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Show -307 "No. The funny thing is that part of me enjoyed the experience. I came back to the very same place a week later, and I think I hoped they'd be there again. That's the trouble with being a Skinner-we're complicated, aren't we? Unpredictable. We don't make sense." "Why should we make sense?" I said. "That's a French idea. So part of you had a good time; there's a little beastliness in all of us. We should be grateful-it's what gives us energy. But that's a terrible story." We had started walking slowly back up the path. Carlo's story had made me sad again, a mean slippery sadness I couldn't find a handle on. I suppose I wanted him to be more innocent than me. I wanted, I see it now, to make an innocence-delegate out of him, to have him out there being an eternal good child on my behalf. As I was, I understood it suddenly, a wild man on Jacob's behalf. "Do you know what was the most frightening part of Paradise Lost?" Carlo said. "When Satan is thrown out of Heaven. He falls for nine days and nine nights before he reaches Hell. Can you imagine that? With your arms and legs flailing and kicking, and still falling for all those long days and all those endless nights? Falling." "There you are," Alice said. "We've been calling and calling you. Come and eat." Jacob gave me a questioning look and I nodded as I sat |