Robert Pirsig - Lila. An Inquiry Into Morals

Let me off here, Jamie said, I’m callin’ the police!

What happened? Rigel said. Over his shoulder the face of another boat-owner now stared.

She tried to kill me!

Jamie looked at him. Something in Rigel’s expression seemed to stop him. Jamie stepped over the boat’s life-line to the dock. He looked at Rigel again. She did! he said, She tried to kill me! Rigel’s expression didn’t change. Jamie then turned and walked down the dock toward the marina office. He jerked his head over his shoulder and looked back, I’m goin’ to call the police. She tried to kill me. She’s going to get it.

Phædrus looked up at Rigel and the other man who was still staring. I’d better go down and see what happened, Phædrus said.

You had better get out of here, Rigel said.

What? Why? I haven’t done anything.

That doesn’t matter, Rigel said. His face had that same angry look he had had at breakfast in Kingston.

At the far side of the marina Phædrus could see Jamie at the marina office saying something to the people standing there. He was gesticulating, waving one arm, holding his face with the other. The man behind Rigel started to walk over there.

Rigel said, I’m going over there too, to see what he’s saying. He left, and Phædrus could see that at the marina office where Rigel was headed some sort of argument was going on.

What was Lila doing now? Down below it was ominously quiet. He stepped down the ladder and saw that the door to the forecabin was shut.

Phædrus went to the door, opened it slowly, and saw Lila on the bunk. Her nose was bleeding. In her hand was a pocket knife. The hypnotic look of last night was all gone. The sheet underneath her had some small blood spots.

Why did you do it? he asked.

He killed my baby.

How?

She pointed to the floor below the bunk.

Phædrus saw the doll lying face down on the floor. He watched her for a moment, wanting to be careful what to say.

Finally he said, Shall I pick it up?

Lila didn’t say anything.

He picked up the doll very carefully, using both hands, and carefully set it beside her.

This is a bad place, Lila said.

Phædrus stepped into the head and got a handful of toilet paper for the nosebleed and brought it to her.

Let me see, he said.

Her nose didn’t look broken. But she was starting to puff up under one eye. He saw that her hand was clenched tight on the jackknife.

This wasn’t the time to talk about it.

He heard a rapping on the hull.

When he got up the ladder he saw it was Rigel again.

He’s gone, Rigel said, but they’re upset. Some of them want to call the police. I told them you were just leaving. It will be a lot easier if you just left now.

What are the police going to do? Phædrus says.

Rigel looked exasperated. You can be here five more seconds or you can be here five more weeks. Which do you want?

Phædrus thought about it. OK, he said, untie the bow line.

You’ll have to untie it yourself.

What’s the matter with you?

Aiding and abetting… For Christ’s sake.

I’ve got to face these people after you leave.

Phædrus looked at him and shook his head. God, what a mess. He jumped onto the dock, grabbed the electric power cord and threw it aboard, uncleated the stern line and threw it aboard too. As he went forward to take off the bow lines he saw that people who had gathered at the office were looking down his way. Crazy how Rigel had shown up just at this minute. And he was right, as usual.

Phædrus threw the bow lines aboard, and with his hands on the boat’s bow, shoved with all his might to get the heavy hull clear of the dock. The current was already starting to move the stern away. Then he grabbed a stanchion and pulled himself aboard.

There’s an anchorage inside Sandy Hook, Rigel said. Horseshoe Bay. It’s on the chart.

Phædrus moved aft smartly over the tangled lines to get control of the boat but in the cockpit he saw the key was out of the engine. The boat was out of control now but for the moment it didn’t matter because the current was carrying it into the river and away from the dock. He jumped down below, opened the top drawer under the chart table and found the key, then scampered up again and inserted it and turned over the engine.

This would be a great time for it to fail.

It didn’t. It took hold and he let it idle for a while.

At the dock, now sixty or seventy feet away, Rigel was talking to some people who had gathered around him. Phædrus shifted into gear, increased the throttle and waved to them. They didn’t wave back, but they were watching him.

One of them cupped his hands and shouted something, but the sound of the diesel was too loud for it to be heard. Phædrus waved to them and headed out into the river toward the New Jersey shore.

Whew!

As he looked back over his shoulder he saw the water of the river between the boat and the marina become wider and wider, and the figures become smaller and smaller. They seemed to diminish in importance as they diminished in size.

The whole city was starting to take shape from the perspective of the water now. The marina was sinking back into the skyline of the city. The green trees of the parkway dominated it now and the apartments rising above the parkway dominated the trees. Now he could see some large skyscrapers at the center of the island rising above the apartments.

The Giant!

It gave him an eerie feeling.

This time he’d just barely slipped out of its grasp.

When he neared the far side of the river, Phædrus swung the boat so that it headed downstream. Already he could feel the open water and the distance between himself and the city start to calm him down.

What a morning! He wasn’t even dressed yet. The dock was getting really far away now, and the people who had been watching him seemed to be gone. Up the river the George Washington Bridge had begun to recede into the bluffs.

He saw there was some blood beginning to dry on the deck by the cockpit. He slowed down the engine, tied off the rudder, and went below and found a rag. He found his clothes on the bunk, and brought everything up on deck. Then he freed the rudder and put the boat back on course again. Then he scrubbed away all the blood spots he could find.

There was no hurry, now. So strange. All that rush and calamity, and now suddenly he had all the time in the world. No obligations. No commitments… Except Lila, down there. But she wasn’t going anywhere.

What was he going to do with her?… Just keep going, he supposed.

He really wasn’t under any pressure. There weren’t any deadlines…

Except the deadline of ice and snow. But that was no problem. He could just single-hand south and let her stay there in the forecabin if that’s where she wanted to be.

Dreamy day. The sun was out! Still hardly any boats in the river.

As he dressed he saw that along the Manhattan shore were old green buildings that looked like warehouses sticking out into the water. They looked rotted out and abandoned. They reminded him of something.

Long ago he’d seen those buildings… There was a gangplank going up, up, up, way up — into a big ship with the huge red smokestacks and he had walked up it ahead of his mother — she looked terribly worried — and when he stopped to look down at the cement below the gangplank she told him to Hurry! Hurry! The ship is going to leave! and just as she said this there was an enormous noise of the fog horn that frightened him and made him run up the gangplank. He was only four and the ship was the Mauritania going to England… But those were the same pier buildings, it seemed, the ones the ship had left from. Now they were all in ruins.