在路上 英文版-22

go!. yelled Dean. .Ole Stan is right. Ole Stan don’t care! He’s so high on those women and that teaand that crazy out-of-this-world impossi-ble-to-absorb mambo blasting so loud that my eardrumsstill beat to it - wheel he’s so high he knows what he’s doing!. We took off our T-shirts and roaredthrough the jungle, bare-chested. No towns, nothing, lost jungle, miles and miles, and down-going,getting hotter, the insects screaming louder, the vegetation growing higher, the smell ranker and hotteruntil we began to get used to it and like it. .I’d just like to get naked and roll and roll in that jungle,.said Dean. .No, hell, man, that’s what I’m going to do soon’s I find a good spot.. And suddenlyLimon appeared before us, a jungle town, a few brown lights, dark shadows, enormous skiesoverhead, and a cluster of men in front of a jumble of woodshacks - a tropical crossroads. Westopped in the unimaginable softness. It was as hot as the inside of a baker’s oven on a June night inNew Orleans. All up and down the street whole families were sitting around in the dark, chatting;occasional girls came by, but extremely young and only curious to see what we looked like. Theywere barefoot and dirty. We leaned on the wooden porch of a broken-down general store withsacks of flour and fresh pineapple rotting with flies on the counter. There was one oil lamp in here,and outside a few more brown lights, and the rest all black, black, black. Now of course we were sotired we had to sleep at once and moved the car a few yards down a dirt road to the backside oftown. It was so incredibly hot it was impossible to sleep. So Dean took a blanket and laid it out onthe soft, hot sand in the road and flopped out. Stan was stretched on the front seat of the Ford withboth doors open for a draft, but there wasn’t even the faintest puff of a wind. I, in the back seat,suffered in a pool of sweat. I got out of the car and stood swaying in the blackness. The whole townhad instantly gone to bed; the only noise now was barking dogs. How could I ever sleep? Thousandsof mosquitoes had already bitten all of us on chest and arms and ankles. Then a bright idea came tome: I jumped up on the steel roof of the car and stretched out flat on my back. Still there was nobreeze, but the steel had an element of coolness in it and dried my back of sweat, clotting up170thousands of dead bugs into cakes on my skin, and I realized the jungle takes you over and youbecome it. Lying on the top of the car with my face to the black sky was like lying in a closed trunkon a summer night. For the first time in my life the weather was not something that touched me, thatcaressed me, froze or sweated me, but became me. The atmosphere and I became the same. Softinfinitesimal showers of microscopic bugs fanned down on my face as I slept, and they wereextremely pleasant and soothing. The sky was starless, utterly unseen and heavy. I could lie there allnight long with my face exposed to the heavens, and it would do me no more harm than a velvetdrape drawn over me. The dead bugs mingled with my blood; the live mosquitoes exchanged furtherportions; I began to tingle all over and to smell of the rank, hot, and rotten jungle, all over from hairand face to feet and toes. Of course I was barefoot. To minimize the sweat I put on my bug-smearedT-shirt and lay back again. A huddle of darkness on the blacker road showed where Dean wassleeping. I could hear him snoring. Stan was snoring too.Occasionally a dim light flashed in town, and this was the sheriff making his rounds with a weakflashlight and mumbling to himself in the jungle night. Then I saw his light jiggling toward us and heardhis footfalls coming soft on the mats of sand and vegetation. He stopped and flashed the car. I sat upand looked at him. In a quivering, almost querulous, and extremely tender voice he said,.Dormiendo?. indicating Dean in the road. I knew this meant .sleep...Si, dormiendo...Bueno, bueno. he said to himself and with reluctance and sadness turned away and went backto his lonely rounds. Such lovely policemen God hath never wrought in America. No suspicions, nofuss, no bother: he was the guardian of the sleeping town, period.I went back to my bed of steel and stretched out with my arms spread. I didn’t even know ifbranches or open sky were directly above me, and it made no difference. I opened my mouth to itand drew deep breaths of jungle atmosphere. It was not air, never air, but the palpable and livingemanation of trees and swamp. I stayed awake. Roosters began to crow the dawn across the brakessomewhere. Still no air, no breeze, no dew, but the same Tropic of Cancer heaviness held us allpinned to earth, where we belonged and tingled. There was no sign of dawn