The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity

by Kurt Vonnegut

  The bar was closing. We hugged our new friend good-by and Simon and I went and pissed on the tippy-top last little bit of pavement of Highway 101.

  On to the Prior Road commune to crash. I had put it off as long as I could but everything was closed and Simon was very tired.

  We were always welcome at the commune. It was a kindred place with kindred people and kindred dreams.

  Was Virginia there? It was possible. There was a red Microbus in the driveway with California plates. We opened the door. It was dark. There were a lot of people crashed on the floor.

  Softly, “Could we crash on the floor?”

  Softly, “Sure.”

  If Virginia was there she didn’t say anything. Maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t, but I wasn’t going to make a big deal asking around. Besides, this was maybe her last night with Vincent or whoever she was with before she came back to the farm and me. I felt like an intruder, so I just lay down trying to be as unobtrusive as possible.

  The sound of very gentle lovemaking came to me while I lay there, and a soft female voice: “We should have done that a long time ago.” Was it Virginia’s voice? I listened closely but there was no more. Everything was quiet.

  A HALF-DREAM. I am in heaven, where the senselessness of pain is clear. The feeling is of peace and fullness. There’s a slight giddiness just below my chest. The magic place of no shadows. Then a sharp pain in my foot, a small bump on the sole, between my toes, like a plantar’s wart. Around it tender and sore but there is no sensation in the bump itself. Picking at it. Little by little I separate it from the surrounding skin. It’s a plug about a quarter-inch across. I pull at it. Pain. It seems to have some sort of roots reaching into my foot. I adjust to the pain and continue to pull at it. It starts to come. The pain very intense but strangely almost pleasurable. Amazed by the size of the thing and how I hadn’t noticed it earlier. I’ve pulled about six inches of foreign growth out of my foot, and there’s no end in sight. A feeling of relief, making my foot all warm and tingly; the more I pull out, the higher the warmth and relief spreads. I pull another six inches and panic for a moment. What if this is all there is? What will be left once I get this thing out? But the gentle strong feeling of warmth and relief reassure me I am doing the right thing and I continue extricating this foreign growth from my system. After each six inches or so I rest, basking in the warmth and relief, letting each part of my body feel its new freedom, past my knee, up to my thigh. There seems to be a particularly tight concentration around my groin that makes it feel all the better when I pull it out. Down my left leg, until my left toes turn warm and free, and up my torso, bringing peace and warmth to my belly and my lower back. At my solar plexus the resistance increases again. I feel the roots pulling on my heart and stop, but only for a moment. “I’ve gone this far, what the fuck.” Feelings of warmth and strength make me weep for joy. I can feel the root tentacles being pulled through my whole body: out it comes, more and more. I am ecstatic as the peace passes up my throat, over my mouth, and through my nose to the top of my head. Ecstasy.

  That’s what all the rushes of fear and pain were. Just getting free of the shit. Nothing but nothing is going to turn me around. Pain? Fear? Fuck ’em, this shit has got to go. I’ve seen heaven and nothing’s gonna turn me around. What is it that wants to turn me around and make me crawl back into believing all the sham about pain being unavoidable, utopia impossible? I’m a freight train, baby, don’t give me no side track, no. I want your main line, baby. Climb aboard the Eden Express. This train, this train is comin’ through. THIS TRAIN IS BOUND FOR GLORY.

  It was mostly out of politeness I had held off for so long. Not wanting to make other people feel lonely, not wanting to have people look at me funny. I had been convinced that something like the Eden Express existed for some time.

  I stopped being polite because the things that had predicated my politeness were simply no longer true. Time was the big thing. We were out of time.

  DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT. Thank God I screamed. I came within an ace of waiting too long but at the last moment I got my shit together and came through in the clutch. What would have happened had I not screamed out I wasn’t sure. It would have been the death of something. Maybe just the end of me and a few friends, but maybe the end of the world or worse. But I did scream. I didn’t go gentle into that black night, blackly into that good night, or goodly into that gentle night.

