第42章
《THE CATCHER IN THE RYE(麦田里的守望者英文版)》章节:第42章,宠文网网友提供全文无弹窗免费在线阅读。!
Oh, I'm so glad!" the one with the glasses, that taught English, said.
"What have you read this year? I'd be very interested to know." She was really nice.
"Well, most of the time we were on the Anglo-Saxons. Beowulf, and old Grendel,
and Lord Randal My Son, and all those things. But we had to read outside books for extra
credit once in a while. I read The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy, and Romeo and
Juliet and Julius--"
"Oh, Romeo and Juliet! Lovely! Didn't you just love it?" She certainly didn't
sound much like a nun.
"Yes. I did. I liked it a lot. There were a few things I didn't like about it, but it was
quite moving, on the whole."
"What didn't you like about it? Can you remember?" To tell you the truth, it was
sort of embarrassing, in a way, to be talking about Romeo and Juliet with her. I mean that
play gets pretty sexy in some parts, and she was a nun and all, but she asked me, so I
discussed it with her for a while. "Well, I'm not too crazy about Romeo and Juliet," I said.
"I mean I like them, but--I don't know. They get pretty annoying sometimes. I mean I felt
much sorrier when old Mercutio got killed than when Romeo and Juliet did. The think is,
I never liked Romeo too much after Mercutio gets stabbed by that other man--Juliet's
cousin--what's his name?"
"Tybalt."
"That's right. Tybalt," I said--I always forget that guy's name. "It was Romeo's
fault. I mean I liked him the best in the play, old Mercutio. I don't know. All those
Montagues and Capulets, they're all right--especially Juliet--but Mercutio, he was--it's
hard to explain. He was very smart and entertaining and all. The thing is, it drives me
crazy if somebody gets killed-- especially somebody very smart and entertaining and all--
and it's somebody else's fault. Romeo and Juliet, at least it was their own fault."
"What school do you go to?" she asked me. She probably wanted to get off the
subject of Romeo and Juliet.
I told her Pencey, and she'd heard of it. She said it was a very good school. I let it
pass, though. Then the other one, the one that taught history and government, said they'd
better be running along. I took their check off them, but they wouldn't let me pay it. The
one with the glasses made me give it back to her.
"You've been more than generous," she said. "You're a very sweet boy." She
certainly was nice. She reminded me a little bit of old Ernest Morrow's mother, the one I
met on the train. When she smiled, mostly. "We've enjoyed talking to you so much," she
said.
I said I'd enjoyed talking to them a lot, too. I meant it, too. I'd have enjoyed it
even more though, I think, if I hadn't been sort of afraid, the whole time I was talking to
them, that they'd all of a sudden try to find out if I was a Catholic. Catholics are always
trying to find out if you're a Catholic. It happens to me a lot, I know, partly because my
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last name is Irish, and most people of Irish descent are Catholics. As a matter of fact, my
father was a Catholic once. He quit, though, when he married my mother. But Catholics
are always trying to find out if you're a Catholic even if they don't know your last name. I
knew this one Catholic boy, Louis Shaney, when I was at the Whooton School. He was
the first boy I ever met there. He and I were sitting in the first two chairs outside the
goddam infirmary, the day school opened, waiting for our physicals, and we sort of
struck up this conversation about tennis. He was quite interested in tennis, and so was I.
He told me he went to the Nationals at Forest Hills every summer, and I told him I did
too, and then we talked about certain hot-shot tennis players for quite a while. He knew
quite a lot about tennis, for a kid his age. He really did. Then, after a while, right in the
middle of the goddam conversation, he asked me, "Did you happen to notice where the
Catholic church is in town, by any chance?"