The Pornographer

by John McGahern

“It’s too risky.”

  I felt her stiffen and recoil as I came outside and when I tried to touch her she angrily drew away, “You may be skilful but it’s not skilfulness I need. I would put a little warmth and naturalness and trust ahead of a thousand manuals but obviously that doesn’t rate very high in your book,” and she crossed to the other bunk. I could feel her anger in the close darkness but fought back the desire to appease it. I listened to the simple, swift flow of the water. All over the countryside dogs were barking, the barking starting up at different points, going silent, and then taken up again from a different point, like so many footnotes growing out of a simple text. Suddenly there was a loud banging of car doors, revving engines, horns, indistinct shouts in the night. The bars were closing. I must have been close to sleep for I did not notice her till she was kneeling by the bunk, her lips on mine.

  “I’m sorry, love,” she said, “Let’s not do anything to spoil the trip.”

  I took her in my arms. “I should be the sorry one. I want to but I’m afraid. In fact, there’s nothing I want more.”

  “Goodnight, love. I’ve set the alarm for five.”

  “Goodnight,” I said. “I hope you sleep well. You have a hard day tomorrow getting the article together.”

  We got the boat away before it was quite light and the early morning mist didn’t look like rising. In the white mist and cold of morning, the boat beating steadily up the centre of the still water, the dead wheaten reeds on either side, occasional cattle and horses and the ghostly shapes of tree trunks and half-branches along the banks, there was a feeling of a dream, souls crossing to some other world. But the grey stone of the bridge of Garrick came solidly towards us out of the mist around eight. We tied the boat up, had a breakfast of fried eggs and bacon and scalding tea in a café by the bridge that had just opened. Afterwards we separated. She went about her business of collecting material for the article. I walked for an hour about the town, bought newspapers, and went back to read them on the boat. Nobody came by until she got back.

  “I’m sorry,” she said as she climbed down into the boat.

  “I was just reading the papers. Did you get everything you wanted?”

  “Everything,” she flipped through notes and showed them like a trophy. “The people were wonderful. In fact, if anything, they were just too co-operative,” she jumped about like a girl. “We’re still ahead of time. In not much more than an hour we’ll be in that village I told you about.”

  The wind had risen, blowing the mist away. The fields along the banks were all flooded, the river defined only by its two narrow lines of dead reeds. After about two miles we came out into a large lake, the waves rocking the boat; but when I turned the power up the boat, big enough to be comfortable on the sea, smashed through the waves. It was exciting to feel its chopping power. All this time she worked on her notes in the cabin. On the far side of the lake we joined the river again, passing between a black navigation sign and a red, the banks flooded for miles, the distance between the lines of reeds growing narrow. Soon, across the flooded fields the village came into view, goal posts upright in a football field, smoke rising from a few houses or shops scattered at random round a big bald ugly barn of a church.

  “It’s certainly not much to look at,” I said when she came out of the cabin.

  “But the fat man is lovely. That’s his bar next to the church, with the smoke rising from the chimneys.”

  We tied up the boat at the small stone pier with four metal bollards that made an arm with the stone bridge, flooded fields and woods, another lake shining in the three eyes of its arches in the next distance. We walked to the bar, the village scattered round a single field, no two shops or houses together, all standing away from one another at angles and distances of irreconcilable disagreements.

  “Probably half of them aren’t talking,” she laughed. “The fat man says he’d go mad with the boredom except for the boats.”

  Because of the talk of his fatness I did not find the man all that fat: he had limp thinning hair, a pleasant red face, and he wore a striped butcher’s apron, the formality of any apron unusual in these villages. Two hatted men nodded drunkenly at the corner of the counter. The man knew her at once, seemed delighted to see her, saying only that she was early this year. He made up delicious ham sandwiches, offered us a choice of coffee or white wine, and refused money for either the coffee or sandwiches. While we ate he sat with us on a heavy ecclesiastical bench that must have come out of some old church. She had several questions to ask him about the river and the trade from the boats, and she wrote down most of his answers. When they’d finished she read back to him what he’d said. While they worked I tried to follow the whispers of the hatted pair at the counter who continually cast spying glances our way but all that came clear from the words and half-phrases was one hoarse whisper, “That’s the answer. Get up early. And you’ll win them all. You’ll bate the whole effin’ lot of them if you get up early.”

  All day I’d been seeing a far more attractive person than the woman I had known up till then. For the first time I was seeing her work, and she shone in the distance its discipline made.

  We had shared nothing but pleasure, and no two people’s pleasure can be the same at the same time for long, the screw turned tighter till it had to be forced on the wrong threads. If we’d shared some work instead of pleasure would it have made any difference? It didn’t matter, it was ending now, and ending on an older note, one withdrawing before becoming enmeshed in the other, intolerant of all chains but those forged in its own pain.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked as we went back down to the boat.

  “I was thinking how well you work. That you make notes, write everything down. It’s not that usual. You’d be surprised how many try to get by on that old amateurish flair.”

  “I’m grateful for that,” she said gravely.

