Cold and old
“It doth
Be me
Who hoots”
26
AS GAINOR, I and T.J. sat at the white porcelain table having breakfast in the warmly snug kitchen in Woodlawn, from Europe news came of the Irish Sea being swept by some of the worst storms in memory. Lives already lost on one of the ferries crossing from Scotland to Northern Ireland. On the Isle of Man, the Anchorage was being battered by the mountainous waves and the spray which was blowing over the house, but, with its three-foot-thick walls and high garden bastion overlooking the beach, was holding out. And Gainor hearing these tidings intoned, “May there be God’s mercy on a wild, wild sea.”
Sustaining one these early days of February was the knowledge that the good ship Franconia was already plowing the North Atlantic deeps on its way to New York to rescue one. And even perhaps Gainor. Who I knew was leaving no stone unturned under which he might find a way of getting out or, in failing that, being able to hide. But meanwhile for me came more bad news. Tumbling as it seemed routinely down the pike. And always one unable to get out of its way. The book having been read twice at Random House was finally declined. The agents, who had plans to show the novel to Farrar, Straus and Young and Harcourt Brace and were hoping to get an editor to work with, no longer seemed to want to pursue further finding a publisher. Saying they found the work very exciting and were certain of its ultimate publication but felt there was too much in the work to which publishers would take exception. Mention was made of references to the Catholic church and to scenes thought too explicit.
With not that many days left to sail, I retrieved the novel. Publishers I’d heard were swamped with stacks of manuscripts day after day. And I knew there was no way The Ginger Man without an agent could be plucked up out of the scramble. The manuscript went packed into my bag. At the same time, a letter arrived from Ernest Gebler, who was in London for the premiere of The Plymouth Adventure, the star-studded Hollywood rendition of his account of the Mayflower, which he’d originally entitled “The Dream of Poor Men.” He had written in answer to one of my fiercely depressing accounts of life as I was finding it in America and the grim prospects I was experiencing for S.D. And sounding euphoric, Gebler wrote back saying that he had felt exactly like that in New York and also, in prophetic words, mentioned that he had an idea about French publishers who published in English in Paris. But meanwhile not to let myself be undermined by rejections and to come back and, with prices cheap, buy a farm in Ireland.
I found that although my mother could carp and criticize, she always acquiesced and came across in all the important things, relenting at my insistence and saying that she would go along with anything I wanted to do. And she had now given me enough money to return to Europe and even the promise of help there, should I need it or of help to get a farm should we ever contemplate return to the United States. I made now my last visits to the club. Taking a ride on the mechanical horse in the gym and working out on bags in the boxing room. I took my leave of Arthur Donovan and Frank Fulham. Who, hearing I was going, expressed the appropriate sadness and immediately launched into their clearly fictitious plans they pretended they had made for my ring future.
“Hey, gee, champ, we got all lined up for you a few pretty good fights at middleweight, where you could pulverize these guys. Like you and Tommy Gill used to do to each other. No kidding. You could go right up to the top of the rankings overnight.”
And of course I hadn’t been kidding when I thought more than once that I might actually have to get up in the ring somewhere and with a mouthpiece preserving my teeth, hope that I could batter a few opponents to the deck for my butter and bread. Plus it might have done me a lot of other good with a means of letting off steam. Especially as one had very quickly found everything wrong in this country. And life corroded by the poison of suspicion seeping deep across the nation. The falsely accused, sent down to doom. Betrayed and their lives ruined. But now at the end of my sojourn, I was also alternately finding Gainor one moment an ally, and the next, intolerably exasperating. And was beginning to wonder why I forgave him all his unforgivable transgressions. And especially through the now rapidly accumulating discomfiture he provided by the constantly occurring mayhem in his life. But then I could never forget that in the midst of all his own tribulations, he would still end up giving me encouragement. And how this could continue throughout his own ordeals and bedevilments was becoming increasingly astonishing to me. But I never thought the day could ever come when I would find Gainor comforting, which I did for the few days he had arrived in Woodlawn for some respite before making his way to Woodstock for further rest and recuperation. Now in a state of hysterical silence, with my voice gone, Gainor spoke to me and I listened and then in large, clearly legible letters, I printed out my replies to him on scraps of paper to make them look like posters.
