Kurt Vonnegut was as curious as a child until the day he died.

It was the second week of February, a sub-zero day in Manhattan. As I walked up the front steps to Kurt’s brownstone, the noise of the salt crunching under my boots was louder than the doorbell. But he opened the door immediately and his small tousled dog ran out. He looked the same—tall, lean, with chaotic hair and wearing scuffed plimsoles. After a few barks and sniffs, we moved inside and Kurt asked if I would like a cup of hot chocolate.

“I promise no chicken sandwiches,” he said. He paused for a few seconds then laughed delightedly, eyes sparkling, shoulders shaking.

On a previous visit, we had gone out to lunch and he had had a rank chicken sandwich in an overly slick Manhattan restaurant and it had become a source of ridicule between us.

In the kitchen he put on a kettle to boil and we chatted about Romania. He wanted to know all about the people and the government and the lasting effects of Communism. Even at the age of 84, he had an intense, childlike curiosity in anything outside his world. He tore open the sachets of chocolate and powder exploded, dusting the counter and floor.

We walked into the sitting room and he asked me about the lizard in my recently published book. He wanted to know how big it was. A regular alligator lizard? A Mexican iguana? A gila monster? In my head I was thinking, Why is he asking about the lizard? Is he hinting that I did not describe it adequately, or is he really interested in my lizard? I decided I was being a paranoid writer in the presence of someone much more accomplished and that he was truly interested in the lizard.

At the original bad chicken sandwich lunch, Kurt had ordered a beer and when I declined, I added that I had been out too late at a party and my head was a bit sore. He grimaced sympathetically and said, “I don’t like going to parties anymore. Everyone fun I knew is dead.” He didn’t say it sadly, so much, but rather matter-of-factly, and wistfully, as though he had accepted it, yet still wished there were some fun people around to go to parties with.

He had a drink of beer and said he had heard I was having a book published and he wanted to know about it. He took the advance copy from me and flicked through it, stopping at the page with a quote from Paul Bowles.

“I knew him,” he said. My jaw hung open.

“You knew Paul Bowles?” I begged him to tell me everything about him and he said he went to his house in Tangiers when his wife was photographing him, before his death. As I asked more and more questions, Kurt smiled and handed his beer to me. I took a deep drink, liking the fact that we were sharing a drink, and started to ask him another question when it occurred to me that here I was going gaga over Paul Bowles when I was sitting with Kurt Vonnegut.

He said he had enjoyed receiving my letters from Romania. He was a big fan of the old art of letter writing, and when I told him I was leaving for Zanzibar in two days, to start my next book, he said he would look forward to a note from Africa. He said he had been stationed in West Africa during the war and he had been impressed with the gentleness of the people within the Swahili tribes.  

I mentioned that Zanzibar was a spice island and he leaned forward and said, “What about cloves? How do they grow? A vine? A bush? Inside a fruit?” We couldn’t imagine how they would grow, and I told him I would do some research on the subject.

Before I left, I kissed him on the cheek and promised to send him a letter from Zanzibar explaining the intricacies of clove trees. He told me to have an interesting trip and to get lots of writing done and that we’d get together again soon and have lunch. Without that damn sandwich, he shook his head and smiled and closed the door.

After Kurt’s death two months later, I went through several days when I was convinced it didn’t matter what you did or accomplished with your life, whether you created the most thought-provoking art in the world or were an alcoholic on the streets. In the end, we all just die. We die and we’re gone. So why even try? And if life just ends and that’s it, why not turn over the beautifully-laid table where I now sit and swing from the crystal chandelier? Why not rape and pillage? If I had kept my Catholic childhood beliefs, rather than turn atheist, these thoughts would never have bothered me. Heaven would be my reward. But without any religious faith, Kurt’s death left me angry and adrift and pondering the ages-old question of the meaning of life—or the absence of any meaning.

Eventually I broke out of my negative reverie and concluded that it was the moment that was important. It was the moment that was worth living for and laughing about. It was the damn chicken sandwich that mattered.

I sent him a letter from Zanzibar, but when I mailed it I had not yet managed to get the scoop on the clove trees. At the end of my stay on the island, I visited a spice farm and collected all the clove details to send to Kurt. I sent him two detailed postcards with photos and descriptions of the clove trees. But I don’t know if he received them. The post-office shack in the village where I stayed was never open when I walked by, so the first card did not get mailed until I passed through Nairobi and the other when I returned home to Bucharest.

While he did not directly influence my style and writing, Kurt inspired me. An aunt once told me how difficult it was for him as a writer in the beginning. I knew his books had not always been popular and did not sell well. He told me that his first book sold only 500 copies.

I’d like to think that he received the postcards and died knowing that clove trees are evergreen and tall, over 30 feet, and the buds are hand-picked just before they open. And that the word clove is taken from the French word clov, meaning nail.

I hope he had the chance to visualize the Swahili women, dressed in their colorful kangas, scattering the cloves over the woven mats to dry them in the sun, the green palm lizards blinking their heavy lids in the heat.