Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

by Kurt Vonnegut

  JERRY: Okay, kids—that’s close enough. We just want to give the general idea. No point in getting it absolutely perfect tonight.

  [Students put down their tools, assemble on the street, awaiting instructions. LEGHORN goes to JERRY.]

  LEGHORN: I got your fog machine going.

  JERRY: I see.

  LEGHORN: It really is one of my old industrial chicken roasters. Didn’t realize they were being sold now as fog machines.

  JERRY: It wasn’t cheap.

  LEGHORN: Nothing ever is. If you ever wanted to roast a half a ton of chicken in five minutes, you still could—feathers and all.

  JERRY: That’s nice to know.

  SALLY: I love you, Jerry. I’d die for you, if you wanted me to. JERRY: That’s nice to know. Places, everybody!

  [JERRY goes into Jekyll’s house. LEGHORN withdraws to one side of apron. SALLY stays under lamppost. POPS continues to patrol. Lower-class types go into pub. KIMBERLY, with her pram, and SAM exit into wings. The rest compose a London street scene in the late afternoon.

  A rock band in the pit strikes up appropriate music to be written by somebody else, and a nonstop rock ballet about Jekyll and Hyde begins.

  The story, to be choreographed by somebody else, goes roughly like this, with some information being sung:

  Everybody on the street is happy, but worried about nightfall and fog. There has been, only a few days before, the murder of a whore under the lamppost where SALLY stands.

  Dr. Jekyll, played by JERRY, comes out of his house, the image of civic decency, and is recognized and adored by all. He is trying to get into his secret lab without being observed. While biding his time, he performs acts of civic virtue which are noted and admired by one and all. He picks up a piece of trash dropped by somebody else, puts it in a waste barrel, gives money to a beggar, politely declines an invitation from SALLY the whore, giving her a gentle lecture, and so on. KIMBERLY enters with her perambulator, and he admires the baby, chucks it under its chin. KIMBERLY exits into wings, to return, going in the opposite direction, a few minutes later.

  A fight breaks out in the pub, spills into the street. POPS rushes in to break it up. Everybody but Jekyll goes to watch. Jekyll takes the opportunity to duck into his lab. Lights go on in there.

  The fight is broken up, and one of the fighters invites everyone into the pub for a drink on him.

  Many accept, go into pub. Some refuse, exit into the wings instead. SALLY resumes her post by the lamppost. The street is otherwise deserted.

  Utterson, the lawyer, played by SAM, enters in a state of agitation. He carries a huge briefcase on which is written, “Lawyer.” He is on his way to Jekyll’s house, is propositioned by SALLY. They dicker. Her price is too high and her services too limited, and he is too busy anyway. He goes and bangs on Jekyll’s door. Nobody is home. He sings to the audience that his client and closest friend, Dr. Jekyll, has just written a will leaving everything to a man named Hyde, about whom Utterson has never heard before. He fears that Jekyll has gone insane or is being blackmailed. He gives up, dickers briefly with the whore again, goes into pub for a needed drink.

  JERRY, now as the monstrous Mr. Hyde, peers furtively out the secret lab door, sees nobody around but the whore. He whistles to her, crooks his finger at her. She is appalled, but needs the work. She goes into the lab with him, and the door is closed.

  A drunk comes out of the pub, sings a song about the beauty of love, staggers off into the wings.

  The lab door opens. The whore reels out, her clothes in frightful disarray. Hyde throws money after her, heaps scorn on her as she picks it up. She exits in disorder and shame. Hyde remains in the doorway, looking up and down the street for other opportunities to do evil.

  KIMBERLY enters with her perambulator, on her way home from the park. She seems an ideal target of opportunity. She pauses, giving him a chance to duck into the lab to get a black spherical bomb with a fuse sticking out of it, which he shows to the audience. She starts coming again, and he stops her, pretending to be solicitous, hiding the bomb behind his back. He tells her that she should be careful, that he thinks someone may be following her. She looks back, and he tucks the bomb in with the baby and lights the fuse.

  She moves on, looking back over her shoulder, exits. Hyde ducks into lab, closes door.

  There is a terrific explosion offstage, people come pouring out of the pub, exit in direction of explosion.

