Pirsig - Lila

LILA

ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE

LILA

A Bantam Book

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Bantam hardcover edition published November 1991
Bantam paperback edition / December 1992

The author wishes to give special thanks to the Guggenheim Foundation for the grant under which this book was written.

All rights reserved.
Copyright 1991 by Robert M. Pirsig.
Cover design copyright 1991 by One Plus One Studio.
Cover photograph copyright 1991 by Jeff Cook.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 91-16417.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address: Bantam Books.

eISBN: 978-0-307-76421-8

Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words Bantam Books and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

v3.1_r1

TO WENDY AND NELL

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following:
Excerpt from Patterns of Culture by Ruth Benedict. Copyright 1934 by Ruth Benedict. Copyright renewed 1961 by Ruth Valentine. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.
Excerpt from The Message in the Bottle by Walker Percy. Copyright 1975 by Walker Percy. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc.
Excerpt from The Crack-Up by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Copyright 1945 by New Directions Publishing Corporation. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Excerpt from In Search of the April Fool by Cathie Slater Spence. Courtesy of the author.
Lyrics from Get Down Tonight by Harry Wayne Casey and Richard Finch. Copyright 1975 by Longitude Music Company. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Longitude Music Company.

Part One

Lila didnt know he was here. She was sound asleep, apparently in some fearful dream. In the darkness he heard a grating sound of her teeth and felt her body suddenly turn as she struggled against some menace only she could see.

The light from the open hatch above was so dim it concealed whatever lines of cosmetics and age were there and now she looked softly cherubic, like a small girl with blond hair, wide cheekbones, a small turned-up nose, and a common childs face that seemed so familiar it attracted a certain natural affection. He got the feeling that when morning came she should pop open her sky-blue eyes and they should sparkle with excitement at the prospect of a new day of sunlight and parents smiling and maybe bacon cooking on the stove and happiness everywhere.

But that wasnt how it would be. When Lilas eyes opened in a hung-over daze shed look into the features of a gray-haired man she wouldnt even remembersomeone she met in a bar the previous night. Her nausea and headache might produce some remorse and self-contempt but not much, he thoughtshed been through this many timesand shed slowly try to figure out how to return to whatever life shed been leading before she met this one.

Her voice murmured something like Look out! Then she said something unintelligible and turned away, then pulled the blanket up around her head, perhaps against the cold breeze that came down through the open hatch. The berth of the sailboat was so narrow that this turn of her body brought her up against him again and he felt the whole length of her and then her warmth. An earlier lust came back and his arm went over her so that his hand held her breastfull there but too soft, like something overripe that would soon go bad.

He wanted to wake her and take her again but as he thought about this a sad feeling rose up and forbade it. The more he hesitated the more the sadness grew. He would like to know her better. Hed had a feeling all night that he had seen her before somewhere, a long time ago.

That thought seemed to bring it all down. Now the sadness came on in full and blended with the darkness of the cabin and with the dim indigo light through the hatch above. Up there were stars, framed by the hatch opening so that they seemed to move when the boat rocked. Part of Orion momentarily disappeared, then appeared again. Soon all the winter constellations would be back.