in the skies. Suddenly Iheard the dogs barking furiously across the dark, and then I heard the faint clip-clop of a horse’shooves. It came closer and closer. What kind of mad rider in the night would this be? Then I saw anapparition: a wild horse, white as a ghost, came trotting down the road directly toward Dean. Behindhim the dogs yammered and contended. I couldn’t see them, they were dirty old jungle dogs, but thehorse was white as snow and immense and almost phosphorescent and easy to see. I felt no panicfor Dean. The horse saw him and trotted right by his head, passed the car like a ship, whinniedsoftly, and continued on through town, bedeviled by the dogs, and clip-clopped back to the jungleon the other side, and all I heard was the faint hoofbeat fading away in the woods. The dogssubsided and sat to lick themselves. What was this horse? What myth and ghost, what spirit? I toldDean about it when he woke up. He thought I’d been dreaming. Then he recalled faintly dreaming ofa white horse, and I told him it had been no dream. Stan Shephard slowly woke up. The faintestmovements, and we were sweating profusely again. It was still pitch dark. .Let’s start the car andblow some air!. I cried. .I’m dying of heat.. .Right!. We roared out of town and continued alongthe mad highway with our hair flying. Dawn came rapidly in a gray haze, revealing dense swampssunk on both sides, with tall, forlorn, viny trees leaning and bowing over tangled bottoms. Webowled right along the railroad tracks for a while. The strange radio-station antenna of CiudadMante appeared ahead, as if we were in Nebraska. We found a gas station and loaded the tank justas the last of the jungle-night bugs hurled themselves in a black mass against the bulbs and fellfluttering at our feet in huge wriggly groups, some of them with wings a good four inches long, others171frightful dragonflies big enough to eat a bird, and thousands of immense yangling mosquitoes andunnamable spidery insects of all sorts. I hopped up and down on the pavement for fear of them; Ifinally ended up in the car with my feet in my hands, looking fearfully at the ground where theyswarmed around our wheels. .Lessgo!. I yelled. Dean and Stan weren’t perturbed at all by thebugs; they calmly drank a couple of bottles of Mission Orange and kicked them away from the watercooler. Their shirts and pants, like mine, were soaked in the blood and black of thousands of deadbugs. We smelled our clothes deeply..You know, I’m beginning to like this smell,. said Stan. .I can’t smell myself any more...It’s a strange, good smell,. said Dean. .I’m nor. going to change my shirt till Mexico City, Iwant to take it all in and remember it.. So off we roared again, creating air for hot. caked faces.Then the mountains loomed ahead, all green. After this climb we would be on the great centralplateau again and ready to roll ahead to Mexico City. In no time at all we soared to an elevation offive thousand feet among misty passes that overlooked steaming yellow rivers a mile below. It wasthe great River Moctezuma. The Indians along the road began to be extremely weird. They were anation in themselves, mountain Indians, shut off from everything else but the Pan-American Highway.They were short and squat and dark, with bad teeth; they carried immense loads on their backs.Across enormous vegetated ravines we saw patchworks of agriculture on steep slopes. They walkedup and down those slopes and worked the crops. Dean drove the car five miles an hour to see..Whooee, this I never thought existed!. High on the highest peak, as great as any Rocky Mountainpeak, we saw bananas growing. Dean got out of the car to point, to stand around rubbing his belly.We were on a ledge where a little thatched hut suspended itself over the precipice of the world. Thesun created golden hazes that obscured the Moctezuma, now more than a mile below.In the yard in front of the hut a little three-year-old Indian girl stood with her finger in her mouth,watching us with big brown eyes. .She’s probably never seen anybody parked here before in herentire life!. breathed Dean. .Hel-lo, little girl. How are you? Do you like us?. The little girl lookedaway bashfully and pouted. We began to talk and she again examined us with finger in mouth. .Gee,I wish there was something I could give her! Think of it, being born and living on this ledge - thisledge representing all you know of life. Her father is probably groping down the ravine with a ropeand getting his pineapples out of a cave and hacking wood at an eighty-degree angle with all thebottom below. She’ll never, never leave here and know anything about the outside world. It’s anation. Think of the wild chief they must have! They probably, off the