At the beginning of the novel, the concept of the book about the bombing of Dresden is described. The author complains that he cannot come up with the right words for this book, which he considered his main work. To plan a future book, he met with his fellow soldier Bernard O'Hare. O'Hair's wife Mary was very angry when she learned about the plan for a book about war, because in all such books there is an element of glorification of war - cynical lies that support new wars. Vonnegut's conversation with Mary is a key episode at the beginning of the novel; it explains why the book about Dresden turned out to be so strange, short, and confusing, which does not prevent it from being anti-war. It is also clear from this dialogue where the second title of the novel came from.
Yes, you were just children then! - she said.
What? - I asked again.
You were just children in the war, like our guys above.
I nodded my head - it’s true. We were at war foolish virgins, barely parted with childhood.
But you wouldn’t write it like that, right? - she said. It wasn't a question - it was an accusation.
“I… I don’t know myself,” I said.
But I know, she said. - You will pretend that you were not children at all, but real men, and you will be played in the movies by all sorts of Frank Sinatras and John Waynes or some other celebrities, nasty old men who adore war. And the war will be shown beautifully, and wars will follow one after another. And the children will fight, like those of our children upstairs.
And then I understood everything. That's why she was so angry. She didn’t want her children, or anyone else’s children, to be killed in the war. And she thought that books and movies also incite wars.
And then I raised my right hand and made a solemn promise to her.
Mary,” I said, “I’m afraid that I will never finish this book of mine.” I've already written about five thousand pages and thrown it all away. But if I ever finish this book, I give you my word of honor that there will be no role for either Frank Sinatra or John Wayne in it. And you know what,” I added, “I’ll call the book “The Children’s Crusade.”
After that she became my friend.
As a result, the novel was dedicated to Mary O'Hair and the Dresden taxi driver Gerhard Müller and was written in a “telegraphic-schizophrenic style,” as Vonnegut himself puts it. The book closely intertwines realism, grotesque, fantasy, elements of madness, cruel satire and bitter irony.
The main character is the American soldier Billy Pilgrim, an absurd, timid, apathetic man, whose prototype was Vonnegut's colleague, Edward Crone. The book describes Pilgrim's adventures in the war and the bombing of Dresden, which left an indelible imprint on Pilgrim's mental state, which had not been very stable since childhood. Vonnegut introduced a fantastic element into the story: the events of the protagonist's life are viewed through the prism of post-traumatic stress disorder - a syndrome characteristic of war veterans, which crippled the hero's perception of reality. As a result, the comical “story about aliens” grows into some harmonious philosophical system.
Aliens from the planet Tralfamadore take Billy Pilgrim to their planet and tell him that time does not actually “flow”, there is no gradual random transition from one event to another - the world and time are given once and for all, everything that has happened and will happen is known . When someone dies, Tralfamadorians simply say, “That’s how it is.” It was impossible to say why or why anything happened - that was the “structure of the moment.”
The composition of the novel is also explained in this artistic way - it is not a story about successive events, but episodes of the Pilgrim’s life that occur without any order. He learned from aliens how to travel through time, and every episode is such a journey.
Here are some of the moments in which the stream of time takes Pilgrim:
- Psychological traumas of childhood (fear from the sight of the Grand Canyon, first unsuccessful swimming experience).
- A long trek through the winter forest with several other soldiers. Having become separated from the detachment, they are forced to wander through unfamiliar places. An autobiographical (like many others in the book) moment.
- Captivity and events in the British prisoner of war camp.
- Work in Dresden, settlement at Slaughterhouse No. 5 and a bombing that wiped the city off the face of the earth in one night. A subtle artistic move - subsequent events, such as the meeting with aliens, can be explained from the point of view that Billy simply went crazy - numerous nervous shocks, the largest of which was the moment of the bombing, which accumulated in the hero, in the end after many years led to clouding of consciousness.
- Mental hospital. Several months after the war, Billy continues to attend optometry courses when he has a nervous breakdown. At the asylum, Billy became acquainted with Eliot Rosewater and the books of Kilgore Trout.
- Events after the war - a calm, measured life with an ugly, but kind and sympathetic wife. Wealth, which Pilgrim did not strive for, came to him in the field of ophthalmological medicine.
- Meeting with aliens - flying to Tralfamadore and exhibiting Billy Pilgrim as a zoo resident for the amusement of the aliens. There he was paired with former movie star Montana Wildback.
- Plane crash and hospital. Billy was on a plane with other optometrists heading to a convention when it crashed into a mountain. Only he and the co-pilot survive the plane crash. Having received a head injury, he ends up in the hospital, where he is mistaken for a “vegetable” for a long time. There he meets Bertram Remford, a 70-year-old former colonel who was writing a book about the history of aviation.
- Death by a sniper's laser gun after Pilgrim's seminar in which he disseminates ideas learned from the Tralfamadorians. As a time traveler, Billy has seen his own death many times and predicted it in great detail.
Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Children's Crusade
(Dance with death on duty)
Author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Year and place of first publication: 1969, USA
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Literary form: novel
Many years after World War II, Kurt Vonnegut met with Bernard W. O'Hare, whom he had befriended during the war, to talk about the destruction of Dresden. Allied forces bombed Dresden; it stood in ruins - as if after the explosion of a nuclear bomb. Vonnegut and other American prisoners of war (POW) survivors of the ordeal of the "Schlachthof-funf", "Slaughterhouse-Five", a concrete shelter designed for the slaughter of livestock. The two friends subsequently visited Dresden, where Vonnegut received material to complement his own experiences to create his “famous book about Dresden.”
Billy Pilgrim, the main character, was born in Troy, New York in 1922. He served in the Army as a chaplain's assistant. After the accidental death of his father while hunting, Billy returned from leave and was assigned to help the regimental chaplain in place of the killed assistant. The chaplain himself was killed in the Battle of the Bulge, and Billy and three other Americans became separated from their own and became lost deep in German territory. One of the three soldiers, Roland Weary, an anti-tank artillery gunner, who all his life was an unpopular guy who was in everyone's way and whom everyone wanted to get rid of. Weary repeatedly pushed Billy out of the enemy's line of fire, but Billy was so exhausted and exhausted that he did not realize that his life was being saved. This infuriates Weary, who “saved Billy’s life a hundred times a day: he scolded him at all costs, beat him, pushed him so that he wouldn’t stop.” Viri and the other two of the four, both scouts, became “the three musketeers” in Viri’s imagination. However, as Weary becomes obsessed with keeping the hallucinating Billy alive, so does the scouts' contempt for Billy and Weary, whom they eventually abandon. Weary is ready to kill Billy, but at the moment when he was already on the way to murder, they are discovered and captured by a detachment of German soldiers.
