I open several books a day, I answered.
You open your granny, said my uncle. Oh, I know the game you are at above
in your bedroom. I am not as stupid as I look, I’ll warrant you that.
He got up from the table and went out to the hall, sending back his
voice to annoy me in his absence.
Tell
me, did you press my Sunday trousers?
I forgot, I said.
What?
I forgot, I shouted.
Well that is very nice, he called, very nice indeed. Oh, trust you to
forget. God look down on us and pity us this night and day. Will you forget
again today?
No, I answered.
As he opened the hall-door, he was saying to himself in a low tone:
Lord save us!
The slam of the door released me from my anger. I finished my collation
and retired to my bedroom, standing for a time at the window and observing the
street-scene arranged below me that morning. Rain was coming softly from the
low sky. I lit my cigarette and then took my letter from my pocket, opened it
and read it.
I
put the letter with care into a pocket at my right buttock and went to the
tender trestle of my bed, arranging my back upon it in an indolent horizontal
attitude. I closed my eyes, hurting slightly my right stye, and retired into
the kingdom of my mind. For a time there was complete darkness and an absence
of movement on the part of the cerebral mechanism. The bright square of the
window was faintly evidenced at the juncture of my lids. One book, one
opening, was a principle I did not find possible to concur. After an interval
Finn Mac Cool, a hero of old Ireland, came out before me from his shadow, Finn
the wide-hammed, the heavy-eyed, Finn that could
spend a Lammas morning with girdled girls at far-from-simple chess-play.