Robert Pirsig - Lila. An Inquiry Into Morals

For years after that his favorite book had been a book about old ships, which he’d paged through slowly, again and again, wondering what it would be like to live in one of those little ornamented aft cabins with the tiny windows, staring out like Sir Francis Drake at the surging waves rolling under you. It seemed as though all his life after that, whenever he took long trips, he ended up on a dock in a harbor somewhere, staring at the boats.

Sandy Hook, as the boat approached it, looked like it hadn’t changed much since the wooden ships of Verrazano and Hudson sailed by. There were some radio towers and old-looking buildings on the northern tip which seemed to be part of some abandoned fortification. The rest seemed almost deserted.

As the boat moved inside the hook’s protection from the sea the surge died and only a ripple from the southwest wind was left. The bay became like an inland lake, calm and surrounded by land wherever Phædrus could see. He furled the jib to slow the boat a little and stepped below for a moment to turn on the depth sounder. Still no sign of Lila in the forecabin up there.

Back on deck he saw that the cove looked quite good. It was exposed to wind from the west, but the chart showed shallow water and a long jetty off to the west that would probably keep big waves out. There certainly weren’t any now. Just a quiet shore, and a couple of sailboats at anchor with no one on deck. Beautiful.

When the depth sounder showed about ten feet of water he rounded up into the breeze, dropped the sail and anchor, started and reversed the engine to set the anchor, then shut it off, furled the main and went below.

He put away the chart, then turned on the Coast Guard weather station to see what was predicted. The announcer said a few more days of light southwest winds and good weather before turning colder. Good. That gave him a little while to figure out what to do with Lila before heading out on the ocean.

He heard Lila move.

He went to her door, knocked and then opened it.

She was awake but she didn’t look at him. He saw now for the first time that the right side of her face was discolored and swollen. That guy had really slugged her.

After a while he said, Hi.

She didn’t answer. She just looked straight ahead. The pupils of her eyes seemed dilated.

Are you comfortable? he asked.

Her gaze didn’t alter.

It wasn’t a very bright question. He made another try: How is everything?

Still no answer. Her gaze just looked right past him.

Oh-oh. He thought he knew what this was. He supposed he should have known this was coming. This is how it looked from the outside. The catatonic trance. She’s cutting off everything.

After a while he said gently, Everything’s all right. I’ll be taking care of you for a while. He watched for a flicker of recognition but didn’t see any. Just the hypnotic gaze — straight ahead.

She knows I’m here, he thought, she probably knows I’m here better than I know she’s here. She just won’t acknowledge it. She’s like some treed cat, way out on the end of a limb. To go after her just scares her farther out on the limb, or else forces her into a fight.

He didn’t want that. Not after what happened back at the dock.

He softly closed the door and went back into the cabin again.

Now what?

He remembered from his anthropological reading that these trance-like states are supposed to be dangerous. What happened back there at the dock fit the description of Malayan amok — intense brooding that’s sometimes followed by sudden violence. But from what he remembered personally it wasn’t so dangerous. If there’s violence it’s provoked by hostile people trying to break the trance and he wasn’t about to do that.

Actually, he had a feeling the worst was over. The ominous thing about last night back in Manhattan was that she seemed so happy. She wasn’t suffering. When she hugged and rocked that doll it was like listening to someone freezing to death say they feel warm. You want to say No! No! Feel the cold! As long as you’re suffering you’re all right.

Now she’s changed. The question is, changed for the better or for the worse? The only thing to do now, he thought, is just to wait it out for a while and see which way she goes. It looked like this good weather might hold for a while. He had plenty of things to do to keep himself occupied… Such as eat. It was already afternoon. He’d planned to tie up at Atlantic Highlands and buy food there, but now that was a couple of miles away. Maybe tomorrow he could put the outboard on the dinghy and putt over if the weather was calm. Or maybe see if there’s a bus on shore somewhere and take that. For now they’d have to get by on what food was left from Nyack.

Nyack. That was a long time ago. Everything would be stale.

He pulled up the icebox top and looked inside. He reached down into the icebox and pulled up what he could find and placed it on the galley counter… There were some cocktail hot dogs in little jars… some small cans of meat and ham and roast beef… The bread was still there. He picked it up and it felt stiff… He opened the bread wrapper… It looked still edible… canned tunafish… peanut butter… jelly… The butter looked OK. One nice thing about cruising in October is that the food goes bad slowly… some chocolate pudding… He’d have to get groceries very soon. That was going to be a problem.

What to drink, though? Nothing but whiskey and water. And mix…

These cocktail hot dogs were stuck in the jar. He held the jar upside-down over the galley sink until all the juice around them ran out, but the dogs were still stuck. He got a fork and pried one out over a plate. It came out in pieces. Then suddenly they all came out in one big plop! They were kind of soft and squishy but they smelled all right.

He supposed he might just as well give her the whiskey and mix to drink. Yes, that ought to be good. She might refuse the food but the booze would be a little more tempting…

He spread some of the butter on the stale bread, put three of the cocktail hot dogs on top and another slice of bread on top of that. Then he poured her a really stiff one and put the glass on the plate with the sandwich and brought it up forward.

He knocked lightly, and said, Lunch. Beautiful lunch!

He opened the door and put the tray on the bunk across from her. If I’ve made the drink too stiff let me know and I’ll add some water to it, he said.

She didn’t answer but she didn’t look angry or disconnected either. Some progress, maybe.

He closed the door and went back into the main cabin and started to fix his meal…

There are three ways she can go, he thought. First, she can go into permanent delusions, cling to this doll and whatever else she’s inventing, and eventually he’d have to get rid of her. It would be tricky, but it could be done. Just call a doctor at some town they came to and have him look at her and figure out what to do from there. Phædrus didn’t like it, but he could do it if he had to.

The trouble is there’s a self-stoking thing where the craziness makes people reject you more and more, which makes you crazier, and that’s what he would be getting involved in. Not very moral. If it went that way she’d probably spend the rest of her life in an insane asylum, like some caged animal.

Her second alternative, he thought, would be to cave in to whatever it was she was fighting, and learn to adjust. She’d probably go into some kind of cultural dependency, with recurring trips to a psychiatrist or some kind of social counselor for therapy, accept the cultural reality that her rebellion was no good, and live with it. In this way she’d continue to lead a normal life, continuing her problem, whatever it was, within conventional cultural limits.