  They return, filled with horror. Some carry pieces of the perambulator. Utterson carries a wheel. Last of all come POPS and KIMBERLY. Pops has his pad and pencil out, trying to get Kimberly’s story. Most of Kimberly’s clothing has been blown away. Her face is black. She still holds the handle of the perambulator.

  Utterson draws aside, muses over the clue of the wheel. He sings that he knows his friend Jekyll has been performing secret experiments of great importance and behaving queerly. He wonders if he could be making bombs.

  Somebody suggests that everybody go into the pub to have a drink. KIMBERLY says that she certainly needs one. All exit into the pub, except for Utterson, who goes to Jekyll’s house and knocks again. JERRY, now a respectable Jekyll again, comes out of the lab unobserved, again picks up a piece of trash, puts it into a barrel.

  Jekyll comes up behind Utterson, scares the daylights out of him. Utterson asks him if his research involves bombs. Jekyll says he has discovered a means of controlling human character with chemicals. Utterson says this is more dangerous than bombs. Jekyll says it is perfectly safe, with no harmful side effects. He confesses that he turned himself into Hyde many times, and that he isn’t going to do it anymore, that Hyde is dead. “No harmful side effects?” says Utterson. Jekyll echoes this, but with qualifications—blurred vision sometimes, constipation, swollen ankles, nothing serious. Utterson asks how he feels now. Jekyll says he never felt better, but then has an attack. He turns into Hyde.

  He chokes Utterson to death. There are Grand Guignol effects, with Utterson spitting out catsup, sticking out an impossibly long tongue, and so on.

  Still clinging to Utterson’s throat, Hyde, played by JERRY, sings a tragic song about how the most idealistic experiments can sometimes go wrong.

  KIMBERLY, POPS, and a few others come out of the pub, all half in the bag. KIMBERLY is still holding the handle of the perambulator. They see Hyde choking the dead Utterson. KIMBERLY identifies him as the man who probably blew up the baby, tells POPS to shoot him like a mad dog.

  POPS draws his real pistol, which is loaded, and is so carried away by the drama that he actually takes a shot at JERRY, shattering a streetlamp.

  Everything stops.]

  JERRY: [As JERRY, dropping Utterson] That was a real bullet.

  POPS: I told you I had real bullets in my gun. Nobody kills babies while I’m around.

  JERRY: Imbecile!

  LEGHORN: [Striding onstage to disarm Pops] I’ll take that thing. [He sticks the pistol under his belt.]

  POPS: I lost my head.

  JERRY: I almost lost my life. Get out of here!

  POPS: What can I say after I’ve said I’m sorry?

  JERRY: Try “Good-bye.”

  POPS: This thing is never going to make it to Broadway anyway. [He exits.]

  LEGHORN: Well—if this show has accomplished nothing else, at least it’s disarmed a campus cop.

  JERRY: The whole thing stunk. I really let you down this time, gang. I resign as head of the student body.

  [SALLY enters, still a mess, deeply concerned about Jerry.]

  SALLY: Jerry—

  JERRY: You don’t have to tell me: You don’t love me anymore. I don’t even love myself anymore.

  SALLY: It wasn’t your fault, Jerry. I mean—it was a story we found in the public domain. Everybody knows there’s nothing but picked-over garbage in the public domain.

  LEGHORN: A little chicken would cheer us all up about now—but I don’t know where we could find a chicken this time of night.

  [POPS screams in terror outside
the theater. The screams go on and on. Nobody is much concerned.]

  SALLY: What’s that?

  JERRY: It sounds like Pops got himself caught in his zipper again.

  SAM: Happens all the time. KIMBERLY: I don’t know—that doesn’t quite sound like his zipper scream.

  [POPS enters, mad with terror, breathless.]

  POPS: [Pointing, gasping] I just saw—I just saw—I just saw—

  LEGHORN: You’re not making any sense.

  POPS: I just saw the biggest chicken in history.

  LEGHORN: Uh huh. The biggest chicken in history weighed fifty-six pounds and four ounces, and was found on Bikini Atoll after a hydrogen bomb test there.

  POPS: Bigger than that.

  LEGHORN: And what was this chicken doing?

  POPS: As God is my witness—it was eating a Doberman pinscher alive.

  JERRY: He just wants his gun back.

  LEGHORN: I don’t know. Strange things happen in the chicken world. [Aside] Often profitable. [To Pops] How much would you say this chicken weighed?

  POPS: With or without the Doberman inside?

