The Ginger Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

door and hopped down the steps. The rich green of the park across the street And through the tops of the trees, red brick buildings on the other side. Look at these great slabs of granite to walk on. How very nice and solid. Celtic lout. I'm all for Christianity but insolence must be put down. With violence if necessary. People in their place, neater that way. Eke. Visit my broker later and buy a French Horn and play it up the Balscaddoon road. About four a.m. And I think I'll step into this fine house here with ye oldish windows.
    This public house is dark and comforting with a feeling of scholarship. With the back gate of Trinity College just outside. Makes me feel I'm close to learning and to you students who don't take the odd malt Maybe I put too much faith in atmosphere.
    Put the money away safely. A bright world ahead. Of old streets and houses, screams of the newly born and grinning happy faces escorting the lately dead. American cars speeding down Nassau Street and tweedy bodies of ex-Indian Army officers stuttering into the well-mannered gloom of the Kildare Street Club for a morning whiskey. The whole world's here. Women from Foxrock with less thick ankles and trim buttocks shod closely and cleanly with the badge of prosperity, strutting because they owned the world and on their way to coffee and an exhibition of paintings. I can't get enough. More. See Marion like that. Going to make money. Me. A sun out. With Jesus for birth control. This great iron fence around Trinity serves a good purpose. World in resurrection. Yellow banners in the sky, all for me, Sebastian Bullion Dangerfield.
    And dear God
    Give me strength
    To put my shoulder
    To the wheel
    And push
    Like the rest.

5
    Spring warmed into summer. In Stephen's Green, actors were sitting in three penny chairs getting a bit of tan. Here there are great rings of flowers and ducks sliding around the sky. And citizens riding the late trams to Dalkey for a swim. On this June morning, Dangerfield came in the front gate of Trinity and went up the dusty rickety stairs of No. 3 where he stood by the dripping rust-stained sink and banged on O'Keefe's door.
    A minute passed and then the sound of padding feet and latches being undone and the appearance of a bearded, dreary face and one empty eye.
    "If s you."
    The door was swung open and O'Keefe plodded back to his bedroom. A smell of stale sperm and rancid butter. Mouldering on the table, a loaf of bread, a corner bitten from it with marks of teeth. The fireplace filled with newspapers, old socks, spittle stains and products of self pollution.
    "Christ, Kenneth, don't you think you ought to have this place cleaned up?"
    "What for? Does it make you sick? Vomit in the fireplace."
    "Don't you have a skip?"
    "I've better things to spend my money for than having a footman. I'm leaving."
    "What?"
    "Leaving. Getting out. Do you want some ties? Bow ties."
    "Yes. Where are you going?"
    "France. Got a job."
    "Doing what?"
    "Teaching English in a Lycée. Besançon, where Paul Klee's mother was born."
    "You lucky bastard, you're telling the truth?"
    "I'm leaving in exactly an hour from now. If you watch me very, very carefully, you'll see me fill this sack with four packs of cigarettes, a pair of socks, two shirts, a bar of soap and a towel Then I put on my cap, spit on my shoes and give them a wipe with my sleeve. I'm out that door, drop my keys off at the front gate and I'm into Bewley's for a cup of coffee, alone I might add, unless you have money to pay for yourself. Then if you're still watching, I'll saunter down O'Connell Street past the Gresham and take a sharp right at the corner and you will see my slender form disappear into a green bus marked airport and finis. Do you see what I mean?"
    "I can only say I'm delighted, Kenneth"
    "See ? System. The well ordered life."
    Dangerfield waving a hand around the room.
    "Is this what you call ordered? Hate to see you in dis-order."
    O'Keefe tapping his skull.
    "Up here, Jack, up