The Ginger Man

by J. P. Donleavy

  "O."

  "Nice?"

  "Yes."

  "Like the gold teeth of God?"

  "Don't spoil it now"

  "My little Marion. I'm such a bastard. I tell you the whole thing up there is just a bunch of roots."

  "I'll have something to read in bed."

  "I'm an incredible pig, Marion."

  "Aren't these suits nice"

  "Don't you hear me, Marion? I'm a pig"

  "Yes, but I wish we were rich and had money. I want to travel. If we could only travel."

  "Let me kiss you, Marion, at least."

  Marion arose, embracing him with blond arms, driving her long groin against his and her tongue deep into his mouth.

  Marion you're good underneath it all and not a bad feel, just irritable at times. Now go in there and cook the dinner. And I'll relax here in the chair and read my Evening Mail. I see listed conscience money. Great thing, the conscience. And letters about emigration and women who marry for quids. And here's a letter about Blessed Oliver Plunket Went up to see him there in the St. Peter's Church, Drogheda. A decapitated, two hundred and sixty year old head. Made me feel hushed. Gray, pink and battered and a glint of dead, bared teeth in the candle light. Charwomen told me to touch it, touch it now, sir, for it's great for luck. I put my finger, afeared, in the mouldy nose hole, for you can't have too much luck these days.

  Now I see them across the street coming out of the laundry. Pouring into the road, faces lining up for the tram. There's the girl with the brown eyes and dark hair, her face colorless but for handsome lips. Her legs in lisle stockings and feet in army surplus boots. Hatless and hair in a bun. Goes to the newsboy, calves knotting softly on the backs of her legs. Tucks the paper under her arm and waits in the queue.

  In my heart I know she isn't a virgin, but perhaps childless with pink buds for nipples or even if they're sucked and dark I don't mind. Wears a green scarf around her nice neck. Necks should be white and long with a blue nervous vein twitching with the nervousness of life in general. My good gracious savior, she's looking over here. Hide? What am I? A scoundrel, a sneak? Not a bit Face her. You're lovely. Absolutely lovely. Put my face on your spring breasts. Take you to Paris and tie your hair in knots with summer leaves.

  "Sebastian, it's ready, do bring in the chair."

  In the kitchen cutting a thick slice off the loaf, scraping butter out of a cup.

  "Sebastian, what about the toilet?"

  "What about it?"

  "Who's going to fix it?"

  "Marion, I beg of you, this is dinner time. Do you want to give me ulcers?"

  "Why won't you take some responsibility?"

  "After dinner. Don't drive me up the wall over Irish plumbing, it's new to the country and the pipes got mixed."

  "But who'll pay?"

  "Skully out of his little gold egg."

  "And the smell, Sebastian. What can we do about the smell."

  "It's just healthy shit."

  "How dare you use that ugly word."

  "Shit's shit, Marion, even on judgement day."

  "It's foul and I won't have it said in the same house as Felicity"

  "She'll hear it and also in the matter of foulness I'll see to it she's laid before she's fifteen"

  Marion silently seized. Putting egg shell in the coffee to make it settle. Notice her fingers bitten. She moves through the mess.

  "All right, Marion, take it easy. It's just adjustment Got to get used to it here"

  "Why must you be so raw?"

  "The mean meat in me"

  "Be sincere. You weren't like this before we came to Ireland. This vulgar filthy country."

  "Easy now."

  "Children running barefoot in the streets in the middle of winter and men wagging their things at you from doorways. Disgusting."

  "Untruths. Lies."

  They're a foul lot. I understand now why they're only fit to be servants."

  "I say, Marion, a little bitterness?"

  "You know it's true. Look at that frightful O'Keefe and his dirty ideas. America doesn't seem to help. Brings the worst out in them. He's not even fit to be a servant."

  "I think Kenneth's a gentleman in every respect Have you ever heard him fart ? Now, have you ? "

  "Absolute frightful rot. One has only to watch him leering over the cat when it's in heat to see he's dreadfully base. When he comes into the room I feel he's criminally assaulting me in his mind."

  "It's legal."

  "It's the revolting lechery of an Irish peasant. And he tries to give the impression of good breeding. Watch him eating. It's infuriating. Grabs everything. That first time we had him to dinner he just came in as if we were servants and proceeded to eat before I even had time to sit down. And pulling hunks out of the bread, how can you be blind to these things."

