Happy Birthday, Wanda June by Kurt Vonnegut.
Title: Happy Birthday, Wanda June.
Author: Kurt Vonnegut.
Genre: Literature, fiction, plays, sociology, satire, humour.
Country: U.S.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1970.
Summary: At the center of this play is a big-game hunter and war hero Harold Ryan. For eight years, he has been presumed dead, lost in the Amazon Rain Forest while hunting for diamonds. Now he's back, only to find his wife engaged to a hippie doctor and his son transformed into a pampered sissy. Though his hunting trophies remain, an inexplicable birthday cake sits in the living room bearing a strange icing inscription: Happy Birthday, Wanda June. Can the household bear the returning force of Harold's machismo? And who on earth is Wanda June?
My rating: 7.5/10
My review:
♥ [All freeze, except for PENELOPE, who comes forward to address the audience. Lights on set fade as spotlight comes on]
PENELOPE
Most men shunned me-even when I nearly swooned for want of love. I might as well have been girdled in a chastity belt. My chastity belt was not made of iron and chains and chickenwire, but of Harold's lethal reputation.
[ SHUTTLE comes into the spotlight]
SHUTTLE
I keep having this nightmare-that he catches us.
PENELOPE
Doing what?
SHUTTLE
He'd kill me. He'd be right to kill me, too-the kind of guy he is.
PENELOPE
Or was. We haven't done anything wrong, you know.
SHUTTLE
He'd assume we had.
PENELOPE
That's something, I suppose.
♥ WOODLY
It's the planet that's in ghastly trouble now and all our brothers and sisters thereon.
SHUTTLE
None of my relatives are Chinese Communists. Speak for yourself.
WOODLY
Chinese maniacs and Russian maniacs and American maniacs and French maniacs ans British maniacs have turned this lovely, moist, nourishing blue-green ball into a doomsday device. Let a radar set and a computer mistake a hawk or a meteor for a missile, and that's the end of mankind.
SHUTTLE
You can believe that if you want. I talk to guys like you, and I want to commit suicide.
♥ WOODLY
Maybe God has let everybody who ever lived be reborn-so he or she can see how it ends. Even Pithecanthropus erectus and Australopithecus and Sinanthropus pekensis and the Neanderthalers are back on Earth-to see how it ends. They're all on Times Square-making change for peepshows. Or recruiting Marines. ..Take care of your body, yes! But don't become a bender of horseshoes and railroad spikes. Don't become obsessed by your musculature. Any one of these poor, dead animals here was a thousand times the athlete you can ever hope to be. Their magic was in their muscles. Your magic is in your brains!
♥ PAUL
[At the door]
Everybody talks about how rotten kids act. Grownups can be pretty rotten, too.
♥ WOODLY
[Going to PENELOPE]
This is very good for us.
PENELOPE
It is?
WOODLY
The wilder Paul is tonight, the calmer he'll be tomorrow.
PENELOPE
As long as he keeps out of the park.
WOODLY
After this explosion, I think, he'll be able to accept the fact that his mother is going to marry again.
PENELOPE
The only thing I ever told him about life was, "Keep out of the park after the sun goes down."
♥ PENELOPE
[Petrified]
No! Oh no! Three people murdered in there in the last six weeks! The police won't even go in there any more.
WOODLY
I wish Paul luck.
PENELOPE
It's suicide!
WOODLY
I'd be dead by now if that were the case.
PENELOPE
Meaning?
WOODLY
Every night, Penelope, for the past two years, I've made it a point to walk through the park at midnight.
PENELOPE
Why would you do that?
WOODLY
To show myself how brave I am. The issue's in doubt, you know-since I'm always for peace-
PENELOPE
I'm amazed.
WOODLY
Me, too. I know something not even the police know-what's in the park at midnight. Nothing. Or, when I'm in there, there's me in there. Fear and nobody and me.
PENELOPE
And maybe Paul. What about the murderers? They're in there!
WOODLY
They didn't murder me.
PENELOPE
Paul's only twelve years old.
WOODLY
He can make the sound of human footsteps-which is a terrifying sound.
PENELOPE
We've got to rescue him.
WOODLY
If he is in the park, luck is all that can save him now, and there's plenty of that.
