The Onion Eaters by J. P. Donleavy Read Free Book Online

together belay abaft and keep your luff. You swabies.
    Clementine standing in the semidarkness. Saluting and smiling in the wheelhouse. Putting his fists tight around the helm. Could head this thing out through those doors. Smash slicing through the mountainous swells, sea spray on the face. Castle cannon blasting once more. Setting a route for the unknown. Brave mariner with a few selected female deck hands navigating a calm but titillating course while sunning on the uncluttered foredeck out there. And in here a leather cushioned chair for the captain to relax while one is underway. With some rather risqué marine sauciness.
    With lighted matches, Clementine explored the ship. Ninety eight feet overall. Twenty one of your feet across the beam. Giant diesel in the engine room. Packing twelve cylinders. Even a little tool table with wrenches, vise and drill. Elevator an upright coffin with a mirror to comb hair. Could fit two deeply in love. Salt stained portholes of the main saloon. Flowered sofas and stacks of yellow coveredgeographical magazines. A crapper here and a crapper there. In which Elmer samples the rusty water, and rushes up and down the gangway. Chewing on the carpet, peeing on a stair. Take Rose off the parapet, down a dram of donkey distillate, turn this vessel into a ship of shame.
    Clementine tapping a barometer on the mahogany panelling of a large stateroom amidships. A double bed covered with a tattered canvas sail. A cough just to my rear. Making only a small area of hair stand up on the back of my head. As one gets used to the random terrors. And Erconwald. Slowly bowing and taking off a white yachting cap.
    ‘Ah good person forgive me. I did see you disappear in this direction. And I came aboard but to ask a question. Which I hesitatingly do as we have already taken generously of your hospitality and a further imposition is unthinkable but pray, some friends have arrived, both of them people who will please you. And here. Humbly I offer, with the compliments of Franz, myself and George, a vial of the donkey distillate. When Franz has completed his precipitation of essences from reproduction fluids of the mamba, we shall of course, upon its meeting with satisfaction in our tests, put it at your immediate disposal.’
    ‘Thank you. Your friends are they just passing through.’
    ‘Ah. Passing through. Ah. Perhaps that might be answered by a brief description. He is Lead Kindly Light. His wife is a woman of cultivation. They have long involved themselves with kindnesses to those imprisoned. And they are accompanied by three exprisoners. Some women of course prefer to cohabit with the stored up passions of men incarcerated for many years.’
    ‘There are five of them.’
    ‘Ah yes to be sure. But I see dear good person that you are dismayed. I would not want that. Pray say the word and we shall depart. But may I say first that Rose wishes for me to send you her compliments. She discerns good person, as certainly do I, your nobility and your abundant humanity. Of which we, your most humble servants, gratefully partake. I withdraw to await your word.’
    Clementine stumbling through the companionway andup out of the damp mustiness. To climb the steps again of the boathouse. Go out the door into the sunshine and rush back up the hill. In the library, thumbing through the dictionary to the letter m. And listed below mama’s boy and above mambo, the word mamba. Any of several tropical venomous snakes attaining a length of twelve feet and dreaded because of its lightning quickness and fearless readiness to inflict its fatal bite.
    Clementine leaning heavily upon the edge of the desk. Inlaid diamonds of ivory surrounding a green leather top. Sneak back into the world by the skin of my foreskin, get somewhere to live and one is set hysterically dancing between a lot of slashing fatal fangs. Which strike even if you didn’t do a god damn thing to it. Like step on its head. Which you can’t do because of its