  "Now, now, a little patience with the people who have given your country a Garden of Eden to play in, make your fires and serve your tea"

  "I wished we had stayed in England. You could have waited for Oxford or Cambridge. And we could have at least maintained a measure of dignity"

  "I'll admit there's not much of that"

  Long limbed Marion settled in the chair. What makes you so tall and slender. You raise your eyelids and cross your legs with something I like and wear sexless shoes with sexiness. And Marion I'll say this for you, you're not blatant. And when we get our house in the West with Kerry cattle out on the hills sucking up the grass and I'm Dangerfield K.C., things will be fine again.

  A tram pounding by the window, grinding, swaying and rattling on its tracks to Dalkey. A comforting sound. Maps shaking on the wall. Ireland a country of toys. And maybe I ought to go over to Marion on the couch. We're experimenting with marriage. Got to find the contraceptives or else another screaming mouth for milk. The brown-eyed girl in the laundry is about twenty-five. Marion sucking on her false teeth again, I think it must be a sign of wanting it

  In the bedroom, Dangerfield rubbing stockinged feet on the cold linoleum. And the sound of Marion using the piss pot behind Skully's genuine Ming dynasty screen. And a little tug at these tattered shades for the privacy. Even in this great Catholic country you've got to keep covered, you know, or they watch you undress, but mind you, the Protestants use a field glass.

  And Marion clutching the hem of her dress and drawing it over her shifting shoulders. She said there was only thirty shillings left.

  "Our good accents and manners will see us right. Didn't you know, Marion, they can't put Protestants in jail?"

  "You've no responsibility and to have my child raised among a lot of savage Irish and be branded with a brogue for the rest of her life. Pass me my cream, please"

  Sebastian passing the cream, smiling and waving his feet from the edge of the bed. Letting his body fall with a squeal of springs and looking at the patches of pink in the ceiling. Marion a bit upset and confused. Difficult for hen She was breaking. Isn't as strong as me, led a sheltered life. Maybe shouldn't have married me. Matter, all of it, of time. Pumping it around and around and around, air in, air out and then it all goes like the shutters of a collapsing house. Starts and ends in antiseptic smell. Like to feel the end would be like closing leaves of honeysuckle, pressing out a last fragrance in the night but that only happens to holy men. Find them in the morning with a smile across the lips and bury them in plain boxes. But I want a rich tomb of Vermont marble in Woodlawn Cemetery, with automatic sprinkler and evergreens. If they get you in the medical school they hang you up by the ears. Never leave me unclaimed, I beg of you. Don't hang me all swollen, knees pressing the red nates of others where they come in to see if I'm fat or lean and all of us stabbed to death on the Bowery. Kill you in the tenement streets and cover you in flowers and put in the juice. By God, you hulking idiots, keep the juice away from me. Because I'm a mortician and too busy to die.

  "'Marion, do you ever think of death?"

  "No."

  "Marion, do you ever think you're going to die?"

&
nbsp; "I say, Sebastian, would you mind awfully stopping that sort of talk. You're in that nasty mood."

  "Not at all."

  "You are. Coming up here every morning to watch the funerals of these wretched people. Dreadful and sordid. I think you get a perverse pleasure out of it."

  "Beyond this vale of tears, there is a life above, unmeasured by the flight of years and all that life is love."

  "You think you're frightening me with these sinister airs of yours. I find them only boring and they tend to make you repulsive"

  "What?"

  "Yes, they do"

  "For the love of Jesus, look at me. Look at my eyes. Go ahead, come on"

  "I don't want to look in your eyes"

  "Honest globes they are"

  "You can't talk seriously about anything"

  "I just asked you about death. Want to know how you feel, really get to know you. Or maybe you think this is forever"

  "Rubbish. You think it's forever, I know you do. You're not as flippant as this in the mornings, I notice."

  "Takes me a few hours to adapt. Snap out of the dream."

  "And you scream."

  "What?"

  "You were yelling a few nights ago, how do I get out of this. And another time you were screaming, what's that white thing in the corner, take it away."

  Dangerfield holding his belly, laughing on the squeaking springs.

  "You can laugh, but I think there's something serious at the root of it."

  "What's at the root? Can't you see I'm mad. Can't you see? Look. See. Madness. E. I'm mad."

  Sebastian ogled and wagged his tongue.

  "Stop it. Always willing to clown but never to do anything useful."