  “STOP—FREEZE—NOBODY MOVE A MUSCLE. IT’S HAPPENING!” I reached out and grabbed Simon’s arm. My eyes were closed. I was in a cold sweat. “DON’T ASK ME HOW I KNOW. THERE ISN’T TIME. JUST DO AS I SAY. I KNOW. THE RAIN HAS STOPPED.” It was only fair to give out a few clues, enough so that they would know that I knew and do what I said. The rain’s stopping definitely had something to do with it.

  It might seem strange to tell a roomful of sleeping people to not move a muscle, especially a roomful of sleeping people you didn’t know. But it made sense. It made more sense than anything else in my life ever had. It wasn’t a night like any other night, or sleep like any other sleep.

  Maybe there’s not really anything extraordinary going on at all, but then again maybe these feelings are right. In any event, it’s best to cover all the bets. If nothing’s going on, someone will correct me.

  There was nothing to lose by acting and possibly a great deal to lose by not acting. So I acted.

  “It’s all right, Mark, we’re all here. Everything is going to be fine now.” I felt my hand being squeezed comfortingly and became aware that I was holding on to someone very hard. It wasn’t Simon’s voice or Simon’s hand. It was Gary Jackson.

  “And Mark?” Asking about my namesake.

  “Mark’s just fine. Don’t worry about it.” I felt tears of joy running down my face. My eyes were still closed. I was afraid opening them might wreck the magic of the moment. The danger was past, the nightmare over. That Gary was supposed to be in Morocco didn’t bother me much. Stranger things had happened in the past few days.

  “Boy, it sure got tense there toward the end,” I sighed, loosening up a little. “I really got pretty worried.

  “And Jessie? Joe? Genie? Tom? Bets? Bea…?” Asking about people from various periods of life.

  “Yes, we’re all here. Everybody’s fine. Don’t worry about it, just take it easy, Mark. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  “And Virginia? I want to see Virge. Where’s Virginia?” My eyes were still closed. I loved the idea of being in this warm comfy womb with all my friends, everyone I had ever loved. I was going to get to hold and touch and talk to them all in this new wonderful world. I wanted to start with Virginia. We had a lot to say to each other. We had been through so much shit together. And now in this big happy womb we could probably say things to each other we had never been able to say before.

  “We don’t know where Virginia is, Mark. Don’t think about her now.” This soured things some. Everyone else seemed to be here, where was she? Had she not made it through the shit-storm apocalypse? Was she a casualty? Were there others?

  “What happened to Virginia?” I pleaded.

  “We don’t know, Mark. It would probably be best if you didn’t think about Virginia right now.”

  “There was so much I wanted to tell her.” I was crying.

  “There’s nothing you can do about it, Mark. Try not to think about her.”

  “And the war in Vietnam?” I asked, trying valiantly to change the subject and also out of genuine curiosity. I wanted to know how everything had turned out. “And the whole race thing, and pollution, the ecology?”

  “Don’t worry about it, Mark. None of that stuff really matters now.” So all that is done and gone with, I reflected.

  “Gee, you know I really took all that stuff seriously.”

  “I know you did, Mark, but don’t worry about it, just relax and get some rest.”

  I lay back and tried to figure out how to make the best of my situation. The first problem was that I didn’t
really have a very clear idea of what my situation was, and since no one seemed to want to talk about it I didn’t see how I was going to figure it out.

  “Mark, this is Stan.” I felt someone take my hand.

  “Hi, Stan,” I said, still not opening my eyes.

  “He’s been there too. Maybe he can help you,” someone said.

  “Sure hope so,” I said. “I seem to be having trouble adjusting. Can I open my eyes?” Stan, Stan, I thought. Who the hell can Stan be? Stan Getz? If I was in some sort of eternity situation with Getz I might be able to adjust, but I would so much rather have had Coltrane around. But if Stan wanted to talk to me it was better than nothing.

  “You can open your eyes if you want,” said Stan.

