Welcome to the Monkey House

by Kurt Vonnegut

  When he faced us again, he was huge and handsome and conceited and cruel. Doris read the part of Stella, the wife, and Harry bullied that old, old lady into believing that she was a sweet, pregnant girl married to a sexy gorilla who was going to beat her brains out. She had me believing it too. And I read the lines of Blanche, her sister in the play, and darned if Harry didn't scare me into feeling like a drunk and faded Southern belle.

  And then, while Doris and I were getting over our emotional experiences, like people coming out from under ether, Harry put down the playbook, put on his coat and tie, and turned into the pale hardware-store clerk again.

  "Was--was that all right?" he said, and he seemed pretty sure he wouldn't get the part.

  "Well," I said, "for a first reading, that wasn't too bad."

  "Is there a chance I'll get the part?" he said. I don't know why he always had to pretend there was some doubt about his getting a part, but he did.

  "I think we can safely say we're leaning powerfully in your direction," I told him.

  He was very pleased. "Thanks! Thanks a lot!" he said, and he shook my hand.

  "Is there a pretty new girl downstairs?" I said, meaning Helene Shaw.

  "I didn't notice," said Harry.

  It turned out that Helene Shaw had come for the tryouts, and Doris and I had our hearts broken. We thought the North Crawford Mask and Wig Club was finally going to put a really good-looking, really young girl on stage, instead of one of the beat-up forty-year-old women we generally have to palm off as girls.

  But Helene Shaw couldn't act for sour apples. No matter what we gave her to read, she was the same girl with the same smile for anybody who had a complaint about his phone bill.

  Doris tried to coach her some, to make her understand that Stella in the play was a very passionate girl who loved a gorilla because she needed a gorilla. But Helene just read the lines the same way again. I don't think a volcano could have stirred her up enough to say, "Oo."

  "Dear," said Doris, "I'm going to ask you a personal question."

  "All right," said Helene.

  "Have you ever been in love?" said Doris. "The reason I ask," she said, "remembering some old love might help you put more warmth in your acting."

  Helene frowned and thought hard. "Well," she said, "I travel a lot, you know. And practically all the men in the different companies I visit are married and I never stay anyplace long enough to know many people who aren't."

  "What about school?" said Doris. "What about puppy love and all the other kinds of love in school?"

  So Helene thought hard about that, and then she said, "Even in school I was always moving around a lot. My father was a construction worker, following jobs around, so I was always saying hello or good-by to someplace, without anything in between."

  "Um," said Doris.

  "Would movie stars count?" said Helene. "I don't mean in real life. I never knew any. I just mean up on the screen."

  Doris looked at me and rolled her eyes. "I guess that's love of a kind," she said.

  And then Helene got a little enthusiastic. "I used to sit through movies over and over again," she said, "and pretend I was married to whoever the man movie star was. They were the only people who came with us. No matter where we moved, movie stars were there."

  "Uh huh," said Doris.

  "Well, thank you, Miss Shaw," I said. "You go downstairs and wait with the rest. We'll let you know."

  So we tried to find another Stella. And there just wasn't one, not one woman in the club with the dew still on her. "All we've got are Blanches," I said, meaning all we had were faded women who could play the part of Blanche, Stella's faded sister. "That's life, I guess--twenty Blanches to one Stella."

  "And when you find a Stella," said Doris, "it turns out she doesn't know what love is."

  Doris and I decided there was one last thing we could try. We could get Harry Nash to play a scene along with Helene. "He just might make her bubble the least little bit," I said.

  "That girl hasn't got a bubble in her," said Doris.

  So we called down the stairs for Helene to come back on up, and we told somebody to go find Harry. Harry never sat with the rest of the people at tryouts--or at rehearsals either. The minute he didn't have a part to play, he'd disappear into some hiding place where he could hear people call him, but where he couldn't be seen. At tryouts in the library he generally hid in the reference room, passing the time looking at flags of different countries in the front of the dictionary.

  Helene came back upstairs, and we were very sorry and surprised to see that she'd been crying.

