| 1 |
here would be no food until Albany, when the New York section, with its diner, was hooked to this train. So I went into the lounge car and had a beer. I packed my pipe and set it on fire and savored the effulgent blur of lazy reflection that pipe smoke induces in me. I blew myself a cocoon of it, and it hung in clouds around me, so comforting and thick that the girl who entered the car and sat down opposite seemed wraithlike, a child lost in fog. |
| 2 |
She put three bulging plastic bags on her table, then tucked her legs under her. She folded her hands in her lap and stared stonily down the car. Her intensity made me alert. At the next table a man was engrossed in a Matt Helm story, and near him, two linesmen?they wore their tools?were playing poker. There was a boy with a short-wave radio, but his racket was drowned by the greater racket of the train. |
| 3 |
A man in a uniform?a train man?was stirring coffee; there was an old greasy lantern at his feet. At the train man's table, but not speaking, a fat woman sneaked bites at a candy bar. She did it guiltily, as if she feared that at any moment someone would shout, Put that thing away! "You mind not smoking?" It was the girl with the bags and the stony gaze. I looked for a NO SMOKING sign. There was none. |
| 4 |
I said, "Is it bother- ing you?" She said, "It kills my eyes." I put my pipe down and took a swig of beer. She said, "That stuff is poison." Instead of looking at her I looked at her bags. I said, "They say pea- nuts cause cancer." She grinned vengefully at me and said, "Pumpkin seeds." I turned away. "And these are almonds." I considered relighting my pipe. "And this is cashews." Her name was Wendy. |
| 5 |
Her face was an oval of innocence, devoid of any expression of inquiry. Her prettiness was as remote from my idea of beauty as homeliness and consequently was not at all interesting. But I could not blame her for that: it is hard for anyone to be interesting at twenty. She was a student, she said, and on her way to Ohio. She wore an Indian skirt, and lumberjack boots, and the weight of her leather jacket made her appear round shouldered. |
| 6 |
"What do you study, Wendy?" "Eastern philosophy. I'm into Zen." Oh, Christ, I thought. But she was still talking. She had been learn ing about the Hole, or perhaps the Whole?it still made no sense to me. She hadn't read all that much, she said, and her teachers were lousy. But she thought that once she got to Japan or Burma she would find out a lot more. She would be in Ohio for a few more years. The thing about Buddhism, she said, was that it involved your whole life. |
| 7 |
Like everything you did?it was Buddhism. And everything that happened in the world?that was Buddhism, too. "Not politics," I said. "That's not Buddhism. It's just crooked." "That's what everyone says, but they're wrong. I've been reading Marx. Marx is a kind of Buddhist." Was she pulling my leg? I said, "Marx was about as Buddhist as this beer can. But anyway, I thought we were talking about politics. |
| 8 |
It's the opposite of thought?it's selfish, it's narrow, it's dishonest. It's all half truths and short cuts. Maybe a few Buddhist politicians would change things, but in Burma, where . . ." 42 Chapter 2 / Narration "Take this," she said, and motioned to her bags of nuts. "I'm a raw- foodist-nondairy vegetarian. You're probably right about politics being all wrong. I think people are doing things all wrong?I mean, completely. |
| 9 |
They eat junk. They consume junk. Look at them!" The fat lady was still eating her candy bar, or possibly another candy bar. "They're just destroying themselves and they don't even know it. They're smoking themselves to death. Look at the smoke in this car." I said, "Some of that is my smoke." "It kills my eyes." " 'Nondairy/ " I said. "That means you don't drink milk." "Right." "What about cheese? |
| 10 |
Cheese is nice. And you've got to have cal- cium." "I get my calcium in cashews," she said. Was this true? "Anyway milk gives me mucus. Milk is the biggest mucus-producer there is." "I didn't know that." "I used to go through a box of Kleenex a day." "A box. That's quite a lot." "It was the milk. It made mucus/' she said. "My nose used to run like you wouldn't believe." "Is that why people's noses run? |
| |
… |
Комментарии