Around the corner Gypo halted. He put his hand against the wall behind
him and stood motionless, with his head turned back, listening. He had
heard a step following him. But the steps halted also. He listened for
several seconds breathlessly and heard nothing further. Then he
snorted and turned his head slowly to his front. He looked ahead into
the darkness, dreamily. He stood perfectly still.
Then his face broke slowly into a sort of smile and his eyes grew dim.
He trembled slightly. He glanced about him sharply and furtively
several times. There was a strange, almost mysterious “significance”
in his movements, slight, sudden, furtive movements.
Then he stared steadily down along the dark, narrow street that
stretched ahead of him, ending at the far end in a high wall, with a
dim lamp at one corner suggesting that another street branched off it
to the left. He winked his right eye at the lamp and a roguish
expression creased his face as he did so.
“Why not,” he muttered aloud. “Why shouldn’t I go an’ have a bit o’
fun? Wha’? A few bob on the women an’ a few drinks to keep me supper
warm.”
A wave of passion surged through his body. He was on the point of
opening his mouth to utter a yell, but instead he thrust his hand into
his trousers pocket anxiously and groped for his wad of money. He
found it. He sighed easily.
“They might have pinched it,” he muttered with a look of gravity in
his little eyes. “That mob around there are a lot o’ wasters. Ye
couldn’t trust yer shirt with ’em on a winter’s night. They’d take the
charley from under a pope’s bed. Terrible lot o’ criminals around
lately.”
Then his face lit up with eagerness as his mind swerved back again to
the contemplation of that lamp at the far end . . . and where that
street led. He swallowed his breath with a loud noise and set out
towards the lamp.
Almost immediately a head peered around the corner behind him. The
head watched until Gypo turned to the left at the far end past the
lamp. Then a man darted around the corner and raced down the street in
pursuit. It was Mulholland tracking Gypo.
When Gypo turned to the left past the lamp he came into a narrow
street in which there were no houses. On the right-hand side there was
a high wall, like a barrack wall. It enclosed a big goods yard
belonging to a manufactory, where mineral waters or something of that
kind were made. On the other side of the street there was no wall at
all. The foundations of houses still remained. Here and there, a
doorway, a chimney stack, or the brick framework of a window, stood up
in a ghastly fashion. Beyond that there was an open space full of
refuse, mounds of earth, bricks, pots, old clothes. The street itself
was a network of puddles. In order to avoid wetting himself to the
knees, Gypo had to walk along the sloping bank of clay where the
houses had crumbled.
It was a dreary sight. It almost shouted its experiences, and if it
had shouted, it would have talked in that endless, loud, babbling
scream in which maniacs and demented creatures utter their words. It
was alive in that peculiar way in which ruins are alive at night, when
the earth is covered with darkness and the living sleep.
But Gypo was not sensitive. For him, the street, with its dirt and its
squalor, was a savage sauce to whet his appetite for the riotous feast
of . . . He strode rapidly. He jumped from mound to mound, now
slipping with a curse, now catching a loose brick in some piece of
wall to steady himself. Now and again he heard a “hist” from the
opposite wall of the street, where some woman, old and decrepit,
sought the darkness so that her ravaged figure might escape the
drunken eyes of some passionate fellow seeking a fool’s pleasure.
These noises, croaks uttered by damned souls, sounds so tremendously
horrid to the innocent mind, made no impression on Gypo. To him they
were merely noises, expressions of everyday life.
Once he recognized one of the women who took a pace forward from her
position and put a wrinkled hand to her brow to look at him.
“Ho! Blast yer sowl, Maggie Casey,” he muttered, “aren’t ye dead yet?”
He chuckled with laughter as he heard her blasphemous rejoinder.
As he approached the far end of the street the silence lessened. He
heard whisperings and murmurs, snatches of distant song, sounds of
footfalls, strains of music. These sounds acted on him like
battle-cries. He almost broke into a run as he came gradually nearer
to the volume of sound. At last he dashed under an old archway and he
was in the next street. The medley of sound was all about him. On his
left-hand side stretched the long, low streets of brothels, entwined
like webwork among the ruins of what was once a resort of the nobility
of eighteenth-century Dublin.