  "Oh, dear," said Doris. "Oh, my--now what on earth's the trouble, dear?"

  "I was terrible, wasn't I?" said Helene, hanging her head.

  Doris said the only thing anybody can say in an amateur theatrical society when somebody cries. She said, "Why, no dear--you were marvelous."

  "No, I wasn't," said Helene. "I'm a walking icebox, and I know it."

  "Nobody could look at you and say that," said Doris.

  "When they get to know me, they can say it," said Helene. "When people get to know me, that's what they do say." Her tears got worse. "I don't want to be the way I am," she said. "I just can't help it, living the way I've lived all my life. The only experiences I've had have been in crazy dreams of movie stars. When I meet somebody nice in real life, I feel as though I were in some kind of big bottle, as though I couldn't touch that person, no matter how hard I tried." And Helene pushed on air as though it were a big bottle all around her.

  "You ask me if I've ever been in love," she said to Doris. "No--but I want to be. I know what this play's about. I know what Stella's supposed to feel and why she feels it. I--I--I--" she said, and her tears wouldn't let her go on.

  "You what, dear?" said Doris gently.

  "I--" said Helene, and she pushed on the imaginary bottle again. "I just don't know how to begin," she said.

  There was heavy clumping on the library stairs. It sounded like a deep-sea diver coming upstairs in his lead shoes. It was Harry Nash, turning himself into Marlon Brando. In he came, practically dragging his knuckles on the floor. And he was so much in character that the sight of a weeping woman made him sneer.

  "Harry," I said, "I'd like you to meet Helene Shaw. Helene--this is Harry Nash. If you get the part of Stella, he'll be your husband in the play." Harry didn't offer to shake hands. He put his hands in his pockets, and he hunched over, and he looked her up and down, gave her looks that left her naked. Her tears stopped right then and there.

  "I wonder if you two would play the fight scene," I said, "and then the reunion scene right after it."

  "Sure," said Harry, his eyes still on her. Those eyes burned up clothes faster than she could put them on. "Sure," he said, "if Stell's game."

  "What?" said Helene. She'd turned the color of cranberry juice.

  "Stell--Stella," said Harry. "That's you. Stell's my wife."

  I handed the two of them playbooks. Harry snatched his from me without a word of thanks. Helene's hands weren't working very well, and I had to kind of mold them around the book.

  "I'll want something I can throw," said Harry.

  "What?" I said.

  "There's one place where I throw a radio out a window," said Harry. "What can I throw?"

  So I said an iron paperweight was the radio, and I opened the window wide. Helene Shaw looked scared to death.

  "Where you want us to start?" said Harry, and he rolled his shoulders like a prizefighter warming up.

  "Start a few lines back from where you throw the radio out the window," I said.

  "O.K., O.K.," said Harry, warming up, warming up. He scanned the stage directions. "Let's see," he said, "after I throw the radio, she runs off stage, and I chase her, and I sock her one.

  "Right," I said.

  "O.K., baby," Harry said to Helene, his eyelids drooping. What was about to happen was wilder than the chariot race in Ben Hur. "On your mark," said Harry. "Get ready, baby. Go!"r />
  When the scene was over, Helene Shaw was as hot as a hod carrier, as limp as an eel. She sat down with her mouth open and her head hanging to one side. She wasn't in any bottle any more. There wasn't any bottle to hold her up and keep her safe and clean. The bottle was gone.

  "Do I get the part or don't I?" Harry snarled at me.

  "You'll do," I said.

  "You said a mouthful!" he said. "I'll be going now.... See you around, Stella," he said to Helene, and he left. He slammed the door behind him.

  "Helene?" I said. "Miss Shaw?"

  "Mf?" she said.

  "The part of Stella is yours," I said. "You were great!"

  "I was?" she said.

  "I had no idea you had that much fire in you, dear," Doris said to her.

  "Fire?" said Helene. She didn't know if she was afoot or on horseback.

  "Skyrockets! Pinwheels! Roman candles!" said Doris.

