The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity

by Kurt Vonnegut

  Then through the warmth I heard Simon’s voice, “Mark, are you all right?” I nodded very slightly. I started thinking about Simon and Vincent and Jack and Kathy and everybody I had ever known and everybody Virginia had ever known and what effect our miracle of love must be having on them. Easily as good a story as Jesus, I thought, probably better in a way.

  The warmth started to fade. I became aware of cold and damp and little aches here and there. I heard the sound of an engine. I found I could open my eyes. Simon was looking at me worriedly. There was no Virginia beside me, just a soggy coil of rope. We were no more than halfway down the lake. I smiled at Simon and tried to reassure him that everything was going to be all right.

  What could I tell Simon? It was just about impossible to say anything above the roar of the engine. Had it all been a dream? I looked around. Everything was zipping past us at incredible speed. There was still some light and the sky and the water, the sounds, the colors, everything was plastic and water all flowing together and too real or unreal… “I want to go back, Simon. Let’s turn around,” I screamed, but my voice came out all funny. It was too fast or I had said it backward or something. I couldn’t make my voice sound right. Simon looked at me helplessly and shrugged his shoulders.

  “We can’t go back now, Mark.”

  “Help, pleh, pleh!” What’s happened? Why can’t we go back? What have I wandered into? What have I dragged Simon and God knows who else into?

  And the mocking hateful contempt of the face a few nights earlier, “Now you’re really going on a trip.”

  “Trip pirt, help pleh,” as the sardonic wind and its accomplice, the Day-Glo water, rushed by in an eerie chuckle.

  Simon handed me a carrot, which seemed at first like a strange thing to do but then as I bit into the carrot lots of things came back to me. It all made sense. The sound of chewing on the carrot was the same sound I had heard the night before while I was groaning in agony after I had tried to explain to Simon what was going on and begged for help. Simon had gone upstairs and explained to Jack and Kathy what had to be done and they had made rabbit-chewing-carrot noises and hypnotized me into believing that I was a rabbit. What a perfect choice, I thought, remembering my father doing Harvey in the Barnstable Comedy Club and everything else I could remember about rabbits. By giving me the carrot, Simon was starting to bring me out of my state. Hypnosis was being put on ice: a way to keep me from exploding, a way to help me last until I could find Virge.

  That Simon had hypnotized me was very reassuring. He was in control and would make sure nothing bad happened.

  I had no real idea of how long I had been in that state. It was possible that Simon had kept me in something like hibernation for weeks or even years, waiting for Virginia to come back so he could bring me out of it and get us back together for a happy ending after which we would all live happily ever after in Eden. Since he was bringing me out of it all the danger was past, it was all right for me to come back to life. Virginia was waiting for us in town. Otherwise he wouldn’t be bringing me out of my trance.

  The trance slipped away as I ate more and more of the carrot. I felt strength and power spreading through my body. After my long sleep I was coming back, rested, stronger than ever before. I roared into the wind.

  More than Virginia would be waiting at the dock. Simon had probably gotten hold of my mother and father and all the people we knew in Powell River and on and on. It was going to be the damnedest party anyone ever saw. A coming-out party, out of my hibernation that had gone on for God knows how long. A party to celebrate Virginia’s and my coming back together. I envisioned some sort of pagan wedding. What a story. What a love. What an ending. I hugged Simon with joy and unfathomable gratitude for what he had done for me, but he looked back at me with that worried look in his eyes. I calmed myself down and decided to just wait for whatever happened. Maybe there’s still more to this journey. I hoped for the best.

  The sun went down just before we reached the marina. There was no one waiting there for us. No one at all. No one at all. No Virginia, no Vincent, no parents, not even a stranger, let alone a brass band. Well, what did you expect? I thought to myself, laughing at all the wild fantasies I had had, still half expecting lights and fireworks to come on any minute and “Surprise, surprise!” from gathered friends, everyone I had ever known hiding in the shadows, or at least Virge and Vincent.

