Pig
1
Once upon a time, in the City of New York, a beautiful baby boy was born into this world, and the
joyful¹ parents named him Lexington.
No sooner had the mother returned home from the hospital carrying Lexington in her arms than
she said to her husband, ‘Darling, now you must take me out to a most marvellous restaurant for
dinner so that we can celebrate the arrival of our son and heir.’
Her husband embraced her tenderly and told her that any woman who could produce such a
beautiful child as Lexington deserved to go absolutely anywhere she wanted. But was she strong
enough yet, he inquired, to start running around the city late at night?
‘No,’ she said, she wasn’t. But what the hell.
So that evening they both dressed themselves up in fancy clothes, and leaving little Lexington in
the care of a trained infant’s nurse who was costing them twenty dollars a day and was Scottish
into the bargain, they went out to the finest and most expensive restaurant in town. There they
each ate a giant lobster² and drank a bottle of champagne³ between them, and after that they went on
to a nightclub, where they drank another bottle of champagne and then sat holding hands for
several hours while they recalled and discussed and admired each individual physical feature of
their lovely newborn son.
They arrived back at their house on the East Side of Manhattan at around two o’clock in the
morning and the husband paid off the taxi driver and then began feeling in his pockets for the key
to the front door. After a while, he announced that he must have left it in the pocket of his other
suit, and he suggested that they ring the bell and get the nurse to come down and let them in. An
infant’s nurse at twenty dollars a day must expect to be hauled out of bed occasionally in the night,
the husband said.
So he rang the bell. They waited. Nothing happened. He rang it again, long and loud. They
waited another minute. Then they both stepped back on to the street and shouted the nurse’s name
(McPottle) up at the nursery windows on the third floor, but there was still no response. The house
was dark and silent. The wife began to grow apprehensive⁴. Her baby was

分享到：