The Ginger Man

by J. P. Donleavy

  They set off along Suffolk Street, into the Wicklow Street and up the Great George's. And over there Thomas Moore was born. Come in and see it, a nice public house indeed. But I must go home and wash my hair. But just a quick one.

  In they went The embarrassed figures looking at them and bird whispering. The man showed them to a booth, but Mr. Dangerfield said that they were just in for a fast one.

  O surely, sir and it's a grand evening. 'Tis that

  And passing the Bleeding Horse he tried to steer her in there. But she said she could go on alone just around the corner. But I must come.

  The house she lived in was one at the end of a long row. Went through an iron gate, just a speck of garden with a bush and bars over her window. And her door just at the bottom of three steps with a drain to run the water off that would surely be going under the door. Only that I must wash my hair I'd ask you in. That's quite all right And thank you for walking me home. Not at all, and may I see you again? Yes.

  She went down the steps. Paused, turned, smiled. Key. Green door. Few seconds. A light goes on. Shadow moves across the window. Hers. What sweet stuff, sweeter than all the roses. Come down God and settle in my heart on this triangular Friday.

  8

  July. Be over in another week. See awnings up in Grafton Street with such a bunch of healthy people going underneath. Everything looks good with the sun out Even my affairs.

  But mornings in the bed with the sheet well up over the eyes, when you hear them downstairs when Marion's out to shop, knocking hard on the door. And it can't stand it And they never stop the damn knocking and some try to push it in. O the fear of them coming up and naked, my dignity wilts and it's a poor enough weapon defending debts. And they yell up the stairs, not wanting someone to be home, embarrassed to have penetrated so far into the house.

  Marion not standing up to it very well. Worry. Couldn't control herself any longer, shaking and crying, tired of it all. Mousy blonde hair, hanging over her head like sauerkraut Silence got her. If she breaks a blood vessel, the doctors and expense will be something terrible.

  And slide from the bed and press warm feet into cold golfing shoes. Full the blankets around me and crouch and shuffle to the cracked basin. Step on the tube of toothpaste, catch one more speck and vigorously brush the teeth. The pain of morning. Hulk over the gas, wordless and hungering. No coffee but piss-tinted tea. Nothing to do but sing:

  Come Holy Ghost

  And fill my

  Faithful belly.

  And riding in this tram to the bottom of Dawson Street my heart thumps to see Chris in Jury's lounge tonight By compressing the lips, erase guilt Take a look in the window of this fashionable men's shop. I think a bowler hat with my next check. Simply must Keep the dignity. Dignity in debt, a personal motto. In fact a coat of arms. Bowler hat crossed by a walking stick.

  In the front gate of Trinity. At least this is a bit professional with all these notices tacked up here. Must admit to an overwhelming fear when I think of exams. I hear these students say they haven't done a scrap of work when their eyes are bloodshot. But me. I just see a massive vista of my total ignorance. The weeks left before the little white paper. A man like me has to get through. Can't afford failure. Must have my offices of law where I come in at ten o'clock and hang my hat. And when they come in to see me I smile with reassurance. A great thing. that. in the law.

  Sebastian Dangerfield crossing the cobble stones. Looking up at O'Keefe's rainstained windows. His little dusty dungeon. Up the steps of the reading room. A strange building indeed. These people standing on the steps smoking cigarettes. They call that a break from work. Inside they have the names of the glorious dead in gold and red wreaths on the white marble. And then down these steps through the swing door and the faces come up from their books. Get back you damn thugs. Because you frighten the life out of me. Especially the few of you I see from my class dug right into the bindings. As for me, I think I'll read a bit in the encyclopedia Loosen up the brain. Up there around the balcony are eligible young things watching the door. hoping for a husband. Not a spark of joy anywhere except from a few lechers I know personally. Otherwise a rogues' gallery of Calvinists.

  An evening sky so very blue. light wind, south by south east. Fm just a little weather station, really. Nice openness of Dame Street this time of day. And sprinkles of people rounding the round corners. And in this little cul-de-sac at the back of the bank with all the lovely green leaves brightening up the granite. There is nothing more pleasant than this on the summer evening.

  In the side door to Jury's. There she is, all dark hair, all white skin and dark lips and mouth, heart and sound. Sitting sedately. And near by, a sly-eyed business man, licking his mouth for her. I know them. I know them all right In this nook of utter respectability. But this a nice lounge with palm fronds and wicker chairs. Flexing her legs, recrossing. Pale nails, long, tender fingers and moisture on her eyes. What do you have underneath, my dear Chris. Tell me.