  What funny, funny things have been going through my mind. I chuckled going over and over the things I had thought. What a funny thing for a mind to do. What a good story. “Well, we made it,” I said to Simon, smiling. He smiled back, looking much relieved. Everything was going to be all right.

  TOWN. We checked the mail. I even did the combination to show Simon I was all right. There was nothing of particular importance in the mail. I noticed some new psychedelic hip posters in the post office, which seemed slightly ominous to me. They looked out of place. Government posters advertising “Get it through the mail” or some such thing. I shook it off. I didn’t want to think about it.

  We went to the Works to get a little something to eat. Sitting there sipping coffee, feeling warmer and safer than I had in quite a while, still a little shaky but pretty sure everything was going to be all right, and then something new.

  I started falling very deeply in love with the waitress and everyone else in the place. It seemed that they in turn were just as deeply in love with me. It was like something I couldn’t get out of my eye.

  I didn’t understand it but I recognized it. There were all those little things that had happened occasionally between me and lovers before, but never this strong, never so lastingly, never with so many. I was completely in love, willing to die for or suffer incredibly for whatever they might want. A rush of warmth and emotion, spiritual and physical attraction, a wanting of oneness, a feeling of already oneness.

  When I looked at someone they were everything. They were beautiful, breathtakingly so. They were all things to me. The waitress was Eve, Helen of Troy, all women of all times, the eternal female principle, heroic, beautiful, my mother, my sisters, every woman I had ever loved. Everything good I had ever loved. Simon was Adam, Jesus, Bob Dylan, my father, every man I had ever loved. Their faces glowed with incredible light. It was impossible to focus, to hate, to fix. They were so mobile, all moving, all changing. They were whatever I needed and more. I loved them utterly.

  I worried about how complicated this could make my life. Maybe it was enlightenment but it brought up not inconsequential problems of engineering. Who sleeps with whom was one, but there were lots of others. Like what if two people I loved wanted me to do different things? Who would I spend time with, who would I talk with, who would I dedicate my life to? If I loved everyone there was no way to focus any more, no reason to spend time with anyone in particular.

  What would Virge think about all this? I had somehow fallen in love with Simon, Jack, Kathy, the waitress, and assorted passers-by more powerfully and completely than I ever had with her.

  I worried about what my eyes might be doing to other people. Was I making them fall in love with me? Was I hypnotizing them? I started keeping my eyes down. This thing could easily get out of hand if it wasn’t already.

  Falling in love with everyone I see. Oh, Christ, what will those jokers from the Pentagon come up with next, the fun-loving boys in biological-chemical warfare? If the Marines walked in that door with submachine guns and gas masks I’d probably love them too. I’m certainly not in any mood to fight anybody. Maybe it’s the Russians. Not that it makes much difference. I wonder where the bastards put it. The air? The water? The food? I wonder if this stuff is supposed to be fatal or just debilitating. I wonder if there’s an antidote. I wonder how much longer I’ll be able to wonder about it or anything else. Better get my wondering in while I can.

  I wonder if there’s been some sort of mistake. I wonder who’s trying to do what to whom.

  Dogs and cats and even sometimes little children get into rat poison.
War involves civilian casualties. Lots of them, usually more than military casualties. Middle-class white kids get into heroin. Luckless bystanders stop bullets all the time. Bullets and rat poison and heroin all work as well on the unintended as the intended, that’s the way they are.

  I understand that good old American technology has developed a scanner that can discriminate on the basis of race as to whom it kills. It has something to do with the pH factor in sweat. I suppose one way to fight back would be to put something in American underarm deodorants. Something like hexachlorophine or aluminum chloral hydrate might do the trick.

  The ideal thing would be something that automatically rewarded good and punished evil. Something like what we had hoped acid was. You wouldn’t have to worry about where to put it.

  Maybe the Germans are putting something in the VW’s they send over here. Sore about World War II and all. Maybe the Japanese are doing something with transistors. Inscrutable chaps, and after Hiroshima who could blame them? Sometimes I think it’s timed to go off some day, sometimes I think it’s going off all the time.

