Kurt Vonnegut - Happy Birthday, Wanda June

SILENCE. Pitch blackness. Animal eyes begin to glow in the darkness. Sounds of the jungle climax in animals fighting. A SINGER is heard singing the first bars of "All God's Chillun Got Shoes." HAROLD, LOOSELEAF, PENELOPE, and WOODLY stand in a row in the darkness, facing the audience. They are motionless. A city skyline in the early evening materializes outside the windows.

The lights come up on the living room of a rich man's apartment, which is densely furnished with trophies of hunts and wars. There is a front door, a door to the master bedroom suite, and a corridor leading to other bedrooms, the kitchen and so on.

How do you do. My name is Penelope Ryan. This is a simple-minded play about men who enjoy killing--and those who don't.

I am Harold Ryan, her husband. I have killed perhaps two hundred men in wars of various sorts--as a professional soldier. I have killed thousands of other animals as well--for sport.

I am Dr. Norbert Woodly--a physician, a healer. I find it disgusting and frightening that a killer should be a respected member of society. Gentleness must replace violence everywhere, or we are doomed.

(to LOOSELEAF)

Would you like to say something about killing, Colonel?

(embarrassed)

Jesus--I dunno. You know. What the heck. Who knows?

Colonel Harper, retired now, dropped an atom bomb on Nagasaki during the Second World War, killing seventy-four thousand people in a flash.

I dunno, boy.

You don't know?

It was a bitch.

Thank you.

(to all)

You can leave now. We'll begin.

(to the audience, making a peace sign)

Peace!

All but PENELOPE exit.

(to the audience)

This is a tragedy. When it's done, my face will be as white as the snows of Kilimanjaro.

(hyena laughs)

My husband, who kills so much, has been missing for eight years. He disappeared in a light plane over the Amazon Rain Forest, where he hoped to find diamonds as big as cantaloupes. His pilot was Colonel Looseleaf Harper, who dropped the bomb on Nagasaki.

(hyena laughs)

I should explain the doorbells in this apartment. They were built by Abercrombie and Fitch. They are actual recordings of animal cries. The back doorbell is a hyena, which you've just heard. The front doorbell is a lion's roar. (to the wings)

Would you let them hear it please? (lion roars)

Thank you.

PAUL, her twelve-year-old son, enters from corridor, a sensitive, neatly dressed little rich boys.

And this is my son, Paul. He was only four years old when his father disappeared.

(radiantly, sappily) He's coming back, Mom! He's the bravest, most wonderful man who ever lived.

(to audience)

I told you this was a simple-minded play.

Maybe he'll come back tonight!

It's his birthday.

I know.

Stay home tonight!

(ruefully, for they have been over this before) Oh, Paul-PAUL

You're married! You've already got a husband!

He's a ghost!

He's alive!

Not even Mutual of Omaha thinks so anymore.

If you have to go out with some guy--can't he be more like Dad? (sick)

Herb Shuttle and Norbert Woodly-can't you do better than those two freaks?

(resentfully)

Thank you, kind sir.

A vacuum cleaner salesman and a fairy doctor.

A what kind of doctor?

A fairy--a queer. Everybody in the building knows he's a queer.

(knowing better)

That's an interesting piece of news.

You're the only woman he ever took out.

Not true.

Still lives with his mother.

You know she has no feet! You want him to abandon his mother, who has no husband, who has no money of her own, who has no feet?

How did she lose her feet?

In a railroad accident many years ago.

I was afraid to ask.

Norbert was just beginning practice. A real man would have sold her to a catfood company, I suppose. As far as that goes, J. Edgar Hoover still lives with his mother.

I didn't know that.

A lot of people don't.

J. Edgar Hoover plays sports.

I don't really know.

To only exercise Dr. Woodly ever gets is playing the violin and making that stupid peace sign. (makes the peace sign and says the word effeminately) Peace. Peace. Peace, everybody. Lion doorbell roars.

(cringing)

I hate that thing.

It's beautiful.

He goes to door, admits WOODLY, whom he loathes openly.

(wearing street

clothes, carrying a rolled-up poster

under his arm)

Peace, everybody--Paul, Penelope.

You're taking Mom out tonight?

(to PENELOPE)

You're going out?

Herb Shuttle is taking me to a fight.

Take plenty of cigars.

(an apology, secret from PAUL)

We made the date three months ago.

I must take you to an emergency ward sometime--on a Saturday night. That's also fun. I came to see Selma, as a matter of fact.

She quit this afternoon.

We don't have a maid any more.

Oh?

The animals made her sneeze and cry too much.

I'm glad somebody finally cried. Every time I come in here and see all this unnecessary death, I want to cry.

(winking at PAUL, acknowledging PAUL's low opinion of him) I don't cry, of course. Not manly, you know. Did she try antihistamines?

They made her so sleepy she couldn't work.

Throw out all this junk. Burn it!

This room crawls with tropical disease.

Everything stays as it is!

A monument to a man who thought that what the world needed most was more rhinoceros meat.

(hotly)

My father!

I apologize. But you didn't know him, and neither did I. How's your asthma?

Don't worry about it.

How's the fungus around your thumbnail?

(concealing the thumb) It's fine!

It's jungle rot! This room is making everybody sick! This is your family doctor speaking now. (unrolling the poster) Here--I brought you something else to hang on your wall, for the sake of variety.