I left everybody and went home to rest. My aunt said I was wasting my time hanging around with Dean and his gang. I knew that was wrong, too. Life is life, and kind is kind. What I wanted was to take one more magnificent trip to the West Coast and get back in time for the spring semester in school. And what a trip it turned out to be! I only went along for the ride, and to see what else Dean was going to do, and fi- nally, also, knowing Dean would go back to Camille in Frisco, I wanted to have an affair with Marylou. We got ready to cross the groaning1 continent again. I drew my GI check and gave Dean eighteen dollars to mail to his wife; she was waiting for him to come home and she was broke. What was on Marylou's mind I don't know. Ed Dunkel, as ever, just followed.There were long, funny days spent in Carlo's apartment beforewe left. He went around in his bathrobe and made semi-ironical speeches: "Now I'm not trying to take your hincty sweets from you, but it seems to me the time has come to decide what you are and what you're going to do." Carlo was working as typist in an office. "I want to know what all this sitting around the house all day is intended to mean. What all this talk is and what you propose to do. Dean, why did you leave Camille and pick up Marylou?" No answer--giggles. "Mary- lou, why are you traveling around the country like this and what are your womanly intentions concerning the shroud2?" Same answer. "Ed Dunkel, why did you abandon your new wife in Tucson and what are you doing here sitting on your big fat ass3? Where's your home? What's your job?" Ed Dunkel bowed his head in genuine befuddlement4. "Sal-- how comes it you've fallen on such sloppy5 days and what have you done with Lucille?" He adjusted his bathrobe and sat facing us all. "The days of wrath6 are yet to come. The balloon won't sustain you much longer. And not only that, but it's an abstract balloon. You'll all go fly- ing to the West Coast and come staggering back in search of your stone."
In these days Carlo had developed a tone of voice which he hoped sounded like what he called The Voice of Rock; the whole idea was to stun7 people into the realization8 of the rock. "You pin a dragon to your hats," he warned us; "you're up in the attic9 with the bats." His mad eyes glittered at us. Since the Dakar Doldrums he had gone through a terrible period which he called the Holy Doldrums, or Har- lem Doldrums, when he lived in Harlem in midsummer and at night woke up in his lonely room and heard "the great machine" descending10 from the sky; and when he walked on 12 5th Street "under water" with all the other fish. It was a riot of radiant ideas that had come to enligh- ten his brain. He made Marylou sit on his lap and commanded her to subside11. He told Dean, "Why don't you just sit down and relax? Why do you jump around so much?" Dean ran around, putting sugar in his coffee and saying, "Yes! Yes! Yes!" At night Ed Dunkel slept on the floor on cushions, Dean and Marylou pushed Carlo out of bed, and Carlo sat up in the kitchen over his kidney stew12, mumbling13 the predic- tions of the rock. I came in days and watched everything.Ed Dunkel said to me, "Last night I walked clear down to Times Square and just as I arrived I suddenly realized I was a ghost--it was my ghost walking on the sidewalk." He said these things to me without comment, nodding his head emphatically. Ten hours later, in the midst of someone else's conversation, Ed said, "Yep, it was my ghost walking on the sidewalk."
Suddenly Dean leaned to me earnestly and said, "Sal, I have something to ask of you--very important to me--I wonder how you'll take it--we're buddies14, aren't we?"
"Sure are, Dean." He almost blushed. Finally he came out with it: he wanted me to work Marylou. I didn't ask him why because I knew he wanted to see what Marylou was like with another man. We were sitting in Ritzy's Bar when he proposed the idea; we'd spent an hour walking Times Square, looking for Hassel. Ritzy's Bar is the hood- lum bar of the streets around Times Square; it changes names every year. You walk in there and you don't see a single girl, even in the booths, just a great mob of young men dressed in all varieties of hood- lum cloth, from red shirts to zoot suits. It is also the hustlers' bar--the boys who make a living among the sad old homos of the Eighth Ave- nue night. Dean walked in there with his eyes slitted to see every sin- gle face. There were wild Negro queers, sullen15 guys with guns, shiv- packing seamen16, thin, noncommittal junkies, and an occasional well- dressed middle-aged17 detective, posing as a bookie and hanging around half for interest and half for duty. It was the typical place for Dean to put down his request. All kinds of evil plans are hatched in Ritzy's Bar--you can sense it in the air--and all kinds of mad sexual routines are initiated18 to go with them. The safecracker proposes not only a certain loft19 on i4th Street to the hoodlum, but that they sleep together. Kinsey spent a lot of time in Ritzy's Bar, interviewing some of the boys; I was there the night his assistant came, in 1945. Hassel and Carlo were in- terviewed.
Dean and I drove back to the pad and found Marylou in bed.
Dunkel was roaming his ghost around New York. Dean told her what we had decided20. She said she was pleased. I wasn't so sure myself. I had to prove that I'd go through with it. The-bed had been the deathbed of a big man and sagged21 in the middle. Marylou lay there, with Dean and myself on each side of her, poised22 on the upjutting mat- tress-ends, not knowing what to say. I said, "Ah hell, I can't do this."
"Go on, man, you promised!" said Dean.
"What about Marylou?" I said. "Come on, Marylou, what do you think?"
"Go ahead," she said.
She embraced me and I tried to forget old Dean was there. Every time I realized he was there in the dark, listening for every sound, I couldn't do anything but laugh. It was horrible.
"We must all relax," said Dean.
"I'm afraid I can't make it. Why don't you go in the kitchen a minute?"
