

  "It is our custom," said Kroner; "it is the custom here at the Meadows--our custom, our Meadows--to meet here under our tree, our symbol of strong roots, trunk, and branches, our symbol of courage, integrity, perseverance, beauty. It is our custom to meet here to remember our departed friends and co-workers."

  And now he forgot the crowd, and talked to the fat cumulus clouds scudding over the blue sky. "Since last we met, Doctor Ernest S. Bassett has left our world for his reward in a better one. Ernie, as you all know, was--"

  The photographer ran out, flashed a bulb in Kroner's face, and disappeared again.

  "Ernie was manager of the Philadelphia Works for five years, of the Pittsburgh Works for seven. He was my friend; he was our friend: a great American, a great engineer, a great manager, a great pioneer at the head of the procession of civilization, opening new, undreamed-of doors to better things, for better living, for more people, at less cost."

  Now and then brokenly, Kroner told of Ernie Bassett as a young engineer, and he traced his career from works to works.

  "He gave himself unstintingly engineeringwise, managershipwise, personalitywise, Americanwise, and--" Kroner paused to look impressively from face to face. Again he talked to the clouds--"heartwise."

  A man stepped from the crowd to hand Kroner a long white box. Kroner opened it slowly and studied it thoughtfully before showing its contents to anyone else. At last he reached in and unfurled a blue and white pennant, the Armed Forces "E" that Bassett had won during the war as manager of the Philadelphia Works.

  A muted bugle played taps.

  Kroner knelt at the foot of the tree and placed Ernie Bassett's pennant there.

  The photographer dashed up, got the picture, and dashed away.

  "Vuuuuzzzzzip! Kablooom!"

  A male choir, concealed in the shrubbery, sang ever so softly--to the tune of "Love's Sweet Song":

  "Fellows at the Meadows,

  Lift your tankards high;

  Toast our living symbol, reaching toward the sky.

  Grown from but an acorn,

  Giant now you are;

  May you ne'er stop growing;

  Rise to the stars!

  Proud sy-him-bol a-hov

  Ourrrrrrrrs."

  "A minute of silence in unspoken prayer for departed friends," said the loudspeaker.

  All through the minute of silence, Paul was aware of a snuffling in the background. Someone's dam of reserve had broken under the impact of the ceremony--someone who must have been awfully close to Bassett. There were tears standing in many eyes, and here and there teeth were sunk in unstable lips, but nowhere could Paul see the sobber. Suddenly he spotted him, not in the crowd, but in the dining hall. Luke Lubbock, a pile of dirty dishes in his arms, had been completely carried away. Big, honest tears for the manager of the Pittsburgh Works flooded his cheeks. Rather roughly, the headwaiter hustled him away from the screen door.

  "Vuuuuzzzzzip! Kablooooom!"

  The band exploded into "The Stars and Stripes Forever," and Kroner was half led from the tree by other oldsters who had known Bassett well. The crowd dispersed.

  Paul looked longingly at the doors of the saloon, which was located in a separate white building. He tested the doors to make sure they were really locked, and of course they were. The saloon never opened until the cocktail hour, after the games.

  "Your attention!" said the loudspeaker. "Your attention, please. The program for the rest of the day:

  "In ten minutes the teams will meet at their captains' tents for assignments to various sports. Formal competition will not begin until tomorrow morning. After assignment, relax, get to know your buddy, don't hang around with the same old crowd.

  "Cocktails at five-thirty. Supper at six-thirty. Now--attention to this change: the keynote play and bonfire will not take place tonight. Will not. They will take place tomorrow night, and there will be a group sing tonight in the amphitheater instead. Taps at midnight.

  "Team captains, team captains--will you please report to your tents."

  Without much hope, Paul rattled the saloon doors, thinking he might be able to talk a floor sweeper inside into getting him a little something.

  "I've just been informed," said the loudspeaker, "I've just been informed that the captain of the Blue Team is not in his tent. Doctor Paul Proteus; Doctor Paul ..."

  20

  THE SHAH OF BRATPUHR'S golden turban hung unfurled like a roller towel in heaven from the hat rack in Miami Beach.

  "Puka pala koko, puku ebo koko, nibo aki koko," said the Shah.

  "What's the foreign gentleman after?" asked Homer Bigley, proprietor of the barber shop.

  "He wants a little off the sides, a little off the back, and leave the top alone," mumbled Khashdrahr Miasma, under a steaming towel in the barber chair next to the Shah's.