PENELOPE
He's not your son.
WOODLY
No. But he's going to be. If he is in the park and he comes out safely on the other side, I can so to him, "You and I are the only men with balls enough to walk through the park at midnight."
[Pause]
On that we can build.
♥ PENELOPE
Did you talk to Paul?
SHUTTLE
Before he started to run. He said his father carried a key to this apartment around his neck-and someday we'd all hear the sound of that key in the door.
PENELOPE
We've got to find him.
[Preparing to exit through front door]
I want you to show me exactly where you saw him last.
[To WOODY]
And you stay here, Norbert, in case he comes home.
[To SHUTTLE]
That's all he said-the thing about the key?
SHUTTLE
He said one other thing. It wasn't very nice.
PENELOPE
What was it?
SHUTTLE
He told me to take a flying fuck at the moon.
[Blackout]
♥ LOOSELEAF
It's a bitch.
HAROLD
[Quietly]
A bitch.
LOOSELEAF
Didn't recognize you.
HAROLD
We've never met.
LOOSELEAF
I wonder who'll recognize us first? They'll wet their pants.
HAROLD
I hope the men do. I would rather the women didn't.
LOOSELEAF
I'm gonna wet my pants.
[He laughs idiotically]
♥ [Silence, while HAROLD attempts to be alone, even though LOOSELEAF is still present]
♥ LOOSELEAF
..You're lucky, boy. You come home, and nobody's here. When I go home, everybody's going to be there.
HAROLD
This room is full of ghosts.
LOOSELEAF
You're lucky, too. My house is gonna be filled with people.
[HAROLD ignores this, attempts to savor the ghosts in the room]
♥ LOOSELEAF
..[Silence]
Jesus-I remember my mother used to make me chew bananas for a full minute before I swallowed-so I wouldn't get sick. Makes you wonder what else your parents told you that wasn't true.
[Blackout]
♥ HAROLD
Daughter-I love you very much.
PENELOPE
You don't even know me.
HAROLD
You are woman. I know woman well.
PENELOPE
This is crazy.
HAROLD
Destiny often seems that way. You're going to marry me.
♥ PAUL
[Blurting]
Do you know who Wanda June is?
HAROLD
Life has denied me that thrill.
♥ PAUL
I was going to a funny movie, but I changed my mind. If you're depressed, laughing doesn't help much.
♥ [Silence. A toilet flushes loudly and complicatedly]
♥ HAROLD
Wife, wife, wife....
[PENELOPE struggles to her feet, her face blank. HAROLD embraces her, finds himself wrestling with a rigid, unresponsive object]
Wife, wife, wife....
[HAROLD lets go, backs away from her]
What's the matter?
PENELOPE
[Tearful]
Give us time.
HAROLD
Like hugging a lamp post.
PENELOPE
Give us time, Harold-to adjust to your being alive.
HAROLD
You were well adjusted to my being dead?
PENELOPE
We adjust to what there us to adjust to. Perhaps Paul, being young, can adjust to joy or grief immediately. I hope he can. I will take a little longer. I'll be as quick as I can.
HAROLD
What sort of time period do you have in mind? Half an hour? An hour?
PENELOPE
I don't know. This is a new disease to me.
HAROLD
Disease?
PENELOPE
Situation.
HAROLD
This reunion isn't what I imagined it would be.
PENELOPE
A telegram-a phone call might have helped.
HAROLD
Seemed the most honest way to begin life together again-natural, unrehearsed.
PENELOPE
Well-enjoy the natural, honest, unrehearsed result-surgical shock.
♥ PENELOPE
He's a very decent man, Harold.
HAROLD
We all are.
PENELOPE
Shouldn't you lie down?
HAROLD
When I'm dead-
[Throwing it away]
or fucking.
♥ WOODLY
You have chills?
HAROLD
Chills, fevers, sweats. You can describe it and name it after yourself: "the Woodly galloping crud."
[WOODLY enjoys the joke and the blossoming friendship]
You can also describe its cure. I'm eating its cure.
WOODLY
I was going to ask.
HAROLD
Pacqualinincheewa root.
WOODLY
Would you say that again?