Dean did so. Marylou was so lovely, but I whispered, "Wait until we be lovers in San Francisco; my heart isn't in it." I was right, she could tell. It was three children of the earth trying to decide something in the night and having all the weight of past centuries ballooning in the dark before them. There was a strange quiet in the apartment. I went and tapped Dean and told him to go to Marylou; and I retired23 to the couch. I could hear Dean, blissful and blabbering and frantically24 rocking. Only a guy who's spent five years in jail can go to such maniacal25 helpless extremes; beseeching26 at the portals of the soft source, mad with a completely physical realization of the origins of life-bliss; blindly seeking to return the way he came. This is the result of years looking at sexy pictures behind bars; looking at the legs and breasts of women in popular magazines; evaluating the hardness of the steel halls and the softness of the woman who is not there. Prison is where you promise yourself the right to live. Dean had never seen his moth- er's face. Every new girl, every new wife, every new child was an addi- tion to his bleak27 mpoverishment. Where was his father?--old bum28 Dean Moriarty the Tinsmith, riding freights, working as a scullion in railroad cookshacks, stumbling, down-crashing in wino alley29 nights, expiring on coal piles, dropping his yellowed teeth one by one in the gutters30 of the West. Dean had every right to die the sweet deaths ofcomplete love of his Marylou-I didn't want to interfere31, I just wanted to follow.
Carlo came back at dawn and put on his bathrobe. He wasn't sleeping any more those days. "Eeh!" he screamed. He was going out of his mind from the confusion of jam on the floor, pants, dresses thrown around, cigarette butts32, dirty dishes, open books--it was a great forum33 we were having. Every day the world groaned34 to turn and we were making our appalling35 studies of the night. Marylou was black and blue from a fight with Dean about something; his face was scratched. It was time to go.We drove to my house, a whole gang of ten, to get my bag and call Old Bull Lee in New Orleans from the phone in the bar where Dean and I had our first talk years ago when he came to my door to learn to write. We heard Bull's whining36 voice eighteen hundred miles away. "Say, what do you boys expect me to do with this Galatea Dun- kel? She's been here two weeks now, hiding in her room and refusing to talk to either Jane or me. Have you got this character Ed Dunkel with you? For krissakes bring him down and get rid of her. She's sleep- ing in our best bedroom and's run clear out of money. This ain't a ho- tel." He assured Bull with whoops37 and cries over the phone --there was Dean, Marylou, Carlo, Dunkel, me, lan MacArthur, his wife, Tom Say- brook38, God knows who else, all yelling and drinking beer over the phone at befuddled39 Bull, who above all things hated confusion. "Well," he said, "maybe you'll make better sense when you gets down here if you gets down here." I said good-by to my aunt and promised to be back in two weeks and took off for California again.
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groaning
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| adj. 呜咽的, 呻吟的 动词groan的现在分词形式 | |
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shroud
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| n.裹尸布，寿衣；罩，幕；vt.覆盖，隐藏 | |
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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befuddlement
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| 迷惘，昏迷，失常 | |
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sloppy
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| adj.邋遢的，不整洁的 | |
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wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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stun
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| vt.打昏，使昏迷，使震惊，使惊叹 | |
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realization
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| n.实现；认识到，深刻了解 | |
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attic
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| n.顶楼，屋顶室 | |
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descending
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| n. 下行 adj. 下降的 | |
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subside
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| vi.平静，平息；下沉，塌陷，沉降 | |
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stew
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| n.炖汤，焖，烦恼；v.炖汤，焖，忧虑 | |
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mumbling
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| 含糊地说某事，叽咕，咕哝( mumble的现在分词 ) | |
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buddies
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| n.密友( buddy的名词复数 )；同伴；弟兄；（用于称呼男子，常带怒气）家伙v.（如密友、战友、伙伴、弟兄般）交往( buddy的第三人称单数 )；做朋友；亲近（…）；伴护艾滋病人 | |
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sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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seamen
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| n.海员 | |
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middle-aged
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| adj.中年的 | |
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initiated
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| n. 创始人 adj. 新加入的 vt. 开始，创始，启蒙，介绍加入 | |
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loft
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| n.阁楼，顶楼 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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sagged
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| 下垂的 | |
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poised
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| a.摆好姿势不动的 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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frantically
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| ad.发狂地, 发疯地 | |
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maniacal
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| adj.发疯的 | |
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beseeching
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| adj.恳求似的v.恳求，乞求（某事物）( beseech的现在分词 ) | |
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bleak
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| adj.(天气)阴冷的；凄凉的；暗淡的 | |
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bum
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| n.臀部；流浪汉，乞丐；vt.乞求，乞讨 | |
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alley
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| n.小巷，胡同；小径，小路 | |
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gutters
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| （路边）排水沟( gutter的名词复数 )； 阴沟； （屋顶的）天沟； 贫贱的境地 | |
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interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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butts
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| 笑柄( butt的名词复数 )； （武器或工具的）粗大的一端； 屁股； 烟蒂 | |
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forum
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| n.论坛，讨论会 | |
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groaned
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| v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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appalling
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| adj.骇人听闻的，令人震惊的，可怕的 | |
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whining
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| n. 抱怨，牢骚 v. 哭诉，发牢骚 | |
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whoops
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| int.呼喊声 | |
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brook
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| n.小河，溪；v.忍受，容让 | |
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befuddled
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| adj.迷糊的，糊涂的v.使烂醉( befuddle的过去式和过去分词 )；使迷惑不解 | |
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