  Who’s trying to do what to whom?

  Maybe it’s freaks vs. straights, male vs. female, white vs. black, young vs. old, East vs. West, etc. The fuckers couldn’t hit each other to save their lives, but every round’s a direct hit on my little head.

  Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.

  Insanity is the price of eternal vigilance.

  Holy shit, is my mind running. This coffee isn’t even cold yet. The same song is still playing on the juke box. I’m thinking about a million miles an hour, spinning fantastic webs. It’s a gas. Cramming whole lifetimes of thinking in between sips of coffee.

  That stuff about where to put it, mistakes, and all doesn’t begin to tell the story. There’s so much more there. It’s like I’ve discovered some sort of shorthand. I’ve got these little microdots of thinking. I just go “dit” and I’ve got years of thinking and then “dit” and another big hunk. Fitting it all together more and more. And it’s not just my thinking. I’m tapping huge pools of other people’s thinking. “Dit” and I’ve got the whole Bible. “Dit,” all of Freud and then “dit” and the relationship of Freud and the Bible in one “dit.” It goes forever in both directions. I’m getting closer and closer to having it all in one “dit.” I get it from time to time but can’t seem to hold it very long but I’m holding it longer and longer. And then one “dit” is all I need. Everything is in it utterly distinct but still in just one “dit.”

  The same song is still playing, my coffee’s still warm. Simon is sipping his coffee. Simon, the waitress, and everyone else is glowing softly with incredible beauty. I’m content forever. “Dit.” Content forever? But it’s not forever, it’s just now. Now I’m content forever. I’m content forever at this moment of time but what about the movement of time? What happens next?

  If I could just be content for now. Now. I don’t care what happens tomorrow because I’m already content about it now no matter what it is.

  No matter what it is. It could be dreadful and here I am content about it. I have an awful feeling something awful is happening or I wouldn’t be feeling this way. All these strange things that have been happening to me must be clues of some sort. All these things I keep trying to laugh off.

  “Simon, I have this awful feeling I’m kissing everyone good-by forever. It seems very sad. ‘It’s been very nice. You were really swell,’ they seem to be saying. ‘Good-bye. I love you too,’ I seem to be answering. ‘Good night. Everything will be just fine.’ Even strangers. Words aren’t necessary. Just glimpsing people going by in cars, they’re all saying, ‘Good-by Mark, we all loved you.’ ‘Gee whiz, everyone, I loved you all too. It’s really been great. I wish we could do it all again.’

  “Simon, the time will come when you too will have to leave me. Don’t be sad. It’s meant to be. I love you, Simon, you’ve been wonderful, solid like a rock.”

  “What do you mean, Mark?”

  “In time it will all make sense, Simon, be patient. I myself am not sure yet how it ends. But be patient, it will all become clear. We have a very strange and difficult journey but nothing is asked of us that we cannot do. Remember that.”

  “Sure, Mark.”

  “Thank you, Simon. Have faith. You will be remembered.”

  “Well, let’s pay the check and get out of here. We still have to find a place to crash.”

  “Well, sure. Let us pay the check. I suppose it is time for us to leave this place. Do you have money, Simon? If you do not have any money, Simon, I have money. We do not have to worry about money. There will always be enough. Have faith. We will also not be afraid. Everything will be all right.”

  “Well, let’s go.”

  “Yes. Let us go.”

  Across the street to the Marine Inn to use the pay phone. I tried to call my family. It took forever to get the operator. Terrible agonized electronic screeches coming through the whole time. There was no answer. No answer at the Barnstable place? It happened, but not often. I’ll try again tomorrow. I went to the bathroom while Simon made a call to his sister in Cambridge.

  The fluorescent light in the bathroom was just about to die. It was stuttering like a strobe. I watched my arms and legs stutter through space. “Maybe the light is fine and it’s me.” My breath, my heart, my everything started stuttering.

