Free The Pornographer by John McGahern Page B

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 timeto 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?”
    “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