“Mike, can you tell me why it is that wives, mistresses and children can’t all live together in happy harmony and avoid this awful emotional not to mention financial fragmentation that comes by having to support several roofs to exist under. Have you any comment to make.”
YES, TO BE CAUGHT ON THE HORNS OF A DILEMMA IS BAD
ENOUGH BUT TO THEN HAVE ONE OF THE HORNS A MILE UP
YOUR REAR END IS A HELL OF A SIGHT WORSE. AND THAT’S
WHY YOU HAD BETTER NOT ALL TRY TO LIVE TOGETHER
One occasionally had to remind oneself that Gainor was in fact one of the trusted efficient supervisors of passenger traffic for Pan American airways and that his associates appreciated his endless willingness to accomplish for them all sorts of favors and relieve them at their harrowing duty at their check-in desks. But I did not take too seriously Gainor’s seemingly vague plans to decamp. Nor did I know that he was in touch with Pamela for money to do so. But I did know that his stepmother back in Ohio had sent him fifty dollars with the firm understanding that he would get no more. And there was no way now that I could see him climbing the gangway to a transatlantic liner or, as was now the case, that of the S.S. Franconia and escaping back either to England or the old sod, as the ship was scheduled to call at both Cork and Liverpool. On his desk in Woodlawn, as we exchanged thoughts, Gainor’s given me verbally and mine written on scraps of paper, I chanced upon what appeared to be printed notes and asked Gainor what they were. As he picked up the sheet, he smiled as he said he had drawn up what he felt might constitute a general preamble to letters he was writing back to Europe.
“Mike, do you want to hear my averments, and perhaps record them in your diary that I see that you are keeping.”
YES
“‘To whom it may concern: Please be advised of these, the facts of my life, which I now freely and happily disclose. America has been wonderful to me. I like and enjoy my work very much at the airport. It has made me very fit and limber, as I have got to keep constantly on my toes, dodging knives, punches, and sometimes bullets, which are directed at me at my check-in counter. But in rebuttal of such, I have innovated for Pan American Airways a delightful lottery of foreign destinations to which unruly passengers might surprisingly find themselves directed at no extra cost. These are called mystery rides. When not busy at work, I do a great deal of reading of the great philosophers. Then having put my mind at rest, agreeing with their conclusions, I manage to get ten hours sleep at night. I go to the opera frequently. And attend equally at the ballet. I wash my own socks and have my shirts laundered by a Chinaman who sends his daughter to Vassar and his son to Yale. I despise drink and smoking and those awful people who do. I particularly avoid pubs, and other places of serious sin. I have most happily now repaid with interest all my debts in Europe and straightened out all of my other highly fucked-up affairs. And here in the land of the free and home of the brave, I have opened up accounts with several reputably bankrupt-proof banks and have retained a broker to acquire for me some of the better stocks and shares. My surplus funds, I send to be looked after by a sedate bank in Basel, which is of course located
in Switzerland. However, on the debit side, I must admit that the food and people in this country here have absolutely no taste or flavor. I haven’t yet found a tailor to my liking but am still on the lookout. Nevertheless, in other gustatory and sensual matters, I am particularly delighted to disclose that one can find exotic ladies here with diamond-tipped nipples and with their vaginas lined with a new ripless, stretch-resistant tissue. I have been particularly charmed and delighted by the college-skilled ladies who give what are referred to here in America as mind-blowing blow jobs. One merely has to make a blowing motion with one’s lips to have one of these former cheerleading girls reach and unbutton the necessary buttons and fish it out of one’s trousers and go to work. It’s proved very convenient and relieving of angst that does make one’s balls shiver a lot less and prevents them sounding like castanets clacking in an empty cathedral. One must add that the apples and grapes are also very good. And the maple syrup. It’s all really a matter of choice.’ Do you like that, Mike. Do you approve. Is that a fair and honest assessment. I see, along with considerable amusement, slight concern on your face. You think I’ve cracked up. Not true. Everything is going to be all right.”
