The Catcher in the Rye Read online

  One thing about packing depressed me a little. I had to pack these brand-new ice skates my mother had practically just sent me a couple of days before. That depressed me. I could see my mother going in Spaulding’s and asking the salesman a million dopy questions—and here I was getting the ax again. It made me feel pretty sad. She bought me the wrong kind of skates—I wanted racing skates and she bought hockey—but it made me sad anyway. Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad.

  After I got all packed, I sort of counted my dough. I don’t remember exactly how much I had, but I was pretty loaded. My grandmother’d just sent me a wad about a week before. I have this grandmother that’s quite lavish with her dough. She doesn’t have all her marbles any more—she’s old as hell—and she keeps sending me money for my birthday about four times a year. Anyway, even though I was pretty loaded, I figured I could always use a few extra bucks. You never know. So what I did was, I went down the hall and woke up Frederick Woodruff, this guy I’d lent my typewriter to. I asked him how much he’d give me for it. He was a pretty wealthy guy. He said he didn’t know. He said he didn’t much want to buy it. Finally he bought it, though. It cost about ninety bucks, and all he bought it for was twenty. He was sore because I’d woke him up.

  When I was all set to go, when I had my bags and all, I stood for a while next to the stairs and took a last look down the goddam corridor. I was sort of crying. I don’t know why. I put my red hunting hat on, and turned the peak around to the back, the way I liked it, and then I yelled at the top of my goddam voice, “Sleep tight, ya morons!” I’ll bet I woke up every bastard on the whole floor. Then I got the hell out. Some stupid guy had thrown peanut shells all over the stairs, and I damn near broke my crazy neck.

  8

  It was too late to call up for a cab or anything, so I walked the whole way to the station. It wasn’t too far, but it was cold as hell, and the snow made it hard for walking, and my Gladstones kept banging hell out of my legs. I sort of enjoyed the air and all, though. The only trouble was, the cold made my nose hurt, and right under my upper lip, where old Stradlater’d laid one on me. He’d smacked my lip right on my teeth, and it was pretty sore. My ears were nice and warm, though. That hat I bought had earlaps in it, and I put them on—I didn’t give a damn how I looked. Nobody was around anyway. Everybody was in the sack.

  I was quite lucky when I got to the station, because I only had to wait about ten minutes for a train. While I waited, I got some snow in my hand and washed my face with it. I still had quite a bit of blood on.

  Usually I like riding on trains, especially at night, with the lights on and the windows so black, and one of those guys coming up the aisle selling coffee and sandwiches and magazines. I usually buy a ham sandwich and about four magazines. If I’m on a train at night, I can usually even read one of those dumb stories in a magazine without puking. You know. One of those stories with a lot of phony, lean-jawed guys named David in it, and a lot of phony girls named Linda or Marcia that are always lighting all the goddam Davids’ pipes for them. I can even read one of those lousy stories on a train at night, usually. But this time, it was different. I just didn’t feel like it. I just sort of sat and not did anything. All I did was take off my hunting hat and put it in my pocket.

  All of a sudden, this lady got on at Trenton and sat down next to me. Practically the whole car was empty, because it was pretty late and all, but she sat down next to me, instead of an empty seat, because she had this big bag with her and I was sitting in the front seat. She stuck the bag right out in the middle of the aisle, where the conductor and everybody could trip over it. She had these orchids on, like she’d just been to a big party or something. She was around forty or forty-five, I guess, but she was very good looking. Women kill me. They really do. I don’t mean I’m oversexed or anything like that—although I am quite sexy. I just like them, I mean. They’re always leaving their goddam bags out in the middle of the aisle.

  Anyway, we were sitting there, and all of a sudden she said to me, “Excuse me, but isn’t that a Pencey Prep sticker?” She was looking up at my suitcases, up on the rack.

  “Yes, it is,” I said. She was right. I did have a goddam Pencey sticker on one of my Gladstones. Very corny, I’ll admit.

  “Oh, do you go to Pencey?” she said. She had a nice voice. A nice telephone voice, mostly. She should’ve carried a goddam telephone around with her.

  “Yes, I do,” I said.

