Franny and Zooey (4 page)

    Lane had just shifted his attention from the frogs' legs to the salad. "Any good?" he said. "What's it about?"

    "I don't know. It's peculiar. I mean it's primarily a religious book. In a way, I suppose you could say it's terribly fanatical, but in a way it isn't. I mean it starts out with this peasant--the pilgrim--wanting to find out what it means in the Bible when it says you should pray incessantly. You know. Without stopping. In Thessa-lonians or someplace. So he starts out walking all over Russia, looking for somebody who can tell him how to pray incessantly. And what you should say if you do." Franny seemed intensely interested in the way Lane was dismembering his frogs' legs. Her eyes remained fixed on his plate as she spoke. "All he carries with him is this knapsack filled with bread and salt. Then he meets this person called a starets--some sort of terribly advanced religious person--and the starets tells him about a book called the Thilokalia.' "Which apparently was written by a group of terribly advanced monks who sort of advocated this really incredible method of praying."

    "Hold still," Lane said to a pair of frogs' legs.

    "Anyway, so the pilgrim learns how to pray the way these very mystical persons say you should--I mean he keeps at it till he's perfected it and everything. Then he goes on walking all over Russia, meeting all kinds of absolutely marvellous people and telling them how to pray by this incredible method. I mean that's really the whole book."

    "I hate to mention it, but I'm going to reek of garlic," Lane said.

    "He meets this one married couple, on one of his journeys, that I love more than anybody I ever read about in my entire life," Franny said. "He's walking down a road somewhere in the country, with his knapsack on his back, when these two tiny little children run after him, shouting, 'Dear little beggar! Dear little beggar! You must come home to Mummy. She likes beggars.' So he goes home with the children, and this really lovely person, the children's mother, comes out of the house all in a bustle and insists on helping him take off his dirty old boots and giving him a cup of tea. Then the father comes home, and apparently he loves beggars and pilgrims, too, and they all sit down to dinner. And while they're at dinner, the pilgrim wants to know who all the ladies are that are sitting around the table, and the husband tells him that they're all servants but that they always sit down to eat with him and his wife because they're sisters in Christ." Franny suddenly sat up a trifle straighter in her seat, self-consciously. "I mean I loved the pilgrim wanting to know who all the ladies were." She watched Lane butter a piece of bread. "Anyway, after that, the pilgrim stays overnight, and he and the husband sit up till late talking about this method of praying without ceasing. The pilgrim tells him how to do it. Then he leaves in the morning and starts out on some more adventures. He meets all kinds of people--I mean that's the whole book, really--and he tells all of them how to pray by this special way."

    Lane nodded. He cut into his salad with his fork. "I hope to God we get time over the weekend so that you can take a quick look at this goddam paper I told you about," he said. "I don't know. I may not do a damn thing with it --I mean try to publish it or what have you-- but I'd like you to sort of glance through it while you're here."

    "I'd love to," Franny said. She watched him butter another piece of bread. "You might like this book," she said suddenly. "It's so simple, I mean."

    "Sounds interesting. You don't want your butter, do you?"

    "No, take it. I can't lend it to you, because it's way overdue already, but you could probably get it at the library here. I'm positive you could."

    "You haven't touched your goddam sandwich," Lane said suddenly. "You know that?"

    Franny looked down at her plate as if it had just been placed before her. "I will in a minute," she said. She sat still for a moment, holding her cigarette, but without dragging on it, in her left hand, and with her right hand fixed tensely around the base of the glass of milk. "Do you want to hear what the special method of praying was that the starets told him about?" she asked. "It's really sort of interesting, in a way."

    Lane cut into his last pair of frogs' legs. He nodded. "Sure," he said. "Sure."

