Riding the Iron Rooster Read Free

tracks."
    No one had been wondering. No one had seen him. Anyway, who was Morthole talking to?
    "I was collecting rocks," he said. "I collect rocks from every country. Listen, in a lot of places it's illegal—the South Pole for example. I've got some rocks from the South Pole. They could put me in jail for that. I've got them from everywhere. Canada. Ohio. London. Each one is the size of a golf ball. I've got hundreds. I'm a kind of geologist, I guess."
    In
Elmer Gantry
I read, "Set in between the larger boulders [of the fireplace] were pebbles, pink and brown and earth-colored, which the good bishop had picked up all over the world. This pebble, the bishop would chirp, guiding you about the room, was from the shore of the Jordan; this was a fragment of the Great Wall of China..."
    The east wind that had blown coldly across the Channel that morning had brought a dusting of snow to Picardy. Snow in April! It lay in a thin covering on hillsides, like long, torn bed sheets, the earth showing through in black streaks. It made the ordinary-looking landscape seem dramatic, the way New Jersey looks in bad weather, made houses and fences emphatic, and brought a sort of cubism to villages that would otherwise have been unmemorable. Each place became a little frozen portrait in black and white.
    It seemed to me that railway lines like this needed a little variation. It was almost as if these hills and villages had been seen by so many people passing by that they had been worn away from being looked at. One of the attractions of China to me was that it had been closed to outsiders for such a long time that even the most hackneyed sight of a pagoda would seem fresh, and in distant Xinjiang a traveler might feel like Marco Polo, because no foreigner had been there for years. But this part of heavily traveled France had been rubbed away by the eyes of sightseers and railway passengers: most landscapes near busy railway lines had that same look of simplification, as if in a matter of time they would disappear from being looked at so much.
    The people on the tour were still getting acquainted with each other. They asked me questions, too. Where was I from? What did I do? Was I married? Did I have children? Why was I taking this trip? What was that book in my lap? What were my plans in Paris? First time in China?
    I was Paul, I was unemployed, I was evasive, and—how does Baudelaire put it?—"The real travelers are those who leave for the sake of leaving," and something about not knowing why but always saying
Allons!
An appropriate sentiment here in the environs of Amiens.
    What I wanted to reply to these questions was something I heard a man say to an inquisitive woman at a dinner party in London.
    "Please don't ask," he said softly."I don't have anything interesting to tell you. I've made a terrible mess of my life."
    What kept me from saying that was that it was a sad memory, because about six months later that man killed himself. It seemed unlucky, and unkind to his memory, to repeat it.
    The sad man called Blind Bob fumbled with the flap of his valise—his eyesight was terrible: his nose was against the hasp—and brought out two rolls of toilet paper.
    People asked him what it was for—surely not Europe?
    "For China," he said.
    I decided not to say that the great sinologist Professor Joseph Needham had proven that the Chinese invented toilet paper. In the fourteenth century they were making perfumed toilet paper (it was three inches square) for the Imperial family, and everyone else used any paper they could lay their hands on. But some Chinese knew where to draw the line. In the sixth century a scholar, Yen Chih-t'ui, wrote, "Paper on which there are quotations or commentaries from the
Five Classics
or the names of sages, I dare not use for toilet purposes."
    Ashley Relph said, "He's taking bog-roll to China!"
    Mr. Cathcart said, "I think they've heard of loo paper in China."
    "Sure, they've heard of it. Lots of