  “Oh, how lovely! Perhaps you know my son, then, Ernest Morrow? He goes to Pencey.”

  “Yes, I do. He’s in my class.”

  Her son was doubtless the biggest bastard that ever went to Pencey, in the whole crumby history of the school. He was always going down the corridor, after he’d had a shower, snapping his soggy old wet towel at people’s asses. That’s exactly the kind of a guy he was.

  “Oh, how nice!” the lady said. But not corny. She was just nice and all. “I must tell Ernest we met,” she said. “May I ask your name, dear?”

  “Rudolf Schmidt,” I told her. I didn’t feel like giving her my whole life history. Rudolf Schmidt was the name of the janitor of our dorm.

  “Do you like Pencey?” she asked me.

  “Pencey? It’s not too bad. It’s not paradise or anything, but it’s as good as most schools. Some of the faculty are pretty conscientious.”

  “Ernest just adores it.”

  “I know he does,” I said. Then I started shooting the old crap around a little bit. “He adapts himself very well to things. He really does. I mean he really knows how to adapt himself.”

  “Do you think so?” she asked me. She sounded interested as hell.

  “Ernest? Sure,” I said. Then I watched her take off her gloves. Boy, was she lousy with rocks.

  “I just broke a nail, getting out of a cab,” she said. She looked up at me and sort of smiled. She had a terrifically nice smile. She really did. Most people have hardly any smile at all, or a lousy one. “Ernest’s father and I sometimes worry about him,” she said. “We sometimes feel he’s not a terribly good mixer.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well. He’s a very sensitive boy. He’s really never been a terribly good mixer with other boys. Perhaps he takes things a little more seriously than he should at his age.”

  Sensitive. That killed me. That guy Morrow was about as sensitive as a goddam toilet seat.

  I gave her a good look. She didn’t look like any dope to me. She looked like she might have a pretty damn good idea what a bastard she was the mother of. But you can’t always tell—with somebody’s mother, I mean. Mothers are all slightly insane. The thing is, though, I liked old Morrow’s mother. She was all right. “Would you care for a cigarette?” I asked her.

  She looked all around. “I don’t believe this is a smoker, Rudolf,” she said. Rudolf. That killed me.

  “That’s all right. We can smoke till they start screaming at us,” I said. She took a cigarette off me, and I gave her a light.

  She looked nice, smoking. She inhaled and all, but she didn’t wolf the smoke down, the way most women around her age do. She had a lot of charm. She had quite a lot of sex appeal, too, if you really want to know.

  She was looking at me sort of funny. “I may be wrong but I believe your nose is bleeding, dear,” she said, all of a sudden.

  I nodded and took out my handkerchief. “I got hit with a snowball,” I said. “One of those very icy ones.” I probably would’ve told her what really happened, but it would’ve taken too long. I liked her, though. I was beginning to feel sort of sorry I’d told her my name was Rudolf Schmidt. “Old Ernie,” I said. “He’s one of the most popular boys at Pencey. Did you know that?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  I nodded. “It really took everybody quite a long time to get to know him. He’s a funny guy. A strange guy, in lots of ways—know what I mean? Like when I first met him. When I first met him, I thought he was kind of a snobbish person. That’s what
I thought. But he isn’t. He’s just got this very original personality that takes you a little while to get to know him.”

  Old Mrs. Morrow didn’t say anything, but boy, you should’ve seen her. I had her glued to her seat. You take somebody’s mother, all they want to hear about is what a hot-shot their son is.

  Then I really started chucking the old crap around. “Did he tell you about the elections?” I asked her. “The class elections?”

  She shook her head. I had her in a trance, like. I really did.

  “Well, a bunch of us wanted old Ernie to be president of the class. I mean he was the unanimous choice. I mean he was the only boy that could really handle the job,” I said—boy, was I chucking it. “But this other boy—Harry Fencer—was elected. And the reason he was elected, the simple and obvious reason, was because Ernie wouldn’t let us nominate him. Because he’s so darn shy and modest and all. He refused… Boy, he’s really shy. You oughta make him try to get over that.” I looked at her. “Didn’t he tell you about it?”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  I nodded. “That’s Ernie. He wouldn’t. That’s the one fault with him—he’s too shy and modest. You really oughta get him to try to relax occasionally.”

