补档2018.9
最近开始重温Vonnegut的《五号屠场》，看到曾经令我印象十分深刻的段落：
It was a movie about American bombers in the Second World War and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this:
American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullents and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.
The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everthing and everybody as good as new.
When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was minaly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.
The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Bill Pilgrim supposed. That wasn't in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed.
提到德累斯顿轰炸，当然不能不把它放在二战的整个背景里面来谈。这场战争对整个社会心态的影响不容小觑，一方面来说，就像小说里谈到的，每个人都被战争打磨得更粗糙了。在这一点，我想尤其是那些老兵们吧。打了范围和烈度都这么大的一场战争，回到家之后也是满目疮痍。另一方面，也会有这样一个很自然的问题：在发生了这么糟糕的事情之后，人们怎么还能有勇气活下去？怎么来面对自己和周围的每个人？怎么才能对我们的未来继续抱有信心？
在小说里Vonnegut借Tralfamadore人和Billy随意穿越时间的特殊能力（假装）提出了一种解决方法。Tralfamadore人面对灾难和苦痛的方式就是忽略它们，转而去关注那些更美好的时光；而Billy在这里倒看电影也隐喻了一个命题：如果我们认为时间不过是一种幻觉，那么事情很有可能就是倒着来的，也就没有种因得果的定律来逼迫人们必须承担道德责任，那么就无可无不可了。可以说这会自然导致一种极端道德淡漠的态度。
书中Billy的表现就反映了这样的态度。Billy二十岁出头，还是一个毛头小伙子的时候就经历了战争的残酷、亲眼目睹了德累斯顿的轰炸。他对之前那个“人们怎么还能有勇气活下去？”的问题的答案是：反正我早就不怎么想活了，就按照惯性得过且过吧。所以他为了钱娶了自己并不爱的女人，也不管儿子去参加了越战，对生活中他人的苦难也表现得无动于衷。
而文中的一个细节也揭示了这种心态：Billy作为战俘与一群美国大兵一起被押着走的时候，他观察到路边上死尸的脚，颜色又青又白（blue and ivory）。而这个表述在书中又出现了很多次，都是用来形容Billy自己的脚。那时候他已经有钱也有地位，却表现得对自己漠不关心，一次在地下室里打字，房间里的加热器坏了，他也丝毫没察觉，直到冻得脚又青又白——而他打字恰恰为了传播他“时间只是一种幻觉”的理论——在我看来，这象征着Billy早已“死”了。当然并不是生理意义上的死，而是他已经完全丧失了对生活的热爱，他对人生、对人类的信心，在看到那些被抛掷路边的死尸、以及其他的种种战争暴行之后被彻底摧毁了。
Billy其实真的是一个好人啊，他通过逃避的方式获得了慰藉，认为有义务让其他人也来分享。但Vonnegut显然认为这是不够好的。
这本书其实并不只是Billy一个二战老兵的故事——Vonnegut并不是一个耐得住性子让读者猜他的意图的作者，他写到，I was there.当然，前言也已经把这件事说得很清楚了。
于是我们也看到了一个与Billy同样经历过德累斯顿轰炸的二战老兵，在那之后是怎么做的：他刚从战场返回家乡就开始构思以德累斯顿为题的作品，之后十多年间，不知写了多少、又扔了多少。关于这本书，他对战友的妻子承诺，绝不会把士兵们写成电影里那些勇敢的男人，因为他们根本就不是。他们只是孩子，而他承诺要管这本书叫《儿童十字军》。他说，在那之后，她就和他成了朋友。那本书里的主人公，对儿子参加越战无动于衷。但作者本人却对自己的孩子说，我禁止你们参与任何屠杀活动。这本书的出版，也对彼时美国的反越战潮流产生了促进作用。
这是一个拒绝被战争摧毁的老兵，也是一个拒绝绝望的人。他相信我们可以做得更好，仍旧相信人性。
Vonnegut的写作一向都是有意图的，他自己并不讳言这一点：
My motives are political. I agree with Stalin and Hitler and Mussolini that the writer should serve his society. I differ with dictators as to how writers should serve.
而我想他的笔下之所以有那么多灾难和天启式的毁灭，就是要我们不要移开视线，要有勇气去注视。这种注视会是艰难的，所以才格外需要勇气。而它之所以艰难，是因为它会在我们的心中激起太多负面的情感：愤怒、悲伤、绝望。但同时他也一定是对我们保有信心的，他相信这些情感最终都会变成动力，让人们互相关爱，去塑造一个更好的世界。
这也是荒谬哲学一脉相传的态度了：世界本已够荒谬，而我们只有彼此。
补档2020.9
今天在看Vonnegut的《Fate Worse than Death》，里面提到Billy的原型确实是一个死在德累斯顿的人：
The fellow ex-Dresden PW at my National Air and Space Museum lecture was Tom Jones, who had paired off (as ordered) in his 106th Division platoon with Joe Crone, the model for Billy Pilgrim, the leading character in Slaughterhouse-Five. Jones said, in a letter I got only yesterday, “I remember Crone in Camp Atterbury. When we went on a forced march I had to walk behind him and pick up all the utensils falling out of his backpack. He could never do it right.
“I bunked with him when he died. One morning he woke up and his head was swollen like a watermelon and I talked him into going on sick call. By midday word came back that he had died. You remember we slept two in a bunk so I had to shake Crone several times a night and say, ‘Let’s turn over.’ I recall how in the early morning hours the slop cans at the end of the barracks overflowed. Everyone had the shits, and it flowed down the barracks under everyone’s bunk. The Germans never would give us more cans.”
Joe Crone is buried somewhere in Dresden wearing a white paper suit. He let himself starve to death before the firestorm. In Slaughterhouse-Five I have him return home to become a fabulously well-to-do optometrist. (Jones and Crone were stockpiled college kids like O’Hare and me. We all read a lot at Camp Atterbury.)