Welcome to the Monkey House

by Kurt Vonnegut

  "You mustn't worry about it, Joe," said the nun. "No one knows who your mother and father were. But they must have been very good people, because you are so good."

  "What is an American?" said Joe.

  "It's a person from another country."

  "Near here?"

  "There are some near here, but their homes are far, far away--across a great deal of water."

  "Like the river."

  "More water than that, Joe. More water than you have ever seen. You can't even see the other side. You could get on a boat and go for days and days and still not get to the other side. I'll show you a map sometime. But don't pay any attention to Peter, Joe. He makes things up. He doesn't really know anything about you. Now, catch up."

  Joe hurried, and overtook the end of the line, where he marched purposefully and alertly for a few minutes. But then he began to dawdle again, chasing ghostlike words in his small mind: ... soldier ... German ... American ... your people ... champion ... Brown Bomber ... more water than you've ever seen.

  "Sister," said Joe, "are Americans like me? Are they brown?"

  "Some are, some aren't, Joe."

  "Are there many people like me?"

  "Yes. Many, many people."

  "Why haven't I seen them?"

  "None of them have come to the village. They have places of their own."

  "I want to go there."

  "Aren't you happy here, Joe?"

  "Yes. But Peter says I don't belong here, that I'm not a German and never can be."

  "Peter! Pay no attention to him."

  "Why do people smile when they see me, and try to make me sing and talk, and then laugh when I do?"

  "Joe, Joe! Look quickly," said the nun. "See--up there, in the tree. See the little sparrow with the broken leg. Oh poor, brave little thing--he still gets around quite well. See him, Joe? Hop, hop, hippity-hop."

  One hot summer day, as the parade passed the carpenter's shop, the carpenter came out to call something new to Joe, something that thrilled and terrified him.

  "Joe! Hey, Joe! Your father is in town. Have you seen him yet?"

  "No, sir--no, I haven't," said Joe. "Where is he?"

  "He's teasing," said the nun sharply.

  "You see if I'm teasing, Joe," said the carpenter. "Just keep your eyes open when you go past the school. You have to look sharp, up the slope and into the woods. You'll see, Joe."

  "I wonder where our little friend the sparrow is today," said the nun brightly. "Goodness, I hope his leg is getting better, don't you, Joe?"

  "Yes, yes I do, sister."

  She chattered on about the sparrow and the clouds and the flowers as they approached the school, and Joe gave up answering her.

  The woods above the school seemed still and empty.

  But then Joe saw a massive brown man, naked to the waist and wearing a pistol, step from the trees. The man drank from a canteen, wiped his lips with the back of his hand, grinned down on the world with handsome disdain, and disappeared again into the twilight of the woods.

  "Sister!" gasped Joe. "My father--I just saw my father!"

  "No, Joe--no you didn't."

  "He's up there in the woods. I saw him. I want to go up there, sister."

  "He isn't your father, Joe. He doesn't know you. He doesn't want to see you."

  "He's one of my people, sister!"

  "You can't go up there, Joe, and you can't stay here." She took him by the arm to make him move. "Joe--you're being a bad boy, Joe."

  Joe obeyed numbly. He didn't speak again for the remainder of the walk, which brought them home by another route, far from the school. No one else had seen his wonderful father, or believed that Joe had.

  Not until prayers that night did he burst into tears.

  At ten o'clock, the young nun found his cot empty.

  Under a great spread net that was laced with rags, an artillery piece squatted in the woods, black and oily, its muzzle thrust at the night sky. Trucks and the rest of the battery were hidden higher on the slope.

  Joe watched and listened tremblingly through a thin screen of shrubs as the soldiers, indistinct in the darkness, dug in around their gun. The words he overheard made no sense to him.

  "Sergeant, why we gotta dig in, when we're movin' out in the mornin', and it's just maneuvers anyhow? Seems like we could kind of conserve our strength, and just scratch around a little to show where we'd of dug if there was any sense to it."

  "For all you know, boy, there may be sense to it before mornin'," said the sergeant. "You got ten minutes to get to China and bring me back a pigtail. Hear?"

  The sergeant stepped into a patch of moonlight, his hands on his hips, his big shoulders back, the image of an emperor. Joe saw that it was the same man he'd marveled at in the afternoon. The sergeant listened with satisfaction to the sounds of digging, and then, to Joe's alarm, strode toward Joe's hiding place.