  LEGHORN: Without the dog.

  POPS: A hundred and eighty pounds, medium build, white— yellow feet, yellow beak—believed to be dangerous. Somebody better get out an APB.

  LEGHORN: A hundred-and-eighty-pound chicken would feed about two hundred people. A few birds like that would go a long way toward ending the protein shortages in India, in Africa, in Moscow—in Bangladesh. [He considers going out to have a look.]

  POPS: Oh, sir—I hate your guts, but I beg of you, please don’t go out there alone.

  LEGHORN: I never met the chicken I could not dominate. Besides, gumshoe, I have a gun with five shots left in it. Remember?

  [LEGHORN draws the pistol, blows down the barrel, and exits.]

  JERRY: Well—that’s all very interesting, but it doesn’t have a heck of a lot to do with saving the college, does it?

  POPS: You’d think it had to do with everything there ever was, if you saw a chicken that size.

  SALLY: Maybe somebody should call the Humane Society.

  POPS: The National Guard!

  JERRY: Maybe we should put on a cake sale.

  [A pistol is fired outside.]

  POPS: Four shots left.

  SALLY: Is it legal to shoot a chicken that size? POPS: A chicken, no matter how big, has no rights in the state of Pennsylvania.

  [Two more pistol shots]

  POPS: Two shots left.

  [LEGHORN rushes back in, holding the smoking gun.]

  LEGHORN: Everybody out! Grab a hammer, a broom—anything! I’m gonna need help with this one. This one must have been fed pure plutonium on Mars. I think I winged it, but I can’t be sure.

  [All but KIMBERLY grab makeshift weapons and rush out. SAM is the last one out.]

  SAM: You coming, Kimberly?

  KIMBERLY: No. I am a follower of Albert Schweitzer. I have reverence for life. Besides, I’m very sleepy.

  SAM: Okay, you take a nap.

  [SAM exits. Sounds of a chase come from outside, fading off into the distance, as KIMBERLY makes a pillow of a discarded garment and goes to sleep on Dr. Jekyll’s doorstep. She snores softly, sweetly.

  There are clumsy, subhuman sounds in the wings. The great chicken which the head of the chemistry department has turned himself into enters, desperately hoping to elude its hunters. It is wounded and enraged. It does not see Kimberly at first, and KIMBERLY goes on sleeping. It tears off the door of the pub, uproots a lamppost and bends it double, and so on.

  It sees Kimberly at last, approaches her sleeping form with a mixture of dim-witted awe and lust, after the fashion of King Kong. It decides to do something with her—whether to rape her or abduct her or consume her, it is not clear.

  We never find out, for just in the nick of time, LEGHORN enters with his pistol cocked and aimed. He is followed by SAM, SALLY, and JERRY.]

  LEGHORN: Reach for the sky.

  [The chicken raises its wings, turns around slowly.]

  LEGHORN: Don’t try anything fancy. One false move, and you’re fricassee.

  JERRY: Some bird!

  LEGHORN: I had a hunch this one would double back to the Mildred Peasely Bangtree Memorial Theater and try to hide in here. Do I know chickens, or do I know chickens?

  SALLY: Who was Mildred Peasely Bangtree?

  JERRY: NO time to wonder that now.

  LEGHORN: Quiet now. I’m going to interrogate this roaster.

  SALLY: Rooster?

  LEGHORN:Roaster.

  [LEGHORN now conducts a conversation in chicken language with the chicken. It takes quite a while. It is expressive, with moments of excitement and sadness and so on.]

  JERRY: What did it say?

  LEGHORN: I thought I had heard every chicken story possible, but this is a new one on me. This is the head of your chemistry department here. He drank a mixture of LSD and chicken tonic and Drano and God only knows what else, in the hopes of winning a Nobel prize. There’s more of the stuff back in his laboratory.

  SALLY, JERRY, AND SAM: Dr. Jekyll.

  [LEGHORN says something rueful in chicken language, and the chicken agrees.]

  SAM: What did you just say to him?

  LEGHORN: Said he couldn’t go to Stockholm looking like that.

  [Chicken says more, resignedly.]

  LEGHORN: Says he’s got three bullets in him, and is dying anyway.

  [The chicken begins a tragic dying scene, which takes a minute or two.

