Galaṕagos: a novel by Kurt Vonnegut

Author:Kurt Vonnegut [Vonnegut, Kurt]
Format: epub
Tags: Demonoid Upload 3
ISBN: 9780440127796
Publisher: Lisa's E-Book Collection
Published: 1986-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

Old Quezeda, stinking like a battlefield, told the girls that they could trust only him, which was easy enough for them to believe, since he was the grandfather of one and the only person who would converse with them. They had to believe everything he said. They were without the means to be skeptical, since their new environment had nothing in common with the rain forest. They had many truths they were prepared to defend stubbornly and proudly, but none of them applied to anything they had so far seen in Guayaquil, except for one, a classically fatal belief in urban areas a million years ago: Relatives would never want to hurt them. Quezeda in fact wished to expose them to terrible dangers as thieves and beggars, and, as soon as was remotely possible, as prostitutes. He would do this in order to feed his big brain's thirst for self-esteem and alcohol. He was at last going to be a man of wealth and importance.

He took the girls on walks around the city, showing them, as far as the nuns at the orphanage were aware, the parks and the cathedral and the museums and so on. He was in fact teaching them what was hateful about tourists, and where to find them and how to fool them, and where they were most likely to keep their valuables. And they played the game of spotting policemen before policemen spotted them, and memorizing good hiding places in the downtown area, should any enemy try to catch them.

o

It was "just pretend" for the girls' first week in the city. But then Grandfather Domingo Quezeda and the girls, as far as the nuns and the police were concerned, vanished entirely. That vile old ancestor of all humanity had moved the girls into an empty shed by the waterfront -- a shed, as it happened, belonging to one of the two older cruise ships with which the _Bah�de Darwin_ was meant to compete. The shed was empty because tourism had declined to the point where the old ship was out of business.

At least the girls had each other. And during their early years on Santa Rosalia, until Mary Hepburn made them the gift of babies, that was what they were most grateful for: At least they had each other -- and their own language and their own religious beliefs and jokes and songs and so on.

And that was what they would leave to their children on Santa Rosalia when they entered, one by one, the blue tunnel into the Afterlife: the comforts of at least having each other, and the Kanka-bono language, and the Kanka-bono religion, and the Kanka-bono jokes and songs.

o

During their bad old days in Guayaquil, old Quezeda offered his stinking body for their experimentation as he taught them, as little as they were, the fundamental skills and attitudes of prostitutes.

They were certainly in need of rescue, long before the economic crisis. Yes, and one dusty window of the shed which was their gruesome schoolhouse framed the stern of the _Bah�de Darwin_ right outside.

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