HAROLD
Pacqualinincheewa root. Means "cougar fang." Cures anything but a yellow streak down the back.
WOODLY
I've never heard of it.
HAROLD
Congratulations. By crossing twenty-eight feet of cockroach-infested carpet, you've become the third white man ever to hear of it. ..More and more we find ourselves laying aside false pride and looking into the pharmacopoeias of primitive people. Curare, ephedrine-we've found some amazing things.
HAROLD
We have, have we?
WOODLY
That's an editorial we, of course. I haven't turned up anything personally.
HAROLD
Everything about you is the editorial we. Take that away from you, and you'd disappear.
PENELOPE
Harold!
HAROLD
I could carve a better man out of a banana!
PENELOPE
Please-
HAROLD
You and your damned bedside manner and your damned little black bag full of miracles. You know who filled that bag for you? Not Alice-sit-by-the-fires like yourself. Men with guts filled it, by God-men with guts enough to pay the price for miracles-suffering, ingratitude, loneliness, death-
WOODLY
[Off balance]
Good Lord.
HAROLD
I can just hear the editorial wee-wee-weeing when Looseleaf and I start flying in pacqualinincheewa root. I can hear the Alice-sit-by-the-fires now: "We discovered it in the Amazon Rain Forest. Now we cure you with it. Now we lower our eyes with becoming modesty as we receive heartfelt thanks."
[HAROLD suddenly goes to WOODLY, takes his hand and pretends abject gratitude]
Oh, bless you, Doctor, bless you-oh healer, oh protector, oh giver of life.
[WOODLY withdraws his hand, examines it as though it were diseased]
PENELOPE
He doesn't deserve this! You don't know him. It isn't fair!
HAROLD
He thought he could take my place. It is now my privilege to give an unambiguous account of why I don't think he's man enough to do that.
♥ HAROLD
You're thinking with your brain instead of your body. That's why you're so tense! Forget Norbert. Relax. It's body time.
PENELOPE
I have a brain.
HAROLD
We all do. But now it's body time. Relax. Ideally, the body of a woman should feel like a hot water bottle filled with Devonshire cream. You feel like a paper bag crammed with curtain rods. Think of your muscles one by one. Let them go slack. Relax. Let the brain go blank. Relax. That's the idea-that's my girl. Now the small of the back. Let those knots over those kidneys unsnarl.
♥ LOOSELEAF
Well-I walked up to the front door. I was still alive. Big surprise. I rang the doorbell, and old Mrs. Wheeler answered. She had her Goddamn knitting. I said, "Guess who?" She conked right out.
PENELOPE
How horrible.
LOOSELEAF
Yeah-cripes. I never did get any sense out of Alice. She found me holding up the old lady, dead as a mackerel. It was a bitch. You know-maybe Mrs. Wheeler was going to die then and there anyway, even if I'd been the paper boy. Maybe not. I dunno, boy. That's civilian life for you. Who knows what kills anybody?
HAROLD
Could have happened to anybody.
♥ HAROLD
[Catching sight of PAUL, whose physical appearance really offends him]
The boy should still go out and exercise. I have the impression he never gets any exercise. He simply bloats himself with Fig Newtons and bakes his brains over steam radiators.
PENELOPE
You're wrong.
HAROLD
Then let me see him go out and get some exercise.
[Explosively]
Right now!
[PAUL goes reeling in terror to the front door, opens it]
PAUL
[To HAROLD abjectly]
What kind of exercise?
HAROLD
Beat the shit out of someone who hates you.
♥ HAROLD
Don't lecture me on race relations. I don't have a molecule of prejudice. I've been in battle with every kind of man there is. I've been in bed with every kind of woman there is-from a Laplander to a Tierra del Fuegian. If I'd ever been to the South Pole, there'd be a hell of a lot of penguins who looked like me.
♥ PENELOPE
This is not a coy deception. I do not want to be scrogged. I want love. I want tenderness.
HAROLD
You don't know what you want. That's the way God built you!
PENELOPE
I will not be scogged. I remember one time I saw you wrench a hook from the throat of a fish with a pair of pliers, and you promised me that the fish couldn't feel.
HAROLD
It couldn't!
PENELOPE
I'd like to have the expert opinion of the fish-along with yours.