  Doctor Ewing J. Halyard was giving himself a ragged manicure with his teeth in one of the waiting chairs, while his charges received their first American haircuts. He smiled and nodded at whatever was being said, but heard nothing save the soft crackle of the letter in his breast pocket as he shifted nervously in a search for comfort no chair could give him. The letter, from the personnel officer of the State Department, had pursued him from New York to Utica to Niagara Falls to Camp Drum to Indianapolis to St. Louis to Fort Riley to Houston to Hollywood to the Grand Canyon to Carlsbad Caverns to Hanford to Chicago to Miami Beach, where he roosted long enough for the letter to catch him--catch him like a javelin, quivering squarely between the shoulder-blades of his spirit. He was lobster-red from a day on the sand, but beneath this stinging veneer of fine health and spirits he was cold and dead-white with fear. "My dear Mr. Halyard," it had begun. "My dear Mr. ..."

  While Halyard brooded, Homer Bigley, with the reflexes born of a life of barbering, selected his scissors, clicked them in air about the sacred head, and, as though his right hand were serviced by the same nerve as his diaphragm and voicebox, he began to cut hair and talk--talked to the uncomprehending Shah after the fashion of an extroverted embalmer chatting with a corpse.

  "Yessir, picked a nice time to come. They call this the off-season, but I say it's the nicest time of year. Cheapest time, too. But that isn't what I meant. It's fifteen degrees cooler right here and now than it is in New York City, and I'll bet not one person in fifty up north knows that. Just because the fact hasn't been promoted. Everything's promotion. Ever stop to think about that? Everything you think you think because somebody promoted the ideas. Education--nothing but promotion.

  "Good promotion and bad promotion. Barbers, now, they get a lot of bad promotion on account of cartoons and television comedians, you know? Can't pick up a magazine or turn on the television without you see a joke about a barber cutting somebody. And sure, maybe that's good for a little snicker, maybe, and God knows the world can use a few snickers, but I don't think it's right to hurt somebody to give somebody else a snicker. I mean that it all kind of cancels out, and nobody's ahead. And I just wonder if any of those comedians or cartoon people ever stop to think about the thousands of barbers who go from one year to the next without they ever cut a customer, and still these people go around telling everybody that barbers are slashing so many arteries and veins you wonder how the sewers can handle it all. But seems like nobody ever thinks about what's maybe sacred to somebody, any more.

  "Matter of fact, of course, used to be barbers did bleed people, of course, and got paid for it, too. One of the oldest professions on earth, if you stop to think about it, but nobody does. Used to be sort of doctors, bleeding people and setting their bones and all, and then the doctors got sore and took over all that stuff and left the barbers haircutting and shaving. Very interesting history. But my father used to say, before he died, of course, that the barbers would be here long after the last doctor's laid away, and there was a lot in what he said. He was worth listening to.<
br />
  "Nowadays, by golly, it takes more time and skill to cut hair'n to do what the doctors do. If you had syphilis or the clap or scarlet fever or yellow fever or pneumonia or cancer or something, why, hell, I could cure you while I was drawing the water for a shampoo. Take a little old needle, puncho! squirto! miracle! and give you a clean bill of health along with your change. Any barber could do what a doctor does nowadays. But I'll give you fifty dollars if you can show me a doctor who can cut hair.

  "Now, they say barbering isn't a profession, but you take the other professions that got so big for their breeches since the Middle Ages and look down on barbering. You take medicine, you take the law. Machinery!

  "Doctor doesn't use his head and education to figure out what's the matter with you. Machines go over you--measure this, measure that. Then he picks out the right miracle stuff, and the only reason he does is on account of the machines tell him that's what to do. And the lawyers! Of course, I say it's a pretty good thing what happened to them, because it was a bad thing for them, which couldn't help to be a good thing for everybody else. I didn't say that. My father said it. Those are his words. But the law's the law now, and not a contest between a lot of men paid to grin and lie and yell and finagle for whatever somebody wanted them to grin and lie and yell and finagle about. By golly, the lie detectors know who's lying and who's telling the truth, and those old card machines know how the law runs on whatever the case is about, and they can find out a helluva sight quicker'n you can say habeas corpus what judges did about cases like that before. And that settles it. No more of this fast footwork. Hell, if I had a lie detector and card machines and all, I could run a law business here and fix you up with a divorce or a million dollar damage suit or whatever you needed whatsoever while you were sticking your feet and a dime into that shoeshine machine.

  "Used to be sort of high and mighty, sort of priests, those doctors and lawyers and all, but they're beginning to look more and more like mechanics. Dentists are holding up pretty good, though. They're the exception that proves the rule, I say. And barbering--one of the oldest professions on earth, incidentally--has held up better than all the rest. Machines separated the men from the boys, you might say.