  And they sat drinking coffee for she said how much better than spirits and perhaps a ham sandwich too. And all about exams. All about this place. And the Erse.

  They walked home. Holding her happy hand. And he paused at the top step, leaving. But she said do come in. Green carpet on the floor, faded and beat. Square wash basin in the corner and a red screen. The fireplace neatly covered with a copy of the Evening Mail. A boarded-up door out to the back garden. She said in heavy rain, water came in on the floor. And another door into the hall. Out there I take my baths and late at night for leisure. I will scrub your back. That would be nice. I'm a great man for the risky conversation. A battered wardrobe, half open and a green coat, and three pairs of shoes. On the window sill next to the front door, a gas ring, and a few pans hanging on the wall.

  I am lost in love with this room. Because it's an oasis of hiding with no door knocks for me. And the building looks sound. Want to have something solid to put the back to. When your back goes to the wall it is sensible to see that the wall is well founded and not given to collapse.

  Sebastian lying on her bed while she told him. All about her year at London University. I didn't like it there and after a year I found Psychology drab and empty but I had to give it up anyway because my money was gone. There was money in Ireland left to my father and that's why I'm here. My father was Irish and my mother a Russian. Strange combination, isn't it, both killed in the beginning of the war and so I got to England. But I needn't tell you that I got less than half the money left to my father. Well, obviously I had to find work. So. See. The result? The laundry. I hate it and I hate Ireland. I'm lonely and bored. Thirty five shillings for this. Horrid little room, really.

  My dear Chris, don't worry now. I'm here. I think it's a fine room, safe, nest of love. And you won't be lonely again. I tell you there are good things and pints of the best and pineapples too and fields and guts and lust, soil and bull. Sebastian, do you really think that way? I do. But I'm a woman and I can't I hate these Irishmen. Seedy bodies, their drunken smirks. I hate them. To listen to their snide remarks and their tight sneaky little nasty jokes. I hate this country.

  My dear Chris, don't worry now.

  She got up with her lovely legs, and poured the milk into the pot. For Ovaltine and biscuits.

  At one a.m. just before he left he said he liked her so much. Gentle girl. And my dear Chris, I have my problems too. I think I am being choked to death by paper. Bills before breakfast and I do so want to have my breakfast first. And Sebastian, how did you ever get into such a mess. Miscalculation, my dear Chris and misunderstanding.

  He kissed her hand as he left. And walked through the night by the canal, counting the locks and bulging waterfalls.

  The story was, Marion, I missed the last tram. Just going down Nassau Street at a ferocious clip. Couldn't possibly get it. I'm in poor condition for running so I went back to Whitington's rooms in college. Smart bloke that, great help with the law of contract You're a liar, I know when you're lying,

 
Marion, what is there left for me to say then ?

  On other evenings, Chris and he went for long walks and one Friday on her payday they went to the Grafton Cinema Cafe where on the top floor they dined mid shaded lamps and open medieval windows. It was so comfortable and full of rest and peace and better than home. Chris so insisted on paying. But I did not want to make a bad impression by appearing to be unconcerned. And after, we walked down along the quays and across the canal locks to Ringsend, the emptying mouth of Dublin. All black.

  He had taken the tram home at eleven. Chris left him at the stop. Marion in the scabrous seat. Looking up from a copy of Woman's Home Companion that a barber had given him. There was a sign of gladness in her. But padded conversation out of my mouth. And she asked him would he like some warm milk with sugar in it All right They talked about America and mansions.

  When they were going upstairs he noticed flowers on the box beside the bed. Marion undressing before the little mirror. Brushing her hair. His name in her plaintive voice.

  "Sebastian?"

  "What?"

  "Sebastian"

  Pausing, looking at the dresser, wrinkling the cloth with the brush.

  "Sebastian, what do you think is happening to us?"

  A shock ran through his body, rigid for a second and he drew his knees up in the bed. Slow rising sheet

  "How do you mean ? "

  "I don't know. Just happening. We don't talk to each other. I hardly see you."

  "See me? Of course you do."

  "You know what I mean."

  "What?"

  "Be with me, sort of. I feel cut off."

  "It's only till my exam."

  "I know, but you come home so late."

  Marion poking the doth in little hills. His lungs light

  "You may have to study but there's no response when I do see you."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Response—it's as if you didn't love me."