  Dangerfield watched from the bed as she flexed her long arms behind her back and her breasts fell from the cups of her brassiere, tan nipples hardening in the cold air. Red line on her shoulder left by the strap. Stepping wearily out of her underpants, facing the mirror and rubbing white cream into her hands and face. Little brown strands growing round the nipples. You've often said, Marion, about giving it the wax treatment but I like them that way after all.

  Sebastian quietly stepping from the bed approaching the naked body. Pressing his fists against her buttocks and she pushes his hands away.

  "I don't like you touching me there"

  And kissing her on the back of the neck. Wet the skin with the tongue and the long blond hair gets in the mouth. Marion taking the blue nightdress from the nail. Sebastian stripping and sitting naked on the edge of the bed, taking white fluff out of the navel, and doubling himself. plucking the congealed dirt from between his toes.

  "Sebastian, I wish you'd take a bath."

  "Kills the personality."

  "You were so clean when I first knew you."

  "Given up the cleanliness for a life of the spirit. Preparation for another and better world. Hardly take offence at a little scruffiness. Clean soul's my motto. Take off your nightie."

  "Where are they?"

  "Under my shirts."

  "And the vaseline?"

  "Behind the books on the box."

  Marion ripping the silver paper. Americans great for packages. Wrap anything up. And she draws the opening of her nightdress back from her shoulders, letting it fall to her feet and folding it carefully across the books. She kneels on the bed. What are other men like, do they grunt and groan, are they all curved and circumcised, with or without. She climbs into bed, a soft voice.

  "Let's do it the way we used to in Yorkshire."

  "Umn."

  "Do you still like my breasts the way they are?"

  "Umn."

  "Tell me things, Sebastian, talk to me. I want to know."

  Sebastian rolled near, pressing the long, blond body to his, thinking of a world outside beating drums below the window in the rain. All slipping on the cobble stones. And standing aside as a tram full of Bishops rumbles past, who hold up sacred hands in blessing. Marion's hand tightening and touching in my groin. Ginny Cupper took me in her car out to the spread fields of Indiana. Parking near the edge of woods and walking out into the sunny rows of corn, waving seeds to a yellow horizon. She wore a white blouse and a gray patch of sweat under her arms and the shadow of her nipples was gray. We were rich. So rich we could never die. Ginny laughed and laughed, white saliva on her teeth lighting up the deep red of her mouth. fed the finest food in the world. Ginny was afraid of nothing. She was young and old. Her brown arms and legs swinging in wild optimism, beautiful in all their parts. She danced on the long hood of her crimson Cadillac, and watching her, I thought that God must be female. She leaped into my arms and knocked me to the ground and screamed into my mouth. Heads pressed in the hot Indiana soil and pinned me in a cross. A crow cawed into the white sun and my sperm spurted into the world. Ginny had driven her long Cadillac through the guard rails of a St. Louis bridge and her car shone like a dot of blood in the mud and murk of the Mississippi. We were all there in the summer silence of Suffolk, Virginia, when the copper casket was gently placed in the cool marble vault. I smoked a cigarette and crushed it out on the black and white squares of the tomb. In the stagnant emptiness of the train station after the cars were gone, I walked into the women's toilet and saw the phallic obscenities on the wooden doors and gray walls. I wonder if people will think I'm a lecher. Ginny had gardenias in her lovely brown hair. I hear the train, Marion's breath in my ear. My stomach's shaking, my last strength. The world's silent. Crops have stopped growing. Now they grow again.

  7

  "Marion, I think I'll go and study in the park this morning."

  'Take the baby with you"

  "The pram is broken"

  "Carry her"

  "Shell piss on my shirt"

  "Take the rubber sheet"

  "How am I going to study, watching her? She'll crawl into the pond"

  "I say, can't you see? I've got my hands full with all this, the mess. Look at the ceiling. And there you are, and you're wearing my sweater. I don't want you wearing my sweater. What do I have"

  "Jesus."

  "And why don't you go to see Mr. Skully and have this loathsome toilet fixed? I know why. You're afraid of him, that's why."

  "Not a bit of it."

  "You are. All I have to do is say Skully and you're off up the stairs like a frightened rabbit, and don't think I can't hear you crawling under the bed either."

  "Just tell me where my sun glasses are, that's all"

  "I didn't have them last."

  "I must have them. I absolutely refuse to go out of this house without them."

  "Well look."

  "Do you want me to be recognized? Do you?"

  "Yes, I do."

  "God damn this house. It's the size of a closet and I can't even find my own foot in it I'll break something in a minute."

  "Don't you dare. And here, a revolting post-card from your friend O'Keefe"

  Marion flicked it across the room.