He was in a narrow street of two-storied houses, low houses with green
venetian blinds on the windows of some of them, their street doors
opened wide, lights in all the front, ground-floor windows. But the
street itself was in darkness on account of the drizzling rain. An odd
woman flitted along. A few men walked about uncertainly. The street
had a gloomy deserted look. But from the houses a medley of joyous
sound issued.
Gypo looked on for a moment excitedly. Then he walked down the street
slowly, examining each house as he passed. He knew Katie Fox was by
now at Biddy Burke’s. He wanted to avoid Biddy Burke’s. Biddy Burke’s
house was over on the other side. He didn’t want to go there to-night.
It was only a poor place, used by revolutionaries and criminals of the
working-class type. The women there were an ugly, ill-dressed,
whisky-drinking lot. He was well known there. He knew all the women.
There was only Guinness’s stout on sale and even that was so diluted
and ghastly that it was like drinking castor oil. The more a man drank
of it the thirstier he became. A shilling a drink for poison like
that!
Yah! Away with Biddy Burke and Katie Fox and Sligo Cissie and the rest
of them! To-night he wanted to go somewhere where he was not known. He
wanted to go among beautiful women. Strange, beautiful women clothed
in silk! Mad women! Women with dark, flashing eyes and sharp, white
teeth! Huh! He wanted to go mad. It was a mad night. There was fire in
his blood. His hands wanted to rip mountains. He would swallow
tankards of drink. He would drain this vast reservoir of strength from
his body. He must or he would burst. Already he felt a desire to beat
his head against walls.
For six months he had been walking about a beggar, cut off from
pleasure, subject to Katie Fox’s charity. Phew! She was no longer
attractive to him, that bag of bones who thought of nothing but dope.
Suddenly, without thinking, breathing heavily, flushed, excited like a
man inhaling chloroform, he staggered through a doorway. He stood in a
long, dark hall. He could hear laughter and drunken singing coming
from his right, a few yards down the hall, from behind a door through
which a glint of light came. He strode to the door. He tried to lift
the latch and walk in, but the door was bolted. Almost instantly the
sounds ceased. He kicked at the bottom of the door with his boot
several times.
“Who’s that?” came a woman’s voice angrily.
“Open the door an’ find out,” answered Gypo in a shout.
“Wait a minute, Betty,” came a husky man’s voice; “lemme out.”
There was shuffling and whispering.
“Keep well behind it,” said somebody else.
Then the bolt was withdrawn. The latch was lifted carefully. The door
opened slowly about three inches. Gypo watched these proceedings
nervously and angrily.
“Come on, come on,” he cried at last, “what’s all this monkey trickin’
about? Why don’t ye open the door wide and take yer mug outa the way?”
The man suddenly slipped outside the door like a cat. With his back to
the door and his right hand bulging in his coat pocket he faced Gypo.
He was a stocky, bulgy fellow, with a criminal face. He had rushed out
with the intention of giving Gypo a thrashing with the “blackjack”
that was concealed on his person, but when he saw the kind of customer
with whom he had to deal his jaw dropped. Gypo gazed at the fellow
angrily.
“So you’re the pimp,” he gurgled ferociously.
He took a little hurried breath, shot out his right hand and seized
the pimp by the throat. The pimp gasped. His right hand dropped the
“blackjack.” He reached up with his two hands to grip the giant hand
that held his throat.
“Lemme go,” he screamed.
But Gypo contemptuously hurled him away from the door and sent him
sprawling along the hall into the darkness. Then he sent the door
flying open with a push of his shoulder and strode blinking into the
room.
The room was crowded with people. It was very large. It had a stone
floor and a wide, open hearth where an immense turf fire was blazing
in a huge grate, with steaming kettles on either side, on the hobs.
There was a dresser loaded with shining Delftware of all colours. The
ceiling was high and white-washed. The walls were covered with
pictures of women, in amorous postures and in the varying degrees of
nakedness that might be expected to arouse libidinous desires in the
minds of all types of men. Everything in the room was spotlessly
clean, but the air was warm and heavy, due to the rather intense heat
of the fire and the combined odour of perfume and of alcohol.
This heavy, languorous odour exalted Gypo. He rolled his eyes round
the room, drawing in a deep breath through his expanded nostrils.