  "Absurd."

  "Don't mock me, please, Sebastian, I've got feelings just as you have. I can't help being English. Nor can I help feeling desperate left alone here and then at night too. I don't want to fight or argue any more. What's going to become of us and Felicity ? Won't your father help us ? "

  "I can't ask him till we're really desperate."

  "But he's rich."

  "I can't"

  "But you must I won't mind if every once in a while you go out and even if you drink. But I'd rather you studied at home. You have every evening after six. You used to. And if we could only be a little happier when we're together. That's all I'm asking. Just that."

  "There's great strain."

  "But who has to bear it all. I stay in this dreary house day after day, seeing nothing but these damp horrid walls. If we could only get out into the country for a few days, see some green fields and feel free instead of hiding behind the kitchen door in mortal fear of that frightful Mr. Skully. He called last night."

  "What did you tell him."

  "To see you."

  "O."

  "How can I put him off ? I think he was drinking too. Even had the nerve to say the front knocker could be polished. He has an excuse to walk in here any time he wants. It's such a hideous feeling. I don't like his eyes. He has no character. I even wrote to Father. But you know how hard things are for them now."

  "Quite."

  "They really are. I know you don't understand. They would help us if they were able."

  He rolled over on his side and pushed his head into the pillow. Marion turned off the light. Her hand pulling back the sheet. A groan of rusty springs. Darkness like the sea come for him. A bed of pain. Asking the dark tide to take me away. And I went out with the sea and knelt praying in the deep.

  Suddenly he was awake. In sweat and fear. Marion clinging to him sobbing. Hear the thunder of her heart and wailing. I'm smitten with remorse and calculating in my heart Dublin looming a Swiss Cheese of streets and running through them screaming in tears. Children shrinking in the doorways. Gutters running pig's blood. Cold and winter.

  In the morning all silence between them. Sebastian heating soup jelly, dipping bread in it and drinking a cup of tea. How I hate the fear of it Hate my own hatred. Get out of all this with escape and murder. Poor Marion. I have never felt so sad or pained. Because I feel it all seems so useless and impossible. I want to own something. I want to get us out of this. Get out of this goddamn country which I hate with all my blood and which has ruined me. Crush Skully's head with a poker. A green Jesus around my neck and this damn leaking ceiling and this foul linoleum and Marion and her wretched shoes and her stockings and panties and her tits and goddamn skinny back and orange boxes. And the black smell of grease and germ and spermy towels. All the rot behind the walls. Two years in Ireland, shrunken teat on the chest of the cold Atlantic. Land of crut. And the drunk falling screaming into the ditches at night, blowing shrill whistles across the fields and brown buggered bogs. Out there they watch between the nettles, counting the blades of grass, waiting for each other to die, with the eyes of cows and the brains of snakes. Monsters growling from their chains and wailing in the dark pits at night. And me. I think I am their father. Roaming the laneways, giving comfort, telling them to lead better lives, and not to let the children see the bull serving the cow. I anoint their silver streams, sing laments from the round towers. I bring seed from Iowa and reblood their pastures. I am. I know I am Custodian of the Book of Kells. Ringer of the Great Bell, Lord King of Tara, "Prince of the West and Heir to the Arran Islands" I tell you, you silly bunch of bastards, that I'm the father who sweetens the hay and lays the moist earth and potash to the roots and story teller of all the mouths. I'm out of the Viking ships. I am the fertilizer of royalty everywhere. And Tinker King who dances the goat dance on the Sugar Loaf and fox-trots in the streets of Chirciveen. Sebastian, the eternal tourist, Dangerfield.

  For two days he sat in the little room. Out twice to buy a tin of spaghetti and pig's trotters. On the third day, remorse hardening with idleness. Reading letters of those with problems in the back of a women's magazine and a few proverbs from the Bible, for the Christianity that was in it And suddenly the sound of mail. On the hallway floor a letter from O'Keefe.

  Dear Phony,

  I'm up to my teeth. I'm a hungry son of a bitch, enough to eat dog. I bought a tin of peas and I ration myself twelve after every meal This place is the dullest I've ever been. I put an ad in the local paper to give English instruction to girls that wanted to take posts in England with families. Two showed up. One as ugly as an old man's sin and knew what I was after and didn't mind at all but as hard up as I am I couldn't get myself to seduce her, even for academic purposes. I am destined to love beautiful women and to inspire in them a desire to lay for someone else. But things are more complicated than that. The other girl complained to the head master and I was scared I was going to get the kaput But the head master is a good skin and he laughed and sympathized but told me to lay off because it wasn't so hot for the school. So much for my heterosexual life from which I have officially retired.

