Robert Pirsig - Lila. An Inquiry Into Morals

You could imagine some old Victorian aristocrat coming back to these streets, looking around, and then becoming stony-faced at what he saw.

Phædrus saw that it was nearly dark. He was almost at his hotel now. As he crossed the street he noticed a gust of wind swirling dust and scraps of paper up from the pavement before the lights of a taxi. A sign on top of the taxi said SEE THE BIG APPLE and under it the name of some tour line, with a telephone number.

The Big Apple. He could almost feel the disgust with which a Victorian would greet that name.

They never thought of New York City that way. The Big Opportunity or the Big Future or the Empire City would have been closer to their vision. They saw the city as a monument to their own greatness, not something they were devouring. The mentality that sees New York as a "Big Apple,"' the Victorian might say, is the mentality of a worm. And then he might add, To be sure, the worm means the name only as a compliment, but that is because the worm has no idea of what the effects of his eating the Big Apple are.

The hotel doorman seemed to recognize Phædrus as he approached and opened the gold-lettered, mono-grammed glass door with a professional smile and flourish. But as Phædrus smiled back he realized the doorman probably seemed to recognize everybody who came in. That was his role. Part of the New York illusion.

Inside, the lobby’s world of subdued gilt and plush suggested Victorian elegance without denying the advantages of twentieth-century modernity. Only the howl of wind at the crack between the elevator doors reminded him of the world outside.

In the elevator he thought about the vertical winds that must be in all these buildings, and wondered if there were compensating vertical downdrafts outside. Probably not. The hot elevator winds would just keep rising into the sky after they left the building. Cold air would fill in from horizontal currents on the streets.

The room had been cleaned since he’d left and the bed had been made. He dropped the heavy canvas sack of mail on it. He wouldn’t have much time to read mail now. That walk had taken longer than he’d thought it would. But he felt sort of tired and relaxed and that felt good.

He turned on the living room light and heard a buzzing sound by the bulb. At first he thought it was a loose bulb, but then he saw that the buzzing was coming from a large moth.

He watched it for a moment and wondered, How did it get up this high in the sky? He thought moths stayed close to the ground.

It blended with the Victorian decor of the place as it fluttered around the lampshade.

It must be a Victorian moth, he thought, aspiring eternally to higher things. And then, reaching its goal, burning to death and falling to the dust below. Victorians loved that kind of imagery.

Phædrus went to a large glass door that seemed to open onto a balcony. There was too much reflection from the room to see what was on the other side, so he opened it a little. Through the opening he could see the night sky, and far away, the random patterns of window lights in other skyscrapers. He opened the door wider, stepped out onto the balcony and felt the cold air. It was windy up here. And high, too. He could see he was almost at a level with the tops of the buildings way over on the other side of the huge dark space of Central Park. The balcony seemed to be made of some sort of gray stone, but it was too dark to see.

He stepped to the stone rail and looked over… YEEOW!!…

Way down there the cars were like little ladybugs. They were yellow, most of them, and they crawled along slowly, just like bugs. The yellow ones must be taxis. They moved so slowly. One of them pulled to the curb directly below him and stopped. Then Phædrus could see a speck that had to be a person get out and go into the entrance he himself had come in…

He wondered how long it would take to fall all the way down there. Thirty seconds? Less than that, he figured. Thirty seconds is a long time. Five seconds would be more like it…

The thought started a tingling in his body. It rose to his head and made him dizzy. He stepped back carefully.

He looked up for a while. The sky was not really a night sky. It was filled with the same orange glow he and Lila had seen at Nyack. Only much more intense now. He supposed it was atmospheric pollution or even normal sea mist or dust reflecting the street-lights from below back down from the sky, but it gave a feeling of not being really outdoors at all. This Giant of a city even dominated the sky.

How quiet it was now. Almost serene. Strange that way up here, looking down on all the noise and jangle and tension below, is this upper zone of silence. You don’t even think about it when you’re down on the street.

No wonder multi-millionaires paid huge sums for space up here in the sky. They could endure all that competitive life down below when they had a place like this up here to retreat to.

The Giant could be very good to you, he thought… If it wanted to.

Lila didn’t care where she was going. She was so mad at the Captain she could spit. That bastard! Who the hell did he think he was calling her that —  A bitch setting up a dog fight. She should have hit him!

What did he know? She should have said, Yes, and who made me one? Was it me? You don’t know me! She should have said, Nobody knows me. You’ll never know me. I’ll die before you know me. But boy oh boy, do I ever know YOU! That’s what she should have told him.

She was so sick of men. She didn’t want to hear men talk. They just want to dirty you. That’s what they all want to do. Just dirty you so you’ll be just like them. And then tell you what a bitch you are.

This is what she got for being honest. Wasn’t that funny? If she’d lied to him everything would be fine. If she was really a bitch did he think she would have told him all that stuff about Jamie? No. That was really funny.

What was she going to do with these shirts now? She sure wasn’t going to give them to him now. She was tired of carrying them. She spent hours looking for them and now she had to take them back. Why did she have to try to be nice to him? She never learned. No matter what you do they always want to make you look worse than they are.

You’re not doing anything wrong, you know, you’re not hurting anybody and you’re not stealing anything, you know, and still they just hate you for it anyway, for making love. Before they get on you’re a real angel, but after they get off you’re a real whore. For a while. Until they get ready again. Then you’re an angel again.

She’d never been on the street every night. She wasn’t one of the bad ones. Just sometimes when she felt like it. She liked it. She always did. She liked it all the time. Every night. So what? And she didn’t like it always with the same man. And she didn’t care what people thought about her. And she liked money too, to spend. And she liked booze too and a lot of other things. Put all that together and you got Lila, she should have told him. Just don’t try to turn me into somebody else. 'Cause it won’t work. I’m just Lila and I always will be. And if you don’t like me the way I am then just get out. I don’t need you. I don’t need anyone. I’ll die first. That’s the way I am. That’s what she should have told him.

A store window showed her reflection. She looked like she was hurrying. She should slow down. She didn’t have to hurry so fast. She didn’t have anywhere to go except to the boat to get her things off.

It was dumb to tell him anything. You can’t tell people like him anything. If you do, they’re gone. All he wanted her for was to prove how big he was. He didn’t care what she said, he just wanted her to be some kind of guinea pig to study or something like that, when he really thought all those bad things about her all the time.