  Right that minute, the conductor came around for old Mrs. Morrow’s ticket, and it gave me a chance to quit shooting it. I’m glad I shot it for a while, though. You take a guy like Morrow that’s always snapping their towel at people’s asses—really trying to hurt somebody with it—they don’t just stay a rat while they’re a kid. They stay a rat their whole life. But I’ll bet, after all the crap I shot, Mrs. Morrow’ll keep thinking of him now as this very shy, modest guy that wouldn’t let us nominate him for president. She might. You can’t tell. Mothers aren’t too sharp about that stuff.

  “Would you care for a cocktail?” I asked her. I was feeling in the mood for one myself. “We can go in the club car. All right?”

  “Dear, are you allowed to order drinks?” she asked me. Not snotty, though. She was too charming and all to be snotty.

  “Well, no, not exactly, but I can usually get them on account of my heighth,” I said. “And I have quite a bit of gray hair.” I turned sideways and showed her my gray hair. It fascinated hell out of her. “C’mon, join me, why don’t you?” I said. I’d’ve enjoyed having her.

  “I really don’t think I’d better. Thank you so much, though, dear,” she said. “Anyway, the club car’s most likely closed. It’s quite late, you know.” She was right. I’d forgotten all about what time it was.

  Then she looked at me and asked me what I was afraid she was going to ask me. “Ernest wrote that he’d be home on Wednesday, that Christmas vacation would start on Wednesday,” she said. “I hope you weren’t called home suddenly because of illness in the family.” She really looked worried about it. She wasn’t just being nosy, you could tell.

  “No, everybody’s fine at home,” I said. “It’s me. I have to have this operation.”

  “Oh! I’m so sorry,” she said. She really was, too. I was right away sorry I’d said it, but it was too late.

  “It isn’t very serious. I have this tiny little tumor on the brain.”

  “Oh, no!” She put her hand up to her mouth and all. “Oh, I’ll be all right and everything! It’s right near the outside. And it’s a very tiny one. They can take it out in about two minutes.”

  Then I started reading this timetable I had in my pocket. Just to stop lying. Once I get started, I can go on for hours if I feel like it. No kidding. Hours.

  We didn’t talk too much after that. She started reading this Vogue she had with her, and I looked out the window for a while. She got off at Newark. She wished me a lot of luck with the operation and all. She kept calling me Rudolf. Then she invited me to visit Ernie during the summer, at Gloucester, Massachusetts. She said their house was right on the beach, and they had a tennis court and all, but I just thanked her and told her I was going to South America with my grandmother. Which was really a hot one, because my grandmother hardly ever even goes out of the house, except maybe to go to a goddam matinee or something. But I wouldn’t visit that sonuvabitch Morrow for all the dough in the world, even if I was desperate.

  9

  The first thing I did when I got off at Penn Station, I went into this phone booth. I felt like giving somebody a buzz. I left my bags right outside the booth so that I could watch them, but as soon as I was inside, I couldn’t think of anybody to call up. My brother D.B. was in Hollywood. My kid sister Phoebe goes to bed around nine o’clock—so I couldn’t call her up. She wouldn’t’ve cared if I’d woke her up, but the trouble was, she wouldn’t’ve been the one that answered the phone. My parents would be the ones. So that was out. Then I thought of giving Jane Gallagher’s mother a buzz, and find out when Jane’s vacation started, but I didn’t feel like it. Besides, it was pretty late to call up. Then I thought of calling this girl I used to go around with quite frequently, Sally Hayes, because I knew her Christmas vacation had started already—she’d written me this long, phony letter, inviting me over to help her trim the Christmas tree Christmas Eve and all—but I was afraid her mother’d answer the phone. Her mother knew my mother, and I could picture her breaking a goddam leg to get to the phone and tell my mother I was in New York. Besides, I wasn’t crazy about talking to old Mrs. Hayes on the phone. She once told Sally I was wild. She said I was wild and that I had no direction in life. Then I thought of calling up this guy that went to the Whooton School when I was there, Carl Luce, but I didn’t like him much. So I ended up not calling anybody. I came out of the booth, after about twenty minutes or so, and got my bags and walked over to that tunnel where the cabs are and got a cab.

