Читать книгу Dreaming of Babylon - Richard Brautigan - Страница 12

Sergeant Rink

After the Chinese kids’ game I thought about my detective friend to keep Babylon away. He was a sergeant and his name was Rink. He was a very tough cop. I think he held the world’s record for being tough. He had perfected a slap across the face that left an exact hand print on it like a temporary brand. That slap was just a friendly greeting from Sergeant Rink compared to how things got later on if you weren’t very, very cooperative.

I met Rink when we were both trying out for the force back in ’36. I wanted to be a cop. We were very good friends back then. We might be on the force together right now, partners solving murders, if only I had managed to pass the final examination. My score was close, though. I was just five points away from being a cop.

Dreaming of Babylon got the best of me. I would have been a good cop, too. If only I had been able to stop dreaming of Babylon. Babylon has been such a delight to me and at the same time such a curse.

I didn’t answer the last twenty questions of the test. That’s why I failed. I just sat there dreaming of Babylon while everybody else answered the questions and became policemen.