The History of the Ginger Man: An Autobiography

by J. P. Donleavy

  “Hey buddy, what a roué you’d be back at the asylum.”

  As I looked at this smiling man with his lopsided face saying these words, I realized he was intending to be friendly and implying I’d be a big hit with his mental institution female inmates and was uttering just about the last amicable words I’d hear from a stranger in America. Then inside the zoo, while watching the happier faces of the orangutans, tumbling and wrestling together, and while contemplating this seemingly calm animal for hints of how it achieved its composure, a man noticing my beard walked up to me.

  “Hey, excuse me, are you a yid. Look how these animals are going crazy locked up like this. I’m from Russia. I am sixty-seven. I stopped work last year and now with nothing to do, I am waiting to die. I have a roommate. He is eighty-seven. He stole five sets of underwear from me. You think at his age he’d know how to behave. But he is nothing but a no-good bastard. I worked as a cutter in a tailor’s. My children are like the communists. They say I want, gimme, gimme, gimme. But they don’t come to see me. I get rid of this old bastard who steals my underwear and I die of loneliness.”

  One was glad, even for a moment, to listen to a foreign complaining voice, but not all matters unpleasant to hear were erupting in America. Valerie’s letters back from the Isle of Man soon contained information that the money voluntarily promised her by Mrs. Heron on her return and left under her father’s will was not now to be forthcoming. And not only that, she was also being made to pay for the electricity she used in the house. A steely hardness, along with my growing angst and reclusiveness, was settling over one. I was also beginning to regret having sold the cottage at Kilcoole and disposing of all one’s pathetically insignificant treasures in life, like battered pails, old boots and bent spoons. And that little former isolated patch of tiny land by the Irish Sea and its cottage with no water, electricity or plumbing was now beginning to seem like paradise. In spite of the odd time when a somewhat semipink Bohemian poet might pay a visit. To report that reds would take over soon. Coming like a massive horde on horseback and slashing down the rich, like a combine harvester in a grain field. And on those lonely, isolated, windswept nights, this was terrifying talk when one thought next morning these red-garmented folk from Russia would be sweeping in on the beach only two fields away, and clanking us in chains would ship us off to the slave labor camp.

  Against all the now accumulating odds and massive indifference, I thought there had to be a tiny spark remaining left with which to fight. For if one break, which was not my neck, did not soon come my way, I knew I’d be finished. One realized how desperate it must have been for Pamela, Gainor’s faithful girlfriend, who wrote now to me asking of Gainor, for he was neglecting to write and to tell her about two pawnbrokers she was supposed to contact on his behalf in London. Of her own news, she said that all the former residents of Dublin and who were now residents of London were all still looking for the perfect job and were as a result becoming very whipped and tacked-up men. Meanwhile, a letter came back from Wheelock suggesting that when I came to pick up the manuscript that we could have a little talk, and that then he could explain the feeling at Scribner’s better than he could in a letter. But I already nearly knew what would be said. It was lucky now that other encouraging words such as Gainor’s had been given me. For it was clear that The Ginger Man’s lifelike obscenity could not find vent in this land. And as T.J. had said when he read the manuscript,

  “If that book is ever published, there’s going to be a lot of lampcords under the closet doors.”

  It seemed one had left only an awkward conceit which could protect and save one from nothing. I was still able to trade sorrows with and talk to Jack Duffy. He’d married and moved to a newer and more commodious apartment. And there was still Tally Brown, who, from her own redoubt under the George Washington Bridge on the Hudson, spoke encouraging words. And to where Gainor and I had so contentedly gone to be entertained. With meals ever more sumptuous and which ended with splendid cheeses and vintage ports. When she heard all my bad news and that I in some desperation and with one foot already sinking in the pit of doom, was planning to book on a liner soon to depart for Europe, she cried out at me over the phone.

  “Mike this country needs people like you. You can’t go. Fight. Get back into life. Don’t let yourself slip into the pit of doom.”

  More snow fell. Hungry bluejay birds were raucously crying out. The sound of scraping, digging shovels and of cars getting stuck as their engines whined and raced to escape from the drifts. The drums were now pounding with a long, steady beat. I had at last got a new passport and all my attentions were toward getting out. With more snow sweeping the streets, I went by subway downtown. I walked down Fifth Avenue in my black tweed, a thornproof silverburn made by my tailor Kaighen on the Isle of Man. Arriving at Scribner’s for the last time, I was conducted into a room referred to as the library as Wheelock sat me down to speak of his position.

  “I do feel guilty about not publishing S.D. as it is and a bit like a cowardly editor. But if cuts were to be made to the manuscript, which would be required if we were to publish it, I feel it would ruin the book. I don’t feel anything should be changed in the work. I could press on here against opposition and press for publication, but a lot would have to come out of the novel which I feel is intrinsic to it. But you may use my name as a recommendation. There’s an agent, Diarmuid Russell, A.E.’s son, who reads everything he handles and whose office is just down Fifth Avenue. By the way, I met your friends the Pratts, and they spoke warmly of you and your very delightful wife and baby.”

