The History of the Ginger Man

by J. P. Donleavy

  “Gainor, why can’t you just stick this poor unfortunate in the bloody Métro with his mutt on the right train, destination Mairie d’Issy.”

  “We can’t do that. He’s got to change at Sèvres Babylone. And being that he is completely unable to interpret signs and he could instead of heading for Austerlitz head for Porte d’Auteuil and end up way out by the Bois de Boulogne.”

  “Well, he could at least take the dog for a walk and a crap there.”

  “Mike, please don’t try to be funny. He may have someone to whom he’s a father waiting for him at his destination. That’s if he ever now gets there in time to catch his train at Gare d’Austerlitz.”

  “Gainor, it’s only one change and about a dozen stops. He’s bound to see Austerlitz written up all over the place. It couldn’t be simpler.”

  “Mike, what happens if his dog, Kuninganna, goes off loose as he is trying to put his bags on the Métro train. The poor man is absolutely banjaxed then in trying to fetch him back with the Métro train leaving with his luggage.”

  “Gainor, what if he hadn’t met you. How the hell was he then going to get to Gare d’Austerlitz.”

  “Mike, that’s a damn silly and an entirely hypothetical question and completely beside the point. Don’t you understand the man has to get to Gare d’Austerlitz and doesn’t speak French or any other known language.”

  “Well, how the hell are you talking to him.” “Your man seems to savvy a little Serbo-Croat and, combined with a bit of Esperanto and a tiny bit of Catalan, I have, if I may say so, become communicative with him. However, with a bit of sign language and my grunts in that language used by earliest humanity, the primordial utterings, we now understand each other perfectly. That indeed was the mother tongue, which has since regrettably become the global babble in which no one understands each other.”

  “Well, Gainor, I do hope you’ll understand when I tell you that I’ve got to be at a cafe near the Opera in just a few minutes.”

  “Mike, don’t worry. There’s no need for two of us to go to Austerlitz. Just lend me a few francs and I’ll meet you somewhere. Or back at the Hôtel Square in an hour or so.”

  “Done. Meet me at the Square. Here’s some francs. Good-bye.”

  Even though Gainor was the world’s most devout humanitarian, I did think in this case he was going far beyond the call of duty. But I bid him, along with his good friend and his blind dog, bon voyage. I also girded my financial loins, for in borrowing money I correctly assumed Gainor was broke, and more than likely was without the means to travel back to Spain. Despite the strange sainthood of this man Crist, at no time did I really think that he would actually do what he was doing on the station of Gare St.-Lazare and escort this incomprehensible gentleman whom he had never met before to Gare d’Austerlitz. If I had, I might have accompanied him. But instead, in total disbelief I stood there mute and more than a minute dumbfounded as off he walked, the handle straps of his small Pan American Airways bag pushed over one wrist and carrying the man’s dog for him. I watched them disappear down the steps into the Métro, and as they did I had a sudden vision of catastrophe and rushed off after them only to lose them in the rush-hour crowd.

  Having missed my appointment with Sayle, but at least having avoided ignominious defeat in a pinball game, at which Sayle was a master in popping the ball in the skill hole, I returned to the Hôtel Square, where Gainor did miraculously appear an hour later. Knocking on my door, his face was wreathed with concern. He had already been to his room in the Hôtel Normandie overlooking the carrefour de Buci, but he was now nervously twiddling his thumbs, which was always a true sign of his being agitated.

  “Mike, I can’t tell you, the most bloody wretchedly unbelievable happened. At Gare St.-Lazare, we mistakenly in the Métro got into a first-class carriage with second-class tickets. And some bastard sporting the Légion d’Honneur on his lapel spotted me hiding the dog under my coat. When we got to Sèvres Babylone and were about to make the successful change, we were no sooner on the platform to Austerlitz when this bastard now following us precipitated exactly what I described to you could happen, which did happen. The train’s doors opened. My friend put his luggage on, and turned to me to hand him the dog. Then the bastard with the Légion d’Honneur shouted just as the train doors were closing that the dog was rabid and illegally on the Métro. You could hear the shout ‘Prenez garde hydrophobie,’ all over the station. Then, as I tried to hold the train doors open, the dog jumped down and got loose. In all the noise and commotion, the poor mutt, who was, I must admit, foaming a little at the mouth, just ran through a fast-panicking crowd. The bloody train then pulled out of the station with your man’s two green canvas valises aboard. Meanwhile, the poor terrified dog ran right the bloody hell back out past the ticket collector from whence we came, which led to this ancient bitch who called the police to try to stop me. I ended up having to run for it. I lost sight of the dog, who couldn’t see where it was going anyway. Then I couldn’t find the man. Anyway, he’d already lost all his luggage. I mean after what happened, one had to wonder, was his life worth going on living anyway. I can now conclude only that the fate of the blind dog was to fall into the tracks, and the mutt’s owner, poor fucker, is somewhere banjaxed for all time in the neighborhood of Sèvres Babylone.”

