Danilo shrugged. "Here. You'd better wear these." He handed Bevis and Cyprian each a fez. Cyprian's was so small it had to be forced onto the back of his head with a sort of screwing motion, while Bevis's kept falling over his eyes and ears. "Wait, then, we'll switch fezzes." Most strangely, this did not resolve the difficulty.
"Makes no sense," Bevis muttered.
"It happens sometimes", Danilo darkly, "but more in the old tales than in our present day. The head of an infidel betrays him by rejecting the fez . Perhaps you are both quite devout Christians?"
"Not especially," Cyprian and Bevis protested at the same time.
"The fez knows," said Danilo. "You cannot fool the fez".
Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day , p. 933.
No comments:
Post a Comment