Everybody was looking at him. There were eight men present, three
students from the University, an artist, a doctor and three young
gentleman farmers, up from the country “on a tear.” They had hired the
brothel for the night and ordered the proprietress to admit nobody;
but they did not take umbrage at Gypo’s appearance. They were just at
that moment in the delicious stage of intoxication when the most
strange incidents become normal and welcome, to minds that are cloyed
with alcohol fumes and the contemplation of bodily pleasures. The
scuffle outside the door and the manner of Gypo’s entrance made no
impression on them. His appearance, huge, towering, in a suit of
dungarees, with his little round hat perched on his massive skull,
intrigued them with a feeling that this was some new kind of pleasure
provided for their entertainment. They looked at him, half laughing,
half serious, with that dim and distant look in their eyes that comes
with the initial stages of drunkenness.
The women, on the other hand, looked at Gypo with disfavour. There
were ten of them present. Some of them were almost nude and in various
stages of intoxication, sitting on the men’s knees, with glasses in
their hands and cigarettes in their mouths. Others sat solemnly on
their chairs dressed for the street, as if they had just dropped in on
their way somewhere. Their hard faces set in a scowl when they saw
Gypo. He was dressed like a workman. Therefore he had no money.
Therefore they scowled at him. This was an “upper-class” brothel. All
the women here were “ladies.” Their “class” instincts were aroused by
his wretched clothes and his uncouth features.
One woman alone took no notice of him whatsoever. She sat in a corner,
reading a newspaper, with her legs crossed, a cigarette between her
lips, a fashionable short fur coat wrapped around her. Gypo’s eyes
wandered around the room until they rested on her. There they
remained.
“What d’ye want?” cried a harsh voice behind him.
Gypo turned. The proprietress of the brothel was standing beside the
door. Her left hand was on her breast fingering a little silver
crucifix that was suspended from her neck by a black velvet cord. Her
right hand rested on the door, a short, white, fat hand, as if she
were waiting until Gypo went out so as to shut the door again. She was
a small, fat woman of middle age, with a huge head of devilishly black
hair, arranged in towering fashion, with a glittering black comb stuck
in the rear of the pile. Her hair was the last remains of her beauty.
The remainder of her head had been coarsened by the odious nature of
her pursuits. Her face was blotched, wrinkled and pale. Her eyes were
yellow, hard, sunken and bloodshot. Her mouth was drawn together as if
some clumsy fellow had tried to stitch the lips and made a bad job of
it. She was dressed in a blue skirt and a white blouse. The blouse
sleeves were rolled almost up to her shoulders showing a tremendously
fat pair of arms. They called her Aunt Betty and she was known all
over the district for her cunning, her meanness and the peculiar habit
she had, perhaps in the middle of a conversation, of suddenly uttering
a coarse expression, grasping her breasts and staring about her
wild-eyed, as if she were afraid of some dread spectre being in
pursuit of her.
Gypo did not know her, because her place was fashionable, frequented
only by well-to-do people, business men, army officers and students
who had money to spend. Gypo only knew the cheaper brothels, places
that were used as “friendly houses” by revolutionaries, criminals and
working men. On any other night he would never think of entering the
place, no more than a man in overalls would think of taking a seat in
the stalls of a London theatre. But to-night he had transcended
himself. He looked at Aunt Betty arrogantly with his lower lip
hanging.
“I want a drink,” he replied gruffly, in a low voice. Then he added
after a pause with a sudden hoarse chuckle, “an’ anythin’ else that’s
goin’.”
“Ye can’t get a drink here,” said Aunt Betty. “You better be going
somewhere else. You’re wasting your time here, my good man.”
Aunt Betty spoke in a state of great excitement. This was habitual
with her, owing to the terrific strain it caused her to try to effect
the correct pronunciation of her words and “the educated accent of a
woman of good family.” For she always tried to speak like a lady.
Gypo took no notice of her, or of the pimp who had again entered the
room and now stood against the wall, with his terror-stricken eyes
gleaming and his face livid with malice.
“Here,” he cried, “give everybody a drink. I’m callin’ a drink for the
house.”
He thrust his hand into his pocket, pulled out the roll of notes and
separated one, which he held out to Aunt Betty. It was like the
performance of a miracle. Aunt Betty’s eyes sparkled. She advanced
almost unconsciously, laughing with her thin, hard lips, while her
eyes gleamed with avarice. Her fingers almost trembled as she took the
note slowly. Feverishly, she examined it under the light. Gypo laughed
as she did so and gave her a loud, hearty smack on the back, with
horrid familiarity. She merely nudged him playfully in response. The
note was genuine and had passed her scrutiny. She sighed and cracked
her fingers towards the pimp.
“Glasses all round,” she said.
There was a little thrill of applause from the throats of the women as
soon as they saw that his money was genuine. Some of those who were
sitting alone, dressed for the street, got up and approached him,
uttering laughing endearments. Even the women who were already
engaged, sitting on the knees of the men, slightly tipsy, sobered up
and became contemplative and sulkily jealous of those women who were
free to capture Gypo and his wad of Treasury notes.
The men, on the other hand, now regarded him with hostility, jealous
of the attraction he held for the women.
Only one person in the room took absolutely no notice of the whole
proceedings. That was the woman in the fur coat, who sat in the corner
to the right of the fire, reading the newspaper.
And Gypo, disregarding the soft, naked arms that attempted to embrace
him and the amorous, sensuous faces, that were turned up to his on all
sides and the soft, seductive, sibilant whispers that were uttered at
him, kept his eyes towards the indifferent woman in the corner
fixedly.
“Keep out of me way,” he muttered.
He pushed the girls away from him, strode over to the corner and stood
beside the mysterious one. He stood over her, breathing heavily,
looking down at her. She glanced at his knees from under her eyelids.
Then she puffed at her cigarette, flicked something off her sleeve
with her thumb and forefinger and went on reading her newspaper. The
other women looked on silently with narrowed eyes. The men began to
smile. Everybody was interested in what the fur-coated woman would do.
Gypo sat down beside her. He sat on the floor with his back to the
wall.
“Aren’t ye hot wearin’ that fur coat?” he said.
She did not reply. There was a titter from the women.
“What’s all the news in the paper about?” continued Gypo.
The woman did not reply. One of the men burst into laughter, making a
sound like an explosion, as if his mouth had been full of laughter a
long time and it suddenly burst out.
“Horrid man! Go ’way,” said somebody else, mimicking the voice of a
timid and refined woman.
Gypo’s face darkened and his throat veins swelled ominously. But just
then the drinks arrived. He jumped to his feet and rushed over to the
pimp who was carrying them. He drained one glass of whisky, then
another, then another. An outcry arose.
“Hey, don’t drink the lot.”
“Savage.”
“What d’ye mean by callin’ a drink for us an’ then swallowin’ ’em all
yoursel’?”
“Hey! Stop him, Johnny. Take the tray away from him.”
“You all go to the divil,” gasped Gypo. The whisky rushing down his
throat had taken his breath away. “Wait there. There’s lots more.”
He pulled out another pound note and tossed it to Aunt Betty
carelessly.
“There ye are,” he cried, “go an’ get more drinks.”
Then amid the delighted yells of the girls he drained three more
glasses one after the other, each one at a gulp, while the women
danced around him.
Suddenly the whole company went into a state of mad excitement. Human
beings always respond in that way to the mysterious influence of a
fresh and dominant personality, who, with a word, a gesture, a shout,
turns a solemn and bored gathering into an almost Bacchanalian party.
It seemed that all the people in the room had only awaited the arrival
of Gypo to abandon themselves completely to an orgy of mad behaviour.
Shouts, shrieks, smacking kisses, laughter, mingled chaotically in the
warm air of the room. Each of the men vied with his neighbours in an
exaggerated attempt to make a fool of himself. A young man with an
innocent, red face and beautiful grey eyes, a student, stood up
precariously in front of the fire, laughing incontinently and began to
strip himself naked. Another man, a big fellow, seized a girl in his
arms, tumbled with her to the floor and lay there shouting and trying
to kiss her, while she struggled to free her loosened hair from
beneath his shoulder. Gypo picked up two women and perched them one on
each shoulder. Then he seized two others round the waist, raised them
from the ground under his arms and began to jump into the air, yelling
like a bull with each jump, while his fluttering, half-naked cargo of
women laughed hysterically as they dangled about him.
This amazing scene lasted fully a quarter of an hour and then ended
suddenly. Everybody seemed to be exhausted. It was only then that Aunt
Betty’s voice was heard above the uproar.