HAROLD
[Shaking his head]
Fish can't feel.
PENELOPE
Well, I can. Some injuries, spiritual or physical, can be excruciating to me. I'm not as silly carhop any more.
[An unexpected, minor insight]
Maybe you're right about fish. When I was a carhop, I didn't feel much more than a fish would. But I've been sensitized. I have ideas now-and solid information. I know a lot more now-and a lot of it has to do with you.
HAROLD
[Sensing danger]
Such as?...
PENELOPE
The whole concept of heroism-and its sexual roots.
HAROLD
Tell me about its sexual roots.
PENELOPE
It's complicated and I don't want to go into it now, because it's bound to sound insulting-even though nobody means for anybody to be insulted. It's just the truth.
HAROLD
I like the truth. I wouldn't be alive today if I weren't one of the biggest fans truth ever had.
PENELOPE
Well-part of it is that heroes basically hate home and never stay there very long, and make awful messes while they're there.
HAROLD
Go on.
PENELOPE
[Blurting]
And they have very mixed feelings about women. They hate them in a way. One reason they like war so much is that they can capture enemy women and not have to make love to them slowly and gently. They can scrog them, as you say-
[Pause]
for revenge.
♥ WANDA JUNE
Won't you please join our club? Please?
MILDRED
Honey-Alcoholics Anonymous takes all the time I've got-and Harold Ryan is an individual I would rather forget. He drove me to drink. He drove his first two wives to drink.
VON KONIGSWALD
Because he was cruel?
MILDRED
[Covering WANDA JUNE's little ears]
Premature ejaculation.
VON KONIGSWALD
Ach soooooooooooo.
MILDRED
No grown woman is a fan of premature ejaculation. Harold would come home trumpeting and roaring. He would kick the furniture with his boots, spit into corners and the fireplace. He would make me presents of stuffed fish and helmets with holes in them. He would tell me that he had now earned the reward that only a woman could give him, and he'd tear off my clothes. He would carry me into the bedroom, telling me to scream and kick my feet. That was very important to him. I did it. I tried to be a good wife. He told me to imagine a herd of stampeding water buffalo. I couldn't do that, but I pretended I did. It was all over-ten seconds after he'd said the word "buffalo." Then he'd zip up his pants, and go outside, and tell true war stories to the little kids. Any little kids.
VON KONIGSWALD
That is sad.
MILDRED
[Blankly]
Is it?
[Pause]
I have this theory about why men kill each other and break things.
VON KONIGSWALD
Ja?
MILDRED
Never mind. It's a dumb theory. I was going to say it was all sexual... but everything is sexual... but alcohol.
[Making peace sign]
Peace.
VON KONIGSWALD & WANDA JUNE
[Making peace signs]
Peace.
[Blackout]
♥ HAROLD
When I was a naïve young recruit in Spain, I used to wonder why soldiers bayoneted oil paintings, shot the noses off of statues and defecated into grand pianos. I now understand: It was to teach civilians the deepest sort of respect for men in uniform-uncontrollable fear.
[He raises his glass]
To our women.
LOOSELEAF
I didn't know we had any women left.
HAROLD
The world is teeming with women-ours to enjoy.
LOOSELEAF
Every time I start thinking like that I get the clap.
♥ HAROLD
It helped more than you know. Down deep, people were deeply affected.
LOOSELEAF
You keep on saying "deep" and "deeply." I wish something good would happen on the surface sometimes.
♥ PENELOPE
He knows you shattered his violin.
HAROLD
I'm dying to hear of his reaction. The thrill of smashing something isn't in the smashing, but in the owner's reactions.
PENELOPE
He cried.
HAROLD
About a broomstick and a cigar box-and the attenuated intestines of an alley cat.
PENELOPE
Two hundred years old.
HAROLD
He feels awful loss-which was precisely my intention.
PENELOPE
[Moving toward the violin, and, incidentally, placing herself much closer to SHUTTLE]
He had hoped that someone would be playing it still-two hundred years from now.
HAROLD
[Echoing, expressing the futility of such long-term expectations]
Hope.
♥ HAROLD
[Downstage center, addressing the civilized world]
Things. Oh-you silly people and your things. Things, things, things.
