J. Salinger. The Catcher in the Rye. Five episodes

STORYTELLER. I wasn’t down at the game,as I’d just got back from New York with the fencing team. I was the goddam manager of the fencing team. Very big deal. We’d gone for this fencing meet with McBurney School. Only, we didn’t have the meet. I left all the foils and equipment and stuff on the goddam subway. It wasn’t all my fault. I had to keep getting up to look at this map, so we’d know where to get off. So we got back to Pencey around two-thirty instead of around dinnertime. The whole team ostracized me the whole way back on the train. It was pretty funny, in a way. And I was on my way to say good-by to old Spencer, my history teacher. I forgot to tell you -they kicked me out.I was flunking four subjects &not applying myself &all. They gave me frequent warning to start applying myself, when my parents came up for a conference with old Thurmer—but I didn’t do it. So I got the ax. They give guys the ax quite frequently at Pencey. It has a very good academic rating, Pencey. It really does.What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I’ve left schools &places I didn’t even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don’t care if it’s a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it. If you don’t, you feel even worse. I was lucky. I suddenly remembered this time, in around October, that we were chucking a football around, in front of the academic building. This teacher that taught biology, Mr. Zambesi, stuck his head out of this window and told us to go back to the dorm and get ready for dinner. If I get a chance to remember that kind of stuff, I can get a good-by when I need one. I started running toward old Spencer’s house. I ran all the way to the main gate, and then I waited a second till I got my breath. I have no wind, if you want to know the truth. I’m quite a heavy smoker, for one thing—that is, I used to be. They made me cut it out. Another thing, I grew six and a half inches last year. That’s also how I practically got t.b. and came out here for all these goddam checkups and stuff. I don’t even know what I was running for—I guess I just felt like it. After I got across the road, I felt like I was sort of disappearing. It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road. Boy, I rang that doorbell fast when I got to old Spencer’s house. I was really frozen. My ears were hurting and I could hardly move my fingers at all.

HOLDEN. C’mon, c’mon! Somebody open the door!

STORYTELLER. Finally old Mrs. Spencer opened it.

MRS. SPENCER. Holden! How lovely to see you! Come in, dear! Are you frozen to death?

STORYTELLER. I think she was glad to see me. She liked me. At least, I think she did.

HOLDEN. How are you, Mrs. Spencer? How’s Mr. Spencer?

MRS. SPENCER. Let me take your coat, dear.

STORYTELLER. She was sort of deaf.

HOLDEN. How’ve you been, Mrs. Spencer?

MRS. SPENCER. I’ve been just fine, Holden. How have you been?

STORYTELLER. The way she asked me, I knew right away old Spencer’d told her I’d been kicked out.

HOLDEN. Fine. How’s Mr. Spencer? He over his grippe yet?

MRS. SPR. Over it! Holden,he’s behaving like a perfect—I don’t know what…He’s in his room,dear.Go right in.

STRYTELLER. They were both around seventy years old, or even more than that. They got a bang out of things, though—in a half-assed way, of course. I know that sounds mean to say, but I don’t mean it mean. I just mean that I used to think about old Spencer quite a lot, &if you thought about him too much, you wondered what the heck he was still living for. I mean he was all stooped over, &he had very terrible posture, &in class, whenever he dropped a piece of chalk at the blackboard, some guy in the first row always had to get up &pick it up and hand it to him. That’s awful, in my opinion. But if you thought about him just enough and not too much, you could figure it out that he wasn’t doing too bad for himself. For instance, one Sunday when some other guys and I were over there for hot chocolate, he showed us this old beat-up Navajo blanket that he &Mrs. Spencer’d bought off some Indian. You could tell old Spencer’d got a big bang out of buying it. That’s what I mean. You take somebody old as hell, like old Spencer, and they can get a big bang out of buying a blanket.

MR. SPENCER. Who’s that? Caulfield? Come in, boy.

STRTLR. The minute I went in, I was sort of sorry I’d come. There were pills &medicine all over the place, & everything smelled like Nose Drops. It was pretty depressing. I’m not too crazy about sick people, anyway. What made it even more depressing, old Spencer had on this very sad, ratty old bathrobe that he was probably born in or something.I don’t much like to see old guys in their pajamas and bathrobes anyway. Their bumpy old chests are always showing. And their legs. Old guys’ legs, at beaches &places, always look so white & unhairy.

HOLDEN. Hello, sir. I got your note. Thanks a lot. You didn’t have to do all that. I’d have come over to say good-by anyway.

MR. SPENCER. Have a seat there, boy.

HOLDEN. How’s your grippe, sir?

MR. SPENCER. M’boy, if I felt any better I’d have to send for the doctor.

STORYTELLER. That knocked him out. He started chuckling like a madman. Boy, his bed was like a rock. He started getting serious as hell. I knew he would.

MR. SPENCER. So you’re leaving us, eh?

HOLDEN. Yes, sir. I guess I am.

STORYTELLER. He started going into this nodding routine. You never saw anybody nod as much in your life as old Spencer did.

MR. SPENCER. What did Dr. Thurmer say to you, boy? I understand you had quite a little chat.