“Do ye want to get me run in be the police?” she cried.
“It’s all right, mother,” said Gypo, going up to her and putting his
arm around her waist. “Yer a nice girl. I’ll keep order here for ye.
Now who is kickin’ up a row? The next fellah that speaks above a
whisper I’ll open his skull for him.”
“Would you, though?” cried the young man who was stripping himself
naked. He stood in front of the fire in his trousers and underwear
with his shirt in his hand. “I’ll teach you manners, my good fellow,”
he continued, pulling up his trousers and brandishing his shirt. “Come
on. I’ll teach you how to behave yourself in the presence of
gentlemen.”
But somebody pulled him on to a settee before he could do anything.
Gypo looked at him for a moment and then he laughed. His eyes were
gleaming. The quantity of whisky he had drunk was coursing through his
head and his limbs as if it were being pumped methodically by a
machine. He released Aunt Betty and took a pace towards the centre of
the floor. Then he shivered all over and gasped for breath. He broke
into a laugh. He walked over to the fur-coated woman without looking
in her direction. He stooped down, put his arms about her, lifted her
up until her face was level with his and he kissed her. His clumsy
lips met her right cheek. They groped about for her mouth, but they
could not reach it on account of her frantic efforts to free herself.
He lost his balance and let her down to the floor. He regained his
balance, laughing heavily and wiping his mouth on his sleeve.
There was an intense silence. The woman stood in front of him erect
and trembling. She held her hands rigid by her sides, with the long,
slender fingers bent backwards. She was dressed in excellent taste,
black shoes, navy-blue skirt, short fur coat, small, black hat, from
under whose brim brown curls protruded. She was a handsome woman, a
beautiful woman, but for her face. The left side of her face was
disfigured in a ghastly way from the temple to the jaw. So that one
cheek was white and the other almost black. The left eye was darkened
and almost sightless, while the right eye was blue, clear and gleaming
with anger. The disfigurement touched the corner of her mouth. The
remainder of the mouth was red-lipped, arched and beautiful.
Suddenly, she bared her white teeth and spat at Gypo with the ferocity
of a wild animal.
He shivered. His hands clawed up. His face contorted and he swivelled
his head on his neck from left to right and back again, like a ram
that is going to charge an enemy. A woman near the fire gasped with
horror. But Gypo did not attack. Instead of advancing on the woman he
took a pace to his rear and let his breath out through his nostrils
with a great noise. Then he stood motionless, with his eyes distended,
staring at the infuriated woman in awe and wonder. She was staring at
him with her eyes almost closed.
“You pig,” she gasped.
There was a painful silence. Each person in the room felt sure that a
catastrophe was imminent. The fact that the room, a few minutes
before, had been full of the sound of libidinous revelry made the
silence all the more terrible. Everybody watched Gypo. His huge body,
monstrous with strange movement, stood under the glare of the lamp
that hung from the ceiling. His face, staring steadily at the woman,
changed again and again, in response to the dark and mysterious
suggestions that chased one another through his mind. At one moment
his chest would heave and his limbs would stiffen. Then his breath
would come out with a snap. His jaws would set. His eyes would expand.
A movement would begin in his throat. Then a sound like a curtailed
snort would come from his nostrils.
At last, after waiting for twenty seconds, the spectators were
startled by the unexpected outcome of these movements. Gypo broke into
a roar of laughter. He raised his head and laughed at the ceiling.
Everybody gaped at him in fright. All gaped at him, terrified, except
the woman. As if in response to his laughter, laughter broke from her
lips too, but it was the shrill, thin laughter of hysteria, that made
her eyes glitter coldly.
Breaking off in the middle of his laugh, Gypo strode over to Aunt
Betty. He took her by the arm, pointed his finger at the woman in the
fur coat and whispered hoarsely:
“I want her. Get me a room. I want to take her upstairs. Ye can have
whatever money ye ask.”
“Never,” shrieked the woman in the fur coat.
She put her hands to her face. Then she took a tiny step forward with
her right foot and stood leaning on the foot, trembling as if she had
planted it on ice.