  "Watch my correspondence. I don't want to have it thrown about"

  "Your correspondence, indeed. Read it"

  Scrawled in large capitals:

  WE HAVE THE FANGS OF ANIMALS

  "E.O aye."

  "That's what he is, a detestable animal"

  "What else?"

  "Bills of course."

  "Well don't blame me."

  "I will blame you. Who started the account in Howth? Who was the one who bought whisky and gin? Who was?"

  "Where are my sun glasses ? "

  "And who pawned the fire irons? And who pawned the electric kettle—"

  "Now look Marion, can't we be friends for this morning? The sun's out Christians at least"

  "See? You immediately get sarcastic Why do we have to live like this?"

  "My glasses, damn it. British hide everything. Can't hide the toilet now, anyway."

  "I won't have this talk."

  "Have this then."

  "Someday you will regret all this. Vulgar."

  "Do you want bir
d calls all your life, the B.B.C.? I'll do a series of programs for you called 'My Bottom was Green'"

  "Your nasty mind."

  "I'm cultured."

  "Yes, from your chromium plated life in America."

  "I'm distinguished-looking. Speak the King's English. Impeccably tailored."

  "What rot. I don't know how I ever let you meet Mommy and Daddy."

  "Your Mommy and Daddy thought I had lots of money. And I, for that matter, thought that they had lots of money. Neither had nicker, no notes, no love"

  "That's a lie. You know it's a lie. There never was a question of money until you started it"

  "All right Get the baby. I can't stand it any more. I need a long trolley ride in the womb, to take me out of this."

  "Take you out? I'm the one who ought to be taken out and it may be any day now"

  "All right Let's be friends"

  "Yes, it's easy isn't it Just like that, after being so horrid"

  I'll take the baby"

  "And you can do some shopping too. Get me some bones from the butcher and don't bring back one of those revolting sheep's heads, and don't let Felicity fall in the pond."

  "I insist on a sheep's head."

  "Be careful shutting the door. It fell on the mailman this morning."

  "Suffering saints and sick sinners. I'll be god damn well sued on top of everything."

  Out on Mohammed road wild with traffic and thundering trams. The laundry a hive of activity. See them in there beating sheets and that's the way it ought to be. Warm yellow sun. Most beautiful country in the world, full of weeds and weeds are people. Stay here to die and never die. Look at the butcher shop. Look at the hooks, groaning with the meat He has his sleeves rolled way up with the chopper. A bunch of them behind the counter.

  Entering the park. Green, green grass, soft and sweet from the night rain. The flower beds. Circles and crosses and nice little fences. Pick that bench. Newly painted. If my father dies by Autumn I'll be very rich, golden udder. And sit on a park bench for the rest of my life. What a warm, lovely day. I'd like to take off my shirt and let a sup of sun to me chest but they'd be hounding me out of the place for indecency. Help my hairs to grow, give them a fashionable tinge of blond. Dear child, stop kicking me in the back. Here, now get on this blanket and play and I don't want any nonsense from you. Jesus, let go of the blanket, think I was going to kill you. Papa's got to study his law and become a big big K.C. and make lots of money. A great big golden udder. A tan on my chest means wealth and superiority. But I'm proud of my humility. And here, reading the dead language, my little book of Roman Law. For parricide, flung off die cliff in a bag with a viper. Fat ugliness writhing in the crotch. And little daughter, gurgling on the grass, have fun now. Because papa is finished. Getting it from all sides. Even in dreams. And last night I dreamt I was carrying a bundle of newspapers under my arm and climbed on a bus and went racing across the Curragh with massive horses galloping beside. In the bus, a man studying butterflies with a magnifying glass. And we were going to the West. Then a bullock leaped from behind a hedge and the bus cut him up and left him hanging on a huge hook in front of a village butcher shop. Then suddenly I was in Cashel. Streets filled with goats and gutters brown with dried blood. And in the hot sun's stillness, a crowd of men and women in thick black overcoats walking down the middle of a winter road, summer's hesitating heat on every side. The funeral of the gombeen man. He caught her, lips bubbling, eyes spinning, sitting on the shop assistant on a crate from Chicago and he heard it collapse and was after them with a hatchet. And they conspired between hot wet lips, clutching at each other's clothes to put poison in the tea, trembling hands to the till and each other's flesh, to wind a cocoon of sin between the pineapple and peaches. The box was closed. Summer. The long line shuffling. Through Cashel. A song: