The Pornographer (8 page)

“I’ll be in the day after tomorrow,” and I saw her relax and then ease to let me go as soon as she had the promise. And now that she was willing to let me go I was ashamed of my haste to be away, and wanted to stay.

The next day I put aside for what I liked doing best. I did nothing, the nothing of walking crowded streets in the heart of the city, looking at faces, going into chance bars to rest, eating lunch and dinner alone in cheap, crowded restaurants.

And without any desire for meaning, in the same way as I had been surprised at her bedside, I sometimes felt meaning in this crowded solitude. That all had a purpose, that it had to have, the people coming and going, the ships tied up along the North Wall, the changing delicate lights and ripples of the river, the cranes and building, lights of shops, and the sky
through a blue haze of smoke and frost. And then it slipped away, and I found myself walking with a light and eager step to nowhere among others, in a meaningless haze of goodwill and general benediction and shuffle, everything fragmented again.

And then came the quiet or the tiredness that said that if that was the way it was it too had to be accepted, and when night fell it was possible to go home with the easy conscience of a sport’s reporter writing, “No play was possible today at Lords because of rain.”

I tried to write a new story. I thought if I got another story done before Maloney started to ask for it I would give myself several free days, but I wasn’t able to write. It must have been that I had got used to deadlines. I went early to Kavanagh’s to meet her and had drunk two pints by the time she came.

“It’s good to see you,” she bent to kiss me as she started to unbutton her jacket.

“What’ll you have?”

“I’ll have a gin and tonic—to celebrate,” she said mysteriously.

“To celebrate what?” I asked when I brought the drinks back from the bar.

“You see, silly, there was no reason to be worried. I told you I was regular as could be. It must have been all that exercise.”

“I’m glad. I’ll drink to that.”

I must have been worried for I felt a weight lift, as money suddenly come upon that had been feared lost. The evening brightened. Having realized the fear in being set free, I resolved never to put it at risk again. And I thought of how many times this celebration must have taken place, people made light-hearted as we by the same tidings. For this time we had no bills of pleasure to pay. We were not caged in any nightmare of the future.

“We’ve never met any place except in these old pubs,” she said suddenly. “Why don’t we start going to different places?”

“What sort of different places?”

“There’s the cinema,” and she named a picture that was playing on the quays that had received much praise. “Or we could go to the Park next Saturday, to the races.”

At the mention of the Park, I remembered the days at the races I’d often gone to with her I had loved, and I drew back as if I knew instinctively what she was seeking: if we could meet people that either she or I knew it would give our relationship some social significance, drag it out of these dark pubs for christening.

“No. I don’t feel like going to any of those places. But why don’t you go?” and I saw it fall like a blow. She made no attempt to conceal it.

“O boy! That sure puts me in my place,” and there were tears in her eyes.

“I don’t want to put you in your place.”

“But you did. Don’t you understand that those places don’t have an interest for me in themselves but are places that I want to go to with you?”

“There’s no future for you in that—for either of us. You’ll only get hurt. That’s the way you fall in love.”

“That’s all the music I need to hear. Maybe I’m hurt all I can be hurt already. I don’t know why you have to be so twisted and awkward. Especially with the news I had I thought we’d just have a nice pleasant evening.”

“There’s plenty of places we can go together.”

“Where?” she put her hand on my knee, smiling through her tears.

“We could go down the country,” I said awkwardly. “And stay in some nice hotel for a weekend.”

“I have a far better idea,” she was laughing now. “And it won’t cost a thing. I was going to mention it when all the silly fighting started. We can take a boat, one of the new cruisers, out on the Shannon for a weekend. They’ve been pushing us for weeks to do an article. In fact, Walter was saying that someone will have to do the article in the next few weeks. Why don’t we do it the weekend after next? That’ll give time
to fix everything. Those cruisers are as comfortable as a hotel and far more fun. Why don’t we?”

“All right. That’s agreed, then.”

“It’ll be great fun. And I can do the article. Poor Walter will even be happy for a day or two,” and in a glow of enthusiasm she started to describe the part of the river that we’d take.