  “Sure,” I said, trying to believe it as I opened my eyes slowly. I was ready to see almost anything. Angels and pearly gates wouldn’t have surprised me, but I was sort of half hoping to find myself in my bedroom in Barnstable. I looked around very cautiously, taking in as much as I could, like a little kid on Christmas morning. Everything was aglow with a soft light, but there was no new bicycle, no mommy, no daddy, not even Gary. Someone had lit a kerosene lamp and a few people were stirring around.

  Stan I had never seen before. He had long reddish hair and a beard and was sitting on his haunches holding my hand, completely naked. “Stan understands,” I said to myself over and over again.

  “What happened?” I asked, putting it as directly as possible.

  “We don’t know what happened, Mark. All we know is that for a time at least we must try to use less energy, so just try to relax.”

  I looked at Simon, who was beside me. He was dead. I had killed him. I had drained away all his energy.

  “Don’t cry,” Stan said gently.

  Crying was using up energy and if I wasn’t careful I would drain away all the energy. Everyone else was perfectly quiet. I looked at Stan pleadingly, sorry for what I had done and not being able to make it right. He quickly looked away from my eyes and I felt even worse, knowing that had our eyes met he might have been killed instantly.

  “Don’t worry, everything’s going to be all right. Is there anything you want?”

  “A cup of coffee?” I had no idea of what was possible or impossible, but a cup of hot coffee would sure taste good.

  Coffee was something that wasn’t grown within several thousand miles of us. It would never be a “natural” part of our lives. Coffee was a product of our exploitive imperialist system. At least I hadn’t asked for Coke. It would have been more cool, more peaceful, more soulful to ask for mint tea but I wasn’t really interested in mint tea. It was coffee I wanted.

  I watched another caveman violently and angrily smashing and splintering wood. I wondered what he was so pissed-off about. That I wanted coffee? That I had woken him up? That I was wasting so much of our limited energy, and all for a cup of coffee?

  “It’s all right, Stan. I really don’t need a cup of coffee.”

  “If you want a cup of coffee you can have some.” I was deeply touched by how much they were willing to sacrifice for me.

  “It’s really OK, I’ll be fine.” The woodcutter stopped. Peace came to the room again. “Thanks for everything, Stan.” I let go of his hand and closed my eyes again and pulled the sleeping bag over my head.

  I would draw deep into myself until I could talk, move around, without hurting anyone. I wasn’t going to drain any more precious energy.

  It wouldn’t have been very hard for me to do without coffee or cars or any of the other things in my life that were the product of so much pain for others. Sure, I had moved out to the farm to grow my own food, make my own house, do without cars, do without so much that was tied up with pain. But maybe if I had done more sooner, maybe if I had trusted and followed more what I knew was right, maybe energy wouldn’t be so desperately critical now, maybe Virginia would be here. Maybe.

  Like the Jews in concentration camps as the Nazis took out their gold teeth, we all stopped, froze, didn’t move a muscle, and were passed over for dead. We all became cells of a larger organism. There were billions of us. One of us would breathe and then another, each holding the spark of life for an instant and then passing it on. Playing a shellgame with our precious ember that would bring us all back to full being as soon as the danger had passed. What a brilliant strategy.

  But then it dawned on me who I was. I was Curiosity. What a terrible thing to be; Curiosity at the dawn of time. I couldn’t help myself, I knew I was going to fuck everything up.

  No one else was interested in talking about things. They didn’t even know what talking was yet. First I’d get them into language and from there build back all the old shit, just to see if I could do it, just because I was curious. As soon as I showed them about fire, the next thing you know I’d be trying to put a telephone together and fucking around with steam engines. If they had any sense at all they’d kill me now, before I go and wreck everything. But they probably wouldn’t have the faintest idea what I was talking about. I’d have to show them how to kill and then it would be too late. They’d be hooked.

  I remember things I’d read about Mu—Atlantis. They must have reached this point and then things started all over again in little caves just like this one, where someone screamed in time. How often had things started from scratch again? Was it different every time or always the same? How many ends had I been through? Was I making the same dumb mistakes time after time or was I making some sort of progress?