  We hugged the black navigation signs after going through the bridge, a series of barrels between pans set on stone piers. We went faster when we came out into the lake, two small islands to the left, one wooded, the other of pale rocks ringed with reeds, and on the shore a great beech avenue waited for spring as it ran to ruined coach houses. The river was so narrow where it entered the lake that we’d to slow the boat down again to a crawl. The woods were to the left and we could see far into them where a red sun was slipping down between the trunks. The flooded fields were so close beyond the right bank of reeds that we had to move very slowly.

  The man was waiting for us at the lock house. It was so long since a boat had gone through that I’d to help turn the wheels that operated the gates while she took the boat up through the lock. For a while it seemed the handle wouldn’t turn but then it gave with a grinding of cog-wheels. When the boat had gone through the lock she joined the lock-keeper to ask him some things for her article, and I went back to the boat. With the water pouring like glass over the wall, then foaming out into the black water where it went still, a broken-down boat-house away in the shallows, the man and woman intent in conversation on the solid arm of the lock gate, and the trees and water held in frost as the light started to fail, the evening seemed so beautiful that it was hard to believe it was real. There had been so many interpretations of beauty as such an evening and scene that it had grown abstract and unreal.

  When she joined me again in the boat she closed the notebook triumphantly. “That’s it. All I have to do now is write it. I’ve at least twice as much as I need.”

  In ten minutes we were letting the anchor down in a half-moon of a bay, sheltered by old woods. “We must come together sometime in the summer,” she said. “In the summer the whole bay is choked with water-lilies.”

  She took lamb chops out of the fridge and I uncorked two bottles of red wine. “I feel we’ve earned this meal,” she said as we kissed. Before she put the chops under the grill she gave herself a quick sponge bath at the other end of the boat and changed into a lovely, clinging brown wool dress. Except for the gr
ey hair and heavy breasts, the naked back was so trim and taut that it might have been the back of a young girl.

  “Do you not want to know who I was here with the last time?” she asked.

  “Who?” I asked, thinking as I watched her move in perfect ease in half nakedness close to me how far we’d come in bodily intimacy in the few short weeks since the first dancehall night.

  “Certainly no man. Those two American girls, Betty and Janey. But it’s far better with a man, especially with you,” she laughed.

  I was ravenous even before the meat started grilling, and as soon as I’d eaten, with the early morning on the river, all the raw air of the day, and the red wine, I began to yawn.

  “Sleepy?”

  “I’m almost dead out.”

  “We’ll leave the washing-up till tomorrow.”

  It seemed inevitable, it could not be put off now or avoided, and the feeling grew that it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the tiredness and the desire.

  “Are you sure it’s all right?” I made a last fainthearted protest as she came naked into my arms, my body taut with desire.

  The next day both of us were grateful for the boat. Getting it back down the river kept us separate and busy.

  “What’ll we do about Michael?” she asked in Carrick. “We hardly need another session.”

  “We’ll have one drink with him and tell him we must get away.”

  When next we met she had given in the written article.

  “Walter’s delighted with it. It’s going into the next issue.” I read it in the upstairs lounge of the Green Goose, while she sipped nervously at her drink, and watched my face greedily. It read quickly, was full of useful things for anybody going on the river, and almost off-handedly caught something of the very withdrawnness of inland waters.

  “It’s no wonder Walter is pleased,” I handed her back the typescript, and we went back to the flat that evening.

  “I can’t see you this weekend,” I said close to morning, before she could press me for a meeting. “My aunt is out of hospital. I have to go down to see her.”

  “I might as well go down the country too,” she said. “My sister has adopted a second child. I’ve been promising for a long time to go down to see her. I’d only spend the whole weekend moping if I stayed in Dublin. When will we meet when you get back?”

  “Wednesday,” I was determined to finish the whole affair. “We can meet in the Green Goose at eight on the Wednesday.”

  “I don’t like the pub,” she said.

  “We can just meet there and go some place else if we want to after.”

  “How is the pain? You’re looking far better than in the hospital,” I lied uneasily to my aunt when I went down to see them that weekend.

  “The pain’s there. I don’t know if it’ll go. I just pray. And I take the brandy. It’s all that does any good.”

  “I brought two bottles. They’re two different brands.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “Will you have a small drop with me?”

  While we were drinking she went into the cold pantry where I remembered rabbits and game birds hanging before roasting, and I heard her drink on her own. She brought out a plate of lamb chops. After the secret drink she was relaxed and started to prepare me a meal. While I was eating, the hall door opened and she went still to listen. “It’s Cyril,” she whispered, and started to tidy away the glasses. “Say nothing about the brandy. He’s against taking the brandy for the pain. He says I should take the pills instead.”

  I listened to his feet come up the hallway. The loose brass knob of the door rattled as it opened. The handsome face had coarsened but the hairline was the same, oiled and parted in the centre. He’d been drinking.

  “Well, if it’s not our friend from the city, eating like a king,” he said sarcastically.

  “Cyril,” she warned sharply but he ignored her.

  The silver cups and medals of his footballing days shone on the dark sideboard, in the small coffin-like mirrors. I got up from the table.