They are searched, weapons and belongings are taken away and taken to the house where prisoners of war are kept. They are placed with twenty other Americans. For propaganda purposes, Billy is photographed to show how poorly the American army trains its soldiers. The Germans and prisoners of war move on, meeting other prisoners of war along the way, who merge into a single human river. They are brought to the railway station and separated by rank: privates from privates, colonels from colonels, etc. Billy and Weary are separated, but Weary continues to believe that Billy was the reason for the disunity of the “three musketeers”, he tries to instill hatred of Billy in his neighbors along the carriage. On the ninth day of the journey, Viri dies of gangrene. On the tenth day, the train stops and the people are taken to a prison camp. Billy refuses to jump from the carriage. They take him out, and the corpses remain in the carriages.
Prisoners are undressed and their clothes are disinfected. Among them are Edgar Darby, a middle-aged man whose son fought in the Pacific, and Paul Lazzaro, a tiny, wrinkled man covered in boils. Both of them were with Weary when he died, Darby held his head in his lap, and Lazzaro promised revenge on Billy. Prisoners are given back their clothes and given personal numbers, which they must wear at all times. They are taken to a barracks inhabited by several middle-aged Englishmen who have been prisoners since the beginning of the war. Unlike their American colleagues, the British try to stay in shape and take care of themselves. They also skillfully save food, and can afford to exchange food with the Germans for various useful things - for example, boards and other building materials for furnishing their barracks.
In a terrible state, delirious, Billy is placed in the sanitary part of the British section, which is actually six beds in one of the rooms of the barracks. He is injected with morphine and is looked after by Darby, who is always reading The Scarlet Badge of Valor. Billy wakes up from a drug-induced sleep, not realizing where he is or what year it is. Darby and Lazzaro sleep in adjacent bunks. Lazzaro had his arm broken for stealing cigarettes from the English, and now he is ranting to Billy and Darby about how he will one day get revenge for this and for Weary's death, which he blames on Billy.
The head of the British informs the Americans: “You, gentlemen, will leave today for Dresden, a wonderful city... […] By the way, you have nothing to fear from bombing. Dresden is an open city. It is not protected, there is no military industry and no significant concentration of enemy troops.” Arriving at the site, the Americans see that they were told the truth. They are taken to a concrete shelter, where there used to be a slaughterhouse, which has now become their shelter - "Schlachthof-funf". Americans work in a factory producing malt syrup fortified with vitamins and minerals for pregnant German women.
Four days later, Dresden was destroyed. Billy, several Americans and four German guards took refuge in the slaughterhouse underground when the city began to be bombed. When they left there the next day, “the sky was completely covered with black smoke. The angry sun looked like the head of a nail. Dresden was like the Moon - all minerals. The stones became hot. There was death all around." The soldiers ordered the Americans to line up in fours and led them out of the city to a rural hotel, far enough from Dresden to escape the bombing.
Two days after the end of the war, Billy and five other Americans return to Dresden, looting abandoned houses, taking things they like. The Russians soon enter the city and arrest the Americans, sending them home two days later on the Lucretia A. Mott.
During the war, Billy Pilgrim, among other things, travels through time. His journeys happen when he is on the edge between life and death or under the influence of drugs. When he was attacked by Viri, he traveled to the future and the past. For example, he went back to when he was a little boy and he and his father went to the YMKA. His father tried to teach Billy to swim using the swim-or-sink method. He threw him into the water in a deep place, Billy sank - “he lay at the bottom of the pool and wonderful music rang around him. He lost consciousness, but the music did not stop. He vaguely felt that he was being saved. Billy was very upset." From the pool he was transported to 1965, visiting his mother in Sosnovy Bor, a nursing home; then he went to a New Year's party in 1961; then returned to 1958 for a banquet in honor of his son's Youth League team; and from there again to the New Year's party, where he cheated on his wife with another woman; he eventually returned to the German rear in World War II, where he was shaken under a Viri tree.
After falling asleep from a morphine injection in the British part of a prisoner of war camp, Billy is transported back to 1948 at the Lake Placid Veterans Hospital. He meets Eliot Rosewater, a former infantry captain who introduced Billy to the works of Kilgore Trout, an obscure science fiction writer who became Billy's favorite writer and whom Billy met personally years later. Billy is then sent back to a time when he is 44 years old and is on display at the zoo on Tralfamadore as a different life form.
The Tralfamadorians—telepaths who live in four dimensions and have a clear understanding of the concept of death—captured Billy and placed him in a zoo, where he sat naked in a room furnished with furniture from the Sears and Rowback warehouses of Iowa City, Iowa. Shortly after Billy's abduction, the Tralfamadorians kidnapped a Groundling woman, Montana Wildback, a twenty-year-old movie star who they hoped would become Billy's girlfriend. Over time, she confided in Billy and they fell in love, to the joy and pleasure of the Tralfamadorians.
Shortly after their sexual experience, Billy awakens. Now it's 1968, he's sweating under the electric blanket, heating up like crazy. His daughter put him to bed upon his return from the hospital where he had been admitted after a plane crash in Vermont on his way to an optometry convention in Canada, in which he was the only survivor. His wife is Valencia Merble, the daughter of a successful optician who brought Billy into his business and thus made him a wealthy man. She dies from accidental carbon monoxide poisoning while Billy is in the hospital.
The next day, Billy Pilgrim goes to New York, where he hopes to get on a TV show and tell the world about the Tralfamadorians. Instead, he ends up on a radio talk show whose topic is “Is Roman Dead or Not?” Billy talks about his travels, the Tralfamadorians, Montana, multiple dimensions and the like until he is escorted “delicately out of the studio during a commercial break. He returned to his room, dropped a quarter into the electric "magic fingers" connected to his bed, and fell asleep. And traveled back in time to Tralfamadore." Billy Pilgrim died on February 13, 1976.
According to Lee Burres, Slaughterhouse-Five is one of the most frequently banned books of the last twenty-five years, boasting dozens of cases in which students, parents, teachers, administrators, librarians and clergy have advocated for the novel's removal or destruction for the following reasons: obscenity , vulgar language, cruelty, “outhouse” language, “not recommended for children” language, godlessness, immorality, “too modern” language and “unpatriotic” depiction of war.
June Edwards addresses protests from parents and religious leaders: "The book is an indictment of the war that criticizes the actions of the government, it is un-American and unpatriotic." This charge ignores Vonnegut's reason for writing the novel, which was meant to show that "it is impossible to speak politely about carnage." Edwards strengthens the author's position with the following arguments: “Young people may refuse to fight in future battles by reading about the horrors of war in novels like Slaughterhouse-Five... but this will not make them anti-American. They do not want their country to be involved in brutality, the extermination of entire peoples, but they want it to find other ways to resolve conflicts.”
Nat Hentoff reports that Bruce Severy is the only teacher at North Dakota's Drake High School to use Slaughterhouse-Five in class as an example of a "living modern book" in 1973. Severi submitted the book to the director for consideration, but, having received no response, decided to act on his own and studied it in class. Student objections to the “inappropriate language” led to the school council calling the book “an instrument of the devil.” The school board decided that the book should be burned, even though none of the board members had read it. Severi, upon learning that his contract would not be renewed, said: “A few three-letter words in a book are of little importance. Students have heard them before. They didn't learn anything new. “I always thought that the job of school was to prepare these kids for life in the ‘big, bad world,’ but it seems I was wrong.” Severy, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, sued the school board. To avoid going to trial, the following agreement was reached: 1) Slaughterhouse-Five could be used by Drake High School teachers in 11th and 12th grade English classes; 2) Severi’s lecture cannot be called unsatisfactory orally or in writing; 3) Severi is paid compensation of 5 thousand dollars.
