Kurt Vonnegut - Timequake (ting-a-ling) | Текст песни

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• Kurt Vonnegut
• Timequake (ting-a-ling)

A bum on a cot next to Trout's at the shelter wished him a Merry Christmas. Trout replied,
\"Ting-a-ling! Ting-a-ling!\"
It was only by chance that his reply was appropriate to the holiday, alluding, one might
suppose, to the bells of Santa Claus's sleigh on a rooftop. But Trout would have said \"Ting-a￾ling\" to anybody who offered him an empty greeting, such as \"How's it goin'?\" or \"Nice day\" or
whatever, no matter what the season.
Depending on his body language and tone of voice and social circumstances, he could indeed
make it mean \"And a merry Christmas to you, too.\" But it would also mean, like the Hawaiian's
aloha, \"Hello\" or \"Good-bye.\" The old science fiction writer could make it mean \"Please\" or
\"Thanks\" as well, or \"Yes\" or \"No,\" or \"I couldn't agree with you more,\" or \"If your brains were
dynamite, there wouldn't be enough to blow your hat off.\"
I asked him at Xanadu in the summer of 2001 how \"Ting-a-ling\" had become such a frequent
appoggiatura, or grace note, in his conversations. He gave me what would later turn out to have
been a superficial explanation. \"It was something I crowed during the war,\" he said, \"when an
artillery barrage I'd called for landed right on target: 'Ting-a-ling! Ting-a-ling!' \"
About an hour later, and this was on the afternoon before the clambake, he beckoned me into
his suite with a crooked finger. He closed the door behind us. \"You really want to know about
'Ting-a-ling'?\" he asked me.
I had been satisfied with his first account. Trout was the one who wanted me to hear much
more. My innocent question earlier had triggered memories of his ghastly childhood in
Northampton. He could exorcise them only by telling what they were.
\"My father murdered my mother,\" said Kilgore Trout, \"when I was twelve years old.\"
\"Her body was in our basement,\" said Trout, \"but all I knew was that she had disappeared.
Father swore he had no idea what had become of her. He said, as wife-murderers often do, that
maybe she had gone to visit relatives. He killed her that morning, after I left for school.
\"He got supper for the two of us that night. Father said he would report her as a missing person
to the police the next morning, if we hadn't heard from her by then. He said, 'She has been very
tired and nervous lately. Have you noticed that?' \"
\"He was insane,\" said Trout. \"How insane? He came into my bedroom at midnight. He woke me up. He said he had something important to tell me. It was nothing but a dirty joke, but this
poor, sick man had come to believe it a parable about the awful blows that life had dealt him. It
was about a fugitive who sought shelter from the police in the home of a woman he knew.
\"Her living room had a cathedral ceiling, which is to say it went all the way up to the roof
peak, with rustic rafters spanning the air space below.\" Trout paused. It was as though he were as
caught up in the tale as his father must have been.
He went on, there in the suite named in honor of the suicide Ernest Hemingway: \"She was a
widow, and he stripped himself naked while she went to fetch some of her husband's clothes. But
before he could put them on, the police were hammering on the front door with their billy clubs.
So the fugitive hid on top of a rafter. When the woman let in the police, though, his oversize
testicles hung down in full view.\"
Trout paused again.
\"The police asked the woman where the guy was. The woman said she didn't know what guy
they were talking about,\" said Trout. \"One of the cops saw the testicles hanging down from a
rafter and asked what they were. She said they were Chinese temple bells. He believed her. He
said he 'd always wanted to hear Chinese temple bells.
\"He gave them a whack with his billy club, but there was no sound. So he hit them again, a lot
harder, a whole lot harder. Do you know what the guy on the rafter shrieked?\" Trout asked me.
I said I didn't.
\"He shrieked, 'TING-A-LING, YOU SON OF A BITCH!' \"

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