  Joe didn't move a muscle until the big boot struck his side. "Ach!"

  "Who's that?" The sergeant snatched Joe from the ground, and set him on his feet hard. "My golly, boy, what you doin' here? Scoot! Go on home! This ain't no place for kids to be playin'." He shined a flashlight in Joe's face. "Doggone," he muttered. "Where you come from?" He held Joe at arm's length, and shook him gently, like a rag doll. "Boy, how you get here--swim?"

  Joe stammered in German that he was looking for his father.

  "Come on--how you get here? What you doin'? Where's your mammy?"

  "What you got there, sergeant?" said a voice in the dark.

  "Don't rightly know what to call it," said the sergeant. "Talks like a Kraut and dresses like a Kraut, but just look at it a minute."

  Soon a dozen men stood in a circle around Joe, talking loudly, then softly, to him, as though they thought getting through to him were a question of tone.

  Every time Joe tried to explain his mission, they laughed in amazement.

  "How he learn German? Tell me that."

  "Where your daddy, boy?"

  "Where your mammy, boy?"

  "Sprecken zee Dutch, boy? Looky there. See him nod. He talks it, all right."

  "Oh, you're fluent, man, mighty fluent. Ask him some more".

  "Go get the lieutenant," said the sergeant. "He can talk to this boy, and understand what he's tryin' to say. Look at him shake. Scared to death. Come here, boy; don't be afraid, now." He enclosed Joe in his great arms. "Just take it easy, now-- everything's gonna be all-1-1-1 right. See what got? By golly, I don't believe the boy's ever seen chocolate before. Go on-- taste it. Won't hurt you."

  Joe, safe in a fort of bone and sinew, ringed by luminous eyes, bit into the chocolate bar. The pink lining of his mouth, and then his whole soul, was flooded with warm, rich pleasure, and he beamed.

  "He smiled!"

  "Look at him light up!"

  "Doggone if he didn't stumble right into heaven! I mean!"

  "Talk about displaced persons," said the sergeant, hugging Joe, "this here's the most displaced little old person I ever saw. Upside down and inside out and ever' which way."

  "Here, boy--here's some more chocolate."

  "Don't give him no more," said the sergeant reproachfully. "You want to make him sick?"

  "Naw, sarge, naw--don't wanna make him sick. No, sir."

  "What's going on here?" The lieutenant, a small, elegant Negro, the beam of his flashlight dancing before him, approached the group.

  "Got a little boy here, lieutenant," said the sergeant. "Just wandered into the battery. Must of crawled past the guards."

  "Well, send him on home, sergeant."

  "Yessir. I planned to." He cleared his throat. "But this ain't no ordinary little boy, lieutenant." He opened his arms so that the light fell on Joe's face.

  The lieutenant laughed incredulously, and knelt before Joe. "How'd you get here?"

  "All he talks is German, lieutenant," said the sergeant.

  "Where's your home?" said the lieutenant in German.

  "Over more water than you'
ve ever seen," said Joe.

  "Where do you come from?"

  "God made me," said Joe.

  "This boy is going to be a lawyer when he grows up," said the lieutenant in English. "Now, listen to me," he said to Joe, "what's your name, and where are your people?"

  "Joe Louis," said Joe, "and you are my people. I ran away from the orphanage, because I belong with you."

  The lieutenant stood, shaking his head, and translated what Joe had said.

  The woods echoed with glee.

  "Joe Louis! I thought he was awful big and powerfullookin'!"

  "Jus' keep away from that left--tha's all!"

  "If he's Joe, he's sure found his people. He's got us there!"

  "Shut up!" commanded the sergeant suddenly. "All of you just shut up. This ain't no joke! Ain't nothing funny in it! Boy's all alone in the world. Ain't no joke."

  A small voice finally broke the solemn silence that followed. "Naw--ain't no joke at all."

  "We better take the jeep and run him back into town, sergeant," said the lieutenant. "Corporal Jackson, you're in charge."

  "You tell 'em Joe was a good boy," said Jackson.

  "Now, Joe," said the lieutenant in German, softly, "you come with the sergeant and me. We'll take you home."