  WHITEFEET and MRS. JEKYLL enter while it is going on. MRS. JEKYLL is carrying the beaker. Everybody is profoundly moved but WHITEFEET, who is overwhelmed with mirth.]

  WHITEFEET: That’s the funniest costume I ever saw!

  MRS. JEKYLL: Shut up you lightweight—you intolerable sparrowfart! That is my husband there. I watched it all through the laboratory window. I have the fatal mixture here. [She shows the beaker.]

  [The chicken struggles upright one last time, and sings a farewell aria in chicken language, with orchestral accompaniment. It dies, its feet straight up in the air.]

  SAM: Kimberly, are you all right?

  KIMBERLY: I think so. But I’ll never be the same. I don’t think I can be a follower of Albert Schweitzer anymore.

  [The remainder of the cast enters quietly to gawk.]

  MRS. JEKYLL: What was its last song about?

  LEGHORN: I’m liable to bust out crying when I tell you. I never thought a chicken could get to me like that. There’s precious little sentimentality in the modern chicken business, believe you me. It sang about the disposal of its remains. It asked to be roasted and wrapped in Reynolds Wrap and given to an orphanage.

  MRS. JEKYLL: The first unselfish act of his life.

  LEGHORN: Well, we’re all in this together now—and the reputation of the college, not that it ever amounted to a hill of beans, depends on what we decide to do. All in favor of roasting it?

  ALL: Aye.

  LEGHORN: All in favor of wrapping it in Reynolds Wrap?

  ALL: Aye.

  LEGHORN: All in favor of giving it to an orphanage?

  ALL BUT MRS. JEKYLL: No.

  MRS. JEKYLL: Abstain.

  LEGHORN: Abstention noted. I think you have voted wisely. Allowing even orphans to eat a chicken produced by this method is morally repugnant in a Christian society at this time. Future generations may feel differently. It is the sense of the meeting, then, that the roasted chicken be buried in an unmarked grave as soon as possible, and that nothing more be said about it, since the story, if it ever got out, would interfere with recruiting and fund raising activities of the college, and only confuse the county prosecutor. CHORUS: [Singing, directed by JERRY] Aaaaaaaaaaaaa-men! Aaaaaaaaaaaa-men! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-men!

  [Sobbing, MRS. JEKYLL throws herself on the remains.]-

  CURTAIN

  16

  A NAZI SYMPATHIZER DEFENDED AT SOME COST

  I HAVE SPOKEN IN ANOTHER chapter of the thunderstorms in t
he head of Jack Kerouac when I knew him, or to be more truthful, when he was unknowable—near the end of his life. He was to be pitied and forgiven, of course, for all he said while the thunder and lightning was going on.

  We arrive now, though, at the case of a writer who not only thought loathsomely on occasion, but who sometimes acted on those loathsome thoughts, and who, as many people have told me very pointedly, can never be forgiven. It is common for people to find his work impossible to read, not because of what he happens to be saying on a given page but because of unforgivable things he has said or written elsewhere.

  He said often enough himself, one way or another and as a universally despised old man and war criminal, that he had nothing to apologize for, and that forgiveness would be yet another insult from nincompoops.

  He would not like me. The evidence is that he was not strikingly fond of any human beings. He loved his cat, which he was forever carrying from here to there like a baby.

  He considered himself at least the equal of any living writer. I am told that he once said of the Nobel prize: “Every Vaseline-ass in Europe has one. Where’s mine?”

  And yet, compulsively, with no financial gain in prospect, and understanding that many people will believe that I share many of his authentically vile opinions, I continue to say that there were good things about this man. And my name is most snugly tied to his in the Penguin paperback editions of his last three books, Castle to Castle, North, and Rigadoon. My name is on each cover: “With a new introduction,” it says, “by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.”

  That introduction to all three paperbacks goes like this:

  He was in the worst possible taste, by which I mean that he had many educational advantages, becoming a physician, and he was widely traveled in Europe and Africa and North America—and yet he wrote not a single phrase that hinted to similarly advantaged persons that he was something of a gentleman.

  He did not seem to understand that aristocratic restraints and sensibilities, whether inherited or learned, accounted for much of the splendor of literature. In my opinion, he discovered a higher and more awful order of literary truth by ignoring the crippled vocabularies of ladies and gentlemen and by using, instead, the more comprehensive language of shrewd and tormented guttersnipes.