I opened my windpipe and made a coarse noise unassociated with the usages of gentlemen.

  I feel very bad, I said.

  By God you’re the queer bloody man, he said.

  I was down in Parnell Street, I said with the Shader Ward, the two of us drinking pints. Well, whatever happened to me, I started to puke and I puked till the eyes nearly left my head. I made a right haimes of my suit. I puked till I puked air.

  Is that the way of it? Said Brinsley.  

  Look at here, I said.

  I arose in my bed, my body on the prop of an elbow.

  I was talking to the Shader, I said, talking about God and one thing and another, and suddenly I felt something inside me like a man trying to get out of my stomach. The next minute my head was in the grip of the Shader’s hand and I was letting it out in great style. O Lord save us …

 Here Brinsley interposed a laugh.

  I thought my stomach was on the floor, I said. Take it easy, says the Shader, you’ll be better when you get that off. Better? How I got home I couldn’t tell you.

  Well you did get home, said Brinsley.

  I withdrew my elbow and fell back again as if exhausted by my effort. My talk had been forced, couched in the accent of  the lower or working-classes. Under the cover of the bed-clothes I poked idly with a pencil at my navel. Brinsley was at the window giving chuckles out.

  What are you laughing at? I said.

  You and your book and your porter, he answered.

  Did you read that stuff about Finn, I said, that stuff I gave you?

  Oh yes, he said, that was the pig’s whiskers. That was funny all right.

This I found a pleasing eulogy. The God-big Finn. Brinsley turned from the window and asked me for a cigarette. I took out my ‘butt’ or half-spent cigarette and showed it in the hollow of my hand.

  That is all I have, I said, affecting a pathos in my voice.

 

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