Robert Pirsig - Lila. An Inquiry Into Morals

They don’t look pretty. A pretty boat doesn’t have all that fake gingerbread and phony smokestacks.

Lila took the pamphlet back. It’s a very beautiful boat, she said.

The Captain shook his head. Beauty isn’t things trying to look like something else.

He’s something else, Lila thought.

Beauty is things being just what they are, he said. There probably isn’t one thing on that boat that’s original.

Why does it have to be original?

It’s play-acting. It’s make-believe.

What difference does that make? If it’s what people like?

He didn’t have any answer for that.

Disneyland’s all fake too, Lila said. I suppose you don’t like that either?

No.

How about movies? TV? That’s all fake too, I guess, huh?

It depends on what they do, the Captain said.

You sure must enjoy yourself a lot, Lila said. She folded up the pamphlet carefully. Arguing with him seemed to make the Captain mad. He didn’t want anybody to argue with him.

He said, I suppose if the boat gave three million rides they must be doing something right. But it’s all - he shook his head prostitution.

Prostitution?

Yeah. It’s all taking the customer’s money and giving him exactly what he wants and then leaving him poorer than when he started. That’s what that singer was doing with those songs. She could have sung something original and left them richer, but she didn’t want to do that, because if she sang something they never heard before they might not like that and might ignore her or turn on her and she’d lose her job and she wouldn’t get her money any more. And she knew that and that’s why she never sang anything that was really her own, did she? She was just imitating some kind of person she was sure they liked and they went along with it. That’s why she’s a hustler. They were paying her to imitate someone making love to them.

Watch out, Lila, she thought. She was really getting mad. She was herself! He was the phony! How did he know what she was like? He wasn’t even there.

People should be themselves, he went on. Not phony singers on a phony boat.

Hang on, Lila.

She smiled a little and said, I’m getting cold. She got up carefully and went back down inside the cabin again.

There she let out her breath.

God, that made her mad!

Oh boy! Oh boy!

A smokestack. A big blowhard smokestack, that’s what he is. Yeah! A big phony smokestack. That’s exactly what he is. He thinks he’s so smart. It’s all over his face. And he’s not smart. He’s stupid. He doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t even know what a hustler is. He doesn’t even know how stupid he is.

Lila opened her suitcase again, carefully folded the brochure, tied it together with her other things with the red ribbon, and then put it in its special compartment and closed the suitcase and locked it.

Hang on, Lila. Never get mad at people like that, she thought. Don’t let yourself get angry. That’s what they want.

Her hands were shaking.

Oh-oh.

She knew what that meant.

She got her purse from the berth, opened it and took out the pills, got a plastic glass by the sink and pumped some water into it and then swallowed them. She had to do that quick, or they didn’t work. She’d been feeling the wave coming all morning. She’d been riding in front of it too long. She should have blown up at him. Then this wouldn’t have happened.

Smokestack! He looked at that picture like it was some kind of an ant or something. That’s what smokestacks like him do. Just to prove how smart they are. She knew what they were like. Just when you start being nice to them they turn on you like that. There’s just one thing someone like him loves — to hear himself blow smoke.

Well, that was that, she guessed. Nothing more to do on this boat until they got to New York. And then get off.

Suddenly she felt cold. That always happened after her hands started to shake. She hoped the pills would work in time. Sometimes they didn’t. She unlocked the suitcase again, took out another sweater and put it on over the one she already had on, then closed the suitcase and locked it again and put it away on the upper berth.

It would be good to get back to living on land again, Lila thought. She was really done with all this boat life. It wasn’t the way she thought it was going to be. Nothing ever was. She didn’t have to put up with him one more night, but she didn’t want to pay for a bus.

On the ledge back of the berth was a radio. Lila opened it and tried to turn it on. It wouldn’t work. She turned on all the switches, back and forth, but none of them worked. Then she found a switch and she could hear some static noise. It worked.

There were lots of stations. One of the announcers said something about Manhattan.

She listened for a while. They were close now. Some music from one station was close and dreamy, the kind anyone could dance to.

She just wanted to get to New York now. Would it be four years now? No, five! Five whole years. Where did they go so fast?

Jamie would never be there. Just to see him again the way he used to look, the way he used to smile at her when he was feeling good. That’s all she wanted. And a little money too.

He’d be hard to find. She would have to ask around. Mindy might know. Probably she was gone too. No one ever stayed any place long. She’d find someone who knew.

She wondered what the old place looked like now. Once in a while they would play an old slow one like that and Jamie would go slow with it. The way he held his hands on her. The way he touched and handled her. It all came back with the music. She was a real princess then, but she didn’t know it.

Lila, she could hear him say, you got something on your mind. I can just tell. What is it? And then after a while she’d just tell him and he’d always listen and he’d never argue with her no matter what she told him. She was crazy to leave. She never should have left.

Even with two sweaters on Lila was still cold. She needed a blanket. She remembered now that she’d had one when she woke up last night but now it wasn’t here. She got up, went to the front of the boat, took the blanket off the bed and brought it back to the main cabin.

The shaking of her hands was getting worse. It always happened after she got mad like that and there wasn’t anything she could do about it. She should have screamed at the Captain but it was too late for that now. When she could scream or hit somebody or even just swear at them then sometimes the wave would stop.

She turned off the radio.

She listened to the sound of the wind above and the lapping sound of water on the hull. So quiet. So different from the Karma.

She wondered what she would do in Manhattan. To get money. Waitressing probably. She wasn’t much good for anything else any more. She’d find somebody. She always did. She wished the Captain was different and they could sail all the way to Florida together. But he was a stupid smokestack. He reminded her of Sidney. Sidney was the kind you always knew was going to be a doctor or lawyer or something like that. He was always supposed to be so nice but you could never talk to him really. He was always looking down on you and he thought you didn’t know it.

That’s the kind her mother always wanted her to pay attention to. The Captain had the same expression — like he was always thinking about something. Sidney was a pediatrician now making lots of money and had four kids, she had heard. See! her mother’d say.