Palm Sunday_ An Autobiographical Collage - Kurt Vonnegut [105]
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