The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity

by Kurt Vonnegut

  I found myself sobbing uncontrollably, scared to death they were going to catch me at it and lock me up in that little room again.

  I was crying because, among other things, I was doubtful that they were ever going to let me out. They were very much “them” and I was cracking under the strain of trying so hard to be patient and not knowing how long I’d have to keep it up. Sure enough they caught me at it. “I suppose it’s not manly to cry. I suppose this means I’m nuts.” But they didn’t zap me into the little room. The nurse even sat down and comforted me some and said crying was OK. It didn’t mean I was crazy. It didn’t mean I wasn’t a man. I cried with her holding my hand for a while.

  Then Ray showed up. I think the nurse asked me if I’d be more comfortable talking with a man.

  I had seen Ray around the hospital before but never really talked with him. He looked maybe a couple of years older than I. He was my version of what I would have been had it not been for the war, dope, the draft, America, Virginia, whatever this biological condition was that they kept talking about, and a few other things. I too would have been a bright, earnest, clean-shaven young man, very possibly a clinical psychologist. My feelings toward him were a mixture of envy and superiority. He seemed so naïve. I didn’t know whether to thank or hate whatever it was that had me turn out differently from him.

  “A whole lot of shit happened to me all at once.”

  The talk I had with Ray wasn’t all that extraordinary except that it was the first time I had talked about things in a down-to-earth way. He was the first person whose attitudes toward what I was going through seemed remotely related to mine. I felt that he liked me. It was the first time I had felt that in a long time, too. I didn’t feel threatened or abused or greatly misunderstood.

  “My woman went off and balled another man… My parents are breaking up…

  “A whole lot of shit happened all at once,” was what it all boiled down to.

  I talked some about the hospital and not understanding at all how the score was being kept. What sort of things did I do that were considered crazy? What sort of things did I have to do to be considered well?

  I talked about feeling horny and wishing there was some way to get laid. I talked about there being nothing to do and wishing I could at least take some long walks. I asked him why they had held me down and shaved off my beard and cut my hair. Wasn’t that maybe not such a hot thing to do to someone who was having a hard enough time identifying with his body and trying to believe this wasn’t a repressive institution, hostile to everything that had ever meant anything to me?

  He offered to take me on a walk the next day. It was a nice walk. We talked about a lot of things. I loosened up and felt much better.

  After my walk and talk with Ray, I was given unlimited afternoon and evening visitor privileges, and allowed to go out with friends for whole afternoons. Simon, Kathy, Jack and André from Stevens Street all dropped in from time to time, never more than two or three at once. Sometimes I’d go on a picnic with Virginia and whoever else was visiting. I was still feeling shaky but less and less so, and I was more and more eager to get the hell out of the hospital.

  My mother went to visit an ailing uncle in California. She and I agreed that I was in good enough shape that she didn’t really need to hang around any more. We were all just waiting for that slowpoke Dale to realize I was OK and let me go.

  And then, seemingly out of nowhere, all hell broke loose again and I was back in that fucking little room. No visitors, no clothes, no one would even talk to me through the little hole, no nothing.

  McNice came in one day with three of the meanest orderlies. I had been utterly alone for days.

  “I think I’m dead, I’m dead, aren’t I?” pleading and grasping for his arm.

  “Yes, I know you feel like that.” He left quickly. The orderlies held me down and jabbed another needle in my ass.

  The third crackup was different from the first two. In lots of ways it was the worst.

  Not much fun or funny happened the third time I cracked. Maybe it was because I cracked in the hospital and there was no running room, no slack, no chance for the Eden Express to get up a decent head of steam.

  Maybe it was because I really didn’t want to go crazy then. I really tried to stop it and couldn’t. Both other times there had seemed to be some point in it.

  I was running out of excuses. My father hadn’t committed suicide. Virginia was OK. My mother was OK. Spring was on schedule. Life seemed to be going on. I had taken all those silly little pills. I hadn’t touched anything remotely dopelike. I had followed all doctor’s orders faithfully and here I was back in that fucking little room again.

  Maybe it was just the repetitiveness of it. Once was an accident, twice a coincidence, but three? A habit. Three strikes. Three points define a circle. A closing one. There had been a few weeks between cracks one and two and just a little over a week between two and three. This was how I was going to spend my life.

  My suicide attempts became more frequent, more pathetic, and more sincere. Before I had danced with death, loved death, hated death, teased death, been teased by death. Now I was rolling on the floor in my own shit, clumsily trying to strangle myself. Before there had been elements of hope and nobility. By dying I could help others live, bring back the sun, teach some truth. Now I just wanted to die.

  I was running out of material. I had been back and forth over my life so often and so thoroughly there was nothing left. I had been Hitler, Napoleon, Lincoln, Jesus, Joan of Arc, Bob Dylan, Billy the Kid, Bach, Wagner, Shakespeare, and Nietzsche, to name a few. I had been through every novel I had ever read and a few I hadn’t at least twice. Movies likewise. I had said everything I ever wanted to say to everyone I wanted to say it to. I had made love to everyone and everything and been made love to in turn and fucked and been fucked. Longings I hadn’t dreamed of had been fulfilled. I had no more unfinished business.

