第44章
《THE CATCHER IN THE RYE(麦田里的守望者英文版)》章节:第44章,宠文网网友提供全文无弹窗免费在线阅读。!
"Who?" she said. All she had on was jeans and about twenty sweaters. You could
tell her mother made them for her, because they were lumpy as hell.
"Phoebe Caulfield. She lives on Seventy-first Street. She's in the fourth grade,
over at--"
"You know Phoebe?"
"Yeah, I'm her brother. You know where she is?"
"She's in Miss Callon's class, isn't she?" the kid said.
"I don't know. Yes, I think she is."
"She's prob'ly in the museum, then. We went last Saturday," the kid said.
"Which museum?" I asked her.
She shrugged her shoulders, sort of. "I don't know," she said. "The museum."
"I know, but the one where the pictures are, or the one where the Indians are?"
"The one where the Indians."
"Thanks a lot," I said. I got up and started to go, but then I suddenly remembered
it was Sunday. "This is Sunday," I told the kid.
She looked up at me. "Oh. Then she isn't."
She was having a helluva time tightening her skate. She didn't have any gloves on
or anything and her hands were all red and cold. I gave her a hand with it. Boy, I hadn't
had a skate key in my hand for years. It didn't feel funny, though. You could put a skate
key in my hand fifty years from now, in pitch dark, and I'd still know what it is. She
thanked me and all when I had it tightened for her. She was a very nice, polite little kid.
God, I love it when a kid's nice and polite when you tighten their skate for them or
something. Most kids are. They really are. I asked her if she'd care to have a hot
chocolate or something with me, but she said no, thank you. She said she had to meet her
friend. Kids always have to meet their friend. That kills me.
Even though it was Sunday and Phoebe wouldn't be there with her class or
anything, and even though it was so damp and lousy out, I walked all the way through the
park over to the Museum of Natural History. I knew that was the museum the kid with
the skate key meant. I knew that whole museum routine like a book. Phoebe went to the
same school I went to when I was a kid, and we used to go there all the time. We had this
teacher, Miss Aigletinger, that took us there damn near every Saturday. Sometimes we
looked at the animals and sometimes we looked at the stuff the Indians had made in
ancient times. Pottery and straw baskets and all stuff like that. I get very happy when I
think about it. Even now. I remember after we looked at all the Indian stuff, usually we
went to see some movie in this big auditorium. Columbus. They were always showing
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Columbus discovering America, having one helluva time getting old Ferdinand and
Isabella to lend him the dough to buy ships with, and then the sailors mutinying on him
and all. Nobody gave too much of a damn about old Columbus, but you always had a lot
of candy and gum and stuff with you, and the inside of that auditorium had such a nice
smell. It always smelled like it was raining outside, even if it wasn't, and you were in the
only nice, dry, cosy place in the world. I loved that damn museum. I remember you had
to go through the Indian Room to get to the auditorium. It was a long, long room, and you
were only supposed to whisper. The teacher would go first, then the class. You'd be two
rows of kids, and you'd have a partner. Most of the time my partner was this girl named
Gertrude Levine. She always wanted to hold your hand, and her hand was always sticky
or sweaty or something. The floor was all stone, and if you had some marbles in your
hand and you dropped them, they bounced like madmen all over the floor and made a
helluva racket, and the teacher would hold up the class and go back and see what the hell
was going on. She never got sore, though, Miss Aigletinger. Then you'd pass by this long,
long Indian war canoe, about as long as three goddam Cadillacs in a row, with about
twenty Indians in it, some of them paddling, some of them just standing around looking
tough, and they all had war paint all over their faces. There was one very spooky guy in
the back of the canoe, with a mask on. He was the witch doctor. He gave me the creeps,
but I liked him anyway. Another thing, if you touched one of the paddles or anything
while you were passing, one of the guards would say to you, "Don't touch anything,
children," but he always said it in a nice voice, not like a goddam cop or anything. Then
you'd pass by this big glass case, with Indians inside it rubbing sticks together to make a
fire, and a squaw weaving a blanket. The squaw that was weaving the blanket was sort of
bending over, and you could see her bosom and all. We all used to sneak a good look at
it, even the girls, because they were only little kids and they didn't have any more bosom
than we did. Then, just before you went inside the auditorium, right near the doors, you
passed this Eskimo. He was sitting over a hole in this icy lake, and he was fishing
through it. He had about two fish right next to the hole, that he'd already caught. Boy, that
museum was full of glass cases. There were even more upstairs, with deer inside them
drinking at water holes, and birds flying south for the winter. The birds nearest you were
all stuffed and hung up on wires, and the ones in back were just painted on the wall, but
they all looked like they were really flying south, and if you bent your head down and
sort of looked at them upside down, they looked in an even bigger hurry to fly south. The
best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was.
Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would
still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south,
the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their
pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that
same blanket. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be
you. Not that you'd be so much older or anything. It wouldn't be that, exactly. You'd just
be different, that's all. You'd have an overcoat on this time. Or the kid that was your
partner in line the last time had got scarlet fever and you'd have a new partner. Or you'd
have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you'd heard your
mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you'd just passed by one of
those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in
some way--I can't explain what I mean. And even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it.
I took my old hunting hat out of my pocket while I walked, and put it on. I knew I
wouldn't meet anybody that knew me, and it was pretty damp out. I kept walking and
walking, and I kept thinking about old Phoebe going to that museum on Saturdays the
way I used to. I thought how she'd see the same stuff I used to see, and how she'd be
different every time she saw it. It didn't exactly depress me to think about it, but it didn't
make me feel gay as hell, either. Certain things they should stay the way they are. You
ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone. I
know that's impossible, but it's too bad anyway. Anyway, I kept thinking about all that
while I walked.
I passed by this playground and stopped and watched a couple of very tiny kids
on a seesaw. One of them was sort of fat, and I put my hand on the skinny kid's end, to
sort of even up the weight, but you could tell they didn't want me around, so I let them
alone.
Then a funny thing happened. When I got to the museum, all of a sudden I
wouldn't have gone inside for a million bucks. It just didn't appeal to me--and here I'd
walked through the whole goddam park and looked forward to it and all. If Phoebe'd been
there, I probably would have, but she wasn't. So all I did, in front of the museum, was get
a cab and go down to the Biltmore. I didn't feel much like going. I'd made that damn date
with Sally, though.
17
I was way early when I got there, so I just sat down on one of those leather
couches right near the clock in the lobby and watched the girls. A lot of schools were
home for vacation already, and there were about a million girls sitting and standing
around waiting for their dates to show up. Girls with their legs crossed, girls with their
legs not crossed, girls with terrific legs, girls with lousy legs, girls that looked like swell
girls, girls that looked like they'd be bitches if you knew them. It was really nice
sightseeing, if you know what I mean. In a way, it was sort of depressing, too, because
you kept wondering what the hell would happen to all of them. When they got out of
school and college, I mean. You figured most of them would probably marry dopey guys.
Guys that always talk about how many miles they get to a gallon in their goddam cars.
Guys that get sore and childish as hell if you beat them at golf, or even just some stupid
game like ping-pong. Guys that are very mean. Guys that never read books. Guys that are
very boring--But I have to be careful about that. I mean about calling certain guys bores. I
don't understand boring guys. I really don't. When I was at Elkton Hills, I roomed for
about two months with this boy, Harris Mackim. He was very intelligent and all, but he
was one of the biggest bores I ever met. He had one of these very raspy voices, and he
never stopped talking, practically. He never stopped talking, and what was awful was, he
never said anything you wanted to hear in the first place. But he could do one thing. The
sonuvabitch could whistle better than anybody I ever heard. He'd be making his bed, or
hanging up stuff in the closet--he was always hanging up stuff in the closet--it drove me
crazy--and he'd be whistling while he did it, if he wasn't talking in this raspy voice. He
could even whistle classical stuff, but most of the time he just whistled jazz. He could
take something very jazzy, like "Tin Roof Blues," and whistle it so nice and easy--right
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while he was hanging stuff up in the closet--that it could kill you. Naturally, I never told
him I thought he was a terrific whistler. I mean you don't just go up to somebody and say,
"You're a terrific whistler." But I roomed with him for about two whole months, even
though he bored me till I was half crazy, just because he was such a terrific whistler, the
best I ever heard. So I don't know about bores. Maybe you shouldn't feel too sorry if you
see some swell girl getting married to them. They don't hurt anybody, most of them, and
maybe they're secretly all terrific whistlers or someth