  Joe dug his fingers into the sergeant's forearms. "Papa! No--papa! I want to stay with you."

  "Look, sonny, I ain't your papa," said the sergeant helplessly. "I ain't your papa."

  "Papa!"

  "Man, he's glued to you, ain't he, sergeant?" said a soldier. "Looks like you ain't never goin' to pry him loose. You got yourself a boy there, sarge, and he's got hisself a papa."

  The sergeant walked over to the jeep with Joe in his arms. "Come on, now," he said, "you leggo, little Joe, so's I can drive. I can't drive with you hangin' on, Joe. You sit in the lieutenant's lap right next to me."

  The group formed again around the jeep, gravely now, watching the sergeant try to coax Joe into letting go.

  "I don't want to get tough, Joe. Come on--take it easy, Joe. Let go, now, Joe, so's I can drive. See, I can't steer or nothin' with you hanging on right there."

  "Papa!"

  "Come on, over to my lap, Joe," said the lieutenant in German.

  "Papa!"

  "Joe, Joe, looky," said a soldier. "Chocolate! Want some more chocolate, Joe? See? Whole bar, Joe, all yours. Jus' leggo the sergeant and move over into the lieutenant's lap."

  Joe tightened his grip on the sergeant.

  "Don't put the chocolate back in your pocket, man! Give it to Joe anyways," 'said a soldier angrily. "Somebody go get a case of D bars off the truck, and throw 'em in the back for Joe. Give that boy chocolate enough for the nex' twenny years."

  "Look, Joe," said another soldier, "ever see a wristwatch? Look at the wristwatch, Joe. See it glow, boy? Move over in the lieutenant's lap, and I'll let you listen to it tick. Tick, tick, tick, Joe. Come on, want to listen?"

  Joe didn't move.

  The soldier handed the watch to him. "Here, Joe, you take it anyway. It's yours." He walked away quickly.

  "Man," somebody called after him, "you crazy? You paid fifty dollars for that watch. What business a little boy got with any fifty-dollar watch?"

  "No--I ain't crazy. Are you?"

  "Naw, I ain't crazy. Neither one of us crazy, I guess. Joe--want a knife? You got to promise to be careful with it, now. Always cut away from yourself. Hear? Lieutenant, when you get back, you tell him always cut away from hisself."

  "I don't want to go back. I want to stay with papa," said Joe tearfully.

  "Soldiers can't take little boys with them, Joe," said the lieutenant in German. "And we're leaving early in the morning."

  "Will you come back for me?" said Joe.

  "We'll come back if we can, Joe. Soldiers never know where they'll be from one day to the next. We'll come back for a visit, if we can."

  "Can we give old Joe this case of D bars, lieutenant?" said a soldier carrying a cardboard carton of chocolate bars.

  "Don't ask me," said the lieutenant. "I don't know anything about it. I never saw anything of any case of D bars, never heard anything about it."

  "Yessir." The soldier laid his burden down on the jeep's back seat.

  "He ain't gonna let go," said the sergeant miserably. "You drive, lieutenant, and me and Joe'll sit over there."

  The lieutenant and the sergeant changed places, and the jeep began to move.

  " 'By, Joe!"

  "You be a good boy, Joe!"

  "Don't you eat all that chocolate at once, you hear?"

  "Don't cry, Joe. Give us a smile."

  "Wider, boy--that's the stuff!"

  "Joe, Joe, wake up, Joe." The voice was that of Peter, the oldest boy in the orphanage, and it echoed damply from the stone walls.

  Joe sat up, startled. All around his cot were the other orphans, jostling one another for a glimpse of Joe and the treasures by his pillow.

  "Where did you get the hat, Joe--and the watch, and knife?" said Peter. "And what's in the box under your bed?"

  Joe felt his head, and found a soldier's wool knit cap there. "Papa," he mumbled sleepily.

  "Papa!" mocked Peter, laughing.

  "Yes," said Joe. "Last night I went to see my papa, Peter."

  "Could he speak German, Joe?" said a little girl wonderingly.

  "No, but his friend could," said Joe.

  "He didn't see his father," said Peter. "Your father is far, far away, and will never come back. He probably doesn't even know you're alive."

  "What did he look like?" said the girl.

