Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

by Kurt Vonnegut

  CHORUS: [Thunderstruck, as one] Wow! Do you think we really could?

  JERRY: Why not? We could take a piece of meretricious kid crap up there and make enough in a season to keep this academic bucket shop running for years!

  CHORUS: [As one] Holy smokes!

  SALLY: Jerry—-just one question: Are we still in love?

  JERRY: You mean in spite of the bankruptcy? It’s too early to tell.

  SALLY: I’ll wait.

  [ELBERT WHITEFEET, the beloved old college president and philosopher, enters wild with grief over the bankruptcy. He is comforted by DR. HENRY JEKYLL, the venerable head of the chemistry department, and by POPS, the doddering campus cop. WHITEFEET and JEKYLL wear academic caps and gowns. POPS is uniformed like a Keystone Cop. It is a wild scene. Students look on in horror and pity as WHITEFEET tears out handfuls of his own hair, rends his garments, dumps a trash container over himself, and so on.]

  WHITEFEET: I don’t want to live anymore!

  POPS: Please, sir—the student body is watching.

  WHITEFEET: I don’t care!

  POPS: They shouldn’t see the president of their college in this condition. They might write home.

  WHITEFEET: They should hang me from the Senior Elm for what I’ve done.

  JEKYLL: Elbert—you haven’t done anything a million other nincompoops might not have done.

  WHITEFEET: [Embracing Jekyll] Ah—Dr. Henry Jekyll—the head of the chemistry department and my closest friend. Faithful old Henry, the only faculty member with a statewide reputation.

  JERRY: President Whitefeet—Dr. Jekyll—what happened to the endowment, which was supposed to be so big and well invested—the Xerox, the Polaroid, the IBM.

  WHITEFEET: [Echoing tragically] The Xerox, the Polaroid, the IBM.

  CHORUS: The Xerox, the Polaroid, the IBM.

  [This sets off a terrific rhythm number that builds and builds, and consists of the chanting of the names of common stocks. Everybody is caught up in a mad, slobbering war dance about wealth. It ends in panting exhaustion.]

  LEGHORN: What did happen to all those stocks?

  KIMBERLY: [Sexually aroused by wealth] All those woozum, coozum, squoozum blue chip stocks. Yum, yum! Yum, yum!

  WHITEFEET: A clean-cut young investment counselor with a silver tongue came into my office two months ago. I was reading Plato at the time.

  SAM: What part of Plato, sir?

  WHITEFEET: [Indignantly] I don’t have to answer pipsqueak questions like that anymore. I was reading Plato. Period.

  SAM: Yes, sir.

  WHITEFEET: It’s all kind of one big mixed up thing anyway. Can’t tell where one thing stops and the next thing begins. This investment counselor said to me, “Lift your bloodshot eyes from the yellowed page, old philosopher. Look at the world as it has come to be! There’s money to be made! In two months’ time, Sweetbread College could be twice as rich as Harvard!”

  SALLY: But Harvard’s too big!

  KIMBERLY: Harvard’s too hard!

  SAM: They’re really serious up there.

  WHITEFEET: “Put everything you’ve got into cocoa futures,” he said.

  LEGHORN: Oh Lord.

  WHITEFEET: Please, for the love of God, don’t anybody ever mention cocoa in my presence again.

  SALLY: What are cocoa futures?

  WHITEFEET: I still don’t know.

  KIMBERLY: I’ll go to the library and look it up.

  WHITEFEET: That’s what you’re here for—to learn how to look things up.

  LEGHORN: [To Kimberly] Look under “C.”

  KIMBERLY: [Sincerely] Thanks for the tip.

  [KIMBERLY exits.]

  WHITEFEET: If my doctor’s thesis had not been about philosophical arguments against suicide, I would be a dead man now.

  JERRY: Dr. Whitefeet—?

  WHITEFEET: [Indicating that he is non compos mentis with self-loathing] Bluh, bluh, bluh.

  JERRY: Sir—I’ve been talking to the rest of the kids, and we thought maybe we could put on a Broadway musical.

  WHITEFEET: Uck.

  LEGHORN: The smartest thing you ever said.

  JERRY: I haven’t figured out what it should be about.

  SALLY: You’re a show business genius, Jerry. You can do anything.

  SAM: We could do the story of Jesus Christ.

  JERRY: Maybe.

  SALLY: [Singing to tune of “Ach Du Lieber Augustine”]

  Oh, I am Mary Magdalene,

  Magdalene, Magdalene—

  I am Mary Magdalene.

  How do you do?

  POPS: [To same tune]

  I have got the leprosy, Leprosy,

  Leprosy. I have got the leprosy.

  Who will cure me?