  I dropped the book off at the agent farther down Fifth Avenue, as suggested by Wheelock, Russell himself not being there. Douglas Wilson had come to New York down from Boston for a wedding. I went to the N.Y.A.C., where I was to meet him and Gainor. We sat in the vast lounge on the ninth floor where in three lonely chairs by the window looking out and down on the snowy whiteness of Central Park, Wilson talked about his grand tour he’d made of Africa and India and reported that A. K. Donoghue was acting on the stage at the Poets’ Theatre in Brattle Street and creating a sensation. Shut away from people for so long, I was enjoying company and invited Gainor back to Woodlawn. Although his image of sainthood was still largely intact, it was becoming clear that some emergency was always required to be overtaking him in his life. Several times in the middle of the night, I could hear his bare feet pass my bedroom door and go downstairs to get some Scotch whiskey, of which there was an endless supply, my father having been sent a case or two at Christmas. Next day we walked together entirely around the four hundred acres of Woodlawn Cemetery.

  “Mike, I must tell you sincerely that I am thoroughly enjoying my brief sojourn here with you and the marvels of this cemetery. Also the entertaining company of your brother, T.J., who seems to have some very incisive ideas.”

  Of course, some of T.J.’s incisive ideas were not all flattering to Gainor, who, after he left, said Gainor was a murderer at heart without absolutely any feeling of any sort, but someone everyone thought very, very nice. One could not help but recognize some truth in T.J.’s words. But said in the context of the present chaos of Gainor’s life, they were a mite unfair. However, as much as I didn’t want to feel it did, even I found that everything to do with Gainor seemed to go haywire. His company was usually cheering, but now combined with my own dejection it was anathema. And which had in just one day already caused me enough angst to last a lifetime. The tension too that had long been mounting as to Scribner’s decision and the long absence of a reply, which now having come, could hardly seem worse. Crist still had the borrowed carbon of the manuscript and all my photographs I had taken in the old sod, which he said served as some consolation in his tribulations and wanted not to part with them yet for they acted as a life preserver out and lost upon the great ocean of anonymity that was Queens. And he quoted me words I wrote, which he said he often whispered to himself.

  “Who seeks me, beseeches my presence. Knows where I
am. In my own brokenhearted sorrow. Dying alone. No one seeks me, beseeches my presence, knows where I am. Dying alone.”

  I told Gainor that Pamela did. She sought him and beseeched his presence. And that Mutt and Jeff were after him too, seeking him for his share of the rent. But at least for the moment out in the more isolated northern wilds of the Bronx, no one did, as far as I know, know where he was. Although Gainor seemed able to summon up resolves stronger than mine, his life seemed far more scattered, and his purposes more undecided. He had even said he thought he’d had a touch of the D.T.’s. I had already told him to get on the first boat and get back to London and stay there. Yet, using the phonetic Gaelic of my surname, he was always able to come back with a contrasting reply, as if I could find some solace in hearing of his own troubles that were anything but bliss.

  “Dinnlay, to look at life through eyes distrusting is to fear. Hast thou forgotten the splendor of our days on the Emerald Isle when the west was awake. Ah, but I know what must trouble you. It’s not that one expects to be loved and admired in this land, but one does not expect either to be kicked or shunned. But Mike, I thought from your forewarning letters that you were forearmed.”

  “Yes, Gainor, but forewarning and forearming still does not stop one from being finally beaten.”

  “Ah, Dinnlay, we have been badly wrong but not now for us to falter nor despond. That upon our sinking ship we shall go down like men, unsquealing and unwhimpering. Dignified on the deck. The ladies and children safely away in the lifeboats. Our dinner jackets agleam in the moonlight, raising our voices in God-worshipful song. Even as the chill water rises upon us to stifle our sound. We shall stand thus saluting at attention till the last. And be thereby the best of men.”

  “Gainor, your words are well taken. And I am looking at life through distrusting eyes. And as a result I am goddamn well full of fear. And I also fear I will do a hell of a lot of bloody complaining as the ship sinks.”

  To Gainor’s efforts to provide heartening and would-be reassurance from chivalrous behavior, all my ripostes now were of a contrary and discontented nature. And it was upon the very next day following this conversation when I had repaired with darkness descending at four o’clock, to my room to write my usual long letter to Valerie and to further sit counting my pennies at my desk, my back to these three windows facing the street and over which the shades were pulled down. Making sure no one could draw a bead on me and make a hole in my head while I held together by all spiritual means what was left of my more than somewhat shattered dreams. When there came another phone call from Gainor, his voice calling out my name as if he imagined I could not hear him.

  “Mike, Mike, are you there.”

  “Yes, Gainor, I am.”

  “Mike, I just a few minutes ago out here in godforsaken Queens have again short-circuited the bloody lights over which Mutt and Jeff are screaming. And I’m now waiting for the police to arrive.”

  “Good God, what for.”