  Joe glanced thoughtfully around the room. "Papa is as high as this ceiling," he said at last. "He is wider than that door." Triumphantly, he took a bar of chocolate from under his pillow. "And as brown as that!" He held out the bar to the others. "Go on, have some. There is plenty more."

  "He doesn't look anything like that, said Peter. "You aren't telling the truth, Joe."

  "My papa has a pistol as big as this bed, almost, Peter," said Joe happily, "and a cannon as big as this house. And there were hundreds and hundreds like him."

  "Somebody played a joke on you, Joe," said Peter. "He wasn't your father. How do you know he wasn't fooling you?"

  "Because he cried when he left me," said Joe simply. "And he promised to take me back home across the water as fast as he could." He smiled airily. "Not like the river, Peter-- across more water than you've ever seen. He promised, and then I let him go."

  (1953)

  REPORT ON THE BARNHOUSE EFFECT

  LET ME BEGIN by saying that I don't know any more about where Professor Arthur Barnhouse is hiding than anyone else does. Save for one short, enigmatic message left in my mailbox on Christmas Eve, I have not heard from him since his disappearance a year and a half ago.

  What's more, readers of this article will be disappointed if they expect to learn how they can bring about the so-called "Barnhouse Effect." If I were able and willing to give away that secret, I would certainly be something more important than a psychology instructor.

  I have been urged to write this report because I did research under the professor's direction and because I was the first to learn of his astonishing discovery. But while I was his student I was never entrusted with knowledge of how the mental forces could be released and directed. He was unwilling to trust anyone with that information.

  I would like to point out that the term "Barnhouse Effect" is a creation of the popular press, and was never used by Professor Barnhouse. The name he chose for the phenomenon was "dynamopsychism," or force of the mind.

  I cannot believe that there is a civilized person yet to be convinced that such a force exists, what with its destructive effects on display in every national capital. I think humanity has always had an inkling that this sort of force does exist. It has been common knowledge that some people are luckier than others with inanimate objects like dice. What Professor Barnhouse did was to show that such "luck" was a measurable force, which in hi
s case could be enormous.

  By my calculations, the professor was about fifty-five times more powerful than a Nagasaki-type atomic bomb at the time he went into hiding. He was not bluffing when, on the eve of "Operation Brainstorm," he told General Honus Barker: "Sitting here at the dinner table, I'm pretty sure I can flatten anything on earth--from Joe Louis to the Great Wall of China."

  There is an understandable tendency to look upon Professor Barnhouse as a supernatural visitation. The First Church of Barnhouse in Los Angeles has a congregation numbering in the thousands. He is godlike in neither appearance nor intellect. The man who disarms the world is single, shorter than the average American male, stout, and averse to exercise. His I.Q. is 143, which is good but certainly not sensational. He is quite mortal, about to celebrate his fortieth birthday, and in good health. If he is alone now, the isolation won't bother him too much. He was quiet and shy when I knew him, and seemed to find more companionship in books and music than in his associations at the college.

  Neither he nor his powers fall outside the sphere of Nature. His dynamopsychic radiations are subject to many known physical laws that apply in the field of radio. Hardly a person has not now heard the snarl of "Barnhouse static" on his home receiver. The radiations are affected by sunspots and variations in the ionosphere.

  However, they differ from ordinary broadcast waves in several important ways. Their total energy can be brought to bear on any single point the professor chooses, and that energy is undiminished by distance. As a weapon, then, dynamopsychism has an impressive advantage over bacteria and atomic bombs, beyond the fact that it costs nothing to use: it enables the professor to single out critical individuals and objects instead of slaughtering whole populations in the process. of maintaining international equilibrium.

  As General Honus Barker told the House Military Affairs Committee: "Until someone finds Barnhouse, there is no defense against the Barnhouse Effect." Efforts to "jam" or block the radiations have failed. Premier Slezak could have saved himself the fantastic expense of his "Barnhouseproof ' shelter. Despite the shelter's twelve-foot-thick lead armor, the premier has been floored twice while in it.

  There is talk of screening the population for men potentially as powerful dynamopsychically as the professor. Senator Warren Foust demanded funds for this purpose last month, with the passionate declaration: "He who rules the Barnhouse Effect rules the world!" Commissar Kropotnik said much the same thing, so another costly armaments race, with a new twist, has begun.