The Book of Evidence by John Banville Page A

tanned pin-up n o w , but s o m e t h i n g else, s o m e t h i n g pallid and slack and soft. I w a s a w a r e o f m y toenails, m y anus, m y d a m p , constricted crotch. A n d I w a s ashamed. I can't explain it.
    T h a t is, I could, but w o n ' t . T h e n the d o g b e g a n to bark, rushing at the p o n y ' s hoofs, and the p o n y snorted, peeling back its m u z z l e and s n a p p i n g its a l a r m i n g teeth. My m o t h e r kicked the d o g , and the girl hauled the p o n y ' s head sideways. T h e d o g h o w l e d , the line o f ponies p l u n g e d and whinnied. W h a t a racket! E v e r y t h i n g , always, turns to farce. I r e m e m b e r e d my h a n g o v e r . I needed a drink.
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    Gm first, then s o m e sort of a w f u l sherry, then successive j o r u m s of my late father's fine B o r d e a u x , the last, alas, of the bin. I was already half-soused w h e n I went d o w n to the cellar to fetch the claret. I sat on a crate amid the must and g l o o m , breathing gin f u m e s o u t of flared nostrils. A streaming lance of sunlight, seething with dust, pierced the l o w , c o b w e b b e d w i n d o w a b o v e m y head. T h i n g s thronged around me in the s h a d o w s — a battered rocking-horse, an old high bicycle, a bundle of antique tennis racquets — their outlines blurred, greyish, fading, as if this place were a way-station where the past paused on its w a y d o w n into oblivion. I laughed. O l d bastard, I said aloud, and the silence rang like a rapped glass. He was always d o w n here in those last m o n t h s before he died. He had b e c o m e a potterer, he w h o all his life had been driven by fierce, obsessive energies. My m o t h e r w o u l d send me d o w n to look for him, in case s o m e t h i n g m i g h t have happened to him, as she delicately put it. I w o u l d find h i m p o k i n g about in c o m e r s , fiddling with things, or just standing, canted at an o d d angle, staring at nothing. W h e n I spoke he w o u l d g i v e a great start and turn on me angrily, huffing, as if he had been caught at something shameful.
    B u t these spurts of animation did not last long, after a m o m e n t he w o u l d drift o f f again into vagueness. It was as if he were not dying of an illness* but of a sort of general distraction: as if one d a y in the midst of his vehement doings something had caught his attention, had beckoned to h i m out of the darkness, and* struck, he had turned aside and w a l k e d t o w a r d s it, with a sleepwalker's pained, puzzled concentration. I was, what, t w e n t y - t w o , twenty-three. T h e l o n g process of his d y i n g wearied and exasperated me in equal measure. Of course I pitied him, too, but I think pity is always, for m e , only the permissible version of an u r g e to g i v e w e a k things a g o o d hard shake.
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    He began to shrink. Suddenly his shirt collars were too big for that w o b b l y tortoise-neck with its t w o slack harp-strings. Everything w a s too big for him, his clothes had m o r e substance than he did, he seemed to rattle about inside them. His eyes were huge and haunted, already clouding. It was s u m m e r then, too. Light was not his m e d i u m any more, he preferred it d o w n here, in the mossy half-dark, a m o n g the deepening shades.
    I hauled myself to my feet and gathered an armful of dusty bottles and staggered with them up the d a m p stone Yet he died upstairs, in the big front b e d r o o m , the airiest r o o m in the house. It was so hot all that week. T h e y opened wide the w i n d o w , and he m a d e them m o v e his bed f o r w a r d until the foot of it was right out on the balcony. He lay with the covers thrown back, his meagre chest bared, giving himself up to the sun, the vast sky, dying into the blue and g o l d glare of s u m m e r . His hands.
    T h e rapid beat of his breathing. His —
    E n o u g h . I was speaking of my mother.
    I had set the bottles on the table, and was