The Pornographer

  “Maybe we’re talking too much,” without even touching I could feel the wetness between her legs.

  “We’re talking far too much love,” she breathed.

  “We don’t have to do it all the way. We can have this deliciousness of skin and.…”

  “Now you are talking too much, love. I want to feel you completely inside me. And don’t worry. I’m as regular as clockwork and it’s only two days off.”

  If it’s raw meat you want, raw meat you’ll get, I thought as she said, “Easy,” and as I went through like any fish feeling the triumph of breasting the hard slimy top of the weir I needed that sense of triumph to dull anxiety. Maybe it could not go easily and proudly through, I tried to lull myself, if it was weighted and made clumsy with the condom.

  The moment is always the same and always new, the instinct so strong it cancels memory. To lie still in the moment, in the very heart of flesh, the place of beginning and end, to snatch it out of time, to move still in all stillness of flesh, to taste that trembling moment again, to hold it, to know it, and to let it go, the small bird that you held, its heart hammering in the cup of the hands, flown into the air.

  “Now. Ο my God,” I heard her call as it flew.

  “You are beautiful,” I said as we lay in sweat, our hearts hammering down.

  “Wait,” she said as I stirred.

  Death must sometimes come the same way, the tension leaving the body, in pain and not in this sweetness and pride, but a last time, the circle completed, never having to come back to catch the flying moment that was always the same, always on the wing.

  “O boy,” she said. “That is what I seem to have been needing for ages without knowing it. I don’t feel any guilt or anything. I feel just wonderful.”

  “How come you sometimes have a touch of an American accent?” I asked tenderly, now that she was stretched out, relaxing above me.

  “There is, of course, the movies. I must have spent half my life at the pictures. My two best friends are Americans, Janey and Betty. They work at the embassy and they’re at Waterways too. They’re both crazy about Ireland. And they’re the only ones I’ve told about us, about the fairly big differences in our ages.…”

  “What do they think?”

  “They’re all for it. They say no one pays any attention to that kind of difference in the States. In fact, they drove me to the Green Goose this evening. I wanted them to come in for a minute but they said they’d meet you another time.”

  “Would you like a drink?” I asked as the old fear of being enmeshed returned. “You can have almost anything.”

  “I’d love a glass of white wine, if that’s possible.”

  I poured it in the light of the open door of the fridge and got a very large whiskey for myself.

  “What are you drinking?” she asked.

  “Whiskey.”

  “It’s just wonderful to have all this time and ease,” she said.

  “Your good health,” I drank.

  “Do many people live in this house? I didn’t realize it was as big as it is till I came in tonight.”

  “There are ten flats. It’s an old house. It was converted about five years ago.”

  “What kind of people live here?”

  “Much the same as I, mostly single. Once they marry they don’t seem to stay long. Civil servants, school teachers, there’s a girl who works on the radio, a solicitor, an accountant, that kind of person. I’m afraid I don’t know much more about them.”

  “Aren’t you ever curious?”

  “Of course I am but I make sure to restrain myself. We meet on the stairs. Sometimes they run out of salt or sugar, mostly the girls, or they cut their hands washing up. It’s all very polite.”

  “I’m afraid I wouldn’t be long here till I’d know everybody. Do you ever wish you could go into another flat and sit and talk?”

  “No. Because I’d be afraid they’d come into mine. And bore hell out of me. There are times when you can’t stand even the best company in the world. Why I avoid getting involved with anybody here is that I know myself too well. This place suits me. If I got involved with someone and they turned out boring or bothersome. I’d not get out in time—because I can’t stand the tension that sets up—and I’d wind up having to do something violent like leaving the house altogether.”

  “You sound a very unsocial person,” she laughed, “but I don’t think you’re unsocial at all.”

  You’re the sort of person who needs a woman, I thought I saw behind the words; you’re the sort of person who’s ripe for plucking. And I’m the one for the job. “I don’t know what sort of person I am,” I said and took her in my arms.

  There was no need of caution any more. If the seed was going to its source it had already gone.

  The night was set for drinking. Whether we would drink more or not, the day was already useless and hungover. Pour the bottle out.

  And so we took our bodies till the sweet mystery of the wine turned to the glass of vinegar we flinched from lifting in the fuddled light. And we towelled our dank bodies and walked to the taxi rank at the bottom of Malahide Road.

  “When will we meet again?” she nuzzled close to me and shivered in the cold light.

  “In three days’ time, say.”

  “All that length of time?”

  “There’s this aunt I have to go in to see. And the next evening I have to bring stuff into the paper. That’s the two evenings in between gone.”