A Librarian's Guide to Resolving Censorship Conflicts provides a detailed account of the Island Tree Union Free School District's Pico v. Board of Education case in 1979, 1980, and 1982. It is significant as the first time a school library censorship case has reached the Supreme Court. The case arose from the initiative of school board members attending a meeting of the Parents of New York (PONY-U) in 1975, at which the issue of “control of textbooks and books in school libraries” was raised. Using a list that included books deemed "unnecessary" in other school libraries, Richard Aherns, then chairman of the Long Island School Board, visited the school library one evening with board member Frank Martin to see which books were on the list. . They found nine books, including Slaughterhouse-Five. At the next meeting, with two high school principals in February 1976, the board decided to remove these nine books (plus two more) from the junior high school curriculum. This decision prompted a note from Director Richard Morrow, who stated: “I do not believe that we should agree and act in accordance with someone else's list ... we already have our own course ... aimed at solving such problems.” At a meeting on March 30, Director Aherns ignored the note and ordered the books removed from the county libraries. After the press became involved, the council issued a retraction that read:
“The Board of Education intends to make it clear that we are NOT PERSECUTORS or BOOK BURNERS in any way. While most of us agree that these books can be found on the shelves of a public library, we all believe that these books are NOT suitable for school libraries where they are easily accessible to children whose minds are still in the formative stage [sic] and where their availability will entice children to read and absorb them..."
Morrow responded that it was "the mistake of the board, as well as of any other group, to remove books without carefully examining the views of the parents whose children read the books and the teachers who use the books in teaching...and without properly examining the books themselves." In April, the board and Morrow voted to create a committee of four parents and four teachers to review the books and make recommendations regarding their future status. Meanwhile, Morrow demanded that the books be returned to the shelves and remain there until the review process was completed. The books were not returned to the shelves. At the next meeting, the committee decided that six of the eleven books, including Slaughterhouse-Five, could be returned to school libraries. It was not recommended to return three books, and no consensus was reached on two more. Be that as it may, on July 28, the council, despite the conclusion of the committee, voted to return only one book - "Laughing Boy" - without restrictions and the second - "BLACK" - with restrictions that will depend on the position of the committee. Aerns stated that the remaining nine cannot be used as required, optional or recommended literature, but their discussion in class is allowed.
In January 1977, a lawsuit was filed by Stephen Pico and other schoolchildren, represented by the New York Civil Liberties Union. Pico said the board violated the First Amendment by removing those books from the library.
As noted in trial records, the school board denounced the books as “anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and downright dirty”; they cited a number of passages dealing with male genitalia, sexuality, obscene and sacrilegious language, and blasphemous interpretations of the Gospel and Jesus Christ. Leon Hurwitz writes: "A federal district court quickly ruled in favor of the board, but an appeals court remanded the case on the students' petition." The Supreme Court, to which the school board appealed, upheld (5-4) the appeals court's decision, rejecting the opinion that "there is no probable violation of the Constitution in the actions of the school board in this area." The cycle ended on August 12, 1982, when the school board voted 6 to 1 to return the books to library shelves, but with the stipulation that the librarian must notify parents in writing that their child was borrowing books they might find offensive. (For more on the debate surrounding this case, see The Censorship History of “BLACK”).
Many other episodes took place around Slaughterhouse-Five in the seventies, eighties and nineties. As documented in the study Banned Books: 387 BC to 1987 AD, an unknown Iowa city school board ordered the burning of 32 copies of the book in 1973 due to the work's obscene language. The teacher who included the book in the program was threatened with dismissal. In McBee, South Carolina, a teacher who accessed this text was arrested and charged with using obscene material.
The Intellectual Freedom Newsletter reports that in 1982, the Lakeland, Florida, review board voted 3-2 to ban the book from the Lake Gibson High School library, citing explicit sexual content, violence and obscene language. The board member's complaint was echoed by Polk County Schools Deputy Superintendent Cliff Maines, who said the book review policy justified the decision's validity.
On May 27, 1984, in Racine, Wisconsin, William Grindland, a district administrative assistant, banned the purchase of Slaughterhouse-Five, declaring, "I don't think it belongs in a school library." Unified School Board member Eugene Dank countered, “Denying our youth a quality reading program is a crime.” This sparked a heated debate that led to the board banning five textbooks, three on social sciences and two on economics. Councilwoman Barbara Scott introduced a proposal to create a "reserve list" containing books that require writing to read.
parental permission. Meanwhile, the Racine Education Association has threatened to take legal action and sue the school board in federal court if the books are banned. The association's executive director, Jim Ennis, said the goal of the process would be to "prevent school boards from removing 'contemporary and significant literature' from libraries and programs." On June 14, a committee of officials recommended that the school district purchase a new edition of Slaughterhouse-Five and also proposed a new library acquisition policy. The latter involved involving parents in forming a committee consisting of parents, librarians, and educational leaders who would work together to select new materials for the library. The news of this deterred the Association from taking legal action against the school district.
On May 15, 1986, Jane Robbins-Carter, president of the Wisconsin Library Association, informed the Racine Unified School District that the issue of censorship "is due to the conflict between district policies and practices as they influence the selection and purchase of library materials and on the principles of intellectual freedom affirmed by the Library Association of America's Library Bill of Rights." The protests were prompted by the actions of William Grindland, who asserted "his power to destroy orders for library materials 'not in accordance with acquisition policy'", using "vague and subjective criteria" in the selection of materials, and to direct "requests for materials of a controversial nature... to public libraries, local bookstores and newsstands.” Robbins-Carter adds that "censorship will continue as long as the Board of Education adopts a revised policy for the selection and purchase of library materials." In December, the Racine Unified School District review committee adopted such a course in June 1985. On Dec. 9, the Racine Unified School District's Library Materials Review Committee voted 6-2 to place Slaughterhouse-Five on restricted access and only be issued to students with parental permission. Grindland, a member of the committee that selected the books, said: “I objected to this book being in the school library and still do. But the limitation is a worthy compromise.”
In October 1985, Owensboro, Kentucky, parent Carol Roberts protested that Slaughterhouse-Five was "simply disgusting," citing passages about atrocities, "magic fingers" [vibrator name - A.E. ] and the phrase - “The shell zipped like lightning on the trousers of the Almighty himself.” She also prepared a petition that was signed by more than a hundred parents. In November, a meeting was held between the administration, teachers and parents, who voted to keep the text in the school library. Judith Edwards, the city's director of education, said the committee "felt the book deserved approval." In April 1987, the LyRue, Kentucky, county board of education refused to remove Slaughterhouse-Five from school libraries, despite numerous complaints about the book's profanity and sexual perversion. Director Phil Isen defended the book, saying it "shows the dirt of war": "We don't force them [those against the book] to read them [the books in the library]."