  I’m so damn absent-minded, I gave the driver my regular address, just out of habit and all—I mean I completely forgot I was going to shack up in a hotel for a couple of days and not go home till vacation started. I didn’t think of it till we were halfway through the park. Then I said, “Hey, do you mind turning around when you get a chance? I gave you the wrong address. I want to go back downtown.”

  The driver was sort of a wise guy. “I can’t turn around here, Mac. This here’s a one-way. I’ll have to go all the way to Ninedieth Street now.”

  I didn’t want to start an argument. “Okay,” I said. Then I thought of something, all of a sudden. “Hey, listen,” I said. “You know those ducks in that lagoon right near Central Park South? That little lake? By any chance, do you happen to know where they go, the ducks, when it gets all frozen over? Do you happen to know, by any chance?” I realized it was only one chance in a million.

  He turned around and looked at me like I was a madman. “What’re ya tryna do, bud?” he said. “Kid me?”

  “No—I was just interested, that’s all.”

  He didn’t say anything more, so I didn’t either. Until we came out of the park at Ninetieth Street. Then he said, “All right, buddy. Where to?”

  “Well, the thing is, I don’t want to stay at any hotels on the East Side where I might run into some acquaintances of mine. I’m traveling incognito,” I said. I hate saying corny things like “traveling incognito.” But when I’m with somebody that’s corny, I always act corny too. “Do you happen to know whose band’s at the Taft or the New Yorker, by any chance?”

  “No idear, Mac.”

  “Well—take me to the Edmont then,” I said. “Would you care to stop on the way and join me for a cocktail? On me. I’m loaded.”

  “Can’t do it, Mac. Sorry.” He certainly was good company. Terrific personality.

  We got to the Edmont Hotel, and I checked in. I’d put on my red hunting cap when I was in the cab, just for the hell of it, but I took it off before I checked in. I didn’t want to look like a screwball or something. Which is really ironic. I didn’t know then that the goddam hotel was full of perverts and morons. Screwballs all over the place.

  They gave me this very crumby room, with nothing to look out of the window at except the other side of t
he hotel. I didn’t care much. I was too depressed to care whether I had a good view or not. The bellboy that showed me to the room was this very old guy around sixty-five. He was even more depressing than the room was. He was one of those bald guys that comb all their hair over from the side to cover up the baldness. I’d rather be bald than do that. Anyway, what a gorgeous job for a guy around sixty-five years old. Carrying people’s suitcases and waiting around for a tip. I suppose he wasn’t too intelligent or anything, but it was terrible anyway.

  After he left, I looked out the window for a while, with my coat on and all. I didn’t have anything else to do. You’d be surprised what was going on on the other side of the hotel. They didn’t even bother to pull their shades down. I saw one guy, a gray-haired, very distinguished-looking guy with only his shorts on, do something you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. First he put his suitcase on the bed. Then he took out all these women’s clothes, and put them on. Real women’s clothes—silk stockings, high-heeled shoes, brassiere, and one of those corsets with the straps hanging down and all. Then he put on this very tight black evening dress. I swear to God. Then he started walking up and down the room, taking these very small steps, the way a woman does, and smoking a cigarette and looking at himself in the mirror. He was all alone, too. Unless somebody was in the bathroom—I couldn’t see that much. Then, in the window almost right over his, I saw a man and a woman squirting water out of their mouths at each other. It probably was highballs, not water, but I couldn’t see what they had in their glasses. Anyway, first he’d take a swallow and squirt it all over her, then she did it to him—they took turns, for God’s sake. You should’ve seen them. They were in hysterics the whole time, like it was the funniest thing that ever happened. I’m not kidding, the hotel was lousy with perverts. I was probably the only normal bastard in the whole place—and that isn’t saying much. I damn near sent a telegram to old Stradlater telling him to take the first train to New York. He’d have been the king of the hotel.