  “I didn’t mean to disturb you,” he said. “I meant for you to go on eating.”

  “You didn’t disturb me,” I said.

  I saw her eyes plead: be easy with him, he doesn’t know what he does, be easy with me.

  “And did you find your aunt that loves you so dearly all right?”

  “She seems improved.”

  “She seems improved. She’s improved when she’s half-crazed with brandy. Nobody will tell the truth. It’s pills she should be taking not the brandy. They’re far better than the brandy and a damned sight cheaper. You might see that I’ve even taken to a little drinking myself.”

  “I can see that,” I said, and for a moment it looked as if he was about to hit me.

  I thought I might see her cower by the stove, but instead she stood at her full height, all her thought for him. “Cyril’s upset that it’s taking me so long to get better, when we just have to be patient,” she said as if she was straightening his tie.

  “I have to go to see the boss,” I said. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

  “We’ll see you in an hour, so,” they both said, his aggression gone.

  She followed me to the door, “Don’t mind what he said. Cyril doesn’t mean what he says. It just flashes out. And you’ll not forget to come back?” she seized me by the arm.

  “I’ll be back,” I said as we quickly kissed.

  She mumbled something like. “God bless you,” as I walked quickly towards the car.

  The mill was four or five miles outside the town, towards the mountains. All the woods that had once surrounded the mill had been cut down. The new woods on the lower slopes of the mountains hadn’t matured yet, so most of the timber had to be brought in. As I drew close to the mill I saw my uncle high on the back of a big truck, unloading pine trunks with a lift, the iron fingers jerking down to fasten about the trunks before swinging them free. As I drew closer I could feel the spring of years of sawdust beneath my feet and the sharp sweet smell of fresh resin. My uncle waved to me but continued unloading the truck. Away at the mill proper—a large crude shed of timber and galvanized iron—I saw Jim getting a trunk into position on the rollers. From one of the smaller sheds came the harsh, brutal clanging sound of a saw sharpening.

  Having unloaded all the pine trunks and turned the engine off, my uncle stretched out his hand. “You’re welcome,” as slow and confident here as he was dwarfed in the city.

  “Things are going well,” I gestured toward the sheds and saws.

  “Well, not too bad. The price of timber keeps going up, but that doesn’t bother us. We just shove up our prices as well, we’re not behind in that,” he laughed. “Are you down for long?”

  “Just for a few hours. I have to be back.”

  “And you’ve seen the patient?”

  “I’ve just come from there. Cyril has a few over the top.”

  “I never see him any other way. I was thinking if things get much worse I might even move out to your place?”

  “You don’t have to ask me that. You can move any time you want.”

  “I know that,” he said with feeling.

  “Would you be able to manage?”

  “The house is in perfect shape. I could move in tomorrow as far as the house goes.”

  “How’d you manage the cooking for yourself?”

  “I’d not cook,” he started to laugh. “There are restaurants in the town. What do you think I did when your aunt was in the hospital? I got all my meals in Caffrey’s. Any fool can get a bit of breakfast for himself!”

  “Why don’t you move, then?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t like to just now,” he said awkwardly. “Your aunt might think I was moving out on her. Are you going out to take a look at your own place at all?”

  “I suppose I might as well. John Hart still has the grass?”

  He nodded, “John Hart is all right. If you put it up for bidding you might get a few more pounds, but someone might co
me and eat the heart out of it. You’ll be down soon again?” he had work to do.

  “If I go to see the place I’ll not have time to see her, and I promised her that I’d go back. But will you just tell her that I ran out of time—that I’ll be down again very soon.”

  “I’ll tell her,” he nodded. “You might as well go over and have a few words with Jim before you go or we’d never hear the end of it. He’s not been in the best of humour this weather either.”

  “Well, how are things in the big smoke?” Jim greeted.

  “The same as usual,” I said, and we talked that way.

  “I suppose you’ll want to be off,” he was the first to change. “Your uncle will have been glad to see you. He’s not been in the best of humour lately.”

  I drove straight out to the house. There were several signs of recent fires having been lit all through the house. New firebricks had been put in the grate of the Stanley cooker in the kitchen and the stone floor had been swept. Except for flaking paint on the wall it looked as if it had been prepared for someone to move in.

  I had so lost connection with the house and fields that I felt I was walking through a graveyard. For the first time I thought that except for my uncle I’d be glad to sell it.

  I felt easier outside in the fields, the crowns of the lime trees, the glint of water through the moss-grown orchard, and the mountains beyond. In the fields down by the lake I met John Hart. He had a cattle cane and hat and collar and tie. He obviously did no other work except look after dry cattle now.

  At the end of the formal pleasantries he started to complain of the lack of young people in the countryside.

  “The only person I see regular around is your uncle, more than I used ever see him. Only last week I was passing the house, after cattle just like I am now, and I saw smoke and happened to look in. And there he was, sitting in the rocking chair, looking into the big fire. He never even noticed me at the window.”

  As I took leave of John Hart and what he told me, I thought how sure and well people act in their instinct. Sensing an approaching death, my uncle was already beating himself a path to a new door.