  As Gainor was about to relate further and better particulars of his most unhappy mishap, I handed him a copy of The Ginger Man, for which, by letters over previous months, he had badgered me. This seemed to cheer him up and relieve him of his disconsolate state and we went out of the Hôtel Square and appropriately enough I left him in a cafe in rue de la Harpe, stopping to look back at him through the window where he sat quietly with his calvados and a cup of coffee, and, with The Ginger Man already open, he was absorbed with a grin on his face. However, the sight of him there in the nearly empty cafe, left me feeling an overwhelming sense of loneliness. For there he sat, so anonymous, this strange traveler who yet could utter in a universal primordial tongue. Of which I had to admit I couldn’t understand a bloody word.

  I now went to meet Muffie Wainhouse just around the corner in the La Boucherie, sitting with her over a drink as she told me of her involvement with The Ginger Man and preparing the manuscript for the printer. She related how she meticulously had made sure that every word could be followed without mistake, conscious as she was of the book’s unconventional style, grammar and punctuation. She had thought that the work would be published as had Beckett’s and Genet’s in a special edition of its own and was surprised to find it included in the Traveller’s Companion Series. She seemed to have a likable opinion of Girodias, that he was not all good nor was he all bad, but that his intentions could be unpredictable. And whether he would do something or not often depended upon the humor he was in. Then this attractive girl with attractive legs led me up the stairs to Girodias’s abode above the restaurant below. And here within sight of Notre-Dame Cathedral across the Seine, drink flowed and food in abundance was everywhere.

  I had no idea the party was being given in my honor. Girodias’s brother Eric, who seemed far less flamboyant than Maurice and rather more serious and erudite, came up to talk to me. In the early course of the evening, I spoke to Girodias and brought up the matter of a cut English edition of The Ginger Man and asked that if such were proceeded with, would he agree to my having the English rights and that as a result of the English publication and reviews, that it might bring about an American edition and that we would continue to share these rights equally. Girodias thought this a good idea, that it would help advertise and sell his edition and was agreed to the arrangement should I find a British publisher. Years hence the story of this evening of October 25 was to be repeated many times and when told by Girodias would allude to my inebriation. Which, if there were any truth in this, and whatever drinking did take place, it never reached the point where my impressions or exact memory of the evening, or the words said, were in any way impaired or blurred. In fact, quite the contrary, ev
ery word spoken was writ large and indelible on my mind, for it was the very reason I had come to Paris.

  But it was true, as Girodias described, that he did accompany me around the corner to the Hôtel Square. However, it was with much amusement and laughter resulting from my cheerfulness in now being able to envision a future for The Ginger Man. And so ended my first ever literary party. But not my enjoyment of more bizarrely pleasant nights in Paris. Gainor settling down to his usual daily routine of urgent errands interrupted by taking a calvados in the various cafes. Then by evening, assembled with Crist, Sayle, and Marx, we all went visiting Sayle’s favorite bars in and around the streets near the Church of St.-Sulpice. Gainor immediately making himself a cherished customer in one of these smaller bistros, where a Spanish patron made him welcome, and one could leave him past midnight contentedly administering his charm and wisdom. However, there was one night which ended up with toreador Crist in the middle of boulevard St.- Germain performing a mock bullfight, with Bob Marx the charging bull. With his jacket off and used as a cape, Crist fought a battle up and down the boulevard. Both gentlemen being brilliant as they jousted with one another and then turned their attention to the oncoming traffic, which Crist, following a few quites, then standing his ground on this famed Paris thoroughfare, received recibiento. Pedestrians, collected in their plenty on the pavement, were incited to shout olé above the blare of automobile horns. But then came speeding down the boulevard at Crist a vehicle with a head out its window shouting, “Make way for the best drunken driver in Paris.”

  I couldn’t determine who spoke these words, but they were followed by the man being declared so qualified, having, by the method of sideswiping, knocked off the door handles of one hundred yards of parked cars. A pass was exquisitely executed by Crist as the car’s fenders swept harmlessly by. Mercifully bringing this particular night safely to a close. But the days seemed to increasingly weigh heavily on Gainor as he now asked for a loan of money to buy his ticket. And to some degree, I was responsible for his obvious glumness as I stubbornly withheld funds for his return to Spain, but always trying to remind him that I did so simply to ensure that he did not drink the money and fail to get back to Barcelona. I had already known from Pamela’s letters of her supreme frustration over his failure to do what he said he would and how when he was expected to travel somewhere, would change plans at the very last minute and fail to arrive. Then, often as not, having already spent the money, she would get a summons to send yet more money to buy tickets.

  Gainor now commenced an odyssey all over Paris to borrow what he could, visiting the few friends he knew and even diplomatic institutions. Gainor’s impatience with me was now far more adamant, as I would reiterate that he would in fact get money for his ticket but that it would only be at the point of his saying good-bye and getting on the train. Even in our last days in America, I had not refused him at least the offer of some money. But Gainor this time seemed to be strangely agitated in a way I had never known him to be before. There is no doubt that he somehow now regarded my financial position as having been made more affluent with the publication of The Ginger Man. And that although I was providing for everything he needed in Paris, that my refusing to give him an amount of money was meanness. And that my offer to give him his fare, but not until he was actually leaving, seemed to irritate if not actually anger him.