..[Directly to the audience]
Never mind the condition of your body and your spirit! Look after your things, your things!
♥ HAROLD
You're an imbecile.
LOOSELEAF
I know you think that.
HAROLD
Everybody thinks that.
LOOSELEAF
Anybody who'd drop an atom bomb on a city has to be pretty dumb.
HAROLD
The one direct, decisive, intelligent act of your life!
LOOSELEAF
[Shaking his head]
I don't think so.
[Pause]
It could have been.
HAROLD
If what?
LOOSELEAF
If I hadn't done it. If I'd said to myself, "Screw it. I'm going to let all those people down there live."
HAROLD
They were enemies. We were at war.
LOOSELEAF
Yeah, Jesus-but wars would be a lot better, I think, if guys would say to themselves sometimes, "Jesus-I'm not going to do that to the enemy. That's too much." You could have been the manufacturer of that violin there, even though you don't know how to make a violin, just by not busting it up. I could have been the father of all those people in Nagasaki, and the mother, too, just by not dropping the bomb.
[Pause]
I sent 'em to Heaven instead-and I don't think there is one.
♥ PENELOPE
Just one favor.
HAROLD
Money? There's plenty of that. Mildred got the brewery. You'll probably get the baseball team.
PENELOPE
I want you to tell me that you loved me once.
[HAROLD is about to dismiss this request majestically, but PENELOPE cuts him off with a sharp, dangerous warning]
I mean it! I must have that, and so must Paul. Tell him that he was conceived in love, even though you hate me now. Tell both of us that somewhere in our lives was love.
♥ PENELOPE
He's afraid of you, Harold. He knew you'd want to fight him. He doesn't know anything about fighting. He hates pain.
HAROLD
And you, a supposedly healthy woman, do not detest him for his cowardice?
PENELOPE
It seems highly intelligent to me.
HAROLD
What kind of a country has this become? The men wear beards and refuse to fight-and the women adore them. America's days of greatness are over. It has drunk the blue soup.
PENELOPE
Blue soup?
HAROLD
An Indian narcotic we were forced to drink. It put us in a haze-a honey-colored haze which was lavender around the edge. We laughed, we sang, we snoozed. When a bird called, we answered back. Every living thing was our brother or our sister, we thought. Looseleaf stepped on a cockroach six inches long, and we cried. We had a funeral that went on for five days-for the cockroach! I sang "Oh Promise Me." Can you imagine? Where the hell did I ever learn the words to "Oh Promise Me"? Looseleaf delivered a lecture on maintenance procedures for the hydraulic system of a B-36. All the time we were drinking more blue soup, more blue soup! Never stopped drinking blue soup. Blue soup all the time. We'd go out after food in that honey-colored haze, and everything that was edible had a penumbra of lavender.
PENELOPE
Sounds quite beautiful.
HAROLD
[Angered]
Beautiful, you say? It wasn't life, it wasn't death-it wasn't anything!
[Anger still mounting]
Beautiful? Seven years gone-
[Snapping his fingers]
like that, like that! Seven years of silliness and random dreams! Seven years of nothingness, when there could have been so much!
PENELOPE
Like what?
HAROLD
[Becoming dangerously physical, seizing a battle-ax]
Action! Interaction! Give and take! Challenge and response!
[He splits a coffee table with the ax]
♥ HAROLD
Welcome to manhood, you little sparrowfart! Load that gun!
PAUL
[Bleatingly]
Dad-
HAROLD
Too late! It's man to man now. Protecting your mother from me, are you? Protect her!
PENELOPE
He's a child!
HAROLD
With an iron penis three feet long. Load it, boy.
♥ PENELOPE
[Wonderingly]
But it's all balled up in your head with death. The highest honor is death. When you talk of these animals, one by one, you don't just talk of killing them. You honored them with death. Harold-it is not honor to be killed.
HAROLD
If you've lived a good life, fought well-
PENELOPE
It's still just death, the absence of life-no honor at all. It's worse than the blue soup by far-that nothingness. To you, though, it's the honor that crowns them all.
HAROLD
May I continue with the rearing of my son?
[To PAUL]
Load that gun!