  JERRY: No, no. Kids have done Jesus Christ to death onstage. (A double take) Say, Pops, I didn’t know you could sing.

  POPS: I was on my way to being a star of stage, screen, and radio. But then my dog was run over, and I entered a period of deep depression from which I never recovered. Nobody starts out to be a campus cop.

  JEKYLL: Cripes—you know, I ought to be able to do something to help. Come up with a chemical discovery of some kind.

  WHITEFEET: You’ve already given the world the recipe for Betty Crocker banana cake.

  JEKYLL: I’m thinking of something really dangerous, Nobel prize stuff. You can’t scare the pants off people with a banana cake.

  JERRY: Come on, kids! Let’s get cracking! Let’s go over to the Mildred Peasely Bangtree Memorial Theater, and see what we can put together. We’ll stay up all night!

  JEKYLL: I’ll stay up all night, too! This is exciting! This is just the kind of a kick in the butt I’ve needed for years.

  [All students exit.]

  LEGHORN: Who was Mildred Peasely Bangtree?

  WHITEFEET: Beats me.

  [KIMBERLY enters.]

  KIMBERLY: Excuse me—

  [LEGHORN, JEKYLL, WHITEFEET, and POPS gather together as a barbershop quartet, and sing a heart-rending ballad, “How Can We Help You, Little Girl?”]

  KIMBERLY: You all through?

  LEGHORN, JEKYLL, WHITEFEET, POPS: [Still singing in harmony] All through.

  KIMBERLY: Which building is the library?

  CURTAIN

  • • •

  SCENE 2: DR. JEKYLL’S LABORATORY. TEN O’CLOCK AT NIGHT. A PAINTED BACKDROP WITH AN OPERATING WINDOW AND DOOR IN IT.

  [At the rise: Library clock strikes ten. Dog howls. DR. JEKYLL is alone and going through hell, trying to think of something really good to discover. The theater is within hailing distance.]

  JEKYLL: Gosh darn it to heck. Let’s put on the old thinking cap, and cogitate. Jesus, this is really a doozy, trying to think up something nobody ever thought up before. Everything I think of has been thought of.

  [JERRY appears in the window. He is dejected.]

  JERRY: Dr. Jekyll—looks like you’re going to have to save the college singlehanded. We can’t think up a story.

  JEKYLL: Things are none too brisk in the lab, my boy. Why is it that every time you need a Nobel prize-type idea, you never can think of one?

  JERRY: I’m sending over some inspiration for you. Hope it helps.

  JEKYLL: Inspiration?

  JERRY: You’ll see.

  [JERRY exits. LEGHORN knocks on the door.]

  JEKYLL: Entrez.

  [LEGHORN enters with a bottle containing a green chemical]

  LEGHORN: I wonder if you’d run an analysis on this for me. It’s some kind of dope one of my competitors is feeding his chickens. I’d like to know what’s in it. I’ll pay you well.

  JEKYLL: That’s like asking Albert Einstein to balance your checkbook.

  LEGHORN: He couldn’t tie his own shoelaces. Everybody knows that. [Spotting a row of bottles] A half gallon of LSD! Amphetamines! Barbiturates! Quaaludes! Vitamin E. What are you doing with this stuff?

  JEKYLL: Taken from students at different times. LEGHORN: No wonder they think they’re so talented. I’ll g
ive you five hundred bucks if you can give me an analysis of this stuff before I get out of here—tomorrow at noon. That’s only in the event, of course, that your Nobel prize project falls through. Good night.

  [LEGHORN exits. JEKYLL sniffs the sample.]

  JEKYLL: Whoooeee! That’ll put hair on your chest! Smells like a mixture of crème de menthe and athlete’s foot to me.

  [Sally knocks on the door, calls through it seductively.]

  SALLY: Dr. Jekyll, Dr. Jekyll.

  JEKYLL: Entrez.

  [SALLY enters at the head of a line of coeds in diaphanous nightgowns. They have come to inspire him. KIMBERLY is among them.]

  JEKYLL: [Petrified, retreating] What kind of a frame-up is this? I’ve never had anything to do with sex in my life!

  SALLY: This isn’t sex.

  JEKYLL: It isn’t?

  SALLY: We’re Muses. Jerry had us dress up like Muses, and told us to come over and inspire you.

  JEKYLL: I’d hate to have to explain that to the state police. SALLY: You just relax and enjoy it.

  [The music starts up, and the girls do a sort of here-we-go-gathering-nuts-in-May dance with and around JEKYLL, tickling him, blowing in his ears, decking him with flowers, and so on. The dance ends with JEKYLL in a sensationally compromising position.

  WHITEFEET enters without knocking, and is scandalized.]

