Robert Pirsig - Lila. An Inquiry Into Morals

He really had it in for Richard, she thought, and he was trying to get her mad again. He wouldn’t leave it alone. On a nice night like this you’d think he’d leave it alone. It was such a nice night. She could feel the booze coming on.

If you want me to go to Florida with you, I’ll go with you, Lila said.

He didn’t say anything. He just poked the steak with a fork.

What do you think? she said.

I’m not sure.

Why aren’t you sure?

I don’t know.

I can cook and fix your clothes and sleep with you, Lila said, and when you’re tired of me you can just say goodbye and I’ll be gone. How do you like that?

He still didn’t say anything.

It was getting very hot in the cabin so she lifted her sweater to take it off.

You really need me, you know, she said.

When she got the sweater off she could see he’d been watching her take it off. With that special look. She knew what that meant. Here it comes, she thought.

The Captain said, What I was thinking about this afternoon while you were sleeping was that I want to ask you some questions that will help me fit some things together.

What kind of questions?

I don’t know yet, he said. About what you like and don’t like, mainly.

Well, sure, we can do that too.

He said, I thought maybe I could ask questions about what your attitudes are about certain things. What your values are and how you got them. Things like that. I’d just like to ask questions and jot down answers without really knowing where it’s going to lead to and then later maybe try to put something together.

Sure, Lila said. What kind of questions? He’s going to go for it, she thought. She saw his glass was just about empty. She reached up through the hatchway and got it, then filled it.

What holds a person together is his patterns of likes and dislikes, he said. And what holds a society together is a pattern of likes and dislikes. And what holds the whole world together is patterns of likes and dislikes. History is just abstracted from biography. And so are all the social sciences. In the past anthropology has been centered around collective objects and I’m interested in probing around to see if it can be better said in terms of individual values. I’ve just had feelings that maybe the ultimate truth about the world isn’t history or sociology but biography, he said.

She didn’t know what he was talking about. All she could think of was Florida.

She handed him up his glass. The blue flame of the stove was hissing away under the oil. She lifted the lid on the pot and saw the heat stirring the liquid inside, but it was so dark she couldn’t really tell if it was time to start the potatoes.

You’re sort of another culture, he said. A culture of one. A culture is an evolved static pattern of quality capable of Dynamic change. That’s what you are. That’s the best definition of you that’s ever been invented.

You may think everything you say and everything you think is just you but actually the language you use and the values you have are the result of thousands of years of cultural evolution. It’s all in a kind of debris of pieces that seem unrelated but are actually part of a huge fabric. Levi-Strauss postulates that a culture can only be understood by reenacting its thought processes with the debris of its interaction with other cultures. Does this make sense? I’d like to record the debris of your own memory and try to reconstruct things with it.

She wished he had a frying thermometer. She broke off a bit of potato and dropped it in the pot, and it swirled slowly but didn’t sizzle. She fished it out and had another bite of lettuce.

Have you ever heard of Heinrich Schliemann? he asked.

Heinrich Who?

He was an archaeologist who investigated the ruins of a city people thought was mythological: ancient Troy.

Before Schliemann used what he called the strato-graphic technique, archaeologists were just educated grave-robbers. He showed how you could dig down carefully through one stratum after another, finding the ruins of earlier cities under later ones. That’s what I think can be done with a single person. I can take parts of your language and your values and trace them to old patterns that were laid down centuries ago and are what make you what you are.

I don’t think you’ll get much out of me, Lila said.

The booze is really getting to him, she thought. All day he’s been so quiet. Now you can’t shut him off.

She said, Boy, I sure pushed a button when I asked about going to Florida with you.

What do you mean?

All day I thought you were one of those silent types. Now I can’t get a word in.

He looked like she’d hurt his feelings.

Well, I don’t mind, she said. You can ask me all the questions you want.

Finally the oil looked hot enough. She used a slotted spoon to lower the first batch into the pot with a roar of bubbles and a cloud of steam. Are the steaks getting close to done? she asked.

A few minutes more.

Good, she said. The smell of the steaks mixed with the French fries coming up from the stove was making her almost faint. She couldn’t remember when she’d ever been this hungry before. When the potato bubbles quieted down she spooned the potatoes out, spread them on a towel and showered them with salt, then put in the next batch. When these were done, she waited until the Captain said the steaks were ready. Then she handed the plates up for him to put the steaks on.

When he handed them down she thought, Oh! Heavenly! She shook the French fries onto them from the paper towel.

The Captain came down. They opened the dining table leaves, moved the plates and whiskey and mix and extra French fries on to the table, and suddenly there everything was. She looked at the Captain and he looked at her. It could be like this every night, she thought.

Oh! The steak was so good she wanted to cry! The French fries! Oh! Salad!

You don’t know what this is doing to me, she said.

What is it doing? He had a little smile on his face.

Is that one of your questions? she asked. Her mouth was full of French fries. She had to slow down.

No, he laughed, that wasn’t one of them. I just wanted to know more about your background.

Like a job interviewer? she said.

Well, yes, that’s a start.

He got up and refilled their glasses.

She thought for a while. I was born in Rochester. I was the youngest of two girls… Is that the kind of stuff you want to know?

Just a second, he said. He got up and got a notepad and a pen.

You mean you’re going to write all this down?

Sure, he said.

Oh, forget it!

Why?

I don’t want to do that.

Why not?

Let’s just eat and relax and be friends.

He frowned a little, then shrugged his shoulders, got up again and put the pad of slips away.

As she took another bite of steak she thought maybe she shouldn’t have said that. Not if she wanted to go to Florida. Go ahead, ask some questions anyway, she said, I’ll talk. I like to talk.

The Captain handed her drink to her and then sat down beside her.

All right, what are the things you like best?

Food.

What else?

More food.

And after that?

She thought for a while. Just what we’re doing now.