    "Well, as I said, the pilgrim--this simple peasant--started the whole pilgrimage to find out what it means in the Bible when it says you're supposed to pray without ceasing. And then he meets this starets--this very advanced religious person I mentioned, the one who'd been studying the Thilokalia' for years and years and years." Franny stopped suddenly to reflect, to organize. "Well, the starets tells him about the Jesus Prayer first of all. 'Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.' I mean that's what it is. And he explains to him that those are the best words to use when you pray. Especially the word 'mercy,' because it's such a really enormous word and can mean so many things. I mean it doesn't just have to mean mercy." Franny paused to reflect again. She was no longer looking at Lane's plate but over his shoulder. "Anyway," she went on, "the starets tells the pilgrim that if you keep saying that prayer over and over again--you only have to just do it with your lips at first--then eventually what happens, the prayer becomes self-active. Something happens after a while. I don't know what, but something happens, and the words get synchronized with the person's heartbeats, and then you're actually praying without ceasing. Which has a really tremendous, mystical effect on your whole outlook. I mean that's the whole point of it, more or less. I mean you do it to purify your whole outlook and get an absolutely new conception of what everything's about."

    Lane had finished eating. Now, as Franny paused again, he sat back and lit a cigarette and watched her face. She was still looking abstractedly ahead of her, past his shoulder, and seemed scarcely aware of his presence.

    "But the thing is, the marvellous thing is, when you first start doing it, you don't even have to have faith in what you're doing. I mean even if you're terribly embarrassed about the whole thing, it's perfectly all right. I mean you're not insulting anybody or anything. In other words, nobody asks you to believe a single thing when you first start out. You don't even have to think about what you're saying, the starets said. All you have to have in the beginning is quantity. Then, later on, it becomes quality by itself. On its own power or something. He says that any name of God--any name at all--has this peculiar, self-active power of its own, and it starts working after you've sort of started it up."

    Lane sat rather slouched in his chair, smoking, his eyes narrowed attentively at Franny's face. Her face was still pale, but it had been paler at other moments since the two had been in Sickler's.

    "As a matter of fact, that makes absolute sense," Franny said, "because in the Nembutsu sects of Buddhism, people keep saying 'Namu Amida Butsu' over and over again--which means 'Praises to the Buddha' or something like that-- and the same thing happens. The exact same--"

    "Easy. Take it easy," Lane interrupted. "In the first place, you're going to burn your fingers any second."

    Franny gave a minimal glance down at her left hand, and dropped the stub of her still-burning cigarette into the ashtray. "The same thing happens in 'The Cloud of Unknowing,' too. Just with the word 'God.' I mean you just keep saying the word 'God.' " She looked at Lane more directly than she had in several minutes. "I mean the point is did you ever hear anything so fascinating in your life, in a way? I mean it's so hard to just say it's absolute coincidence and then just let it go at that--that's what's so fascinating to me. At least, that's what's so terribly--" She broke off. Lane was shifting restively in his chair, and there was an expression on his face--a matter of raised eyebrows, chiefly--that she knew very well. "What's the matter?" she asked.

    "You actually believe that stuff, or what?"

    Franny reached for the pack of cigarettes and took one out. "I didn't say I believed it or I didn't believe it," she said, and scanned the table for the folder of matches. "I said it was fascinating." She accepted a light from Lane. "I just think it's a terribly peculiar coincidence," she said, exhaling smoke, "that you keep running into that kind of advice-- I mean all these really advanced and absolutely unbogus religious persons that keep telling you if you repeat the name of God incessantly, something happens, Even in India. In India, they tell you to meditate on the 'Om,' which means the same thing, really, and the exact same result is supposed to happen. So I mean you can't just rationalize it away without even--"

    "What is the result?" Lane said shortly.

    "What?"

    "I mean what is the result that's supposed to follow? All this synchronization business and mumbo-jumbo. You get heart trouble? I don't know if you know it, but you could do yourself, somebody could do himself a great deal of real--"

    "You get to see God. Something happens in some absolutely nonphysical part of the heart-- where the Hindus say that Atman resides, if you ever took any Religion--and you see God, that's all." She flicked her cigarette ash self-consciously, just missing the ashtray. She picked up the ash with her fingers and put it in. "And don't ask me who or what God is. I mean I don't even know if He exists. When I was little, I used to think--" She stopped. The waiter had come to take away the dishes and redistribute menus.

