Читать книгу Satori in Paris and Pic - Jack Kerouac - Страница 13

THE ARAB GIRL GOES OUT WITH ME, I INVITE HER TO see and hear a performance of Mozart’s Requiem in old St.-Germain-des-Prés church, which I knew about from an earlier visit and saw the poster announcing it. It’s full of people, crowded, we pay at the door and walk into surely the most distingué gathering in Paris that night, and as I say it’s misting outside, and her soft little hook nose has under it rose lips.

I teach her Christianity.

We neck a little later and she goes home to her parents. She wants me to take her to the beach at Tunis, I’m wondering if I shall be stabbed by Arabs jealous on the Bikini beach and that week Boumedienne deposed and dis-posed of Ben Bella and that woulda been a fine kettle of fish, and also I didnt have the money now and I wonder why she wanted that:’ I’ve been told where to get off on the beaches of Morocco.

I just dont know.

Methinks women love me and then they realize I’m drunk for all the world and this makes them realize I cant concentrate on them alone, for long, makes them jealous, and I’m a fool in Love With God. Yes.

Besides, lechery’s not my meat and makes me blush:– depends on the Lady. She was not my style. The French blonde was, but too young for me.

In times to come I’ll be known as the fool who rode outa Mongolia on a pony: Genghiz Khan, or the Mongolian Idiot, one. Well I’m not an idiot, and I like ladies, and I’m polite, but impolitic, like Ippolit my cousin from Russia. An old hitch hiker in San Francisco, called Joe Ihnat, announced that mine was an ancient Russian name meaning “Love.” Kerouac. I said “Then they went to Scotland?”

“Yes, then Ireland, then Cornwall, Wales, and Brittany, then you know the rest.”

“Rooshian?”

“Means Love.”

“You’re kidding.”

—Oh, and then I realized, “of course, outa Mongolia and the Khans, and before that, Eskimos of Canada and Siberia. All goes back around the world, not to mention Perish-the-Thought Persia.” (Aryans).

Anyhow me and the Breton Goulet went to an evil bar where a hundred assorted Parisians were eagerly listening to a big argument between a white man and a black man. I got outa there quick and left him to his own devices, met him back at La Gentilhommière, some fight musta spilled out, or, not, I wasnt there.

Paris is a tough town.