  Mirror, mirror on the wall. There was usually something slightly unexpected waiting for us in a mirror after two or three weeks at the farm, but what I saw this time was totally other. For starters I looked at least ten years older and twenty pounds lighter. There were lines in my face that I had never seen before. My beard seemed much longer and fuller than I remembered it. I was entranced. There was a depth of feeling I had never seen before. An authenticity, a wiseness, an utter lack of games. I was awed. It was somehow what I had always wanted to see in the mirror but I still had trouble believing it was really me. That face was real. It was not a face that cried wolf.

  How long have I been here staring at myself? The strobe was freezing me. What if the door’s locked? What if I open it and there’s nothing there? What if they’re all dead? What if I’m dying? What if this is how it ends—in a plastic bathroom that could be anywhere? What if, what if, what if when I open that door I don’t know where I am? Where am I?

  I threw some cold water on my face. One foot in front of the other, one moment in front of the other. It’ll all keep going. Somehow I got to the door. Somehow I opened it. Somehow Simon was waiting in the lobby. Somehow I was in Powell River, British Columbia, Canada. Somehow I shrugged it off.

  “Goddamned light.”

  Simon and I headed out to Car Car.

  “Under no circumstances can I be locked up, Simon. I cannot go to jail.”

  “Relax, Mark. No one’s going to lock you up.”

  “I will be all right, Simon. I just need a little time. Getting locked up would ruin everything.”

  As soon as I started driving I felt much better. Things were still very strange but driving felt good. I loved my car, it was running beautifully. Driving along deserted Highway 101 at night. Up the hills, down the hills, round the corners. Everything was fine. I could do it forever.

  It was taking forever. “My life certainly has gotten very full lately. It seems there’s more happening in five minutes now than used to happen in years. Maybe I’ve just never really paid attention before.”

  I turned on the radio. The only things I could get was some station from Detroit playing old rock songs. All my favorites. “Shop Around,” “Momma Said.” The DJ kept talking about memory lane. “My Girl,” “Dream,” “Take a Message to Mary.” He was playing exactly the songs I would have played had I been in charge of some “end of the world” radio program. It seemed strange to be able to pick up a Detroit station and nothing else, and that clear as a bell. One radio station left, wrapping it up. “Golly gee, fellas, that’s sweet. Just for me.”

  Simon seemed to be nodding o
ff. I looked over at him. What an angel, a big, bearded Pooh bear with a Jewish afro. I guess I had been hard to keep up with of late. I wasn’t the least bit tired. I could go forever. Driving the car, listening to old songs forever, I couldn’t imagine anything that would feel better. I had it down pat. Something else might not go as well.

  I hadn’t slept for what was probably only days but seemed to stretch back forever. It was like a whole other existence. “Oh, yes, I remember back when I used to sleep.” I dreaded sleep. I was afraid that face would come back. Besides, I was having such a good time being awake.

  There was some very good reason for going to have a beer at the Lund bar. I didn’t know what it was but that made it an all the better reason.

  Magic, wonderful, wondrous things happened when we went to have a beer at the end of Highway 101. It was apparently just the right thing to do.

  The most wondrous of the wondrous things was what happened between us and a local guy about our age who came over to buy us drinks like he was pulled by some cosmic magnet. The big thing about him was how cheerful he was. He couldn’t stop smiling. We couldn’t stop smiling back. Here was a perfect example of lots of the things I had been thinking and trying to explain to Simon: how pleasant life could be, how we were all one, how nothing bad could happen.

  He used to work in the mill. He had just quit that afternoon and was out celebrating. We congratulated him. We got to laughing, telling stories, slapping each other on the back. There were some ESP-type things and cosmic messages, but the big thing, the thing no one could argue with, was what a wonderful time we had, how famously we got along.

  This was the way life should be all the time. This was the way life could be if everyone stopped worrying about all the silly things they worried about. This is what Jesus wanted. We were all in love.