  My homosexual personality is complete. I have been reading André Gide in French, the Marquis de Sade and Casanova. It's just like they say it is, being in love with a boy. I'm afraid of getting caught or that he might report me. He comes to my room at night and teases me by turning off my light and then wrestling with me in the dark. Jesus Christ, I think it will drive me crazy. I'm sure he must know, these French kids know everything, but he's teasing me just like Constance used to do in my rooms at Harvard. If I were in America the class would have reported me long ago. They notice I always ask him questions and that I never yell at him when he comes up to my desk but treat him like a bowl of cream. Being in love with a boy is an experience everyone should have but it's breaking my balls, but I must say that for me it is more exciting than chasing women who never gave me a tumble. Everyone does that. Fm dying for the want of a smell of the ould sod. Eire is in my blood. veins and jowls. I'm thinking of
joining the Jews to fight the Arabs or the Arabs to fight the Jews. What the hell. Fm sick of it all. Fm raising a beard among other things. No more women—I've discovered Fm impotent, ejaculatio praecox.

  Now what about the money? You've let me down badly. You've got to realize that Fm up against it. I'm depending on you. Nothing else except that I hope to get up to Paris soon. Fm saving a hundred francs from my pay every week and Fm going to lose my cherry once and for all to a pro. My best to Marion.

  God bless you,

  Kenneth O'KEEFE,

  Duke of Serutan.

  Will I ever see time of largess. Say with a bit of butler. With O'Keefe at the front door blasting his way in with a pukka accent. Kenneth must have money troubles but he'll be all right. Nice little job. Quite a pleasant life that. He doesn't know that he has it good now. But I do think that Kenneth needs a menopause.

  This is the month of August. Football season, a sunny New England afternoon. An indifferent summer air blowing sweetly softly across the grass. There is that word enthusiasm. And watch these people running out of locker rooms full of pep and zip and of course, enthusiasm. To see a ball spiral lazily down the field, plunging into the brute arms of a gentle idiot who charges through this so strange indifferent summertime. I could get down on my knees in this wretched little room and weep for things like that. I don't play football, however, but it wrings my heart for that dry wistful air. O the aching pangs of it. And the wholesome girls. Like bread, good enough to eat. Eat me. And brandy, rugs and cars. What have I now? The G.I. Bill. Of Rights too. And when you get as old as I am now I can only feel I need preferential treatment Preference of the veteran. I had a dream that these veterans were looking for me. They were arriving in Battery Park. Thousands of them off the Staten Island ferry. More out of the subway from Brooklyn. Beating great drums with leather-thonged fists, holding aloft torches of liberty. Going to get me. And a dreadful feeling it is. Get me for lechery and cheating. For not being at the front. I tell you, you oafs, I was behind the book. The man behind the book. They had a statue of the Blessed Virgin. But I beg of you, I'm just an ordinary guy. Say, bub, you're a moral leper, and degenerate. We're the Catholic war veterans and we're going to purify lousy bastards like you by hanging. But I tell you I'm rich. You're not rich bub. They were marching through Wall Street, coming up through the city to get me. Sleeping in my booze-stained room with someone's crying sister. Finding my room, picking out my brown fireproof door from a million others. I was in the Washington Heights for the anonymity that was in it. They were at 125th Street, a rumble of drums. Please, protection. None. Me an example. A mile away with placards, "Wipe Out Degenerates." But I tell you, I'm not degenerating. My God, they have dogs too. This sister of somebody, sobbing. Gentlemen, I put it to you that I am a Protestant and above this nonsense. Look, bub. we know what you are. But, gentlemen, I'm an Irish Catholic. Bub, we're going to hang you for sure for saying that. Mercy. Pounding feet up the stairs. I must say it was all most distasteful. The door was down. A football player plunging into the room. Bub, I'm from Fordham and we make short work of perverts like you. What are you Bub, crazy or something? Needless to say, I winced in terror and they pushed a flag pole out the window and dragged me from my corner, punching me in the ribs and twisting my balls and hanged me. I woke up with the bed sheet in shreds. Marion thought I had a touch of distemper, or papaphobia.