  “Mike, please don’t prevaricate, equivocate and evade. I need the money now, at this moment.”

  His voice was raised and insistent. Previously he would philosophically have shrugged such a matter off and gone about his business. And my being in any way obtuse to a request would have merely led to the subject being changed, while always knowing I could at least be relied upon to buy the next round. Even my attempt to compromise and actually buy him the ticket was stubbornly refused. He had now already made his last attempt to get money and succeeded in obtaining a thousand francs from some strange source deep inside the American embassy which I suspected was female. And we were now back in his room, overlooking the traffic-noisy carrefour de Buci. There was a strange seriousness in his behavior. And he spoke in a way that I had never heard him speak before.

  “Mike, I don’t feel right, there’s something wrong with me.”

  I had just contributed a small further amount of money for him to go out and buy some food at the market just around the corner, and he excused himself while I remained in the room. He was gone for ten or so minutes and returned and was standing in the middle of the room when, in placing his baguette on the dresser, he suddenly began reaching about himself and patting his pockets. He then said that he’d left behind in the market his piece of Camembert cheese he’d bought. At that moment, his recent story of the blind dog and its incomprehensible owner to whom he spoke in primordial mutterings, and the luggage lost in the Métro, flashed through my mind and I began to laugh. Knowing too that if his cheese was past praying for that I would replace it for him. But for the first time in all the time I had known him, there was anger in his voice directed at me.

  “You think that’s funny.”

  As Crist went out again to fetch his cheese, I was totally taken aback and realized suddenly that something was really wrong. One had always presumed upon his iron strength and his stoical ability to shrug off and even be amused by all the world’s ills heaped upon him. And these words he said over the loss of his piece of Camembert cheese were, because of their vehemence, among the most wounding words I’d ever heard him speak. And a solemnity overcame me, that such a brief and trivial event might make one feel so. As I left, I thought I would leave it to him to show up at the Hôtel Square before he left for Spain. Girodias meanwhile had organized yet another lunch at yet another eating house to which Muffle Wainhouse’s presence was invited.

  I was now feeling the pace. But, according to his doctors, so was Girodias, who kept a reference list of Paris restaurants and was sampling this one recently opened which seemed to have made an effort to resemble an Elizabethan country manor, its interior paneled in oak and, along with reputed great cuisine, somberly furnished. Although an acknowledged bon vivant, upon asking Girodias about what he would regard as his favorite meal, he announced it was roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. This was a meal I knew a great deal about, having had myself many times enjoyed it expertly prepared by both Valerie and her mother. Girodias seemed a mite different on this occasion and somewhat more guarded, and I recalled that earlier, when I had mentioned British newspaper interest, he said he was interested in publicity but wished one to be discreet, which was hardly advice to be followed when seeking mention by the press.

  However, I vaguely suspected now that Girodias had second thoughts and was reviewing the commercial prospects of The Ginger Man. But I had no idea that he had a scheme already in preparation, according to Terry Southern, who, having written Candy with Mason Hoffenberg, published by the Olympia Press, disclosed such information years later. Girodias was intending during my visit to Paris to wholesale cheat me of my rights in The Ginger Man. And indeed later was even attempting to claim that the novel had been actually written by one of his editors. And, dear me, had I known it at the time, I could have warned him that such as he was plotting had no chance of going according to plan. But there were already other reasons to be cautious. Upon mentioning to Muffle Wainhouse that Girodias and I had agreed concerning an English edition, she immediately asked if I had it in writing. When I said no, she intimated that it would be better that I should, and that Girodias was not a man upon whose word alone one could depend. My reaction was swift and certain. I said that I would depend upon Girodias’s word and that he would have to depend on mine as well.

  Lunch ended early. And in the remainder of the afternoon, I went off alone wandering the Paris streets and to make my way to finally visit the church of Sacré-Coeur, which shone so radiantly on its mount overlooking Paris. Upon arriving I found a venerative ceremony in progress, and the church full of women in black. I took a pew. Candles on the altar blazi
ng alight. Jesus above all. And his arms outstretched across the dome vaulting over the altar. The white host on display in its golden, gleamingly jeweled monstrance. The smoke of incense hovering between the massive towers of stone as the sacring bell rang and bells in the tower boomingly tolled. The recitation and litany as the organ thundered, piercing the great gloom. And voices of the choir soared. In crimson vestments, a cleric carried a crucifix and followed by priests and altar boys slow-marched, parading aloft the monstrance with its sacred host, up and down the aisles. The sorcery of these strange benedictions and vespers cast a spell on this darkening day. And the carefully moving feet of these figures in procession, with their liturgical raiment, their staring eyes and judicial faces, haunted the air of this seraphic chamber. The organ thundering out Charles-Marie Widor’s Toccata Symphony no. 5 in F Minor. And in such solemn devoutness, although a total pagan atheist, I was stunned to putting paper francs into the passing collection plate.