The Ginger Man - J. P. Donleavy [20]
"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