  WHITEFEET: I am revolted! I am disillusioned! I am scandalized!

  JEKYLL: It isn’t what it looked like.

  WHITEFEET: It looked like a full professor playing here-we-go-gathering-nuts-in-May.

  SALLY: It was our fault, Dr. Whitefeet.

  WHITEFEET: What do you foolish virgins know? You couldn’t find your own behinds with both hands.

  KIMBERLY: [Proudly, innocently] I just found mine.

  WHITEFEET: [Pointing to JEKYLL] There is the man I hold responsible/He is not only a Dr. Jekyll—he is a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

  SALLY: [Echoing wonderingly] Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. [More firmly] Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde! That’s it!

  JEKYLL: Who’s Mr. Hyde?

  SALLY: That’s the story for our musical! Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—it’s never been done. Wait till I tell Jerry!

  WHITEFEET: Just a minute! What about this moral outrage I saw here?

  SALLY: [On her way out, leading the other coeds] Buster—when you peed away the endowment on cocoa futures, you ceased to exist as a moral leader for me. You don’t have the brains God gave a clay pigeon.

  [SALLY and the coeds exit.]

  WHITEFEET: I suppose I had that coming. It’s probably good for me that people speak to me like that from time to time.

  JEKYLL: Who’s Mr. Hyde?

  WHITEFEET: From the famous story, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” by Clare Boothe Luce.

  JEKYLL: I never heard of it.

  WHITEFEET: Your name is Jekyll, and you never heard of one of the most famous stories in all of our literature—a story with your own name in it?

  JEKYLL: I don’t make you feel like something the cat drug in because you don’t know any chemistry. Don’t you make me feel like something the cat drug in because I don’t know any literature.

  WHITEFEET: It’s about a man who discovers a substance that changes his whole personality and appearance when he drinks it. He changes from nice Dr. Jekyll to terrible Mr. Hyde.

  JEKYLL: He drinks it himself?

  WHITEFEET: And becomes a monster.

  JEKYLL: Doesn’t give it to somebody else. He drinks it himself.

  WHITEFEET: That’s right.

  JEKYLL: [Inspired] Boy—that’s what I call balls.

  [Cheers come from the theater as SALLY delivers the good news.]

  JERRY: [Off, far away] That’s it, kids! Jekyll and Hyde!

  CURTAIN

  • • •

  SCENE 3: THE BARE STAGE OF THE MILDRED PEASELY BANG-TREE MEMORIAL THEATER—A FEW MINUTES LATER.

  [At the rise: All the students, except for JERRY, SALLY, KIM-BERLY, and SAM, are onstage. They are excited about doing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. POPS is looking on. The girls are still in nightgowns.

  Accompanied by scary music, they experiment with turning into monsters, uttering maniacal laughs, and generally trying to scare the hell out of each other.

  JERRY, SALLY, KIMBERLY, and SAM enter, loaded down with Victorian costumes and props.]

  JERRY: Okay, kids—we found all this stuff in the costume loft. Come and get it.

  [They throw down the costumes, and people set about clothing themselves, including SALLY, KIMBERLY, and SAM.]

  POPS: Can I pick a costume, too?

  JERRY: No. You’re perfect as you are. We need a comedy cop.

  POPS: [Offended] There’s real bullets in my gun.

  JERRY: You’re kidding! They shouldn’t trust you with a squirt gun loaded with lemonade!

  POPS: Thanks a lot.

  JERRY: Any time.

  [LEGHORN enters from the wings, impressed by a machine he has seen back there.]

  LEGHORN: Mind if I watch you geniuses work?

  JERRY: Glad to have you, Dad.

  [Everybody but JERRY and LEGHORN and POPS turns his or her back to the audience, and applies monster makeup, becoming Dracula or Frankenstein or Wolfman or whatever.]

  LEGHORN: You can stop calling me that. Your mother and I have filed for divorce.

  JERRY: Well, whoever you are, take a seat somewhere.

  LEGHORN: There’s a hell of a machine back here. Looks like one of my old industrial chicken roasters—from the early days.

  [Jerry has a look, is thrilled.]

  JERRY: Oh, boy! A fog machine—left over from our rock and roll version of Macbeth.

  LEGHORN: Some boat whistles, too.

  JERRY: Left over from our rock and roll version of The Old Man and the Sea. [He takes his place stage center.] Okay, gang—face this way, please.

  [Everybody faces him—with horrifying effect.]

  JERRY: Oh, no—everybody can’t be the monster!

  SALLY: But everybody loves monsters so.

  [This starts off a production number about how everybody loves monsters, but that not everybody is lucky enough to be a monster, that some people have to be good-looking and therefore hated by everyone, and so on.]