YES I LIKE IT VERY MUCH
ALTHOUGH I DO
NOT AGREE THAT
EVERYTHING
IS GOING TO
BE ALL RIGHT
The old white clapboard house in Woodlawn had now become an outpost as one was gathering possessions together and packing. And making last contact with those whom I would leave behind in America. Although I thought there was a fraction of a hope that Gainor might indeed escape with me, when I then thought of the horrors chasing him I was sure he would be trapped and left in circumstances of long incarceration. And as I stood there looking at him, a weary but understanding smile broke across Gainor’s face. For one thing was certain, he was delighted and relieved to find himself once more safely ensconced in Woodlawn. But his appearance reminded me of early mornings back at my rooms at Trinity when Gainor would turn up in his gown, clutching a few papers, and having spent the night drinking in the cattle markets and was now on his way to go sit his law exams. His hands trembling, the veins standing out in his wrists, his eyes reddened in an ashened face, he looked as if he had not eaten solid food or slept for days.
Knowledge spreading that I was leaving, odd parting messages came through from such as Donoghue, perhaps more American than any of us and coping in his own eccentric way better. But who called from Boston to say he was seeking analysis as to why he was getting blow jobs but could not get laid. And now in residence in Spring Street, he said that after I left, the old Jewish man with his long gray beard who lived behind still had his rich son coming to see him who continued to throw out and put in garbage cans all the old man’s junk he collected at four A.M. when he would tour the local streets with his little handcart. The son trying to clean the place up. But that as soon as the son and wife left again, the old man would go out to the garbage pails, empty them and bring back in all his junk again. When he would stop Donoghue, he would say that all were bums except for the man with the beard, who was a gentleman and who used to live there with the beautiful wife and baby.
News came too from Douglas Wilson in Boston, whose life seemed also better regulated, saying among other things that even in angst there was to be found enlightenment. And he said he was simplifying his own future by studying law. He also reported the whereabouts of a mutual friend and college chum whose serenely black face one was always glad to see in Ireland and who had now returned home to Africa where he was presiding over his father’s vast estate in the southern Sudan and was at the following address.
Sayid Ishak Mohammed Khalia Sherif,
Director, Zuleit Pumping Scheme,
Kosti
Ishak, a talented painter and poet, describing himself on the pumping scheme as not being wholly incompetent, aided as he was by expert and expensive advisers. I was learning too from various sources that other American folk with whom one had been acquainted at Trinity College and who had tried return to America as the solution to their lives had already, thoroughly dispirited, quietly departed without fanfare. Away from this land of the American dream. Where one wondered if it were wives who wanted most to escape. Feeling themselves betrayed by so-called unsuccessful husbands. And themselves turning into evil-humored shrews who used their energies, guile and scathing, carping sarcasm to usher and hurry their spouses onto death. And to the payout on their life insurance policy. Although my own mother kept her own counsel, I sensed my own father was in his own nightmare, ready to be expendable and, despite his animating poetry and horticulture, was beginning his final demise. But never, it appeared did he give up a devotional admiration of my mother.
With the single exception of April, I no longer spoke to anyone. But not using my voice anymore did not seem to make me any faster writing messages on pieces of paper and scribbling out advice, mostly to Gainor, whose life, at least at the moment, was suspended in hibernation. But as one sensed his plans getting more chaotic, I felt I had to be quicker with my admonitions, exhortations and warnings. And communication with him was improved, becoming almost as fast as talking, when Gainor would come and stand behind me as I sat at my typewriter and typed my replies to him, which he read over my shoulder. Some of my answers being brief indeed.
“Mike, might you be able to see your way clear to lending me just ten dollars till tomorrow afternoon, when I shall repay you at three o’clock when a draft of money arrives for me at American Express.”