In August 1987, school officials in Fitzgerald, Georgia, decided to ban Slaughterhouse-Five from all city schools and offer similar protections against other "objectionable" material. The book was banned by a 6-5 vote after Ferais and Maxine Taylor, whose daughter brought the book home, filed a formal complaint in June: “If we don't do anything here, they'll bring this trash into class and we We will put our stamp of approval on it.”
In February 1988, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, school board member Gordon Hutchison announced that he wanted to ban Slaughterhouse-Five and all books like it, which he called "foul language books." His attention was drawn to a complaint from Brenda Forrest, whose daughter had chosen a novel from Central High School's recommended reading list. District Parent Teacher Association President Beverly Trahan responded to the event: “You could have very serious problems with banning books.” Dick Icke, executive director of the East Baton Rouge Union of Educators, echoed Trahan in defending the book. School board President Robert Crawford, a Vietnam veteran, agreed with Icke and Trahan, saying, “I think it's dangerous to start banning books. We can clean out the libraries if we want." In March, schools superintendent Bernard Weiss said a committee would be formed to evaluate the book. A committee of twelve voted (11 in favor, one abstained) to keep the book. Community member Bill Huey stated, “I have a hard time trusting this community... to discuss removing books from library shelves. I don't want to live in a society that approves of bingo and bans books."
Banned in the USA: A Guide to Book Censorship in Schools and Public Libraries mentions the 1991 Plummer, Idaho, scathing critique of Slaughterhouse-Five. Parents protested the use of the book in the 11th grade English language and literature syllabus, citing blasphemy. Since the school had not developed a mechanism for such prohibitions, the book was simply removed from the school, and the teacher who used the book in class threw out all copies.
Dedicated to Mary O'Hair and Gerhard Müller
The bulls are roaring.
The calf moos.
They woke up the Christ Child,
But he is silent.
Chapter 1
Almost all of this actually happened. In any case, almost everything about the war here is true. One of my acquaintances was actually shot in Dresden for taking someone else’s teapot, another acquaintance actually threatened that he would kill all his personal enemies after the war with the help of hired killers. And so on. I changed all the names.
I actually went to Dresden for a Guggenheim fellowship (God bless them) in 1967, the city was very similar to Dayton, Ohio, only with more squares and parks than Dunton. There are probably tons of human bones crushed into dust there in the ground.
I went there with an old fellow soldier, Bernard W. O'Hare, and we became friends with the taxi driver who took us to Slaughterhouse Number Five, where we prisoners of war were locked up at night. The taxi driver's name was Gerhard Muller. He told us that he had been a prisoner of war among the Americans. We asked him how life was under the communists, and he said that at first it was bad, because everyone had to work terribly hard and there was not enough food, clothing, or shelter.
And now it has become much better. He has a cozy apartment, his daughter is studying and receiving an excellent education. His mother was burned during the bombing of Dresden. So it goes.
He sent O'Hare a Christmas card, and it said: "I wish you and your family and your friend a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and hope that we meet again in a peaceful and free world, in my taxi, if chance wants"
I really like the phrase “if chance wants.”
I'm terribly reluctant to tell you what this damn book cost me - how much money, time, worry. When I returned home after the Second World War, twenty-three years ago, I thought that it would be very easy for me to write about the destruction of Dresden, because I only had to tell everything that I saw. And I also thought that a highly artistic work would come out, or, in any case, it would give me a lot of money, because the topic is so important.
But I just couldn’t come up with the right words about Dresden; in any case, there weren’t enough of them for a whole book. Yes, words don’t come even now, when I have become an old fart, with familiar memories, with familiar cigarettes and adult sons.
And I think: how useless all my memories of Dresden are and yet how tempting it was to write about Dresden. And the old naughty song is spinning in my head:
Some scientist associate professor
Angry at his instrument:
"It ruined my health,
Capital wasted
But you don’t want to work, you impudent fellow!”
And I remember another song:
My name is Jon Jonsen,
My home is Wisconsin
In the forest I work here.
Whomever I meet;
I answer everyone
Who will ask:
"What is your name?"
My name is Jon Jonsen,
All these years, my acquaintances often asked me what I was working on, and I usually answered that my main work was a book about Dresden.
That’s what I answered to Harrison Starr, the film director, and he raised his eyebrows and asked:
Is the book anti-war?
Yes, - I said, - it seems like that.
Do you know what I tell people when I hear that they are writing anti-war books?
Don't know. What are you telling them, Harrison Star?
I tell them: why don’t you write an anti-glacier book instead?
Of course, he wanted to say that there will always be warriors and that stopping them is as easy as stopping glaciers.
Slaughterhouse-Five or the Children's Crusade
A fourth-generation German-American who now lives in excellent conditions on Cape Cod (and smokes too much), he was a US infantryman (non-combatant) a long time ago and, having been captured, witnessed the bombing of the German city of Dresden (“Florence on Elbe") and can talk about it because he survived. This novel is partly written in a slightly telegraphic-schizophrenic style, as they write on the planet Tralfamadore, where the flying saucers originate. World.
Dedicated to Mary O'Hair and Gerhard Müller
The bulls are roaring.
The calf moos.
They woke up the Christ Child,
But he is silent.
Almost all of this actually happened. In any case, almost everything about the war here is true. One of my friends was actually shot in Dresden for taking someone else’s teapot. Another acquaintance actually threatened that he would kill all his personal enemies after the war with the help of hired killers. And so on. I changed all the names.
I actually went to Dresden for a Guggenheim fellowship (God bless them) in 1967. The city was very similar to Dayton, Ohio, only with more squares and parks than Dunton. There are probably tons of human bones crushed into dust there in the ground.
I went there with an old fellow soldier, Bernard W. O'Hare, and we became friends with a taxi driver who took us to Slaughterhouse Five, where we prisoners of war were locked up at night. The taxi driver's name was Gerhard Müller. He told us that he had been captured by the Americans. We asked him how life was under the communists, and he said that at first it was bad, because everyone had to work terribly hard and there was not enough food, clothing, or shelter. And now it has become much better. He has a cozy apartment, his daughter is studying and receiving an excellent education. His mother was burned during the bombing of Dresden. So it goes.
He sent O'Hair a Christmas card and it said: "I wish you and your family and your friend a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and hope we meet again in a peaceful and free world, in my taxi, if chance wants.”
I really like the phrase “if chance wants.”
I’m terribly reluctant to tell you what this damn book cost me - how much money, time, worry. When I returned home after the Second World War, twenty-three years ago, I thought that it would be very easy for me to write about the destruction of Dresden, because I only had to tell everything that I saw. And I also thought that a highly artistic work would come out, or, in any case, it would give me a lot of money, because the topic is so important.