road, over that bluff, milesback, must be even wilder and stranger, yeah, because the Pan-American Highway partially civilizesthis nation on this road. Notice the beads of sweat on her brow,. Dean pointed out with a grimace ofpain. .It’s not the kind of sweat we have, it’s oily and it’s always there because it’s always hot theyear round and she knows nothing of non-sweat, she was born with sweat and dies with sweat.. Thesweat on her little brow was heavy, sluggish; it didn’t run; it just stood there and gleamed like a fineolive oil. .What that must do to their souls! How different they must be in their private concerns andevaluations and wishes!. Dean drove on with his mouth hanging in awe, ten miles an hour, desirousto see every possible human being on the road. We climbed and climbed.As we climbed, the air grew cooler and the Indian girls on the road wore shawls over their headsand shoulders. They hailed us desperately; we stopped to see. They wanted to sell us little pieces ofrock crystal. Their great brown, innocent eyes looked into ours with such soulful intensity that notone of us had the slightest sexual thought about them; moreover they were very young, some of themeleven and looking almost thirty. .Look at those eyes!. breathed Dean. They were like the eyes ofthe Virgin Mother when she was a child. We saw in them the tender and forgiving gaze of Jesus. Andthey stared unflinching into ours. We rubbed our nervous blue eyes and looked again. Still they172penetrated us with sorrowful and hypnotic gleam. When they talked they suddenly became franticand almost silly. In their silence they were themselves. .They’ve only recently learned to sell thesecrystals, since the highway was built about ten years back - up until that time this entire nation musthave been silent!.The girls yammered around the car. One particularly soulful child gripped at Dean’s sweaty arm.She yammered in Indian. .Ah yes, ah yes, dear one,. said Dean tenderly and almost sadly. He gotout of the car and went fishing around in the battered trunk in the back - the same old torturedAmerican trunk - and pulled out a wristwatch. He showed it to the child. She whimpered with glee.The others crowded around with amazement. Then Dean poked in the little girl’s hand for .thesweetest and purest and smallest crystal she has personally picked from the mountain for me.. Hefound one no bigger than a berry. And he handed her the wristwatch dangling. Their mouths roundedlike the mouths of chorister children. The lucky little girl squeezed it to her ragged breastrobes. Theystroked Dean and thanked him. He stood among them with his ragged face to the sky, looking forthe next and highest and final pass, and seemed like the Prophet that had come to them. He got backin the car. They hated to see us go. For the longest time, as we mounted a straight pass, they wavedand ran after us. We made a turn and never saw them again, and they were still running after us. .Ah,this breaks my heart!. cried Dean, punching his chest. .How far do they carry out these loyalties andwonders! What’s going to happen to them? Would they try to follow the car all the way to MexicoCity if we drove slow enough?..Yes,. I said, for I knew.We came into the dizzying heights of the Sierra Madre Oriental. The banana trees gleamed goldenin the haze. Great fogs yawned beyond stone walls along the precipice. Below, the Moctezuma wasa thin golden thread in a green jungle mat. Strange crossroad towns on top of the world rolled by,with shawled Indians watching us from under hatbrims and rebozos. Life was dense, dark, ancient.They watched Dean, serious and insane at his raving wheel, with eyes of hawks. All had their handsoutstretched. They had come down from the back mountains and higher places to hold forth theirhands for something they thought civilization could offer, and they never dreamed the sadness and thepoor broken delusion of it. They didn’t know that a bomb had come that could crack all our bridgesand roads and reduce them to jumbles, and we would be as poor as they someday, and stretchingout our hands in the same, same way. Our broken Ford, old thirties upgoing America Ford, rattledthrough them and vanished in dust.We had reached the approaches of the last plateau. Now the sun was golden, the air keen blue,and the desert with its occasional rivers a riot of sandy, hot space and sudden Biblical tree shade.Now Dean was sleeping and Stan driving. The shepherds appeared, dressed as in first times, in longflowing robes, the women carrying golden bundles of flax, the men staves.Under great trees on the shimmering desert the shepherds sat and convened, and the sheepmoiled in the sun and raised dust beyond. .Man, man,. I yelled to Dean, .wake up and see