NO
I did in fact advance a small bit of traveling money to Gainor, which in turn he did repay as promised. And the sum assisted him to go with T.J. to attend a small gathering convened by Tally at her apartment. As I no longer wanted to see anyone, I remained, holding the fort in Woodlawn, with T.J. and Gainor vividly reporting back. There had been slight friction evident among the guests. Lea was there with John Fountain, who the whole time looked up at the ceiling or into books. But musically at least, it was according to Gainor a much enjoyed evening. To awed and stunned listeners, T.J., normally shy at such events, stepped forward and played from his repertoire his “Bronx Rhapsody in Pink.” Lea’s marvelous singing voice was again joined with Tally’s when the two sang in duet pieces from Bizet’s Carmen. Gainor said he was spellbound listening to a recording played of one of John Duffy’s early symphonies, in which the sadness of the violas, Gainor said, could rip out your soul. As Tally’s marvelous food and drink were served, Lea was talking about and wanting to go to the Canary Islands. Recommending Tenerife to Gainor as the perfect place for him to find peace. And prophetic these words would become. As none of us could ever guess then, that a place so far away was indeed to be the place of all places to play the final hours in Gainor’s life. But nothing was seen of April. Who rang me this very same night to plaintively say,
“Gee, J.P., don’t shut up on me will you. Shut up on the others but not me. I couldn’t stand that, especially with the rest of the things that are happening in this burg. Come on. You’re a good guy. Don’t go. Fight it out. Battle. Beat the little turds. Don’t leave me alone with all the shits.”
I told April that agents, my last hope, had now declined to further handle the work. That the paranoia spread everywhere, and even among the most liberal-minded, was such that made even the mildest of words in S.D. actually feared.
“Hey, gee, J.P., I guess you got to go. And then you’re not going to hear any more of my bedtime stories. You know, maybe the only thing after all worth having is a good marriage. And a guy like you who loves his wife. Which gives life a center, a purpose. And maybe into which you can put with hard work some faith and trust. All those things together and maybe you got something to wake up to in the morning. Hey, gee, listen to me, old cynical lips, saying these things. When my ole grandma hit my ole grandpa a good ole contusion with a board on the head to wake him up and do a little work plucking peaches from the peach tree, she killed him. ‘Cause maybe th
at’s what she wanted to do in the first place. But other than just a couple of extra shekels to jingle, what else is there supposed to be around that’s supposed to be better than two people in love. But then you know, J.P., what is a guy to a girl but a prick. And you put your name on it with a wedding. And no wedding, what is a guy but a prick. And you end up, as your tits begin to sag down to your knees, looking over your shoulder, wondering where your lifetime private income is going to come from. And so with that little rendition of ole hillbilly wisdom from high up the gulch, my ole dear J.P., I wait for you to come back. And in the by and by, I bid you fond voyage over the steep ocean waves.”
Along with April’s predictive and weatherwise words echoing in one’s mind, one also thought one could sometimes hear coming up the Hudson valley and into the northern reaches of the Bronx, the great throbbing blasts of an ocean liner’s horn announcing its putting to sea. And then one morning, I did hear such a sound coming on the chill wind blowing across the snowy, cold Van Cortlandt woods. I took it as foreordainment of my certain departure. And it shortened the days now passing, as I attempted to conquer my malaise by making morning explosive bursts from my bed and trying to fight off the gloom that would slowly, inevitably settle upon me during the day. Meanwhile keeping silent in my own silence. No longer the presumptuous, positive iconoclast I had been in Dublin. Assuming my certainty over my future as a writer and painter. I had been wrong. No one was waiting in America to acclaim a work I had believed would be acclaimed. Instead the nation seemed an enemy. In my letters, I now apologized to Valerie for taking her away from the civilization of England and for introducing her to the gossipy backbiting morass of drink and dismally dissolute life to be found in Dublin. I expressed regret for then having further dragged her through the disappointments and crushed hopes that were to be mine in America. And which till I got aboard the boat, I was still not certain I had survived.
The History of the Ginger Man Page 35
