The Pornographer by John McGahern

body shone above me before she bent to kiss. “I thought of nothing else all week. I wanted the week to run to Saturday night. I’d find my fingers reaching out, and I’d wonder what they were reaching for, and then I’d realize they were reaching for your skin.”
    I drew her towards me, “This time we can take all the time in the world,” and when it was over, all the grossness of the food and wine seemed drained away and a peace that was almost purity seemed to settle on what a few moments before had been muscular and wild.
    I put more wood on the fire when we rose and drew the cork of another bottle of wine. She lit the candles that had been blown out. They wavered on the half-filled wine glasses, on the Brie and Stilton and Cheddar and water biscuits on the wooden platter.
    “This girl,” she said with a pause that I knew to be the pain of jealousy, “this girl, the girl you were in love with, who was she?”
    I looked at her, how vulnerable and open the face was. She was going to hurt herself by searching about in a life that no longer existed, that she had been unaware of when it was going on. Crazy as it was, she was determined to cause herself that pain.
    “We met much like we met—like most of Ireland meets—at a dance. We went casually out for a year. At first she did most of the running, and when she tired I took up the pursuit. It’s a usual enough pattern. The more I pushed myself on her the more tiresome I became to her, and that speeded up her withdrawal, which made her ten times as attractive. I felt I couldn’t live without her. Which made me ten times as tiresome. I was ill, lovesick, mad. If she’d finished it then it might have been easier, but who knows. She kept the thing going, interested in my madness, which was after all about her, and we can all do with an awful lot of ourselves. I think it nearly turned into a farce in the end.”
    “I don’t know how you can call it a farce. It sounds horrible. What’s worst about it is that I wish I had her chance.”
    “Marriage to a madman is hardly a recipe for domestic bliss. Because of her interest in this madness about herself I think she nearly fell in love with me. If she’d done that then it’d have been the farce.”
    “Isn’t that what you’d want? Isn’t that what everybody wants, two people in love at the same time.”
    “It doesn’t work that way. If she had fallen in love with me I think it would have soon cured me of my madness. No world can afford to have all its inmates mad at the same time.”
    “You seem to have it all figured out. If I didn’t believe there wasn’t some happiness I don’t know how I’d be able to go on.”
    “You would,” I said. “Anyhow it all got too much. She drew the line.”
    “I don’t see what’s funny about something as horrible as that. All the sex writing must twist and blind you to everything about love, make it just pure cynical.”
    “On the contrary. It clears it out of the way. You learn it has nothing to do with love or living. It’s like sport. Except it’s between the sheets instead of in the gym.”
    “Was she younger than you?” she was still biting into herself.
    “She was, a few years. Why don’t we go to bed?”
    The pain made her look tired and older. “Let’s clear up,” she said. “I hate waking up to a dirty kitchen.”
    After we tidied up I fell into a drugged sleep and woke with the splitting headache of a hangover. Later in the morning she asked, “Since it’s Sunday why don’t we spend the day together?”
    “I’d love to but I have to work,” and I walked her part of the way to where she lived. It was one of those spring mornings, the sun thawing the white frost out of the front gardens, and people with prayerbooks were going and coming between the Masses.
    “Look. We’ll have the whole of next weekend together,” I said as we parted. “What’ll you do for the day?”
    “I think I’ll go to Mass like the other people,” she