theshepherds, wake up and see the golden world that Jesus came from, with your own eyes you cantell!.He shot his head up from the seat, saw one glimpse of it all in the fading red sun, and droppedback to sleep. When he woke up he described it to me in detail and said, .Yes, man, I’m glad youtold me to look. Oh, Lord, what shall I do? Where will I go?. He rubbed his belly, he looked toheaven with red eyes, he almost wept.The end of our journey impended. Great fields stretched on both sides of us; a noble wind blewacross the occasional immense tree groves and over old missions turning salmon pink in the late sun.The clouds were close and huge and rose. .Mexico City by dusk!. We’d made it, a total of nineteen173hundred miles from the afternoon yards of Denver to these vast and Biblical areas of the world, andnow we were about to reach the end of the road..Shall we change our insect T-shirts?..Naw, let’s wear them into town, hell’s bells.. And we drove into Mexico City.A brief mountain pass took us suddenly to a height from which we saw all of Mexico Citystretched out in its volcanic crater below and spewing city smokes and early dusklights. Down to itwe zoomed, down Insurgentes Boulevard, straight toward the heart of town at Reforma. Kidsplayed soccer in enormous sad fields and threw up dust. Taxi-drivers overtook us and wanted toknow if we wanted girls. No, we didn’t want girls now. Long, ragged adobe slums stretched out onthe plain; we saw lonely figures in the dimming alleys. Soon night would come. Then the city roaredin and suddenly we were passing crowded cafes and theaters and many lights. Newsboys yelled atus. Mechanics slouched by, barefoot, with wrenches and rags. Mad barefoot Indian drivers cutacross us and surrounded us and tooted and made frantic traffic. The noise was incredible. Nomufflers are used on Mexican cars. Horns are batted with glee continual. .Whee!. yelled Dean,.Look out!. He staggered the car through the traffic and played with everybody. He drove likean Indian. He got on a circular glorietta drive on Reforma Boulevard and rolled around it with itseight spokes shooting cars at us from all directions, left, right, izquierda, dead ahead, and yelled andjumped with joy. .This is traffic I’ve always dreamed of’ Everybody goes.’. An ambulance cameballing through. American ambulances dart and weave through traffic with siren blowing; the greatworld-wide Fellahin Indian ambulances merely come through at eighty miles an hour in the citystreets, and everybody just has to get out of the way and they don’t pause for anybody or anycircumstances and fly straight through. We saw it reeling out of sight on skittering wheels in thebreaking-up moil of dense downtown traffic. The drivers were Indians. People, even old ladies, ranfor buses that never stopped. Young Mexico City businessmen made bets and ran by squads forbuses and athletically jumped them. The bus-drivers were barefoot, sneering and insane, and sat lowand squat in T-shirts at the low, enormous wheels. Ikons burned over them. The lights in the buseswere brown and greenish, and dark faces were lined on wooden benches.In downtown Mexico City thousands of hipsters in floppy straw hats and long-lapeled jacketsover bare chests padded along the main drag, some of them selling crucifixes and weed in the alleys,some of them kneeling in beat chapels next to Mexican burlesque shows in sheds. Some alleys wererubble, with open sewers, and little doors led to closet-size bars stuck in adobe walls. You had tojump over a ditch to get your drink, and in the bottom of the ditch was the ancient lake of the Aztec.You came out of the bar with your back to the wall and edged back to the street. They servedcoffee mixed with rum and nutmeg. Mambo blared from everywhere. Hundreds of whores linedthemselves along the dark and narrow streets and their sorrowful eyes gleamed at us in the night. Wewandered in a frenzy and a dream. We ate beautiful steaks for forty-eight cents in a strange tiledMexican cafeteria with generations of marimba musicians standing at one immense marimba - alsowandering singing guitarists, and old men on corners blowing trumpets. You went by the sour stink ofpulque saloons; they gave you a water glass of cactus juice in there, two cents. Nothing stopped; thestreets were alive all night. Beggars slept wrapped in advertising posters torn off fences. Wholefamilies of them sat on the sidewalk, playing little flutes and chuckling in the night. Their bare feetstuck out, their dim candles burned, all Mexico was one vast Bohemian camp. On corners oldwomen cut up the boiled heads of cows and wrapped morsels in tortillas and served them with hotsauce on newspaper napkins. This was the great and final wild