  POWER. Just before my third crack-up, I learned that Joe had landed in a nut house and was going through electroshock. It was another hint that “delusions of grandeur” was at least partly a misnomer. I remembered that Warren, the aspiring guru, had also wound up in a nut house shortly after his encounter with me. I felt shitty as hell about Joe being in the hospital. Warren, I felt, had it coming.

  Both had played somewhat similar roles in my crack-ups. They were both primary males. Each had been some strange combination of father, devil, and God. Both had tried to cure me. I had had the feeling that these guys were both trying to use cosmic clout. My reaction in both cases was the same: No hard feelings, fellas, but this time you’ve bitten off more than you can chew.

  Uncanny feats of memory, physical strength, spiritual power, agility: I’d be inclined to dismiss them if there weren’t so many instances supported by people who were there. In fact, I’d feel much more comfortable about the whole thing if I could dismiss all the spooky stuff as delusions.

  Maybe it was just that I was able to create an atmosphere which destroyed people’s customary expectations, an atmosphere in which miracles could flourish. Anyway, it spooked the hell out of me. I even managed to spook a few doctors and nurses. That’s impressive spooking, considering the extensive spookproofing those people go through and all the antispook drugs they pumped me full of.

  Somehow I managed to stumble onto some tricks of the holy-man trade. Call it cosmic disability compensation, a bonus dividend accruable on ego disinvestiture.

  I doubt that I had much to do one way or another with the California earthquake or what was being broadcast on the TV or any of the numberless other things I felt responsible for. But I wouldn’t have taken such bizarre notions as seriously as I did if it hadn’t been for the smaller-scale miracles that were undeniably real. My notions of what I was and was not capable of were blown to smithereens.

  I had some help from my friends. In folie à deux a crazy person is able to convince another person of his bizarre notions. Why not folie à cinq, six, sept, huit
? My smaller-scale miracles worked on those around me much the same way they worked on me. When I started acting like I could control the weather or raise the dead, they couldn’t rule it out.

  I hate to think I’ve come this far, carefully nourishing my credibility every inch of the way, only to blow it this close to the end. But if I were asked to swear on all that’s holy that I had no extraordinary powers, I could not do it. As uncomfortable as it made me, I had extraordinary powers.

  I have no such powers now. I hope I never have them again. I’m glad there isn’t very much concrete evidence to back up the contention that I had such powers then. Mostly there are just some eye-witness accounts a good cross-examiner could make look pretty silly.

  The worst thing about the powers was how little control I had over them. They coincided with the blanks. The more rational control I had, the less power I had. So the powers were to me a powerlessness. I didn’t have the faintest idea of what went on in those blanks. I’d come out of them and by the way people were looking at me and the questions they asked, I got bits and pieces of it. The bits and pieces added up to power, power I doubt that I would have trusted myself with even if I had been able to control it.

  The power phenomenon had a neat, almost ceremonious ending which sets it apart from other things. The voices, visions, misperceptions, irrationality, bizarre behavior all faded fuzzily, much the way they had come. Milder versions still come to visit occasionally. I’d just as soon they didn’t, but as long as the powers stay away, I don’t mind too much.

  It was a few days before Easter. I was in the little windowless room. Why I was there, when I was allowed to go to the bathroom, when food came, when pills came, were all a complete mystery. I had lost any hope that anything nice was going to happen. No one had come to visit me forever. No nurse, orderly, doctor, patient, no nobody wanted anything to do with me. I was hopeless.

  But then a miracle. The door opened.

  “Bring him in here.” A voice that can open doors. A voice that people with keys pay attention to. It was a lot more than could be said for my voice. And what’s more, a voice that seemed interested in me.

  I was taken into the room diagonally across the corridor. It had windows, curtains, flowers, paintings, books, paper, pens. It was all anyone could ever ask for.

  To whom do I owe this honor, this reprieve from windowless, everything elseless nothingness?

  I owed this honor to Wally.

  “Sit down, Mark.” I sat down. “My name’s Walter. Call me Wally.”

  “Wally? Wally? My roommate in prep school was called Wally. His last name was Walters. His father fell six stories onto a sidewalk but came out OK except for one leg being shorter than the other which gave him a limp.”

  Wally seemed to know all this and a lot more. I didn’t get a chance to find out how he knew all these things. I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. But he was answering so many questions there didn’t seem to be much reason to get a word in edgewise anyway.

  Most of what he said wouldn’t have made much sense to anyone but me. It would have been just another poor crazy person raving his brains out. What it boiled down to was that I was being divested of my power.

  “You’re not the conductor any more. Someone else is in charge of the train.” He seemed to be congratulating me for having done my part well and saying that now I could relax. He filled me in on lots of the places, people, and things I had been worried about. Told me that for the most part I had caught on beautifully, far better than anyone expected.

  He must have been listening to my ravings for the past few days. Maybe he just wanted me to shut up so he could get some sleep. He knew all the key words, all the themes, key players, etc., and how to put them together. It worked like a charm. I don’t think I did any raving after that. I felt great relief. My prayers had been answered. I had no more power. I could not be just one of the fellas.