“I suppose we won’t bother going back to my place,” I said when the pub closed.

“Why?” she said in alarm, having obviously taken it for granted that we would.

“I thought you mightn’t want to because of the time of the month.”

“No. That doesn’t matter. We can talk there. And I can hold you, can’t I?”

We went by a side lane which cut the distance back by half, along a row that was once fishermen’s cottages, and then in the sparse lights by ragged elder bushes and rows of dumped cars. I took her jacket when we got to the flat, stirred up the almost dead fire, and put some wood on, and asked if she wanted anything to drink. I was waiting to see what she wanted to do. She said she’d prefer not to drink, just to take a glass of water, but for me to go ahead; and then suddenly, lifting the page in the typewriter, asked if she could read what I’d written.

“Sure. I have to warn you that it’s anything but edifying, but it pays. It’s pornography. No. What’s in the typewriter is only doodling. You can read this story. It’s set in Majorca. It’s finished but I haven’t given it in yet,” and I handed her the story and a large glass of water. I poured myself a whiskey and sat in front on the fire. She sat on the bed, under the arc of the lamp, her glass on the marble.

“This isn’t half hot,” she said after half a page, in the same tone as she’d said “Boy, you don’t move half fast” when I first tried to touch her in the room.

“You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to.”

“I want to.”

“That stuff might be hot for Dublin but it’s old hat in por
nography by now. The new pornography has polar bears, bum frigging, pythons, decapitators, sword swallowers.”

“It sure seems hot enough to me.”

“Do you really want to finish it?” She nodded. “I’ll shut up, so, until you finish.”

Warmed by the whiskey, watching the fire catch, I felt time suspended as she read. If God there was, he must enjoy himself hugely, feeling all his creatures absorbed in his creation; but this was even better. It was as if another god had visited your creation and had got totally involved in it, had fallen for it. Some gods somewhere must be shaking huge sides with laughter.

“That’s something,” she said when she finished.

“What did you think of old Grimshaw and Mavis?”

“O I don’t know. I’m shocked. I suppose what shocked me most of all was to think you wrote it.”

“But you know the stuff is around. That it’s sold in shops. That people buy it.”

“Yes, but somehow one doesn’t think it has anything to do with oneself. It’s for others. So it’s quite shocking to come as close to it as this,” she tapped the pages.

“Would you like a drink?”

“All right. I’ll have the same as you. I somehow knew I needed an education but I never thought I’d run through one quite as fast as this.”

I got her the drink, poured myself another, and stayed silent. It must have been the drink, for I felt the flat shake with an uncontrollable silent laughter, that I was both taking part in some farce and at the same time watching it from miles far off.

“What’s so funny?” she asked sharply.

“Nothing. You and I. Mavis and the Colonel. The whole setup seems somehow such a huge farce.”

“How do you mean?”

“Nothing much. Sometimes it seems that we’re all being had, by ourselves as much as by others—by the whole setup.”

“Writing that stuff is bound to have an effect on a person,” she’d come and put arms around me. I drew up her blouse and brassière to feel her breasts, warm and full, the nipples erect.

“Did the stuff excite you at all?”

“Of course. That’s what’s disturbing about it.”

“How disturbing?”

“It makes a farce of the whole thing, doesn’t it. It’s nothing got to do with anything. It just makes a farce of people, plays on them, gets them worked up.”

“Like this?”

“This is natural,” she’d put hands inside my shirt, and was running light fingers along my ribs and back. We kissed as I drew up her nipples till she caught her breath. “I just want to feel you. You smell so sweet. I just want to feel your skin, to lie beside you, even if it’s only for a little while.”

In bed she said, “Don’t you know I love you? Don’t you know I’m crazy about you? Don’t you know I think about you all the time? I never fell before but when I did I sure fell hard.”

“You shouldn’t be telling me that.”

“It’s the truth. I love you.”

“The truth’s generally disastrous.”

“I have so much love for you that I believe you will come to share some of it, no matter how hard you try to fight it.”

“It doesn’t work that way.”

