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- Columbus discovering America, having one helluva time getting old Ferdinand and
Isabella to lend him the dough to buy ships with, and then the sailors mutinying on him
and all. Nobody gave too much of a damn about old Columbus, but you always had a lot
of candy and gum and stuff with you, and the inside of that auditorium had such a nice
smell. It always smelled like it was raining outside, even if it wasn't, and you were in the
only nice, dry, cosy place in the world. I loved that damn museum. I remember you had
to go through the Indian Room to get to the auditorium. It was a long, long room, and you
were only supposed to whisper. The teacher would go first, then the class. You'd be two
rows of kids, and you'd have a partner. Most of the time my partner was this girl named
Gertrude Levine. She always wanted to hold your hand, and her hand was always sticky
or sweaty or something. The floor was all stone, and if you had some marbles in your
hand and you dropped them, they bounced like madmen all over the floor and made a
helluva racket, and the teacher would hold up the class and go back and see what the hell
was going on. She never got sore, though, Miss Aigletinger. Then you'd pass by this long,
long Indian war canoe, about as long as three goddam Cadillacs in a row, with about
twenty Indians in it, some of them paddling, some of them just standing around looking
tough, and they all had war paint all over their faces. There was one very spooky guy in
the back of the canoe, with a mask on. He was the witch doctor. He gave me the creeps,
but I liked him anyway. Another thing, if you touched one of the paddles or anything
while you were passing, one of the guards would say to you, "Don't touch anything,
children," but he always said it in a nice voice, not like a goddam cop or anything. Then
you'd pass by this big glass case, with Indians inside it rubbing sticks together to make a
fire, and a squaw weaving a blanket. The squaw that was weaving the blanket was sort of
bending over, and you could see her bosom and all. We all used to sneak a good look at
it, even the girls, because they were only little kids and they didn't have any more bosom
than we did. Then, just before you went inside the auditorium, right near the doors, you
passed this Eskimo. He was sitting over a hole in this icy lake, and he was fishing
through it. He had about two fish right next to the hole, that he'd already caught. Boy, that
museum was full of glass cases. There were even more upstairs, with deer inside them
drinking at water holes, and birds flying south for the winter. The birds nearest you were
all stuffed and hung up on wires, and the ones in back were just painted on the wall, but
they all looked like they were really flying south, and if you bent your head down and
sort of looked at them upside down, they looked in an even bigger hurry to fly south. The
best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was.
Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would
still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south,
the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their
pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that
same blanket. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be
you. Not that you'd be so much older or anything. It wouldn't be that, exactly. You'd just
be different, that's all. You'd have an overcoat on this time. Or the kid that was your
partner in line the last time had got scarlet fever and you'd have a new partner. Or you'd
have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you'd heard your
mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you'd just passed by one of
those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in
some way--I can't explain what I mean. And even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it.
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