Robert Pirsig - Lila. An Inquiry Into Morals

You’re not drinking as much as I am. She held the bottle up to the sky and looked at it. And you know something else?

What?

I’m not going to answer any more of your questions.

Why not?

You’re the detective. That’s what you are. You think you’re going to learn something. I don’t know what, but you’re not going to learn anything… You’ll never find out who I am because I’m not anything.

What do you mean?

I’m not anybody. All these questions you’re asking are just a waste of time. I know you’re trying to find out what kind of a person I am but you’re never going to find out anything because there’s nothing to know.

Her voice was getting slushy. She could tell it was getting slushy.

I mean, I used to play I was this kind of person and that kind of person but I got so tired of playing all those games. It’s such work and it doesn’t do any good. There’s just all these pictures of who I am and they don’t hold together. They’re all different people I’m supposed to be but none of them are me. I’m not anybody. I’m not here. Like you now. I can see you’ve got a lot of bad impressions about me in your mind. And you think that what’s in your mind is here talking to you but nobody’s here. You know what I mean? Nobody’s home. That’s Lila. Nobody’s home.

You know what? Lila said.

What?

What you want to do is make me into something I’m not.

Just the opposite.

You think just the opposite. But you’re really trying to do something to me that I don’t like.

What’s that?

You’re trying to… you’re trying to destroy me.

No.

Yes.

Well, you’ve completely misunderstood what I’m asking these questions for, the Captain said.

No, I haven’t. I’ve completely understood it just exactly right, Lila said. All men do that. You’re no big exception. Jerry did it. Every man does it. But you know something? It won’t work.

I’m not trying to destroy you, he said.

That’s what you think. You’re just playing around the edges, aren’t you! You can’t go to the center of me. You don’t know where the center of me is!

That set him back.

You’re not a woman. You don’t know. When men make love they’re really trying to destroy you. A woman’s got to be real quiet inside because if she shows a man anything they’ll try to kill it.

But they all get fooled because there’s nothing to destroy but what’s in their own mind. And so they destroy that and then they hate what’s left and they call what’s left, "Lila," and they hate Lila. But Lila isn’t anybody. That’s true. You don’t believe it, but it’s true.

Women are very deep, Lila said. But men never see it. They’re too selfish. They always want women to understand them. And that’s all they ever care about. That’s why they always have to try to destroy them.

I’m just asking questions, the Captain said.

Fuck your questions! I’m whatever your questions turn me into. You don’t see that. It’s your questions that make me who I am. If you think I’m an angel then that’s what I am. If you think I’m a whore then that’s what I am. I’m whatever you think. And if you change your mind about me then I change too. So whatever Richard tells you, it’s true. There’s no way he can lie about me.

Lila took the bottle and took a swig down straight. The hell with glasses, she said. Everybody wants to turn Lila into somebody else. And most women put up with that, because they want the kids and the money and the good-looking clothes. But it won’t work with me. I’m just Lila and I always will be. And if men don’t like me the way I am, then men can just get out. I don’t need them. I don’t need anyone. I’ll die first. That’s just the way I am.

After a while Lila looked around and saw that all the boats were lying straight in line just like the Captain said they would be. That’s pretty good. He’d figured that out. She told him about it. He didn’t say anything. He hadn’t said anything for a long time.

A bad feeling started to creep up. He wasn’t drinking. Was he getting mad? That’s what happens when you don’t keep up drinking. You get mad.

She was talking too much. Sober up, Lila, before it’s too late. Hang on. Sober up.

You know what? Lila said.

What?

I’m really sick of talking about me. Let’s talk about something else.

It’s getting cold out here, the Captain said.

He got up. I didn’t get any real sleep last night, he said, I’m going to bed early.

Lila got up and followed him into the cabin. He went into the bunk at the front of the boat and she could hear him lie down and then he was quiet.

She looked around the cabin. All this food and things to put away. What a mess.

Suddenly she remembered the chocolate pudding never got made.

She would probably never get to eat it, she thought.

In the forecabin Phædrus turned back the bed covers, then sat on the bunk and slowly pulled off his sweater and his other clothes. He felt weary.

Some archaeological expedition, he thought. Garbage and more garbage.

That’s what an archaeologist is, really — a highly trained garbage man. You see all the great finds in museums. You don’t see what they had to go through to find them… Some of those ancient ruins, Phædrus remembered, were located under city dumps.

Rigel would really be gloating now. What do you think now? he’d say. Does Lila have Quality? What’s your answer?

A light flashed through the porthole and then disappeared. Somebody’s searchlight, or a beacon maybe. But it was too irregular to be a beacon. Phædrus waited for it to reappear, but it didn’t.

This really wasn’t his day. Funny how everything kept going back to high school with her. That’s what this was. This was one of those high school disasters where you take the girl home early and do not kiss her good night and if you call again later and ask her out she is going to be doing something else.

She really was that girl on the streetcar.

And he really was that guy. That was him. The guy who doesn’t get the girl.

What was it she had said about Sad Sack ?… He was quiet most of the time… You thought it was because he was listening to you… but he wasn’t. He was always thinking about something else. Chemistry, I guess… I felt sorry for him… He knew a lot but he just didn’t know what was going on. He didn’t understand women because he didn’t understand anybody… You never could get close to him. He was very smart in some ways, but in other ways he was very stupid, you know what I mean?

Phædrus knew what she meant. He knew who she meant.

He slowly stretched his legs out down under the blankets, and remembered something else he hadn’t thought of for years.

It was a movie he watched long ago when he was a chemistry student. There was a pretty girl, played by Priscilla Lane, he seemed to remember, who was having romantic difficulties with the handsome young leading man — maybe it was Richard Powell. For comic relief Priscilla Lane had a dumb-cluck girlfriend who gave everybody laughs and warm feelings of self-importance because they knew that stupid as they might be they weren’t as stupid as she was. They loved her for that.

In one scene the dumb-cluck girlfriend came home from a dance and met Priscilla Lane and Richard Powell who were standing arm in arm — blue-eyed, radiant and beautiful — and they asked her, How was the dance?