ja ja. ja ja. i am major siegfried von konigswald. they used to call me "the beast of yugoslavia," on account of all the people i had tortured and shot--and hanged. we'd bop 'em on the head. we'd hook 'em up to the electricity. we'd stick 'em with hypodermic syringes full of all kinds of stuff. one time we killed a guy with orange juice. there was a train wreck, and two of the freight cars were loaded with oranges, so we had oceans of orange juice. it was a joke--how much orange juice we had. and we were interrogating a guy one day, and he wouldn't talk, and the next thing i know--somebody's filling up this big syringe with orange juice. there was a guerrilla war going on. you couldn't tell who was a guerrilla and who wasn't. even if you got one, it was still a civilian you got. telling americans what a guerrilla war is like--that's coals to newcastle. how do you like that for idiomatic english? "coals to newcastle." that harold ryan--he says he spoke to me in perfect german? he talks german like my ass chews gum. i'm glad to hear the wonderful thing he said before he killed me. i sure didn't understand it the first time around. i figured he was a lithuanian or something, which will give you an idea of how wrong you can be. all i knew was he was very proud about something, and he had a machine pistol, and it was aimed at me. the woods were full of all kinds of nuts who were proud of some damn thing or other, and they all had guns. they were always looking for revenge. you find a way to bottle revenge--that's the end of schnapps und coca-cola. harold ryan said he killed maybe two hundred guys. i killed a hundred times that many, i bet. that's still peanuts, of course, compared to what that crazy looseleaf did. harold and me--we was doing it the hard way. i hope the record books will show that. there should be a little star or something by the names of the guys who did it the hard way. i'm up in heaven now, like that little wanda june kid. i wasn't hit by no ice-cream truck. harold ryan killed me with his bare hands. he was good. my eyes popped out. my tongue stuck out like a red banana. i shit in my pants. it was a mess. when i got up on the day i died, i said, "what a beautiful day this is. what a beautiful part of the world." the whole planet was beautiful. up here i meet guys from other planets. we got some really crazy-looking guys up here. their planets weren't anywhere near as nice as earth. they had clouds all the time. they never saw a clear blue sky. they never saw snow. they never saw an ocean. they had some little lakes, but you couldn't go swimming in them. the lakes were acid. you go swimming, you dissolve. we got some guys up here who got shoved in them lakes. they dissolved. harold ryan stopped talking german to me there in yugoslavia. he switched to english, so i finally got some kind of idea what he was so burned up about. he wanted revenge for the guy we killed with orange juice. i don't know how he ever found out about it. there was just three of us there when we did it--me and two regular military doctors. somebody who cleaned up afterwards must have squealed. if i'd lived through the war, and they tried me for war crimes and all that, i'd have to tell the court, i guess, "i was only following orders, as a good soldier should. hitler told me to kill this guy with orange juice."
yes, we do.
we have enough for a shuffleboard team. in heaven, shuffleboard is everything. hitler plays shuffleboard.
mozart plays shuffleboard.
jack the ripper plays shuffleboard.
it was almost worth the trip--to find out that jesus christ in heaven was just another guy, playing shuffleboard. i like his sense of humor, though--you know? he's got a blue-and-gold warm-up jacket he wears. you know what it says on the back? "pontius pilate athletic club." most people don't get it. most people think there really is a pontius pilate athletic club.
you bet! "the harold ryan fan club." pink, eh? with a yellow streak up the back. we got very good tailor shops up here. they'll make you any kind of uniform, any kind of sweatsuit you want. judas iscariot--he's got this black jacket with a skull and crossbones over the heart. he walks around all hunched over, and he never looks anybody in the eye, and written on the back of his jacket are the words, "go take a flying--
leap at the moon."
aha! hello! you're mildred, right?
you were harold ryan's third wife. right?
you want to join the harold ryan fan club? wear a pink jacket with a yellow streak up the back?
because he was cruel?
ach soooooooooo.
that is sad.
ja?