Spoils

short-story

A short story by Kurt Vonnegut, which I read as part of the collection Armageddon in Retrospect.

Themes

The story begins with the protagonist, Paul, having dinner with Sue, his wife. Sue had spent the day with their neighbor Mr. Ward and was impressed by an elaborate silver service for twenty-four people that he had “liberated” from Europe during World War II. She pokes fun at Paul for only have brought home a “rusty and badly bent Luftwaffe saber”.

Vonneget opens the story with the following, before telling us anything about who Paul is:

If, on Judgement Day, God were to ask Paul which of the two should rightly be his eternal residence, Heaven or Hell, Paul would likely suggest that, by his own and by Cosmic standards, Hell was his destiny–recalling the wretched thing he had done. The Almighty, in all His Wisdom, might recognize that Paul’s life on the whole had been a harmless one, and that his tender conscience had already tortured him mightily–for the thing he had done.

There are some distinctly religious undertones here. I was halfway convinced Vonnegut was talking about St. Paul. But we learn in the very next sentence that Paul (like Vonnegut) had been a soldier and a German prisoner of war:

Paul’s garish adventures as a prisoner of war in Sudetenland lost their troubling forms as they mired down in the past, but one dismal image would not sink from his consciousness.

His wife’s “playful banter” at dinner stirs up this mud from the past and the rest of the story can be interpreted as a flashback to this “thing he had done.” That thing, it turns out, is to have murdered the pet rabbit of a crippled German child.

After the allies win the war, Paul and his fellow prisoners are abandoned by their German guards (the theme of abandonment by captors appears in other short stories, such as Wailing Shall Be in All Streets). They’re encouraged by some “Scotchmen” to loot the houses in the village of Hellendorf. “You’re the victors, you know,” they tell them. “You’ve a bloody good right to anything you like.”

Convinced, Paul and his comrades make their way to a nearby house. From the condition of the house, Paul concludes that it had either already been looted or the family was poor, until he finds a room with brightly painted walls, elaborate furniture, and a stash of toys. A pair of kid’s crutches leans against the wall. Whoever lived here adored this child to the point of sacrificing their own comfort and luxury.

In the barn behind the house, Paul’s luck turns. He finds a few potatoes and a large white rabbit in a cage. What luck! He will feast tonight!

Delighted with himself, Paul set about skinning and cleaning the rabbit, cutting off a foot for good luck in surely better days to come.

Better days, indeed. He stands in the barn’s doorway and watches Germans who had evacuated during the fighting as they return, defeated, to their homes.

Suddenly Paul was aware of three figures who detached themselves from the dismal procession and moved toward him. They paused before the battered house. A wave of remorse and sorrow billowed in Paul’s chest… The woman wept and the man shook his head. The boy kept trying to get their attention, saying something and gesturing toward the barn.

Ashamed, Paul hides and then runs back to his comrades as the family enters the house. The boy dashes to the barn as quickly as his crutches allow:

He disappeared into the barn for an agonizing long time. Paul heard his faint shriek, and saw him come to the door, carrying the soft white pelt with him. He rubbed it against his cheek, and then sank to the doorsill to bury his face in the fur and some his heart out.

And so, dear Sue, your husband was and still is a prisoner of war. His “rusty and bent Luftwaffe sword” may not seem like much to you, but it means more than you could know, for the true spoils of war are the ways in which it disfigures the men who wage it. Once strong and mighty, war bends and breaks them, rusts their hearts, and turns them against themselves.