  I couldn’t help thinking things that made me want to laugh. Maybe if I had voted in the ’68 elections things would have turned out differently. Old rock-and-roll songs drifted through my head.

  After what seemed like years if not millennia, people started moving around some. I heard the sounds of someone building a fire and opened my eyes slowly. The sun was up and people were getting dressed. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. The sun had come up and life seemed to have survived. I felt a special warmth flowing through my body. Not because it was that important to save energy any more but just to savor life, I closed my eyes and reveled in it. We had made it.

  After a while I felt a hand gently shaking my shoulder. “It’s time to get up, Mark.” It was Simon’s voice. He was all right.

  If he had come back to life maybe everybody had come back. Maybe even Virginia was all right. I opened my eyes again and smiled at Simon.

  “Everything’s OK,” I said. Simon smiled. “Thank God that shit is over,” I said. Simon nodded and we embraced. It was sure good to be back. Good old Simon. Good old people. Good old sun. Good old planet.

  Just about everyone who had spent the night there had already left. One guy came back up to the house and said that our car was blocking his way. “You really from Massachusetts?” he asked. “Yup.” “Far out,” he said, and Simon and I gathered up our sleeping bags and headed out to the car.

  A CUP OF MU TEA. We went to the Marine Inn coffee shop to get a little breakfast. I’ll never forget Simon’s groan and horrified look when I ordered. “A cup of Mu tea, please.” It was exactly the right thing to do.

  “Mu tea? I’m not sure we have any of that,” the waitress replied. Another customer helped out. “Ain’t that just some sort of Chinese tea?” And she brought me a cup of Mu tea. It was probably just some magically transformed Tetley or Lipton.

  “Is the tea in the leaves or in the tongue?”

  I was trying out the new world and my new self. If I could get a cup of Mu tea in the Marine Inn, that was quite something. I mean, what do you have to have before you say “Miracle”?

  How could it be that everything made such perfect sense, that I was thinking so much, so well, feeling so much, so well, seeing so well, hearing so well, knowing so much, so well.

  That everything strange that had happened to me in the past few days was all in my head was a possibility but it didn’t seem to be very likely. Something very big was happening, and I was figuring it out as I went along.

  Part of the
confirmation that something really had happened was the price of tobacco. The last time I had been in town a tin of tobacco had cost $1.20 and now it was $1.80. The supermarket was very strange. There were no other customers in there. There didn’t seem to be very much left on the shelves. Did money mean anything any more? Did I have to pay for anything or could I just take whatever it was I wanted?

  It was very important not to run out of tobacco. I picked up as many tins as I could carry. Smoking was an important reminder of who I was. It was my clock. Cigarettes seemed to keep time. They had a continuity with the real world that I seemed to be losing. As long as I smoked cigarettes I was alive. As far as I knew, dead people didn’t smoke cigarettes.

  I was walking out of the store with seven or eight big cans of tobacco just as Simon walked in from the bank. He looked upset with me. “Mark, do you really need all that tobacco?”

  I felt slightly ashamed and defensive. Simon wasn’t a smoker, how could I expect him to understand? The manager of the supermarket was looking on with disbelief and maybe a little fear.

  “Mark, did you pay for these?”

  “No, Simon. I figured that if I was supposed to pay for them he would say something,” pointing to the manager. He was just staring, not about to interfere. I could have picked up a cash register and he would have just watched. The idea that this wild-eyed kid would just stroll into his store, pick up over ten dollars’ worth of tobacco, and walk out without the slightest pretense of hiding the stuff was too much.

  Simon talked me into putting most of the tobacco back. I kept one can and some papers and Simon paid for them.

  Imil riggle ugle roo. What I would like to know is why no one ever told me there was something like this. What I would like to know is what the fuck is going on.

  Skimmy zoo a loop de roo—the problem is what to do? What to do ought to do. I’ve always thought ’bout what to do and why to do what to do and not to do.