  Meals started coming more regularly. Orderlies and nurses stopped beating me up and sticking needles in my ass. They let me out of the little room more and more. And then my mother showed up and then Virginia.

  Wally was gone the day after our visit. I tried to find out more about him but no one seemed to know much. According to the nurses he was just another patient.

  Easter morning I was sitting just outside the little room rolling a cigarette, still trying to put together some of the things Wally had said and who the hell he was.

  A breeze came through the ward. It smelled like spring. It was the first smell I had noticed in months that hadn’t been death.

  Something was saying good-by to me.

  “You’re still smoking cigarettes.” It wasn’t the voices exactly.

  It wanted me to notice more than the fact that I still smoked cigarettes. It wanted me to recognize myself.

  “Cigarettes? Sportsman? Export? Tobacco? Papers?” It was chuck-ling, almost laughing, feigning amazed disbelief, making sure there were no hard feelings. I almost felt an arm around my shoulder.

  “Good-by, sport. Who would ever guess?” And it was gone.

  Tears started streaming down my face. They tasted sweet I sat there smoking through the tears, tasting them both, and how good they were.

  Two nurses came up and asked if I was all right.

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, yes. Everything is going to be OK from now on.”

  They seemed to believe me. They seemed as relieved as was and on the verge of tears themselves. They offered some tea and hot cross buns. I accepted.

  BIOCHEMISTRY. At first my friends and I were doubtful that there was any medical problem. It was all politics and philosophy. The hospital bit was just grasping at straws when else failed.

  It took quite a bit to convince us that anything as pedestrian as biochemistry was relevant to something as profound and poetic as what I was going through. For me to admit the possibility that I might not have gone nuts again had they given me pills when I left was a tremendous concession.

  It’s such a poetic affliction from inside and out, it’s not hard to see how people have assumed that schizophrenia must have poetic causes and that any therapy would have to be poetic as well. A lot of my despair of ever getting well was based on the improbability of finding a poet good enough to deal with all that had happened to me. It’s hard to say when I accepted the notion that the problem was biochemical, it went so hard against everything I had been taught about mental illness. At the farm we were coming more and more to seeing physical illness as psychological. A cold or slipping with a hammer and smashing a finger was psychological. Schizophrenia was biochemical?

  But the idea had a lot to recommend it. The hopelessness of dealing with it on a poetic level was the start. The doctor who had apparently been able to bring me out of it was working from a biochemical model. According to most authorities who believed in this or that poetic theory, my case was hopeless. The biochemists said otherwise. The poets in the business gave little hope and huge bills. The chemists fixed me up with embarrassingly inexpensive, simple nonprescription pills. Vitamins mostly. The biochemists said no one was to blame. The poets all had notions that required someone’s having made some mistake.

  The AMA had no particular affection for megavitamin therapy. That was something. Anything the AMA hated couldn’t be all bad.

  The more research I studied, the more impressed I was. I remain converted.

  It’s impossible to say whether full insight and understanding would help a schizophrenic or not. We all have vastly greater capacities for experience than for understanding. A hundred of the best shrinks in the world working day and night for years would be doing well to scratch the surface of a day in anyone’s life. Schizophrenia multiplies the problem manyfold and disability makes the problem more pressing. Since there is always so much more to be understood and dealt with, the notion that understanding will clear up the problem can’t be tested.

  They used electroshock on me. There was nothing I or my parents or any of my friends could do to stop them.
I was scared to death of it. It probably did me some good.

  I was given no advance warning about it. One morning my breakfast tray didn’t show up and I knew what that meant. The rationality of my efforts to avoid it is the best proof I have that I was already in pretty good shape. I talked to the nurses perfectly logically. I remembered phone numbers and talked with my mother and then Virginia, trying to get them to do something about it. I think it was another case of hierarchy lag. The nurses knew I was OK, the orderlies knew I was OK, but the doctors who gave orders for such things hadn’t caught on. They were several days behind.

  I thought the purpose of it was to make me forget things that were bothering me. I composed a series of ten rhyming couplets that included all the most awful things that had ever happened to me and scratched the first letter of each line in the wall behind my mattress. For the experience itself, I was knocked out with sodium pentothal. Just before I went under I remember saying to the doctor in charge that I didn’t think this was such a good idea. When I came to, about fifteen minutes later, I was disoriented for a bit but remembered my ten rhyming couplets without having to look at the wall. Except for a bitch of a headache, I felt fine.

  I think that maybe a lot of the horror people feel about shock comes from confusing its effects with those of mental illness itself, or some of the other medications often used. The dull, glazed look, the amnesia and confusion found in mental patients may be caused by a number of things, but electroshock is what people usually blame because it sounds so awful.

  If I found myself going under again, I’d choose electroshock ahead of a lot of things. My only complaint is that they made no attempt to clear up my misconceptions about it and that they didn’t use it earlier. I really didn’t need it by the time they got around to using it. This isn’t to say that shock isn’t grossly misused in some situations.