  "Mf," said Helene. And that was all she said. She looked as though she were going to sit in the chair with her mouth open forever.

  "Stella," I said.

  "Huh?" she said.

  "You have my permission to go."

  So we started having rehearsals four nights a week on the stage of the Consolidated School. And Harry and Helene set such a pace that everybody in the production was half crazy with excitement and exhaustion before we'd rehearsed four times. Usually a director has to beg people to learn their lines, but I had no such trouble. Harry and Helene were working so well together that everybody else in the cast regarded it as a duty and an honor and a pleasure to support them.

  I was certainly lucky--or thought I was. Things were going so well, so hot and heavy, so early in the game that I had to say to Harry and Helene after one love scene, "Hold a little something back for the actual performance, would you please? You'll burn yourselves out."

  I said that at the fourth or fifth rehearsal, and Lydia Miller, who was playing Blanche, the faded sister, was sitting next to me in the audience. In real life, she's the wife of Verne Miller. Verne owns Miller's Hardware Store. Verne was Harry's boss.

  "Lydia," I said to her, "have we got a play or have we got a play?"

  "Yes," she said, "you've got a play, all right." She made it sound as though I'd committed some kind of crime, done something just terrible. "You should be very proud of yourself."

  "What do you mean by that?" I said.

  Before Lydia could answer, Harry yelled at me from the stage, asked if I was through with him, asked if he could go home. I told him he could and, still Marlon Brando, he left, kicking furniture out of his way and slamming doors. Helene was left all alone on the stage, sitting on a couch with the same gaga look she'd had after the tryouts. That girl was drained.

  I turned to Lydia again and I said, "Well--until now, I thought I had every reason to be happy and proud. Is there something going on I don't know about?"

  "Do you know that girl's in love with Harry?" said Lydia.

  "In the play?" I said.

  "What play?" said Lydia. "There isn't any play going on now, and look at her up there." She gave a sad cackle. "You aren't directing this play."

  "Who is?" I said.

  "Mother Nature at her worst," said Lydia. "And think what it's going to do to that girl when she discovers what Harry really is." She corrected herself "What Harry really isn't," she said.

  I didn't do anything about it, because I didn't figure it was any of my business. I heard Lydia try to do something about it, but she didn't get very far.

  "You know," Lydia said to Helene one night, "I once played Ann Rutledge, and Harry was Abraham Lincoln."

  Helene clapped her hands. "That must have been heaven!" she said.

  "It was, in a way," said Lydia. "Sometimes I'd get so worked up, I'd love Harry the way I'd love Abraham Lincoln. I'd have to come back to earth and remind myself that he wasn't ever going to free the slaves, that he was just a clerk in my husband's hardware store."

  "He's the most marvelous man I ever met," said Helene.

  "Of course, one thing you have to get set for, when you're in a play with Harry," said Lydia, "is what happens after the last performance."

  "What are you talking about?" said Helene.

  "Once the show's over," said Lydia, "whatever you thought Harry was just evaporates into thin air."

  "I don't believe it," said Helene.

  "I admit it's hard to believe," said Lydia.

  Then Helene got a little sore. "Anyway, why tell me about it?" she said. "Even if it is true, what do I care?"

  "I--I don't know," said Lydia, backing away. "I--I just thought you might find it interesting."

  "Well, I don't," said Helene.

  And Lydia slunk away, feeling about as frowzy and un-loved as she was supposed to feel in the play. After that nobody said anything more to Helene to warn her about Harry, not even when word got around that she'd told the telephone company that she didn't want to be moved around anymore, that she wanted to stay in North Crawford.

  So the time finally came to put on the play. We ran it for three nights--Thursday, Friday, and Saturday--and we murdered those audiences. They believed every word that was said on stage, and when the maroon curtain came down they were ready to go to the nut house along with Blanche, the faded sister.

  On Thursday night the other girls at the telephone company sent Helene a dozen red roses. When Helene and Harry were taking a curtain call together, I passed the roses over the footlights to her. She came forward for them, took one rose from the bouquet to give to Harry. But when she turned to give Harry the rose in front of everybody, Harry was gone. The curtain came down on that extra little scene--that girl offering a rose to nothing and nobody.

