Palm Sunday_ An Autobiographical Collage - Kurt Vonnegut [107]
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 the 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