HOLDEN. Yes, we did. We really did. I was in his office for around two hours, I guess.

MR. SPENCER. What’d he say to you?

HOLDEN. Oh… well, about Life being a game &all. And how you should play it according to the rules. He was pretty nice about it. I mean he didn’t hit the ceiling or anything. He just kept talking about Life being a game &all. You know.

MR. SPENCER. Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.

HOLDEN. Yes, sir. I know it is. I know it.

STORYTELLER. Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it’s a game, all right—I’ll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren’t any hot-shots, then what’s a game about it? Nothing. No game.

MR. SPENCER. Has Dr. Thurmer written to your parents yet?

HOLDEN. He said he was going to write them Monday.

MR. SPENCER. And how do you think they’ll take the news?

HLDEN. Well… they’ll be pretty irritated about it. They really will. This is about the fourth school I’ve gone to.

STORYTELLER. I shook my head. I shake my head quite a lot. I was sixteen then, and I’m seventeen now, and sometimes I act like I’m about thirteen. It’s really ironical, because I’m six foot two and a half and I have gray hair. I really do. The one side of my head—the right side—is full of millions of gray hairs. I’ve had them ever since I was a kid. And yet I still act sometimes like I was only about twelve. Everybody says that, especially my father. It’s partly true, too, but it isn’t all true. People always think something’s all true. I don’t give a damn, except that I get bored sometimes when people tell me to act my age. Sometimes I act a lot older than I am, but people never notice it. People never notice anything. Old Spencer started nodding again. He also started picking his nose. He made out like he was only pinching it, but he was really getting the old thumb right in there.

MR. SPENCER. I had the privilege of meeting your mother and dad some weeks ago. They’re grand people.

HOLDEN. Yes, they are. They’re very nice.

STORYTELLER. Grand. There’s a word I really hate. It’s a phony. I could puke every time I hear it. Then all of a sudden old Spencer looked like he had something very good, something sharp as a tack, to say to me. He sat up more in his chair and sort of moved around. I wanted to get the hell out of the room. I could feel a terrific lecture coming on. I didn’t mind the idea so much, but I didn’t feel like being lectured to and smell Nose Drops and look at old Spencer in his pajamas and bathrobe all at the same time. I really didn’t. It started, all right.

MR. SPENCER. What’s the matter with you, boy? How many subjects did you carry this term?

HOLDEN. Five, sir.

MR. SPENCER. Five. And how many are you failing in?

HOLDEN. Four.

STORYTELLER. It was the hardest bed I ever sat on. I passed English all right, because I had all that stuff when I was at the Whooton School. He wasn’t even listening.

MR. SPENCER. I flunked you in history because you knew absolutely nothing.

HOLDEN. I know that, sir. Boy, I know it. You couldn’t help it.

MR. SPENCER. Absolutely nothing.

STORYTELLER. That’s something that drives me crazy. When people say something twice that way, after you admit it the first time. Then he said it three times.

MR. SPENCER. But absolutely nothing. I doubt very much if you opened your textbook even once the whole term. Did you? Tell the truth, boy.

HOLDEN. Well, I sort of glanced through it a couple of times.

STORYTELLER. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. He was mad about history.

MR. SPENCER. You glanced through it, eh? Your, ah, exam paper is over there on top of my chiffonier. On top of the pile. Bring it here, please.

STORYTELLER. It was a very dirty trick. Boy, you can’t imagine how sorry I was getting that I’d stopped by to say good-by to him. He started handling my exam paper like it was a turd or something.

MR. SPENCER. We studied the Egyptians from November 4th to December 2nd. Would you care to hear what you had to say?

HOLDEN. No, sir, not very much.

STRTLR. He read it anyway, though. You can’t stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.

MR. SPENCER. “The Egyptians were an ancient race of Caucasians residing in one of the northern sections of Africa. The latter as we all know is the largest continent in the Eastern Hemisphere”.

STORYTELLER. I had to sit there and listen to that crap. It certainly was a dirty trick.

MR. SPENCER. “The Egyptians are extremely interesting to us today for various reasons. Modern science would still like to know what the secret ingredients were that the Egyptians used when they wrapped up dead people so that their faces would not rot for innumerable centuries. This interesting riddle is still quite a challenge to modern science in the twentieth century”.

STORYTELLER. I was beginning to sort of hate him.

MR. SPENCER. Your essay, shall we say, ends there.

STORYTELLER. You wouldn’t think such an old guy would be so sarcastic and all.

MR. SPENCER. However, you dropped me a little note, at the bottom of the page.

HOLDEN. I know I did.

STORYTELLER. I said it very fast because I wanted to stop him before he started reading that out loud. But you couldn’t stop him. He was hot as a firecracker.

MR. SPENCER. “ Dear Mr. Spencer. That is all I know about the Egyptians. I can’t seem to get very interested in them although your lectures are very interesting. It is all right with me if you flunk me though as I am flunking everything else except English anyway. Respectfully yours, Holden Caulfield.”