But I just couldn’t come up with the right words about Dresden; in any case, there weren’t enough of them for a whole book. Yes, words don’t come even now, when I have become an old fart, with familiar memories, with familiar cigarettes and adult sons.
And I think: how useless all my memories of Dresden are and yet how tempting it was to write about Dresden. And the old naughty song is spinning in my head:
Some scientist associate professor
Angry at his instrument:
“It ruined my health,
Capital wasted
But you don’t want to work, you impudent one!”
And I remember another song:
My name is Jon Jonsen,
My home is Wisconsin
In the forest I work here.
Whomever I meet;
I answer everyone
Who will ask:
"What is your name?"
My name is Jon Jonsen,
All these years, my acquaintances often asked me what I was working on, and I usually answered that my main work was a book about Dresden.
That’s what I answered to Harrison Starr, the film director, and he raised his eyebrows and asked:
– Is the book anti-war?
“Yes,” I said, “it seems like that.”
– Do you know what I tell people when I hear that they write anti-war books?
- Don't know. What are you telling them, Harrison Star?
“I tell them: why don’t you write an anti-glacier book instead?”
Of course, he wanted to say that there will always be warriors and that stopping them is as easy as stopping glaciers. I think so too.
And even if wars did not approach us like glaciers, an ordinary old woman would still remain - death.
When I was younger and working on my notorious Dresden book, I asked an old fellow soldier, Bernard W. O'Hare, if I could come and see him. He was a district attorney in Pennsylvania. I was a writer on Cape Cod. During the war, we were ordinary scouts in the infantry. We never hoped for good earnings after the war, but we both got a good job.
I've assigned the Central Telephone Company to find him. They're great at it. Sometimes at night I have these attacks, with alcohol and phone calls. I get drunk and my wife goes into another room because I smell like mustard gas and roses. And I, very seriously and elegantly, make a phone call and ask the operator to connect me with one of my friends whom I have long lost track of.
That's how I found O'Hair. He is short and I am tall. During the war our names were Pat and Patashon. We were taken prisoner together. I told him over the phone who I was. He believed it immediately. He didn't sleep. He read. Everyone else in the house was asleep.
“Listen,” I said. – I’m writing a book about Dresden. You could help me remember something. Is it possible for me to come to you, see you, we could have a drink, talk, remember the past.
He showed no enthusiasm. He said he remembers very little. But still he said: come.
“You know, I think the book should end with the shooting of that unfortunate Edgar Darby,” I said. - Think about the irony. The whole city is burning, thousands of people are dying. And then this same American soldier is arrested among the ruins by the Germans for taking a kettle. And they are judged by all odds and shot.
“Hm-hmm,” O’Hair said.
– Do you agree that this should be the denouement?
“I don’t understand anything about this,” he said, “this is your specialty, not mine.”
As an expert in resolutions, plotting, characterization, amazing dialogue, intense scenes and confrontations, I have outlined the outline of a book about Dresden many times. The best plan, or at least the most beautiful plan, I sketched on a piece of wallpaper.
I took colored pencils from my daughter and gave each character a different color. At one end of the piece of wallpaper was the beginning, at the other the end, and in the middle was the middle of the book. The red line met the blue one, and then the yellow one, and the yellow line ended because the hero depicted by the yellow line died. And so on. The destruction of Dresden was represented by a vertical column of orange crosses, and all the surviving lines passed through this binding and out the other end.
The end where all the lines stopped was in a beet field on the Elbe, outside the city of Halle. It was pouring rain. The war in Europe ended a few weeks ago. We were lined up, and Russian soldiers guarded us: British, Americans, Dutch, Belgians, French, New Zealanders, Australians - thousands of former prisoners of war.
Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse-Five or the Children's Crusade
Dedicated to Mary O'Hair and Gerhard Müller
The bulls are roaring.
The calf moos.
They woke up the Christ Child,
But he is silent.
Almost all of this actually happened. In any case, almost everything about the war here is true. One of my acquaintances was actually shot in Dresden for taking someone else’s teapot, another acquaintance actually threatened that he would kill all his personal enemies after the war with the help of hired killers. And so on. I changed all the names.
I actually went to Dresden for a Guggenheim fellowship (God bless them) in 1967, the city was very similar to Dayton, Ohio, only with more squares and parks than Dunton. There are probably tons of human bones crushed into dust there in the ground.
I went there with an old fellow soldier, Bernard W. O'Hare, and we became friends with the taxi driver who took us to Slaughterhouse Number Five, where we prisoners of war were locked up at night. The taxi driver's name was Gerhard Muller. He told us that he had been a prisoner of war among the Americans. We asked him how life was under the communists, and he said that at first it was bad, because everyone had to work terribly hard and there was not enough food, clothing, or shelter.
And now it has become much better. He has a cozy apartment, his daughter is studying and receiving an excellent education. His mother was burned during the bombing of Dresden. So it goes.
He sent O'Hare a Christmas card and it said: "I wish you and your family and your friend a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and hope we meet again in a peaceful and free world, in my taxi, if chance wants"
I really like the phrase “if chance wants.”
I’m terribly reluctant to tell you what this damn book cost me - how much money, time, worry. When I returned home after the Second World War, twenty-three years ago, I thought that it would be very easy for me to write about the destruction of Dresden, because I only had to tell everything that I saw. And I also thought that a highly artistic work would come out, or, in any case, it would give me a lot of money, because the topic is so important.
But I just couldn’t come up with the right words about Dresden; in any case, there weren’t enough of them for a whole book. Yes, words don’t come even now, when I have become an old fart, with familiar memories, with familiar cigarettes and adult sons.
And I think: how useless all my memories of Dresden are and yet how tempting it was to write about Dresden. And the old naughty song is spinning in my head:
Some scientist associate professor
Angry at his instrument:
"It ruined my health,
Capital wasted
But you don’t want to work, you impudent fellow!”
And I remember another song:
My name is Jon Jonsen,
My home is Wisconsin
In the forest I work here.
Whomever I meet;
I answer everyone
Who will ask:
"What is your name?"
My name is Jon Jonsen,
My home is Wisconsin...
All these years, my acquaintances often asked me what I was working on, and I usually answered that my main work was a book about Dresden.
That’s what I answered to Harrison Starr, the film director, and he raised his eyebrows and asked:
– Is the book anti-war?
“Yes,” I said, “it seems like that.”
– Do you know what I tell people when I hear that they write anti-war books?
- Don't know. What are you telling them, Harrison Star?
“I tell them: why don’t you write an anti-glacier book instead?”
Of course, he wanted to say that there will always be warriors and that stopping them is as easy as stopping glaciers. I think so too.
And even if wars did not approach us like glaciers, an ordinary old woman would still remain - death.
* * *
When I was younger and working on my notorious Dresden book, I asked an old fellow soldier, Bernard W. O'Hare, if I could come see him. He was the district attorney in Pennsylvania. I was a writer on Cape Cod. We were privates in the war scouts in the infantry.
We never hoped for good earnings after the war, but we both got a good job.