  “Come with me in the taxi, then.”

  “What’s the use?” I was reluctant.

  “I want you to,” she pressed her lips on mine.

  The house she lived in was in a tree-lined road, detached and prosperous, surrounded by gardens. She seemed to want me to see it, even in this impoverished light, and I got out of the taxi and walked her to the gate.

  “I’ll see you in three days,” I said.

  “In three days,” she raised her lips a last time. There were no lights on in the house.

  She left off from fumbling in her handbag to wave to the taxi as it came out of a turn on the empty road. I waved back and saw her lift a key cautiously towards the lock. I watched to see if she’d take off her shoes but the taxi had taken me out of sight before the door opened.

  “I’ll get out anywhere here,” I said to the driver soon after we had left the road. I needed to walk.

  I ended the Majorcan holiday with a simple ringing of the changes Maloney had asked for: the Colonel with Mavis; Mavis and the bullfighter Carlos; the Colonel and Carlos’ sixteen-year-old girl friend Juanita —all four of them in delicious, unending revel—cunt and tongue and tit and rod and sperm. At the end of the story they all take a taxi together to the airport, addresses are exchanged, promises made. I had finished so early in the day that I decided to walk the five miles across the city to the hospital but it was still an hour too early when I got there. I bought an evening paper, read it over a hot whiskey in the pub closest to the hospital and got the bottle of brandy there too. It was night when I came out, starlit, with frost. I paused at how beautiful the chrysanthemums were—rust, yellow, pink—under the naked bulb hanging from the canvas of the flower stall in the cold-steel light. I knew she’d hardly like the flowers but on impulse bought her a bunch because of their amazing beauty in the frost. On many frozen evenings such as this she and I used to go to Lenten Devotions, down the hill and to the left up Church Street, and stand at the back of the cold, near-empty church.

  “God bless you,” she said as I put the brandy down. “I wouldn’t take it off you but I know you have plenty of money, but I’ll never forget it,” and I saw her eyes fasten on the chrysanthemums in disapproval. “What did you want to go bringing in those old flowers for?”

  “I was just passing them and I thought they looked nice.”

  “They’re a waste. And I’m not likely to get married again,” she began to laugh, but painfully, catching at the laughs. “And I’d hardly be here if I wasn’t trying to put off
the other thing.”

  “Ah, but look, all the people around you have flowers.”

  “They’re from the city,” she said. “A good head of lettuce or a string of onions would give me more joy than all the flowers in the world.”

  I thought of her own garden beside the little creosoted wooden gate off where the railway siding used to be, blooming with good things for the table. “You look far better, and I don’t think it’s just in my eyes.”

  She did look better. Though I knew it was of little use. All sorts of clover and sweet grasses glowed here and there on even the steepest slopes. They were not meant to be clutched at.

  “Maybe because they’ve stopped that old deep X-ray. It used to make me feel horrible. I don’t trust any of those drugs and gadgets. But what can you do? When you’re here you have to put up with whatever they want to do to you.”

  “Do you ever hear from Cyril or Michael?” I asked.

  “No, it’d never occur to them that there was such a thing as a pen or paper. They’d not write,” and she started to chuckle. “But there was someone asking for you. She has me persecuted about you. It’s that blackheaded nurse that jumps around.”

  “Well, tell her I was asking for her. She’s a fine looking girl.”

  “I will not. There’s nothing more sets your teeth on edge when you’re down as someone going around showing the joys of spring.”

  “Would you like a little brandy now?”

  “No thanks. I can do without it for a while. The pain’s been not so bad. I’ll keep it till I need it.”

  Through the window above the bed I could see the clear sky of frost, pierced with stars, and the reflection of all the lights of the city beyond the bare trees, and beside them this woman’s fierce desire to live, and in the long ward, all the little groups about, the same desire in each bed, small shining jewels in an infinite unfathomable band. Everywhere there was a joy that was part of weeping.

  Suddenly I felt my eyes blind. I had been taken completely by surprise. There was the need, too, to give thanks and praise; and no one to turn to. So that she wouldn’t see my disturbance, I pretended to fix the brandy bottle more carefully out of sight in the locker.

  “I suppose I might as well be going now. Before they put me out.”

  “What hurry’s on you? Ah, but wait, tell me the truth now, do you think will I ever get out of this old place?”

  “Of course you’ll get out but you’ll have to have patience.”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes I think I never will.”

  “There’s the bell for the visitors,” I said.

  “You can still stay on a few minutes.”

  “It’s great to see you better,” I couldn’t bear to stay.

  “You’ll be in? I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “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 pornography 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?”