“None of this nonsense, Phyllis,” said Aunt Betty, coming forward to
the centre of the room. She faced the fur-coated woman with her arms
akimbo and her jaws squared. “I’m fed up with your swagger. You’re no
better than yer board and lodging, an’ as long as I keep you, you’re
no better than any other woman that takes bite and sup in my house.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it. One man is as good as another.
You’re going with him.”
“That’s true, Aunt Betty,” cried several women, looking with hatred at
the fur-coated woman.
“Rabble,” shrieked the fur-coated woman, stamping her feet and shaking
her fists all round her at the women. “What filthy souls you have to
be reduced to this level. I’m not a prostitute like you and that’s why
you hate me. You hate me because I’m an educated woman and——”
“It’s nothin’ o’ the kind,” cried a big, large-boned, red-faced,
strong, handsome woman, called Connemara Maggie. “We hate ye because
yer a stuck-up, ignorant thing, that thinks she’s better than what God
turned her into; an’ God forgive me for sayin’ so——”
“More power to ye, Maggie,” interrupted several, “tell her yer mind.”
“I don’t mind what you say, Connemara Maggie,” gasped the fur-coated
one. “You’re not the worst of them and——”
“Good God,” shouted Aunt Betty, suddenly putting her hands to her
breasts.
She backed to the wall, staring furtively at the fur-coated woman. She
was in the power of one of her “visions.” Gypo stared at the woman in
the fur coat with his arms hanging loosely by his sides.
“Listen,” continued the woman, “I don’t bear any of you any malice.
You can’t help it, any of you. I don’t bear even you any malice, Aunt
Betty. I know very well that were it not for you I would starve
or . . . or be in a worse place. I have been in your house a month now
and you’ve been kind to me. I know very well nobody can help anything.
I’m English, an army officer’s wife, so it’s only natural that you
girls would be prejudiced against me——”
“It’s nothing o’ the kind,” cried Connemara Maggie; “it’s yer stuck-up
ways that——”
“Let her have her say, Maggie,” cried another.
“I had no right to come in here,” cried the woman, bursting into
tears. “I should have gone to the police and got them——”
“The police!” yelled Gypo suddenly, starting as if he had been
awakened from his sleep. “None o’ that talk. Keep away from the
police. What d’ye want the police for?”
“I want to get back home,” sobbed the woman.
“Where’s yer home?”
“It’s . . . it’s near London.”
“Well, what are ye doin’ over here then?”
“I got this,” cried the woman, becoming hysterical again. She put a
trembling hand to her disfigured cheek. “I got this a year ago. It’s
driven me mad. My husband took another woman. I sold everything I had
and came over to Dublin. I wanted to go to work. Honest to God, I did.
But I could get nothing. Then a man brought me down here. Good God,
the shame of telling you all this in a place like this . . .
the . . .”
“D’ye want to go home now?” cried Gypo angrily.
She did not reply, but looked at him with large eyes, as if in
amazement.
“What’ll bring ye home?” he continued. “How much will it cost?”
“A little over two pounds,” she replied in a low voice.
“Here,” he cried, taking out his money, “here’s yer fare. One, two,
three,” he paused and was going to add a fourth, but he put it back.
He handed her the three notes. She shrank backwards, looking at the
money with large eyes.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said in a strange, dreamy voice. “Take the money
an’ get outa here. That’s enough to take ye home. Go back home. Yer
not wanted here. You an’ yer husband and the police. Ye better keep
away from the police, I’m tellin’ ye. Go on. Beat it. Get outa here.”
Staring him in the face, trembling, with her mouth open, she seized
the notes suddenly. Then uttering an exclamation, she looked about her
once and rushed to the door.
“Go off now,” cried Gypo after her. “Go off now.”
Everybody stared at the door through which she disappeared, banging it
after her. There was silence. Then Aunt Betty spoke:
“That’s all very well,” she sniggered; “but she owes me two pound ten.
Who’s goin’ to pay me that? It’s all very well doin’ the——”
“Shut up yer gob,” cried Gypo, “here’s two pound for ye. That’s
enough. Not another word outa ye.” He threw two pound notes at her.
Then he threw out his arms. “Who’s comin’ to bed with me,” he cried,
“before the bank is broke?”
“I am, me bould son o’ gosha,” cried Connemara Maggie, rushing to him,
with her yellow curly hair streaming about her face and her blue eyes
dancing.
She enveloped his neck with her brawny arms.