I've assigned the Central Telephone Company to find him. They're great at it. Sometimes at night I have these attacks, with alcohol and phone calls. I get drunk and my wife goes into another room because I smell like mustard gas and roses. And I, very seriously and elegantly, make a phone call and ask the operator to connect me with one of my friends whom I have long lost track of.
So I found O'Hare. He's short, and I'm tall. During the war, our names were Pat and Patashon. We were captured together. I told him on the phone who I was. He immediately believed. He didn't sleep. He read. Everyone else in the house was asleep.
“Listen,” I said. – I’m writing a book about Dresden. You could help me remember something. Is it possible for me to come to you, see you, we could have a drink, talk, remember the past.
He showed no enthusiasm. He said he remembers very little. But still he said: come.
“You know, I think the book should end with the shooting of that unfortunate Edgar Darby,” I said. - Think about the irony. The whole city is burning, thousands of people are dying. And then this same American soldier is arrested among the ruins by the Germans for taking a kettle. And they are judged by all odds and shot.
“Hm-mm,” said O'Hair.
– Do you agree that this should be the denouement?
“I don’t understand anything about this,” he said, “this is your specialty, not mine.”
* * *
As an expert in resolutions, plotting, characterization, amazing dialogue, intense scenes and confrontations, I have outlined the outline of a book about Dresden many times. The best plan, or at least the most beautiful plan, I sketched on a piece of wallpaper.
I took colored pencils from my daughter and gave each character a different color. At one end of the piece of wallpaper was the beginning, at the other the end, and in the middle was the middle of the book. The red line met the blue one, and then the yellow one, and the yellow line ended because the hero depicted by the yellow line died. And so on. The destruction of Dresden was represented by a vertical column of orange crosses, and all the surviving lines passed through this binding and out the other end.
The end where all the lines stopped was in a beet field on the Elbe, outside the city of Halle. It was pouring rain. The war in Europe ended a few weeks ago.
We were lined up, and Russian soldiers guarded us: British, Americans, Dutch, Belgians, French, New Zealanders, Australians - thousands of former prisoners of war.
And at the other end of the field there were thousands of Russians, and Poles, and Yugoslavs, and so on, and they were guarded by American soldiers. And there, in the rain, there was an exchange - one for one. O'Hare and I climbed into an American truck with other soldiers. O'Hare had no souvenirs. And almost everyone else had them. I had - and still have - a German pilot's ceremonial saber. The desperate American, whom I called Paul Lazzaro in this book, was carrying about a quart of diamonds, emeralds, rubies and all that. He took them from the dead in the basements of Dresden. So it goes.
The English fool, who had lost all his teeth somewhere, was carrying his souvenir in a canvas bag. The bag was lying on mine. legs. The Englishman kept looking into the bag, rolling his eyes and twisting his neck, trying to attract the greedy gazes of those around him. And he kept hitting me on the legs with the bag.
I thought it was an accident. But I was wrong. He really wanted to show someone what he had in his bag, and he decided to trust me. He caught my eye, winked and opened the bag. There was a plaster model of the Eiffel Tower.
It was all gilded. There was a clock built into it.
– Have you seen the beauty? - he said.
* * *
And we were sent on planes to a summer camp in France, where we were given chocolate milkshakes and all sorts of delicacies until we were covered in young fat. Then we were sent home, and I married a pretty girl, also covered with young fat.
And we got some guys.
And now they have all grown up, and I have become an old fart with familiar memories, familiar cigarettes. My name is Jon Jonsen, my home is Wisconsin. I work in the forest here.
Sometimes late at night, when my wife goes to bed, I try to call my old friends on the phone.
- Please, young lady, can you give me the telephone number of Mrs. so-and-so, it seems she lives there.
- Sorry, sir. We do not have such a subscriber.
- Thank you, young lady. Thank you very much.
And I let our dog out for a walk, and I let him back in, and we have a heart-to-heart talk. I show him how much I love him, and he shows me how much he loves me. He doesn't mind the smell of mustard gas and roses.
“You're a good guy, Sandy,” I tell him. - Do you feel it? You're great, Sandy.
Sometimes I turn on the radio and listen to a conversation from Boston or New York. I can't stand recorded music when I've been drinking too much.
Sooner or later I go to bed and my wife asks me what time it is. She always needs to know the time. Sometimes I don't know what time it is, and I say:
- Who knows…
* * *
Sometimes I think about my education. After World War II I studied briefly at the University of Chicago. I was an anthropology student. At that time we were taught that there is absolutely no difference between people. Maybe they still teach it there.
And we were also taught that no people are funny, or nasty, or evil.
Shortly before his death, my father told me:
– You know, you don’t have villains in any of your stories.
I told him that this, like many other things, was taught to me at the university after the war.
* * *
While I was studying to become an anthropologist, I worked as a police reporter for the famous Urban Accident Bureau in Chicago for twenty-eight dollars a week. One day I was transferred from the night shift to the day shift, so I worked sixteen hours straight. We were funded by all the city newspapers, AP, UP, and all that. And we gave information about trials, about incidents, about police stations, about fires, about the rescue service on Lake Michigan, and all that. We were connected to all the institutions that financed us through pneumatic pipes laid under the streets of Chicago.
Reporters relayed information over the phone to journalists, who, listening through headphones, imprinted incident reports on wax, multiplied them on a rotator, inserted the prints into copper cartridges with a velvet lining, and pneumatic tubes swallowed these cartridges. The most experienced reporters and journalists were women who took the place of men who went to war.
And the very first incident that I reported on, I had to dictate to one of those damn girls over the phone. The case was about a young war veteran who was hired as an elevator operator on an outdated elevator in one of the offices. The elevator doors on the first floor were made in the form of a cast iron lace lattice. Cast iron ivy curled and intertwined. There was also a cast iron branch with two kissing doves.
The veteran was about to lower his elevator into the basement, and he closed the doors and began to quickly go down, but his wedding ring got caught on one of the jewelry. And he was lifted into the air, and the floor of the elevator disappeared from under his feet, and the ceiling of the elevator crushed him. So it goes.
I conveyed all this over the phone, and the woman who was supposed to write all this asked me:
- What did his wife say?
“She doesn’t know anything yet,” I said. - It just happened.
– Call her and interview her.
- Wha-o-o?
- Say that you are Captain Finn from the police department. Say you have sad news. And tell her everything, and listen to what she has to say.
So I did. She said everything that could be expected. That they have a child. Well, in general...
When I arrived at the office, this journalist asked me (simply out of womanish curiosity) what this crushed man looked like when he was flattened.
I told her.
- Was it unpleasant for you? – she asked. She was chewing on a Three Musketeers chocolate candy.
“What are you talking about, Nancy,” I said. “I saw worse things in the war.”
* * *
I was already thinking about a book about Dresden. To the Americans of that time, this bombing did not seem at all extraordinary. Not many people in America knew how much worse it was than, for example, Hiroshima. I didn't know myself. Little about the Dresden bombing was leaked to the press.
