"You're an evil person."
"Did I pick out the cashier--or did you?"
She considered anger--and settled for laughter. "At least, you have one
virtue. A person around you doesn't have to censor what he says."
"And the devil is shocked by virtue, too--is that right? How perfectly
the closed mind bats them back! It must be marvelous never to be
able to wonder what goes on outside your own head. The enviable
situation of nearly everybody! And the everlasting chute-the-chutes to
hell-on-earth. Here comes our next course, Miss Morals."
"Can I have pêches flambeau?" she asked, somewhat later.
"I'll join you."
"I thought you didn't drink?"
"I don't. A brandied bonbon? Peaches with the alcohol mostly burned
away? Sherry in the soup? I'm not absolutist, Yvonne--not stuck
with it, quite. I don't accidentally swallow the port in my fruit
cocktail and then go out and get roaring drunk--excusing myself with
the accident of the port. Maybe the sniff of alcohol will fold up
the resolution of some reformed drunkards. My own problem--in that
case--was different."
"What was it, then?"
"It's a long and sordid story that I am not going to tell you now."
"Do you really understand all these things you're talking about?"
I thought that one over. "Mostly," I said, "my mental activity relates
to errors in the concepts of other people. Let's say--I've come to
understand a good deal--by searching for blunder, by hunting for the
sense of what brighter guys have learned. By relating them all."
"If God came in here now, what would you ask Him?"
It was quite a question and I looked at her with surprise. Her face
saddened. "Rol said that to me, once. But what?"
What would I ask?
I realized, with a strange feeling, that I wouldn't ask anything.
No questions. No further privileges. No favors. No additional
enlightenment. That last impulse had stayed in my mind for a moment and
I had then thought, if you want more enlightenment, the data is there,
son. Enlighten yourself. Don't ask, when there's a chance of finding
out on your own.
Superego?
Had my father told me that?
Or was that how I felt about life and the world?