[PAUL shakes his head]
Load it!
[PAUL refuses]
Then speak, by God! Can you fight with words?
PAUL
I don't want to fight you.
HAROLD
Get mad! Tell me you don't like the way I treat your mother! Tell me you wish I'd never come home!
PAUL
[Weakly]
It's your house, Dad.
HAROLD
[Throwing up his hands]
Everybody simply evaporates!
[Including the audience, inviting it to share his indignation]
There are great issues to be fought out here-or to be argued, at least. The enemy, the champion of all who oppose me, is in East St. Louis with his mother and his aunt! I have so far done battle with a woman and a child and a violin.
PENELOPE
The old heroes are going to have to get used to this, Harold-the new heroes who refuse to fight. They're trying to save the planet. There's no time for battle, no point to battle anymore.
HAROLD
I feel mocked, insulted, with no sort of satisfaction in prospect. We don't have to fight with steel. I can fight with words. I'm not an inarticulate ape, you know, who grabs a rock for want of a vocabulary. Call him up in East St. Louis, Penelope. Tell him to come here.
PENELOPE
No.
HAROLD
[Emptily, turning away]
No.
[Pause. He contemplates PAUL]
And my son, the only son of Harold Ryan-he's going to grow up to be a vanisher, too?
PENELOPE
I don't know. I hope he never hunts. I hope he never kills another human being.
HAROLD
[To PAUL, quietly]
You hope this, too?
PAUL
I don't know what I hope. But I don't think you care what I hope, anyway. You don't know me.
[Indicating PENELOPE]
You don't know her, either. I don't think you know anybody. You talk to everybody just the same.
HAROLD
I'm talking to you gently now.
PAUL
Yeah. But it's going to get loud again.
PENELOPE
He's right, Harold. To you, we're simply pieces in a game-this one labeled "woman," that one labeled "son." There is no piece labeled "enemy" and you are confused.
♥ HAROLD
This is man to man.
WOODLY
It's healer to killer. Is that the same thing?
HAROLD
What brought you back?
WOODLY
The same hairy, humorless old gods who move you from hither to yon. "Honor," if you like.
HAROLD
[To PENELOPE[
He's a champion after all.
WOODLY
Of the corpses and cripples you create for our instruction-when all we can learn from them is this: how cruel you are.
PENELOPE
This is suicide.
[To PAUL]
Go get the police.
HAROLD
Stop!
[PAUL stops]
There's going to be no bloodshed here; I know how he'll fight-the only way he can fight: with words. The truth.
[To WOODLY]
Am I correct?
WOODLY
Yes.
♥ HAROLD
You intend to crack my eardrums with your voice? Will I bleed from my every orifice? Who will clean up this awful mess?
WOODLY
We'll find out now, won't we?
PENELOPE
No, we won't. No matter how it begins, it will end in death. Because it always does. Isn't that always how it ends, Harold-in death?
HAROLD
There has to be a threat of some sort, nobility of some sort, glamor of some sort, sport of some sort. These elements are lacking.
♥ HAROLD
[To WOODLY]
Whoever has the gun, you see, gets to tell everybody else exactly what to do. It's the American way.
♥ HAROLD
Something seems to have happened to my self-respect.
WOODLY
And the hell with it. It was so tragically irrelevant, so preposterously misinformed.
HAROLD
The new hero is you.
WOODLY
I hate crowds, and I have no charisma-
HAROLD
You're too modest.
WOODLY
But the new hero will be a man of science and of peace-like me. He'll disarm you, of course. No more guns, no more guns.
HAROLD
Was I ever of use?
WOODLY
Never. For when you began to kill for the fun of it, you became the chief source of agony of mankind.
♥ WOODLY
[Sickened]
Oh God-you're really going to kill me.
HAROLD
It won't hurt as much as the sting of a bumblebee. Heaven is very much like Paradise, they say. You'll like it there.
WOODLY
Can I beg for mercy-on my knees?
HAROLD
If you want to be found that way.
WOODLY
What is this thing that kills me?
HAROLD
Man, as man was meant to be-a vengeful ape who murders. He will soon be extinct. It's time, it's time.
WOODLY
Don't shoot.
HAROLD
I've enjoyed being man.