  JERRY: Gee—I wonder how the real-life Jekyll is doing over in the lab?

  LEGHORN: He can’t even light a Bunsen burner, if you ask me.

  CURTAIN

  • • •

  SCENE 4: DR. JEKYLL’S LABORATORY—A FEW MINUTES LATER.

  [At the rise: Idiotic rock music can be heard coming from the theater through the open window. It consists of a repetition of “Jekyll and Hyde! whoe whoe, baby, good old Jekyll and Hyde!” JEKYLL is alone, happily adding LSD and the unknown diet supplement for chickens and so forth to a large beaker, which is giving off unwholesome fumes.

  JEKYLL closes the window, shutting out the music. He continues about his business, singing to himself, to the tune of “Humor-esque.”]

  JEKYLL: [Singing] We were walking through the park,

  A-goosing statues in the dark.

  If Sherman’s horse can take it,

  So can you—oo!

  [There is a knock on the door.]

  JEKYLL: [Aside] Hmmmm. A possible guinea pig. [To knocker] Entrez, s’il vous plait.

  [Jekyll’s wife, a gorgeous, tragically neglected older woman, enters. He does not recognize her. She immediately sings to him in a rich contralto a show-stopping song about her total devotion to him.]

  JEKYLL: May I ask who you are?

  MRS. JEKYLL: I’m your wife, Henry.

  JEKYLL: Right, right, right. Got it now.

  MRS. JEKYLL: When you failed to come home for supper, I called around to find out what had become of you.

  JEKYLL: [Genuinely concerned] Am I all right?

  MRS. JEKYLL: Here you are.

  JEKYLL: Thank God. I could be lying in a ditch somewhere.

  MRS. JEKYLL: They said you were going all out for the
Nobel prize.

  JEKYLL: [Intensely] It’s the new me, Mildred.

  MRS. JEKYLL: [Correcting him] Hortense.

  JEKYLL: It’s the new me, Hortense. Say—you look thirsty to me.

  MRS. JEKYLL: Thirsty?

  JEKYLL: [Offering the beaker] This’ll put hair on your chest.

  MRS. JEKYLL: Why would I want hair on my chest?

  JEKYLL: Just a friendly expression. You have to pick me up on every last little thing? I don’t know how our marriage has lasted as long as it has.

  MRS. JEKYLL: That stuff smells vile!

  JEKYLL: But you love me so much. That was you, wasn’t it?

  MRS. JEKYLL: Yes—it was I.

  JEKYLL: Okay—so drink, chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug; so drink, chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug!

  MRS. JEKYLL: This is the first thing I have ever refused you.

  [MRS. JEKYLL exits with dignity.]

  JEKYLL: [Aside] If it’s anything that burns me up, it’s women’s lib. [To himself] Okay, big boy—if you’re ever going to get to Stockholm, you’d better drink this stuff yourself. Here goes nothing.

  [He holds his nose and drinks. Nothing happens for a moment, then a horrible transformation starts to take place. He claws at his throat, makes subhuman sounds, drops to the floor, rolls out of sight under a desk. When he emerges, he has become an enormous, homicidal chicken. He flings open the window, and, flapping his wings, jumps out into the night.]

  CURTAIN

  • • •

  INTERMISSION

  • • •

  SCENE 5: THE STAGE AT MIDNIGHT THE SAME NIGHT. THE STUDENTS HAVE BUILT A SET TO REPRESENT A NINETEENTH-CENTURY LONDON STREET. THERE ARE THREE FACADES FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: A LOW-LIFE PUB, A SINISTER STOREHOUSE WHERE JEKYLL DOES HIS EXPERIMENTS, AND JEKYLL’S RESPECTABLE HOME. ALL HAVE OPERATING DOORS. THERE ARE STREETLAMPS. THERE IS A PROMINENT SIGN ON THE SECRET LAB SAYING, “SECRET LAB.”

  [Before the rise: College library clock strikes twelve.

  At the rise: Full cast, except for WHITEFEET, DR. JEKYLL, and MRS. JEKYLL, is onstage. All except LEGHORN, who is a mere observer in his regular business suit, are dressed in Victorian costumes from every level of society. POPS is a bobby, already on duty. SALLY is a whore with a heart of gold, already waiting for customers under a lamppost. JERRY, who is going to be Dr. Jekyll, wears a top hat and evening cape, and directs many students who are still working on the set, painting, driving nails. Among them is SAM, wearing a tweed suit and derby, who is to be Utterson, Jekyll’s best friend, and KIMBERLY, who is dressed as a nursery maid. Her elaborate perambulator is parked on the street. LEGHORN has been interesting himself in the fog machine, which is now putting out wisps of fog.]