  I went backstage, and I found her still holding that one rose. She'd put the rest of the bouquet aside. There were tears in her eyes. "What did I do wrong?" she said to me. "Did I insult him some way?"

  "No," I said. "He always does that after a performance. The minute it's over, he clears out as fast as he can."

  "And tomorrow he'll disappear again?"

  "Without even taking off his makeup."

  "And Saturday?" she said. "He'll stay for the cast party on Saturday, won't he?"

  "Harry never goes to parties," I said. "When the curtain comes down on Saturday, that's the last anybody will see of him till he goes to work on Monday."

  "How sad," she said.

  Helene's performance on Friday night wasn't nearly so good as Thursday's. She seemed to be thinking about other things. She watched Harry take off after curtain call. She didn't say a word.

  On Saturday she put on the best performance yet. Ordinarily it was Harry who set the pace. But on Saturday Harry had to work to keep up with Helene.

  When the curtain came down on the final curtain call, Harry wanted to get away, but he couldn't. Helene wouldn't let go his hand. The rest of the cast and the stage crew and a lot of well-wishers from the audience were all standing around Harry and Helene, and Harry was trying to get his hand back.

  "Well," he said, "I've got to go."

  "Where?" she said.

  "Oh," he said, "home."

  "Won't you please take me to the cast party?" she said.

  He got very red. "I'm afraid I'm not much on parties," he said. All the Marlon Brando in him was gone. He was tongue-tied, he was scared, he was shy--he was everything Harry was famous for being between plays.

  "All right," she said. "I'll let you go--if you promise me one thing."

  "What's that?" he said, and I thought he would jump out a window if she let go of him then.

  "I want you to promise to stay here until I get you your present," she said.

  "Present?" he said, getting even more panicky.

  "Promise?" she said.

  He promised. It was the only way he could get his hand back. And he stood there miserably while Helene went down to the ladies' dressing room for the present. While he waited, a lot of people congratulated him on being such a fine actor. But congrat
ulations never made him happy. He just wanted to get away.

  Helene came back with the present. It turned out to be a little blue book with a big red ribbon for a place marker. It was a copy of Romeo and Juliet. Harry was very embarrassed. It was all he could do to say "Thank you."

  "The marker marks my favorite scene," said Helene.

  "Um," said Harry.

  "Don't you want to see what my favorite scene is?" she said.

  So Harry had to open the book to the red ribbon.

  Helene got close to him, and read a line of Juliet's. " 'How cam'st thou hither, tell me, and wherefore?' " she read. " 'The orchard walls are high and hard to climb, and the place death, considering who thou art, if any of my kinsmen find thee here.' " She pointed to the next line. "Now, look what Romeo says," she said.

  "Um," said Harry.

  "Read what Romeo says," said Helene.

  Harry cleared his throat. He didn't want to read the line, but he had to. " 'With love's light wings did I o'erperch these walls,' " he read out loud in his everyday voice. But then a change came over him. " 'For stony limits cannot hold love out,' " he read, and he straightened up, and eight years dropped away from him, and he was brave and gay. " 'And what love can do, that dares love attempt,' " he read, " 'therefore thy kinsmen are no let to me.' "

  " 'If they do see thee they will murther thee,' " said Helene, and she started him walking toward the wings.

  " 'Alack!' " said Harry, " 'there lies more peril in thine eye than twenty of their swords.' " Helene led him toward the backstage exit. " 'Look thou but sweet,' " said Harry, " 'and I am proof against their enmity.' "

  " 'I would not for the world they saw thee here,' " said Helene, and that was the last we heard. The two of them were out the door and gone.

  They never did show up at the cast party. One week later they were married.

  They seem very happy, although they're kind of strange from time to time, depending on which play they're reading to each other at the time.

  I dropped into the phone company office the other day, on account of the billing machine was making dumb mistakes again. I asked her what plays she and Harry'd been reading lately.