By chance, I told a professor at the University of Chicago - we met at a cocktail party - about the raid I had seen and about the book I was going to write. He was a member of the so-called Committee for the Study of Social Thought. And he began to tell me about the concentration camps and how the Nazis made soap and candles from the fat of murdered Jews and all sorts of other things.
I could only repeat the same thing:
- I know. I know. I know.
* * *
Of course, the Second World War made everyone very angry. And I became the head of the external relations department for the General Electric Company in Schenectady, New York, and a volunteer fire department in the village of Alplos, where I bought my first home. My boss was one of the coolest people I've ever met. I hope that I will never again encounter such a tough person as my former boss. He was formerly a lieutenant colonel, serving in the company's communications department in Baltimore. When I served in Schenectady, he joined the Dutch Reform Church, and that church is also pretty cool.
Often he mockingly asked me why I did not rise to the rank of officer. Like I did something bad.
My wife and I lost our young fat a long time ago. Our lean years are gone. And we were friends with skinny war veterans and their skinny wives. In my opinion, the nicest of the veterans, the kindest, the most entertaining, and the ones who hate war the most are those who really fought.
Then I wrote to the air force department to find out the details of the raid on Dresden: who ordered the bombing of the city, how many planes were sent, why the raid was needed and what was gained by it. I was answered by a person who, like me, was involved in external relations. He wrote that he was very sorry, but all the information was still top secret.
I read the letter out loud to my wife and said:
- My God, my God, completely secret - but from whom?
Then we considered ourselves members of the World Federation. I don't know who we are now. Probably telephone operators. We make an awful lot of phone calls—at least I do, especially at night.
* * *
A few weeks after the telephone conversation with my old friend and fellow soldier Bernard W. O'Hare, I actually went to visit him. This was in 1964 or so - in general, the last year of the International Exhibition in New York. Alas, the fleeting years pass. My name is Ion Johnsen... Some learned assistant professor...
I took two girls with me: my daughter Nanny and her best friend Alison Mitchell. They never left Cape Cod. When we saw the river, we had to stop the car so they could stand, look, and think. Never in their lives had they seen water so long, narrow and unsalted. The river was called the Hudson. There were carps swimming there and we saw them. They were huge, like nuclear submarines.
We also saw waterfalls, streams jumping from the rocks into the Delaware Valley. There was a lot to see, and I stopped the car. And it was always time to go, it was always time to go. The girls wore elegant white dresses and elegant black shoes, so that everyone they met could see what good girls they were.
“It’s time to go, girls,” I said. And we left. And the sun went down and we had dinner at an Italian restaurant, and then I knocked on the door of the red stone house of Bernard V. O'Hare. I held a bottle of Irish whiskey like a bell to call for dinner.
* * *
I met his dear wife, Mary, to whom I dedicate this book. I also dedicate the book to Gerhard Müller, a Dresden taxi driver. Mary O'Hair is a nurse; a wonderful occupation for a woman.
Mary admired the two little girls I brought, introduced them to her children, and sent them all upstairs to play and watch TV. And only when all the children left did I feel: either Mary didn’t like me, or she didn’t like something about this evening. She was polite but cold.
“Your house is nice, cozy,” I said, and it was true.
“I have given you a place where you can talk, no one will disturb you there,” she said.
“Great,” I said, and imagined two deep leather chairs by the fireplace in a wood-paneled office where two old soldiers could drink and talk. But she led us to the kitchen. She placed two hard wooden chairs at the kitchen table with a white porcelain top. The light of a two-hundred-candle lamp overhead, reflected in this lid, wildly hurt my eyes. Mary prepared the operating room for us. She placed a single glass on the table for me. She explained that her husband could not tolerate alcohol after the war.
We sat down at the table. O'Hair was embarrassed, but he did not explain to me what was the matter. I could not imagine how I could anger Mary so much. I was a family man. I was married only once. And I was not an alcoholic. And nothing bad happened to her. I didn’t tell my husband during the war.
She poured herself a Coke and clattered ice out of the freezer over the stainless steel sink. Then she went to the other half of the house. But even there she did not sit quietly. She rushed around the house, slammed doors, even moved furniture to take her anger out on something.
I asked O'Hair what I had done or said that had offended her.
“Nothing, nothing,” he said. - Don't worry. - You have nothing to do with it.
It was very nice of him. But he was lying. I had a lot to do with it.
We tried to ignore Mary and remember the war. I took a sip from the bottle I brought. And we laughed and smiled, as if we remembered something, but neither he nor I could remember anything worthwhile.
O'Hare suddenly remembered one guy who attacked a wine warehouse in Dresden before the bombing and we had to take him home in a wheelbarrow. You can't make a book out of this. I remembered two Russian soldiers. They were carrying a cart full of alarm clocks. They were cheerful and happy. They smoked huge rolled-up cigarettes rolled out of newspaper.
That's about all we remembered, and Mary was still making noise. Then she came into the kitchen to pour herself a Coca-Cola. She grabbed another freezer from the refrigerator and slammed the ice into the sink, even though there was plenty of ice.
Then she turned to me so that I could see how angry she was and that she was angry with me. Apparently she was talking to herself all the time, and the phrase she said sounded like an excerpt from a long conversation.
- Yes, you were just children then! - she said.
- What? – I asked again.
“You were just children in the war, like our guys above.”
I nodded my head - it’s true. During the war we were foolish virgins, barely out of childhood.
– But you won’t write it like that, right? - she said. It wasn't a question - it was an accusation.
“I... I don’t know myself,” I said.
“But I know,” she said. “You will pretend that you were not children at all, but real men, and you will be played in the movies by all sorts of Frank Sinatras and John Waynes or some other celebrities, nasty old men who adore war. And the war will be shown beautifully, and wars will follow one after another. And the children will fight, like those of our children upstairs.
And then I understood everything. That's why she was so angry.
She didn’t want her children, or anyone else’s children, to be killed in the war. And she thought that books and movies also incite wars.
And then I raised my right hand and made a solemn promise to her.
“Mary,” I said, “I’m afraid I’ll never finish this book of mine.” I've already written about five thousand pages and thrown it all away. But if I ever finish this book, I give you my word of honor that there will be no role for either Frank Sinatra or John Wayne in it. And you know what,” I added, “I’ll call the book “The Children’s Crusade.”
After that she became my friend.
O'Hair and I gave up reminiscing, went into the living room and started talking about all sorts of other things. We wanted to know more about the real children's crusade, and O'Hair took out a book from his library called “The Amazing Delusions of Nations and the Follies of Crowds,” written by Charles Mackay , Doctor of Philosophy, and published in London in 1841.
Mackay had a low opinion of all the crusades. The children's crusade seemed to him only a little darker than the ten adult crusades. O'Hare read this beautiful passage aloud:
* * *
Historians tell us that the crusaders were wild and ignorant people, that they were driven by undisguised hypocrisy and that their path was flooded with tears and blood. But the novelists, on the other hand, attribute to them piety and heroism and depict in the most ardent colors their virtues, their generosity, the eternal glory that they deserved, given to them according to their merits, and the immeasurable benefits they rendered to the cause of Christianity.
