Excerpt from A Monk Swimming by Malachy McCourt, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

An ardent craw-thumping follower of Gucci-shoed popes was old G.G.G., who cast a cold orb upon me when I'd share with him my inflated tales of fleshly pursuits, until I decided I'd show him, and kept them to myself.

On the table in our living room there stood in eternal vigilance a stone bird, beak up, wings folded, greenish grey--an ornithologist's dilemma. George warned me to be careful what I said, as our friend the boid had the habit of flying around to the other apartments in the building after we went to bed and relating to all the Jews living there every word we had spoken. And there was much to be reported, as our chats, such as they were, would by then have been quite brief were it not for the latest doings of the Jews (G.G.G.) and the weather (me).

The end of this apartment share came after only a few months, the night G.G.G. and myself were sitting digesting the evening's repast and, having been filled in by my roommate on the daily doings of Moses' henchmen, I was reading quietly. Suddenly my attention was drawn to the floor. Eichmann's admirer was crawling toward me, eyes ablaze, flecks of ye olde foam at the corners of the mouth. "Get down," he urged. "Get down on the floor. Quick! Quick!"

George was a veteran of the latest police action in Korea and, although a pilot, knew ground warfare too. As my knowledge of warfare partook of neither the sky nor the battlefield, but extended only to the occasional barroom set-to, I deferred to his greater experience and assumed we were under attack, even though we were on the seventh floor. Fear accelerated my dive to the carpet, where I found myself stretched out on the belly, face-to-face with my foaming friend.

Having taken all possible precautions against being blown away by sniper fire from the Museum of Natural History, I ventured a query to George.

"What is going on, George?" sez I.

"Can't you hear them!"

"Who?" sez I.

"The Jew cab drivers."

I tried to look thoughtful, and indeed I was, thinking how a distinction could be made between the words "Jew" and "Jewish."

"What about them, George?"

"As if you don't know! They've been told to honk their horns when they pass this building!"

"I see. And what are we doing on the floor?"

"They can see our shadows on the ceiling!"

It's embarrassing to realize you've been conned into entering the province of a first-class, ocean-going lunatic, so up on the pins with me, announcing, "You're talking through your arsehole!"

Thereupon, the slavering George said that I was a brainwashed Jew-lover, no better than the Judas bird, and there was no place for me in a decent Christian society, much less his apartment, so I'd better get out. I left the following morning, after an alert and sleepless night.

I didn't see old G.G.G. for some years, until I spotted him on Third Avenue pacing up and down across the street from Malachy's I, a saloon I owned at that time. With a bit of trepidation, I approached the man. He seemed glad to see me, and when I invited him to step across the boulevard to the saloon, he demurred, and instead invited me to dine with him the following week at the New York Athletic Club.

I was relieved to see the man had apparently achieved normalcy, so I accepted. The New York Athletic Club at that time was a bastion of Franco-loving, Mussolini-mourning, God-fearing Hitlereans, but, not being too discriminating in those days, I hied myself over there and presented myself for the free dinner. Got a warmish greeting from George and, after a beaker of Irish whiskey (N.B.: No other whiskey is entitled to be spelled with an "e"), he invited me to inspect the new wrestling mats in the gym.

(C) 1998 Malachy McCourt All rights reserved.