STORYTELLER. He put my goddam paper down then and looked at me like he’d just beaten hell out of me in ping-pong or something. I don’t think I’ll ever forgive him for reading me that crap out loud. I wouldn’t’ve read it out loud to him if he’d written it—I really wouldn’t. In the first place, I’d only written that damn note so that he wouldn’t feel too bad about flunking me.

MR. SPENCER. Do you blame me for flunking you, boy?

HOLDEN. No, sir! I certainly don’t.

STORYTELLER. I wished to hell he’d stop calling me “boy” all the time. (Picks up the notebook.) It’s boring to do that every two minutes.

MR. SPENCER. What would you have done in my place? Tell the truth, boy.

STORYTELLER. Well, you could see he really felt pretty lousy about flunking me. So I shot the bull for a while. I told him I was a real moron, &all that stuff. I told him how I would’ve done exactly the same thing if I’d been in his place, &how most people didn’t appreciate how tough it is being a teacher. That kind of stuff. The funny thing is, though, I was sort of thinking of something else while I shot the bull. I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go. I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away. You don’t have to think too hard when you talk to a teacher.

MR. SPENCER. How do you feel about all this, boy? I’d be very interested to know. Very interested.

HOLDEN. You mean about my flunking out of Pencey and all?

STORYTELLER. I sort of wished he’d cover up his bumpy chest. It wasn’t such a beautiful view.

SPENCR. If I’m not mistaken, I believe you also had some difficulty at the Whooton School and at Elkton Hills.

HLDN. I didn’t have too much difficulty at Elkton Hills.I didn’t exactly flunk out or anything.I just quit, sort of.

MR. SPENCER. Why, may I ask?

HOLDEN. Why? Oh, well it’s a long story, sir. I mean it’s pretty complicated.

STRTLLR. I didn’t feel like going into the whole thing with him. He wouldn’t have understood it anyway. It wasn’t up his alley at all. One of the biggest reasons I left Elkton Hills was because I was surrounded by phoni-es. That’s all. They were coming in the goddam window. For instance, they had this headmaster, Mr. Haas, that was the phoniest bastard I ever met in my life. On Sundays, for instance, old Haas went around shaking hands with everybody’s parents when they drove up to school. He’d be charming as hell and all. Except if some boy had little old funny-looking parents. You should’ve seen the way he did with my roommate’s parents. He would just shake hands with them and give them a phony smile and then he’d go talk, for maybe a half an hour, with somebody else’s parents. I can’t stand that stuff. It drives me crazy. It makes me so depressed I go crazy.

HOLDEN. What, sir?

MR. SPENCER. Do you have any particular qualms about leaving Pencey?

HOLDEN. Oh, I have a few qualms, all right. Sure… but not too many. Not yet, anyway. I guess it hasn’t really hit me yet. It takes things a while to hit me. All I’m doing right now is thinking about going home Wednesday. I’m a moron.

MR. SPENCER. Do you feel absolutely no concern for your future, boy?

HOLDEN. Oh, I feel some concern for my future, all right. Sure. Sure, I do. But not too much, I guess. Not too much, I guess.

MR. SPENCER. You will. You will, boy. You will when it’s too late.

STORYTELLER. I didn’t like hearing him say that. It made me sound dead or something. It was very depressing.

HOLDEN. I guess I will.

SPNCR. I’d like to put some sense in that head of yours, boy.I’m trying to help you.I’m trying to help u, if I can.

STORYTELLER. He really was, too. You could see that.But it was just that we were too much on opposite sides of the pole, that’s all.

HOLDEN. I know you are, sir. Thanks a lot. No kidding. I appreciate it. I really do.

STORYTELLER. Boy, I couldn’t’ve sat there another ten minutes to save my life.

HOLDEN. The thing is, though, I have to get going now. I have quite a bit of equipment at the gym I have to get to take home with me. I really do.

STRYTLLR. He looked up at me and started nodding again, with this very serious look on his face. I felt sorry as hell for him,all of a sudden. But I just couldn’t hang around there any longer,the way we were on opposite sides of the pole, &his sad old bathrobe with his chest showing, &that grippy smell of Nose Drops all over the place.

HOLDEN. Look, sir. Don’t worry about me. I mean it. I’ll be all right. I’m just going through a phase right now. Everybody goes through phases and all, don’t they?

MR. SPENCER. I don’t know, boy. I don’t know.

STORYTELLER. I hate it when somebody answers that way.

HOLDEN. Sure. Sure, they do. I mean it, sir. Please don’t worry about me. Okay?

MR. SPENCER. Wouldn’t you like a cup of hot chocolate before you go? Mrs. Spencer would be…

HOLDEN. I would, I really would, but the thing is, I have to get going. I have to go right to the gym. Thanks, though. Thanks a lot, sir.

STORYTELLER. And all that crap. It made me feel sad as hell, though.

HOLDEN. I’ll drop you a line, sir. Take care of your grippe, now.

MR. SPENCER. Good-by, boy.

STORYTELLER. After I shut the door and started back to the living room, he yelled something at me, but I couldn’t exactly hear him. I’m pretty sure he yelled “Good luck!” at me, I hope to hell not. I’d never yell “Good luck!” at anybody. It sounds terrible, when you think about it.