* * *
...
But what were the true results of all these battles? Europe squandered millions of its treasures and shed the blood of two million of its sons, and for this a bunch of pugnacious knights took possession of Palestine for a hundred years.
Mackay tells us that the Children's Crusade began in 1213, when two monks conceived the idea of raising armies of children in France and Germany and selling them into slavery in northern Africa. Thirty thousand children volunteered to go to what they thought was Palestine.
These must have been children without a mentor, without anything to do, like big cities teem with, writes Mackay - children nurtured by vices and insolence and ready to do anything.
Pope Innocent III also believed that the children were going to Palestine, and was delighted. “The children are watching while we are dozing!” - he exclaimed.
Most of the children were sent on ships from Marseille, and about half died in shipwrecks. The rest were landed in North Africa, where they were sold into slavery.
Due to some misunderstanding, some of the children considered the place of departure to be Genoa, where they were not waylaid by slave-owner ships. They were sheltered, fed, questioned by kind people and, after giving them a little money and a lot of advice, they sent them on their way.
“Long live the good people of Genoa,” said Mary O’Hair.
* * *
That night I was put to bed in one of the nurseries. O'Hair put a book on my night table. It was called “Dresden. History, Theaters and Gallery,” by Mary Endell. The book was published in 1908, and the preface began like this:
* * *
We hope this little book will be useful. It attempts to give the English reading public a bird's eye view of Dresden, to explain how the city acquired its architectural appearance, how it developed musically thanks to the genius of a few people, and also to draw the reader's eye to those immortal phenomena in art that attract Dresden gallery the attention of those who are looking for lasting impressions.
* * *
I read a little more about the history of the city:
...
In 1760, Dresden was besieged by the Prussians. On the fifteenth of July the cannonade began. The art gallery was engulfed in flames. Many paintings were moved to Königsstein, but some were badly damaged by shell fragments, especially the Baptism of Christ by Francia. Following this, the majestic tower of the Cross Church, from which they monitored the enemy’s movements day and night, was engulfed in flames. In contrast to the sad fate of the Church of the Cross, the Church of the Blessed Virgin remained untouched, and Prussian shells flew off its stone dome like raindrops. Finally, Frederick was forced to lift the siege, as he learned of the fall of Glatz, the center of his recent conquests. “We must retreat to Silesia so as not to lose everything,” he said.
The destruction in Dresden was incalculable. When Goethe, a young student, visited the city, he still found dismal ruins: “From the dome of the Church of the Blessed Virgin, I saw these bitter remains scattered among the excellent layout of the city; and then the church servant began to boast to me of the art of the architect, who, in anticipation of such unwanted accidents strengthened the church and its dome against shell fire. The good minister then pointed out to me the ruins that were visible everywhere, and said thoughtfully and briefly: “The work of the enemy.”
The next morning the girls and I crossed the Delaware River where George Washington crossed it. We went to the International Exhibition in New York, looked at the past from the point of view of the automobile company Ford and Walt Disney and at the future from the point of view of the General Motors company...
And I asked myself about the present: how wide is it, how deep is it, how much will I get out of it?
* * *
Over the next two years, I taught a creative writing workshop at the famous Writer's Room at the University of Iowa. I got into the most incredible bind, then got out of it: I taught in the afternoon. In the mornings I wrote. I was not allowed to interfere. I was working on my famous book about Dresden. And somewhere out there, a nice man named Seymour Lawrence made a three-book deal with me, and I told him:
- Okay, the first of three will be my famous book about Dresden...
Seymour Lawrence's friends call him "Sam" and now I say to Sam:
- Sam, here it is, this book.
* * *
The book is so short, so confusing, Sam, because you can't write anything intelligible about the massacre. Everyone is supposed to die, be silent forever, and never want anything again. After the massacre there should be complete silence, and indeed everything becomes silent, except for the birds.
What will the birds say? The only thing they can say about the massacre is “pewty-pewt.”
I told my sons that they should under no circumstances take part in the massacres and that when they heard about the beating of their enemies, they would not experience any joy or satisfaction.
And I also told them not to work for those companies that produce mechanisms for mass murder, and to treat with contempt people who believe that we need such mechanisms.
* * *
As I said, I recently went to Dresden with my friend O'Hare.
We laughed an awful lot in Hamburg, and in Berlin, and in Vienna, and in Salzburg, and in Helsinki, and in Leningrad too. This was very good for me, because I saw the real setting for those fictional stories that I will someday write: One will be called “Russian Baroque”, another “No Kissing” and another “Dollar Bar”, and another “ If chance wants” - and so on.
* * *
The Lufthansa plane was scheduled to fly from Philadelphia, via Boston, to Frankfurt. O'Hare was supposed to land in Philadelphia, and I was in Boston, and off we went! But Boston was flooded with rain, and the plane flew straight from Philadelphia to Frankfurt. And I became a non-passenger in the Boston fog, and Lufthansa boarded me onto a bus with other non-passengers and sent us to a hotel for the night.
Time stopped. Someone was playing around with the clock, and not only with electric clocks, but also with alarm clocks. The minute hand on my watch jumped - and a year passed, and then it jumped again.
I couldn't help it. As an earthling, I had to trust the clocks - and the calendars too.
* * *
I had two books with me, I was going to read them on the plane. One was a collection of poems by Theodore Roethke, “Words to the Wind,” and this is what I found there:
When I wake up, it’s time to wake up from sleep.
I look for fate wherever there is no fear.
I'm learning to go where my path leads.
My second book was written by Ernka Ostrovskaya and was called “Celine and his vision of the world.” Sedin was a brave soldier in the French army in World War I until his skull was crushed. After that, he suffered from insomnia and noise in his head. He became a doctor and treated the poor during the day and wrote strange novels all night. Art is impossible without dancing with death, he wrote.
...
The truth is in death,” he wrote. “I diligently fought death as long as I could... I danced with it, showered it with flowers, waltzed around it... decorated it with ribbons... tickled it...
He was haunted by the thought of time. Miss Ostrovskaya reminded me of a stunning scene from the novel Death on Credit, where Celine tries to stop the bustle of the street crowd. A screech comes from its pages: “Stop them... don’t let them move... Hurry, freeze them... forever... Let them stand like that...”
...
I looked in the Bible, on the motel table, for a description of some great destruction.
The sun rose over the earth, and Lot came to Zoar. And the Lord rained down upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And he overthrew these cities, and all the surrounding countryside, and all the inhabitants of these cities, and the growth of the earth.
So it goes.
Both cities were known to have many bad people. The world became a better place without them. And of course, Lot’s wife was not told to look back to where all these people and their homes were. But she looked back, which is why I love her, because it was so human.
* * *
And she turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes.
People shouldn't look back. I won't do this again, of course.
Now I have finished my war book. The next book will be very funny.
But this book failed because it was written by a pillar of salt.
It starts like this:
"Listen:
Billy Pilgrim is disconnected from time."
And it ends like this.