Barbary Shore by Norman Mailer Read Free Book Online

enjoyment.
    “You smoked that long?” I asked.
    “No, I’m learning. I’ve noticed that Mr. Wilson and some of the men over him like Mr. Court tend to smoke a pipe a great deal. College men mainly smoke pipes, don’t they?”
    “Probably a case can be made.”
    “I don’t like the pipe much, but if it’s necessary, I supposeI’ll have to learn.” He tapped the stem in resignation against his teeth. “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”
    “No.”
    “You’re a college man, aren’t you?”
    Indeed, why not? So I nodded, and he smiled with pleasure. “Yes, I thought so,” he went on. “I’ve trained myself to observe people. Which college is it?”
    I named at random a famous university.
    He bobbed his head in admiration as if I had built the place. “Sometime I’d like to have a few talks with you about college. I’ve been wondering … Do you make many contacts there?”
    I resisted the impulse to be flip, and said noncommittally, “I think it depends on whether you want to.”
    “That could be a big help for a career I would say. Most of the big men in the place I work at are college men. I’m intelligent, everybody tells me that,” he added in his colorless voice, “and maybe I should have gone, but I hated to think of all the years I’d waste there. Wouldn’t you?”
    I merely said, “It
is
four years.”
    “That’s what I say.” He produced an image. “If you all start a race together, and there’re too many men, you can get licked even if you’re good.” He regarded me seriously, and I discovered again how unusual were his eyes. The pupils were almost submerged in the iris, and reflected very little light. Two circles of blue, identical daubs of pigment, stared back at me, opaque and lifeless.
    The sockets were set close together, folded into the flanks of his thin nose. Front-face, he looked like a bird, for his small nose was delicately beaked and his white teeth were slightly bucked. There was a black line between his gums and the center incisors in his upper jaw, and it gave the impression of something artificial to his mouth.
    “Do you mind if I inquire what you do?” he said to me.
    “I’m a writer, although don’t ask me what I’ve published.”
    Again he produced his excessive laughter, going hir-hir-hir for some time and then ceasing abruptly. I had a passing image of the mechanical laughter in a canned radio program, the fans whirring, the gears revolving, the klaxons producing their artificial mirth and halting on signal. “Oh, that’s good,” he said. “I think that’s very humorous.” He tilted the beer to his mouth, and gurgled at the can. “You know a lot about books then.”
    “Yes. About some.”
    His next question was more tentative. “Do you know any good books I could read?”
    “What kind do you mean?”
    “Oh, you know.”
    I noticed a few magazines and a book on his desk. Because I was curious I said, “If you could let me see what you’re reading now, I’d have a better idea of what you want.”
    “I guess you would.” As though exposing his chest to the stethoscope, he gathered up the publications on his desk, and deposited them beside me. “You can see there’s quite a bit of reading matter.”
    “Yes.” He had a pocket book with the cellophane carefully peeled from the jacket. It was an anthology of the letters of famous people. Underneath, I found a pile of pulp magazines, a radio amateur’s handbook, several Westerns, and a series of mimeographed papers which contained lessons on ballroom dancing.
    “I don’t suppose I ought to be reading things like that,” Hollingsworth said.
    “Why not?”
    But he only tittered. I leafed through the pile and put them aside. “What kind of books do you want?” I asked again.
    “Well …” He seemed hesitant. “In the Army there was an awful lot of literature that I liked. You know things with the facts of life in them.”
    I gave the name of an historical romance which