第4章
《THE CATCHER IN THE RYE(麦田里的守望者英文版)》章节:第4章,宠文网网友提供全文无弹窗免费在线阅读。!
old Spencer said. He said it
pretty tough, too, for him. "How many subjects did you carry this term?"
"Five, sir."
"Five. And how many are you failing in?"
"Four." I moved my ass a little bit on the bed. It was the hardest bed I ever sat on.
"I passed English all right," I said, "because I had all that Beowulf and Lord Randal My
Son stuff when I was at the Whooton School. I mean I didn't have to do any work in
English at all hardly, except write compositions once in a while."
He wasn't even listening. He hardly ever listened to you when you said
something.
"I flunked you in history because you knew absolutely nothing."
"I know that, sir. Boy, I know it. You couldn't help it."
"Absolutely nothing," he said over again. That's something that drives me crazy.
When people say something twice that way, after you admit it the first time. Then he said
it three times. "But absolutely nothing. I doubt very much if you opened your textbook
even once the whole term. Did you? Tell the truth, boy."
"Well, I sort of glanced through it a couple of times," I told him. I didn't want to
hurt his feelings. He was mad about history.
"You glanced through it, eh?" he said--very sarcastic. "Your, ah, exam paper is
over there on top of my chiffonier. On top of the pile. Bring it here, please."
It was a very dirty trick, but I went over and brought it over to him--I didn't have
any alternative or anything. Then I sat down on his cement bed again. Boy, you can't
imagine how sorry I was getting that I'd stopped by to say good-by to him.
He started handling my exam paper like it was a turd or something. "We studied
the Egyptians from November 4th to December 2nd," he said. "You chose to write about
them for the optional essay question. Would you care to hear what you had to say?"
"No, sir, not very much," I said.
He read it anyway, though. You can't stop a teacher when they want to do
something. They just do it.
The Egyptians were an ancient race of Caucasians residing in
one of the northern sections of Africa. The latter as we all
know is the largest continent in the Eastern Hemisphere.
I had to sit there and listen to that crap. It certainly was a dirty trick.
The Egyptians are extremely interesting to us today for
various reasons. Modern science would still like to know what
the secret ingredients were that the Egyptians used when they
wrapped up dead people so that their faces would not rot for
innumerable centuries. This interesting riddle is still quite
a challenge to modern science in the twentieth century.
He stopped reading and put my paper down. I was beginning to sort of hate him.
"Your essay, shall we say, ends there," he said in this very sarcastic voice. You wouldn't
en8848
think such an old guy would be so sarcastic and all. "However, you dropped me a little
note, at the bottom of the page," he said.
"I know I did," I said. I said it very fast because I wanted to stop him before he
started reading that out loud. But you couldn't stop him. He was hot as a firecracker.
DEAR MR. SPENCER [he read out loud]. That is all I know about
the Egyptians. I can't seem to get very interested in them
although your lectures are very interesting. It is all right
with me if you flunk me though as I am flunking everything
else except English anyway.
Respectfully yours, HOLDEN CAULFIELD.
He put my goddam paper down then and looked at me like he'd just beaten hell
out of me in ping-pong or something. I don't think I'll ever forgive him for reading me
that crap out loud. I wouldn't've read it out loud to him if he'd written it--I really wouldn't.
In the first place, I'd only written that damn note so that he wouldn't feel too bad about
flunking me.
"Do you blame me for flunking you, boy?"