  “A naked and completely berserk girl is hysterical down on the next landing. And I may need someone to go bail for me. You’ll never believe this, neither will a judge or the police. I was in the bathroom having a shower and at the same time trying to shave, and trying to do two things at once I slipped in the goddamn bathtub. In reaching up to stop my fall I first tore the bloody shower head off its mooring in the wall and then a light fixture which short-circuited the lights. Just more things I’m going to have to pay someone a ransom to fix. I don’t know what madness made me risk nearly electrocuting myself, but I was late for my shift at the airport. And I haven’t much time to tell you this, but that is only the beginning. The shower head coming off in my grasp, the only thing left to cling to was the shower curtain and rail. And I ripped the whole bloody thing down in my fall.”

  Lounging back in a sofa chair in the downstairs sitting room in my dressing gown, I was now having to hold the phone away from my ear and my hand over the mouthpiece so that Gainor could not hear my convulsed laughter. His voice remaining alarmed and deadly serious as he went on to relate matters which were clearly portending legal if not criminal consequences.

  “Honestly, Mike, I thought, here I am prostrated with a bruised ass in the bath and why not put in the plug, fill it up, keep my head under water and mercifully end it all. But no. Like the fool I am, I struggled up. And I hadn’t yet been able to turn the water off, which was shooting out over the bath, onto the floor. Then having found at last a dry match and by a miracle a candle, I lit the bloody thing and was carrying it till of course it suddenly went out. And long enough for me to get attired and entangled in the fucking shower curtain. But then in relighting the candle and coming out into the hall, how was I to know that Mutt’s girlfriend, whom I had never met and who as I’ve just discovered was stopping overnight on her way back to Cleveland, had been asleep in his room waiting for him to come back from his shift at the airport. Mike, you couldn’t get out here, could you. It’s desperate.”

  “Good God, Gainor, I’ve just undressed and am just about to take a bath. Why don’t you just go gently and well wrapped up in your shower curtain and invite Mutt’s girlfriend for a cocktail downstairs in the bar. It’s the Yuletide season, and if she’s in a blanket people will merely think you’re in fancy dress.”

  “Mike, this is not fucking funny. With my subway track record, my story won’t be believed. The whole thing is utterly too absurd. That’s why I’m wasting precious moments telling you all this. It could be thought I tore this girl’s clothes off. But in reality, she was in a bloody state of undress and obviously coming to use the bathroom and not knowing anyone else was in the apartment thought I was some sort of naked rapist intruder, then panicked and ran stark raving nude out into this building’s hallway landing to ring every goddamn neighbor’s bell for help. Who bloody well could help nobody, suffering as they all do from an acute pathological and chronic paranoia. Then in stupidly trying to calm the naked girl, I got a blanket to cover her and proceeded out into the hallway. Where, under the light and dressed in a yellow polka-dot shower curtain, of course the first neighbor in her curlers to look out her crack in the door also thought I was a rapist and slammed it shut. How could anyone think otherwise at such a scene. But, Mike, I haven’t told you the most embarrassing and incriminating thing yet. I got an erection. How this could be psychologically possible under the circumstances, I’ll never know. I just couldn’t believe what was happening to me. It was as if in a twisted gentlemanly fashion, I didn’t want to make a liar out of the girl. The terrified creature wouldn’t let me approach her with the blanket and instead ran down the stairs to the next floor below. The wretched girl is still as far as I know shivering there on the landing. Where obviously no one is going to open their door. Mike, are you still there.”

  “Yes, Gainor, I am.”

  “After what’s happened, I have to let you know all this in case I am arrested and arraigned and will need someone to make me at least seem I might be civilized and to bail me out.”

  “Gainor, show them your passport, you’re a veteran of the U.S. Navy and served your country. And have never been accused of rape before. On the contrary, you’ve been besieged by women from the moment you set foot in high school.”

  “Mike, please don’t try to be funny. Can you come out here. I’ve no time to tell you more. Because that’s not all that’s bloody well happened. But it’s all I’ve got time to tell you now. Only a half-gibbering wreck can go on surviving here. The secret is to lose most of one’s sanity and just keep enough left to know when people are shortchanging you. I could be bloody well arrested and locked up for several years. I know it’s a lot to ask, but, Guts, can you get here.”

  As Gainor spoke and some of the humor wore off, I was, rather than heading out to Queens, thinking of getting down pronto to the transatlantic piers on the Hudson and running up the first gangplank I could find available on any ocean liner that I could afford to get on. But there was also no doubt that Gainor was curing me of
my own comparatively feeble concerns, as he always could in reciting yet another drama befalling him. And which often had me holding the phone near to my ear and my hand over the speaker as I was convulsed in some mirth. However, I considered expedient practicality as being of the highest priority now. And showing his passport and declaring his naval serial number as a veteran of foreign war was not the worst start provided he got dressed and divested of his shower curtain. And I realized that even if I were able to solve my way on the subway system, that my showing up in Queens with a beard would only compound problems further. And one placed one’s hope in knowing what a charming diplomat Gainor could be.

  “Gainor, please listen to me. Just put on your clothes, a shirt and your Trinity tie, and at least you will stand some chance of convincing the girl and police of your innocence. If you get arrested, then ring me back.”

  “But the whole damn point, Mike, is that I may not be able to ring you back.”

  “OK. If I don’t hear from you in an hour, I’ll come out there and look out for where they’ve got you locked up and that should be the nearest police station to your address. But I will most likely end up saying I don’t know you from Adam.”