uninhibited Fellahin-childlike city thatwe knew we would find at the end of the road. Dean walked through with his arms hanging zombie-like at his sides, his mouth open, his eyes gleaming, and conducted a ragged and holy tour that lasted174till dawn in a field with a boy in a straw hat who laughed and chatted with us and wanted to playcatch, for nothing ever ended.Then I got fever and became delirious and unconscious. Dysentery. I looked up out of the darkswirl of my mind and I knew I was on a bed eight thousand feet above sea level, on a roof of theworld, and I knew that I had lived a whole life and many others in the poor atomistic husk of myflesh, and I had all the dreams. And I saw Dean bending over the kitchen table. It was several nightslater and he was leaving Mexico City already. .What you doin, man?. I moaned..Poor Sal, poor Sal, got sick. Stan’ll take care of you. Now listen to hear if you can in yoursickness: I got my divorce from Camille down here and I’m driving back to Inez in New Yorktonight if the car holds out...All that again?. I cried..All that again, good buddy. Gotta get back to my life. Wish I could stay with you. Pray I cancome back.. I grabbed the cramps in my belly and groaned. When I looked up again bold nobleDean was standing with his old broken trunk and looking down at me. I didn’t know who he wasany more, and he knew this, and sympathized, and pulled the blanket over my shoulders. .Yes, yes,yes, I’ve got to go now.Old fever Sal, good-by.. And he was gone. Twelve hours later in my sorrowful fever I finallycame to understand that he was gone. By that time he was driving back alone through those bananamountains, this time at night.When I got better I realized what a rat he was, but then I had to understand the impossiblecomplexity of his life, how he had to leave me there, sick, to get on with his wives and woes. .Okay,old Dean, I’ll say nothing..175PART FIVE176Dean drove from Mexico City and saw Victor again in Gregoria and pushed that old car all theway to Lake Charles, Louisiana, before the rear end finally dropped on the road as he had alwaysknown it would. So he wired Inez for airplane fare and flew the rest of the way. When he arrived inNew York with the divorce papers in his hands, he and Inez immediately went to Newark and gotmarried; and that night, telling her everything was all right and not to worry, and making logics wherethere was nothing but inestimable sorrowful sweats, he jumped on a bus and roared off again acrossthe awful continent to San Francisco to rejoin Camille and the two baby girls. So now he was threetimes married, twice divorced, and living with his second wife.In the fall I myself started back home from Mexico City and one night just over Laredo border inDilley, Texas, I was standing on the hot road underneath an arc-lamp with the summer mothssmashing into it when I heard the sound of footsteps from the darkness beyond, and lo, a tall old manwith flowing white hair came clomping by with a pack on his back, and when he saw me as hepassed, he said, .Go moan for man,. and clomped on back to his dark. Did this mean that I shouldat last go on my pilgrimage on foot on the dark roads around America? I struggled and hurried toNew York, and one night I was standing in a dark street in Manhattan and called up to the windowof a loft where I thought my friends were having a party. But a pretty girl stuck her head out thewindow and said, .Yes? Who is it?..Sal Paradise,. I said, and heard my name resound in the sad and empty street..Come on up,. she called. .I’m making hot chocolate.,. So I went up and there she was, the girlwith the pure and innocent dear eyes that I had always searched for and for so long. We agreed tolove each other madly. In the winter we planned to migrate to San Francisco, bringing all our beatfurniture and broken belongings with us in a jalopy panel truck. I wrote to Dean and told him. Hewrote back a huge letter eighteen thousand words long, all about his young years in Denver, and saidhe was coming to get me and personally select the old truck himself and drive us home. We had sixweeks to save up the money for the truck and began working and counting every cent. And suddenlyDean arrived anyway, five and a half weeks in advance, and nobody had any money to go throughwith the plan.I was taking a walk in the middle of the night and came back to my girl to tell her what I thoughtabout during my, walk. She stood in the dark little pad with a strange smile. I told her a number ofthings and suddenly I noticed the hush in the room and looked around and saw a battered book onthe radio. I knew it was Dean’s high-eternity-in-the-afternoon Proust. As in a dream I saw him tiptoein from the dark hall in his stocking