第45章
《THE CATCHER IN THE RYE(麦田里的守望者英文版)》章节:第45章,宠文网网友提供全文无弹窗免费在线阅读。!
Not me.
Finally, old Sally started coming up the stairs, and I started down to meet her. She
looked terrific. She really did. She had on this black coat and sort of a black beret. She
hardly ever wore a hat, but that beret looked nice. The funny part is, I felt like marrying
her the minute I saw her. I'm crazy. I didn't even like her much, and yet all of a sudden I
felt like I was in love with her and wanted to marry her. I swear to God I'm crazy. I admit
it.
"Holden!" she said. "It's marvelous to see you! It's been ages." She had one of
these very loud, embarrassing voices when you met her somewhere. She got away with it
because she was so damn good-looking, but it always gave me a pain in the ass.
"Swell to see you," I said. I meant it, too. "How are ya, anyway?"
"Absolutely marvelous. Am I late?"
I told her no, but she was around ten minutes late, as a matter of fact. I didn't give
a damn, though. All that crap they have in cartoons in the Saturday Evening Post and all,
showing guys on street corners looking sore as hell because their dates are late--that's
bunk. If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late? Nobody.
"We better hurry," I said. "The show starts at two-forty." We started going down the
stairs to where the taxis are.
"What are we going to see?" she said.
"I don't know. The Lunts. It's all I could get tickets for."
"The Lunts! Oh, marvelous!" I told you she'd go mad when she heard it was for
the Lunts.
We horsed around a little bit in the cab on the way over to the theater. At first she
didn't want to, because she had her lipstick on and all, but I was being seductive as hell
and she didn't have any alternative. Twice, when the goddam cab stopped short in traffic,
I damn near fell off the seat. Those damn drivers never even look where they're going, I
swear they don't. Then, just to show you how crazy I am, when we were coming out of
this big clinch, I told her I loved her and all. It was a lie, of course, but the thing is, I
meant it when I said it. I'm crazy. I swear to God I am.
"Oh, darling, I love you too," she said. Then, right in the same damn breath, she
said, "Promise me you'll let your hair grow. Crew cuts are getting corny. And your hair's
so lovely."
Lovely my ass.
The show wasn't as bad as some I've seen. It was on the crappy side, though. It
was about five hundred thousand years in the life of this one old couple. It starts out when
they're young and all, and the girl's parents don't want her to marry the boy, but she
marries him anyway. Then they keep getting older and older. The husband goes to war,
and the wife has this brother that's a drunkard. I couldn't get very interested. I mean I
didn't care too much when anybody in the family died or anything. They were all just a
bunch of actors. The husband and wife were a pretty nice old couple--very witty and all--
but I couldn't get too interested in them. For one thing, they kept drinking tea or some
goddam thing all through the play. Every time you saw them, some butler was shoving
some tea in front of them, or the wife was pouring it for somebody. And everybody kept
coming in and going out all the time--you got dizzy watching people sit down and stand
up. Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were the old couple, and they were very good, but I
didn't like them much. They were different, though, I'll say that. They didn't act like
people and they didn't act like actors. It's hard to explain. They acted more like they knew
they were celebrities and all. I mean they were good, but they were too good. When one
of them got finished making a speech, the other one said something very fast right after it.
It was supposed to be like people really talking and interrupting each other and all. The
trouble was, it was too much like people talking and interrupting each other. They acted a
little bit the way old Ernie, down in the Village, plays the piano. If you do something too
good, then, after a while, if you don't watch it, you start showing off. And then you're not
as good any more. But anyway, they were the only ones in the show--the Lunts, I mean--
that looked like they had any real brains. I have to admit it.
At the end of the first act we went out with all the other jerks for a cigarette. What
a deal that was. You never saw so many phonies in all your life, everybody smoking their
ears off and talking about the play so that everybody could hear and know how sharp they
were. Some dopey movie actor was standing near us, having a cigarette. I don't know his
name, but he always plays the part of a guy in a war movie that gets yellow before it's
time to go over the top. He was with some gorgeous blonde, and the two of them were
trying to be very blas?