    "You want some dessert, or coffee?" Lane asked.

    "I think I'll just finish my milk. But you have some," Franny said. The waiter had just taken away her plate with the untouched chicken sandwich. She didn't dare to look up at him.

    Lane looked at his wristwatch. "God. We don't have time. We're lucky if we get to the game on time." He looked up at the waiter. "Just coffee for me, please." He watched the waiter leave, then leaned forward, arms on the table, thoroughly relaxed, stomach full, coffee due to arrive momentarily, and said, "Well, it's interesting, anyway. All that stuff ... I don't think you leave any margin for the most elementary psychology. I mean I think all those religious experiences have a very obvious psychological background--you know what I mean. . . . It's interesting, though. I mean you can't deny that." He looked over at Franny and smiled at her. "Anyway. Just in case I forgot to mention it. I love you. Did I get around to mentioning that?"

    "Lane, would you excuse me again for just a second?" Franny said. She had got up before the question was completely out.

    Lane got up, too, slowly, looking at her. "You all right?" he asked. "You feel sick again, or what?"

    "Just funny. I'll be right back."

    She walked briskly through the dining room, taking the same route she had taken earlier. But she stopped quite short at the small cocktail bar at the far end of the room. The bartender, who was wiping a sherry glass dry, looked at her. She put her right hand on the bar, then lowered her head--bowed it--and put her left hand to her forehead, just touching it with the fingertips. She weaved a trifle, then fainted, collapsing to the floor.

IT was nearly five minutes before Franny came thoroughly to. She was on a couch in the manager's office, and Lane was sitting beside her. His face, suspended anxiously over hers, had a remarkable pallor of its own now.

    "How are ya?" he said, in a rather hospital-room voice. "You feel any better?"

    Franny nodded. She closed her eyes for a second against the overhead light, then reopened them. "Am I supposed to say 'Where am I?'" she said. "Where am I?"

    Lane laughed. "You're in the manager's office. They're all running around looking for spirits of ammonia and doctors and things to bring you to. They'd just run out of ammonia, apparently. How do you feel? No kidding."

    "Fine. Stupid, but fine. Did I honestly faint?"

    "And how. You really conked out," Lane said. He took her hand in his. "What do you think's the matter with you anyway? I mean you sounded so--you know--so perfect when I talked to you on the phone last week. Didn't you eat any breakfast, or what?"

    Franny shrugged. Her eyes looked around the room. "It's so embarrassing," she said. "Did somebody have to carry me in here?"

    "The bartender and I. We sort of hoisted you in. You scared the hell out of me, I'm not kidding."

    Franny looked thoughtfully, without blinking, at the ceiling while her hand was held. Then she turned and, with her free hand, made a gesture as though to push back the cuff of Lane's sleeve. "What time is it?" she asked.

    "Never mind that," Lane said. "We're in no hurry."

    "You wanted to go to that cocktail party."

    "The hell with it."

    "Is it too late for the game, too?" Franny asked.

    "Listen, I said the hell with it. You're going to go back to your room at whosis--Blue Shutters--and get some rest, that's the important thing," Lane said. He sat a trifle closer to her and bent down and kissed her, briefly. He turned and looked over at the door, then back at Franny. "You're just going to rest this afternoon. That's all you're going to do." He stroked her arm for a moment. "Then maybe after a while, if you get any decent rest, I can get upstairs somehow. I think there's a goddam back staircase. I can find out."

    Franny didn't say anything. She looked at the ceiling.

    "You know how long it's been?" Lane said. "When was that Friday night? Way the hell early last month, wasn't it?" He shook his head. "That's no good. Too goddam long between drinks. To put it crassly." He looked down at Franny more closely. "You really feel better?"