feet. He couldn’t talk any more. He hopped and laughed, hestuttered and fluttered his hands and said, .Ah - ah - you must listen to hear.. We listened, all ears.But he forgot what he wanted to say. .Really listen - ahem. Look, dear Sal - sweet Laura - I’vecome - I’m gone - but wait - ah yes.. And he stared with rocky sorrow into his hands. .Can’t talkno more - do you understand that it is - or might be -But listen!. We all listened. He was listeningto sounds in the night. .Yes!. he whispered with awe. .But you see - no need to talk any more - andfurther...But why did you come so soon, Dean?..Ah,. he said, looking at me as if for the first time, .so soon, yes. We - we’ll know - that is, Idon’t know. I came on the railroad pass - cabooses - old hard-bench coaches - Texas -playedflute and wooden sweet potato all the way.. He took out his new wooden flute. He played a fewsqueaky notes on it and jumped up and down in his stocking feet. .See?. he said. .But of course,Sal, I can talk as soon as ever and have many things to say to you in fact with my own little bangtailmind I’ve been reading and reading this gone Proust all the way across the country and digging agreat number of things I’ll never have TIME to tell you about and we STILL haven’t talked of177Mexico and our parting there in fever - but no need to talk. Absolutely, now, yes?..All right, we won’t talk.. And he started telling the story of what he did in LA on the way over inevery possible detail, how he visited a family, had dinner, talked to the father, the sons, the sisters whatthey looked like, what they ate, their furnishings, their thoughts, their interests, their very souls; ittook him three hours of detailed elucidation, and having concluded this he said, .Ah, but you seewhat I wanted to REALLY tell you - much later - Arkansas, crossing on train - playing flute - playcards with boys, my dirty deck -won money, blew sweet-potato solo - for sailors. Long long awfultrip five days and five nights just to SEE you, Sal...What about Camille?..Gave permission of course - waiting for me. Camille and I all straight forever-and-ever . . ...And Inez?..I - I - I want her to come back to Frisco with me live other side of town - don’t you think?Don’t know why I came.. Later he said in a sudden moment of gaping wonder, .Well and yes, ofcourse, I wanted to see your sweet girl and you - glad of you - love you as ever.. He stayed in NewYork three days and hastily made preparations to get back on the train with his railroad passes andagain recross the continent, five days and five nights in dusty coaches and hard-bench crummies, andof course we had no money for a truck and couldn’t go back with him. With Inez he spent one nightexplaining and sweating and fighting, and she threw him out. A letter came for him, care of me. I sawit. It was from Camille. .My heart broke when I saw you go across the tracks with your bag. I prayand pray you get back safe. ... I do want Sal and his friend to come and live on the same street. ... Iknow you’ll make it but I can’t help worrying - now that we’ve decided everything. . . . Dear Dean,it’s the end of the first half of the century. Welcome with love and kisses to spend the other half withus. We all wait for you. [Signed] Camille, Amy, and Little Joanie.. So Dean’s life was settled withhis most constant, most embittered, and best-knowing wife Camille, and I thanked God for him.The last time I saw him it was under sad and strange circumstances. Remi Boncoeur had arrived inNew York after having gone around the world several times in ships. I wanted him to meet andknow Dean. They did meet, but Dean couldn’t talk any more and said nothing, and Remi turnedaway. Remi had gotten tickets for the Duke Ellington concert at the Metropolitan Opera and insistedLaura and I come with him and his girl. Remi was fat and sad now but still the eager and formalgentleman, and he wanted to do things the right way, as he emphasized. So he got his bookie todrive us to the concert in a Cadillac. It was a cold winter night. The Cadillac was parked and readyto go. Dean stood outside the windows with his bag, ready to go to Penn Station and on across theland..Good-by, Dean,. I said. .I sure wish I didn’t have to go to the concert...D’you think I can ride to Fortieth Street with you?. he whispered. .Want to be with you asmuch as possible, m’boy, and besides it’s so durned cold in this here New Yawk .... I whispered toRemi. No, he wouldn’t have it, he liked me but he didn’t like my idiot friends. I wasn’t going to startall over again ruining his planned evenings as I had done at Alfred’s in San Francisco in 1947 withRoland Major..Absolutely out of the question, Sal!. Poor Remi, he had a special necktie made for this evening;