“If I believed that I don’t know how I could go on.”

“You’d go on. Everybody does. Or mostly everybody.”

As much as from desire to stop the words as from real physical desire, I drew her towards me. Afterwards it was she who said, “That’s far better than talking. It just makes sense in itself.”

“It’s not verbal.”

I broke the long silence that followed, “Are you sure you want to go on this boat trip? I enjoy sleeping with you, being with you, but I don’t love you. If you love me as you say you
do you can only get more hurt by going on. Since it’ll have to be broken, it might be better for everybody if we just broke it off now.”

“I don’t know what you wanted to say that for. Unless it’s just wanting to be brutal,” and I could feel her cry.

“No, I don’t want that,” I rocked her. “I wanted the opposite. But are you sure you want that?”

“Does a drowning person want a life raft?”

“I don’t think the situation is as bad as that, but sure, we can go on that boat trip. There’s nothing else to stop it.”

She kissed me, and there was a sense of rest. I knew it well. Two whole weeks were secured and rescued from all that threatened. A small heaven had been won. Within its secure boundaries love somehow might be set on its true course.

“What are you doing tomorrow evening?” she tried to ask with a casualness that only served to highlight her anxiety.

“I have to go to the hospital. It’s a bore but she depends on me now, especially for the brandy. After all, it was she and my uncle who brought me up after my parents vamoosed. So it’s no less than fair.”

“How vamoosed?”

“Dying, I suppose, is a sort of vamoosing, isn’t it? It’s not playing the game.”

“But it’s natural,” she said slowly. “It’s making room for others.”

The chrysanthemums had gone from the bedside when I next went to the hospital. Knowing her, she probably gave the flowers to someone she felt she owed a present to, possibly someone she disliked, maybe to the black-haired nurse. I thought she was watching me to see if I missed the flowers. “Mrs Mulcahy down the ward was saying how nice the flowers were so I gave them to her. You know I can’t stand flowers,” she said.

“How do you feel?” I put the brandy down.

“God and the brandy is all that’s any use now. It’s all I get any value out of. The pain’s still there. I don’t trust this place. I thought the pain was going but it’s back as bad as ever.”

“But you look far better.”

“I don’t feel as bad as when I was in the X-ray, but I don’t feel right. There’s a chance I may be let home. They’re doing some tests. They’ll tell me tomorrow.”

“But that’s great news. That contradicts everything you’ve been saying.”

“Maybe they won’t let me home after all,” she said warily. “Or maybe they’re just letting me home because there’s nothing they can do.”

“They’d not do that,” I said and changed. “I see our black-haired friend is on duty.”

Her swarthy, lovely form was moving between two beds at the far end of the ward.

“That one. She has me still persecuted. I think she must have arranged to be on duty because I had to tell her you were coming in. Whoever has his luck there will find he has more than the full of his arms.”

“I must tell her what you think about her,” I teased.

“You will not,” she put her hand to her mouth as she attempted to laugh it away. “You can do anything you want. You’re all right. But she can take it out on me here. You see she’s moved now so that you’ll have to pass her on your way out.”

Outside her natural attractiveness, the very fact that she was probably available made her more attractive still. We seem repelled as much by the hopeless as by what is too ferociously thrust upon us. Between these two, longing and fearing, we are drawn on.

“I’ll go then, so,” I used the levity as an excuse to leave early without her opposition, “so that I’ll not miss her.”

“You’d not be able,” she laughed.

“The next time I hope you’ll have the good news.”

“Will you be in tomorrow, then?”

“The day after. You’ll hardly be gone home by then?”

“I might never be gone home. Except feet first,” she put her hand again to her mouth as if to take away the words.

As I passed the nurse, she faced me. She was not pretty but more than pretty, handsome and lovely, in her perfect health and young strength. “My aunt says she may be going home soon.”

“She probably will. She’ll know for certain tomorrow.”

“Thanks for looking after her so well.”

“For nothing at all,” she laughed directly.

“I hope I see you soon.”

She didn’t answer. The clear laughing look in her eyes warned me to ignore what she showed me at my own peril.